Lincoln Is Ours, Slavery Is Yours Debunking the Magical Switching Parties Theory How and Why the Segregationists Stayed Democrat by Steven Mrozak * * * * * TABLE OF CONTENTS: As this is purely meant as an online book, I think it useless to lay things out by page numbers. Instead, use this outline and the "control + F" search feature to find its corresponding section in the text. ______

A Note on Recurring Sources

---> Introduction Prelude: Russian Collusion Showed the Playbook My bombshell thesis

The 1619 Project Is Fake History Based on What? A True History of Slavery A True History of The Nature of the American Founding: The American Founding and its Ideology is not about Slavery or Racism The American Revolution and its True Motivations The Constitution and Other Early Legislation Other Assorted Legislative Proofs the USA is No Slaveocracy From the Founding to the Civil War: Where Did Our Wealth Come From? (Not Slavery) The Shoddy Historical Scholarship Underneath 1619 (The "New Historians of Capitalism") America's Wealth Since the Civil War Is Not a Result of Slavery Either Why 1619? Because Orange Man Bad, Basically.

Identity Politics: Proudly Promising Wakanda But Delivering Zimbabwe Since 1965! The Intellectual Bankruptcy of Identity Politics MAGA Is Not Identity Politics Identity Politics Fails to Cause Economic Advancement Identity Politics Fails Internationally Too Why do Millennials Think There's Racism and "" Everywhere?

What About Our Own Dead Ends? Various Assorted Dead Ends Ignoring The Racebaiting Won't Work, Answer It! Yes, the Civil War Was About Slavery But Thomas Woods and Thomas DiLorenzo Say The South Was Libertarian and Capitalist and that Lincoln Was a Centralizing Tyrant Like The Later Progressives! Fuentes and His Follies The Alt-Right's Conceptual Errors Muslims in Europe Non-Whites in America

What Democrats Are Trying to Bury: A True History of America Between The Founding and 1960 What Explains the Anti-Slavery Founding Getting Reversed to the Point of Civil War? The Founding of the Democrats: How It Happened The Effect of Democrats on Slavery Slavery Versus Capitalism Not "North Versus South," Republicans Versus Democrats After the Civil War Reconstruction and Afterwards 1890 to 1920: A Suspicious Timeframe New Deal, Fair Deal, Leadup to 1960 Some Assorted Defenses to Some Assorted Attacks on the Republicans Records One Final Note on an Obscure But Specific Accusation

Academics and Quackademics, Where the Magical Switching Parties Came From What Business Do I Have Questioning Academic Consensus? Academic Fraud in Theory: A Brief History of the Quackademics Academic Fraud in Particular: "The Parties Switched" Early Efforts: The Myth of the Southern Strategy Intermediate Efforts: Efforts to Slam Presidential Southern Republicanism, Efforts to Hype Isolated Party-Switchers The "Big Switch" Narrative How This Hoax History Is Expanded Upon & Employed Contemporary Application of the MSPCT: Historical Trickery Contemporary Application of the MSPCT: Rhetorical Trickery Contemporary Application of the MSPCT: The Endgame is Censorship and Mind Control The End of the Road for the MSPCT: The Meta-Theoretical Problems Alone Sink The Story * * * ---> Chapter 1. Continuity of Personnel: The Politicians Didn't Switch

Continuity of Personnel An Overview of People Not Switching The Federal Level One Guy Is One Guy, No Smokescreen Can Hide It The Parade of the Not-Dixiecrats The State Level Changes Nothing Yes, That Is How Realignments Work Republican Segregationists? They Didn't Capture the South for the GOP: Irrelevant Footnotes Republican Segregationist Candidates? But Why? How Much Weight Does This Point Carry? Democrats Staying Democrat Who Owns Who? The Democrats Who Stayed Democrat Stupid Games That Deserve Stupid Prizes What It Means? Bonus Section: On Groups Not Formally Attached to the Parties Bonus: The Council of Conservative Citizens Bonus! The Klan Didn't Switch! A Quick Note * * * ---> Chapter 2. Continuity of Voting Patterns: The Voters Didn't Switch

The 1964 Anomaly Explained The "Goldwatershed" Conspiracy Theory, A Subpart of the Magical Switching Parties Conspiracy Theory The 1964 Anomaly The Deep South Must Have Loved Civil Rights! Not a Gold-watershed: 1964 Started Nothing Except Democrats' of Racebaiting and Nazi-Accusing The Hard Data, The Easy Conclusion Operation Dixie No, It Wasn't an Appeal to Racism. No, Their Increasing Gains Were Not Evidence of Racism Goldwater Lost Because Abandoned Goldwater Didn't Typify His Party and Ultimately Lost Because Abandoned Then Why Did We See The Map We Did?

Prehistory: Before Republicans and Democrats The First Party System: The Federalists The First Party System: The Democratic-Republicans The 1824 Election The Second Party System: The Democrats

The Second Party System: The Whigs How Did Whigs Originate and Who Led Them? What Did Whigs Support and Oppose? Who Supported Whigs and Why? Where Was This Support Located Geographically The Second Party Sytem: Elections Briefly Summarized

Republicans and Democrats: The Combatants of Today Who Are Republicans? Ethnic Voting: Groups and Party Affiliation The Basics Later Arrivals and Additions Who Most Likely To Back Who? Who the Regions Voted For Ancient History: Summary of All Pre-1964 Republicans vs Democrats Elections

The Second Republican Conquest of Dixie (the first being the Civil War) When Did the South Become Republican? Overview of All State Offices: The Outer South Overview of All State Offices: The Deep South Overview Of All State Offices: Overall Notes in Summary & Conclusions

Outer South, Deep South, Mountains, Suburbs & Black Belts: Coming Down From 30,000 Feet to See the Details The Outer South and the Deep South Outer & Deep South: The Presidency Outer & Deep South: The Senate Outer & Deep South: The House

We've Answered When, And Outlined How. Framework, Meet History 1964 Revisited, and the Leadup to 1968 1968 Presidential Election Results by State More Detail Still, Where Within the States Did the Shift Occur: Exact Vote Patterns of Former Confederate States The Civil War Voting Pattern: The Life Cycle Thereof The Basis for the New Pattern: The Cities vs. All Comers (And Vote For Us Or You're Racist!)

What Underlies This Shift? The "Who" of the GOP Conquest of the South Eisenhower Deniers Economic Development of the Modern South Economic Development Drove Republican Growth Wasn't it Race Tho? White Collar Districts Racial Context Variations on the Above: The Presidency vs. Congress I've Never Heard This Before. Where Are You Getting This? Closing and Summary

Putting It All Together: Nixon's 1968 Voting Bloc, A Middle Class Campaign 1972 Explained Bridge Candidates: A Hoax Within a Hoax The Hitjob That Fails to Refute Shafer & Johnston, or, Can You Believe Wiki Lets Liberals Use This as a Source? The "White Flight" Hoax To Rescue the Unrescue-able "Honey, I Smeared the Suburbs," by Kevin M(ontebank) Kruse Misleading Phrasings and Framings, or My Deconstructive Delight!

How Blacks Became Democrats: The True Story of Dubious DuBois and His Pernicious Myths Blacks Before DuBois and The Big 1930s Sellout: Republican, Capitalist, and Conservative Who Was W.E.B. DuBois and What Ideas Did He Promote? DuBois and His Great Love For Dictatorships His Role in The Big 1930s Sellout Black Votes Since The Big 1930s Sellout: Not Fitting the Narrative Blacks Became Democrats, But Didn't Change the Party; the Party Changed Them Blacks Were Democrats In the South Before 1960 The Worst Sellout of All Recapping It All * * * ---> Chapter 3: Continuity of Ideology, or The Platforms Didn't Switch

Definitions Labels to Claim, Labels to Blame A Word on Labels In Historical Settings Academics Don't Understand Conservativism Southern Democrats Labelled "Conservative" Using Dubious Definitions

Southern Democrats Were Not Conservatives: An Exhaustive Proof The "Wings Narrative" Was Practically Invented to Bolster This Theory Southern Democrats Were Liberals DW-NOMINATE: Introduced, Explained, Reliability Defended The Huge Implications of Lawmakers Not Changing Their Voting Habits The "" Is a Hoax and This Has Been A Known (or at Least Knowable) Fact Since at Least 1949 The State Level Is No Different: Mostly Left of Center

Democrats: Continuous Anti-Capitalism and Big Government Fervor From Andrew Jackson Until the Present Constant Since Jackson Tammany of The South Democrats Always Hated Markets And Capitalism Philosophy of Government vs Level of Government Capitalism Support Is Not Racism, Big Government Is Not Civil Rights Antellum Democrats Democrats Said Slavery Was Good for Slaves Whigs Didn't Use Positive Good Arguments, Only Democrats Did Wage Slavery! George Fitzhugh: The Leading, Most Influential Defender of Slavery Hated Capitalism, and Other Inconvenient Facts Omiitted by the Left Fitzhugh: His Contents Fitzhugh: His Centrality and Lasting Philosophy Fitzhugh: His Company Slavery & Big Government The Slave Power Was Big Government Republicans: Free Labor, Free Soil, Free Speech & Free Men The Civil War, Reconstruction, and History in General Until the 1890s The Anti-Capitalist Confederacy The Republicans' Capitalist Reconstruction The Democrats' Anti-Capitalist Opposition to Reconstruction The GOP Didn't Sell Out; Jim Crow Wasn't Imposed in 1876, but in the 1890s What Was Jim Crow, Who Imposed It? Jim Crow Was Government Restriction of the Market, Not the Will of the Market Where Did Anyone Get the Idea Jim Crow Was Conservative or Capitalist? Progressive Jim Crow Segregation, from Zoning Laws to the New Deal Who's Still Doing it? Who Opposed it the Whole Time? The "Liberal" Republicans Republicans' Roll Call Votes Didn't Switch Republican Platforms Didn't Switch Republican Policies Didn't Switch There Was A Pivot: Why Did Democrats Switch? Democrats Never Backed A Civil Rights Bill Before 1957 Truman's Fraudulent Claims of Civil Rights Virtue Reasons That Don't Explain The Pivot Not Anti-Communism Moral Reformation? Not So Fast! The Real Reasons for the Pivot

But What Subsequently?: 1964 and the Goldwater campaign Goldwater's Civil Rights Act Vote Caused Nothing, Blacks Were Already Democrats The Exonerating Context of Goldwater's Vote Goldwater Opposed Segregation and His History Shows His "States' Rights" Is Of A Different Kind Than Segregationists Goldwater's A Strategic Dunce, Not A Dogwhistling Mastermind Distinction Must Be Made Between His Surrogates and Self-Declared Boosters, Most of Whom Were Cleaned Out By Ray Bliss Goldwater No Watershed, Except in Democrats Launching Racebaiting and Nazi Smears as a Strategy From the People Who Brought You the "Southern Strategy" The GOP in General: Continuity In Civil Rights Support Civil Rights Act Rationales and Housing Act Reasoning Voting Rights Acts and Antics The Corruption of the Civil Rights Movement Quotas Are Not Civil Rights; Quotas Are a Spoils System & Machine Politics Disguised as Social Justice Quotas and Compensatory Theory Were Opposed By All Involved in Creating the Civil Rights Laws Compensatory Theory, Quotas, and Institutional Racism Replaced the Original 1865-1965 Goals Middle and Upper Class Blacks the Biggest Beneficiaries of Affirmative Action Most Blacks of the Civil Rights Generation Rejected Affirmative Action Bonus: The NAACP Needs Their Reputation Reevaluated

EEOC and Equivalents: Redefinitions EEOC, FEPC, Other Such Commissions Are Redundant The EEOC, By Its Own Admission, Was Changing It's Mission. EEOC Bickering Over Cease & Desist Court-Assistance for Redefinitions & Mission Creep Courts & Sociology Employment Law and Voting Districts Republican Consistency Redux: Backlash Against Redefinitions Backlash Against Redefinitions 1966 Was Backlash Against the Great Society, Not Civil Rights Democrats Slapping the Civil Rights Label on Non-Civil Rights Issues: A Brief History No, GOP Election Integrity Measures Are Not The Continuation of Democrat Voter Suppression

Nixon's Campaign & Transition Vindicated, Along With Some More Modern Republicans The Supposed Southern Strategy: Theoretical Problems With the Evidentiary Basis of the Accusation Theoretical Problems With Having a Supposed Southern Strategy They Wouldn't Have Needed To It Wouldn't Have Worked If They Did Do, Plus They Just Saw It Not Work Practical Evidence They Said They Weren't Doing It What They Said They Were Doing The Voters Confirm This Version of Events There Is No Documentary Support for the Democrat Version of What the Supposed Southern Strategy Was Nixon's Appeals Weren't Specifcally Southern Nixon's Appeals Weren't New in 1968 (or 1964) Gotchas Got Ya Nothing! Conclusion: Fake Fact Checks Will Fail To Prop Up The Narrative

Only Dogs Hear Dogwhistles, or, "If They're Clever Appeals To Racism, How Come Only You Liberals Can Hear Them?" Dogwhistles Are a Conspiracy Theory Backed Only By Spin The Tricks Used To Spin Everything as a Racist Dogwhistle Alternative Explanations Get Ignored Reply to Every Leftist by Saying "You Call Everything Racist! It's Just a Tactic" and Watch Them Melt Down Democrats and their Faith-Based Arguments That Republicans Are Secretly Racist Honorable Mentions Trump Trump Trump, and the Media's Confessed Strategy of Calling Everything Racist Reagan to Trump: There's No Pattern of GOP Racism, There Is A Pattern of Bogus Accusations From Democrats Nixon, Law & Order, and Vindication of His True Pro-Civil Rights Self The Consistent Republican Platform and the Civil Rights Plank Issue But the Quotes!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! But the Confessions!!!!!!!!!!!! The Four Types of Failed Proof Defections That Explain Conclusions

The Matter of Schools and School Choice The Matter of Bussing

The Nixon Presidency: False Accusations, Actual Progress Timebombs: The Narratives Explode Nixon Preferred Foreign Policy, Domestic Flexibility & Floating Coalitions Shiny Objects & School Desegregation Unions and Nixon's Philadelphia Plan: Background, Requirements, and Rationale Who Attempted to Stop It The Stupid Games of the Democrat-Captured Front Groups Nixon Didn't Undermine Civil Rights Enforcement Democrats Are Still the Problem, and Haven't Fixed Anything

Contemporary Frame-Ups & Hitjobs: Fascism iIs Not Right-Wing, and the Alt-Right Is Not Conservative Part 1: The Original Fascists Were Not RIght Wing Fascism Is Left Wing Economically and in the Role of Government FDR, Democrats, Progressives, and their Great Love for Mussolini Nazis Weren't Social Conservatives: is Based on Darwin How the "Nazis Are Right-Wing" Hoax Was Begun, And What Rhetorical and Framing Tricks Does it Rest Upon?

Part 2: The Alt-Right Does Not Believe What Conservatives Do The Alt-Right Isn't Right, and there's no such thing as "White" Nationalism First the Matter of Abortion Then the Matter of Their Governmental Philosophy

Conclusions * * * ---> Conclusions & Solutions

Conclusions The Imperative of a Way Out

Solutions We Need an Honest, Non-Racebaiting Media Where Did Media Bias Come From? Legislative Solutions Societal Solutions

APPENDIX: HOW THEY CONSTRUCTED THE MAGICAL SWITCHING PARTIES CONSPIRACY, THE ANATOMY OF A HOAX MATERIAL How To Lie Like Dan T. Carter and Kevin Kruse For Your Fake-History-Loving Democrat Followers: Democrat-Party-Narrative-Laundering-and-Guilt-Redistribution Made Easy! Notes on Sources * * * * * A Note on Recurring Sources I put my sources parenthetically into the text, after the fact they support. I may make a physical form of this work someday, but until and unless I do, it makes little sense to put them at the end of a chapter. All that would do is make people scroll up and down looking for a series of numbered footnotes all day. Sources used only once or twice are detailed in full on the spot, but the sources listed below are the recurring ones:

CARNES GARRATY is Mark C. Carnes and John A. Garraty, The American Nation: A History of the , Vol. II: Since 1865, 13th Ed. New York: Pearson Longman, 2008 CONSCIENCE is The Conscience of a Majority, by , 1970, Prentice-Hall, Inc., Englewood Cliffs, N.J. COUNTERPOINT is American Counterpoint: Slavery and Racism in the North-South Dialogue, by C. Vann Woodward. Belknap Press of the Press, 1964/1966/19681969/1970/1971. [Little, Brown, and Company, Boston & Toronto] GRAHAM is The Civil Rights Era: Origins and Development of National Policy, 1960-1972, by Hugh Davis Graham, Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press, 1990 HYNES is Patrick Hynes. In Defense of the Religious Right: Why Conservative Christians Are the Lifeblood of the Republican Party and Why That Terrifies the Democrats. Nashville: Nelson Current, 2006. KEY is Southern Politics in State and Nation, by V.O. Key, Jr., 1949 KESSEL is The Goldwater Coalition: Republican Strategies in 1964, by John H. Kessel, 1968, The Bobbs-Merrill Company Inc. LOEVY is The Civil Rights Act of 1964: The Passage of the Law That Ended Racial Segregation, edited by Robert D. Loevy, w. contributions by Hubert H. Humphrey, Joseph L. Rauh, Jr., and John G. Stewart. SUNY Press, Albany, 1997 PHILLIPS is The Emerging Republican Majority, by Kevin Phillips, 1970 edition RHODES is Republicans in the South: voting for the State House, voting for the White House, by Terrel L. Rhodes, 2000, Praeger Publishers, 88 Post Road West, Westport, CT RENEGADE is Thaddeus Russell, A Renegade History of the United States. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2010 RIPON is From Disaster to Distinction: Rebirth of the Republican Party, by the , 1966. Pocket Books, a division of Simonand Schuster, Inc. HOLT is The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party: Jacksonian Politics and the Onset of the Civil War, by Michael F. Holt, 1999, Oxford University Press, Inc. New York & Oxford. NEW SOUTH is The New South 1945-1980, by Numan V. Bartley, LSU Press, 1995 SCHWEIKART is Larry Schweikart and Michael Allen, A Patriot's History of the United States: From Columbus's Great Discovery to the War on Terror. New York: Sentinel, a member of Penguin Group, 2004 STRANGE CAREER is The Strange Career of Jim Crow, 2nd Revised Edition, by C. Vann Woodward, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1966) WSWS is ' 1619 Project: A Racialist Falsification of American and World History, by Niles Niemuth, Tom Mackerman, and David North. World Socialist Web Site Pamphlet * * * * * Introduction

Prelude: Russian Collusion Showed the Playbook On Friday, March 22, 2019, Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III turned in his report to Attorney General William Barr. Mr. Mueller had been tasked with investigating whether then-candidate had colluded with Russia, concluding "the investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities." The report declares Russia wanted a Trump Presidency, and that Trump's Campaign "expected it would benefit" electorally from the Wikileaks releases, allegedly the work of Russia (sidebar: how would Putin know how to win a non-rigged election anyways?) Personally, I expected "no collusion," because having watched the 2016 campaign, I'd never seen evidence Trump colluded with his own campaign, much less Russia. But many were legitimately shocked: collusion had seemed so obvious, the case so clear, the evidence so conclusive, yet, nothing. But what does this have to do with whether the parties "switched" on racism, whether the GOP became a racist party appealing to white backlash, whether the Democrats became civil rights trailblazers fighting for civil rights today? Strictly speaking, nothing, at least as far as the substance of the Mueller investigation is concerned. However, the way the press covered it, selectively reporting only what fit their story, bending, twisting, distorting, misquoting, citing "anonymous sources" each with a supposed "BOMBSHELL!!!" ("the walls are closing in!") and treating the bewildered pushback of an exasperated Trump as "proof of guilt," is eerily similar. This idea that there was a "big switch" or "party realignment" on bigotry in the 1960s and early 1970s (or ever, for that matter) is fundamentally a narrative, sustained by selective inclusion of facts that fit the story, and omission of facts that don't. For example, Goldwater's 1964 campaign gets mentioned repeatedly, but never that Eisenhower and Nixon before him won Southern states. Voting patterns are largely ignored, that nearly no politicians switched parties is ignored, that platforms didn't switch is ignored, and so forth. Rather, a political party has discovered and cultivated a cadre of pretend experts, willing to abuse their credentials to say things that some schmuck like me with a day job could figure out was a lie in their spare time. Having deconstructed the lie of the "big switch," which I call the "Magical Switching Parties Conspiracy Theory," (MSPCT) in exhaustive detail, I will now explain to you how the magicians did their trick, exactly what they put in, exactly what they left out, exactly what they hyped and what they downplayed, exactly how the very way they frame and phrase every last part of the story serves a purpose.

My bombshell thesis The British installed slavery, the Founding Fathers curtailed it, the Democrats expanded it, the Republicans ended it. The Republicans fought for civil rights the entire time, the Democrats got on board only after civil rights was clearly the winning side. Then, Democrats pivoted to a new model of exploiting Blacks, realized it could be expanded to other races, then invented a conspiracy theory to pretend that Republicans and conservatives were guilty of blocking Black rights the whole time, or had at least pivoted in the 1960s to opposing rights for African-Americans. Democrats moved from being the party of slavery to the party of enslavement. This modern system where you have to be scared to say your beliefs out loud lest you lose your livelihood is not freedom. If you can't say what you really think and get away with it, in what sense are you free? And how long can your other rights be preserved, absent to advocate for them in the first place? So cancel culture, the informal social credit system created by the China-loving Democrats, is a modern system of enslavement. Ironically, they are citing THEIR (Democrat) OWN PAST CRIMES as the excuse to impose it on the people who DIDN'T DO IT! (Republicans). This book will take away the cover story of the violent Democrat thugs who are cancelling their critics, assaulting their opponents, looting others' property, and burning America's cities. If they become aware of this book, I do not expect them to take it well, because it demonstrates they are bad people doing bad things to good people for fake reasons. They are not Civil Rights Leaders. They are Civil Rights LARPers, using self-congratulation as a basis for social policy, protected by bad-faith accusations of racism. First, I briefly debunk the 1619 Project, which for all the hype is just the latest incarnation of W.E.B. DuBois "America is guilty/all are guilty" narrative (more on DuBois in the "Voters" chapter). Then the bulk of the book debunks the Magical Switching Parties Conspiracy Theory in several chapters on how the guilty politicians didn't change parties, the voting patterns remained the same for decades after the supposed switch, and how the platforms of the parties stayed constant, unaffected by allegedly seismic events. * * * The 1619 Project Is Fake History

Based on What? Since Nikole Hannah-Jones likes to allege her critics didn't read her work, I made it a point to read it. I read her original essay in the New York Times, several of the other essays, and saw YouTube videos of her appearances on the Breakfast Club Power 105.1, her appearance on HOT 97, and her debate with Jason Riley at the Hauenstein Center at Grand Valley State University, "Race and the American Dream." Here is the short version of everything she got wrong; had I written the "long version" of all she got wrong, it would require a whole book of its own.

A True History of Slavery Slavery is universal. Abolition is Western. Blacks were sold into slavery by people who looked like them and freed by people who didn't, which debunks identity politics then and there. Waves of slavers & oppressors existed throughout history--most of history is honestly quite dismal. Europe since 1492 has merely been the most recent. Unlike all previous slavers, the slavery practiced by whites was not ended by outside imposition from a new wave of soon-to-be tyrants, but by whites themselves, as a result of a philosophical shift within , which then spread to the rest of the world. Europeans in general and America in particular are being singled out for what everybody is guilty of, in order to push politically useful narratives. Those most opposed to Eurocentrism are quite Eurocentric when discussing the flaws of humanity, and more concerned with present uses of past evils than with the evils themselves. Slavery still exists in parts of Africa today, but the narrative pushers are more disturbed over what happened in the past than what is happening to the living. Slavery predates recorded history, and was practiced everywhere. Ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome had slavery, as did Native Americans, long before Columbus appeared. Slavery predates racism, and slaves were despised for any number of reasons, such as Muslim slavers calling European captives "Christian dogs." African kept more slaves to themselves than they sold to the West. Muslims, in addition to taking more slaves from Europe than Europe ever took from Africa, also obtained more slaves from Africa than Europe did, took slaves for longer, and only stopped when European colonialists forced them to. Yet the West gets singled out. Why? Because it is a useful narrative for corrupt leaders, foreign and domestic, to blame the results of their own socialism, tyranny, and corruption on someone else. Just remember that everyone condemning the West and America has no moral authority to be doing so. Isolated rulers elsewhere banned slavery, only to have it return later. It only stayed dead when mass movements, such as those exclusive to the West, made it stay dead. Slavery's unpopularity increased in the West, while being defended elsewhere: slavery's end was celebrated in Brazil, whereas when the Muslim Ottoman Empire banned the slave trade, it sparked riots. Rulers from Africa resisted calls to give up the slave trade, even after Europeans became abolitionists. As King Gezo of Dahomey (located where modern Benin is) told English visitors, "The slave trade is the ruling principle of my people. It is the source and glory of their wealth...[T]he mother lulls the child to sleep with notes of triumph over an enemy reduced to slavery." Africans insisting on selling other Africans over the objections of Europeans may seem bizarre on its face, but they saw it through the lens of tribal identity, as capturing or selling rival tribesmen. As for the Transatlantic Slave Trade, it would have been impossible without the complicity of Africans themselves. Europeans were not immune to malaria, and would not have a prophylactic cure to malaria until quinine appeared in the 1850s, by which point Europeans were abolitionists (indeed, the late date of a malaria cure also explains why the "Scramble for Africa" had to wait until the after 1870. The idea that Europeans went into African jungles and kidnappped Africans themselves is not based on history: it comes from a 1970s TV show called "Roots," and has been baselessly repeated for decades by people who haven't bothered to check things before repeating them. Most of the 15-20 million slaves transported to the New World in the Transatlantic Slave Trade went to Central and South America, not the future USA. "Only" about 400,000, or 4.5% of the total were sent to the British parts of North America ( Philip D. Curtin, The Atlantic Slave Trade: A Census (Madison, Wis., 1969), 74-75, 88-89). Most American slave ships post-1808 transported slaves to Cuba and the Caribbean ( Philip D. Curtin, The Atlantic Slave Trade: A Census (Madison, Wis., 1969), 74-75, 88-89) As for the numbers themselves, Haiti got 864K (more than America's 400K, just on that one island alone; Jamaica 748K, Cuba got 702K, Leeward Islands got 346K and Barbados 387K, Martinique got 366K, and Guadaloupe got 291K. So several small islands got more than America, and some even smaller islands received slave imports in the same ballpark. (Philip D. Curtin, The Atlantic Trade: A Census (Madison, Wis., 1969), 88-89) Brazil saw 3.6 milllion slaves imported. (Philip D. Curtin, The Atlantic Trade: A Census (Madison, Wis., 1969), 47-49) One reason so many more slaves landed in Central/South America was the master class there worked them to death. As for blaming America, the British installed slavery while we were a colony. Blaming people for what they inherited is unfair. The date 1619 is chosen as a hitjob on America. It's not a notable date in the world history of slavery, or even slavery in the Western Hemisphere. The Spanish had imported slaves to the New World since 1501 (Hispaniola) and by 1537 had enough slaves in Mexico to have a slave rebellion. Yet it is not called the 1501 Project or the 1537 Project. Slavery was not abolished until 1834 in British Empire, 1848 in French colonial holdings, 1858 in Portuguese holdings, 1861 in Dutch Caribbean holdings, 1886 in Cuba, and 1888 in Brazil. Barbary pirate slavers from North Africa enslaved a million Europeans until end of World War 1, three times the number Africans sold to America. China in 1910 abolished slavery (though the practice persisted until 1949), in Korea it persisted until 1930. Qatar allowed it until 1952, and Saudi Arabia and Yemen until 1962. It was banned in Mauritania in 1980, though by many credible reports, it persists anyway. (Remind me again why it's "racist" to say Western culture is better?) Refuting assorted nonsense: the "400 years of slavery/oppression" trope arises not from history, but from a Lupe Fiasco rap son in 2011 ("All Black Everything"). The transatlantic slave trade spanning 1440-1888 is being incorrectly equated with slavery itself (and that 400 years is not "continuously, in all countries"; it starts here, ends there, etc). Genesis 15:13 is talking about Jews, not Blacks. America didn't "invent chattel slavery" because all slavery is chattel slavery! If you are owned by someone else, you're reduced to a "chattel," and Ancient Greece and Rome had it too. To observe it wasn't racially based is irrelevant because Greeks and Romans didn't have access to massive numbers of people that far away, so they enslaved who was handy. To say America is the only place with hereditary race-based chattel slavery is misleading; Jamaica, Barbados and Brazil only lacked it because they worked their slaves to death and replaced them with imports before it could become "hereditary." The time frame from 1619 to 1865 (13th Amendment) is 246 years, for most of which the USA didn't exist as an independent nation. Using the Declaration of Independence, the 1783 Treaty of Paris recognizing our independence, or the US Constitution as the starting point, slavery in North America predates our founding by either 157 years, 164 years, or 170 years. Even the earliest date of 1776 only puts the USA on the hook for 89 years, the worst of it 1820-1860, aided, abetted & defended by the Democrat party, which also produced the subsequent abuses until the 1960s. What America and its Founders can be factually blamed for is therefore a little limited. In short, it's all a hiitjob on the least guilty country, a nation with no unique crimes and many unique achievements. The Left hates our and free speech and the gun rights to keep our property from their thieving schemes. They don't demonize the most guilty, they demonize the most free.

A True History of Racism Contrary to what you might hear from recent soft science graduates, racism wasn't invented by Europeans. Racism was invented by Arab slave traders, particularly of the Cairo slave markets, and eventually entered Europe via Muslim-occupied Spain and Portugal. The Spanish Empire later had a taxonomy featuring 32 grades of racial intermixture, each with its own name, such as negrito, mulatto, octaroon, etc, as a legacy of this. As a caveat, while the culprits were Arab Muslims, it should be noted this isn't something that arose of out Islam per se. Rather, it is the fallout from Caliph Omar in the 640s proclaiming Arabs and fellow Muslims couldn't be enslaved and all existing Arab slaves were declared free. The only way to procure slaves afterwards was to take them from afar, and three slave trades arose, one to Central Asia, the Slavic Slave Trade from Eastern Europe, and the Trans-Saharan Slave Trade. The first brought Turkic people called Mamluks, the Slavic one ranged from Bulgaria to Russia, which were all called Saqaliba, and the Africans were called Zanj. They were categorized not by tribal identity, but by skin color. A Bulgarian and a Russian were both Saqaliba, all Africans were Zanj, all Central Asians were Mamluks, as far as the Arab slave markets were concerned, and this, is the invention of "race." Slaves were categorized racially, not tribally, and employed differently with Mamluks as soldiers, Saqaliba as domestics or craftsmen, and Zanj/Africans as field slaves. Saqaliba women were often used in harems, as Arabs wanted lighter offspring, disdaining darker skin even before European colonists showed up. Then there's the public intellectuals: What do Al-Farabi (872-950 AD), Avicenna (980-1037 AD), or Ibn Khaldun (1332-1406 AD) have to say about Blacks? Practically everything the Europeans are accused of having invented later: biological inferiority, lower intelligence, fit only for forced manual labor and ideal for enslavement to perform the same. They had similar justifications for enslaving Europeans, the "Saqaliba." Now the point of all this is not a hit on Arabs or Muslims, but to show that there's no justification for writing nonstop hitpieces on Europeans passing as "scholarship" as our academy insists on doing. I keep context in mind, and it should be said the Arabian Peninsula and the Middle East sits at an intersection of three continents, so in hindsight it isn't surprising that Arabs would be the first to invent race because they were the first to be so situated as to have access to multiple races to enslave; in contrast, most people whom Rome or Greece were in a position to enslave would have more or less looked like them. * * * The Nature of the American Founding: The American Founding and its Ideology is not about Slavery or Racism What motivated the Founding of America doesn't sound anything like that, however. The Founders' beliefs don't lead to the support of slavery, nor did they spend much time talking about race; they chiefly concerned themselves with the proper role of government and proper extent of government power. Classical Lockean liberalism (aka what "Liberal" meant until FDR stole the word) was predicated on self-ownership, and was opposed to slavery. John Locke's First Treatise of Government begins with the sentence "Slavery is so vile and miserable an estate of man, and so directly opposite to the generous temper and courage of our nation...." As we might expect, the Founders who built upon Locke were not philosophical fans of slavery. Some wanted abolition on the spot, other gradually, some toyed with various schemes to repatriate blacks to Africa, but the important point is, none of them had anything good to say the institution of slavery. The ones who didn't own slaves condemned it, the ones who owned knew it was wrong. The first abolitionist society was formed in Philadelphia in 1775, certainly an odd year and an odd time for a revolution Nikole Hannah-Jones says was about defending slavery. This development predates British abolitionist William Wilberforce. Some, to diminish the importance and goodness of our Founders, enjoy pointing to previous monarchs who'd issued sporadic declarations abolishing slavery, but their commands never lasted. Western abolitionsism took hold because it was morally awakened mass movement, inspired by the American experiment in . Anti-slavery ideology was a new thing then. Previous monarchs here and there had abolished by decree various forms of forced servitude, but there was never a mass movement against slavery per se before the one in America. There had never been a substantial philosophical attack on slavery either, hence never any need for a serious philosophical defense. Common belief at the time was slavery was inexorably headed for extinction. Per Gordon Wood, "The Revolution suddenly and effectively ended the cultural climate that had allowed black slavery, as well as other forms of bondage and unfreedom, to exist throughout the colonial period without serious challenge." Indeed, as Elizabeth Fox-Genovese and Eugene Genovese point out "Perception of slavery as morally unacceptable--as sinful--did not become widespread until the second half of the eighteenth century." Leslie M. Harris, professor at Northwestern, told 1619 they were wrong: "Far from being fought to preserve slavery, the Revolutionary War became a primary disrupter of slavery in the North American Colonies." The 1619 Project's authors of course ignored her. Also, if preserving slavery motivated the American Founding, it's rather odd that every state north of Maryland abolished slavery by 1804, aka within the lifetimes of the Founders. Ditto the 1808 abolition of the American slave trade or the 1787 prohibition of slavery in the Northwest Territories. If the Founding and the revered Founders aimed to create a slavocracy, how did this happen? 1619 claims racism is in America's DNA. But if something is in your DNA, what are you supposed to do about it? If America's DNA is bad, the only solution is to destroy it, thus, what the 1619 Project is saying in an oblique way is that America deserves to be destroyed. And their fake history is now cirrculum in many school systems. Imagine entire generations of Al Shaprtons, Jussie Smollets, and Shaun Kings, complete with waves of hoaxes by maleducated youths told racism surrounds them, and unable to find it, invent it, and inflict real harm on pretend "perpetrators." Imagine the SJWs, except not the mere overlevereged 8% of the population that the "Hidden Tribes" report tells us they are. That's the goal of the 1619 Project. But hidden beneath all this blaming the American founding, a major US political party is actually guilty. Contra 1619, not only was white supremacy not central to the Founding, so too was racism was not central to the Founding. Many cultures have had slaves, and many have had racism, yet none have them have produced anything like the United States of America. America's unique achievements indicate a unique founding creed; indeed most countries aren't founded on a creed at all, much less a unique one! The Founders' thinking centered around the creation and preservation of free societies, and most of their pondering revolved around questions of what the proper role of government was, on the origins and nature of human liberty, and insofar as they mentioned race at all, it was in relation to the topics they were already obsessed with. They attempted to make race as irrelevant as possible. Insofar as any held racist views, it was no worse than any of their contemporaries, very often not as bad, incidental rather than central (role of government was central) to their philosophy, and any pronouncements made simply do NOT match the virulance of what was seen later. Nor did the Founding Fathers ever create any organizations to terrorize free blacks like the . In the Founders days, the contradiction between the promise of "all men are created equal" and the reality of slavery was reconciled by the hope, prediction (and even some concrete action) that slavery would be ended soon enough. It was recognized that the discord existed, meaning that Blacks were not generally seen as "less than men" in this period. If they were seen as "less than men," it wouldn't be a contradiction. And indeed that's how the South eventually resolved it, by proclaiming Blacks less than men. But why did such sentiment spread to the North? While not all were enlightened egalitarians, opinions clearly shifted for the worse between the Founding and the 1850s. The Democrats made this happen by inventing political racism as a weapon. Racism per se precedes the Democrats, it even precedes America, but racism to motivate election turnout, that of course can't be older than multiracial countries with elections itself. Previous republics and featured homogenous electorates. If not for Democrats, it could be someone else, but that said, they invented it, and stoked it. Book titles by progressive Democrats, early 20th Century: Charles Carroll The Negro a Beast (1900), Robert Shufeldt The Negro: A Menace to American Civilization (1907), Charles McCord The American Negro as Dependent, Defective, and Delinquent (1914), Robert Shufelt America's Greatest Problem: The Negro (1915). Search the Founding period in vain for this kind of hatred of Blacks. The worst you can find is probably Jefferson's statment: "I advance it therefore as a suspicion only that the blacks, whether originally a distinct race, or made distrinct by time and circumstance, are inferior to the whites in the endowments of body and mind."(Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia (New York: W.W. Norton, 1982), 143) Think of it what you will, but it is what Jefferson purports to be empirical. The seething hatred of the later Democrats towards Blacks is not present in his statement, nor in any Jefferson statement, because he didn't believe rights came from intelligence. Otherwise, he said, one would have to make Sir Issac Newton the ruler of all his contemporaries, that any smarter man was entitled to be King of the rest, thus he said of Blacks, "Whatever be their talents, it is no measure of their rights." (Thomas Jefferson, letter to Henri Gregoire, February 25, 1809) Even in his excuses for his indecisiveness regarding abolition, the hate is not there: "We have the wolf by the ear, and we can neither hold him, nor safely let him go. Justice is on one scale, and self-preservation in the other' (Thomas Jefferson, "Like a fire bell in the night" Letter to John Holmes, April 22, 1820) Other Founders did better than Jefferson, and later Whig rationalizations would sound simliar to Jefferson. Later Democrat rationalizations included the postitive good school, seething hatred, and denouncements of the Founders from the likes of John Calhoun, and from Alexander Stephens in his "Cornerstone Speech," showing the Democrats wished to overturn the Founders long before they ever pretended to care about civil rights. As for why there was backsliding by Jefferson and company, many Founders who did own slaves were deeply in debt, and were not about to discard their income source. That doesn't make it right, as owing money is a poor moral excuse for keeping people in bondage. But people are seldom hypocrites simply for the hell of it, and every case of hypocrisy has a motivation. It is dishonest of left-wing fake historians to leave that part out, in order to make the hypocrisy of Jefferson or Madison sound like insincerity. Were they so insincere, why did they throw down the gauntlet to the strongest empire on earth? There are easier ways to preserve wealth and slavery. They are guilty at most of hypocrisy, but not insincerity. And in any case, their revolution would establish the path to end slavery not only domestically, but inspired anti-slavery sentiment throughout the West. The only problem with the US Founding was the incomplete application of its ideals; there is nothing wrong with the ideals themselves.

