By Mike Appleton, Guest Blogger
“We pledge ourselves to use all lawful means to bring about a reversal of this decision which is contrary to the Constitution and to prevent the use of force in its implementation.
-The Southern Manifesto, Cong. Rec., 84th Cong. 2d Session, Vol. 102, part 4 (March 12, 1956)
‘This was an activist court that you saw today. Anytime the Supreme Court renders something constitutional that is clearly unconstitutional, that undermines the credibility of the Supreme Court. I do believe the court’s credibility was undermined severely today.”
-Michele Bachmann (R. Minn.), June 26 2012
Most people are familiar with the opinion in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, et al., 349 U.S. 483 (1954), in which a unanimous Supreme Court summarily outlawed public school segregation by tersely declaring, “Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.” 349 U.S. at 495. But many people do not know that Brown involved a consolidation of cases from four states. The “et al.” in the style refers to decisions on similar facts in Delaware, South Carolina and Virginia. And the response of Virginia to the ruling in Brown provides an interesting comparison with the actions leading to the current government shutdown.
In 1951 the population of Prince Edward County, Virginia was approximately 15,000, more than half of whom were African-American. The county maintained two high schools to accommodate 386 black students and 346 white students. Robert R. Moton High School lacked adequate science facilities and offered a more restricted curriculum than the high school reserved for white students. It had no gym, showers or dressing rooms, no cafeteria and no restrooms for teachers. Students at Moton High were even required to ride in older school buses.
Suit was filed in federal district court challenging the Virginia constitutional and statutory provisions mandating segregated public schools. Although the trial court agreed that the school board had failed to provide a substantially equal education for African-American students, it declined to invalidate the Virginia laws, concluding that segregation was not based “upon prejudice, on caprice, nor upon any other measureless foundation,” but reflected “ways of life in Virginia” which “has for generations been a part of the mores of the people.” Davis v. County School Board of Prince Edward County, 103 F. Supp. 337, 339 (E.D. Va. 1952). Instead, the court ordered the school board to proceed with the completion of existing plans to upgrade the curriculum, physical plant and buses at Moton High School. When the plaintiffs took an appeal from the decision, the Democratic machine that had for many years controlled Virginia politics under the firm hand of Sen. Harry Byrd had little reason to believe that “ways of life” that had prevailed since the end of the Reconstruction era would soon be declared illegal.
When the Brown decision was announced, the reaction in Virginia was shock, disbelief and anger. Reflecting the prevailing attitudes, the Richmond News Leader railed against “the encroachment of the Federal government, through judicial legislation, upon the reserved powers of the States.” The Virginia legislature adopted a resolution of “interposition” asserting its right to “interpose” between unconstitutional federal mandates and local authorities under principles of state sovereignty. And Sen. Byrd organized a campaign of opposition that came to be known as “Massive Resistance.”
In August of 1954 a commission was appointed to formulate a plan to preserve segregated schools. Late in 1955, it presented its recommendations, including eliminating mandatory school attendance, empowering local school boards to assign students to schools and creating special tuition grants to enable white students to attend private schools. Enabling legislation was quickly adopted and “segregation academies” began forming around the state. Subsequent legislation went even further by prohibiting state funding of schools that chose to integrate.
In March of 1956, 19 senators and 77 house members from 11 southern states signed what is popularly known as “The Southern Manifesto,” in which they declared, “Even though we constitute a minority in the present Congress, we have full faith that a majority of the American people believe in the dual system of government which has enabled us to achieve our greatness and will in time demand that the reserved rights of the States and of the people be made secure against judicial usurpation.”
Throughout this period the Prince Edward County schools remained segregated, but when various court rulings invalidated Virginia’s various attempts to avoid integration, the school board took its final stand. It refused to authorize funds to operate any schools in the district, and all public schools in the county were simply closed, and remained closed from 1959 to 1964.
There are striking similarities between Sen. Byrd’s failed plan of Massive Resistance and Republican efforts to prevent implementation of the Affordable Care Act. There was widespread confidence among conservatives that the Supreme Court would declare the Act unconstitutional. When that did not occur, legislators such as Michele Bachmann, quoted above, attempted to deny the legitimacy of the Court’s ruling. Brent Bozell went further, denouncing Chief Justice Roberts as “a traitor to his own philosophy,” hearkening back to the days when southern roadsides were replete with billboards demanding the impeachment of Chief Justice Earl Warren.
The House of Representatives has taken over 40 votes to repeal the ACA, quixotic efforts pursued for reasons known only to John Boehner and his colleagues. And in accordance with the Virginia legislative model, the House has attempted to starve the ACA by eliminating it from funding bills. Following the failure of these efforts, Republicans have elected to pursue the path ultimately taken by the school board of Prince Edward County and have shut down the government.
