Terrible Deeds Committed in the name of Democrats

Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest, possibly the first grand dragon of the Ku Klux Klan, spoke at the 1868 Democratic National Convention. Most Klansmen were Democrats. The party refused to condemn the Klan as late as its 1924 convention, a gathering wags called “the Klanbake.”

Woodrow Wilson, a progressive Democrat, was a white supremacist who re-segregated the federal workforce. Segregationists were part of the New Deal coalition and were running mates even to liberal Democratic presidential candidates into the 1950s. In 1956, 99 of the 101 politicians who signed the racist “Southern Manifesto” were Democrats.

The major civil rights legislation of the 1950s and 1960s were supported by a lower percentage of Democratic members of Congress than Republicans. This included J. William Fulbright, who was a mentor to Bill Clinton, Al Gore Sr., who was father of the future vice president, and Robert Byrd, an ex-Klansmen who was the Senate Democratic floor leader until 1989 and an elected Democrat until his death in 2010.

George Wallace, Bull Connor and Lester Maddox were all Democrats… By now you get the point.

We don’t need to ask whether liberals think any of this history is relevant to the Democratic Party today. They’ve told us repeatedly.

When then-conservative Bruce Bartlett wrote a book about the Democrats’ past racism, the Washington Monthly’s Steve Benen dismissed it as “cheap and silly.”

“If history ended in 1965,” Benen concluded, “Bartlett may have a legitimate point.”

Or as Matthew Yglesias put it, “that was all quite a long time ago.”

Not longer ago than the history Obama and Coates cite in comparing Christian supporters of slavery and segregation in the 19th and 20th centuries to ISIS today. (Coates curiously downplays the extent to which Christianity also played a role in abolishing slavery and segregation.)

It’s all much more recent than the Crusades or the Inquisition.

If we’re talking about Christians or Americans, there is a direct link between the distant past and today. If we’re talking about Democrats, it’s all ancient history.

It’s almost like saying that bringing up the weather to argue against global warming is stupid but bringing up the weather to argue for it is really smart and sophisticated.

All analogies break down somewhere. There’s obviously less continuity between the Democratic platforms of 1860 and 2012 than Christian doctrines from the early church to today.

Most liberals would say that whatever the sins of past Democrats, what’s relevant is where the party stands today. The same is true for the president’s history lesson: whatever sins have historically been committed in the name of Christianity, ISIS is setting people on fire right now.

The United States abolished slavery in 1865. ISIS still practices it.

Yes, we should resist the urge to dehumanize or make enemies of all Muslims. The Jordanian pilot brutally murdered by ISIS was a Muslim. His countrymen who are risking their lives in the fight against ISIS are Muslims.

But we should also acknowledge that some of the things jihadists fight for, such as the death penalty for apostates, have much more popular support in the contemporary Muslim world than Timothy McVeigh, the Olympic bomber, the Ku Klux Klan or abortion clinic bombers enjoy in the United States.

A 2013 Pew Research Center poll found that Muslims themselves often worry more about Muslim extremism than other forms of religious extremism. As noted above, the victims of Muslim extremists are often Muslims.

And while majorities throughout the Muslim world told Pew they rejected violence, the minorities were not trivial in number.

Our current president should have taken a similar approach. If history ended in 1215, Obama may have a legitimate point.

The Daily Caller

NC Republicans Shaking Up the Racist Left

North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory (R) on Monday signed into law one of the nation’s most wide-ranging Voter ID laws.

The move is likely to touch off a major court battle over voting rights, and the Justice Department is weighing a challenge to the new law, which is the first to pass since the U.S. Supreme Court struck down part of the Voting Rights Act. 


The measure requires voters to present government-issued photo identification at the polls and shortens the early voting period from 17 to 10 days. It will also end pre-registration for 16- and 17-year-old voters who will be 18 on Election Day and eliminates same-day voter registration.

Democrats and minority groups have been fighting against the changes, arguing that they represent an effort to suppress the minority vote and the youth vote, along with reducing Democrats’ advantage in early voting. They point out that there is little documented evidence of voter fraud.

Republicans say that the efforts are necessary to combat such fraud and that shortening the window for early voting will save the state money. They also note that, while the North Carolina law makes many changes to how the state conducts its elections, most of its major proposals — specifically, Voter ID and ending same-day registration — bring it in line with many other states. More than three-fifths of states currently have some kind of Voter ID law, and even more have no same-day registration. Not all states allow in-person early voting.

“While some will try to make this seem to be controversial, the simple reality is that requiring voters to provide a photo ID when they vote is a common-sense idea,” McCrory said in a statement. “This new law brings our state in line with a healthy majority of other states throughout the country. This common-sense safeguard is commonplace.”
A spokesman for the Democratic Governors Association said McCrory’s “cynical” move will come back to haunt him.

“When he ran for governor, Pat McCrory pretended to be a moderate pragmatist,” the spokesman, Danny Kanner, said. “Today, he proved that he’s just another cynical, ultra-conservative ideologue intent on disenfranchising voters who might not be inclined to vote Republican.”
While there is significant resistance to Voter ID laws on the left, polls generally show the American people support them by large margins. Recent North Carolina polls and a Washington Post poll last year showed nearly three-quarters support requiring voters to show photo ID.

Read More:  The Washington Post

Dr. Ben Carson Fires Back at Critics

 

It wasn’t long after pediatric surgeon Dr. Ben Carson became an overnight star among conservatives for his epic speech at the National Prayer Breakfast that the left began attacking him. On Fox News Tuesday, Carson hit back.

Among his critics, far-left commentators like MSNBC’s Touré have argued that Carson is just a “token” for the GOP who is only helping conservatives “assuage their guilt” because they are racist.

Carson’s popularity among conservatives couldn’t have anything to do with the fact that not only is Dr. Carson a brilliant neurosurgeon, but he also has common sense ideas that appeal to a conservative base dying for real leaders, right? Not according to Touré, who says Carson is benefiting from “the GOP’s version of affirmative action.”

Responding very calmly — as he is known to do — on Fox News Tuesday, Carson lectured his critics, saying “if you don’t have anything useful to say, you attack people. If you feel that your house of cards has been discovered and is starting to come unraveled, you become very desperate.”

Though he would have arguably been justified, Carson did not name-call or use any of the tactics leveled against him. He also never called out Touré by name.

Read More: The Blaze

30 of the Best Anti-Obama Cartoons

See the rest at:

Independent Journal Review

MSNBC'S MOTTO: 'LEAN RACIST'

In the speech, Obama lied about America to portray the nation as irredeemably racist. Channeling Kayne West, Obama said the government doesn't "care about" black people in New Orleans. This was based on his assertion that New York City received more help from the federal government after 9/11, and Florida got more after Hurricane Andrew.

Unlike blacks in New Orleans, he said, those victims were considered "part of the American family."

Obama was a sitting senator when he spouted this nonsense. He had to know that months earlier, $100 billion in federal disaster relief had been sent to the Gulf states hit by Katrina -- or five times more than the disaster relief funds sent to New York after 9/11.

All this was edited out of the clips Rachel played from Obama's speech. This allowed her to smirk: "This is how (Obama) snuck into the White House, right? People didn't actually know he was this black, and if they had known he was this black, they never would have elected him. That's the idea here, right?"

Actually, Rachel, I think the point is that this half-black, private-schooled Hawaiian, born in 1961, is desperate for reasons to be angry at white America, so he can play-act Ralph Ellison in "The Invisible Man." 

READ MORE: anncoulter.com