The American Revolution and its True Motivations Hannah-Jones claims (in NYT Magazine, Aug 18, 2019, p.19) slavery was America's "original sin," and inanely tried to spin the American Revolution and the Civil War as conspiracies to perpetrate white racism. As even a Socialist pamphlet has to point out, this is not merely reframing past events, this is fake history. (WSWS 15) American Revolutionaries were not motivated by the preservation of a slavocracy: the Somerset decision of 1772 did NOT apply to anything outside the British Isles. No colonist expressed alarm regarding the Somerset decision. It wasn't even news enough to make more than a handful of North American newspapers of the era, not even in the South. The British Caribbean didn't fear impending abolition either, and why should they, when there was no organized British abolitionist movement to speak of until 1783, after the war was over. The Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade was founded in 1787, four years later. On top of the timeframe discrepancy, British loyalists in North America and elsewhere also owned slaves, meaning the chasm between Rebels & Crown was not over slavery, and Governor Dunmore's proclamation promising freedom to slaves of Patriot masters was only issued after the war was already underway, and it only applied to rebels' slaves, most of whom were promptly shipped to the Caribbean plantations or if lucky merely resettled in Nova Scotia. The 1619 Hoaxsters cite no person and no document to support the idea the war was to preserve slavery, and never explain why the even more slave-intensive Caribbean colonies weren't joining the American Revolution, which would only be expected, were the revolution about preserving a slaveocracy. Were the revolution to preserve slavery, we should also expect to see the rabblerousers who got it going to be Southerners, yet most of those getting it started were Massachusetts men, or at least folks from the Northeast in general. And these are just the logical problems, before we get to what it explicitly known about the Founders' motivations, as are laid out in their extensive writings, proclamations, declarations & pronouncements. I won't bore you with those here, you've heard it all before, the Declaration of Independence, Common Sense, or Jefferson's Declaration of the Causes and Necessity of Taking Up Arms. Nor is that merely my opinion. The leading scholars of the American Revolution War and Civil War, Gordon Wood and James McPherson respectively, have thoroughly documented the motivations of those who fought the wars. But 1619 does not consult them, nor do they consult many other worthy names. The Revolutionaries were most certainly not fighting to preserve white supremacy, but for freedom. (WSWS 15-16) Besides, there's easier way to protect power and privilege than throwing down the gauntlet against the most powerful empire on the face of the earth at that time. This whole accusatory fake history & hitjob on America is untrue & needless.

The Constitution and Other Early Legislation The Constitution was not a document establishing "white supremacy," and there is nothing in any of the legislative history to back it up, nor anything in the back and forth of Papers to support the notion. Every state north of Maryland abolished slavery by 1804 and the slave trade was ended in 1808. If Founding was "white supremacist," how were states abolishing slavery and slave trade abolished during the lifetime of the Founders? If the Founding was "white supremacist," the South in 1860 would resemble the Founding. It doesn't. From mail censorship to speech and gun control to the rejection of Jefferson by John Calhoun, George Fitzhugh, and Alexander Stephens, the South drifted from the Founders. The word slavery was kept out of the Constitution. Per James Madison's notes, he "thought it wrong to admit in the Constitution the idea that there could be property in men." A similar stance was taken by Frederick Douglass later. "If the Constitution were intended to be, by its framers and adopters, a slave-holding instrument," how come "neither slavery, slaveholding nor slave...be anywhere found in it?" The Constitution omitted the word slavery because they envisioned one day it would no longer exist. Nikole Hannah-Jones' rantings against the Constitution do not rest on anything that any of the writers or signers ever said or wrote anywhere. Frederick Douglass recognized as much: "Abolish slavery tomorrow and not a sentence or syllable of the Constitution needs to be altered." Slavery, merely "scaffolding to the magnificent structure, to be removed as soon as the building was completed." (Frederick Douglass, "Address for the Promotion of Colored Enlistments," July 6, 1863). Lincoln for his part defied anyone to name any Founding period person who denied Blacks were included in the Declaration of Independence, as well as tallying in his Cooper Union speech those Founders who'd had an occasion to vote on slavery. He found 23 had such occasion, and 21 voted against it; then he computes for those with no record, Franklin, Hamilton, Gouverneur Morris, etc, finding all but one antislavery. He was hardly alone: abolitionists in general viewed abolition of slavery not as overturning the Founding, but its compleition. So Jones' entire line of attack is disingenous. Slavery was abolished in 1865, over 150 years ago, and yet, today's Left wants to use something already outlawed as an excuse to scrap free speech, gun rights, property rights, the electoral college, and the rest of the Constitution, which has nothing to do with slavery, merely the role and operation of the general government. The left's latest target, the electoral college is outlined in the Federalist Papers, No. 68 "The Mode of Electing the President," by Alexander Hamilton (abolitionist), written under pseudonym Publius. The words "slavery," "enslavement," and "servitude" do not appear in it. Myth BUSTED! Other assorted points. The 3/5 compromise was not a verdict on the humanity of blacks, but a verdict on how to allot representatives, and the slave power's representation would have been greater without the compromise As to why such a compromise would be made, there was a threat of Britain returning and attempting reconquest if the colonies weren't unified. Nor was this a hypothetical danger, the 1812 war saw the occupation and burning of Washington, DC by the British forces.

Other Assorted Legislative Proofs the USA is No Slaveocracy Other assorted legislative proofs the USA was no slaveocracy: The Northwest Ordinance of 1787 prohibited slavery in Northwest Territory, which contained the future states of Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio. In 1780, legislation banned Americans from employment/investment in slave trade; in 1794 Congress barred American ships from the slave trade; in 1808, Congress banned the importation of slaves. By 1804 every state North of Maryland had abolished slavery. Antislavery societies flourished, even within the South. Preachers and printers critiqued the institution unmolested, even many planters paid at least lip service to the idea it should end someday sooner rather than later. Yet by 1860, the planters are willing to fight a war to preserve. Clearly, something changed between the Founding in ways incompatible with the Founding. * * * From the Founding to the Civil War: Where Did Our Wealth Come From? (Not Slavery)

The Shoddy Historical Scholarship Underneath 1619 (The "New Historians of Capitalism") The 1619 Project bases itself on scholarship ("scholarship?") by Sven Beckert (Empire of Cotton), Ed Baptist (The Half Has Never Been Told), and Walter Johnson (River of Dark Dreams), the socalled New Historians of Capitalism (NHC). Neoliberal politics + white liberal guilt = pronouncements that slavery is capitalist. Catchy sloganeering, poor history. The New Historians of Capitalism struggle to define capitalism and their works contain no substantive critique of capitalism, only arguments by analogy and feelings, focusing on superficial similarities like the existence of management techniques, greed, and violence, as though these were found nowhere else. The most significant one in terms of possible impact to policy is probably Baptist's book, which is the one cited by Ta-Nahesi Coates in a congressional hearing. Baptist's book is the one that make the ridiculous claim that a 3x increase in cotton production 1800-1860 was caused by methodical whipping, "calibrated torture," as he says, which will be addressed later. Ta-Nahesi Coates testified before Congress regarding a proposed value of reparations, which comes from Cornell historian Ed Baptist's 2014 book The Half Has Never Been Told. Baptist calculates what he thinks the value of economic activity arising from cotton production. The correct figure was $77 million, about 5% of the GDP in 1836. Baptist then commits an accounting error, double and sometimes triple counting intermediate transactions, arriving at a figure of $600 million, or about 50% the antebellum US economy. However, GDP is calcuated with only the final value of the goods and services, the theory being that the final price already incorporates the costs of intermediate transactions. Baptist, with a flaw sadly typical among historians, is not well-versed on how economics either works or how economic statistics are computed. So while slavery was no doubt significant and profitable, cotton amounted to about 5% of the GDP, not the 50% NHC authors claim. It was profitable for slaveholders, but made the South as a whole poor, without making the North rich. Northern prosperity was built upon capitalism. But if slavery was such a miniscule part of the economy, why did it command so much political power? Because though it left the South a poor region of the nation, the slaveowners were some of the wealthiest people in that nation, and money talks. But power aside, were the US economy half as dependent on slave-grown cotton as some suggest, the Northern economy would have collapsed when the South seceded. It did not. In a demented way, the New Historians of Capitalism have inadvertantly rehabilited the "King Cotton" myth, which was the belief, championed by James Henry Hammond, that the South could induce Britain and France to save them by threatening to cut off their cotton shipments (Britain took to growing cotton in India instead.) As to the idea whippings boosted cotton yield 1800-1860, productivity cannot be increased 400% by whippings, not unless said whippings can produce 4 times the physical exertion from the same body, which is, of course, impossible. Stanford economic historian Gavin Wright shoots down any explanation invoking a purported capitalist obsession with efficiency among the planters: "the apparent efficiency of slave labor [was due to the] extraordinary growth of world demand for cotton between 1820-1860" Alan Olmstead and Paul Rhode also did some fine work debunking this "whippings caused 400% efficiency increases" story. In their combined work, "Slave Productivity in Cotton Picking." they demonstrate that improvements in seeds had far more to do with the increase as the picking process itself barely changed in this period, and in any case, cotton production approaches peak prewar levels 5 years after the Civil War, and by 1891, it was double the highest prewar level.

Slavery Did Not Produce Capitalism and Is Not Like Capitalism Matthew Desmond's idiotic essay asserting capitalism grew out of antebellum slavery ignores that the actual philosophical underpinnings of capitalism owe more to Adam Smith (Wealth of Nations, 1776), Richard Cobden, and Frederic Bastiat, all of whom opposed slavery. Proslavery theorists held capitalism in contempt, especially the widely read antebellum author George Fitzhugh. Capitalism says no theft, force, or fraud. Slavery involves at least the first two, and is thus definitionally not capitalist. Hence the free labor advocates also being abolitionist, because began with the premise of self-ownership per John Locke. In contrast with anti-Capitalist Fitzhugh, British abolitionists were likewise free marketers. The slave South was in the capitalist world, not of it, trading with capitalists no more makes slavery capitalist than the USSR's trade with the West made them capitalist. People then knew it too, and we should disbelieve that the slave South was capitalist because 1) The North didn't think so. 2) The South didn't think so. 3) Karl Marx didn't think so. (Confederate Political Economy, Michael Brem, review by Max Mischler) Marxists say capitalism is about the creation of class, yet the South never developed a bourgeosie. Further, if slavery was fundamentally a capitalist system, the Civil War becomes unexplainable. If the North and South were both capitalist, if their systems were the same, why did they go to war? Slaveholders defending "their property" is a weak case for slavery being capitalist. Only they held that definition of property. The ideology of the Founders, derived from Locke and the Levellers before him, asserted, as a starting point, the right to self-ownership. Slavery where it existed was government enforced, with the Federal Fugitive Slave Act, and local/state/federal subsidy in the form of slave patrols.

America's Wealth Since the Civil War Is Not a Result of Slavery Either Capitalism is what replaced slavery. It was not built on slavery, and does not depend on slavery; The US ended slavery in 1863. Look at all the wealth produced since then, phones, cares, antibiotics, computers, none with slavery. Slavery disappeared only as industrial capitalism appeared, in spite of not disappearing for thousands of years before. The conclusion is inescapable. Capitalism ended slavery, and did so because it worked better. And adherents of slavery promptly made a Slavery 2.0, called Socialism. But back to capitalism working better: it can acheive complex tasks without having to monitor the workers to prevent sabotage, because the workers are positively motivated. All the wealth of the slave South was destroyed in the Civil War. Sherman's rampage through the South may have had something to do with it. Latin America is poorer even though they had more slaves brought in by the Spanish and Portuguese than the British ever brought to the US. Slave regions in Brazil, the Northern part, are the poorest regions today, mirroring the situation of the American South. (If our capitalism is a legacy of our slavery, is Latin American socialism a legacy of their slavery?) The Ancient World had far more slaves than anyone modern. Yet modern capitalist societies outperform them. If slavery built America, why did the South lose to the North? Why did slavery not provide the strength needed to crush the North? What did the North have that made it so great without the help of slavery? PROTIP: It's called "FREE MARKET CAPITALISM" and it's also what made America great. And Democrat attempts to dismantle it is why we have to . ;) By 1860, the North had 110K manufacturing establishments, the South just 18K. The North produced 94% of the iron, 97% of the coal, 97% firearms, 22K miles of railroads to the South's 8.5K, 75% of the farm acreage, 60% of the livestock, 67% of the corn, 81% of the wheat, and held 75% of America's wealth. If slavery built America, how do you explain that?

Why 1619? Because Orange Man Bad, Basically. Why does the New York Times think it to reframe US history around slavery? It turns out, we don't even have to speculate. NYT editor Dean Baquet was caught on tape admitting it was about swaying 2020. This is the Democrats plan, to go all in on racebaiting, undergirded by distortions like 1619, which is not history, but evangelism based on recycled 1970s talking points about America and capitalism; it adds no knowledge, only cynicism. Even without Baquet's taped admission, we can discern the motivation by what they put in, what they left out (90% of the story), and the surrounding context in which the project was published: The surrounding context is Trump's increasing Black support; not stratospheric, but anything more than 10% of Blacks voting Republican is lethal to Democrat chances. Even should it fail to sway 2020, the authors are busily getting it into the school systems of many major cities, as of this writing including Chicago, Buffalo, and Washington DC, with presumably more to follow. The distortions of the 1619 Project are so laughable, and we should be content to laugh at it, were it not for the seriousness of including it in the cirriculum. Taxpayer funded America hating cirriculum is justified by contentions they're fighting oppression. American identity based on history, so anyone distorting history for political gain undermines America. Democrats in FDR's day liked Charles Beard's economic interpretation, in which the American founding was accused of being only for rich people, and the GOP was cast as defenders of the rich, used as excuse to ignore the Constitution. Today, the 1619 Project and other racebaiters are "in," American founding is declared white supremacy, and the Constitution's GOP are framed as defenders as white supremacy and it's all used as excuse to discard the Founding. The particular distortions of US history always just so happen to mimic the Democrat election appeals of the day. As an aside, anyone who can get published in the New York Times is not "fighting the power structure"; they ARE the power structure. They can tell lies that get the 2020 riots started and face no consequences for it, all while declaring the riots' targets deserved it. Which is the ultimate in privilege. Between the riots it starts and the political influence as school cirriculum, this is a revolution to be sure: it's just that it's a top-down revolution by the elites against civil society, in which the left-wing establishment radically alters civil society (and our establishment is indeed left-wing--if not, what conservative ideas does it hold?) Its only stable principle is inflicting unasked-for instability and social engineering on the rest of us. For example, where was the groundswell of grassroots demand for border jumping and transgenderism? These are establishment-promoted trends, not organic ones. (In a semi-related note, this is why they're freaking out over losing the Supreme Court. Since 1970 or so, the triumphs of leftist ideas have seldom come through majority support) * * * Identity Politics: Proudly Promising Wakanda But Delivering Zimbabwe Since 1965!

The Intellectual Bankruptcy of Identity Politics Identity politics is a category error. An identity is not an idea, it's a herding mechanism to allow ethnic leaders to control a bloc vote with the assumption that legislators who "look like me" are key to getting better results, a historically invalid proposition. Blacks were sold into slavery by other blacks, and whites fought other whites to end slavery. This debunks identity politics. Many abolitionists were white, as most of the Union Army, as was ever member of Congress that passed the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments. Identity politics is an affinity scam which enriches the "ethnic leaders" without helping the group. That is why nobody can name a single group in history that ever rose from poverty to prosperity by playing identity politics.

MAGA Is Not Identity Politics Any retort that Trump and MAGA are " politics" falls flat. Republicans never said MAGA was only for white people, only the Democrats have ever claimed that. And besides, should you really be getting your "analysis" from people who said Hillary was going to win? Trump never said he only stood for whites; his enemies are the only ones saying that. Additionally, none of his policies benefit only whites; rather, they benefit every American who is not part of the Swamp, every American who is not part of the free-speech hatin' & lyin' racebaitin' fake news media, hence why they are his biggest critics. Trump has never appealed to white voters on the basis of their skin color, Trump has never used any idea that a nonwhite person couldn't support, and had never used any racial appeals, except in the of people who hear ghosts. A tax cut is an idea, not an identity. Concealed carry, guarding the border, draining the swamp, school vouchers to force educational quality improvement, these are ideas, not identity. Trump is not playing identity politics, he is playing IDEA POLITICS, just as the GOP has always done. The GOP is not the other side of the "not being racist" issue, they're not even a mirror image of Democrats. They're talking about a different set of issues entirely, and are being smeared with bogus accusations of racism by people who are determined to see race in non-racial issues, determined to inject race into non-racial issues. Believing in less government is a philosophical issue, not a racial issue. Cutting taxes is a financial issue, not a racial issue. Gun rights is a defending-your family issue, not a race issue. Guarding the border is a national security issue, not a racial issue, etc. Only people who are already choosing to see the world in racial terms, as a starting point to their thinking, could possibly see them as racial issues." Why do Democrats call everything racist? Democrats call everything racist because they are defensive about how their policies have failed Black Americans.

Identity Politics Fails to Cause Economic Advancement Identity politics fails to advance groups economically, because 9/10 of producing prosperity comes down to cultural, legal, and political norms. South Koreans vs North Korea, East and West Germans, Cubans in Cuba vs Cubans in Florida, all go to show that people with the same genetic makeup get very diffrent results in systems that reward initiative than they do in systems that punish it (contra the genetics-obsessed Alt-Right) Chinese, Lebenese, Jews, Japanese, the world over, where they settled, came to lead the locals economically. Yet none of them of them played politics to assure their rise, and all rose higher than any group that thinks its economic advancement must come through politics. Turning specifically to the case of Blacks, in 1940, 87% of Black households were below the poverty line. By 1960, 47%. Today, about 20-25%. In other words, Black poverty was falling faster before 1) the "help" of the Great Society programs and 2) before any civil rights laws or any great number of black elected officials. In fact, the decline in poverty slowed after these things came to be, a result that is inconsistent with the idea that politics fixes economic problems. (Stephan Thernstrom and Abagail Thernstrom, America in Black and White: One Nation, Indivisible (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997) 233-234) Nor is the failure of identity politics unique to blacks. Irish were the old backbone of Democrat political machines nationally, and lagged other whites in every measurable way. The plain truth is political problems have political solutions and economic problems have economic solutions, but that economic problems do not have political solutions. The Irish-Americans once had worse alcoholism, worse high school graduation rates, and lower average incomes than other White Americans. In 1904, Irish Americans had five times the incarceration rate of German Americans. But they were also (wait for it) OVER-REPRESENTED in the political process. Democrat machine politicians then, just like Democrat machine politicians now, told them that the Anglo-Saxon society was stacked against them, and that the only thing that could save them is electing Democrats. None of that fixed their problems. What changed it was Irish leaders, notably those in the , launched campaigns of self-improvement. They fixed their problems by fixing themselves. Soon afterwords, they stopped voting Democrat. AND NOW, we see the REAL REASON that Democrats promote victimhood among Blacks and Hispanics, to prevent them from realizing that they themselves possess the power to solve their own problems, and that the Democrats themselves and their lies are all that impede this quest. No group ever advanced itself by acquiring a sense of grievance and entitlement; no group that ever acquired a sense of entitlement ever acquired results thereby, only a bad reputation. One treatise on ethnic violence noticed ethnic violence is overwhelmingly begun by lagging groups. (Donald. L. Horowitz, Ethnic Groups in Conflict (Berkeley: University of Press, 1985), 180) Often the very "ethnic leaders" enriching themselves on identity politics are the instigators (Al Sharpton's role in Crown Heights comes to mind: yet, can anyone name a single resident of Crown Heights who benefitted monetarily from Sharpton's presence?) Blacks are well-represented in extremely competitive endeavors like music, entertainment, sports, politics, etc, without any affirmative action. Why then do Blacks truly need affirmative action to be in far less competitive endeavors? Are only the more mundane jobs affected by a legacy of oppression? Additionally, the entire discussion of disparities simply omits any mention of Asians. Asians have on the whole higher incomes than Whites, lower incarceration rates, higher educational success, etc. In anything that can even be measured, except for height, Asians outperform Whites. Yet to describe American society as "Asian supremacy" and plauged by "Asian privilege" would get you laughed out of town, as well it should. We have had civil rights laws on the books for more than 50 years. Any lag at this point falls into two categories. The first is bad public policy since 1965, contemporary causes rather than ancient ones. Slavery didn't cause the new problems of today. The second potential cause is: different behavior causes different results. At no point in any discussion of disparities does any liberal ask if everyone involved was behaving the same; this potential cause is simply unexamined by our racebaiting elites. It is indeed the case that different behavior causes different results, and different cultures inculcate the different behavior. Some would try to spin this truth as racist, namely the same people who call everything racist. However, anyone saying that "culture" is a dogwhistle for race is themselves a racist. People with the same race can have very different cultures, and very different outcomes as a direct result; compare Nigerians with Somalis, Caribbean-born Blacks with ADOS blacks, Cubans with Mexicans, French v Russians, South v North Koreans, etc. So the real racists are those expecting everyone who looks the same to act the same.

Identity Politics Fails Internationally Too The same thinking fails to explain international wealth gaps too. The cultural and legal and political norms of a society have more to do with its success than any other factor. If natural resources explained wealth and poverty, Africa would be the richest continent and Russia would be the richest country. If exploitation and conquest explained wealth and poverty, countries like Spain and Mongolia would be world leaders in GDP. Imperialism doesn't explain third world poverty because the third world was poor before European empires showed up and have been poorer since Europeans left. There is also no connection to which European countries had the most extensive empires and which ones are the richest today. Spain got started earlier and had a more expansive empire than other European countries, and looted so much gold and silver from the New World that it caused in Spain, yet it is on the poorer end of Europe today. Norway, Sweden, and Switzerland never had overseas empires, yet they're richer than Spain, and as rich as a typical leading European economy. The broader error is the assumption that there is a finite amount of wealth and that plunder explains why rich countries are rich. Mongolia plundered far and wide, but has nothing to show for it. The only causes of lasting wealth are INTERNAL, cultural. This is why former British colonies outperform former Spanish colonies the world over, just as Britain outperforms Spain itself. As for the idea Latin America must have been poor because of Yankee imperialism, the same gaps in wealth, political freedom, and lower levels of public corruption are seen when comparing New Zealand to Guatamala, Canada to Mexico, Australia to Columbia, and so forth, even though these have certainly not intervened in Latin American politics. Indeed, few fortunes top being an ex-British colony. The Mongols, Ottoman Turks, and Spanish have conquered as much as, or more than, Great Britian, yet left behind no world-beating civilizations in terms of prosperity, honest government, human rights, and advanced technology. The British system and mindset, being more individualistic and hands-off, was simply better. Barbados Blacks have a 40% higher per capita GDP than Argentina (The World Almanac and Book of Facts: 2014 (New York: World Almanac Books, 2014), 750, 754), even though Argentina has mostly European ancestry. The Spanish arrived in Argentina as conquerers, the Barbadian Blacks arrived as slaves, but apparently being even a British slave was, amazing as it seems, better in the long run than to be a Conquistador conquerer, so much better was the British system. Or take the Balkans nations, most of which have more GDP per capita than most countries in Africa, even though the Balkans were occupied and plundered for far longer by outsiders like the Ottoman Turks, than Africa was by Europeans. So given its failure as an explanation, why is exploitation theory promoted? Because in any society with two or more groups, there is bound to be disparities, and with them "ethnic leaders," seeking to further their own interests by making hay out of them. If the "ethnic leaders" command the lagging group, they will, the world over, invent conspiracy theories that the leading group has somehow "exploited" them, even when the accused group is a numerical minority with no political power to do so, like the Jews in pre-Hitler Germany, the Chinese in the Phillipines or Maylasia, or Indians in Uganda. The type of rhetoric used to demonize the Jews, Chinese, and Indians is echoed by racebaiters against whites in America, by ethnic leaders like Shaun King, Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, , and others, all of whom lack any awareness that they're part of a larger pattern of false accusers; they all believe they speak for unique sets of grievences, unparalleled in world history. They may claim they're advancing the interests of Blacks, but I defy anyone to name a community in better shape as a result of Al Sharpton (LARPton?) having been there; calling everybody and everything racist has made Shaprton a pretty penny. Whether it's helped anyone else is far less clear. Nor is that anything unusual. The world over, identity politics has had nothing to do with any group rising to prosperity. Political problems have political solutions, economic problems have economic solutions, and there are no political solutions to economic problems. That's why the ghetto is still the ghetto after decades of electing people who talk the way Sharpton does---pretending that economic lag is the result of political discrimination. While successful self-help programs have been carried out, there remains ZERO CASES of trailing groups rising to prosperity by asking for cash transfers, preferential educational and employment policies, and apologies for past injusticies. In closing we can best describe the progress of identity politics thusly: "The forest was shrinking, but the trees kept voting for the axe because its handle was made of wood and they thought it was one of them."

Why do Millennials Think There's Racism and "White Supremacy" Everywhere? So if all the above is correct, where did people, especially younger people, acquire the notion they live under "white supremacy" that needs "resistance?" The reason so many Millennials think there's massive amounts of racism everywhere is because there are more articles about racism than there have ever been before. In fact, the percentage of articles about racism is higher now than during the Civil Rights era. (There's also more protest marches now than in the civil rights era: it's not about facts, it's about pushing narratives). According to LexisNexis, the results for any number of terms related to race or racism began skyrocketing around the time of Obama's re-election campaign, shooting up so fast that the charts look like the world famous CLIMATECHANGEGRAPH (TM). It seems that Mr. Obama, for the hype, had no serious record of achievement, had caused no recovery for Main Street, had not wound down the Middle East wars like he promised (and had started bombing Libya for reasons that are still not clear to most Americans), and needed a handy distraction from all the above. So the communications arm of his reelection campaign (the media) dramatically increased the number of articles with headlines about terms such as "diversity and inclusion," "whiteness," "critical race theory," "unconscious bias," "white privilege," "systemic racism," "diversity training," "privilege," "discrimination," "social justice," "police brutality," "marginalized," "people of color," "racism," "white supremacy," "intersectionality, etc. It's no accident, it's by design. In 2008, an email listserv called "Journolist" was exposed: per Spencer Ackerman, Washington Independent: "If the right forces us all to either defend [Jeremiah] Wright or tear him down, no matter what we choose, we lose the game they've put upon us. Instead, take one of them -- Fred Barnes, , who cares -- and call them racists." First, it tells us the press picked a side, second, it proves framing everyone who disagrees as "racist" is a tactic, and after giving us two terms of Obama with it, the meda's go-to tactic. But does that prove the headlines and coverage gave Millennials the idea? If the General Social Survey is any indication, yes. The survey contains the statement: "Irish, Italians, Jewish and many other minorities overcame their prejudice and worked their way up. Blacks should do the same without special favors." Blacks have fluctuated between 30-40% disagreement from 1994-2016. White Conservatives have been consistently below 10% disagreement, and white liberals hovered between 20-30% disagreement, until 2012, whereupon they matched their previous high of (eyeballing the graph) about 28%, surpassing blacks who felt that way in 2014, and now have 46% disagreement in 2016, far above Blacks at 32% in that same year. (Source: analysis of General Social Survey, by Zach Goldberg, Georgia State University). So if one didn't cause the other, it's mighty strange the two phenomena just happen to line up perfectly chronologically. Additionally, white liberals surpassing blacks in believing society is rigged against blacks has led to the bizarre phenomenon of white liberals denouncing Kanye West, , as well as some memorable clips that went viral on during the George Floyd protests of white protestors telling Black cops that they're oppressed. (The very existence of Black cops makes both liberals heads and liberal narratives about America explode) * * * What About Our Own Dead Ends?

Various Assorted Dead Ends I've outlined the Democrats true history of being racists and the need to fight back on this issue, and there's three assorted dead ends to clear up. 1) Establishment and beltway Republicans ignoring this is no longer an option. 2) There are some who have taken the Democrat bait, engaging in Southern apologism, as though "The South" was guilty and "The South" needed a defense. 3) There are others who insist the GOP needs to become a white-identity party, which will not only fail to get more white votes, but also will "confirm" the accusations. Personally, I suspect these folks are false flags/plants paid by the DNC myself. I mean, nobody asked for them, yet here they are! Am I the only one who finds that fishy? In any case, let's start with the necessity of fighting this particular battle.

Ignoring The Racebaiting Won't Work, Answer It! The Establishment GOP, which despite its subsequent gaslighting had precious little nice to say about Reagan while he was with us, is now trying to pretend we're perpetually in the Reagan years. As a result, many "establishment," conventional Republicans hesitated for too long to answer this racialized nonsense from the Democrats. They're good people, and thought fair play would show the Democrats we weren't so bad, but that never worked with the Soviets, and it isn't working with the Democrats. Ignoring the racebaiting and moving the argument to higher ground worked fine with Reagan-era demographics, and the Reagan-era generation of voters. Republicans were content to laugh off the preposterous accusations, not realizing the real purpose wasn't to convince you: Democrats had written you off. The target of the lie was the next generation of children, who had not lived through the Carter economy followed by the Reagan economy, who did not have the personal life experience to know first hand that all the Democrat spin about the Reagan economy "benefitting only the rich" was a ridiculous lie. The lie was that the economy was bad but Reagan had used coded racial appeals to rally the white working class, and the result is that we've been branded racist, in a country that is increasingly not white. It makes everything we say look tainted, not addressing the accusation made people think its true. Nobody is going to care what you think the marginal tax rate should be if they believe you're a Nazi, especially when the Democrats concoct make-believe "incidents" by taking us out of context and pretending it's racist. And you can't win playing defense all the time. Explaining why each contrived incident is no bombshell is failing, not because we haven't explained it, but because when people hear 20 false accusations against you, spun as a "history" or a "pattern" of bigotry, most people are not going to take the time to check them all, they're going to think "well, they can't all be false, can they? What would the odds of that be?" Well, that depends: if the accuser is a liar, the charges CAN all be false. The only way out of this is to make it clear the accuser has no moral authority to be making the accusations, to move the conversation onto the history of the Democrats, and their record, and to expose the names behind the generation of the Magical Switching Parties Conspiracy Theory: Krock & Alsop, Dan T. Carter, Earl and Merle Black, Joseph Aistrup, Kari Frederickson, and Kevin M. Kruse need to become household names, the particular invented history and false narratives they generated need to be known along with when and why they were invented. In other words, it needs to be known that this Magical Switching Parties Conspiracy Theory (MSPCT) is not a historical fact, but a propaganda narrative based on selective omissions of key facts, that was invented by particular people, to serve the agenda of a particular party; it's not self-evident long-understood history but a fairly recent concoction. It's not an error, the myth's creators knew perfectly well what they were doing, as the consistent pattern of one-sided omissions makes clear. Addressing a misconception in passing: welfare doesn't explain the Black vote today, belief in the MSPCT does. Blacks became Democrat in the 1930s, when excluded from most Federal welfare programs, support for Democrats didn't fall post-1990s welfare reform, rich blacks are no less Democrat than poor ones, and polls show 35% of Blacks identify as conservative (perhaps more, so vilified has the word been by ethnic politicians). So it's not philosophical agreement with Democrats stopping Republicans from getting 35% of the Black vote, and it certainly isn't the Democrats' record, which indicates its something they've been told about Republicans.

Yes, the Civil War Was About Slavery Through the use of Hollywood movies, the press, and the school system, the Democrats that control all three have made a habit of attacking the South, now run by the Republicans. I believe this is an attempt to maneuver us into a defense of deeds that are not ours. Some have taken the bait and proclaimed the battle flag of the Confederate States of America and all associated statutes to Confederate generals & soldiers to be expressions of "heritage, not hate." Well, suit yourself, but if you're a Republican, a capitalist, a conservative, or an individualist, it's not your heritage, you're not on the hook for it, and you don't have to defend it. Additionally, even if it was our heritage, it's not something that there is a ready defense for. It's pretty cut and dry that the war was, more or less, about slavery. Yes, there's nuance, but all things considered, it strains credulity to believe slavery was anything but the leading motivation. Before the war, predictions of Haitian Revolution-style massacres if the South lost and slavery ended had failed to materialize. The fight now lacked a rationalization, hence the motive to generate Lost Cause narratives to justify why 1/4 of adult Southern adult males were sent to die in the Civil War. Practically no Southerner during the war denied that the cause was slavery. What soon emerged after the war, was soon called the "Lost Cause" theory. A subordinate of General Robert E. Lee, one Jubal Early, did more to advance the Lost Cause theory than anyone else. It was of course a group effort, but his own work was the best combination of most completely fleshed out and, fittingly, early. Jubal Early also originated of the "Lee Did Nothing Wrong At Generalship, Ever!" story, including blaming the Gettysburg defeat on Longstreet (who had since taken a job in the Grant administration and committed the unforgivable sin of becoming a Republican.) Lost Cause narratives dominated because most of the initital writers of Civil War history were Southerners and of course Democrats all. (1865-1890). In other words, the imposition of Jim Crow and Progressive Era ("Southernization"), today blamed on "America" and "White People," actually resulted not from some generic white backlash, but from the culmination of a generation of Democrat fake history about the Civil War and Reconstruction. As for the theory itself, no, not about states rights, the 1852 Fugitive Slave Act trampled the rights of free states to be free states, the South's opinion only changed when they lost control of the Federal government. Andrew Jackson's opinion on federal power in the 1832 tariff crisis belies the idea Democrats were that consistent either. Nor was the Civil War caused by tariffs. Slavery in 1860 was not on track to self-extinction, and regardless, the Southern state secession resolutions proclaim they were determined to preserve it whether it was in some cosmic sense ultimately & inevitably headed for extinction or not. Of the 11 seceding states, 7 cite preserving slavery as their motive, yet none mention the tariff. All the free states were one side, nearly all slaves states on the other, led by the most slave-intensive ones, and the states on the fence permitted slavery but had few slaves. Coincidence? Plus, were it not about slavery, it would make no sense. What was the Fugitive Slave Act about? What was Bloody Kansas about? What was Dred Scott about? What were the Great Lincoln-Douglas debates about? What was the 1860 campaign about? What motivated John Brown to make his violent raid on Harper's Ferry? What were the subsequent scuffles about 13th Amendment ratification and Black Codes about? Are we to believe that a decade of legal debate and extralegal violence over slavery gives way to a war over...tariffs...then followed by an attempt of furious ex-Confederates to reinstate slavery in all-but-name? I think not. Additionally, South Carolina didn't secede in 1830, when the tariff was higher. The Confederate Constitution in Article I, Section 9, (4); Article IV, Section 2, (1); Article IV, Section 2, (3) [A]; and Article IV, Section 3 (3) all protect slavery. Also the Cornerstone Speech, in which CSA VP Alexander Stephens said the CSA was built upon slavery, declared Jefferson and the Founding Fathers were wrong for saying all men were equal; and on an amusing note, when his own cringeworthy words were recounted after the war, he claimed he had been "misquoted." Confederate soldiers' letters, to the extent they mention motivations (20% of those sampled by McPherson do), were pro-slavery, with none against it. American Revolutionaries realized an incongruity existed between slaveholding and fighting for freedom, but Confederates saw no such incongruity. "Unlike many slaveholders in the age of Thomas Jefferson, Confederate soldiers from slaveholding familes expressed no feelings of embarassment or inconsistency for fighting for their liberty while holding other people in slavery. Indeed, white supremacy and the right of property in slaves were at the core of the ideology for which Confederate soldiers fought." (James M. McPherson. For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997. p.106) McPherson continues, "It would be wrong, however, to assume that Confederate soldiers were constantly preoccupied with this matter. Only 20 percent of the same of 429 Southern soldiers explicitly voiced proslavery convictions in their letters or diaries. As one might expect, a much higher percentage of soldiers from slaveholding familes expressed such a purpose: 33 percent, compared with 12 percent. Ironically, the proportion of Union soldiers who wrote about the slavery question was greater, as the next chapter will show. There is a ready explanation for this apparent paradox. Emancipation was a salient issue for Union soldiers because it was controversial. Slavery was less salient for Confederate soldiers because it was not controversial. They took slavery for granted as one of the Southern 'rights' and institutions for which they fought, and did not feel compelled to discuss it. Although only 20 percent of the soldiers avowed explicit proslavery purposes in their letters and diaries. none at all dissented from that view. (McPherson, For Cause and Comrades, p. 109-110.) While McPherson does concede 2/3 of his letters sample is slaveholding in an army where only 1/3 of the soldiers were, zero dissent is still zero. As to the point that most Confederate soldiers didn't own slaves, that may be, but the secession conventions and state legislatures voting on secession had vast overrepresentation of slaveholders. To point out most soldiers didn't own slaves is to miss the point that without slaveholders voting for what would lead to war, there wouldn't have been the war in the first place. Even the "Solid South" fighting for some unspecified "Southern" cause is incorrect, as the South was internally very divided. "In 1860 a majority of White Southerners lived not in the plantation belt but in the upcountry, an area of small farmers and herdsmen who owned few slaves or none at all. Self-sufficiency remained the primary goal of these farm families, a large majority of whom owned their land." (Foner, American Heritage 1989) At the secession conventions, the delegates against it were from said upcountry. Historian David Potter tells us "At no time during the winter of 1860-61 was secession desired by a majority of the people of the slave states." Democrats in charge pulled skillful parliamentary maneuvers to make happen what surprisingly few people in the South wished to see happen. Williams again, "So few men of means served that soldiers in Virginia sarcastically grumbled that it was easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter Camp Lee." By the end of 1862, the CSA army had significant discontent, soon manifesting itself in the form of a huge desertion problem. On the civilian front, the Confederacy did not quickly enough switch land to food production as the war raged, leading to food shortages, and soon thereafter, riots. The CSA government, no free market laissez-faire paragon, used "impressment" of other peoples' property to fund its war effort. (all this more detailed in David Williams. Bitterly Divided: The South's Inner Civil War. New Press, 2008) And Southern leaders were aware of all this at the time. In September 1864, Jefferson Davis publicly admitted 2/3 of the soldiers were absent "most of them without leave." [48] David Williams. Rich Man's War: Class Caste, and Confederate Defeat in the Lower Chattahoochee Valley. University of Georgia Press, 2011. p.4