Even the strategy followed by Republicans is largely a southern effort. Approximately 60% of the Tea Party Caucus is from the South. Nineteen of the 32 Republican members of the House who have been instrumental in orchestrating the shutdown are from southern states. It is hardly surprising therefore, that the current impasse is characterized by the time-honored southern belief in nullification theory as a proper antidote to disfavored decisions by a congressional majority.
In reflecting upon the experience of Virginia many years later, former Gov. Linwood Holton noted, “Massive resistance … served mostly to exacerbate emotions arrayed in a lost cause.” Republicans would do well to ponder the wisdom in that observation.
BarkinDog here on the issue of WordPress censorship:
The moderation thing will not let one use words so you must hyphenate and let people guess or you can use Pig Latin. astardBay, itchBay.
Hyphen: N –word.
But that gets us to the Lee Atwater quotes above from Wikipedia. If you want to understand how the Party of Lincoln became the Party of George Wallace, go to Google and punch in the words Lee Atwater.
Here is a section of Wikepedia on Lee Atwater which has to be moderated because of the N word:
Atwater on the Southern Strategy:
As a member of the Reagan administration in 1981, Atwater gave an anonymous interview to political scientist Alexander P. Lamis. Part of the interview was printed in Lamis’s book The Two-Party South, then reprinted in Southern Politics in the 1990s with Atwater’s name revealed. Bob Herbert reported on the interview in the October 6, 2005, edition of the New York Times. On November 13, 2012, The Nation magazine released what it claimed to be audio of the full interview.[7] James Carter IV, grandson of former president Jimmy Carter, had asked and been granted access to these tapes by the widow of the recently deceased interviewer, Mr. Lamis. Atwater talked about the Republican Southern Strategy and Ronald Reagan’s version of it:
Atwater: As to the whole Southern strategy that Harry S. Dent, Sr. and others put together in 1968, opposition to the Voting Rights Act would have been a central part of keeping the South. Now [the new Southern Strategy of Ronald Reagan] doesn’t have to do that. All you have to do to keep the South is for Reagan to run in place on the issues he’s campaigned on since 1964 and that’s fiscal conservatism, balancing the budget, cut taxes, you know, the whole cluster.
Questioner: But the fact is, isn’t it, that Reagan does get to the Wallace voter and to the racist side of the Wallace voter by doing away with legal services, by cutting down on food stamps?
Atwater: You start out in 1954 by saying, “N-word, N word, N word.” By 1968 you can’t say “N word” — that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states’ rights and all that stuff. You’re getting so abstract now [that] you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites. And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I’m not saying that. But I’m saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me — because obviously sitting around saying, “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “N word, N word.”[8][9]
1988 election[edit]
Atwater’s most noteworthy campaign was the 1988 presidential election, where he served as the campaign manager for Republican nominee George H.W. Bush. A particularly aggressive media program included a television advertisement produced by Floyd Brown comparing Bush and Democratic nominee Michael Dukakis on crime. Bush supported the death penalty for first-degree murderers, while Dukakis opposed the death penalty. Dukakis also supported a felon furlough program originally begun under Republican Governor Francis Sargent in 1972. Prison furlough programs had been long established in California during the governorship of Republican Ronald Reagan, prior to 1980, but never allowed furlough for convicted murderers sentenced to life in prison.[citation needed]
In 1976, Massachusetts passed a law to similarly ban furloughs for first-degree murderers, and Dukakis vetoed the bill. Willie Horton was serving a life sentence for first-degree murder for stabbing a boy to death during a robbery. Horton while on weekend furlough kidnapped a young couple, tortured the young man, and repeatedly raped the young woman. This issue of furlough for first-degree murderers was originally brought up by Democratic candidate Al Gore during a presidential primary debate. However, Gore never referred specifically to Willie Horton. Dukakis had tried to portray himself as a moderate politician from the liberal state of Massachusetts. The Horton ad campaign only re-enforced the public’s general opinion that Dukakis was too liberal, which helped Bush overcome Dukakis’s 17-percent lead in early public opinion polls and win both the electoral and popular vote by landslide margins.[citation needed]
Although Atwater clearly approved of the use of the Willie Horton issue, the Bush campaign never ran any commercial with Horton’s picture, instead running a similar but generic ad. The original commercial was produced by Americans for Bush, an independent group managed by Larry McCarthy, and the Republicans benefited from the coverage, which it attracted in the national news. Referring to Dukakis, Atwater declared that he would “strip the bark off the little _astard” and “make Willie Horton his running mate.”[1] Atwater’s challenge was to counter the “where was George” campaign slogan Democrats were using as a rallying cry in an effort to create an impression that Bush was a relatively inexperienced and unaccomplished candidate. Furthermore, Bush had critics in the Republican base, who remembered that his pro-choice positions (primarily, approval of abortions) in the 1980 primary and that the harder the campaign pursued Dukakis’s liberal positions the bigger his base turnout would be.
