To be efficient and save time, I believe we can roll all the tactics and strategies of a given political campaign into one overarching objective: “Can we seize the moral high ground?”
Before we get into the meat of this offering, it is appropriate to admit that the information herein is one-sided. You could say I am picking on the Democrats, because I am. I have voted for both in the past, but I will no longer do that.
Readers who take a deep dive into the history of the GOP will undoubtedly find some nefarious activity. It is just that Republican activity is not nearly as dark, devious, or destructive as is the historically bad behavior of the Democrat party. The evidence is inarguable. Let’s review the bill of particulars.
In 1830, the Congress passed, and an American president signed, “The Indian Removal Act.” More than 50,000 Indians were forced to leave their homes east of the Mississippi and move west. The Trail of Tears, perhaps the most egregious government-sanctioned action against America’s native population, forced 16,000 of them, under military threat, to travel on foot nearly one thousand miles in the middle of the winter to the West. About 4,000 of these people died en route.
Who controlled Congress at the time? Who was the president? Well, what was then called the “Modern Democrat Party” controlled both houses of Congress, and the party’s standard-bearer, Andrew Jackson, was the president. Until very recently, Democrats were celebrating “Jackson Days.”
Fast-forward thirty years to 1860. At the time, there were four million slaves in this country, and Democrats “owned” virtually every one of them. The Republican Party had coalesced in the previous decade as the anti-slavery party. Its first president was Abraham Lincoln, the fellow whose “day” Republicans still proudly celebrate. It was Lincoln who issued the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863.
In 1865, every Republican — 100 percent of them — ratified the Thirteenth Amendment, which banned slavery throughout the United States. Fourteen Democrats voted for it as well. Many of those were bribed with government jobs. The Democrats have always had their price.
In 1868, 94 percent of Republicans ratified the Fourteenth Amendment, which gave all who were born in America, or who were naturalized citizens, equal protection under the law. The primary benefactors of this amendment were freed slaves. Zero percent of the Democrats signed on.
In 1870, the Fifteenth Amendment gave the newly freed black Americans the right to vote. Again, 100 percent of the Republicans and zero percent of Democrats voted to ratify. Does a pattern seem to be emerging?
In response to these amendments, one political party began to implement what are known as Jim Crow laws throughout the South. These laws were intended to deny black Americans full access to the American Dream. Yes, of course, it was the Democrats once again who put their boots on the necks of their fellow citizens.At roughly the same time, a vigilante group emerged to intimidate black Americans and, if need be, execute them. Yes, of course, the Ku Klux Klan was a wholly owned subsidiary of the Democratic Party.
Into the mid-twentieth century, many Democrat members of Congress got their political start in the KKK. One of them, Sen. Robert Byrd, of West Virginia, the Senate minority leader, had been the Exalted Cyclops of his local chapter. Upon his death in 2010, then-senator Joe Biden gave his eulogy.
Inarguably, the most overtly racist president was Woodrow Wilson. Elected in 1912 after promising blacks “equal treatment,” one of Wilson’s first acts was to mandate the segregation, by race, of the federal workforce.
This led to a substantial reduction of the black Civil Service workforce and a significant increase in the wage gap. Wilson’s actions eroded gains made by blacks since Reconstruction. The “systemic racism” that the Democrats frequently refer to was energized by Wilson and has yet to be fully resolved for a significant number of black Americans, especially those who live in Democrat-controlled cities. Wilson also ran on the promise to keep us out of war, and then he took us into WWI.
Speaking of war, in 1942, Democrat President Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered the relocation and incarceration of more than 120,000 Japanese-Americans, many of them American citizens. In its 1944 decision Korematsu v. United States, Roosevelt’s hand-picked U.S. Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the removals.
Some have tried to claim that there was a titanic shift in 1960, arguing that Democrats became the supporters of equal rights for black citizens and the Republicans their oppressors. The facts say otherwise. Some 80 percent of Republicans voted for the Civil Rights Act of 1964, but only 63 percent of Democrats did.
Through their control of the media and the educational establishment, Democrats have tried to seize the moral high ground these last sixty years, but that claim makes sense only to those who don’t know their history, which includes, unfortunately, most Democrats.
As American philosopher George Santayana famously reminded us, “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”