But Thomas Woods and Thomas DiLorenzo Say The South Was Libertarian and Capitalist and that Lincoln Was a Centralizing Tyrant Like The Later Progressives! Ok, they can say that, but they're wrong. Neither the Antebellum South nor the Confederacy were any paragons of Jeffersonian , as the South had changed dramatically under the control of the Democrats. First there's the land "redistribution" from the Indians scheme, the "Tammany of the South" for future votes by Andrew Jackson. Then there's the way the South was run between Jackson and Jefferson Davis. Slaveowners, accelerating after the Panic of 1837, built vigilante groups (most assuredly Democrats, who ever heard of a Whig mob?) These groups were: "Essentially bands of slave- and property-holders who monitored both the behavior and beliefs of less affluent whites. [Historian Charles] Bolton described the targeted whites as those 'whose poverty or indolence made them undesirable.' Slaveless whites increasingly found themselves inhabiting a world in which they had to censor every utterance and defend every action" Under the direction of this oligarchic terror: "Local mobs lynching and killing poorer whites abounded in the late antebellum period. The majority of those brutalized were accused of abolitionism of some sort--whether they were distributing reading materials, talking to other non-slaveholders about worker's rights, or simply seemed too friendly with African-Americans." (WSWS 27) Poor whites barred from reading abolitionist literature, and the Democrats also imposed a gag rule in Congress on the topic. Elections were corrupted, poor whites having to viva voce (voice vote), slave owning election monitors looking on (with control of employment and store credit: "deplatforming" enforcement, you could say), and some plantations were even used as polling places. In the years preceding secession, some slaveholders pushed to enslave poor whites and re-enslave free blacks (they'd read George Fitzhugh and Henry Hughes). The Panic of 1857 was also a slaveholder panic. The diary of Charles Memminger, Charleston slaveowner, says "white workers, especially foreign ones, were 'the only party from which danger to our institutions are to be apprehended among us,' and they 'would soon raise the hue and cry against the Negro, and be hot abolitionist--and every one of those men would have a vote." (WSWS 28) All of this upheld, of course, by gun control laws, and a judiciary ignoring the explicit text of their state constitutions when needed, anticipating the later "living document" judges of today's Democrats. It gets no better when the Bonnie Blue Flag (that bears a single star) starts flying.The CSA had by 1863 direct income taxes, and taxes on gold, and debased the currency to a degree anyone saying "End the Fed" (yes, end it!) should be shrieking. A CSA dollar was worth 82 cents in gold or silver in 1862, but only $0.017 by 1865, which puts it in Revolutionary War continentals or Weimar Reichmarks territory. (Larry Schweikart, Banking in the American South from the Age of Jackson to Reconstruction (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State Univeristy Press, 1987), chap. 7, passim.) The Confederacy had a command economy, created its own powder works, and 7/8 of Virginia Central Railroad freight was government-related. (Jeffrey Rogers Hummel, Emancipating Slaves: Enslaving Free Men: A History of the American Civil War (Chicago: Open Court, 1996), 236-237) The CSA government confiscated all railroads, steam vessels, telegraph lines, impressed their people for government work, coming to resemble the complaints Jefferson had about the agents of King George: "He has errected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people and eat out their substance." Peoples' property was impressed into Confederate service in exchange for forced payments of increasingly worthless Confederate money. Not surprisingly, shortages soon abounded, much as in the Soviet Union when they had the government run everything. Scholar Richard Bensel analyzed it all and found the North was less centralized and more open than the South was, even crediting its comparative commitment to openness for its victory. (Richard Bensel, Yankee Leviathan: The Origins of Central Authority in America, 1859-1877 (New York: Cambridge, 1990), passim.) Even in the suspension of habeus corpus, Lincoln was not worse than the opposition, As Mark E. Neely, Jr. documents, CSA authorities arrested pro-Union civilians at a higher rate than the Union arrested Confederate sympathizers, and free travel within the CSA was limited by an internal passport system, which sounds more Dzerzhinsky than Jefferson. (Mark E. Neely, Jr., Southern Rights: Political Prisoners and the Myth of Confederate (University Press of Virginia, 1999; 172, Mark E. Neely, Jr, Confederate Bastille: Jefferson Davis and Civil , 1993. pp. 11, 16) Now this means that the authors like Thomas E. Woods have it all backwards: The South was not some Libertarian society before or during the Civil War, heroically resisting the attempts of centralizers to pervert the American experiment. The South was then a closed society of abusive central power, that limited the press and circulation of ideas through the mails that the authorities didn't approve of, and hated capitalism; only in propaganda aimed at Britain and France (which had abolitionist publics) did the CSA say their fight was about anything but slavery. Nor was Lincoln's raising an army unreasonable; it is not normal, then or now, for nation-states to just let someone take half their territory and run, just because they didn't like the election result. The Confederacy instituted a draft (1862) before Lincoln did (1863), and far from fighting to resist Lincoln's tyranny, seven of the Southern states seceded before Lincoln was even innaugurated. Nor was Lincoln anywhere near as high handed as Woodrow Wilson and FDR, who did worse in peacetime than Lincoln did in wartime. Let me be clear however: Thomas E. Woods, Thomas DiLorenzo, and their fellow Austrian school free market economists are not racists. They are just worried about the implications for liberty of conceding that central government ever solved anything; and indeed centralized power almost never does, so his core thesis remains intact. I just wish Mr. Woods & co. would realize that the Confederates were all freedom-hating Democrats and realize that his worldview doesn't require him to bother defending them. * * * Fuentes and His Follies

Nick Fuentes No, he's not simply maligned as a racist or a Nazi. I understand the skepticism after the first 100,000 fake accusations of racism the media makes, but if you see what he actually says, he is. He burst on to the scene 2019, post midterms, calls people like Charlie Kirk & Donald Trump Jr. "OpenBordersCons" and "Conservative Inc." He and his ilk seem to not like gays or Jews in general, and are fixated on white racial grievances. It is curious that he and his "groypers" only happened to show up right as Trump's poll numbers with blacks are starting to rise and gays and Jews are being set upon by the hard left for a "wrong" opinion or two, and see Trump is the saner of the choices available. He only appears as #walkaway grows, calling himself "America First," because he's good at pretending to be one of us as he sabotages us, and issues pompous pronouncements like: "Let's stop pretending like legal status has anything to do with it. It doesn't." Or, "If there were a way to get two million illlegal immigrants here from Europe, I would say let's do it." Or, "I don't care if they're paying taxes or not. I don't care what they're doing. Get them over here." Or, "Enough with the Jim Crow stuff. Who cares? 'Oh, I had to drink out of a different water fountain.' Big f***ing deal...oh no, they even had to go to a different school...And even if it was bad who cares?...It was better for them, it's better for us." It won't help to have him around, he contributes nothing we can't get elsewhere, combined with a lot of baggage we can avoid elsewhere. His talk on sounds good, but we can get that anywhere (guarding the border is after all a mainstream position of all who are not recent America-hating soft-science graduates) They're already jackasses when on the outside, and that tells us how they'll act if we let them in, so don't. We told and Richard Spencer to get lost, as we did with "former" Democrat operative who started the Charlottesville outrage. Fuentes, like Charlottesville, is meant to be a , and futhermore, Fuentes is a dead end who has never persuaded anyone or been responsbile for winning us any election ever (ditto Michelle Malkin or for that matter.)

The Alt-Right's Conceptual Errors The Alt-Right's broader worldview is wrong. Differences are better explained by culture and legal/political institutions than race. Compare North and South Koreans, East and West Germans, Cubans in Cuba with Cubans in Florida, Chinese in China with Chinese living outside of China, Indians in India with Indians living outside India. Long story short, your results are better if you're 1) English-speaking/former English colony, 2) Christian, especially Protestant, 3) Capitalist. For instance, compare African countries that are Christian against those that are Muslim, and as for comparatively being behind Christian Europe, 's introduction beyond the African coast is only about a century or so old, give it time. The supposed is a hoax: the UN and internationalists despise the West because they hate freedom and , not because they hate Whites per se (though for them, Whites are a proxy for the hated ideals themselves). Also, with regard to the two Kalergi quotes the Alt-Righters throw out: it's not a plan, it's a prediction. Read it again, more carefully.

Muslims in Europe As for Muslims in Europe, consider the following in Charles Westoff and Tomas Frejka, "Religiousness and Fertility Among European Muslim," Population and Development Review 33, no. 4 (2007); 785-809: In Europe, Muslims are growing in cities, which, combined with media concentration in cities, portrays them as more numerous than they actually are. They make up less than 5% in most European countries (most of the exceptions are in the Balkans, where the Ottoman Turks rampaged for several centuries). Muslims are in no serious danger of becoming a majority in the next century, and the only thing that even has a chance to change that is unlimited migration, which electorates in country after country are already losing patience with and electing leaders to stop. The fertility rates of women mirror where they were themselves born; first generation Muslim immigrants to Europe, much like first generation Mexican immigrants to America, have higher birthrates. Both fall the next generation onward to mirror the country around them. Additionally, the birthrates in Muslim (and Latin American countries) has dramatically plummeted in the past 4 or 5 decades, indeed, in the past 15 years (indeed, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Iran, among others are between 2 and 3 per woman; some gulf Arab states like I believe Bahrain or Qatar are at something like 1.8). Muslim birthrates remain somewhat higher, though not dramatically so; if they are outbreeding European women, it is not because their childbearing is absurdly high, but because European womens' childbearing is absurdly low (yes, having kids at below replacement rate is absurd), which is nobody's fault but Europeans'. "In Austria for example, Muslim women had a total fertility rate (an estimate of lifetime births per woman) of 3.1 children per woman in 1981, well above the 1.7 average for the majority Roman Catholic women. By 2001, the rate for Catholics had fallen to 1.3, but the Muslim rate had fallen to 2.3" As for the idea of a takeover and repression of Western freedom-loving ideals, the real danger of that is not birthrates but idiot left wing leaders, who were against said freedom even before the immigration; Muslims are less the cause than the incident of the online censorship Merkel and others are calling for, for if East German-raised Merkel was not so amenable to censorship in the first place, if she was more like free speech Farage, it wouldn't be a pretext. Insofar as there is a danger, it's not that Europe will be majority Muslim by tomorrow afternoon, but that if they were to turn out and bloc vote in a multiparty parliamentary system such as European nations have. But I have to believe there would be a backlash ten times worse than there is now over the "Syrian" "refugees" (most of whom are actually neither Syrian nor refugee) if that were to start.

Non-Whites in America Is the problem the skin color or is the problem the voting patterns? The voting patterns. Why the voting patterns? Those of us who have bothered examining polls of minority attitudes have noticed that the number that profess to be conservative, or at least not liberal, is far higher than the percentage voting for the Republican party. For example, 35% or so of Blacks identify as "conservative" in spite of that word being so maligned constantly, which implies the true figure may even be more than 35%. Even so, let's take that number at face value: we should be getting 35% of the Black vote. Hell, if we got HALF of that, the Democrats would never win again for 30 years. So why aren't we winning 35%, or even 17%, of the Black vote? The voting pattern is because we're being maligned as racist, and all embracing someone like Fuentes and his compatriots will do is "confirm" the bogus narratives that the Democrats who actually ran slavery are spreading. And we know the bogus narratives are why, because looking at the ghettos, barrios, and reservations, it sure isn't the results that drive the voting habits! As for the idea that winning more minority votes will somehow cost Republicans white votes, 1) it assumes that people are so diametrically different that they don't all want to personally pay lower taxes, be safe, gainfully employed, and have good schools, etc, 2) actual election returns don't back up the idea there's a tradeoff, 3) this being smeared as "racist" is costing us white votes too, so this idea of spiking the white percentage for our side has some issues too. The fundamental problem is the Magical Switching Parties Conspiracy Theory. * * * * * What Democrats Are Trying to Bury: A True History of America Between The Founding and 1960

What Explains the Anti-Slavery Founding Getting Reversed to the Point of Civil War? So what then shall we do, with these other paths shown to be dead ends? We should learn why Democrats turned to racebaiting and accusing others in the first place. What is it they're trying to distract and divert our attentions from? That practically every ugly aspect of American racial history is their doing. Every state North of Maryland abolished slavery by 1804, the Northwest Ordinance banned it in the Northwest Territories, the slave trade was abolished in 1808. The institution became "peculiar" because of the Founders, it was reduced to a Southern institution. In 1776, the slave population was 650,000, by 1828, it was about 2 million, by 1860, 4 million. A growth of 1.35 million in the 52 years between the Founding and Democrats, and about 2 million in the 32 years between Democrats and the Civil War. The post-Founding pre-Democrat South had slaves, but was not necessarily pro-slavery. Southern states voted to exclude slavery from the Northwest Territory and for the 1808 abolition of the slave trade. The South in the early 1800s had over 100 antislavery societies and tolerated denounciations of slavery, as historians Eugene Genovese and Elizabeth Fox-Genovese tell us in The Mind of the Master Class (2005, p. 73), and as Winthrop Jordan tells us in White Over Black (1977, p. 346). Manumissions of slaves were tolerated as well. Historian John Blassingame writes in The Slave Community: "Until the 1820s, many planters, convinced of the immorality of bondage, joined with clergymen in seeking its abolition." (John Blassingame, The Slave Community (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979), 77). Yet Stanley Elkins remarks that by the 1830s "the hostility to slavery that had been common in Jeffersonian times...all but disappeared." (Stanley Elkins, Slavery (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976), 209) So what happened between 1820 and 1830 that set all that off? Not the cotton gin, that was invented in 1793. It was the Democratic Party, founded on the defense of slavery. The Missouri Crisis 1819-1820 is a turning point, which may have spurred the slaveholders' intransigence, eventually leading to the Democrat party founding. The North came to understand the South wanted to expand slavery westward, the South came to understand the North was hellbent on preventing it. Returning to Blassingame, planters organized a campaign to defend slavery. They organized mob attacks against ministers who opposed slavery. "By the 1840s, the propagandists had largely succeeded in silencing the churches," after which they browbeat the local clergy into shilling for slavery. (John Blassingame, The Slave Community (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979), 80-81) The mails were also censored, blocking antislavery literature from reaching the South, Southern lawmakers enacted manumission bans, and by the 1850s some proslavery writers like William Yancey and Robert Barnwell Rhett called for restarting the slave trade. James Henry Hammond and others argued slavery was good for the slaves ("positive good"), as did George Fitzhugh, who declared slavery could be good for whites as well. Democrats rejected the Founding itself in so doing. John C. Calhoun, said the Declaration of Independence has "an utterly false view of the subordinate relation of the black to the white race," lamenting that a fellow Southerner like Jefferson could have admitted "so great an error" into the South. "Many in the South once believed that it [slavery] was a moral and political evil; that folly and delusion are gone; we see it now in its true light, and regard it as the most safe and stable basis for free institutions in the world." (John C. Calhoun, Senate Speech of January 10, 1838, in Erick McKitrick, ed. Slavery Defended (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1963), 18)

The Founding of the Democrats: How It Happened Martin Van Buren was the head of the Albany Regency political machine. He was also chummy with the New York City Tammany Hall political machine. He went to Virginia and met with one Thomas Ritchie. We know this meeting took place because Ritchie wrote about it, though Van Buren destroyed much his correspondence. Ritchie was editor of the Richmond Enquirer, and a member of the Richmond Junto, which dominated Virginia. And where Virginia went, the South followed; 5 of the first 6 Presidents were Virginians and Virginia was held in high esteem. Van Buren cut a deal with Ritchie, that Ritchie would have those in his orbit vote the way Van Buren wanted to, and in return Van Buren would have his Northern supporters block any attempt to abolish slavery. Per Van Buren, "political combinations between the inhabitants of the different states are unavoidable and the most natural and beneficial to the country is that between the planters of the South and the plain Republicans of the North." (Quoted in Robert V. Remini, Martin Van Buren and the Making of the Democratic Party (New York: Press, 1959), 131.) Without said alliance, "the clamour against the Southern influence and African Slavery" would increase. (Robert V. Remini, Martin Van Buren and the Making of the Democratic Party (New York: Columbia University Press, 1959), 132) The deal was taken, and an organization later emerged to further this deal. It was called the Democratic Party. Martin Van Buren wasn't strictly speaking pro-slavery, but was convinced disputes over slavery could result in disunion or war. His Democrat party was designed to prevent this. So why was Van Buren's deal taken up? The South was losing comparative electoral strength, as most immigrants landed in New York and Boston and spread out to other Northern free states. The free states could outvote the slave states and end slavery, profitable or not. Historians rightly say the cotton gin ensured profitability and the transition of the South to a one-crop economy, and they are also right to say that the skyrocketing profitability of cotton-picking slavery ensured political power. But growing Northern power meant profitability did not guarantee safety from abolition. Indeed, politicians seem to relish banning things that are profitable, if anything. So the reason Van Buren's offer was taken up is because he had made the planter class an offer they couldn't refuse. The implication of this is that the Democratic Party is responsible for reversing decades of the decline of slavery, preventing its eventual peaceful abolition, and setting the country, ironically despite Van Buren's intentions, on a course to war over it. While the original deal to defend chattel slavery may be dead, but the other legacy of Martin Van Buren is alive and well. He never gave a great speech or wrote any astounding document, or won a dramatic battle. He did invent the political machine and ethnic mobilization. All the Democrat appeals about "social justice" and "racial equity" used to turn out Blacks and Latinos to the polls is just reworked Van Buren, whose machine began the tricks with the Irish, often striking anti-British appeals just as present demagoguery strikes anti-White appeals. From meticulous turnout efforts, to voter fraud efforts, to looting the treasury and siphoning off big money to cronies to buy voter and donor support, Van Buren's dreadful corrupting legacy lives on.

The Effect of Democrats on Slavery Virginia debated abolition in 1832, and it was narrowly defeated. The path from there to later anti-abolition mobs and mail censorship went straight through the rise of the Democratic Party. Democrats promoted the "positive good" theory of slavery, becoming the first entity in world history to argue that slavery was beneficial to slaves. Of course, if one believed slavery was beneficial, a good thing altogether, what else to do but expand it? Not only was that logically implied, Republicans believed Democrats were doing exactly that, regularly warning of the danger the "Slave Power" posed to the American system and founding. Lincoln's "House Divided" speech alleged a conspiracy of Democrats to take slavery national, listing four chief plotters as Roger Taney (MD), Stephen Douglas (IL), Franklin Pierce (NH) and James Buchanan (PA). And all involved knew which party was more pro-slavery. John C. Calhoun, having once been a Whig, switched back to being a Democrat because he was convinced it would better defend slavery. Per Democrat President James Buchanan, slaveholders "have no other allies...except the of the North," (Cited by Daniel Walker Howe, What Hath God Wrought (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 524). William Seward, Lincoln's future Secretary of State, said "The great support of Slavery in the South has been its alliance with the Democratic party of the North." (Cited by Lewis Lehrman, Lincoln at Peoria: The Turning Point (New York: Stackpole Books, 2008), 155)

Slavery Versus Capitalism Slavery was profitable, but profit didn't necessitate capitalist mentality. Slaveholders fancied themselves an aristorcacy, with an increasing (by the time of the Cornerstone Speech, complete) repudiation of our Founding philosophy, rather than its fulfillment as 1619 would claim. The planters had anti capitalist mentality (COUNTERPOINT 36-37), and the planter class "grew into the closest thing to feudal lords imaginable in a nineteenth century burgeois republic." (Eugene D. Genovese, The Political Economy of Slavery: Studies in the Economy and Society of the Slave South (New York, 1965), p23, 28,, 30) As Gordon Wood puts it "They came closest in America to fitting the classical ideal of the free and independent gentleman." (Gordon Wood, The Radicalism of the American Revolution, (New York: Vintage Books, 1991), 115-116) Slavery was profitable true, yet were the planter class capitalists, they'd have branched out into the even more profitable manufacturing. (SCHWEIKART 257) Nor did slavery's defenders think slavery personified capitalism. George Fitzhugh led many in saying quite the opposite, portraying Northern capitalism as "wage slavery" that kept workers in a worse way than plantation slaves. Republicans believed in "free labor" ideology, which despite the name didn't mean the work was free, but the worker. The working man was entitled to work at whatever wages he could get, to take or leave employment at whatever time he pleased, and better himself thereby. Republicans endorsed "free labor" as practiced on free soil by free men. And slavery's expansion threatened it all, because who can underbid working for nothing? Nor is slavery anything like capitalism, even if one takes the attitude that the planters themselves had it all wrong. Capitalism says no theft, force, or fraud. Slavery involves at least the first two, and is definitionally not capitalist. Hence the free labor advocates also being abolitionist, because classical liberalism began with the premise of self-ownership per John Locke; hence the anti-capitalists, George Fitzhugh et. all, being pro-slavery.

Not "North Versus South," Republicans Versus Democrats The "North" didn't believe slavery was wrong, only Republicans did. Lincoln repeatedly asserted slavery was the dividing line between Republicans and Democrats, and Northern Democrat Stephen Douglas never disputed it. (One example of Lincoln so asserting was his letter to Alexander Stephens, December 22, 1860). As an amusing sidenote, D'Souza once stated no Republicans in 1860 owned slaves, and Kevin Kruse and his 150 flying monkeys on Twitter found about a dozen who did, and claimed victory, as if the other 393,975* or so Democrat slaveholders didn't count. Some such slaveowners became GOP members after the election because they opposed secession. [*This is the number of individual slaveholders. Some will insist on counting it on a slaveholding household basis, but that's not the point; the point is almost none were, at any point in their lives, Republican.] Much like the slavery debate itself, the Civil War wasn't between the "North" and the "South." It was more or less between the Republicans and the Democrats. Northern Democrats were war-opposing Copperheads, doing what they could to aid the Southern Democrat Confederates. But there were Southern Unionists, opposing secession and the Confederacy, and they were mostly Republicans (some were "Unconditional Unionists" to be fair, but they certainly weren't Democrats). They were mostly located in the Appalachians in Eastern Tennessee, Western North Carolina, Western Virginia (and West Virginia), Northern Alabama, the Ozarks, and Texas Hill Country. Many of Confederate General Robert E. Lee's campaigns and maneuvers were aimed at influencing politics in a pro-Democrat direction. For example, he invaded Maryland in the months preceding the 1862 midterms, noting in a Septmber 8, 1862 letter to Confederate President Jefferson Davis that in November voters determine "whether they support those who favor a prolongation of the war or those who wish to bring it to a termination." (Cited by Jennifer Weber, Copperheads (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 106) For all the hype on Britain or France, whose publics were very anti-slavery, the great hope of the Confederacy was the Northern Democrats. Lincoln feared the Northern Democrats, the "Peace Democrats," the "Copperheads," or as he called them the "fire in the rear." Their numbers included former Congressmen Clement Vallandigham and Alexander Long of Ohio, former Governor Horatio Seymour of New York, NYC Mayor Fernando Wood, and Indiana Senator Daniel Voorhees. There were also "War Democrats" who supported preserving the Union, but turned on him after the Emancipation Proclamation (which energized the Yankee rural base of the Republican Party). Lincoln as late as early September greatly feared he would lose reelection, but many fence-sitters came on board after some timely victories by the Union Army in September and October 1864, making it clear that the war was not a vain, interminable struggle, but that it would soon be over, and in victory. (One minor note, in case anyone tries it: Lincoln's 1864 run as a "National Union" was to get votes from those who couldn't stomach the name "Republican," such as Unconditional Unionist and Union Party members. The term was occasionally seen in 1868, state GOPs mostly didn't so brand themselves, and no historian I'm aware of pretends "National Union" tickets were anything but Republicans in all but name.) The Northern Democrats and their schemes explain many of Lincoln's otherwise inexplicable behaviors, his midwar hemming and hawwing. Lincoln's own views on slavery were unmistakeable. "If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong. I cannot remember when I did not so think, and feel." Lincoln proposed colonization to play politics, to make clear he'd exhausted all other options. At that infamous meeting with Black leaders where he endorsed colonization, the Emancipation Proclamation sat in his desk, awaiting deployment. And much the same was Lincoln's oft-cited letter to Horace Greeley, Lincoln needed to win reelection or slavery would endure. He needed to win not just the border states, but the swing states of New York, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. The latter three had a Southern-settled lower half, essentially Virginians who moved westward, and if they had high turnout against him, he stood to lose all three. Democrats and the 1619 Racebaiting Fake History Project misrepresent Lincoln's letter as his genuine sentiments rather than a political maneuver to further the end of slavery in fact. Additionally, had Lincoln's goal been to simply save the Union, regardless of slavery, he would have embraced the Crittenden Compromise or Stephen Douglas' ideas of popular sovereignty. He didn't.

After the Civil War The Democrats voting "no" on the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments were the Northern Democrats. The South was not yet readmitted to the Union. Democrats, North and South, defended slavery. Only 23% of Democrats supported abolishing slavery, and the latter two amendments received zero percent support among Democrats, who loved President Andrew Johnson for his efforts to obstruct civil rights. Johnson grew up poor in Tennessee, and hated the planter aristocracy, he was a left-populist yet a racist at the same time, contrary to those who claim such things are impossible. Johnson vetoed the 1866 Civil Rights Act, which Republicans passed over his veto, and incited a narrowly-failed impeachment attempt.

Reconstruction and Afterwards Southern Democrats were not "conservative," their "positive good" ideology was not "conservative" but was unprecedented in world history. Republican 40-acres-and-a-mule schemes followed natural rights principles of recompense when someone benefitted from stolen property, and are not analogous to either Marxism or modern reparations proposals (for one thing, they came from actual slaveholders and went to actual slaves). Nor were Democrats any more pro-market after the war, employing regulations like Black codes, requiring annual employment contracts, prohibited movement between counties without official permission (sounds more like the Soviet internal checkpoints than anything American), and the use of "vagrancy" charges (to nail anyone trying to get a better job, just as they're busy looking for one). The anti-free market continued with hefty license fees on recruiters from other states trying to lure freedman. Also, occupational licensing to keep blacks out of profitable professions; the fees could of course be paid by those established in the trades, but a freshly freed slave was not likely to have the cash on hand. In the meantime, legislators could plead the law was neutral if challenged in court. All of this upheld by, of course, gun control laws. Hmmm, now who still pushes gun control laws? Democrats invented political racism, and white supremacy as political doctrine. It was their glue that held the party together in this period. Democrats also made the Ku Klux Klan, a military wing of their party. Their initial targets were White Republicans; they pivoted to Blacks because no hard thought was needed to identify the Republicans among them. The Ku Klux Klan Acts of 1871 restricted Northern Democrat inflow of money and weapons to Klan. The Department of Justice was created under the Grant Administration and its first task was to suppresss the Klan. As for its revival, Thomas Dixon, Democrat, later appointed to a judgeship by FDR, wrote a book called The Clansman. This book was the basis for Democrat D.W. Griffith's film Birth of a Nation (which ends with the Klan "heroes" defeating the and, as the caption card put it, "disarming the blacks." Yep, gun control upheld Jim Crow, so at least that part is 100% accurate.) Klansmen abounded in elected office, and even Supreme Court justices, such as Edward White or Hugo Black. So influential did they become that the 1924 Democratic National Convention seriously struggled with whether to condemn the Klan.

1890 to 1920: A Suspicious Timeframe Many will be surprised to learn Jim Crow did not start in 1876. 1876 to 1890 was a period of relative calm, if not one of justice. The worst damage by several magnitudes starts in 1890, with the rise of the likes of Pitchfork Ben Tillman (SC), James K. Vardaman (MS), Hoke Smith (GA), Charles B. Aycock & Josephus Daniels (NC), Carter Glass & Andrew Montague (VA), Braxton B. Comer (AL), and Napoleon B. Broward (FL). Why would Democrat historians show such interest in making 1876, and the not-so-great deal the GOP made to get Hayes the Presidency, central? Perhaps because if you knew Jim Crow's installation lasted from about 1890 to 1920, a period called the "Nadir of American Race Relations," there's the off chance you'd notice it perfectly overlapped with something else that lasted from about 1890 to about 1920: The Progressive Era. The Nadir of American Race Relations IS the Progressive Era. Not in spite of progressives; because of them. They weren't products of their times; they produced their times, the Progressives were the racists who did both the Jim Crow-imposing and the making government bigger and more centralized. Nor should that be surprising, because fundamentally, what is Jim Crow? It was not a system merely permitting private sector discrimination, but a series of laws, imposed by government and enforced by government, mandating discrimination be done. Most businessmen didn't care for it, even a great many that didn't much care for Blacks, because mandates for separate entrances and separate rooms and segregated streetcars meant more expenses for them. But it cost the politicians nothing, hence why they enacted new laws constantly. Jim Crow was big government. Woodrow Wilson was the quintessential racist progressive, segregating the Federal government, yet pushing through the Act, the IRS, child labor laws, and so forth. He also intervened in World War 1, beginning an unfortunate habit of the United States intervening in wars halfway around the globe in which we were not attacked. (Wars prior to Wilson were all either 1) started by others--or as with the Maine explosion/1898 Spanish-American War--believed to be started by others, or 2) started by us but at least done with opponents that bordered us.) As strange as it my sound to anyone whose first memory of politics with the George W. Bush years, Republicans and Conservatives were not historically the ones who got us into most of our wars. Wilson also wrote a 5 volume History of the American People, which described the Reconstruction era thusly: "The tasks of ordinary labor stood untouched; the idler grew insolent, dangerous; nights went anxiously by, for fear of riot and incendiary fire...until at last there had sprung into existence a great Ku Klux Klan, an Invisible Empire of the South, bound together in loose organization, to protect the southern country from some of the ugliest hazards of a time of revolution." (Cited by Nathaniel Weyl and William Marina, American Statesmen on Slavery and the Negro (New Rochelle: Arlington House, 1971), 325-326) Some quotations from his writings appeared on screen in Birth of a Nation, which he screened at the White House, and which led to a revival of the Ku Klux Klan. Some have observed the subsequent 1920s Klan contained some Republicans, but insofar as this is true, it was majority Democrat and Thomas Dixon, author of The Clansman on which the film was based, said he hoped it would make every man a good Democrat. Woodrow Wilson was the first president to denounce our Founders, because he believed in progressivism. Racist, AND progressive, contra the narrative's claims the two are opposites. Wilson's existence makes their heads explode, that's why they avoid talking about him whenever possible. Imagine if people knew that the inventor of the "living document" interpretation of the Constitution was the work of the same man who segregated the federal government and revived the Ku Klux Klan! Before the launch of the Magical Switching Parties Conspiracy Theory, Wilson wasn't so toxic. He came from academica and academics generally like progressivism because it lets the intellectual crack the whip. Wilson also lead to another shift, one of preferring centralization to easier implement progressivism. The Democrats' Civil War defeat had taught them control of the Federal government was paramount. But their philosophy didn't shift, only their tactics.

New Deal, Fair Deal, Leadup to 1960 FDR took the Tammany playbook to the Potomac, becoming America's first national machine boss. He won all but the most die-hard Republican voters, as the GOP was reduced to its Yankee and Appalachian hardcore base for several election cycles. Somewhat surprisingly, Democrats acquired the Black vote in the 1930s, as Blacks joined many others in the country in embracing leftist statist economics in the 1930s (more on how and why that happened later). By January 1935, over 3 million Blacks worked on relief projects, and began switching to the Democrats. (Samuel Lubell, White and Black: Test of a Nation, 2nd ed (New York: Harper and Row, 1966), p.57-58). But long story short, civil rights played no part in it, it was achieved because Democrats were the only port in a storm caused by big government. The Depresssion gutted the private sector, and with the NRA and WPA, the Federal government became the leading black employer by 1935, which could be leveraged for votes. Democrats then ran a complete nationwide scheme of oppression of blacks: in the South, emigrant agent and vagrancy laws; in the North, racist Democrat unions locking up anything above the most menial of employment. The remaining jobs, like domestic and agricultural workers, were excluded from Social Security coverage, and it is only because of GOP President Eisenhower and Republican majorities 1952-1954 that blacks can receive Social Security today. Adding insult to injury, the Democrats created the National Housing Administration, and made redlining mandatory nationwide--as Wilson segregated the Federal government, FDR used the Federal government to segregate America; big government and big segregation, you could say. The Unions that composed the Northern Democrat base were complicit as well. The National Labor Relations Act (Wagner Act) originally had a clause banning racial discrimination, and this was removed at AFL insistence. One one hand, the Tennessee Valley Authority compensated land owners but not sharecroppers when taking land for its projects. On the other hand, but the rising unions forming the backbone of Northern Democrats excluded Blacks as members, and captured the once heavily black construction job market. At a time when government public works spending skyrocketed. Black unemployment, lower than white unemployment from the 1890s until the New Deal era (yes, really), has been higher ever since. Thanks Democrats! Then came World War 2, and the discovery of the Nazi deathcamps (which in addition to the body count, achieved the not insignificant feat of making General George S. Patton throw up). Racism's intellectual credibility collapsed, and with it, the Democrat stranglehold of the South. Republicans captured the Presidency in 1952 and 1956, with Eisenhower carrying numerous Southern states. The jig was up, and in 1957, for the first time in US history, a majority of Democrats voted for a Civil Rights bill, and again in 1960. Democrats needed to quickly spin their way to being on the "right side of history," not only to keep the black vote, but in order to not lose the white vote, which declining racism would jeapordize.

Some Assorted Defenses to Some Assorted Attacks on the Republicans Records Republicans had saved the country from secession and slavery, even though Reconstruction failed. Or perhaps should we say, "was thwarted," and the South today still lives with the effects of what the Democrats spent the 1870s doing. However, at this point we need to explain, why the rapid progress 1866-1876, why the apparent backsliding between then and 1960s? First, other big, recurring issues existed. Tariffs were another big issue, which Republicans defended as a benefit to workers' wages and owners' profits alike. Currency reform, or attempts to get the money backed by silver as well as gold, as an inflationary measure to help debtors (the Federal government issued greenbacks during the Civil War, then in a deflationary move retired them and returned to the gold standard.) Also, civil service reform, in which there was the idea that a professional civil service should replace partisan spoils-system-allotted government bureaucratic posts (though I would contend it's debatable how nonpartisan any government employee can really be.) (CARNES GARRATY AMERICAN NATION P534) Second, the GOP often lacked the overwhelming post-Civil War control of government. Firstly, the readmittance of the Southern states, with the rise of Democrats back to power within them, took away the huge, structural majorities Republicans had at the time the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments were passed. Most Southern states were not yet readmitted to the Union at the time the amendments were passed. Then, the matter of governmental control. The Republicans controlled the Presidency 1860-1884, 1888-1892, and 1896-1912, with Senate control 1872-1878, a tie their VP could break 1880, and 1882-1892 and 1896-1912, and with House control 1860-1874, 1880-1882, 1888-1894, and 1896-1910. They controlled all three until 1874, then 1880-1882 (with a VP tiebreaker needed), 1888-1892, and 1896-1910. Now here's the twist. Now, here's the twist. 1883 saw Civil Rights cases striking down their 1875 Civil Rights Act, and judges made it nearly imposssible to enforce civil rights laws, even were the GOP to have the majorities to pass them, such as with Slaughterhouse 1873 Cases, US vs Reese and Cruikshank *1876, 1883 Civil Rights cases, Hall v. de Cuir (1877), Louisville, New Orleans and Texas Railroad v. (1890), Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), Williams v. Mississippi (1898). After 1900, GOP had hands full fighting progressive schemes to expand the oppression. Democrats spent 1865-1900 writing fake history that paid dividends by shaping the contemporary politics. Second, the GOP consistently made an attempt. After the 1874 wipeout they passed in an 1875 lame duck session the 1875 Civil Rights Act. The GOP problem 1874-1890 was neither losing interest nor losing their principles, but rather losing elections and losing court cases. They would have to content themselves with passing state-level civil rights laws. Effectiveness? Your milage may vary, but they were enacted. Finally, the argument is an exercise in disingenousness. I'm sure progressives can name any number of times the GOP didn't push hard enough, did not show enough fortitude and shrank from controversy. But that simply begs the question: Why was there a controversy? Due to whose opposition did treating Blacks as human beings become controversial? The Democrats' opposition. On top of that, their old lie and their new lie are colliding. This pre-1960s line of attack, referred to by C. Vann Woodward in his 1964 American Counterpoint: Slavery and Racism in the North-South Dialogue, is from an older line of Democrats minimizing their own parties guilt by minimizing the Republican accomplishments, which were limited because a certain party starting with "d" was limiting them. Their new line, that the parties switched, contradicts their older one, that the GOP didn't really mean it when it stood for abolition and civil rights. But if GOP record pre 1960s were really so bad, why are Democrats trying so hard to claim it for themselves, and foist their record upon us? At least the British who installed slavery in North America atoned for it by a century of suppressing the slave trade, at great expense to themselves. What recompense have Democrats ever made?