During the election, a number of allegations were made in the media about Dukakis’s personal life, including the unsubstantiated claim that his wife Kitty had burned an American flag to protest the Vietnam War and that Dukakis had been treated for a mental illness. In the film Boogie Man: The Lee Atwater Story, Robert Novak reveals for the first time that Atwater personally tried to get him to spread these mental-health rumors.[10]
The 1988 Bush campaign overcame a 17% deficit in midsummer polls to win 40 states. Atwater’s skills in the 1988 election led one biographer to call him “the best campaign manager who ever lived.”[citation needed]
During that campaign, future President George W. Bush, son of Vice President George H.W. Bush, took an office across the hall from Atwater’s office, where his job was to serve as “the eyes and ears for my dad,” monitoring the activities of Atwater and other campaign staff. In her memoir, Barbara Bush said that the younger Bush and Atwater became friends.[citation needed]
RNC Chairman[edit]
After the election, Atwater was named chairman of the Republican National Committee.[citation needed]
Paul,
Sorry. I’m fine with “Teabilly,” myself.
The idea that this is an honest disagreement on the part of the Republican Party and its Tea Party bosses is ludicrous. The plan was laid out to object to and disrupt anything President Obama proposed long ago. Even when he proposed a Republican idea, now known as Obamacare.
When legislators object to a bill, they vote on it. When it passes, they can try the courts and hope a President will veto it. Since the Republicans lost in the Courts, their only reaction is to stop government in its tracks. A childish act that is backfiring on them. BTW, I would have loved a single payer plan or Medicare for all, but that would never have passed.
Paul,
The links take you to a couple of photos offered without comment.
http://i.huffpost.com/gen/119761/thumbs/s-TEABAGGER-large.jpg
http://ionenewsone.files.wordpress.com/2010/05/teabagger.jpg
No honest person is going to say that only the South voted for the ongoing endless wars and endless spying on Americans by the military NSA (Patriot Act and its ilk).
Every state has two Senators, so the Southern States are way out numbered.
It takes a whole nation to worship war.
Michael Murry 1, October 14, 2013 at 4:23 am
You quote Lind:
The South was economically decimated over slavery and The Civil War. More so than the North.
The hatred that all engendered is passed on through the generations via cultural dynamics, even as others in the South seek to get over it and become modern Americans.
But our national ignorance now, as well as then, is our adherence to modern American Feudalism.
Which is, as it always was, based on the war induced domination by the elite.
What we have yet to learn is that the domination is a function of the warmongering ideology of war worship:
(American Feudalism, supra, quoting “A Short History of the English People”, by Green, pp. 12-13). We continue to worship war by funding it without hesitation, even as we contemplate cutting earned insurance benefits like Social Security.
We keep doing the same thing while expecting a different result.
Isn’t in interesting that the “enlightened” people keep using the term “Tea Bagger”? Why do you have to use that term? Does it make you feel better? Superior? They have different views than you. The lack of respect you show for those whom you disagree with does not serve you well.
“Isn’t in interesting that the “enlightened” people keep using the term “Tea Bagger”? Why do you have to use that term? Does it make you feel better?”
Paul,
Yes it does make me feel better and here’s why:
http://jonathanturley.org/2013/02/16/tea-party-a-phony-movement-mantled-as-legitimate/#more-60771
http://jonathanturley.org/2011/08/02/tea-party-and-the-myth-of-a-grassroots-movement/
To disrespect a phony movement, backed by rich people and supported by people who don’t understand the situation they are creating, gives me bitter pleasure. You see I love this country and this group are traitors to both the Constitution and to the legitimacy of this Country.
Jill, for someone constantly appalled at the state of healthcare in America the ACA is a mixed blessing. We’re long overdue for single payer but I don’t see that happening. Leaving an expansion of medical care in the hands of the private sector was the only way to get an expansion. That deal was done before the issue was publicly taken up. If it hadn’t been it wouldn’t have been taken up.
I’ll support the ACA because people that couldn’t afford or get care will now be able to. Not enough people are covered and potentially their care choices will not be adequate. I know how many ways an insurance company can say no to needed care. Until insurance and medical care are severed we are screwed.
Citizen’s United didn’t help. If there’s a political issue that can have a corporate finger on the scales, tilting an outcome to corporate protectionism and profit it doesn’t matter a whole bunch what is good for the country or it’s citizens, corporate interests win.
There is no “massive resistance.” There are no silent or moral majorities waiting to rescue conservatives. The south shall not rise again. Everything conservatives do not want and have not wanted has happened anyway, going all the way back to desegregation. At least.
Do they still like Ike? All of the GOP Presidents since would be primaried in 2013.