One Final Note on an Obscure But Specific Accusation As for the "Lily White Movement," there is an answer, but first, let's deal with the charge on a conceptual level: the situation can't be quite what the narrative pushers say it is, because if the GOP were anywhere near as guilty as the Democrats, the Democrat apologists wouldn't be so busy trying to pretend the parties "switched." The facts, there's two key ones. First, yes, it was a thing. Second, no, it wasn't much of a thing. It is a case of a racist fringe versus a racist core, occasional opportunists versus a central strategy for every cycle. The GOP won most post-Civil War elections without Southern Whites, and possessed no fear of "alienating" those bloc voting Democrat for a generation. Some Southern Republicans believed that, were the Republicans to embrace white supremacy, it would help them make inroads with White Southerners, who, it should be said, were the ones capable of voting at the time. However, the national GOP did not endorse this notion. Former Nebraska Governor George Sheldon for instance tried to make the Mississippi GOP lily white (Key 287) but his delegations to the Republican National Conventions were not seated precisely for his endorsement of white supremacy (Key 288). Likewise "Tieless Joe," Joseph W.Tolbert of South Carolina, tried much the same and was declined. The Lily-white movement was an insignificant detail, purely patronage organizations in a barely-above-defunct Southern Republican Party, making few or no efforts to float serious candidates to win Southern state elections, or most House and Senate elections, and did precious little except send occasional delgates to the Presidential nominating conventions, most of the time not being seated for their beliefs. (Key 289-290). They spoke for GOP organizations that, lily-white or not, were hardly forces to be reckoned with, commanded few votes and typically had no idea where likely voters were (Key 293), and were more interested in fundraising for swing states than running on hopeless local campaigns. (Key 295-296) when they weren't too busy dreaming of patronage. In any case, no equivalent to an actual racist Democrat party, and if not for an unfortunate act of Herbert Hoover, wouldn't even merit a footnote mention. Indeed, this whole canard is an attempt to turn a footnote into a headline, basing a case on an anomoly. In fact, by even bringing it up, the narrative pushers have refuted their own story by showing that appeals to racism were even capable of converting Democrats, as Democrat stayed Democrat throughout. It's almost like the South wasn't conservative and it's voters had other, left of center, reasons for voting Democrat. * * * Academics and Quackademics, Where the Magical Switching Parties Conspiracy Theory Came From

What Business Do I Have Questioning Academic Consensus? What business does a layman have questioning academic consensus? Plenty, when we consider some of the silly things academic consensus is behind. Though I have no degree, I do know proper historical research methods. The only thing the credentialed snobs who will attack this work can do that I can't is get paid for it. The facts are my credentials. I'm citing facts, and citing "experts" is just citing people; how are they experts without facts? There's nothing wrong with my history, they just don't like my conclusions. When people have to resort to citing their credentials instead of citing specific facts, they're confessing their argument is in trouble. If an opponent had some specific fact that would bury you, wouldn't they be citing that instead? In an academia that takes soft science's pronouncements seriously, I would assert my lack of credentials indicates I'm less prone to believing silly things I can't prove. People with credentials can fall into groupthink like anyone else, they chase fads like everyone else (the latest fads involve "social justice"). Obsession over imaginary "institutional racism" is one such fad (and if there is such a thing, the Democrats are guilty because they run the institutions). The previous method for overturning bad scholarship was others with credentials advancing new theories. For example, later scholarship debunked 1960s notions that fathers were unnecessary. But this mechanism broke long ago, as we see with today's forced retraction of a study showing white cops were no more than black cops to kill black suspects (because Heather MacDonald had cited it, you see?) Or take the "Sokal Squared" hoax, in which James Lindsay, Peter Boghossian, and Helen Pluckrose created intentionally broken (and frequently hilarious) papers in race and gender studies to see if the academic journals would publish them (they would.) Amusingly, James Lindsay said they had better luck getting their hoax papers printed once they realized social justice was a RELIGION and wrote accordingly. The system is broken. The retaliation against them reveals the internal self-corrective process academia once had is broken, as does the intimidation aimed at Brett Weinstein from Evergreen University. Which makes correcting it my job as a layman. It is clear that academia will not be forced to abandon the untenable "parties switched and Republicans are now racist" theory from internal pressure. There are many good academics still; I even cite some of them. But far too many academics are little but academic "dirty tricks" operatives, such as those cranking out quack studies showing conservatives are "racist" or "authoritarian." Meanwhile, in the real world, conservatives don't really even talk about race, all while the left tells people what words they're not allowed to say. One Bob Altemeyer concocted a bizarre theory, claiming authoritarianism is inherently right-wing, and combined this with his international relations simulation game, in which conservatives destroyed the world in a nuclear war and liberals managed to create a peaceful kumbaya planet. Meanwhile, in the real world, the Soviet Union ran wild over the liberals for forty years, and 's military buildup and unyielding demeanor caused the collapse of the Soviet Union. Liberals use academic-looking "studies" to push narratives, they are more interested in proving a thesis and discovering the truth. As to the "authoritarian" is right-wing trope, the Coronavirus restrictions of leftist officials say otherwise, as does their cheering for every despotism to ever oppose the United States, from Stalin, to Mussolini, even for a while Hitler, to Castro, to Che, to Joe Biden's present soft spot for China and big tech's soft spot for copying Chinese-style internet censorship. Yet good luck getting academics to write books on any of that, they're addicted to their own conclusions. Their methods of telling what they want to tell and omitting what they don't, and spuriously naming things, I call it the "Liberal NFL": Narratives Framing Labelling. We, on the other hand will deconstruct academic leftism by pulling out the NAILs (Narratives And Incorrect LabelS) We will push back on the academic laundering of Democrat political narratives and talking points and conspiracy theories, coasting on institutional reputations from earlier & from far more serious thinkers, using them as a brand name, adding gravitas to their lightweight ideas. We will push back on the Quackademics, the intellectual bodyguard of the Democrat party.

Academic Fraud in Theory: A Brief History of the Quackademics As bigotry's prestige plummeted, academic Democrats knew their party's past impeded its present, so they set about busily ret-conning history to fit the future needs of the party. If this sounds wild and conspiratorial, consider that they've done this before. For one thing, the aforementioned "Lost Cause" theory originated with Democrate both inside and outside academia, aided by the Dunning School version of Reconstruction, which said corrupt black rule backed by zealot Republicans ruined everything in the South until the Klan and Democrats returned to power. This was the very fake history undergirding Woodrow Wilson's writings, referenced onscreen in Birth of a Nation. Newer historians crafted their narratives to support then-current Democrat needs. One Professor Howard Beale (Yes, that was really his name), argued in a 1924 Ph.D dissertation he later published as a book that Carpetbaggers were pawns of northern industrialists, the real villians or Reconstruction. He claimed they'd taken control during the Civil War, used tariffs, and railroad networks funded by subsidies and secret payoffs. They feared Southern whites, ex-Confederates especially, would regain power and end to their gains, and that Republican talk of equal rights was just claptrap. Andrew Johnson was transformed into an anti-capitalist hero of sorts. As Beale said, "Constitutional discussions of the rights of the negro, status of Southern states, the legal position of ex-rebels, and the powers of Congress and the president determined nothing. They were pure sham." (Howard K. Beale, The Critical Year: A Study of Andrew Johnson and Reconstruction (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1930; reprint 1958), p.147) There's also the better known Charles & Mary Beard and their book, The Rise of American Civilization with a similar story. Beale and the Beards became friends and promoted their outlook, termed "revisionism," which was the dominant interpretation replacing the Dunning School, until the 1950s. (Allan D. Charles, "Howard K. Beale," in Clyde N. Wilson, ed. Twentieth-century Amerian Historians (Gale Research Company, 1983), pp.32-38.;T. Harry Williams, "An Analysis of Some Reconstruction Attitudes," Journal of Southern History (1946) 12#4 pp.469-486) Charles Beard also wrote the hit on the Founders, with his 1913 An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States, all while Woodrow Wilson did the same in the legal sphere, all but inventing the "living document" interpretation which is backed by no Founding Father or really most anyone before the Progressive Era. Wilson said "Living political constitutions must be Darwinian in structure and in practice"; in other words, it must evolve as the politicians want. (Woodrow Wilson, Constitutional Government in the United States, 1908, p.57) Yes, some trot out a quote from Jefferson's letter to Samuel Kercheval, but in the same letter Jefferson also says the change must be done by the people themselves and their representatives, which is different from the "living document," which is a judicial philosophy on how to interpret a document, that while sometimes amended, was never rewritten wholesale, hence the meaning should not greatly change. Per Jefferson: "That majority, then, has a right to depute representatives to a convention, and to make the constitution what they think will be best for themsleves," meaning, he's open to a generational rewrite based on what the public wants, is not the same as progressive judges pretending the same text somehow acquired new meaning. Returning from law to history, Democrats and progressives spilled much ink evading the fact a capitalist, conservative Republican party ended slavery and fought for civil rights, opposed by the big government party they favored. Their first attempt declared the GOP insincere regarding emancipation or civil rights, devoting little emphasis to examining their opponents' motives and actions. The new approach proclaims the parties "switched" in the 60s regarding civil rights, with Republicans becoming their foe. To understand why academics would rally behind something so silly, one must know professors donate to Democrats over Republicans by a 95:1 ratio, and in some departments at some colleges, liberals outnumber conservatives by as much as 12 to 1. When someone says the "experts" or "academic consensus" proves conservatives wrong, keep in mind who runs academia, ask whether it is an academic consensus or a political consensus, whether they speak as experts or as liberals, whether it is real history or progressive spin. Ask what the specific facts are, and make up your own mind. So if "academic consensus" pronounces this book wrong, ask whether they can explain 1) why so few Southern Democrats at all levels of government actually changed parties, 2) why beliefs the GOP held since the 1860s were suddenly called "dogwhistles" starting in the 1960s--what caused Democrats to start using this attack on the very same beliefs they'd never called racist before the 1960s, 3) why the voting patterns showed the GOP's growth in the South tied to white-collar growth rather than anything Civil Rights related, 4) why the supposedly conservative Jim Crow Democrats voted for the New Deal, the Fair Deal, most of the Great Society, and why Jim Crow Democrats engaged in all the same behaviors seen by non-Southern Democrats then and now, in everything from massive voter fraud to organized political violence and the overblown rhetoric promoting hatred of capitalism. Basically, the politicians didn't switch, the platforms didn't switch, the voters didn't switch, and the patterns of partisan behavior didn't switch. All "evidence" of "party alignment" on civil rights rests on hyping some events, omitting others, manipulating electoral stats, deceptively clipping quotes, reinforced by assorted hoaxes in the present (Tawana Broadley, Duke Lacrosse, "Trump called Nazis fine people," Jussie Smollette, etc) All that I call fact is independently verifiable, and all I ask is for you to read this work in full and make up your own mind. After all, the job of a historian is not to tell you what to believe; the job of a historian is to tell you what happened. The Magical Switching Parties Conspiracy Theory is a kind of historical negationism, also called denialism. This differs from revisionism, which merely diverges from what precedes it, as revisionism (like my work) merely argues the existing facts point in a different direction. Now everybody calling each other a liar is about par for the course, so let's find a suitable definition and use it as a yardstick of who lies. I'll use the description given during the case of by Cambridge Professor Richard J. Evans: "Reputable and professional historians do not suppress parts of quotations from documents that go against their own case, but take them into account, and, if necessary, amend their own case, accordingly. They do not present, as genuine, documents which they know to be forged, just because the forgeries happen to back up what they are saying. They do not invent ingenious, but implausible, and utterly unsupported reasons for distrusting genuine documents, because these documents run counter to their arguments; again, they amend their arguments, if this is the case, or, indeed, abandon them altogether. They do not consciously attribute their own conclusions to books and other sources, which, in fact, on closer inspection, actually say the opposite. They do not eagerly seek out the highest possible figures in a series of statsitics, independently of their reliability, or otherwise, simply because they want, for whatever reason, to maximize the figure in question, but rather, they assess all the available figures, as impartially as possible, in order to arrive at a number that withstand the critical scrutiny of others. They do not knowingly mistranslate sources in foreign languages in order to make them more servicable to themselves. They do not willfully invent words, phrases, quotations, incidents and events, for which there is no historical evidence, in order to make their arguments more plausible." (Richard J. Evans. David Irving, Hitler, and Holocaust Denial: Electronic Edition, 6. General Conclusion Paragraphs 6.20, 6.21.). As I'll show, Dan T. Carter, Kevin Kruse, and others do most of the above; not presenting forged documents, but inventing ingenious yet implausible reasons for, say, hyping Goldwater while ignoring Eisenhower; claiming Kevin Philips' Emerging Republican Majority describes a racist "Southern Strategy" employed by Nixon (it doesn't, and he didn't); in manipulating statistical series by using cherrypicked data points to pretend GOP gains in the South resulted from civil rights backlash, etc--this they do. They maliciously clip quotes, present quotes out of context, mischaracterize the context, mischaracterize events generally; indeed, the deceptively edited quotes comprise most of their case, as voting data refuses to oblige them. The pattern of knowing could be described as "The Jussie Smolletting of the Republican Party." And parallels exist. For example, in both cases, the people in the best position to know better (press, academics) are the biggest promoters of the hoax, which is then dismantled by the reviled, the deplorables, and the unsophisticates. * * * Academic Fraud in Particular: "The Parties Switched"

Early Efforts: The Myth of the Southern Strategy Eisenhower did well in the South in 1952 and 1956, and the GOP even gained a few urban districts to match its traditional mountain districts. Seeing this, the GOP launched a program called Operation Dixie to recruit suitable candidates to run for more previously uncontested lower offices. Enter Joseph Alsop, a "columnist" who was chummy with John F. Kennedy (Kennedy even dropped by at a party at Alsop's home on Innauguration Night). JFK and the Democrats were intrested in launching a prepackaged narrative they were the party of civil rights and that Republicans had ceased to be. So Joseph Alsop wrote column after column, mischaracterizing the GOP's appeal in the South as campaigning for the votes of segregationists, as did another writer, Arthur Krock. Never mind the idea of Operation Dixie was that the GOP had a chance because racism was declining in the South. Never mind that these columns and similar articles could only cite anonymous GOP operatives ("sources say Russian collusion"--some things don't change), and could not cite or produce any document to support the idea the GOP was gunning for the segregationist vote. Never mind that anyone they could quote by name who said such a strategy existed was not in a position to know. Alsop and JFK, and later LBJ, needed their prepackaged narrative to take hold in the American mind, because the Democrats were already losing the South, with the Southern states that backed Eisenhower in 1952 and 1956, and most of which went for Nixon in 1960, all while the GOP was promoting civil rights nationally. Without their narrative, they had neither the South nor the pretense of a moral high ground. With it, they were guaranteed at least one. Thus the nucleus of the Magical Switching Parties Conspiracy Theory was already in place between 1960-1963. Polls document the effect that the slanted media narrative-pushing had on public opinion There was a poll asking, which party "is more likely to see to it that Negroes get fair treatment in jobs and housing? In 1962: 22.7% Democrats, 21.3% said Republicans, 55.9% said no difference. But after this, and some laudatory, nay, messianic coverage of JFK's Executive Order 10925 of March 6, 1961, and the hyping of JFK and a proposed civil rights law in 1963 (Republican role not hyped of course) by 1964, 56% said Democrats, 37% No difference, 7% Republicans. The media bias had done its trick! Alsop and Krock had succesfully launched their narrative, which would eventually become the Magical Switching Parties Conspiracy Theory. What this also means is that this narrative isn't a reaction to the 1964 election: if anything, the 1964 election is the reaction to people believing this narrative. Startling to modern readers? Yes. Well, you're going to find that a lot of this Magical Switching Parties Conspiracy Theory collapses once we do things as simple as putting historical events in their proper chronological sequence, once we do the basic checking of primary sources from the era.

Intermediate Efforts: Efforts to Slam Presidential Southern Republicanism, Efforts to Hype Isolated Party-Switchers The Magical Switching Parties Conspiracy Theory rests on several supporting columns, the biggest of which an alleged Republican "Southern Strategy." While today Nixon stands accused, the myth of the Southern Strategy was already being pushed before Nixon was running in 1968. Other chronological mistakes plague the story, as Kevin Phillips book The Emerging Republican Majority was not published until after the campaign, Phillips only gave a summary to Nixon's people who he spends much of the time wailing that they weren't taking his advice. (James Boyd, "Nixon's Southern Strategy 'It's All In the Charts' ," New York Times, May 17 1970) His advice wasn't racist anyways, and anyone telling you it is hasn't read the book (more on that in the "Platforms" chapter). The story goes that the Goldwater campaign began a cascade of Southern Republicans, that it was a watershed, or as I'll deride it as, The "Goldwatershed" Thesis (and it's debunked in the "Voters" chapter). The narrative then says Nixon refined Goldwater's clumsy racist strategy into one of cleverly phrased "dogwhistles" and innocous issues that could be plausibly be normal issues, but were actually motivated by hidden bigotry, which I'll call the "Supposed Southern Strategy" (the claims of hidden racist messaging are debunked in the "Platforms" chapter and the "Voters" chapter uses election data to show it simply can't have happened regardless). During this timeframe, says the narrative, Southern Democrat segregationist politicians poured into the party (refuted in the "Personnel" chapter) accompanied by their electorate (refuted in the "Voters" chapter), which I shall call "The Just 2 Guys in Congress Realignment," "The Only 1 Percent Of All Southern Officials Realignment, and the "The Class-Based Southern Voter Shift" respectively. As for Black voters, they did not switch over civil rights, but had been Democrats from the New Deal era, thanks to the Great 1930s Sellout encouraged by W.E.B DuBois, or as I call him, "Dubious DuBois" (and he deserves the title, as the "Voters" chapter demonstrates.)

The "Big Switch" Narrative The South remained Democrat at all non-Presidential levels until the 1990s. While there were jabs at Republican presidential candidates prior the 1990s, there was no, so far as I could find, systemic story of how the parties "switched" until the 1990s. More than anyone else, the guy who concocted this was Dan T. Carter, with other supporting works by Earl and Merle Black, and further refined by Kevin Kruse. Of Carter's books, his 1996 work George Wallace to : Race in the Conservative Counterrevolution (which I have read) pushes the MSPCT more than his biography of George Wallace, which while it pushes the MSPCT narrative, is after all a biography of Wallace that mostly focuses on Wallace. It is Carter who originates the claim that the GOP, more than making a racist appeal here and there, has an ideology it copied from Wallace but dares not credit him for it, the "politics of rage" that drives all the anti-DC, anti-establishment appeals, which are of course somehow coded racial appeals. Everything from "welfare queens," "colorblindness," even "taking the country back," couldn't possibly be people fed up with taxes, preferential policies, or being overruled by unelected bureaucrats hundreds of miles away. It's gotta be racism, because, narrative! Earle and Merle Black's The Rise of Southern Republicans (2002) focuses more on an overview of all the specific elections, with an emphasis on non-presidential Southern Republicanism. However, they say nothing Shafer & Johnston's The End of Southern Exceptionalism (2006) can't refute. The third one is Kevin Kruse's White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of Modern Conservatism (2007). Kruse focuses on Atlanta, I would think, because movement out of Atlanta tended to be North, and the district north of Atlanta is the future Newt Gingrich district (otherwise Atlanta seems like a very random city). In any case, his book mirrors Carter's argument that white supremacy is a core doctrine of the right, and of the Republican party today. In passing, I find it suspicious that all of these authors are Southern white liberals, with motivations possibly as much personal as political, hailing from Alabama (Dan Carter), east Texas (Earl & Merle Black), and Tennessee (Kevin Kruse). But this aside, it is the comparative recency of this being taken seriously in the scholarly world that grabs my attention. Not only that, it's flimsiness. It looked so intimidating, so complete, until I resolved to dig into the foundational data, only to discover the whole story rested on characterization of events more than the events themselves. It's all interpretation and no substance. * * * How This Hoax History Is Expanded Upon & Employed

Contemporary Application of the MSPCT: Historical Trickery Democrats take the Magical Switching Parties Conspiracy Theory as a foundation, and build other prepackaged narratives on top of it, and weave it into their other lies about America. Here's how the scam works: The history of America is framed as a "Black struggle" against "White people," against "American" oppression. British-introduced slavery is spun as the work of the Founding. 100% continuity is assumed, without any decline in slavery's acceptability until the 1820s, without the revival by the Democrats and their "positive good" theory, without the Democrats being solely responsible for the Confederacy, Jim Crow, every lynch mob, every race riot, etc. The party affiliation is omitted, and the perpetrators all spun as "white," and then the white Democrats, the Founders who inherited but curtailed slavery, and the British who installed slavery: their common skin color is hyped to create a pretend 400 years of continuity. Then by hyping "white" and hyping "America" and omitting the "Democrat," the left's narrative pushers observe Republicans today have most white voters and celebrate the American founding, and smear the Republicans today of being a continuation of said ugly history. Devious rhetorical traps are set. Republicans love America. Knowing this, Democrats blame America. Republicans defend America, incorrectly employing a "minimization of American guilt" strategy, and Democrats cry racist, and claim America's got an ugly legacy and that the Republicans are a continuation of that legacy. The Magical Switching Parties Conspiracy Theory only became necessary when contemporary Republicans started noticing who the guilty party was. In everyday politicking, Democrats promote preferences and quotas, the visible favoritism creating resentment which is then cited in circular fashion as "proof" America and white people are still racist. The long time pro-merit & individualist stance of the GOP (which dates back to the Civil War) is accused of being coded white supremacy continued. The accusers know they're lying, and their plan is to drive pro-meritocratic whites into the GOP, then use as this as "social proof" that perference for meritocracy is "racist," as a defense against any Democrat being called out on incompetence. If this sounds incredible, consider that the Democrats have done this before: they just they used Irish instead of Blacks in those days. Another favorite tactic is the creation of symbolic, substanceless, "gotcha" issues, such as fights over flags or statues during election years, or using a politicians skin color as a shield against being criticized for the results of their policies. (We can tell Democrats are using race as a shield for radicalism because of the way Democrats treat Black Republicans.) If Democrats loved black people as such, they'd be much kinder to blacks who aren't Democrats. If Republicans treated white Democrats one-tenth as poorly as Democrats treated Black Republicans, it'd be a national story. Or perhaps Republicans don't describe white Democrats as "race traitors," because Republicans (wait for it!) DON'T SEE THE WORLD IN RACIAL TERMS! Their advocacy for limited government and low taxes is...actually advocacy for limited government and low taxes! For Democrats to see something racial in wanting lower taxes says more about the Democrats than anyone they're accusing. Another favorite trick is what I'll term the "snapshot fallacy," in which a present detail is omitted from any historical context. For example, Democrats and their media allies portray the GOP as a "white" party. Aside from the fact Democrat media smears keep scaring minorities away from Republicans, the Republicans were a majority white party when they ended Democrat-run slavery too, a majority white party even when they had the black vote, and both parties were mostly white for most of their history. So if they're mostly white, so what? An additional co-fallacy in this line of argument is to point to minorities voting Democrat as a "social proof" connecting Democrats to civil rights. The problem is that if you examine WHEN minorities began voting Democrat you find that none of them became Democrats during the Civil Rights era. Blacks became Democrats in the 1930s, so did, as far as I can find out, Latinos (census issues.). Asians became Democrats in the 1990s, and Muslims in 2004. In other words, NONE of the groups Democrats brag about having on their team began voting Democrat over civil rights, which majorly undercuts their self-righteous moral preening.

Contemporary Application of the MSPCT: Rhetorical Trickery Even the best laid plans can go wrong: railing against racism falls flat when there's self-evidently less racism than there's ever been. Thus recently, Democrat activists pushed Webster to change the definition of racism. The reason they had to redefine racism is 1) there was very little actual racism left, a huge impediment to racebaiting grifters, and 2) some persons of color don't have such great things to say about other races themselves, and as they tend to be Democrats, there needed to be a way to redefine that kind of racism out of existence, lest Democrats have to relinquish their pretend moral superiority in public. The first clue racism isn't about a power structure is that it ends in "-ism," as beliefs do. It's Rac-ISM. It's a belief, not a power structure. Power structures have names ending in -archy or -ocracy: oligarchy, monarchy, anarchy, democracy, aristocracy, theocracy. If racism is about a power structure, it wouldn't be called "racism," it'd be called "racearchy" or "raceocracy". So the very word itself tells you this claim is fraudulent. What's more, it's historically false: if it takes institutional power to be racist, then by that standard, the Nazis haven't been racist since the 1940s and the Ku Klux Klan hasn't been racist since the 1960s. "White privilege" is a related notion, in which people who go to work every day, pay their taxes, and follow the law are accused of upholding some sort of racist system. And anyone who denies this is accused, using invalid circular reasoning, of "white fragility." Don't worry too much about it though. White privilege was invented so that the guy who got off the boat from Italy in 1875 could be blamed for slavery, and reparations extracted. However, studies confirm that belief in white privilege doesn't make you a better person. As Erin Cooley writes in an article on May 8 2019 on Vice.com, "The Disturbing Thing I Learned Studying White Privilege and Liberals": "However, what we found was startling was that white privilege lessons didn't increase liberals' sympathy for poor Black people. Instead, these lessons decreased liberals' sympathy for poor white people, which led them to blame white people more for their own poverty. They seemed to think that if a person is poor despite all the privileges of being white, there must really be something wrong with them." That such beliefs don't promote sympathy is unsurprising. People who play games with words are not after truth; they're after power, they'll play games with words to get power, and play games with your lives once in power. And as such, they have no moral authority over you or me. Furthermore, people who distort the meaning of words will distort the meaning of justice. In fact, they're already announcing they'll do just that. That's why they call their program "social justice." If it was actually justice, there would be no need for the modifier.

Contemporary Application of the MSPCT: The Endgame is Censorship and Mind Control We know the Quackademics' motivations for lying, but what are rank-and-file Democrats' motivations for believing them? Racebaiting's purpose to undergirding cancel culture and liberal violence in the streets. Democrats' lies about America and the Magical Switching Parties Conspiracy Theory are a pretext for censorship and violence. They realized in 2016 they're losing the argument, so they label opposing beliefs "racist" and "fascist" and thus illegitimate, and get them banned, after phony "fact-checkers" who write for Salon or Rawstory call it "misinformation." It's not resurgent racism of fascism they fear, but majority opinion; they don't want the right-of-center majority--disturbed at the attempted remaking of America--to realize they are the majority. Democrats silence speech, citing past evils without telling us who did them. They also slap the civil rights label on non-civil rights issues. Men being able to pee in the womens' bathroom is not like being a Freedom Rider, and BLM burning down cities is not an MLK march. A majority oppose Democrat policies, but are intimidated by bogus accusations of racism, and are unsure how to respond. ("Shut up racebaiter, the Democrats ran slavery" isn't a bad leadoff line). But suppose someone debunks the Magical Switching Parties Conspiracy Theory? Their cover is gone, now they're left with their own record of being jerks for no reason. It would mean their moral cloak for burning, looting, and assault is GONE. They'll defend this cover story no matter how ridiculous it gets because otherwise they must admit their party is the racist one, their guilt compounded by using conspiracy theories to justify mob attacks on peaceful people. It means they're bad people doing bad things to good people for fake reasons. It means the "party of the little guy" is picking on the little guy, and the party of "free stuff" has a dark side. Democrats derive their pretend moral authority, and thus their power, from fake victimhood. Debunking the MSPCT undercuts this by demonstrating they're the historical, and present, victimizer. Say loudly and proudly: "Your fake victimhood gives no moral authority to you. Please present a real argument with facts and logic." This society-wide thuggery goes by many names, all of which amount to the same thing: anti-racism, cancel culture, deplatforming, the many names all mean silencing what the Left doesn't want society to hear. It's never the public calling for conservatives to be silenced, it's third party pressure groups funded by Soros with tons of sockpuppet Twitter accounts that corporate boards don't realize is only 8% of the public that's making these demands. Cancel culture doesn't speak truth to power. Cancel culture speaks power to truth. There's several excuses for deplatforming and cancel culture, all of them dishonest. The control freaks say "the right to free speech does not mean the right to not have consequences for speech," but who appointed them to impose consequences on other peoples' speech? Then there's the "accountability" canard, yet cancel culture doesn't make power accountable to the people, it makes the little guy accountable to the ideologues, who are often funded by rich Democrats like Soros. Or my personal favorite, "the right to speak doesn't mean a right to a platform." So you don't split hairs, you just cut rabbits in half? The intent is censorship, the effect is censorship, so that means it's censorship. Crowdsourced, mob-based censorship is still censorship. It's like that Lincoln quote where he asks how many legs a dog has if we call the tail a fifth leg: four, because it doesn't matter if you call a tail a leg, it factually isn't one. Likewise, it doesn't matter if you call censorship something else, it's still censorship. Deplatforming is the work of a tiny overleveraged minority trying to silence the spokesmen of the real majority, trying to prevent the majority from realizing it IS the majority. Trying to get anyone who could awaken and organize that majority banned. Anti-racism and cancel culture is the new Salem Witch Trials. Every instance of overwhelming pushback against their self-congratulatory policy is deemed "racism." Magical invisible racism everywhere is very much the new "witchcraft." Nothing has to be proved, no coherent explanation is required (and it's more "witchcraft" to ask for one), the accusation is enough. And much like Arthur Miller's The Crucible, the actual culprits, the Democratic party with its ugly history, are the ones doing all the accusing, using their own past outrages (and blaming others of course) to deflect from their present corruption.

The End of the Road for the MSPCT: The Meta-Theoretical Problems Alone Sink The Story The story, which I debunk in detail, is implausible even in theory, long before one learns the exact data. Firstly, to determine which party is lying, ask which party has a motive to lie? Probably the party electorally needing to rebrand itself as in favor of civil rights in time for civil rights to triumph. The GOP before 1964 had little to apologize for, hence they had no need to concoct stories that parties didn't "switch," it was Democrats who had a motive to concoct a story that they did "switch." Republicans supported 1964 Civil Rights Act more strongly than Democrats; proportionally speaking of course, the GOP was hardly the majority party at the time. (Civil Rights Act of 1964, House: Republican 136-35 (80%), Democrats 153-91 (63%). Senate: Republicans 27-6 (82%), Democrats 46-21 (69%) ). But if there was a "switch" because Goldwater, how come the same story is also true of the: >the 1965 Voting Rights Act--House: Democrats 221-61 (78%), Republicans 112-24 (82%); Senate: Democrats 47-16 (75%), Republicans 30-2 (93%) >the 1968 Fair Housing Act--House: Democrats 166-67 (71%), Republicans: 161-25 (86%); Senate: Democrats 42-17 (71%), Republicans 29-3 (90%) >and the 1972 Equal Employment Opportunity Act?--House: Democrats: 156-80 (66%), Republicans 132-28 (82%); Senate: Democrats: 39-7 (84%), Republicans 32-5 (86%) Eight years after the supposed "switch," nothing has. Not only did Southern Democrat politicians and voters not switch, as we shall see later, it makes no sense they would express their anger at the national Democrats over civil rights by joining the party more strongly in favor of civil rights, and possessing such reputation for 100 years. Some like Harry Enten have said (Harry Enten, "Were Republicans Really the Party of Civil Rights in the 1960s?" August 28, 2013, theguardian.com) this lower Democrat support for Civil Rights bills was a purely regional phenomenon, Southerners of both parties more likely to vote no, which inadvertenly underscores the point: Southern Democrat voters had no reason to vote Republican because their particular Democrats were voting the way their constituents wanted! Also, the Civil Rights side was winning. If this "switch" in ideology had actually happened, that means the Republicans defected to what everyone knew at the time was the losing side, jumping on what everyone knew was a sinking ship. It supposes a party witnessing Goldwater's disaster would then imitate it. This isn't just an accusation of villainy; it is an accusation of stupidity. Both claims can't be true; pick one! The "Goldwatershed" Thesis is bunk, it is the Goldwater Anomaly if anything. On top of this, by 1976, 1980 for sure, civil rights opposition is dead. Wallace in 1968 was a last hurrah, after which even Wallace pivoted. On top of all this, when realignments happen, they don't occur ten years before the events (1952/1956/1960 GOP Presidential gains in Southern states) in question, or thirty years after (GOP takes over majority of Southern House reps, Senators, Governors, state legislatures). If an event "caused a realignment," shouldn't the voters shift around the same time of the supposed "realignment?" The only "realignment" is the Democrats "realigning" their narratives to fit modern demands, so that contemporary Democrats can imagine history justifies them, because the progressive spin fake history is all they've heard. Progresssives, by distorting the past to conceal the guilty, by slanting the record of the 1960s to apply to the present goals, they have revealed they do not care about stopping racism. How can we remedy it until we're allowed to point out who did it? If you're not interested in correctly identifying who did it, you're not interested in fixing it. It would be like proposing to solve a murder without figuring out the culprit. And thus, we see Democrat history for what it is, the 3 Phases of the Democrat party: First they deny they lost (and start the Klan). Second, they denied it was about slavery. The MSPCT tells a different story than the "Lost Cause," but it serves the same purpose: to absolve the party of slavery and treason of its history. * * * Chapter 1. Continuity of Personnel: The Politicians Didn't Switch * * * * * Continuity of Personnel

An Overview of People Not Switching Only two Dixiecrats changed parties. Of all the segregationist Democrats who voted "no" on either the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, or the Fair Housing Act of 1968, only one Senator, Strom Thurmond, and one House representative, Albert Watson, became Republicans. If the parties "switched," we should expect to see a veritable STAMPEDE of segregationist Southern Democrats to the Republicans. We don't. Not on the federal level, not on the state level, not on the local level. There was only one Republican who voted "yes" on these bills who became a Democrat, John Lindsay. So many Democrats voters don't know these basic facts. This has allowed their party leadership and media to spread ridiculous stories, that, but for Republicans, would have spread far and wide. For example,in 2013 Chris Hayes misidentified George Wallace as a Republican. More recently GQ Magazine, in its zeal to call abortion opponents racist, made the same amateurish error.

The Federal Level Starting with the federal level: There were over 100 segregationist Democrats in the House and the Senate, who voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (and of 1957 and 1960 as well), against the Voting Rights Act of 1965, against the Fair Housing Act of 1968, against the Equal Employment Opportunity Act of 1972. How many of them became Republicans? Only two on the federal level, in Congress: Albert Watson in the House, Strom Thurmond in the Senate, both of South Carolina, and both in the general vicinity of the 1964 election, Thurmond before, Watson after. As to what became of these two, Albert Watson washed out of politics after a particularly ugly, racially-tinged run for governor in 1970. Watson lost a race that very well could have been won. This spooked Thurmond into toning it down (1992 C-SPAN interview with Earle & Merle Black, about their then-recent book "The Vital South"), and he hired black staffers and modified his rhetoric accordingly. As Harry Dent (worked at various times for Thurmond, Goldwater, Nixon, Ford, Reagan, and H.W. Bush) said, "We're going to get him [Thurmond] on the high ground of fairness on the race question." What was in his heart, I don't pretend to know, but he did, at least publicly, tone it down. As for how much to read into Thurmond, keep in mind throughout his life, Strom Thurmond persistently did what was good for Strom Thurmond. V.O. Key's Southern Politics describes him as running on a progressive platform for South Carolina governor (Key 133), has him endorsing the not-at-all conservative notion of rent controls "until some degree of sanity returns to profiteering real estate owners" (Key 149-150, citing Atlanta Journal, September 16, 1947) To the claim he left for the GOP because he thought it would be more amenable to segregationism makes little sense. The GOP had just more strongly voted for the Civil Rights Act. It's not clear what his real motivation was, but the New Yorker speculated that his move was prompted by fear of a possible 1966 primary challenge in the Democrat Senate primary. "Southern politicians do not believe that Thurmond joined the Republicans because he thought the Party had a bright future in South Carolina; he crossed over, they think, because he would not, in all probability, have been renominated as a Democrat in 1966, when he was due to be opposed by the incumbent governor, Donald S. Russell" (Richard H. Rovere, "The Campaign: Goldwater, " New Yorker, September 25, 1964, though the New Yorker's web address says "10/03/1964" for some reason.) Regardless, one guy is one guy.

One Guy Is One Guy, No Smokescreen Can Hide It Some, such as Kevin M. Kruse, downplay the anomalous nature of Thurmond by hyping every rumor that the GOP wanted more defectors of Thurmond's ilk. Quotes and screenshots of newspapers adorn his thread of May 5, 2018, and all miss the point. For example, William Buckley speculating which Southerners might be induced to follow Thurmond is not evidence the Republican party itself had such plans. The other photo a of a news article in his May 15 2018 thread ("Would They Rather Switch Than Fight?" by Theo Lippman, Jr., newspaper name not in photo, but Kruse says it is from 1969) says "RUMORED PLAN [emphasis mine] to entice a few Senators who now Democrats to join the Republicans." It concludes "The whole idea may be a little paranoid. Whether it arose in a persecuted liberal mind or a deluded conservative mind--or in both--is a good question. The stories that best indicate the political mood of Republicans in the South these days concern not switching but winning." Also notice the article's title is "WOULD THEY Rather Switch Than Fight," and not "THEY WOULD Rather Switch Than Fight," the whole thing is speculation on a rumor, much as people do today with every rumored scheme of the Trump administration (and typically with as little basis--how many of the endless "bombshells" were real?) One of the comments on the thread only underscores the point: "That's NOT what the article states. Buckley said "conservative-minded Democrats" might switch due to a "self-interest" of facing "elimination at the polls"; and only if they "guarantee a reorganization of the Senate under Republican (i.e. their own) leadership" His backup thesis is that Southern Democrats stayed Democrats to prevent liberalism? How? By voting for it? (And they did, as we'll see in the "Platforms" chapter.) If he wants to make a name for himself "debunking" Dinesh D'Souza on Twitter, he needs to up his game. His "proofs" are only convincing to people already convinced the parties "switched."

The Parade of the Not-Dixiecrats A Dixiecrat is someone who either was part of the 1948 Dixiecrat movement, signed the Southern Manifesto, or voted against the civil rights laws. All 1948 Dixiecrats came from, and returned to, the Democrats, so they're not the source of any more names. The next evasive maneuver is citation of , John Tower, and , and a few others (2 Republicans signed the Southern Manifesto, along with 99 Democrats), to say that more than two guys changed parties. What trips this up is none of them were Dixiecrats, only one (Tower) was even in Congress during 1964, and none of them held office as a Democrat during the time the civil rights bills were passed. It matters because it means they were not part of the power structure that created or maintained Jim Crow. If they never held office before as Democrat, they don't prove a "big switch." Their timing is either far too early or far too late. It proves some Republicans said or did bad things, but to demonstrate the "big switch," it needs to happen in reaction to a given event, not 4 years before it (Tower elected 1960), not 8 years after it (Helms switches 1972, not holding office yet). Is it too much to ask the proclaimed effect to happen at more or less the same time as the cause? Helms wasn't an elected official until 1972, he was a radio host who opportunistically switched parties right before he decided to run. Also, Helms' and Tower's vote patterns matched Ike's, demonstrating they were not voted for because they said anything racist, but despite it. Thurmond toned it down and won re-elections easily. Helms never did, and every re-election was a struggle. It wasn't rewarded, he was tolerated because of the "R" before his name. And North Carolina's Black population share was less than that of South Carolina, so Helms struggling would mean he's turning off white Republicans, meaning racially combative appeals were no secret weapon. All in all, bad is bad, but worse is also worse. If I have to explain Helms or Lott or Tower, the other side must explain the 100 Dixiecrats in the House who never switched, and the 20 Dixiecrat Senators who never switched, as well as the governors, attorneys general, and countless state representatives and state senators. They say there was a "big switch," and they say they were "conservatives." That's TWO REASONS they should have, according to their own theory, jumped ship in droves. But they didn't. Why?

The State Level Changes Nothing Kevin Kruse's ridiculous Twitter threads, in their zeal to debunk Dinesh D'Souza (and he fails), he's trying very hard and missing basic facts. For instance,he thinks he's showing Dinesh a thing of two when he digs down to the state level and dredges up a few dozen more Democrat segregationists who became Republicans. OK, if he wants to play that game, we can play that game. A few dozen such Democrats to Republicans at the state level...OUT OF HOW MANY? All in all, there were across the former Confederate states, 1,325 total state house seats across 11 states and 457 total state senate seats across 11 states, for a total of 1,782 state legislative seats. Each state had a Governor, Attorney General, Secretary of State, as well as many other offices, but for simplicity's sake, lets just say those three offices for eleven states*, for 33 more public officials. So adding those 33 to 1,782, we get 1,815 officials. If by a few dozen, you mean 24, that's 1.32%; if you mean 36, that's 1.98%, if you mean 48, or let's round up to 50, then that is 2.75%. So whatever number Kontextless Kevin Kruse manages to scrape together, it's basically nobody. The point that practically no segregationists changed parties basically holds. 97% true is true enough for me and it ought to be true enough for you, the reader, as well. *including border states like Kentucky, Missouri, West Virginia, or Oklahoma doesn't change the result.

Yes, That Is How Realignments Work Kruse's theads also insist that people and voters switching parties is "not how realignments work." Well, actually, yes, that is how realignments work. Whigs remnants sorted themselves into Democrats and Republicans over slavery becoming the dominant issue. (Politicians moved). In other situations, like 1928 and 1932, voters realign and replace the politicians that displease them, without creation of a new party (New Deal coalition formation). In any case, these relignments don't happen 30 years after (or 10 years before) their purported cause. * * * * * Republican Segregationists?

They Didn't Capture the South for the GOP: Irrelevant Footnotes Numerous less-than-virtuous actors Republicans can surely be cited by name, from Alfred Witherspoon Goldthwaite of Alabama, Howard "Bo" Calloway of Georgia, Bill Cramer of Florida, Rubel Phillips and Prentiss Walker and Gil Carmichael of Mississippi. A variety others can be named, and MSPCT advocates will happily name them. Some were bad guys (Prentiss Walker), some were just waffling, seeing which way the wind was blowing instead of showing courage (Calloway), some tried both approaches in their time (Rubel Phillips, Gil Carmichael). But Kevin Kruse's threads, and anyone else hyping these not-so-fine fellows is missing the biggest point of them all: these guys didn't flip the South Republican. That didn't happen until the 1990s. Kruse also omits mention of how the GOP spent 1970-mid 1980s mostly going backwards or running in place in the South. For example, the Republicans gained more House seats in the 1992 and 1994 elections than they did from 1964-1990 (Southern Republican net gains 1968-1990=+17, Southern Republican net gains 1998-1994=+19). In fact, no appreciable progress in competitiveness was seen in most Southern states until the Reagan years, at which point the debate is no longer about civil rights. So these guys, as much fun as narrative pushers have pretending they prove something, are not the ones who flipped the South. Kruse in particular will be disappointed to learn he wrote entire interminable threads on an irrelevancy. Or perhaps he does know it's a red herring, and leading people the wrong way was the idea, who knows.

Republican Segregationist Candidates? No Republicans were involved in creating segregation or Jim Crow. As Jim Crow waned, as Ike broke through in the South in the 1950s, the GOP was inspired to create Operation Dixie. This created a "farm team" system and supporting infrastructure to find and promote GOP candidates for many previously uncontested offices. This attracted some longtime but dormant Republicans. It also attracted opportunists who knew they'd never win a Democrat primary and that they could bypass much of that by running as Republicans. (Where is the evidence any of them were more than opportunists?) Some Republicans running for sub-Presidential offices c. 1960-1967 ran as segregationists. These were not the people actually running segregation, they were on the outside looking in. There were instances of segregationist Republicans against segregationist Democrats. There were cases of non-segregationist Republicans against segregationist Democrats. However, and this is most inconvenient for advocates of "the parties switched," there are no cases of segregationist Republicans running against nonsegregationist Democrats, which is what would be necessary to prove the narrative. The MSPCT narrative isn't that some Republicans also did some bad things. The MSPCT narrative is that Republicans as a whole, and Democrats as a whole, exchanged platforms on civil rights questions. So this topic is a case of slinging mud and hoping nobody notices the specifics of the evidence don't match the specifics of the accusation.

But Why? Why did they do it? They were competing in a Democrat-created environment. Contemporary columnists Krock and Alsop hype these 1960s Southern GOP candidates as the beginning of a "transformation" of the GOP, and many modern Democrats have been happy to pretend it was. However, if we apply this thinking to any other subject than civil rights, we begin to see how absurd this is. Larry Hogan of Maryland, Charlie Baker of the Massachusetts, and Phill Scott of Vermont are three Republican Governors who have liberal politican positions on abortion and gun control. Yet nobody in their right mind would suggest this indicates the Republicans and Democrats as a whole are imminently about to reverse their previous positions on abortion or guns. They are competing in Democrat-created environments of widespread social liberalism. Ditto Joe Manchin, Democrat Senator of West Virginia, and his support of the coal industry; yet nobody would confuse his position with most of his party. But Mr. Manchin, for local reasons, cannot join them on that issue. But for some (narrative-driven) reason, the same is not granted in the case of these particular Southern Republicans running segregation-lite campaigns. The voters of the era were not fooled, however, and racist votes went for the real thing--the Democrats. And so the South remained Democrat.

How Much Weight Does This Point Carry? These GOP footnotes didn't flip the South Republican. The Presidential breakthrough started before them, in the 1950s, with Eisenhower. The sub-Presidential breakthrough occured in the early 1990s. There's very few of them, barely a fraction of their party. Compare this with the segregationist Democrats, who but for a tiny number of examples, stayed Democrats. All the Golthwaites and Calloways and Cramers and Walkers and Carmichaels and Phillips, put together were hardly as indispensible to Republican numbers as the Southern Democrats were to Democrat numbers. Only 10% of GOP congressional representatives were Southern in 1964. Southern Democrats were an indispensible fraction of their party. In most any given year, the Democrats, minus even 33-40% of their Southern seats, weren't in the majority in the House. Yet Democrats resent the idea Segregationist Democrats defined the party, while insisting Rubel Phillips or Prentiss Walker define what the Republican Party is, not just in the 1960s, but even today. * * * * * Democrats Staying Democrat

Who Owns Who? Democrat majorities depended on the South, hence why none were expelled or denounced by leadership. This point matters, because it takes the consent of the group they claim membership in for them to be members. Compare this with the attempt to make David Duke, the Klan or the Alt-Right "the face" of the GOP. The media (outsiders) declaring it so does not make it so. It takes the consent of the group (GOP) for Duke to be a part of the group, not the malicious assertions of the libelous labelling liberal media. If I declared myself the quarterback of the Cleveland Browns, which actually might be an improvement, but nonetheless if the Cleveland Browns denied I was their quarterback, but then CNN declared that I was the quarterback, does CNN declaring it so make it so? Of course not. Now apply that to David Duke and the GOP. He's not with us. Now, contrast with Democrats and their segregationists, which though they deny them now, they embraced at the time. In fact, blacks were told by Democrats to vote for them, and on the strength of black voters we saw the continued elections of George Wallace, John Stennis, , Fritz Hollings, etc. Connecting this to a larger point, Democrats blame Republicans for people that Republicans explicitly reject, while shrieking for being blamed for people Democrat have explicitly embraced, be they Farrakhan, be they Stalin, be they Mussolini, or be they Obama's favorite Pastor Jeramiah "God-Damn-America" Wright.

The Democrats Who Stayed Democrat The segregationist Democrats weren't replaced, nor we expect this. Even if they were mad at the national party, their representatives did what they wanted, so why vote Republican? The segregationists stayed Democrat, including, but not limited to, James Eastland (MS), John Stennis (MS), Russell Long (LA), Herman Talmadge (GA), J. William Fullbright (AR), Lestor Maddox (GA), Al Gore Sr. (TN), Robert Byrd (WV), Spessard Holland (FL), Sam Ervin (NC), Richard Russell (GA), Olin Johnston (SC), Lister Hill (AL), John Sparkman (AL), John McClellan (AR), Harry F. Byrd Sr (VA)., Harry F. Byrd Jr (VA)., Allen Ellender (LA). A similar list for the House would be just as true but very long and do little but bore the reader. Most segregationist Democrats not only never switched, they were never repudiated, no one attempted to push them out, they were not primaried, nor forcibly retired. Why? Because they were pretty liberal, reliable votes on anything but civil rights, in most cases (as we shall explore in the "Platforms" chapter) As Hubert Humphrey's legislative assistant John G. Stewart recounted: "[Sen] Joe Clark (D-PA) took a very hardnosed and somewhat acrimonious position that the southerners should more or less be "punished" for their sins and should be given no consideration whatsoever in this position of cloture. Mansfeld, and to a lesser extent, Humphrey, urged a much softer line. [They] pointed out that party unity was essential, that other bills would be coming along, and that we should attempt to be charitable at this point in time." ("Thoughts on the Civil Rights Bill," John G. Stewart, in Loevy 132) And to this day, Richard Russell still has the Russell Senate Building named after him, likewise Sam Rayburn, with the Rayburn House Office Building. To say nothing of half of West Virginia being named after Robert KKK Byrd, who was elected Senate Majority leader in...1977! That doesn't fit the "parties switched in the 60s" narrative, does it? Tying it all to more contemporary events, Joe Biden's comments on working with segregationists are also "interesting," to say the least, and certainly don't fit the narratives. Some have tried calling them "conservative Southern Democrats," and insisted that they, in combination with Republicans, were a "conservative coalition" comprising a majority in Congress. If that's true, what great "conservative" legislation did they pass that would do the Tea Party proud? Others have insisted they stayed because of seniority rules, but seniority rules were altered by the 1974 "Watergate babies," and some like William Poage, Wright Patman, Wilbur Mills, and Edward Hebert were stripped of committee chairmanship more or less on the spot. The mass of Southern Democrats stayed over the platform.

Stupid Games That Deserve Stupid Prizes And this brings us to the last ditch Kruse excuse, that Dixiecrats trained their GOP replacements or told their young followers to get started in the GOP. He cited William Colmer, who told Trent Lott to do so in Mississippi. He says Helms too, as Helms worked for Democrat Willis Smith, but cites no evidence Smith told Helms to run as a Republican. So one, maybe two cases? Sounds like the one or two cases of Dixecrats who changed parties, spun as a general rule. But the plural of anecdote is not "evidence." On top of this, the segregationist Democrats in the House and Senate were succeeded by other Democrats for an average of 25 years after 1964. Surely Kruse can show us the mountain of outgoing segregationists endorsing Republican challengers to the next Democrat running? Because I can't. And if he could, it still wouldn't make any sense, because their left-of-center voting records wouldn't match who they were endorsing. Kruse also plays the gotcha game, because and Newt Gingrich, as lowly campaign workers in the 1960s, are obviously responsible for the platforms of James D. Martin and Bo Calloway. This is how desperate he is to pretend there's a connection between segregation and modern Republicans. DW-NOMINATE, which we'll cover in detail in the "Platforms" chapter, says most weren't "conservatives" and in any case Kruse's theory cannot explain why the ones that switched were the ones that switched, whereas my theory of looking at their voting records can explain it just fine. Why Strom Thurmond, why Albert Watson, why did Harry F. Bryd become an Independent? Why not John Sparkman, why not Richard Russell, why not Fritz Hollings, why not 's mentor J. William Fullbright or Hillary Clinton's mentor Robert KKK Byrd?

What It Means? Failure to switch by segregationist Democrats and by civil rights Republicans means segregationists knew that Republicans were not, and had not just become, racist; nor did Republican base think Democrats to be the civil rights party. Those living in the era and most in a position to know and most interested in knowing say, by their own actions, or lack thereof, that such a party "switch" did not occur; without the Southern Democrats, Democrat party would not have a majority in either house of Congress. The failure of this to occur means either 1) any Southern white voters voting on race stayed Democrats because they thought Democrats were still racist, or 2) they weren't conservative, because the more conservative party was always the Republican party. If the story we're told is true, there should have been a stampede following Thurmond, the near-immediate flip of the South at all levels of government following Goldwater, and the ascent of the GOP to a majority in both Houses of Congress. Or are we to believe they'd have rejected 20 Senate and 95 House seats if offered? Either the lifelong defenders of segregations stopped caring about white supremacy without telling anybody; or else the GOP was no attraction to them on account of the GOP was never a racist party. We should also expect to see a stampede of Northeastern Republicans the other way. If the GOP embraced racism, there'd be a jailbreak of pro-civil rights Republicans getting out, no? Yet we see only 1, John Lindsay, who switched to the Democrats. He cited his disgust with "the Southern strategy," but waited until 1972 to be disgusted with it. (More on the "Southern strategy" hoax in the "Platforms" chapter) * * * * * Bonus Section: On Groups Not Formally Attached to the Parties

Bonus: The Council of Conservative Citizens Some Republicans have been blasted because for speaking at the Council of Conservative Citizens (CCC), because SOME of said council's leaders had been, decades earlier, leaders in a segregationist group, the Citizen Councils of America. But why would Republicans appear at such a group? Because of it's leaders' distant past? Or because it has the word CONSERVATIVE in the name? And of course, in the pre-internet era, it's a stretch to suggest a politician know the ins-and-outs of every group with an innocuous sounding name. Nor does any of the above cancel out which party ran segregation when it actually existed. Trent Lott and Bob Barr did nothing more than give some speeches. Meanwhile, Democrat Dick Gephardt in the 1970s spoke to the forerunner, the Citizen Councils of America, that's right, in the 1970s, after the supposed "big switch." (Carl Cameron, "Gephardt Admits Mistake on Race Issues in '70s," FoxNews.com, January 11, 2004)

Bonus! The Klan Didn't Switch! The Klan never switched. All Klan members and leaders of the era either 1) stayed Democrat, 2) tried to insert themselves into existing fringe parties, or 3) tried creating their own fringe third parties. David Duke, who came much later, is the only one to ever try to call himself a Republican. Duke has been in 5 different parties, and was in the Klan 1980-1986: At that time, he was a Democrat. He has never been in the Klan coterminous with being a (self-declared, we don't want him, believe me!) Republican. Additionally, not only can I not find any other Klan Republicans, I think its fair to assume that if there was some stampede of Klansmen to the GOP, we'd be hearing about it constantly. The fact we hear nothing of the sort is a veritable bomshell in itself. Speaking of bombshells and bombs in general, there was a man named J.B. Stoner, a racist extraordinaire, involved with 1958 Bethel Baptist Church bombing, for which he served 3.5 years (originally sentenced to 10 years). Stoner was the appeals attorney for James Earl Ray (MLK killer, already convicted), and after all that ran for governor of Georgia in 1970, and in the Democrat Senate primary in Georgia in 1972. (Sam Nunn was the nominee, and spent his time NOT running from George Wallace's endorsement or that of Herman E. Talmadge.) Stoner also ran in 1980 for the Senate, still as a Democrat. Then there was Asa Carter's run in the 1970 Alabama Gubernatorial Democrat Primary. You'd think these guys would run as Republicans if the parties "switched." In passing, a sideshow point must be made about the 1920s Klan, and the marginal Republican involvement anywhere but Indiana before D.C Stephenson's scandal killed Klan influence in both parties. Thomas Dixon, who wrote The Klansman which was the basis for D.W. Griffith's film Birth of a Nation, said he hoped to make everyone a good Democrat thereby. Insofar as any 1920s Klansman wasn't a Democrat, the guy who caused the Klan revival would have per his own terms failed. Additionally, the 1920s Klan branched out into other issues than hating Blacks, such anti-Catholicism and anti-immigration sentiment, which would have appealed to the Republicans as immigrants voted Democrat. The second Klan is also less meaningful, in that the first one had the high body count. Plus, whoever heard of a Republican riot, or a Republican mob burning down black neighborhoods? Or Republicans lynching anyone? If Democrats had such stories, I'd think we'd be hearing them. The worst they can do is pretend Kyle Rittenhouse (assuming he's even guilty) portends a massive wave of armed violence if Democrats don't get to run everything again. Man bites dog stories are all they have, and they think if the public hears enough man bites dog stories, that they will believe men biting dogs is the general rule.

A Quick Note As we'll explore in the "Platforms" chapter, the other associated Alt-Right personalities and groups are not GOP or conservative. They don't accept our definition of conservative; rather, they are determined to redefine it to match their ideas. Additionally, there are some other groups like the who are more or less conservative, but are demonstrably not "Alt-Right," so there's two forms of this lie. The first is declaring the actual alt-right to be conservative. The second lie is declaring social conservative groups that are not alt-right to be alt-right, a deception made easier by most people not knowing what the alt-right actually believes and why. I deal with this at the end of the "Platforms" chapter. * * * Chapter 2. Continuity of Voting Patterns: The Voters Didn't Switch

There are accompanying maps, which I did not clutter the text with, but make this chapter more interesting. Many of these maps can be seen on Wiki and for the House of Representatives, entering "mappingcongress.com" takes you to a website run by the University of Richmond (web address starting with "dsl.richmond" that I can never remember, hence the prior instructions). Lots of maps, 1840-present, and you can look at individual districts, you can set it to show not just who won but strength of victory, all sorts of neat things. * * * * * The 1964 Anomaly Explained

The "Goldwatershed" Conspiracy Theory, A Subpart of the Magical Switching Parties Conspiracy Theory The MSPCT claims that Goldwater was a watershed, a "Goldwatershed" if you will. In this version of events, Barry Goldwater's campaign of racist dogwhistles, most of which involve being a proxy for hating Blacks, caused Republicans to break through in the South. Richard Milhaus Nixon imitated this in 1968, with greater success due to the appeals his being craftier, so as to prevent a backlash in the rest of the country. These appeals were part of his "Southern strategy" of swaying segregationists upset with Democrats' newfound moral reformation and support for civil rights, the story goes. Nixon then reprised his coded appeals about "bussing," "law and order," and "silent majority" in 1972 and turned Wallace's voters into Republicans, the implication being they were his in 1968 but for Wallace's entry into the contest. Racism's decline in public respectability meant future Republicans were subtler still, such as Reagan's "welfare queens" remarks or his opposition to affirmative action, and often opposition to communism is said to be an oblique opposition to equality itself. Why else would anyone oppose a movement that uses the word "equality" as its calling card, and doesn't he know capitalism is racist? (We'll get to who started that idea in this chapter too!) All of the above moved Southern whites, on the basis of racial animosity that, the story goes, remains as strong as ever albeit in sublimated form via proxy issues, to support a party of small government.

The 1964 Anomaly To make this cherrypicked, deceptively crafted narrative hold, the 1964 Anomaly is hyped, most other things are ignored, and most of what's mentioned is misconstrued (like the 1968 election) It is the solitary data point that meets the Magical Switching Parties Conspiracy Theory, and for this reason will by hyped, to the exclusion of every other data point, by the hoax's proponents. In 1964, the Republicans lost the Northeast badly, the Yankee sections of the Northeast the most badly, did best in the Southern states, did most strongly in the Deep Southern states, and won most strongly in the aforementioned "Deep South cultural area" that was the historical heartland of the Democratic Party. This is true not only for Goldwater's campaign, but also with regard to House elections. The explanation for this anomaly? That it IS an anomaly. There is ZERO other elections in the entire history of this nation where one party triumphs the most strongly in its the other party's strongest areas, while losing most intensely its own strongest areas. Every other election features a continuum, where the winning party wins most strongly in its own base areas, dominates the swing areas, and in landslide years, encroaches into areas mildly favorable to the other party in typical years (ex, GOP in 1928 in some Southern states). There are no other "base state swaps" in US history, and that is true not only of any previous Republican vs Democrat contests, but also of every subsequent one, and it is also true of Democrat vs Whig contests, and even of Federalist vs Democratic-Republican contests. Go ahead, check out the maps. Even within the anomaly, the finer details reveal more that the narrative-pushers don't tell. If Goldwater Civil 1964 Rights Act vote explains so much, why didn't it hurt anyone else who voted against it, or even state and local candidates supporting segregation, even in states LBJ won? For example, in the governor's race in Arkansas, 60% of Black voters went for Republican Winthrop Rockefeller. (Ripon 33) By implication, that means 40% of the Arkansas black vote went to Democrat segregationist Orval Faubus. But blacks voted Democrat because civil rights! say the narrative-pushers! In North Carolina, "Moderate Robert Gavin lost the governor's race to a segregationist [Dan K. Moore] who nevertheless received 97% of the Negro votes." (Ripon 59) No statewide Democrat was toppled in the South, not even where challenged by Republicans; the GOP made no statewide office gains in Goldwater states and limited, and not very long lasting gains at the sub-statewide level. For example, the Congressional Deep South gains in 1964 are reversed in 1966, with the Mississipi district lost, Georgia's situation reverting to that before 1964, and several Alabama gains retaken by Democrats. And for the next 20-30 years, the GOP generally held the Northeast and the Democrats generally held the South at most levels of government (whether its more like 20 year or 30 years depends on specific location).

The Deep South Must Have Loved Civil Rights! A "Unity Conference" in Hershey, Pennyslvania, August 12, 1964, invited Eisenhower, Nixon, Goldwater, and many other GOP bigwigs. Goldwater clarified: "A Goldwater-Miller administration pledges, in the literal wording of the President's Oath of Office "faithful execution" of the 1964 Civil Rights laws, and all other Civil rights laws. This solemn pledge for full implementation is included in our 1964 Platform. For myself, I reject any suggestion that I would do otherwise based on my individual vote as a Senator when the 1964 Act was approved by the Senate. Further I say to you--as I have said in every corner of the land throughout the campaign--that I will use the great moral influence of the Presidency to promote prompt and peaceful observance of civil rights law." (Kessel 188) So unless the plan was get segregationist votes by endorsing civil rights, there must be something more to the story. Then there's the trouble of voting data. "Civil Rights, a major question of national policy in 1964, does not appear to have been as influential as welfare issues with respect to voting. There is some possibiltiy that the data on the relationship between one's general attitude on segregation and vote, given in Table XV, understate the effect of civil rights on the election. Three other specific civil rights questions were scaled with an intensity component (as the general question was not), and two of them have a much stronger realationship to voting choice. The gamma ran order correlations were: job integration .453, school integration .372, and residential integration.173. However, none of these relationships were as strong as those between welfare attitudes and vote, and President Johnson received a majority of both integrationists and segregationist support on all of these issues." (Kessel 289) On page 290, Kessel puts out the following data table.

Table XV, Relation Between Specific Issues and Vote: "Are you in favor of desegregation, strict segregation, or something in between?" Voting for Johnson Goldwater N Desegregation 75.3% 24.7% 360 Something in between 64.6% 35.4% 497 Strict Segregation 62.8% 37.2% 223 Gamma=.192

What it all means is that while Goldwater ran better with segregationists than non-segregationists, the majority of segregationists voted for LBJ. It appears many segregationists liked big government and fled Goldwater because of his opposition to poverty programs, the TVA, aid to education, Social Security, Rural Electrification Administration, farm price supports, and so on. * * * Not a Gold-watershed: 1964 Started Nothing Except Democrats' Tradition of Racebaiting and Nazi-Accusing The narrative pushers focus on Goldwater, because this allows them to pretend events in 1964 were pivotal, to portray GOP growth as the result of Southern white backlash against Civil Rights. But 1964 is no watershed, and it signifies nothing except the start of the Democrats' long-running tradition of race-hustling and baseless accusations every GOP candidate is literally Hitler. This story differs from a mere distortion of truth, because what's said by MSPCT advocates shows they have no idea what happened, no idea what it is they're even trying to distort. The inconvenient raw facts in question are elaborated upon in great detail in two of Sean Trende's realclearpolitics.com articles, "Misunderstanding the Southern Realignment" from September 9, 2010, and "Southern Whites' Shift to the GOP Predates the 60s," of April 20, 2013. The Goldwater Hypers are Eisenhower Deniers. These Eisenhower Deniers ignore the 1952 election, where Ike won Virginia, Florida, Tennessee, and Texas, and took 48% of all Southern votes. Ike repeated the feat in 1956, added Louisiana, and attained a plurality in the South of 49.8% of the vote (independent elector shenanigans at work). He nearly won South Carolina the first time, and nearly won North Carolina both times, and in all Southern states Ike dramatically gained over all previous GOP. In 1960, Nixon duplicated Ike's feat in Virginia, Florida, and Tennessee, and nearly won Texas, but for the massive voter fraud. Tricky Dick amassed 46.1% of the Southern vote, despite Southerner LBJ's presence on JFK's ticket, and in the wake of Nixon's support for civil rights bill in the Senate, Nixon attacking JFK's civil rights record, and after Little Rock. The unavoidable fact is Republicans were gaining in the South, before Goldwater, while pushing a pro-civil rights agenda, and the MSPCT narrative can't survive this fact. All this comes on top of previous, steady if less dramatic gains the GOP had been making since 1936, at which time Democrats didn't even pretend to care about civil rights. By 1940, the GOP won 25% of the Southern Presidential vote. Something else explains the GOP gains, both before and after 1964, and that is covered later in this chapter. A point to ponder now is that MSPCT advocates don't consider alternative explanations to race, of which there were many. Race dominated headlines, but was hardly the only thing happening. As for Goldwater, his 1964 mark of 49.0% of the Southern vote fell short of Ike's 1956 tally of 49.8%, making it a step backwards, not a watershed. In Congress, the GOP gained a sampling of Southern districts in the 1950s, mostly urban districts in Texas, Virginia, North Carolina and Virginia, mirroring Ike's strongest areas. Inspired by this, the GOP created Operation Dixie to build on this success. And across the region, the GOP got 21% of the Southern vote in 1960, 33% in 1962, and backwards to 32% in 1964, and up to 34% in 1966. It's mighty strange to be going backwards in the South during the supposed "breakthrough" year of 1964, to see the supposed "backlash" costing the GOP 1% back while supporting civil rights gains 12%. Even allowing for the business of district drawing, it is clear that Goldwater's outing cost the Grand Old Party in the South in terms of overall House seats. (RHODES 51)

The Hard Data, The Easy Conclusion States data tables only underscore the point, showing rising Southern Republicanism before anything that could be plausibly attributed to backlash over civil rights, before LBJ, before JFK, before Ike, even before Truman. Nearly every Southern states had a brief uptick 1932-1936 in Democrat Presidential vote share the Republicans do precious little but gain right through 1960. If the data were plotted on a line graph and future trends as of the late 40s-early 50s assumed, one would have concluded the tipping point would be reached in the 1960s or 1970s. Eisenhower sped up the process, but the process, which occured for reasons we'll explore later in this chapter, would have eventually conquered the South for the Party of Lincoln, Ike or not. I originally had planned to use Charts 63 (Deep South POTUS vote) and Chart 74 (Outer South POTUS vote) from Kevin Phillips' Emerging Republican Majority, but found it more useful to just use the Republican vote share. The reason is for some years, some states had Dixiecrats or independent elector shenanigans take large swathes of the vote. How should I count the Dixiecrats? The Dixiecrats after all did return to the Democrats in 1952. On the other hand, "Republican" always meant "Republican," so it seemed a more sensible measure to use, considering the focus is the growth of the GOP in the first place. Here are the data tables:

Republican Outer South Presidential Voting During the New Deal Era 1932-1968 State 1932 1936 1940 1944 1948* 1952 1956 1960 1964 1968** Virginia 29.39 29.39 31.55 37.39 41.04 56.32 55.37 52.4 46.2 43.4 North Carolina 29.3 26.6 25.97 33.3 32.7 46.1 49.3 47.9 43.9 39.5 Tennessee 32.5 30.8 32.4 39.2 36.9 49.99 49.2 52.9 44.5 37.9 Arkansas 12.53 17.86 21.02 29.8 21 43.8 45.8 43.1 43.4 31 Florida 24.98 23.90 25.98 29.68 33.63 54.99 57.27 51.51 48.85 40.53 Texas 11.35 12.3 18.9 16.6 24.3 53.1 55.3 48.52 36.5 39.9

Republican Deep South Presidential Voting During the New Deal Era 1932-1968 State 1952 1936 1940 1944 1948* 1952 1956 1960 1964 1968** Louisiana 7 11.2 14.1 19.39 17.5 47.1 53.3 28.6-X 56.8 23.47 Mississippi 3.6 2.8 4.2 6.4 2.62 39.56 24.46-X 24.67-X 87.1 13.52 Alabama 14.1 12.82 14.34 18.2 19.04 35 39.39 42.18 69.5 14 Georgia 7.77 12.6 14.83 18.25 18.31 30.3 32.7 37.4 54.12 30.4 South Carolina 1.89 1.43 4.36 4.46 3.78 49.3 25.2-X 48.8 58.9 38.1

*Dixiecrats Thurmond 1948 run. **Wallace 1968 run, 3-way contest. X Unpledged elector shenanigans; in 1956, Adlai Stevenson won 58.22% in Mississippi and 45.4% in South Carolina; in 1960, JFK in won 50.4% in Louisiana and 36.34% in Mississippi

Analyzing these data points some more, the growth is steady, sometimes slow, but always real. Eisenhower's effect was seismic, in some states the Republican vote share jumped 20% or more. Tennessee, Virginia, Texas, and Florida became GOP states in the 1950s, and North Carolina, Louisiana and South Carolina became swing states in the 1950s. Even Mississipi and Alabama saw GOP support in the 35-40% range. Long story short, civil rights can't have cost Democrats the South because they were already losing the South. * * * Operation Dixie Goldwater didn't initiate attempts to campaign in the South. Operation Dixie predated him. Witnessing Ike's success and the accompanying success of some congressmen in Outer South urban areas that supported Ike, the GOP launched Operation Dixie in the late 1950s. (Kessel 39), and GOP success was seen as indication South was becoming less sectional. I. Lee Potter tried to recuit ambitious young Southern men into GOP ranks, attempting to create a bench of worthwhile candidates for sub-presidential runs. (Kessel 39-40, CONSCIENCE MAJORITY 52-53)

No, It Wasn't an Appeal to Racism. As for "Operation Dixie" and the self-described "Southern Strategy," several things must be observed. First, to campaign in a region where racists exist is not the same as campaigning for their votes specificially. Many non-racists voted for Hoover, then twice for Eisenhower, and the objective of expanding their numbers motivated GOP efforts. The idea was to achieve the same numbers for state offices and congressional and senate races that were seen at the Presidential level. Second, post-World War 2, racism itself entered a decline everywhere, including the South. Stepping up campaigns amidst declining racism was a smart move. Racism held the Democrats together (for more see "how well did Al Smith do in Southern Black Belt counties vs Southern White majority counties), and as racism declined, so did the Democrat vote share in Southern states, as they bled Presidential support at a rate of 6-10% every election. In such an environment, it appeared an opportunity for expansion was developing. Thirdly, Goldwater was a founding member of the Arizona NAACP, he desegregated the Phoenix schools, desegregated the Arizona National Guard, and voted for earlier civil rights bills. To accuse him of being a racist for his 1964 vote FAILS TO EXPLAIN why he voted FOR the other bills. His own explanation that he thought it violated Federalism and private enterprise itself gains great credence by the way he lived and voted the rest of his life.

No, Their Increasing Gains Were Not Evidence of Racism One wiseguy writing an article on the internet (Jamie Boulle), referenced and refuted by Sean Trende, advanced the assertion that a spike in 1960s GOP Southern Congressional vote share indicated racism converted White Southerners to vote Republican. What he's omitted is that the reason the GOP started winning a higher vote share in the 1960s is...that's when they started running candidates! Many Southern offices had no Republican challenger as often as not before Operation Dixie. Candidate provison spiked 1940-1960, bouncing between 20-40% of House Seats (+20% in 20 years.). 1960-1964 saw the GOP's seats contested rise from 40 to 65%, with 1960-1970 more generally witnessing a rise from contesting 40% of seats to contesting 60% (+20% in 10 years). It continues in 1970-1980, rising from 60% contested to 80% of seats contested (+20% in 10 years), and approaching 100% of seats contested by the mid-1990s. (All this data derived from "Figure 5.1: Change in the Provision of Republican Candidates: The House of Representatives, 1940-2000, in Shafer & Johnston 137) * * * * Goldwater Lost Because Abandoned

Goldwater Didn't Typify His Party and Ultimately Lost Because Abandoned As much as the press likes using Goldwater to define his party, Goldwater didn't define his party now or then. His candidacy was the work of die-hard activists, much like those who engineered McGovern's nomination, and Goldwater's defeat owes not to him causing a backlash & surge among Democrats, but in his own party's base repudiating him. Slippage from 1960 was worst in rural Northeast, not the Northeast cities that had been Democrat-run for a generation by that point. His own worst drops were in the historical Yankee-settled areas of GOP strength: Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Upstate New York, Northern Ohio, etc. This decline also occured in the historical GOP Appalchian strongholds and the areas settled in the Ozarks by the same folks. The Republican voters didn't embrace Goldwater, and GOP downballots tended to win or lose to the degree they associated themselves with (or were accused of being associated with) Goldwater (Ripon 45), even in areas very bad for Goldwater, such as New England (Ripon 52-53) Pollster Louis Harris conducted a poll finding only 6 million of 27 million votes for Goldwater were hardcore Goldwater backers. Most voted for party loyalty reasons. Even many self described conservatives didn't like him. "Few Real Barry-men," a survey report by Louis Harris as reported in the Boston Globe, January 11, 1965, p. 7. Another survey in March 1965 found much the same, most of Goldwater's vote was merely the party vote. Louis H. Bean & Roscoe Drummond, "How Many Votes Does Goldwater Own?," Look, March 23, 1965, pp. 75-76 (Ripon 48-49)

Then Why Did We See The Map We Did? Asking why Goldwater lost is an easy, barely controversial matter. The press treated him unfairly, which he compounded by giving them lots of material to work with. Taking campaign stops in Knoxville, Appalachia, and St. Petersburg to attack the Tennessee Valley Authority, antipoverty programs, and Medicare played badly. But, MSPCT pushers say, explaining why he lost is one thing; why did he win the states he did? That's also an easy question, but a more than barely controversial matter. When someone is smeared as a racist, by the only news sources available, of course racists will vote for him, and of course non-racists will vote against him. As a result of hitting a home run with race hustling on their first try, the Democrats have been hooked, like a gambler with beginner's luck, thinking they can hit a home run every time; though results since have been mixed, the Democrat party would be dead in the water with out it, as their class warfare Huey Long rhetoric fades in effectiveness due to more upward mobility. More significant than 1964 is 1972, because in the latter the GOP swept the Deep South without losing the rest of the country. This materialized because race & segregation was not the issue it was in 1964 or even 1968. The only lasting significance of the 1964 Presidential Election is that it was the beginning of the Democrats calling every Republican since then a racist as a campaign tactic. The centrality of race-baiting to the modern Democrat party is hardly something you'd need to read between the lines to see. Just look at a list of everything they've called racist in the last ten years alone.

But if Goldwater's election is atypical, then what was typical, and why did the South really become Republican? This necessitates a dive into some "prehistory" and "ancient history," first to establish the Republican Party is not some mere continuation of any previous party, and second to establish what was typical, so as to assess what happened 1960-1990 * * * * * Prehistory: Before Republicans and Democrats As this section is just a backgrounder to matters 1950-1994, I will not dwell on many individual elections prior to that, extremely few of which are actually germane to the book's thesis, one way or the other. This is an incomplete history, but it will do. * * * The First Party System: The Federalists The first two parties were the Federalists and the Democratic-Republicans, which originated from the pro-Hamliton and anti-Hamilton (Jefferson's and Madison's) factions inside the Washington administration. The Federalists favored business and a strong national government, favored Britain over France, and from Alexander Hamilton derived the concept of "implied powers," favoring a loose, flexible reading of the Constitution. Federalists believed liberty trumped equality and distrusted pure democracy, preferring the . It sounds vaguely like the modern GOP, until we consider their willingness to, on occasion (the Adams presidency's Alien and Sedition Acts) suppress free speech, their general nonchalantness about having a national debt (indeed, some even argued it was a benefit), and their belief an educated elite should guide policy. It is an error to assume that today's political parties are a 1:1 equivalency to any past one; the issues & philosophical divisions creating past parties don't necessarily parallel contemporary issues (some so, some don't). Federalists performed strongest in cities, enjoying support from wealthy merchants and landowners most everywhere, and from all classes in the Northeast. After 1800, they lacked competitiveness outside New England, and a pro-Britain stance, followed by a War of 1812, injured them badly. The unpopular Adams administration cost them their majorities in both Houses in 1800, which they never regained or came close to regaining. The party was for all practical purposes kaput by 1816, though a cadre of judges led by John Marshall ensured the party's influence on the Supreme Court endured longer than the party did. Many surviving Federalists joined the Whigs. A few like James Buchanan and Roger Taney became Democrats. Religiously, they also tended to be Congregationialists.

The First Party System: The Democratic-Republicans Historians term the Federalists' rival the "Democratic Republicans" to distinguish them from the modern Republican Party. However, in their own day, French Revolutionary terror gave the word "democrat" a negative connotation, they termed themselves "Republicans." (Robert A Dahl, "James Madison: Republican or Democrat?" Perspectives on Politics 3#3: 439-448;;Malone, Dumas. Jefferson 3:162) This party, sometimes also called "Jeffersonian Republicans," favored agrarianism, strictly limited national government kept in check by an inflexible reading of the Constitution, and favored egalitarian sentiment generally. Their influence led to removal of property requirements for voting in all but three states by 1824. This party that Jefferson built disdained not merely centralized government, but the notion of a national bank, military buildup, and the Alien & Sedition Acts. Suspicious of Great Britain, they tolerated French Revolution radicialism for far longer than was necessary or proper. Despite internal divisions on slavery, their President Jefferson did sign the 1808 bill abolishing the slave trade. The egalitarian rhetoric and feeling anticipates the later Democrats of today, but the strict Constitutionalism precludes them from being welcome in today's organization. Again, past parties aren't necessarily 1:1 equivalents. Their other legacy is more interesting: The Democratic-Republicans basically invented Get Out The Vote operations, from the constructing of lists of who could vote and how they stood, to the distribution of party newspapers to sway the rest As for who they successfully swayed, Democratic-Republicans were mostly farmers, their greatest strength was in the South and towards the frontiers. But they also attracted many middle-class Northerners, whether artisans, farmers, or lower-level merchants eager to topple local elites. More specifically in Pennsylvania, D-Rs were weakest around Philadelphia strongest in Scot-Irish settlements in the West.