Blouise hits perfectly on what is happening in the present:
“But stoking the right-wing base’s fires of resentment isn’t working because the right-wing base is shrinking and nobody else is listening to their lies.”
The younger you are, the less you buy it. The internet has been very busy cataloging these lies for review by “disinterested” voters close to election day. The library is vast, and the footage remains pristine.
Michael Murry 1, October 14, 2013 at 4:23 am
Relevant to this so-called “southern strategy,” self-described southerner and conservative Michael Lind has a good article at Salon.com entitled The South is Holding America Hostage.
…
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The Civil War declared by Southern States was much more of a government shutdown than the wussy verbal play pretend being scripted in the MSM today.
In that 19th century attempted shutdown of government, they concocted armies and navies, and actually fired upon the government.
But they did not shut it down even though a minimum of 600,000 Americans died.
Methinks we are a culture that overstates the case on play pretend issues, but we understate the case on critical issues (The U.S. Government Report & The IPCC Fifth Report Are In Agreement). That cultural dynamic is probably the result of the institutionalization of fear in our culture.
A big difference between the segregation case and the Affordable care act, is that the conflict occurred under the legal complaint of separation of powers between the states and the federal govt.
The health care revolt and the hostage holding of the govt shutdown, is all federal, and has a more legitimate legal basis for the opposing sides to fight against each other under.
RTC,
Use of “democrat” party was first used as an epithet back about 1940 in Wendell Wilkie’s campaign. FDR retaliated by calling his opponent a “Publican.” Journalist William Safire did some interesting research on the eytomology of the noun-as-adjective use as an insult.
Republican operatives and politicians seem to think it is clever, but in reality, just shows ignorance, as you point out.
http://www.salon.com/2013/10/09/right_wing_coup_deluded_secessionists_have_already_won/ ” Thanks to a confluence of three events, the S-word — secession — is once again in the air. In Washington, new questions are emerging about whether the United States can function as a unified nation after a partial government shutdown was engineered by a largely regional party — one whose home territory looks eerily similar to the Confederacy. Adding to the questions about the viability of the post-Civil War union is the fact that the shutdown has been orchestrated by a Texas legislator whose state party stalwarts — including its governor — seem to support secession, to the point of taking concrete legislative steps to prepare for independence. On top of all that, in states across the country, incipient secession movements have sprung up only a few months after secession petitions flooded the White House website.
In his seminal book “Better Off Without ‘Em,” Chuck Thompson marshals data to argue that America would benefit by letting the Republican Party and its strongholds formally secede from the country. Whether or not you end up agreeing with Thompson, the argument he forwards is compelling on the policy merits. It also raises an important but less-explored political question: Why would today’s conservatives want to formally secede from a nation that gives them the privilege of governing the whole country, even though they remain in the electoral minority and even though their policy agenda is opposed by a majority of the country?….”
Just freed up some comments from the filter. Spam filter seems to be set on “Extra Grumpy” lately.
Jill, you had two comments that appeared to be identical, so only freed the most recent one.
Marc,
You’ll have to tell which Republicans from the south have stood up against drones and NSA spying becuase I’m not aware of any. I do know that southern Republicans were among the worst spendthrifts during the Bush Administration, so you’re not going to get any points on that one.
There is a link that won’t go through. An actual analysis of obamacare. Look at naked capitalism for several excellent analysis.
Dredd, Counterpunch has some very interesting information on Bill.
I agree with lottak; every time I hear someone use the term “Democrat Party”, I view them as less intelligent. Definitely not the mark of someone capable of independent thought.
Here is the link on the virtue of Obamacare that just won’t go through. There are several excellent analysis of it at nakedcapitalism.
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2013/10/obamacare-narrow-networks-how-they-affect-doctor-specialties.html
Dredd, at Counterpunch there is an examination of Bill that you might find interesting.
I understand, RTC, but my point is very simply that while the similarities Mike draws between the reaction to Brown vs. Board of Education and the reaction to Obamacare might be interesting, they are also potentially misleading.
His analysis in the original post is flawed to the extent that it is capable of being interpreted to mean that a large number of southerners oppose Obamacare because of lingering racist sentiments.
I doubt that this was an accident. He gives Southerners no credit for opposing Obamacare as a position consistent with their opposition to the cost and incompetence of a centralized government on many other fronts.
The same people he paints as racists harming the GOP stood up against drone use on American citizens, stood up for privacy against government snooping, want to bring our soldiers home, cut wasteful government spending and generally want more people to become engaged in the political process.
While I am certainly not a “Liberty Movement/Ron Paul” kind of guy, I am actually pretty happy that somebody is standing up against Big Brother, and I don’t think Big Brother is black, brown, yellow, pink, red, white, blue, or any other color.
We live in a world and in a time when issues of segregation and slavery are as irrelevant to this discussion as the price of buggy whips. It is a distraction that confuses and insults at the same time.