The 1824 Election The 1824 Election was a genuinely outrageous election in which no candidate got the sufficient number of electoral votes to become President, thus throwing it to the House of Representatives to decide. So the second place guy (John Quincy Adams) made a deal with the third place guy (Henry Clay) to make that third place guy his Secretary of State if the third place guy will direct his followers to provide the necessary votes to surpass the first place guy (Andrew Jackson) to make the second place guy President. Jackson's faction railed against the "corrupt bargain," and that's the backdrop of the aforementioned meetings of Martin Van Buren with Thomas Ritchie to form a party to back Jackson in the next election, dirty deal to protect slavery and all.

The Second Party System: The Democrats The Jacksonian Democrats got their start railing against the "corrupt bargain," and put Andrew Jackson in the White House twice. Democrats from the start saw themselves as an enemy of the rich, of the market revolution and the resulting capitalism, and saw taking Indian land as a way to reduce economic pressure on the average farmer and planter (Jackson even enriched himself with various schemes to do just that.) Jacksonians were egalitarian among all white males, and saw the incoming free market economy as a threat to equality, as well as to democracy itself. This disdain of capitalism precludes any claim that Democrats then were "conservatives" in any sense that would be recognizable today. They saw themselves as different from other self-proclaimed reform movements. seemed elite puritanism (the Democrat Tammany machine depended on the Irish immigrant vote), Sabbatarians and temperance types were seen as self-righteous. The Democrat base was in the South, the Southern-settled sections of the Midwest (the northern edge of which roughly corresponds with modern I-40), and among immigrants in Northern cities like New York. Insofar as they had Northern rural backers, they tended to be non-Anglo-Saxons, or at least non-Yankees. While most slaveholders were Whigs, the Democrats were the only party to believe in the "positive good" defense of slavery (more on that later), and hence they were more motivated to expand westward to not only acquire more land for their poor white backers, but also to expand slavery with it, and the number of slaveholders along with that. They viewed anti-slavery activism as a plan by wealthy interests to distract the white downtrodden from overthrowing their elite New England masters. Some say they were for limited government and laissez faire, but this is a misnomor. For starters, the real action was at the state level, which the Democrats had no problem with intervention at. But also, since when is a spoils system, complete with patronage, complete with Tammany Hall machines in the North, complete with Jackson's "Tammany of the South" (the land-theft-for-votes scheme described in Steven Inskeep's Jacksonland) "small government" or "laissez faire?" And Jackson's objection to the Bank of the United States seems to be more that Jackson didn't control it; Democrats made a series of state banks instead, banks Jackson's opponents called his "pets." (Holt 24) Said state banks made loans to members of the dominant party, or state government guarantees of bond sales of banks, their banks packed with those friendly to the dominant party. (Larry Schweikart, Banking in the American South from the Age of Jackson to Reconstruction (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1987) (SCHWEIKART 232) When such politically-influenced banks, inevitably failed, some state level Democrat (Arkansas, Wisconsin, Texas) banned issuing state charters for banks. Banks existed, but not with state government's blessing. They had no consistent stand on Federal power, from Jackson's stance on the of 1832 and the enthusiasm for the Federal Fugitive Slave Act, then the banner of state rights in time for Lincoln's victory, then the support of federal power under Wilson and FDR and since. But the anti capitalism is constant, as is the desire to control other. The level of government fluctated, the philosophy of government did not, and therefore, the voters didn't fluctuate either. Those most opposed to capitalism and those most in favor of controlling others were Democrat voters, then, and I contend, now. As for where these voters were geographically located in the Second Party System, and who they were: Democrats nationwide were strong among subsistence farmers, particularly those in remote, underdeveloped areas, and along the frontier. They were strong among immigrants, Catholics and even some disaffected Protestants resenting Whig moral imperialism, which manifested largely in the form of liquor restrictions. (Holt 82-84) They were rallied by class warfare rhetoric which alarmed others to backing Whigs (Holt 83), and passed a variety of antibanking and anticorporate laws 1838-1839, which Whigs used as campaign fodder in 1840. (Holt 84) Democrat voters, more blue collar and lower class, faced possible economic competition from free Black labor that typical Whigs did not, hence racism was a motivating factor to Democrats in a way it was not to Whigs. "Because the Whig voters, for class reasons, did not face competition from black labor in the way that the Democratic voters did, they did not have to hate them with the same intensity, and since for class reasons the status of the Whig voters in the white community was already assured, they did not have to use racism to support the claim that all white people are equal to each other as the Democrats did, a position called "herrenvolk democracy" by George Frederickson (1979)" (John Burt, Lincoln's Tragic Pragmatism: Lincoln, Douglas, and Moral Conflict. Cambridge & London: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2013. NOTE: What I saw was in e-book form, and incredible as it sounds, lacked page numbers; however, any enterprising individual with the internet can see for themselves the quotation is real.) Democrats in the South were in some states the poor, such as in Northwest Georgia, Northern Alabama, the Mississippi Pineywoods, Eastern Kentucky, and Southwestern Virginia (Holt 116). Poor Democrat farmers favored cheap land and the Westward expansion that could bring it (and the Manifest Destiny that could justify it), and many aspired to be slaveholders as well (Holt 200) As for existing slaveholders, while most of them nationally (and in the Deep South) were at the time Whig, the majority of planters in the states of South Carolina and North Carolina, and in the Commonwealth of Virginia were Democrats (Holt 117), as were those in Northern regions of Kentucky near the Ohio River, and those in Louisiana upriver of New Orleans. (Holt 117-118) Democrats also commanded the votes of the Virginians who had moved West on the Ohio River, who had settled much of non-Appalachian Kentucky and the Southern half or so of the states of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. (Holt 117-118) In the North, Democrats drew support for reasons cultural and philosophic as well as economic. As Whig voters included most affluent people and those who expected to be made richer, Democrats had voters in market-oriented areas who thought themselves victimized (Holt 83) They also held the votes of those annoyed by the Whigs moral and cultural imperialism, even if they were affluent, such as the prosperous Dutch and Germans of Pennsylvania and New York (Holt 83). Immigrants in general voted Democrat, so long as they were anyone or anything but British Isles Protestant: Scots, Scots-Irish Protestants, English, or Welsh. The historically-grounded anti-Catholicism of these drove them in a Whiggish direction. (Holt 117-118) Religiously, Catholics were all guaranteed Democrats, as were many Protestant sects, especially if not Congregationalist. (Holt 117-118) Said immigrants, especially the Catholics, tended to be big drinkers and resented Whiggish liquor restrictions, which were often enacted just to spite them. And spite them they did, spiking Democrat turnout at numerous inconvenient moments. (Holt 82) By the late 1840s, there was a faction of Northern Democrats called "Barnburners" who opposed slavery, as opposed to "Hunkers" who had no such objection. Many Barnburners subsequently became Republicans. A confederation of them joined with the Liberty Party men and "Conscience" Whigs from New England and the Midwest to form a "Free Soil Party." In surprising development, they nominated Martin Van Buren, who in an equally surprising development had become an abolitionist. Their slogan was "Free Soil, Free Speech, Free Labor, and Free Men." (Holt 338-339) After 1848, most of these Free Soil backers eventually became Republicans, and indeed a county map of where the Free Soil party did best in 1848 and 1852 matches where the GOP did best in 1856 and 1860 * * * The Second Party System: The Whigs

How Did Whigs Originate and Who Led Them? The Whigs were founded 1833 and dissolved 1856, emerged in opposition to Andrew Jackson, formed from the former National Republican Party and the anti-Masonic Party, along with some Democrats unhappy with Jackson. The "Whig" name derives from the English anti-monarchist Whigs, denoting their American imitators' irritation with "King" Andrew Jackson. The National Republican Party had much of the same platform, it had formed around Adams and was simply called the "Adams party" (Holt 7-8) for a time after 1824. Much of its platform, namely the love of the "American System" program of tariffs, infrastructure subsidies, and a national bank, subsequently became the Whig platform. If the county map of the 1828 Presidential election is any indication, it shared many of the same supporters as well. It held some common personnel with the defunct Federalists, but it was not truly a successor. The plan for the 1836 election was to have different candidates in different regions to deny Van Buren the electoral votes needed thus throwing the election to the US House. The other major section of the party was the former anti-Masonic party, formed after the 1826 murder of William Morgan, who was, it is said, about to publish a tell-all about the Freemasons. The Anti-Masonic Party apparently invented nominating conventions and party newspapers. (Arthur Goldwag, The New Hate: A History of Fear and Loathing on the Populist Right (2012) p. 172) As for major figures in the party, the Big Whigs were Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, William Henry Harrison, Zachary Taylor.

What Did Whigs Support and Oppose? Whigs were interventionists for the "American System," tariffs, subsidies for infrastructure, and a national bank. Whigs wanted to create a modern, meritocratic society, and prized the rule of law over popular wills and whims of the moment. Whigs regularly took pro-corporation/pro-banking/pro-paper money stances. Whigs also backed temeprance, Sunday blue laws, and state-run schools, and Democrats portrayed them as fanatics for the same. (HOLT 68) Whigs argued "private capital was too small and fragmented to finance economic development," and said the national government should supply it, particularly in financing of transportation measures to faciliate more commerce. Other favored policies included tariffs to make US manufactures attractive to investors, and limited liability for corporations under state laws to help business expansion. The government's role was to aid in facilitating linkages in an otherwise localzed, atomized, and fragmented economy. (HOLT 69) Some Whigs backed prohibition, which achieved little but inflaming immigrant Democrat voters into larger turnouts. (HOLT 82-84) Whigs tried to avoid the slavery issue whenever possible. Northern Whigs tended to be more anti-slavery than Northern Democrats, while Southern Whigs were, at least in the 1830s, more pro-slavery than Southern Democrats. (Holt p44) Later, by late 1840s, Southern Democrats had become more pro slavery, both for expansion and secession purposes (Holt 463-464) Democrats were more purely majoritarian, Whigs more rule-of-law focused, and interested in societal stability and against majority tyranny. (Frank Towers," Mobtown's Impact on the Study of Urban Politics in the Early Republic." Maryland Historical Magazine 107 (Winter 2012) pp. 469-475, p.472, citing Robert E. Shalhope, The Baltimore Bank Riot: Political Upheaval in Antebellum Maryland (2009) p.147) Whigs were a sort of "modernizing conservatives," embracing the market revolution while attempting to hold other things. (Daniel Walker Howe. The Political Culture of the American Whigs, University of Chicago Press (1979), pp. 183, 210) Both Democrats and Whigs were "political institutions of a kind that had never existed before" because of their mass membership and inter-election continuity. (A. James Reichley. The Life of the Parties: A History of American Political Parties. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers (2000), pp. 84-85) The Whigs' beliefs differed from Republicans, thus being called conservative is "somewhat [counterintuitive] for those who associate a small role for government rather than a pro-business orientation with conservatism" (John H. Aldrich and John D. Griffin. Why Parties Matter: Political Competition and Democracy in the American South. University of Chicago Press. (2018), p. 60) "At the heart of Democratic ideology was a militant egalitarianism which contrasted strongly with the Whigs' support for equality of opportunity to produce a meritocratic society."(Gregory L. Bowen. "Antebellum Parties and Party Systems," Australasian Journal of American Studies (1988) 7 #2, p. 34) During Civil War, many of the anti-administration "proto-party" in CSA congress opposed to Jefferson Davis were former Whigs. Postwar, ex-Whigs in the South (Virginia esp) called themselves "conservatives" to avoid identification with Democrat party. (Jack P. Maddex Jr. (2018) The Virginia Conservatives, 1867-1879: A Study in Reconstruction Politics, University of North Carolina Press, p.13) Some later joined the Democrats, but were the more reasonable ones Hayes was told would run things when he made a deal in 1876, as opposed to the rabid post-1890 ones who created Jim Crow. Overall, Whigs thought of themselves as Madisonian in lineage. Whigs valued the rule of law above all and feared the tyranny of the majority, while championing government promotion of growth, and the "expansion of banking credit and currency, the granting of corporate privilege, tariff protection, and internal improvements because they sincerly believed that such diversification enhanced ' by expanding their opportunities for upward mobility." Whigs believed Democrats stood for "executive suppression of the legislative will; the negative, do-nothing state; war mongering expansionism; corruption; subservience to the demands of their Catholic immigrants and rum-swilling constituents, and by the mid-1840s, Union-threatening and liberty-crushing Slave Power aggression." (HOLT 951-953) The Whigs rise and fall resulted from banking on opposition to Democrats while having internal divisions. Whigs did best when issues were clearest, which internal inconsistency confounded. (HOLT 953-955) Whigs arose for one set of issues, and fell when another set rose.

Who Supported Whigs and Why? "Whigs "attracted those who wanted to expand the market sector because they had already enjoyed its benefits or hoped to do so future." (Holt 115) Businessmen, entrepreneuers, professionals and planters backed Whigs, plus those most connected to commerce, from cash crop farmers, miners, manufacturers, artisans, merchants, tradesmen, and so forth. Those that weren't on board at the beginning were driven there by Democrat class warfare rhetoric, and drawn by Whiggish ideas of expanding banking credit and government subsidies for infrastructure, aka "internal improvements." (HOLT 83) Reformers, Protestants, and the emerging middle class in general gave Whigs their support. (Holt 44) Whig voters didn't face much economic competition from Blacks as poorer, blue collar Democrat voters did. Some were pro-slavery, other anti-slavery, but the general position was indifference rather than seething hatred. Political racism was invented and stoked by Democrats. There was also a certain temperment behind Whiggery. Whigs were hyper-individualists, to the extent of self-defeating anti-partyism as first, and accompanied by a suspicious of all things collectivist, the Catholic Church, and Van Buren's machines. As said self-dealing machines depended on Catholic immigrants block voting on no discernable principle for pure majoritarian goals, Whigs saw all that they hated rolled into one. They viewed private associations like Bible societies, temperance and anti-slavery organizations as just as valid for their purposes, thus they initially didn't see anti-partyism as a problem. (HOLT 30-32) Intitially organized with newspapers and state caucuses making nominations, and the "3 nominees strategy" of 1836 was as much about state legislature wins as beating Van Buren. (Holt 39-40)

Where Was This Support Located Geographically Whigs did well in major trading centers, among planters in the black belts in Arkansas, Mississipi Delta, sugar growing Louisiana, South and Central Alabama, Central Georgia, Kentucky in general, the Northeast outside NYC in general, places settled by Northeasterners in general. (HOLT 116-118) They did best of all among the wealthy: Men worth $100K or more in NYC were 85% Whig, a figure that rose to 89% in Boston. In newer but developing Pittsburgh, the threshold was $25K or more, but 75% of those were Whig, with affiliation being as much a status symbol as a philosophical statement. (Holt 116) But at the same time, supporters were more than just the wealthy, they included those who expected to become wealthy in the new market economy (Holt 115), and those who while poor wanted economic development and credit and infrastructure sent their way, such as the Appalachian voters in Tennessee and North Carolina supporting the Whigs. The planters in South Carolina, North Carolina, and Virginia were Democrats, and opposed the internal improvements, not wishing to pay for them. (HOLT 117) In Kentucky, planters in central Kentucky were Whigs, but so were the poor on the Ohio River. (Holt 117-118) Native born, especially Anglo-Saxons, and Protestants, particularly Congregationalists, backed Whigs, and some had anti-Catholic sentiment, though different Protestants as soon voted against each other absent Catholics. Sometimes pro-Temperance Whigs drove non Anglo-Saxon Protestants to the Democrats, who portrayed Whigs as busybodies. (HOLT 116-119) As for state level control, as a general overview of state legislature, governor, Senate and House control, 1830-1860, Democrats dominated the South. Louisiana featured a strong Whig showing and often control across many offices, N.Carolina very good for Whigs throughout, Virginia has a burst of Whig control across the board in the early 1840s. Tennessee and Kentucky were Whig strongholds at all levels throughout, or barely in the minority if so. Generally, Whigs here and there but the state houses in Democrat hands, sometimes barely, sometimes greatly. (Based off a casual looking over of Wiki tables for "Party strength in" insert your favorite ex-Confederate state here)

The Second Party Sytem: Elections Briefly Summarized The 1828 and 1832 elections featured a Whig predecessor called the National Republican Party (no relation to the 1854-onwards GOP), with largely the same platform as the Whigs, and if county maps suggest anything, largely the same voters. Jackson won easily both times, but his imperiousness drew backlash, as the Whigs formed from the National Republican Party combined with other minor parties "These data support Horace Greeley's assertion in 1838 that the Whigs formed as an amalgam of former National Republicans dedicated to the American System, states' rights Southerners and Nullifiers, the bulk of anti-Masons, dissident Democrats angered by Jacksons "high-handed conduct," and "numbers who had not before taken any part in politics; but who were awakened from their apathy by the palpable usurpations of the executive." (Holt 46) The 1836 election saw the Whigs run three different, regionally popular candidates with the intent to throw it to the House of Representatives. As insane as that sounds, it almost worked; only Van Buren's narrow win in Pennsylvania handed him the election outright. The Whigs knew beating Van Buren was a tall order, but figured they'd get good counterplay by winning big in the state legislatures. That sounds like strange logic to modern ears, but in this pre-New Deal world it was a gambit worth playing, as the Presidency's powers to overrule local officials were then much more limited. The 1840 election saw the Whigs surge, foreshadowed by a strong showing in state elections 1837-1839 (Holt 76), to win the Presidency, as Van Buren's management of the economic downturn following the 1837 Panic left much to be desired. The Whigs faded in the 1844 election. Their VP candidate Theodore Frulingheysen had some anti-Catholic buddies the Democrats stirred up Irish voters in reaction to; the Democrats also engaged in rampant voter fraud. (Holt 188-189) As Holt (198-199) recounts, Whigs charged, probably truthfully, that Democrats "illegally naturalized [recent] immigrants and marched them to the polls, openly bought votes or paid the taxes of those who could not meet taxpaying requirements to vote, employed double and triple voting, and stuffed ballot boxes to steal the election from the Whigs in Louisiana, Georgia, New York, Pennylvania and elsewhere" and "Parishes giving more voters than, or as many as there are white inhabitants of all sexes and ages in them. Steamboats chartered to convey voters in the same day at different Polls, and every other species of fraud that could be imagined." (Charles Oliver to Henry Clay, November 29 [I think. Might be 24], 1844, MSS (Lilly Library, Indiana University) In truth, fraud or not, the Whigs were in no danger of winning the election of 1844. The old voters to each party were loyal, but Democrats far outpaced Whigs in adding new voters, especially in the South, where the Whigs had been slipping in off year elections in 1841, 1842, and 1843. New Democrat voters were outpacing new Whigs to a lesser degree in the Northern states as well (Holt 199) 1848 saw the Whigs last hurrah, courtesy of Van Buren running as a third party, a Free Soil candidate. He only got appreciable votes in the Northeast, most significantly, in New York, thereby allowing the Whigs to carry its 36 electoral votes, and thus the election. Many at the time suspected Van Buren was doing this purely as revenge for the party he founded denying him the Democratic nomination (Holt 342). In fairness, it must be mentioned that Van Buren really did become an abolitionist in later life and indeed wrote a pamphlet advocating the same, suggesting his run had more than cynicism behind it, even if his contemporaries found it difficult to believe. But ominously for the Whigs, the falling turnout resulted from 1848 being fought practically without issue or enthusiasm. Whigs benefitted, but it was a bad long-term sign for a party dependent on sharply defined differences for success. (Holt 372) In 1852, a huge immigrant vote loomed. 1846 amd 1847 arrivals met the 5 year naturalization requirement, plus Democrats had used fraudulent naturalization to boost their totals (Holt 691) As expected, 1852 saw a return to reality: the Whig Party had been outplayed, and without a third candidate to split the vote, they weren't capable of winning. Adding insult to injury, the country was becoming badly divided over slavery and the Whigs still declined to pick a side. Those favoring abolition soon had a new party that would. As one wag later noted, "The Whig Party died of too much respectability and not enough people." (Edward Stafford, in the Jackson Pilot, July 30, 1870, cited in Holt 951) * * * * * Republicans and Democrats: The Combatants of Today

Who Are Republicans? Though they followed the Whigs, but hardly constituted a 1:1 replacement for them. The philosophy was different, and their areas of support differed too. Additionally, if there were no serious differences, why did the Whigs go away and get replaced by Republicans in the first place? So who are the Republicans? Essentially Yankees plus Appalachians, and initially, Blacks. Broadly speaking: "The Republican Party has always been formed around a core of people who are considered, by themselves and others, to be typical Americans, although they are never by themselves a majority: northern Protestants in the nineteenth century, married white people in the twenty first. The Democratic Party has always been a combination, a coalition, of people who are not thought of, by themselves or others, as typical Americans, but who together often form a majority: Southern slaveholders and big-city Catholics in the nineteenth century, churchgoing and urban blacks and affluent urban and suburban liberals in the twenty-first." (Michael Barone, in How America's Political Parties Change (and How They Don't).) Republicans have a solid 45-ish percent, but that last 5-6% is a struggle. Democrats always have a majority, on paper, but struggle to keep factions with contradictory demands on board and turned out in sufficient numbers. The GOP when victorious included a handful of outsiders, black freedmen in the 1870s, Mormons in Progressive era, Cuban refugees in the 1980s. As with the Democrats, the Republicans' philosophy has been more or less consistent: "He [Barone] notes, as one example of adaptation, that the Republicans were the national-oriented party of a more active federal government from the 1860s into the 20th century but have shifted to the party we know today, a supporter of states' rights and an opponent of federal overreach. But there is more ideological continuity than change in Republican history; what looks like a shift is more a reflection of the Democrats' veering wildly from the Jacksonian extreme of and strict limitation of federal power to the modern Wilsonian administrative and judicial Leviathan. Few even among today's most conservative Republicans actually oppose many of the federal powers championed and exercised by the party of Lincoln and Grant. The party's Lockean core ideology, built around economic self-reliance and the right of every man to keep the fruits of what he earns, runs through every generation of Republican rhetoric, agendas, and platforms. But so does a persistent tendency toward and Christian moralism." (Dan McLaughlin, "Our Two Party System Isn't Going Anywhere," November 25, 2019, nationalreview.com) * * * * * Ethnic Voting: Groups and Party Affiliation Immigrants don't settle randomly or come from random places. They tend to come from the same areas of the old country, settle in the same areas of the new country, and move west to the same areas. For example, 90% of those on the Mayflower came from within 60 miles of the town of Mayfield in East Anglia, England. They also tend to bring similar attitudes which, unchecked by attempt to convert them, translate into party affiliations.

The Basics There are 4 basic streams present at creation, so to speak (from the book "Albion's Seed" by David Hackett Fischer) 1) Yankees: Anglo Saxon, settled in the Northeast, with Calvinist Puritan & Pilgram forebears, originally hailing from East Anglia (That rounded bulge on the east coast of England--Northeast of London--is East Anglia). Later generations weren't as Calvinist, but the moral fervor was channeled into the Crusade de Jour, be it American Independence or abolitionism. Originally Federalists, then Northern Whigs, they were the base of the Republican Party, and took their Republicanism West with them to upstate New York, Northern Pennsylvania, Northern Ohio, Michigan, Northern Indiana, Northern Illinois, Iowa, Kansas (some Kansans later moved to Northern Oklahoma), Nebraska, and Oregon, though they were eventually displaced from their original Boston area by new Irish arrivals. Yankee GOP support was fervent, and steady, unaffected by the Great Depression, and only collapsing in the 1964, after which it revived until the 1990s. 2) Southerners/Cavaliers: Anglo Saxon, settled in the South, largely from the South and Southwest of England. Initially settling in coastal Virginia and inhabiting the coastal/Tidewater area. They settled across the lowlands South, Eastern Virginia, Eastern North Carolina, South Carolina, the Southern 3/4 of George, the Southern 2/3 of Alabama, Northern Florida, Mississippi, Louisiana (esp. Northern), Western Tennessee, Southeastern Arkansas, Southeastern Oklahoma, the eastern parts of Texas. Later, Southerners constituted some of the earlier arrivals in Arizona and New Mexico and Southern Nevada, which made the states Democrat for the first few cycles after their admission as states. Other Virginians, mostly poorer and non-planter--often descendents of indentured servants--also moved West on the Ohio river, settling Kentucky and parts of Missouri ("Little Dixie"), as well as Southern Illinois, Southern Indiana, and Southern Ohio. 3) North Midlands: Anglo-Saxon, settled in the Delaware Valley (Southern New Jersey, Southeastern Pennslyvania, Northeastern Maryland, Northern Delaware), source of the Quakers in Pennsylvania. Quite Republican until fairly recently. 4) Scots-Irish: from borderlands between England and Scotland, settled down in Appalachia, from southern Pennyslvania down to the western parts of modern Virginia, as well as the actual West Virginia, western North Carolina, eastern Kentucky, eastern Tennessee, the Cumberland Gap in south central Tennessee, and eventually to the Ozarks of southwest Missouri and northwest Arkansas. In mountainous isolation they retained Elizabethan English speech patterns, and the same story politically; Republicans since the Civil War era, resented the lowlands gentry to the East even before then, and continued it since

Later Arrivals and Additions The Irish: arriving chiefly 1820 to 1860, with a huge surge in the 1840s after potato crop failures, the Irish settled in New York City and Boston and moved to many Northern cities. They tended to be overwhelmingly Democrats and vote tribally, to constitute the backbone of the political machines in major cities, and to engage in a truly ridiculous degree of self-dealing. Moreover, they viewed it as a continuation of the struggle back home, where they faced an Anglo-Saxon occupying establishment; they voted oppositionally to the Yankees, never mind that they made an independent country resisting the Anglo-Saxon establishment in Britain themselves. The Germans: Later major additions are Germans, who are the historical swing voters and kingmakers. They settled in New York and Pennsylvania, moving westward to around Milwaukee, various locations in Wisconsin, Minnesota, the Dakotas, and some in the St. Louis area. Also, some did settle in the South (that's how some North Carolina counties acquired names like "Mecklenberg") and Texas Germans too. They were against whatever the dominant local establishment was. In Yankeedom, they were mostly Democrats, especially if Catholic. (All Catholics leaned Democrat, but Irish Catholics the most of all). Regardless, Germans in Borderlands states voted Republican, and the more South you go, the more Republican they voted. In the San Antonio area for instance, even at the height of Jim Crow, the German settled are there voted Republican. The Scandanavians, Norwegians, Swedes, Finns, what have you, went from New York to Wisconsin, Minnesota and the Dakotas, and then to the Washington Puget Sound area. Initially Republicans, but they became enthused with more social democrat-style schemes, mirroring the political drift of their old countries at the time, and thus became big fans of the Democrats and the New Deal. Scandanavians also displayed a greater proclivity to back third party candidates and causes, particularly of the more progressive variety. The Italians, who as Catholics were Democrats too, though all non-Irish Catholics could be far more easily induced to vote Republican in revulsion at the Irish Democrat machines. The French are mostly concentrated in the Southern half or so of Louisiana, the only area of the Louisiana Purchase with much French settlement at the time. Their voting historically has been mostly Democrat, as is the case with most Catholics. The Jews settled mostly in New York, in two waves. The earlier wave (mostly 1880-1914, mostly German in origin) was more conservative and Republican, while later waves of Eastern European Jews were more inclined toward Democrats, if not outright Socialists. As recently as 1968 Jews were 1/3 of NYC and 1/5 of NY State voters. Black voters were overwhelmingly Republican until the New Deal era, since which they have been overwhelmingly Democrat. The Black vote switching in the 1930s proves Blacks voting Democrat is not about civil rights. Chinese and Japanese, largely settled on the West Coast, and in New York City. New York City Chinese and Japanese were conservative. Chinatown was the strongest Republican enclave in lower Manhattan. Many other Chinese and Japanese voters live on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, more GOP than their neighbors. Nixon carried both NYC's Chinatown and 's Chinatown. (Phillips 110-111)

Who Most Likely To Back Who? This is not intended to be exhaustive, just complete enough to be explanatory. There's something of a continuum of who was most likely to back which party. How intensely, by what margins, how great the turnout varied by candidates and elections, but there were constants. For example, Yankees would always be more Republican than any stripe of Catholic. Overwhelmingly Democrats: Irish, Southern Anglo-Saxon Whites Generally Democrats: Catholic Germans in the North, Catholic Italians, Catholics in general, recent immigrants unless Protestants from the British Isles be they English/Welsh/Scots/Irish Protestants, Jews descended from post-1914 Jewish immigration (mostly from Eastern Europe) Generally Republicans: Germans in the South, Protestant Germans in the North, Protestants in general, Jews descended from 1880-1914 Jewish immigration (mostly from Germany) Overwhelmingly Republicans: Yankees, Appalachian Scots-Irish, Blacks (until 1936)

Who the Regions Voted For Continuum of regions. Largely a function of who settled it, though not entirely. Republicans on the plains sometimes were at loggerheads with Republicans back home in the Northeast. These crystalized over the Civil War and slavery and Reconstruction and I will call this the "Civil War Voting Pattern." It continued for a long time, with variations, with the political climate at times tilted towards one party or another, but their support for either party was always in this order on a continuum: Overwhelmingly Democrat: Southern Black Belts (post-Black disenfranchisement even moreso), New York City, Chicago, most any major Northern city with a significant Irish population Generally Democrat: Southern-settled areas of northern and western Kentucky, southern Ohio, southern Indiana, southern & western Illinois, eastern Missouri north of St. Louis (following the Ohio & Mississippi rivers) Swing Areas: The Non-Yankee Rural Northeast (NYRNE), lower Pennsylvania, the area between NYC and upstate New York, parts of New Jersey (check) Generally Republican: Plains states, most mountain states, Utah. While Republicans did well in plains farm territory, they best in the small towns, with their more white collar/small business orientation; they tended to poorly with actual farmers. The GOP, of course, did better with all involved, the more Yankee-settled the area was. Overwhelmingly Republican: rural Yankee Northeast, areas settled by Yankees in upstate New York, northern Pennsylvania, northern Ohio, Michigan, northern Indiana, northern Illinois, Kansas, Nebraska, Appalachian mountain areas (minus much of West Virginia), Appalachian-settled areas in south-central Tenessee and the Ozarks of southwest Missouri/Northwest Arkansas * * * Ancient History: Summary of All Pre-1964 Republicans vs Democrats Elections And thus we apply all of the above to elections 1860-1960. In 1856 and 1860, Republicans won where Yankees were, and Appalachians in 1864. In 1868, much the same pattern, but now with freed Blacks across the Black Belts of every Southern state as yet readmitted to the Union. Black voters disappear 1876 onward, not all at once, but a steady diminuation can be discerned from the county maps. A "Solid South" starts to appear in the Black Belts, increasing continuity of a chain of dark blue. The GOP does occasionally better, occasionally worse in the decisive Non-Yankee Rural Northeast and the Borderlands of Missouri, Kentucky, West Virginia, and the southern parts (indeed, originally Southern-settled parts) of Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio. The GOP, as a backlash against Willian Jennings Bryan's agrarian radicalism, generally wins the Non-Yankee Rural Northeast until 1932, excepting 1912, a 3-way race. This backlash includes many Catholics, Democrats before, alarmed by Bryanism and revolted by Irish machine self-dealing. The GOP during this period had a few machines too, such as Philadelphia, Wilmington and Rochester. They were typically built on economic leverage rather than patronage, self-dealing, or voter fraud inherent in Democrat machines. Common fear of Bryanism kept labor unrest down and the "full dinner pail" was the election pitch. Yankees were outnumbered by foreign stock but very much in charge. (PHILLIPS 333-335) From time to time, the GOP's Yankee setlers in the Farm Belt butted heads with those in the Northeast, but this is diverted by GOP leaders "waving the bloody shirt," a tactic that quelled farm discontent effectively for as long as Union Civil War veterans are alive. 1912 features a 3-way race in which Teddy Roosevelt and Taft so thoroughly split the non-Woodrow Wilson vote that most of the counties in the whole country are blue. Wilson wins 41% nationally, winning many states he has no business winning, though the only states he wins with over 45% are in the South. 1916 sees a return to a more typical pattern, Yankeedom and Appalachia return to being solidly red, though Wilson still wins. The 1920 election sees a national backlash against Wilson in particular and progressivism in general. The GOP even makes an inroad here and there in the South, while solidly holding the rest of the country, which is also irate over World War 1 involvement, Wilson's police state antics at home, and his high-handedness in general (he insulted the Irish-Americans at Versailles; the Irish-dominated machines at home responded by sitting on their hands and declining to stuff the ballot box per usual, resulting in the GOP winning even within the confines of many cities) While Irish turnout fell, the antiwar Appalachians surged, a massive turnout giving the GOP an unlikely win in Tennessee. 1924 and 1928 are much the same story nationally, though 1928 sees urban Catholics and urban immigrants of all ethnicities strongly move Democrat, which they remain for a long time. Isolationism came to be a GOP thing by the 1930s, a reaction to Democrat Woodrow Wilson involving us in World War I under false pretenses. ("Make the world safe for democracy," he says...and then most "democratically" excludes the Germans from their own peace conference, and proposes an unelected League of Nations to overrule the American public and commit our soldiers to more wars. The Senate, thanks to Republican opposition, preserved our national sovereignty and declined to ratify his crackpot notions.) The FDR era sees the GOP reduced to its Yankee base in the Northeast and the Yankee settled areas of Michican, Northern Illinois, and areas on the plains; Appalachian folk stay loyal as well, but most of the country went hard left. 1940 and 1944 see a resurgence driven by the traditional (and GOP-leaning) isolationism of the plains,as well as many ethnic Germans there who (pre-deathcamps discovery, to be fair) resented being in another "British war." Such concerns also caused FDR's Irish and Italian support to weaken in 1940 and 1944. The 1948 election saw Strom Thurmond's third party run, and a Truman miracle. The traditional GOP areas stayed that way; however, parts of central and south Florida begin to redden, as many from the North begin to move south, to Southern suburbs. The 1952 and 1956 elections see a surging Dwight D. Eisenhower return the Republicans to the White House for the first time in 20 years, sweeping the traditional GOP Yankee areas, the plains and mountains that were backlashing against Korean War involvement, gaining among Catholics both urban and suburban, and starting to make inroads into the South, before any of the events the racebaiters credit for GOP inroads in the South. Ike takes the Outer South states of Virginia, Tennessee, Florida, and Texas, driven by traditional mountain Republicanism added to the urban and suburban middle class rising in Outer South states. In 1952 he nearly takes South Carolina (though to be fair, he was listed as an "independent" there rather than as a "Republican"), in 1956 he adds Louisiana, and in both 1952 and 1956 he comes within a few points of taking North Carolina. He also, while falling far short in Deep Southern states, did much better than most any predecessor since Reconstruction. Ike's two terms, and largely good economy throughout discredited Democrat claims that returning the GOP to power would return us to the Depression, which Democrats had convincingly if inaccurately blamed on Hoover in the minds of the public. In 1960, JFK is chosen by a Democratic party that fears it must either take another gamble on a Catholic Presidential or VP candidate like 1928, or risk continuing to lose ground with Catholics. Nixon's strength is in the same areas that Eisenhower's strength is. Nixon, however, is a far weaker candidate and JFK is a far formidable foe than Adlai Stephenson III. JFK edges Nixon out for the Presidency. However, in so winning, the JFK demonstrates Al Smith's 1928 defeat had as much to do with his association with the corrupt Tammany Hall political machine as his Catholicism, as well as demonstrating anti-Catholic prejudice was for all intents and purposes dead by 1960. This is our foreshadowing. * * * * * The Second Republican Conquest of Dixie (the first being the Civil War)

When Did the South Become Republican? When did the South become Republican? Tallies by office type (statewide races), dates of pre-1980 wins in bold. The significance of 1980 is that by the time of Reagan's election, nobody in their right mind, even if they strain and stretch the truth, can make it look like civil rights--or supposed backlash--is the number one issue on the electorate's mind. By 1980 (or earlier) economic stagnation & stagflation and containing the aggression of the Soviet Union became the dominant issues. The relevance of the non-presidential results is to demonstrate no party realignment occured during the 1960s.

Presidential Deep South: Arkansas: 1972, 1980, 1984, 1988---Louisiana: 1956, 1964, 1972, 1980, 1984, 1988---Mississippi: 1964, 1972, 1980, 1984, 1988, 1992, 1996--Alabama: 1964, 1972, 1980, 1984, 1988, 1992, 1996; Georgia: 1964, 1972, 1984, 1988, 1996---South Carolina: 1964, 1972, 1980, 1984, 1988, 1992, 1996 Outer South Tennessee: 1952, 1956, 1960, 1968, 1972---Virginia: 1952, 1956, 1960, 1968, 1972, 1976, 1980, 1984, 1988, 1992, 1996---North Carolina*: 1968, 1972, 1980, 1984, 1988, 1992, 1996---Florida: 1952, 1956, 1960, 1968, 1972, 1980, 1984, 1988, 1992---Texas**: 1952, 1956, 1972, 1980---Oklahoma: 1952, 1956, 1960, 1968, 1972, 1980, 1984, 1988, 1992 1996 Borderlands Missouri: 1952, 1968, 1972, 1980, 1984, 1988---Kentucky: 1956, 1960, 1968, 1972, 1980, 1984, 1988---West Virginia: 1956, 1972, 1984 *Very close to being GOP in 1952, 1956 **very close and likely stolen by voter fraud in 1960, 1968

Senate Deep South Arkansas: 1998--Louisiana: None before 2000 --Mississippi: 1978, 1984, 1988, 1994, 1996--Alabama: 1980 (gone 1986), 1996--Georgia: 1980 (gone 1986), 1992--South Carolina: 1966*, 1972, 1978, 1984, 1990, 1998 Outer South Tennessee: 1966, 1970, 1972, 1978, 1994--Virginia: 1972, 1978, 1982, 1984, 1990, 1996--North Carolina: 1972, 1978, 1980 (gone 1986), 1984, 1990, 1992, 1996--Florida: 1968, 1980 (gone 1986) 1984, 1990, 1992, 1996--Texas: 1960, 1966, 1972, 1978, 1984, 1990, 1994--Oklahoma: 1968, 1972, 1974, 1980, 1986, 1992, 1994, 1996 Borderlands Missouri: 1976, 1980, 1988, 1994---Kentucky: 1960, 1962, 1966, 1968---West Virginia: *Strom Thurmond switched in 1964, a year in which he was not up for election, but had been previously elected. 1966 is the first year he won election as a Republican.

Governors Deep South Arkansas: 1966, 1968, 1980, 1998, 2002--Louisiana*:1979, 1995, 1999--Mississippi: 1991, 1995, 2003--Alabama: 1986, 1990, 1994, 2002--Georgia: 2002--South Carolina: 1974, 1986, 1990, 1994, 2002 Outer South Tennessee: 1970, 1978, 1982, 1994, 1998--Virginia: 1969, 1973, 1977, 1993, 1997--North Carolina: 1972, 1984, 1988--Florida: 1966, 1986, 1998, 2002--Texas: 1978, 1986, 1994, 1998, 2002--Oklahoma: 1962, 1986, 1994, 1998 Borderlands Missouri: 1972, 1980, 1984, 1988--Kentucky: 1967, 2003--West Virginia: 1968, 1972, 1984, 1996 *Another governor, Buddy Roemer, switched to GOP while already in office, and lost in 1991. He never however won election as a Republican. * * * Overview of All State Offices: The Outer South By "Appreciable Narrowing," I mean to indicate roughly when the state's legislatures got competitive. Sometimes the Republicans went from nowhere near a majority to sweeping the chamber overnight. In other cases, they steadily increased, then made a big breakthrough that got them to near 50%, then flipped the chamber.

>Florida had its first Republican Senator in 1968-1974, but had to wait until 1980 for another. Florida had its first Republican governor in 1966, had to wait until 1986 for another, and 1998-present has had a Republican. The Florida House of Representative Delegation became majority Republican in 1990, after an Appreciable Narrowing 1984-1988. The Florida State House became majority Republican in 1996 after an Appreciable Narrowing in 1994. The Florida State Senate became majority Republican in 1994 after an Appreciable Narrowing in 1988 >North Carolina elected its first Republican senator in 1972 and the first senator for the other seat in 1980. North Carolina elected its first Republican governor in 1972, and had another in 1984 and 1988, but not again until 2012. The North Carolina House Representatives Delegation became majority Republican in 1994. The North Carolina State House became majority Republican in 1994-1998, then 2010-present. The North Carolina State Senate became majority Republican in 2010 >Tennessee had its first Republican governor 1970-1974, then 1978-1986, and 1994-2002, 2010-present. Tennessee's House of Representatives delegation had a brief Republican majority 1972-1974, but they did not attain majority status again until 1994. The Tennessee State House became majority Republican in 2008, following an Appreciable Narrowing 2002-2008. The Tennessee State Senate became majority Republican in 1996 due to two Democrats switching parties, on the heels of an Appreciable Narrowing 1992-1996. Upon the next elections it then reverted to Democrat control, before being either tied or Republican controlled since 2004. >Texas had Senator John Tower in office 1960-84, followed by Phil Gram 1984-2002, and John Cornyn from 2002 to the present. Texas had one GOP governor elected twice, Bill Clements served 1978-1982, 1986-1990; George Bush 1994-2000, GOP holds to present. In 1990-1994 Ann Richards was governor, a Democrat. (Democrats love to excuse their post-1964 continued control of the South as "conservative Democrats," but since when is the mother of Planned Parenthood's Cecile Richards a "conservative?") The Texas House of Representatives delegation became majority Republican by 2004, after an Appreciable Narrowing 1994 onwards. The Texas State House became majority Republican in 2002, showing Appreciable Narrowing 1994-2002.The Texas State Senate became majority Republican in 1996, after showing Appreciable Narrowing in 1992. >Virginia had one Senator's seat become Republican in 1972, the other in 1982, though both have been gone since. In Virginia it took until 1969 to gain the Governor's mansion, with the GOP then having the office in 1973 and 1977 as well, 1993, 1997, 2009, but no longer. Virginia's House of Representatives delegations featured a Republican majority 1970-1974, 1976-1982, and at about half of the delegation for many years afterward. The Virginia State House became majority Republican in 2000, after an Appreciable Narrowing in 1994. The Virginia State Senate became majority Republican in 1998, after an Appreciable Narrowing 1990-1996.

Overview of All State Offices: The Deep South >Alabama had its first Republican Senator in 1980, Jeremiah Denton, who lasted until 1986. Their next Senatorial gain was in 1994, courtesty of Richard Shelby switching parties. Alabama's first GOP Governor Guy Hunt was elected in 1986. Alabama's House of Representatives delegation was first Republican 1964-1966, as part of the Goldwater Anomaly, but then stayed majority Democrat until 1996. The Alabama State House became majority Republican in 2010. The Alabama State Senate became majority Republican in 2010. >Arkansas had its first Republican Senator in 1994, who lasted until 2002. Arkansas had two Democrat Senators as recently as 2010. In 2008, the GOP couldn't even find a challanger for the Senate race. Republicans John Boozeman and Tom Cotton now are the Senators, Boozman since 2010, and Cotton since 2014. Arkansas had occasional Republican governors before 1990, being a half Ozarkian Appalachain and half Deep South state. For instance Winthrop Rockefeller, from 1966 to 1970, and Frank E. White, the only one to ever beat Bill Clinton in an election, 1980-1982. Huckabee is more recent than 1990, being Lt. Gov. 1992-1996, and governore 1996-2006, with another Rockefeller, Winthrop Paul Rockefeller, as Lt. Gov 1996-2000. Asa Hutchinson, son of the earlier Senator, is the governor since 2014. The Arkansas House of Representatives delegation became majority Republican for the first time in 2010, though to be fair it had been tied at 2-2 many times prior. The Arkansas State House became majority Republican in 2012, showing Appreciable Narrowing in 2010. The Arkansas State Senate likewise became majority Republican in 2012, after showing Appreciable Narrowing in 2010. >Georgia had its first Republican Senator in 1980, Mack Mattingly, who lasted until 1986. The next one was elected in 1992, and it took until 2004 to get Republicans in both seats. Georgia had its first Republican governor in 2002. Georgia's House of Representatives delegation became majority Republican in 1994. Georgia's State House became majority Republican in 2004. Georgia's State Senate became majority Republican in 2002. >Louisiana had its first Republican Senator in 2004, and as recently as 2014, held the other Senate seat. Louisiana had its first Republican governor in 1979, but had to wait until 1995 for another elected Republican governor (Buddy Roemer switched while an incumbent but lost reelection in 1991), then won in 1999, with a close loss in 2003. Democrats won in 2007, 2011, 2015, and 2019. Louisiana's House of Representatives delegation became majority Republican in 1996, holding 50% of the seats 1988-1992. Louisiana's State House became majority Republican in 2010, following an Appreciable Narrowing in 2008. Louisiana's State Senate became majority Republican in 2010, following an Appreciable Narrowing in 2008 >Mississippi had its first Republican Senator in 1978, in a 3-way race after James Eastland retired, and the other was gained in 1988, after John Stennis retired. Mississippi had its first GOP governor in 1991, and in 1975 and 1987 came within 6 or 7 points, with a Democrat as recently as 1999 (?) South Carolina's first GOP governor since Reconstruction was elected in 1974, another GOP governor in 1986, and has had a Democrat governor as recently as 1998. Mississippi's House of Representatives delegation became majority Republican in 1996. The Mississippi State House became majority Republican in 2011. The Mississippi State Senate became majority Republican in 2011 for good, after some shenanigans of politicians switching parties landing a brief majority in 2007, and then in 2009. >South Carolina had its first Republican Senator, Strom Thurmond, after he switched parties in 1964. The other seat would have to wait for Jim DeMint to win the retiring Fritz Hollings' seat in 2004. South Carolina's had its first Republican governor 1974-1978, but did not have another until 1986. South Carolina's House of Representatives delegation became majority Republican in 1980, but fell to 50% in 1982, and to 33% in 1986, and did not regain the majority in the delegation until 1994. The South Carolina State House became majority Republican in 1994. The South Carolina State Senate became majority Republican in 2000, after Appreciable Narrowing 1994-2000,

Overview Of All State Offices: Overall Notes in Summary & Conclusions 1994 is the flip for overall Southern House majority and the overall majority of Southern Senators and Governors. A significant number of Southern states still had Democrats in those roles, and the GOP took even longer to take total control of the South, and of state legislatures. At no point before the 1990s did the GOP gain more in the South than in other regions (disproportionately). Incumbency doesn't explain the Democrat hold on South, with new Democrats elected when segregationists died (Russel) or retired (Fullbright). (Shafer & Johnston 111) Nor was this due to Black voters; a majority of white voters stayed Democrat for subpresidential offices for several decades after the supposed "party switch." All told, even as late as the year 2000, the GOP still was not competitive in many Southern states at below Presidential level. (RHODES 17) The state legislature level is perhaps the most indicative of the party philosophy of a state. Everyone knows who's running for President, but progressively fewer for Senators and governors, House reps, and least of all state legislatures. The average person on the street likely couldn't tell you the name of their state representative. The GOP's slow progress was mostly in traditional GOP areas, most state legislative Republican seats were urban districts, and with an occasional mountain one. But the South, despite urban growth, remains more rural than many other places. As of 2000, State legislative districts in the South: 41% RURAL (49% Democrat, 48% Republican), 26% URBAN (69% Democrat, 31% Republican), 29% SURUBAN (45% Democrat, 55% Republican) (RHODES 129-130) And Indeed, thanks to the 2006 and 2008 reversals, Democrats held onto majorities until 2010 for US House delegations from Arkansas, Mississippi, North Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia, and within State Houses in Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, and Texas. The timeframe alone refutes MSPCT explanations of how Republicans took the South, and we're still not done. There's veritable mountains of other kinds of proof. * * * Outer South, Deep South, Mountains, Suburbs & Black Belts: Coming Down From 30,000 Feet to See the Details

The Outer South and the Deep South On a complete state basis, the Outer South is Texas, Tennessee, Virginia, North Carolina, Florida. The Deep South is Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and South Carolina. Where Arkansas falls seems to depend on who you ask, I lean towards a "Deep South" characterization. On a cultural basis, many Southern states are part Outer South and part Deep South. Sparing you a long written description, on a map this equates to roughly the counties carried by Al Smith in 1928, Strom Thurmond in 1948, Barry Goldwater in 1964, and George Wallace in 1968. Smith's case is particularly instructive, because Southern Protestants of the era destested Catholics, and White Southern Democrats detested Blacks--and Hoover was accused of plotting segregation's demise. In Southern counties 5% or less Black, Hoover triumphed in 187 of 266; in counties 50% or more Black, Smith won 184 of 191, amassing record turnout in so doing. (Phillips 194-195) The area in these counties had the most cotton plantations, the most support for slavery, for secession, Jim Crow imposition, the most lynchings, and the most fervent opposition to desegregation, and of course, the strongest Democrat support both percentage and in turnout, egged on by racism and class warfare rhetoric. In the Second Republican Conquest of Dixie (the first being the Civil War), the party tended to do far better in the Outer South the Deep South. Insofar as they gained anything and held it in the Deep South, it tended to be urban and suburban areas rather than the rural deep south that, strongly suggesting the appeal involved something other than bigotry.

Outer & Deep South: The Presidency Presidentially, as at all other levels, the Outer South fell to GOP first. The Deep South voted either Democrat or Independent for 1968 and 1976. 1972 should be viewed as aberrant, given it matched a national 49-state Presidential landslide, and was mostly unmirrored by significant GOP progress at the lower levels of government. That makes it an indicator of what the Deep South thought of George McGovern rather than a referendum on Republican principles themselves. GOP Peripheral South support was stronger than Deep South support in 1960, 1968, 1976, 1980. The two converged in about 1984, at which point it's much too late to credit it to any supposed civil rights backlash. Of the relevant period, 4 of the 6 fit the "Civil War Voting Pattern + Ike Areas" seen in 1952 & 1956, one (1972) is a national landslide, and one (1964) is the biggest anomaly in the entire history of American politics. Guess which one Kevin Kruse tells you is central.

Outer & Deep South: The Senate Republicans were more successful in peripheral South Senate seats, winning them earlier, with higher % in victor or defeat, and winning more overall. By 1972, 7 of 22 Southern Senators were Republicans, but only 1 was in the Deep South (Thurmond). Senator Harry Byrd of Virginia went Independent but never joined the GOP. In 1974 and 1976 Republicans failed to win any Southern Senate seats (Watergate fallout). GOP maintained Southern Senate footing at c. 1/3 of seats throughout the 1970s. Before 1980, there were only two Deep South Republican Senators. Strom Thurmond had switched parties, bringing incumbency with him, and had won an open MIssissippi seat in 1978, with 45% of the vote in a 3-way race in a midterm year. Thus, neither of the two reflected any great success of the GOP as an institution in the Deep South. In the Early Reagan era (1980-1984), which is much too late for any of this to be about supposed civil rights backlash, Republicans held almost half of Southern Senate seats as Reagan's 1980 effort had massive coattails. But in 1986 the Republicans dropped down to about one-third of Southern Senate seats. The true tipping point was 1994, as Republicans held 13 of 22, courtesy of the 12 seats they won, plus Senator Shelby of Alabama switching parties. For the first time, Republicans held over half of Southern Senate seats. Even at this juncture, however, they did better in the Outer South (2/3 of seats) than the Deep South (1/2 of seats)

Outer & Deep South: The House Republicans did better in the Outer South than the Deep South in the U.S. House as well. Republican congressional growth was strongest where Ike was strongest, it matched Ike's county vote patterns, not Goldwater's. Republicans did especially well in Texas and Florida, and better in urban areas than rural areas in all cases. The only real exception to the rule was they did reasonably well in South Carolina, where Thurmond's stature and endorsements had made it more socially acceptable to be Republican in a region where such things were generally viewed with suspicion, even at this late date. In neither the Outer South nor the Deep South did incumbency explain the Democrats holding the seats, as Democrats were elected to replace segregationists who died in office or retired. The Democrats could hardly jettison the South either, given the large, majority-creating fraction of their party holding Southern seats. As an illustration of their dilemma, the "mappingcongress.com" site, setting it to show you "strength of victory" has the South the most strongly Democrat region into the late 1980s. The Democrat waffling on civil rights 1945-1960 or so is them weighing the competitive North vs loyal South as a future strategy, eventually deciding they had to pivot, at least rhetorically. * * * We've Answered When, And Outlined How. Framework, Meet History

1964 Revisited, and the Leadup to 1968 Let's revisit 1964 a moment. Referring to the regions (Yankeedom, Non-Yankee Rural Northeast, Borderlands, Outer South, Deep South) and their typical voting patterns, the best way to describe the 1964 returns is that "everything moved one standard deviation to the Left"; staunchly red areas moved to light red, light red moved to light blue, light blue moved to dark blue, and the darkest blue of all areas, the Deep South, voted for Goldwater. Republicans aimed to shake loose Democrat voting habits in the Deep South, thinking it would add to their Outer South, and rest of the country. Instead, the "rotating standard deviations" disaster ensued. The worst part of the disaster was one lost election, but the addition of plausibility to a bogus Democrat narrative. In any case the GOP reverted to the Outer South strategy, with great success in 1966 and 1968. The 1964 House gains in Goldwater states included a Mississippi seat, five in Alabama, and a trade in Georgia, in which an Atlanta-suburban district was lost and a more "Deep South" district bordering Alabama was gained, all while losing a number of urban Outer South districts. However, in 1966, the pattern reversed, the Mississippi district was lost, 2 of the 5 Alabama gains were reversed, and the Georgia situation reverted to the pre-1964 status losing the Black Belt districts and regaining suburban Atlanta. None of the districts lost by the GOP lost in 1966 was regained until much later, certainly not before 1970, but after 1972 new districts were drawn. No seats were gained in Louisiana or South Carolina throughout. The 1966 election was not a "backlash against civil rights." One of the surest proofs is where the GOP won. The GOP House wins and losses in 1966 look far more like 1960 and 1962 than like 1964. The 1966 election sees Republican losses in the Deep South, gains in the Outer South, most of which are in either urban areas or bordering areas the GOP already held, with most gains overall not in the South altogether. If the "they stoked racial backlash" story where true, the GOP should have continued to lose seats in the North while gaining in the Deep South, yet the clear majority of 1966 Republican gains were the very non-Southern districts they had lost in 1964. This silly story depends on conflation of the Great Society with civil rights. The two are clearly not the same: the segregationists largely voted for the first while opppsing the latter and Republicans voted for the latter while oppsing the former. Many other issues drove 1966: declining farm prices and farmer incomes (and Republicans made huge gains in heartland farm country), all while Democrats pushed welfarism in urban areas and wars abroad, escalating our involvement in Vietnam. The possibility for 1966 gains became greater following the 1964 losses, which far outpaced typical losses. Thus the stage is set for 1968. According to the MSPCT, the 1968 election typified the "Southern Strategy," following in Barry Goldwater's dogwhistling footsteps to get the segregationist vote and ride civil rights backlash to power. The actual voting data, on the other hand, tells us a very different story.

1968 Presidential Election Results by State Let's look at the voting data, first by state, then some county analysis. I broke these into categories of states. Some might quibble with where I placed a state. Some will insist Arkansas is Outer South, others might say Oklahoma should be considered Southern, and surely someone will insist a Heartland state belongs somewhere else. Whatever. The point is Nixon's Southern numbers versus his everything-else numbers show there's no way he's doing a "Southern strategy" as described, or if he did, that it sure didn't work!

(Civil War Historical) Borderland States State Nixon Humphrey Wallace Kentucky 43.79 37.65 18.29 Missouri 44.87 43.74 11.39 Oklahoma 47.68 31.99 20.33 West Virgina 40.78 49.60 9.62

Outer Southern States State Nixon Humphrey Wallace Florida 40.53 30.93 28.53 North Carolina 39.51 29.24 31.26 Tennessee 37.85 28.13 34.20 Texas 39.87 41.14 18.97 Virginia 43.36 32.49 23.64

Deep Southern States State Nixon Humphrey Wallace Alabama 13.99 18.72 65.86 Arkansas 31.01 30.33 38.65 Georgia 30.40 26.75 42.83 Louisiana 23.47 28.21 48.32 Mississippi 13.52 23.02 63.46 South Carolina 38.09 29.61 32.30

Plains and Mountains and General Heartland States State Nixon Humphrey Wallace Arizona 54.78 35.02 9.56 Colorado 50.46 41.32 7.50 Idaho 56.79 30.66 12.55 Iowa 53.01 40.82 5.69 Kansas 54.84 34.72 10.19 Montana 50.60 41.59 7.29 Nebraska 59.82 31.81 8.36 Nevada 47.46 39.29 13.25 New Mexico 51.85 39.75 7.86 North Dakota 55.94 38.23 5.75 South Dakota 53.27 41.96 4.76 Utah 56.49 37.07 6.37 Wyoming 55.76 35.51 8.73

Northeast & Mid-Atlantic States State Nixon Humphrey Wallace D.C. 18.18 81.82 --- Deleware 45.12 41.61 13.28 Connecticut 44.32 49.48 6.10 Maine 43.07 55.30 1.62 Maryland 41.94 43.59 14.47 Massachusetts 32.89 63.01 3.73 New Hampshire 52.10 43.93 3.76 New Jersey 46.10 43.97 9.12 New York 44.30 49.76 5.29 Rhode Island 31.78 64.03 4.07 Vermont 52.75 43.53 3.16

Midwest Industrial States State Nixon Humphrey Wallace Illinois 47.08 44.15 8.46 Indiana 50.29 37.99 11.45 Michigan 41.46 48.18 10.04 Minnesota 41.46 54.00 4.34 Ohio 45.23 42.95 11.81 Pennsylvania 44.02 47.59 7.97 Wisconsin 47.89 44.27 7.56.

Pacific States State Nixon Humphrey Wallace Alaska 45.28 42.65 12.07 California 47.82 44.74 6.72 Hawaii 38.70 59.83 1.47 Oregon 49.83 43.78 6.06 Washington 45.12 47.23 7.44

The numbers illuminate a great deal. For someone with a supposed "Southern Strategy," Nixon's Southern numbers are soft. They're not even that great in the quasi-Southern Borderlands states. The Deeper South you get, the worse Nixon's numbers get. Nixon's numbers in many Northeastern states are better than most of his Southern numbers, Rhode Island and Massachusetts obviously excepted. In no state of the former Confederacy did Nixon top 45% and in only Virginia and Florida did he top 40%. (In Oklahoma he got 47%, but Oklahoma, while in Confederate territory, was not a state at that time). Nixon's in the Midwest Industrial and Pacific were good enough to get him elected Nixon voters aren't Wallace voters, they weren't competing for the same people. The Supposed Southern Strategy conspiracy theory depends on the idea that they competed for the same people. The Nixon majorities in the Outer South arose from the mountains and suburbs. Nixon did well with urban and especially suburban whites, Southern or otherwise. Only in the cities within the Deep South did he even do quasi good there. He carried the outer South because they had more cities in those states, and hence also more suburbs. Nixon won counties with few Blacks, winning Whites in whiter areas based on economics, whereas Wallace won the Negrophobic rural Whites from counties with high Black populations. (Wallace was no conservative either, just look at his platform and class-warfare rhetoric, that's another reason their voters wouldn't be the same crowd). As for Hubert Humphrey, insofar as Humphrey won Southern votes at all, they came from Black voters, plus some Cubans or Jews in Southern Florida, and Mexicans in Texas, plus all the Texas courthouse cliques pulled out all the stops as directed to by LBJ and John Connally. (Phillips 269) As for the subsequent elections, Nixon's 1968 county level pattern looks like 1960s, and like that of Eisenhower's 1952 and 1956 outings. How can he have had a "Southern strategy" in 1968 and yet win and lose the same people he won and lost in 1960? How can Nixon's supposedly new strategy in 1968 produce a pattern of support looking like Eisenhower's 1952 showing? The voting patterns reinforce the state level percentages in disproving the myth of the "Southern strategy."

More Detail Still, Where Within the States Did the Shift Occur: Exact Vote Patterns of Former Confederate States As far as any pre-1960/lasting to 1980 voting patterns are discernable, here they are. Much of the Deep South disenfranchised many poor whites as well as Blacks, voted deeply blue the whole time, and then with the Voting Rights Act of 1965, added them all at once. This creates a fog impenetrable to county map analysis for much of the deep South, except in the more clear case of Arkansas. But we do have other ways to tell what was happening, and we'll get to those.

>Arkansas' northwest Ozarks were settled by Appalachian Republicans bringing their allegiance westward. Except for Winthrop Rockefeller winning some Black votes on Eastern edge in his gubernatorial bids, it's mostly a story of Northwest GOP expanding towards the Southwest, first around west edge of state, then South and East. The Civil War voting patterns whereby the Ozarkian Appalachian people of the Northwest were electing the Republican(s) continued to hold for a very long time after the 1960s. Somebody go tell them the parties "switched! >Florida's panhandle was the most Democrat part of the state. Downstate, many migrants from outside the South moved to either work or retire to warmer climes, building much of the previously undeveloped Florida in the process and populating it heavily. (As recently as the 1940s, the state held a mere 6 electoral votes, was thought of as unimportant, and was anything but a swing state). Miami was settled by many pre-Castro Cuban immigrants (who were surprisingly left-leaning), post-Castro Cuban immigrants (the conservatism of which is legendary), and in the late 40s and early 50s, many Jews from the New York area. >North Carolina's traditional mountain Republicans dominated the western part of the state, with Democrats strongest in the east generally, the northeast especially. This didn't invert in 1964. The Republican areas got them to about 40 or at most 45 percent of the vote, but adding anything at all in the eastern half of the state was all it took to get the GOP over 50%, as began to occur with consistency Reagan and onwards at the Presidential level. >Oklahoma in the 1940s was invaded by Kansans moving southward, and the state turns red from the North on down. The suburbs of Tulsa and Oklahoma City further boosted the Party of Lincoln. The Southern part, particularly the Southeastern portion was the Democrat stronghold. >In Tennessee, traditional GOP strength rested in the Appalachian mountains of the east of the state, and in an Appalachian settled area in the Southern edge of the state, parallel to the Alabama-Mississippi border but on the Tennessee side. Better performance in a few suburbs and Bob's your uncle, the state was theirs. >In Texas, the traditional GOP strength (1928, 1952, 1956, 1960) and onward were 1) the Texas Panhandle, 2) "Texas Hill Country" (plus some east and west, are includes San Antonio and Texas Germans), 3) Dallas-Fort Worth and suburbs, 4) Houston and suburbs. This pattern holds 1940s-1990s, even in 1964. Another trend that drove John Tower's 1960 victory was Northern GOP transplants. Migrants to the South had greater conservatism than natives. (Phillips 281) >Virginia's GOP strength is what we'll call "The Upside-Down V," or "The Inverted Checkmark." The Appalachian areas, plus blooming suburbs in the Northern part of the state were the party's strength, only inverting itself in the 1964 Anomaly. The party also grew in the suburbs of Richmond, though not the city proper. Many gubernatorial and senatorial candidates gained parts of Virginia farther south, in addition to The Inverted Checkmark, but not at its expense.

The Civil War Voting Pattern: The Life Cycle Thereof These vote patterns are part of a larger meta-pattern that I call the "Civil War Voting Pattern." It's like the continuum described previously. The Republicans were strongest in New England, most strongly in the Yankee-dominated areas away from the coasts, and the Yankee-settled areas from upstate New York, northern Pennsylvania, northern Ohio, Northern Indiana, Michigan, Northern Illinois, parts of Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, etc. The battlegrounds were the non-Yankee rural Northeast, the area between NYC proper and upstate New York, south Pennsylvania, parts of New Jersey, Northern Maryland, etc. Places leaning blue but attainably red in a good Republican year were the Civil War borderlands of Southern-settled South Illinois, South Indiana, South Ohio, and much of Kentucky More solidly blue areas included the major cities like New York City or Chicago or any of the political machine-dominated cesspools of corruption, and of course the South, especially the Deep Southern Black Belts. Within this larger theme there existed variations. The First Phase (1864-1876): Black freedman voters gave Republicans control of the Black Belts. The Second Phase: From 1876 to the 1890 election, Black Belt freedmens' votes are incrementally eradicated, and vanish at an even faster clip after 1890. The Third Phase (1896-1948): The Emergence of the Solid South, in which Black Belt counties are all dark blue, and Southern Republicanism is all but eradicated, but then starts to resurge in incrementally 1936-onward for reasons we'll get to later. The Fourth Phase: From 1952 to 1980, in which suburban areas went up around Southern cities, and Republican support with it. As recently as World War 1, the populations of Miami, St. Petersburg, Orlando, Palm Beach, Fort Lauderdale, Dallas, Fort Worth, Houston, Amarillo, and Odessa-Midland were negligable. (Phillips 270-271) But with the flow of people inward, the Democrat strength in the South was constrained back to the Black Belts. As cities and suburbs grew, so did the Republican party. The "Civil War Voting Pattern" pattern was clearly collapsing by 1980, but lasted through 1976 for sure. But whatever am I talking about? Haven't I seen the state electoral maps? Yes, but describing elections on a complete state basis is part of how MSPCT advocates disguise what actually happened. For starters, check out state percentages in 1976 and 1980. Carter swept the South even more strongly than Adlai Stephenson in the 1950s, and Reagan barely won most of the Southern states he did win. While he did win Florida, Texas and Virginia commandingly, other margins were less than dazzling. He won Alabama 1.3 points (48.75%-47.45%), Arkansas by 0.61 points (48.13%-47.45%), Louisiana by 5.45 points (51.20%-45.75%), Mississippi by 1.32 points (49.42%-48.09%), North Carolina by 2.12 points (49.30%-47.18%), South Carolina by 1.53 points (49.57%-48.04%), and Tennessee by 0.29 points (48.70%-48.41%) His most impressive margins, much like Nixon, came on the Plains and Mountain states, winning states like Idaho with 66%, Kansas with 57%, Montana with 56%, Nebraska with 65%, North Dakota with 64%, Oklahoma with 60%, South Dakota with 60%, Utah with 72%, and Wyoming with 62%. Where his support was most intense tells us Reagan didn't win with mythical appeals to coded racism. He won by appealing the values of middle American common sense, pride in this country, and a desire to see it succeed on the world stage, and succeed against the very Soviet Union that had killed more people than Hitler in between invading everyone who looked at it funny. But there's something more, and even looking at state percentage won't show us this. So I've come up with a saying gets us to the truth, "counties reveal what states conceal." Admittedly, sometimes many votes are backed into a few counties, and a big city can win a whole state, and that point is useful for figuring how to win elections. But cultural patterns and which party said cultural pattern votes for is revealed by county level analyis. Examine the county maps from 1952/1956/1960/1968/1976/1980, and you'll notice something. Ignore Wallace, ignore the unpledged electors, just compare Republicans to Republicans. It's essentially the same map all six times, sometimes stronger for Republicans, sometimes stronger for Democrats. Republicans win the mountains and the suburbs, adding the plains of the Texas Panhandle and the hill country of West Central Texas, while the Democrats remain strongest in the very Black Belts that spawned the Confederacy and Jim Crow. Wouldn't that situation have "switched" if the parties had "switched?" But that's not what we see. We see that Nixon wins where Eisenhower wins. Nixon loses where Eisenhower loses. Gerald Rudolph Ford's strength and weakness matches that of Richard Milhaus Nixon and Dwight David Eisenhower, both in location and demographics; Ford's white Southern backers looked like the Ike/Nixon showings, both in percentage (56-42) and on county maps. Ronald Wilson Reagan is clearly encroaching into traditional Democrat areas, but it bears recounting that by the point of Reagan's 1980 election, race is no longer the primary issue. Reagan also did better among younger white Southerners, and in the meantime some older white Southerners, the age range more attached to segregation, would have passed away. It's clear the racists didn't become Republicans, they just started dying off. In fact, most of George Wallace's went to Jimmy Carter in 1976 and 1980. And of course, 1972 is uninstructive because it is a national landslide, and 1964 is the most anomalous election in American history, that's why I focused on 1952/1956/1960/1968/1976/1980. By 1984, there's no trace of the old pattern in the South at the Presidential level. However the same pattern does persist for the South into the 1990s at the subpresidential levels, for the GOP base of support for Senators, Governors, and House. The same pattern had mirrored the Republican Presidential strength throughout, explaining away even such things as the case of Texas Senator John Tower, whose 1961 Special Election county map vote pattern looks practically identical to Eisenhower's, as do his subsequent reelection maps. He wasn't elected "because racists switched parties" or any of the usual nonsense trotted out. He won because of the same combination of the Texas panhandle, hill country, plus the upwardly mobile and frequently in-migrants from the Republican Northern states (Phillips 281) that carried Ike to victory and Nixon to a close loss in 1960. The same story prevails for the likes of Bill Brock and Howard Baker in Tennessee and Edward Gurney in Florida, etc. The same base carrying their Presidential candidates are the biggest backers of their other candidates, not any mythical army of "conservative" Democrats. Insofar as any Republican with an indefensible vote or two was elected, it was something Southern Republicans elected in in spite of, not because of. If it was a racist appeal to racist voters, the map would look different. And no matter how much Dan Carter and Kevin M(ontebank) Kruse screech, if you can't find it in the voting data, it didn't happen. Moving on to the House, by 1972, the GOP held 34 out of 107 Southern House Seats, 25 in the Outer South as opposed to 9 in the Deep South. Of the 34 GOP House seats, 17 were urban or suburban districts, 5 heavily urban districts, 3 combined urban with traditional Republican mountain strength, 7 were otherwise traditionally Republican areas, and 2 were predominantly non-metro (rural) areas aka historical racist Democrat areas. As for other places in America, the pattern persisted there too. New England stayed conservative and Republican for far longer than commonly believed. Kevin Phillips in his 1969 work The Emerging Republican Majority had a theory that the Northeast would become liberal and Democrat and the South conservative and Republican in short order, in the immediate future. However, Phillips errs in seeing the Yankee Northeast 1) moving Left in Ike years or 2) lost by 1968. Using 1962-1968 it looked that way at the time, but 1970-1990 was a different story. Whereas they moved left 1970-1990, it was not lost to the GOP by 1968. Yankeedom didn't flip Democrat until 1990-1996, the Clinton Era, not the Civil Rights era. Nor were New England Republicans liberal back then. These were the core GOP seats held even in the FDR era, and they sent lawmakers with conservative DW-NOMINATE scores (I'll explain what this is and more in the "Platforms" chapter) to DC up until the moment the GOP lost the Yankee rural Northeast. Maine and Vermont Republicans were more conservative than average, Massechusetts ones were barely left of the national average per Voteview, and New Hampshire ones were some of the most conservative even scored. Anecdotally, New Hampshire was electing the likes of John Sununu as late as the 1980s, and Bernie Sanders had to win his seat from a Republican, Peter Plymton Smith (voteview +.055; still right of center though not by as much as past Republicans.) Neither did Yankee settled areas of rural Michigan or Northern Illinois switch during the civil rights era (or ever) While the Northeast's conservatism fades late, the South's conservatism comes late. The GOP took the South not because any "southern white conservatives" joined them. they got the South by converting it to conservatism. (more detail in the "Platforms" chapter). If these white Southern Democrats were so "conservative," then what great conservative legislation that would do the Tea Party proud did they enact in any Southern state during this timeframe? Yeah, I thought so. The gun issue is a good proxy for "have conservatives overrun your state?" Using concealed carry as a basis, the South took turn towards the GOP in the early 1990s because that's when they took a turn towards conservatism. Slavery and Jim Crow were both upheld by gun control laws, such as the Jim Crow law upheld in Florida in the 1940 case of Watson v. Stone. From Justice Rivers H. Buford, "the original Act of 1893...was passed for the purpose of disarming the negro laborers...and to give the white citizens in sparsely settled areas a better feeling of security. The statute was never intended to be applied to the white population and in practice has never been so applied" (Supreme Court of Florida: Watson v. Stone, 4 So. 2d 700 (Fla. 1941) In 1987, an increasingly conservative Florida went from "may issue" to "shall issue" for concealed carry licenses, meaning anyone who asked for a license and passed a background check must be granted a license. It was no longer at anyone's discretion. In 1989 Georgia followed suit, Missisippi in 1990, Tennessee in 1994, Arkansas, Oklahoma, North Carolina, Texas, and Virgnia in 1995, with Kentucky, Louisiana, and South Carolina doing likewise in 1996. Meanwhile, Democrats still retain their old gun banning stance from their slavery and Jim Crow days. Since this has come up again recently, I might add this in passing: The 1994 Crime Bill ("mass incarceration"), the House votes had Democrats 188-64 in favor and Republicans 46-131 against. The Senate vote was 61-38, of these only 4 Republicans were for it, and only 2 Democrats were against it. So the same people calling the criminal justice system's strictness racist today were in fact the driving force to make it that way. They're pulling a mini-version of MSPCT, as if this was the work of racist "America" or "conservatives." * * * The Basis for the New Pattern: The Cities vs. All Comers (And Vote For Us Or You're Racist!) The basis for the new pattern is cities vs all comers, intensifying after 2000 to dramatic heights by 2016, and likely to be even truer in 2020. Democrats were always built on the two pillars of urban machines and the South. Having lost the South, they went all in on urban machines. Having lost the white votes as whites became wealthier and had no interest in New Deal & class warfare rhetoric, the Democrats have seen fit to denounce them as racist in order to spike minority turnout. This charge is supported by fake history, such as we're refuting now. Self-righteous Democrats cite their non-white constituencies as "social proof" of their civil rights bona fides. What they disingenously omit is none became Democrats over Civil Rights (or during the Civil Rights Era): Blacks and Hispanics became Democrats in the 1930s, Asians in the 1990s, and Muslims in 2004. For a supposed civil rights shift, civil rights changed....NOTHING! No group changed their voting patterns as a result of civil rights. The Democrats Self-Congratulation License is hereby REVOKED! * * * * * What Underlies This Shift? The "Who" of the GOP Conquest of the South

Eisenhower Deniers The 1952 election belies the oft-told story Goldwater was some turning point in Southern political history. The Goldwater-hyping hysterics, eager to place the GOP breakthrough in the same timeframe as the civil rights movement, have ignored that Dwight D. Eisenhower won numerous Southern States, in both his electoral triumphs. Ike was the first Republican to campaign in the South (NEW SOUTH 101), and in 1952, he won Florida, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia, winning them all again plus Louisiana in 1956. He fired a near miss in North Carolina both times, and despite trailing distantly in most Deep Southern states, he dramatically outperformed previous Republicans like Dewey or Wilkie. Republican victories at lower levels accompanied Eisenhower's wins, mainly urban House districts in Florida and Texas, plus expansions from Appalachian districts in Virginia and North Carolina eastward. This differed from 1928's GOP performance, in which their Southern Presidential numbers surge, unmatched at other levels of government. Ike's Southern performance paired with his party's embryonic but real development signaled a new era in Southern politics, a decade or so before Barry Goldwater's ill-fated run for Pennsylvania Avenue. Nor did pre-Goldwater gains dating back to 1936-1940 arise from any supposed GOP appeals to segregationists, because the fall in Democrat vote share came before the GOP campaigned in the South at all (local organizations remained rather anemic, thus saith V.O. Key Jr., Southern Politics, chapter 13.)

Economic Development of the Modern South If Southern GOP growth originates in the Eisenhower era, then that means the GOP's rise precedes the civil rights era and pursuant laws. It ends one question, but raises another: What is the real cause? Whatever this real cause is, it must, to answer the question, precede the Civil Rights Movement. And it does. It's a real explanation, it's a convincing explanation that matches the data, those are the upsides. The downside is that it's a boring explanation, and that explanation is: economics. Hard to get any explosive headlines out of that, hence it didn't make many headlines, hence it went under the radar, both then and now, but it's the truth. The South's economy before 1940 was a one-crop plantation economy, a third-world country within a first world country in both incomes and human rights (Gavin Wright. Old South, New South: Revolutions in the Southern Economy Since the Civil War (New York, 1986), 50). It was overwhelmingly rural, with 2/3 of its population in towns of 2,500 people or less if not in ouright rural areas. (Leonard Reissman, "Urbanization in the South," in The South in Continuity and Change, ed. John C. McKinney and Edgar T. Thompson (Durham, N.C., 1965), 79). The change underway in the South was noted and bemoaned by William Alexander Percy, son of former Senator LeRoy Percy, in his 1941 book Lanterns on the Levee. Percy, in between complaining about Theodore Bilbo (who certainly gave much cause for complaint) expressed displeasure that the "old Southern way of life" was being supplanted with commerce and money making, and that poverty was no longer "worn with style and dignity, now it was a stigma of failure." (William Alexander Percy, Lanterns on the Levee: Recollections of a Planter's Son (New York, 1941), Foreward, 312) New attitudes accompanied the new economy, as 7 Southern states passed right-to-work laws by 1947: Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia. (NEW SOUTH 49) Many also offered tax writeoffs to move businesses in. (NEW SOUTH 18-19) Over Percy's objections, the Southern economy lunged ahead, not only growing rapidly but closing the lead the rest of the also-growing nonsouthern economy had. At the start of World War 2, about 40% of the Southern workforce worked in agriculture, falling to 1% by 1990. Southern per capita income in 1940, $3,002 (1940 dollars), or 53% of non-South. By 1980, it was $14,138 (1940 dollars) or 85% of the non-South. This per capita growth was so explosive that even the influx of migrants from the North didn't dilute it. (Statistical Abstract ofthe United States, Washington D.C. US Department of Commerce, relevant years). The gigantic change in a compressed time frame could scarcely fail to impact politics, and this change drove rising Republicanism from 1936 until Eisenhower's campaign in 1952, in which the power of Eisenhower's celebrity and falling levels of personal racism combined with the rising urban white-collar Republicanism to flip multiple Southern states. Many Southern states halfheartedly resisted desegregation efforts, but always balked if it endangered Northern investment dollars. (NEW SOUTH. Numan Bartley makes this point repeatedly). In passing, if Jim Crow was so conservative and capitalist, as liberals claim, it's hard to explain why the South becomes less fervent in defending segregation as it gets more business investment (and more Republicanism). Many books cover this subject in some capacity, but the best remains Byron E. Shafer & Richard G.C. Johnston's 2006 classic The End of Southern Exceptionalism. Originally inspired by the reaction to a Nelson Polsby lecture (he'd asserted economics explained Southern Republican growth), the pair realized they could statistically test whether it was true, by examining where within the South the GOP grew first and strongest. If the cause was racial backlash, Republicans would do best in counties and districts with high Black populations, and if the cause was economic, new and rising white collar population districts would be Republican hotbeds.

Economic Development Drove Republican Growth The historic base of the Republican Party, aside from Yankees of all stripes and black freedmen, were the white collar, entrepreneurial types, and of course Appalachians. Blacks shifted to the Democrats in the 1930s, but the other groups remained. The South diverged from the rest of America, in that the rich were the most Democrat. However, upon economic development, the South converged with America, and a class inversion among Southern whites happened (Schafer Johnston 26), as the growing Southern white upper class comprised more self-made and business-oriented folks as compared to traditional planter families. In other words, a growing number of Southerners were the type of people who voted Republican in the rest of the country. It wasn't a "flip" of some widespread wealthy Southern business and professional class because such a thing didn't exist before in the capitalism-hating South. This newly arisen GOP base led to a new GOP. Not only did the electorate become more favorable to the Party of Lincoln on a class basis, those with more money and more education were more likely to bother voting. Turnout was lowest among men with less than a high school diploma, and highest among college educated. (Black & Black, Politics and Society in the South, 193, in NEW SOUTH 416) Thus the white collar GOP backers punched above their weight. In 1980 it added up and between the traditional mountain Republicans, the new suburban white collars, and a proportion of more rural whites, Reagan won most white Southerners; Carter only got 36%, doing best among older and low income whites (aka Wallacites) (Lamis, Two Party South (New York, 1984), 21-26; Black & Black, The Vital South: How Presidents Are Elected (Cambridge, Mass., 1992), 307-312, in NEW SOUTH 455)

Wasn't it Race Tho? Economic development arose first, accompanied by a class inversion which itself was a convergence with the rest of America This new professional and entrepreneurial upper class became an expanding share of the electorate, bringing capitalism and GOP voting to the South (Shafer & Johnston 22, 26) GOP gained evenly each decade, with no rapid acceleration of gains in the 1960s, indicating the primacy of class over race. The top tercile of earners were majority GOP in House elections by the 1970s. By the time the middle tercile, with it the majority of White Southerners, was GOP, the top tercile neared 2/3 Republican support, while low income whites were no more Republican in the 1990s than the 1950s (Schafer & Johnston 27-28) The Voting Rights Act 1965 enfranchised many poor whites as well as Blacks; the electorate tilted poorer (Shafer & Johnston 60-61), hence Republicans stalled, especially in the Deep South. Race-based narratives can't explain a GOP stall in a race-centered decade. The electorate now including many poorer voters put Republicans gains on hold until the sustained development enriched more poor whites, grew cities, spawned suburbs, and made more Southern whites wealthy enough to start voting Republican.

Table 2.3: Social Class and the Coming of Southern Republicanism: The Presidency [% of S. Whites for GOP] (on Shafer & Johnston 31) Tercile 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s LOW 43% 37% 56% 51% 38% MIDDLE 47% 38% 64% 63% 54% HIGH 53% 56% 72% 77% 57% TOTAL 48% 43% 64% 65% 51%

The richest tercile of whites started off at 53% Republican in the Eisenhower years and grew to 77% by the Reagan, a 24% increase. The poorest tercile grew from 43% to 51% in the same time, a 8% jump. The gap between the two grew from 10% in the 1950s to 26% by the Reagan era. That means in order to believe this resulted from race, one would have to believe that money makes a man 26% more racist. Also, one would have to explain why the middle tercile of earners falls between the poorest and the richest tercile so neatly. It's almost like it's really about class rather than race. Adding insult to MSPCT proponents' injury, most of the poorest Republican voters in both the 43% (1950s) and 51% (1980s) cases were traditional Appalachian mountain Republicans. They're technically in the South, but not the racist Democrat base, few of which ever converted (Schafer & Johnston 33) Richer whites led the way, top on down, to flip the South for the GOP. (Shafer & Johnston 174) It's all income based, and moves steadily, not corresponding to any racial event or civil rights law.

White Collar Districts GOP success grows basically in proportion to the number of districts with sizable white-collar workers.(Shafer & Johnston 47) The Peripheral South/Deep South distinction is misunderstood/masks a more relevant distinction, say the authors. The true factor to look at is the number of white collar districts, which they call "New South/Old South." Initially there were more White collar districts in the Peripheral South; the GOP's growth, both in and outside the Deep South, tracks the growth in white collar-intensive districts. (Shafer & Johnston 130) More open seats had a GOP entrant, and GOP vote share was higher. However, the more white collar a district, the more likely a GOP entrant (1962 onward) Whiter, Outer South states (with more white collar voters as well) drew GOP challengers earlier.Some exceedingly long-lived Democrat incumbents slowed GOP gains. Republicans did better in open seats, regardless of other contexts. Incumbent Southern Senators with their careers ended by defeat showed no uptick in the civil rights era. (Shafer & Johnston 138-147) If racial backlash drove Republican growth, we'd have to see incumbent Democrats abandoned in favor of Republicans. We don't.

Racial Context Faced with this economic argument, the dodge Dan Carter uses is that the normal rules can't be applied to the South. The South is different, he says, inherently so. He makes his case in his article "More than Race: Conservatism in the White South since V.O. Key Jr," in Unlocking V.O. Key Jr: Southern Politics for the Twenty-Tirst Century (2011), edited by Angie Maxwell and Todd G. Shields. Dan T. Carter responds to Shafer and Johnston, while also making a wholely inadequate response to a different argument used by Gerard Alexander, a discussion of which is more suited to the "Platforms" chapter. Kevin Kruse got in the act too. In his interminable Twitter threads he posts a screengrab of a hostile review of Southern Exceptionalism, which argues much the same. This "review" mostly consists of the reviewer being outraged anyone would apply econometric methods to test anything about the South, while failing to demonstrate there's anything invalid about doing so. The South, the story goes, is so different that none of their narratives about Magical Switching Parties and mythical white "conservatives" (who vote for the New Deal) can ever be put to the test. But I daresay they have missed the point. The South may have started different, but the point of Shafer & Johnston is that economic development rendered the South less different than it had before said development. Carter objects that race and economics are impossible to separate in the South. Fully granted, it is more difficult to do so when analyzing the South, but it is not impossible, and Shafer & Johnston have done precisely that through the variable of "racial context." By looking first at districts with high percentages of development/white collar workforce percentage, and then at districts where whites are surrounded with high black populations, they can discern which caused the Republican vote share to jump more. The answer is a clear one. Southern whites were less likely to vote Republican in more black contexts, aka in the Black Belts. (Shafer & Johnston 98) This was recognized as early as V.O. Key's 1949 foundational work Southern Politics. Somewhat amusingly, V.O. Key is repeatedly mentioned by people who have obviously not read him directly. I won't bore you with most of the comical but probably good faith errors (most of which wouldn't be that interesting to folks who haven't read Key's 675-page tome anyways). But we should observe something more sinister in Kevin Kruse's mockery of Shafer & Johnston. Kruse's derision of Shafer & Johnston's The End of Southern Exceptionalism for its assertion black-belt whites were more racist in voting habits than less-black areas is unwarranted, and he compounds the offence by citing V.O. Key both in his Twitter threads and in White Flight. He cites extensively from the chapter on Georgia (Chapter 6), yet somehow never makes it to Chapter 14, especially pages 319-326, for where Key notes black-belt whites were more race-obsessed and more Democrat in their voting habits, or to page 514, where Key explains that rural counties with the highest Black concentrations have the highest white Democrat turnout. (Key 514) As for Kevin Phillips oft-cited prediction that Negrophobic whites would quit the Democrats, it simply didn't happen. Not only does Shafer & Johnston's data say so, the reasoning that Blacks would drive the party leftward doesn't figure. Blacks are center-left voters who back establishment candidates like Hillary Clinton or Joe Biden over the fringe candidates like George McGovern or Bernie Sanders. Underscoring things further, radical ideas to destabilize society tend to arise from overpaid academics in their ivory towers; the idea that men should be allowed to pee in the ladies room or that dozens of genders exist most certainly did NOT come from the hood! Ideas such as these came from the campus.

Variations on the Above: The Presidency vs. Congress The Presidential votes is the party's potential, the Congressional votes is the actual philosophical commitment to that party's platform. The presidency is more personality based than other offices. In contrast, the typical person is not likely to know much about their congressman other than his party. The wild Presidential-level fluctuations juxtposed with the steady Congressional rise militates against Joseph Aistrup's "top down" theory. (Joseph A. Aistrup, The Southern Strategy Revisited: Republican Top-Down Advancement in the South. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1996) In passing, Reagan pulled 12 Senators to victory in an atypical 1980, most of whom fell in 1986. It is highly unusual for 12 Senate seats to flip in one fell swoop, 4 or 5 is more commonly seen, sometimes not even that many. That means that looking at more typical years only strengthens the point against the top-down theory. (Shafer & Johnston 16-18) Within the South, the Presidential contests had black belt whites voting more Republican, but this was not mirrored at other levels of government, which perplexes the authors. (Shafer & Johnston 53, 93-98). They speculate perhaps racial preference is voted nationally and economic preference locally, but I find foreign policy--something peculiar to the Presidency--a more compelling explanation. If an effect is only seen with the Presidency, then suspect something unique to the Presidency. The class effect of richer whites voting Republican is seen within Black belts whites regardless. Furthermore, Republicans did worst with whites in more-Black House districts, which only converged with less-Black districts in the 1990s, by which time race wasn't an issue. The covergence occured because upward mobility had diminished the percentage of Southern whites who were poor, and the same story repeated itself in the Senate. (Shafer & Johnston 64-67) This reinforces the foreign policy explanation for the discrepancy between Presidential and Congressional voting before 1990, as there was no meaningful domestic policy debate shift that explains it.

I've Never Heard This Before. Where Are You Getting This? From Shafer & Johnston, who explain their empirical foundations on pages 20-24 of their book. 1) National Election Studies, 1948-2000 Cumulative Data File (Ann Arbor:University of Michigan, Center for Political Studies, 2002)--->The individual level data, social background, voting behavior, issue preference. 2) Census data by district, Congressional District Data Book (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Commerce, 1961, 1973 and supplements); Congressional DIstricts in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s (Washington, D.C. Congressional Quarterly Inc. 1973, 1983, and 1993). 3) Specialized compilations of election outcomes---> Candidate and Constituency Statistics of Elections in the United States, 1788-1990, 5th ICPSR ed. (Ann Arbor: University of Michican, Center for Political Studies, 1995); Guide to US Elections, volumes I & II (Washington, D.C. Congressional Quarterly Inc, 2001); Jerold G. Rusk, ed. A Statistical History of the American Electorate (Washington, D.C. Congressional Quarterly Press, 2001); America Votes (Washington, D.C: Congressional Quarterly, various years); The Almanac of American Politics (Washington, D.C. National Journal, various years); America Votes, initially had a series of short run publishers before becoming institutionalized at Congressional Quarterly; The Almanac of American Politics was first published privately and then by E.P Dutton before becoming institutionalized at National Journal. National Election Studies (NES) data is the source of voting-pattern-by-class information. Started in 1948 with a limited set of questions, a more complete 1952 survey followed. The pattern for Congress is in the data ("discerned easily with 1950's data in the case of Congress"), the Presidential answers "can be teased out of the data in the case of the Presidency." Shifting occupational categories complicate analysis somewhat but NES does "categorize by family income" for 1952-2000. These are income bands/ranges rather than precise figures, but tercile data can be compliled from the raw info. (Shafer & Johnston 23-24) As a qualifier, regarding the National Election Statistics were the Senate elections data source: Uncontested seats can mess with the data quality for early years when GOP didn't run challengers. (Shafer & Johnston 37)

Closing and Summary These facts have been long suppressed to help Democrats push a narrative. We can tell because little of what was just recounted here was unknowable at the time it was happening. In fact, a great many people at the time knew it was happening and said so! Donald Strong found urban Republicanism on the rise as early as 1940-1944, especially among higher income voters. This longtime trend continued and multiplied. (Strong, Donald. The 1952 Presidential Election in the South. University, Alabama: Bureau of Public Administration, 1953, cited in RHODES 53-55) "As was the case in the rest of the country, it was among the higher income, suburban dwellers that Republican voting manifested itself most strongly in the Peripheral South." "The Republican success continued the pattern established in the 1930s by electing candidates in primarily traditional Republican areas (dating from the time of the Civil War) and from primarily urban/suruban areas populated by middle-class professionals, in-migrants from other parts of the country who brought their Republicanism with them, and older invididuals retiring to warmer climates." (RHODES 55) Barry Goldwater in his 1970 book Conscience of a Majority notes GOP Presidential candidate Thomas Dewey made huge gains in South in 1944 and 1948, "polling one-third of the total popular vote in the area embraced by Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia," the gains concentrated in urban areas. (Conscience of a Majority 53-55) This means the truth was known, willfuly buried, and then rediscovered by Nelson Polsby, Dinesh D'Souza and Sean Trende and Byron Shafer and Richard Johnston later. There wasn't a switch of "Southern white conservative" voters to Republicans. There was a Reagan-inspired conversion to conservatism by Southern white voters, to match the economic reality. The GOP is the party of the middle class, not white solidarity. They won the Outer South before the Deep South, white collar voters over blue collar voters, and the money-focused over the race-focused. If the MSPCT is true, the GOP gains should have begun in the Deep South and spread to the Outer South, and been stronger with older than younger whites, poorer than richer, rural than urban or suburban, native born than Northern transplants, and show up on electoral map as votes from Goldwater/Wallace counties moreso than Ike/Nixon counties. Each prediction is wrong. Ike won Virginia, Tennessee, Florida, and Texas and turned in the best GOP results yet in other states, came close in North Carolina both times. Nixon repeats the trick in 1960, though more weakly, and hence doesn't become President. The rest of the party fits the pattern as well. "In the 1960s and '70s, nearly three-quarters of GOP House victories were in the Peripheral rather than the Deep South, with the GOP winning twice as often in urban as rural districts. And six of the eight different Southern Republican Senators elected from 1961 to 1980 were from the Peripheral South. GOP candidates tended consistently to draw their strongest support from the more educated, middle- and upper-income white voters in small cities and suburbs. In fact, Goldwater in 1964—at least his Deep South performance, which is all that was controversial in this regard—was an aberration, not a model for the GOP." (Gerard Alexander, "The Myth of the Racist Republicans: The truth about the Southern Strategy," Claremont Review of Books, Vol. IV Number 2, Spring 2004.) * * * Putting It All Together: Nixon's 1968 Voting Bloc, A Middle Class Campaign One oft-repeated story is that Nixon's voters would have Wallace's voters, or vice versa, and that Nixon had to use coded racial appeals to get Southern voters from Wallace. It lacks plausibility for several reasons. First, if Nixon was someone they could have supported why didn't they? Unlike Wallace, Nixon had a shot. If he offered what they truly wanted, why not? Second, contrary to common assertions that Wallace ran "to Nixon's right," Governor George Corley Wallace didn't run a particularly conservative campaign. The Alabamian promised Medicare and Social Security increases, an immediate end to the Vietnam War, opposed right-to-work laws, and denounced concentrations of wealth. He sounds more Huey Long than Ronald Reagan, a fact not lost on New Leftist Jack Newfield, who wrote in 1971, "I cannot recall either Johnson in 1964 or Humphrey in 1968 campaigning on any positive or exciting ideas that might excite the almost-poor workers, whose votes they took for granted...In contrast, George Wallace had been sounding like Williams Jennings Bryan as he attacked concentrated wealth in his speeches..." In addition to outside speculation about behavior, in addition to the assessment Wallace's appeals were qualitatively different, there's another hurdle. Richard M. Scammon and Ben J. Wattenberg, in The Real Majority: An Extraordinary Examination of the American Electorate (New York, 1970), proved at length that Wallace voters and Nixon voters were not the same group of people. This was confirmed by other authors, who declared "Republicans and Wallacites are different types of people--they belong to different kinds of clubs and churches, go different places on Saturday night and Sunday morning, and respond differently to "bigness." (James Clotfeller and WIlliam R. Hamilton, "Beyond Race Politics: Electing Southern Populists in the 1970s" in You Can't Eat Magnolias, ed. H. Brandt Ayers and Thomas H. Naylor (New York, 1972), 155). Polls about a month about from election day, 1968, showed Nixon with 43% Humphrey at 29%, and Wallace at 22%. Before election day Nixon and Humphrey were both at 42% and Wallace was at 13%. Wallace's support went to Humphrey, not Nixon! More polls showed Wallace winning almost half of union members in Summer 1968. Humphrey regained them with claims that Nixon would dismantle various pro-labor & big government things they liked. So if a big government-loving voting bloc would consider Wallace, that precludes them from being Nixon voters (except if Democrats run someone kookoo like McGovern). Voter analysis of subsequent Presidential contests shows Jimmy Carter got the Wallace vote in 1976. (Alexander Lamis, Two Party South, 37-39, Black & Black, The Vital South, 239-31) As Shafer and Johnston show, he largely held it in 1980 as well. The voter data from 1968 alone also belies notions of a "Southern strategy," Nixon won the same groups North and South. He did best with richer voters (or the richest available voters) North and South, his numbers for "Middle income urban" and "Low income urban" are no more than a couple points off (44 vs 40, 19 vs 18), and for him to scored worse with "Rural (all income)" in the South means those mostly likely to, per that description, be Black belt racists, were the LEAST likely to have voted for Nixon, and most "Rural" in the Southern states were, per county maps, the Appalachian folks that backed the GOP Ike and before. That his numbers in both North and South are practically identical broken down by demographics and income proves he had no "Southern strategy," at least not anything like the kind he's accused of.

NBC sample precincts 1968 election: Whole nation Humphrey Nixon Wallace High income urban 29 63 5 Middle income urban 43 44 13 Low income urban 69 19 12 Rural (all income) 33 46 21 African-American neighborhoods 94 5 1 Italian neighborhoods 51 39 10 Slavic neighborhoods 65 24 11 Jewish neighborhoods 81 17 2 Unionized neighborhoods 61 29 10 Source: Congressional Quarterly Weekly Report. "Group Analysis of the 1968 Presidential Vote," XXVI, No. 48 (November 1968), p.3218

NBC sample precincts 1968 election: South only Humphrey Nixon Wallace Middle income urban neighborhoods 28 40 32 Low income urban neighborhoods 57 18 25 Rural (all income) 29 30 41 African-American neighborhoods 95 3 2 Hispanic neighborhoods 92 7 1 Source: Congressional Quarterly Weekly Report. "Group Analysis of the 1968 Presidential Vote," XXVI, No. 48 (November 1968), p.3218 * * * 1972 Explained Nixon won the whole South in 1972, say the narrative pushers, to which the facts reply, "Actually, Nixon won every state not named 'Massachusetts,' even managing to take Hawaii with 62% of the vote." On YouTube, one can find uploads of old "Big Three" election night broadcasts, and in 1972, Nixon was leading in NYC itself until late into the night. Nixon won every county in 20 states, held McGovern to one county in 6 more, and permitted McGovern 2 counties in an additional ten states. It's staggering to contemplate, but McGovern won 2 or fewer counties in 36 states, and 130 counties nationwide. Try as narrative pushers might, there is simply no way to pretend a national landslide is the result of a "Southern strategy." All their blithering about Nixon's secret racist dogwhistles fall flat, the obvious fact is McGovern was simply a nut, and 49 states saw it, and even without Watergate, McGovern would have lost badly. But try they do. First there is the notion that Wallace voters were Nixon voters, when they weren't. There's little Nixon did between 1968 and 1972 that would have turned Wallace voters into Nixon voters that would have not also turned everyone else into a Nixon voter. Nixon's support for school desegregation (which largely happened on his watch) and for the Philadelphia Plan's affirmative action schemes would if anything repel Wallace voters, and Nixon's opposition to bussing held no appeal peculiar to Wallace voters, it was unpopular just about everywhere with just about everybody. Were Nixon to have done any such thing, he'd have lost huge swathes of voters elsewhere in the nation (for more see Barry Goldwater's 1964 campaign, Adlai Stephenson's campaigns in 1952 and 1956, George Wallace in 1968, James M. Cox in 1920, John W. Davis in 1924, and Al Smith in 1928.) It also cannot explain why Nixon won 18% of black vote in 1972, up from 9% in 1968. How can supposed appeals to racism have caused his Black vote share to double? This makes no sense! Even if one is determined to assert a counterfactual, to assert Nixon's Deep South performance outdoing the rest of the nation in 1972, and that Nixon's 1972 percentages roughly approximate the combined 1968 Nixon + 1968 Wallace percentages, this contention collapses under a look of the actual vote counts. Vote counts show Blacks stayed home. 1972 turnout is lower than 1968. McGovern underperforms Humphrey even though it was a 3 way race in 1968. Turnout down, Democrat totals down more. As Deep South Democrat votes in 1968 for Humphrey essentially = Blacks, that McGovern amassed a lower number votes shows Blacks didn't vote. McGovern frightened many with his radicalism (and it was the campus crazies which drove Democrats left and picked McGovern, not Blacks, who are more center-left than hard-left). In Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, and South Carolina, vote totals and Democrat vote share declined, despite the uptick in registration. The Democrat vote tallies for for these states were higher in both 1968 and 1976. In Alabama, turnout down was also down, but Democrat vote only marginally (10K) higher. This explains WHY Deep South Nixon's best area in 1972: If your opponents base stays home, your percentage of the overall vote jumps higher. The vote count illuminates the matter, and also explains the nearly all red county maps. Also, if it's a scandal they went Wallace to Nixon, how about consequently going to Carter? As for "how can they have been not conservative," consider Nixon's DW-NOMINATE/voteview.com score from his Senatorial days (+.162) vs McGovern's (-.573, consistently in the top 4 or 5 most liberal). A 1971 study of Georgia and South Carolina gubernatorial elections found the 1968 Wallace voters returned to, and stayed within the Democratic party in overwhelming numbers" (Murphy, Reg, and Hal Gulliver. The Southern Strategy. New York: Charles Scribners' Sons, 1971, p191), and insofar as they didn't think of themselves as Democrats, they thought of themselves as independents rather than Republicans (Sundquist, James L. Dynamics of the Party System: Alignment and Realignment of Political Parties in the United States. Washington, D.C.: The Brookings Institution, 1973, 347) Most Wallace districts returned to Carter in 1976, and even in 1980, 38/48 districts for Carter. Reagan did best in Nixon districts, Nixon did better in LBJ districts than Goldwater districts. Goldwater is a dead end, not a transitional figure. Neither Goldwater and Wallace were bridges to anywhere, if county vote maps or consulted, or income/age/rural v. urban data for that matter. Wallace voters held a different class composition than Reagan's coalition. . A "bridge candidate" can't have a different vote profile than the subsequent recipient! Both Thurmond and Wallace are bridges to nowhere. (Schafer & Johnston 168-171) * * * Bridge Candidates: A Hoax Within a Hoax Bridge candidates are a myth. While Kevin Phillips in Emerging Republican Majority suggests there is such a thing, the two major proponents of the "Bridge Candidate theory" are Dan T. Carter (The Politics of Rage: George Wallace, the Origins of the New Conservatism and the Transformation of American Politics. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995; also, Carter, Dan T. From George Wallace to Newt Gingrich: Race in the Conservative Counterrevolution, 1963-1994. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1996) and Kari Frederickson. (The Dixiecrat Revolt and the End of the Solid South, 1932-1968. Chapel Hil: University of North Carolina Press, 2001.) The trouble with bridge candidates is the data says they're bridges to nowhere. Not that it even makes sense if all you look at is rhetoric. Big spending George Wallace is not a bridge to small government Republicanism, as much as Cherrypickin' Dan Carter frames Wallaces as Proto-Reagan; nor is Strom Thurmond's racial rhetoric a pathway for anyone to vote for pro-civil rights Eisenhower. It takes a massive amount of deceptive clipping and omission of quotations and mischaracterization of historical events to make it look like one leads to the other. As for the data it shows Eisenhower, Nixon, Ford, and Reagan did best among white-collar, wealthier (or at least upwardly mobile), suburban, younger, and more educated voters, the only exceptions being the rural mountain voters of Appalachia, who were already Republican since the Civil War-era; in other words, Republicans did best with those voters least preoccupied with race. Wallace did better among blue collar, poorer, rural, older, and less educated voters. A bridge candidate cannot have a different vote profile than the subsequent recipient! Then there's the county or district level data. Ike's 1952 counties of Appalachian and Southern suburban middle class support only overlap a handful Thurmond's 1948 counties, as even a passing look will show. The only state showing a Dixiecrat-to-Ike trajectory was South Carolina, because Thurmond endorsed Eisenhower. The rest of it, it's just not there. Kevin Phillips, for his part, sees mirages at times as he makes several statements that are dubious and several predictions that fail to come to fruition. He (Phillips 218-219) contends that Black Belt 1948 Dixiecrats backed conservative economic policies and that the populist New Deal lovers were the poorer whites of the Pineywoods and the Piedmont foothills. This is incorrect, because the Black Belts were in fact FDR's strongest areas of support, both in the South and nationally, as the maps from 1932-1944 demonstrate. Support for FDR and Stephenson is correlated with support for Dixiecrats far more than support for Eisenhower is. This is seen even more clearly on a district basis, where Thurmond carried 29 districts, 25 of which went to Democrat Adlai Stephenson in 1952. Most Ike districts were Truman districts, most Thurmond's went to Stephenson. The only parts of the Deep South that liked Ike all that much were the urban areas, and it was largely class based. Nixon won Florida, Virginia, Tennessee in 1960, nearly Texas, no Supposed Southern Strategy required. 4 Districts went Thurmond to Ike (if county maps are any indication, at least 2 were in South Carolina), but 26 Truman districts went to Ike in 1952. (Note for the nerds: While NES lacks individual-level data as far back as 1948, the basically all-white electorate makes figuring answers clear enough. (Shafer & Johnston 166-167) Figure 5.13 Superimposes 1940s district boundries over the 1952 vote. Before the strict "one man, one vote" standard resulting from SCOTUS rulings like Baker v. Carr (1962) and Reynold v. Sims (1964), districts were drawn on the county lines (for 1952 only, Orleans parish was subdivided) so 1940s to 1950s, fairly easy calculation.) All the same things doom any idea Goldwater was a transitional figure: "As Havard (1972, p439) and Sudquist (1973, p257) found, the Republican increases in the 1964 election and the resulting aftermath in the Deep South were due to alienated Democrats who generally returned to the Democratic party after Goldwater was gone. The one exception to this was South Carolina, where Senator Strom Thurmond's early switch to the Republican party established a base and a legitimacy for two party growth. (Cosman, Five States, 1967, p.65)" (RHODES 100, citing Havard, William C. The Changing Politics of the South. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1972 and Sundquist, James L. Dynamics of the Party System: Alignment and Realignment of Political Parties in the United States. Washington, D.C.: The Brookings Institution, 1973) As for George Wallace, most of the Wallace districts returned to Carter in 1976 and even in 1980, 38 of 48 districts for Carter. Reagan did best in Nixon districts, and Nixon and Reagan both did better in LBJ districts (and for that matter Eisenhower districts) than Goldwater districts. Goldwater is a dead end, not a transitional figure. Neither Goldwater nor Wallace were bridges to anywhere, the data proves it. (SHAFER JOHNSTON P168-171) Sorry Dan Carter, you wrote a whole book for nothing! Also, it's going to be hard for Wallace to be a bridge to the Republicans when he stayed a Democrat, and a popular one at that. He was very much in the running in the 1972 DNC primary when shot, which all but ended his campaign. His performance still got 23.5% of the overall primary vote (3rd), and he did better in primaries than caucuses, meaning he still possessed real support among Democrats rather merely than a knowledge of working the caucus system. He did well in Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Indiana, meaning he wasn't simply getting his votes milking the South either. * * * The Hitjob That Fails to Refute Shafer & Johnston, or, Can You Believe Wiki Lets Liberals Use This as a Source? One final note, there is a hit piece on Schafer and Johnston's book, cited in Wiki for Democrat Party page to back this claim that The Second Republican Conquest of Dixie (the first being the Civil War) was all about race. This article in question is by Ilyana Juziemko and Ebonya Washington, entitled "Why Did Democrats Lose The South? Bringing New Data to an Old Debate," American Economic Review, Vol. 108, No. 10, Oct.? 2018, pp. 2830-67. I have to say, and I don't say this lightly, this is probably the single sleaziest, most dishonest work I have ever seen done anywhere. Never has a single work, in so few pages, ever managed to omit so many easily findable facts and frame and phrase things in such a consistent effort to hide the ball. And that's before we get to the "data" that they just plain MADE UP! Starting with Figure 1, about Democrat party identification, the decline is as fast 1950-1060 as it is 1960 to 1970. You'll see it in the chart, but not in their text. Democrat self identification rises in the 1970s, and is no lower in 1980 than 1970. It plummets again after 1980, but by then civil rights isn't the issue. Also, they're trying to shoehorn it to Truman and his civil rights move, as though it was genuine, as though it wasn't later abandoned in exchange for anti-McCarthy support in Congress, as though the Democrats didn't spend most of the 1950s reversing course, as though the Democrat Southern vote share hadn't been falling since 1936 anyway. Buried on page 17 and 38, when it should be on page 1, is that the increase in Republican identification was only 1/3 the Democrat identification decrease. Figure 2 refutes their own argument: General Social Surveys 1874-2010 and the Gallup 1958-2013, the "Black President" question shows the gap between the South and the non-South closed 1960-1975, the South hit 50% between 1970-1975, and has been above 60% since 1975. Figure 3 (% that say Democrat or Republican party will integrate schools) and Figure 4 (JFK approval in various regions in country vs civil rights headlines in NYT) only prove people react to what they're told, not whether it was true. The article also engages in nonstop circular reasoning and passes it off as analysis, defining conservatism as racism and racism as conservatism. They also self-own by admitting Southern whites had a higher support for government healthcare and government action against big business. These non-conservatives are then called "racially conservative" to fit a narrative. Crowning all previous dishonesty, the authors on pages 17-18, authors concoct a "predicted" measure of racism and assume all pre-1963 sentiment are hidden but there as a basis to ignore the rise in GSS/Gallup data on Black President acceptance. For racism to vanish as GOP wins start amassing is not something they can afford to concede. The central fallacies and distortions are using 1948 as a start point instead of 1936, using surveys rather than voting data, then assuming the survey data is lying when it won't give them the result they want and constructing a bogus regression analysis based on circular reasoning to "prove" racism is still there. On top of that, the fact that it is built on surveys rather than voting data makes this an exercise in analyzing 2nd rate data, which fails too so they invent pretend "predicted racism" to make it work. Even when they do mention voter data, they gut their credibility by botching basic facts. Blacks became Democrats in the 1930s, not the 1960s. JFK's Catholicism didn't cost him Southern votes to Nixon; declining Democrat vote share continues the 1936-1960 trend, and the Deep South backed Catholic Al Smith in 1928 more strongly than anywhere else. Compounding all the above, the study refers only to the Presidency, ignoring the House, Senate, Governors, or State Legislatures. * * * The "White Flight" Hoax

To Rescue the Unrescue-able Long before this writing, leftists noticed their own "Southern Strategy" story did have some holes in it. But the Magical Switching Parties Conspiracy Theory is central to Democrats and their pretense that controlling your life is about "fighting racism." Alternative explanations for GOP gains like the religious right or suburban growth or more capitalism must be tarred with racism to rescue their story. But all their attempts to attack suburbs and middle-class values only underscore their problem: real explanations don't need to be rescued.

"Honey, I Smeared the Suburbs," by Kevin M(ontebank) Kruse The latest dunce craze sweeping the nation is that of Kevin Kruse, and his book White Flight. In it, Kruse alleges not only did whites leave Atlanta because of anti-Black animus, but they developed modern conservatism (filled with hidden racial motivations and coded language of course) as a result. Kruse is an exceptional historian...in that he builds his case on exceptions. And trivia, don't forget trivia. For instance, Kruse begins his fake arc of history with the Columbians, a group of hooligans in post World-War 2 Atlanta, with aims of national control, purchasing South Africa from Britain, and deportation all American Blacks thereto. Columbians wore Nazi-like khaki uniforms and frequently marched in the streets, they claimed to be 2,000 strong but more likely numbered around 200. They also professed their vision of a "progressive white community," but in his zeal to make them predecessors to Newt Gingrich, Kruse leaves that part out. (All this info, minus my editorializing, is from Edward A. Hatfield, "Columbians," 1/25/2008, newgeorgiaencyclopedia.org) The first problem is the failure to consider alternative explanations. Why live in suburb? There are plenty of non-racial reasons to leave a city. One can attend to all its benefits while suffering none of the inconveniences from crime to corruption to pollution. The second problem is the timeframe not working: his story only makes sense if you don't know suburbs were being rapidly built in the 1920s, a trend put on pause for two decades by the Depression. His story depends on suburbs being an invention of the late 40s and early 50s. As for moving out en masse, that's just ethnic succession. Many neighborhoods in major cities have ethnic succession, in which some moved in, followed by a different ethnic group, and the last wave was Black. But the last wave is hyped as something malign because the group moving out and the group moving in are visually distinct. And what about the reverse? Around 1900, Polish immigrants moved into many Detroit neighborhoods and blacks began moving out. Are blacks guilty of anti-Polish (and presumably anti-Catholic) prejudice? A third gigantic problem is which whites left the cities tells us why they left the cities. Most "suburbs are racist" theorists tell you only the aggregate story: blacks were moving into the city and whites were moving out, which without the details looks worse than it is. However, an analysis of suburbs 1940-1970 in 70 Northern & Western metro areas showed, per Census Burea maps, in 1940, average white urban household lived 3 miles away from a black enclave. For most whites, blacks were an abstraction. In 1970, areas adjacent to black enclaves became black, but distant areas remained white. Only 1/3 of white neighborhoods in 1940s cities bordered a black enclaves, and said whites were more than 1/3 of leavers. But the clear majority of leavers were leaving all white neighborhoods, selling their old residences to other whites. So all told, "white flight" as commonly described was a thing, but not much of a thing. An fourth, and even more gigantic problem is that cities in the plains and mountains states with next to no black people populations grew suburbs in the same time frame, cities such as St. Paul and Minneapolis, Omaha, Lincoln, Denver, Boise, and Phoenix. (All this and more found in Leah Boustan, "The Culprits Behind White Flight," New York Times, May 15, 2017). The fifth and final insurmountable hurdle to this story is Black flight, and what they declare they fled, namely, they fled the hood and do not appreciate politicians subsidizing the hood to follow them. "The harshest criticism of dispersing public housing's tenants comes not from whites but from blacks. In Harvey, a struggling, working class African-American suburb south of the city, nearly one of every 10 housing units is already occupied by renters with subsidies." (Alex Kotlowitz, "Where is Everyone Going?" , March 10, 2002) The resistance of working- and middle-class blacks "in some cases has been fierce." Black homeowners "protested, loudly" at public meetings that they "didn't want 'those people' moving back into their rejuvenated neighborhood." Often homeowners at public gatherings "would shout at officials that they'd worked hard to get where they were and that they didn't want to live next door to people who would just tear up their homes. They called them 'project people,' 'lowlifers' and 'freeloaders.'" (Alex Kotlowitz, "Where is Everyone Going?" Chicago Tribune, March 10, 2002) "Some blacks feel that 'those people' make it tough on those of us trying to make something of ourselves," says Shirly Newsome, a homeowner in Kenswood-Oakland and a longtime voice of moderation. "That's why white America doesn't want me living next to them, because they look at me and figure I'm from a place like public housing.'" (Alex Kotlowitz, "Where is Everyone Going?" Chicago Tribune, March 10, 2002) What motivates moving to the suburbs is self interest, not white solidarity. The movement of whites to suburbs has less to do with black people and more to do with the fact that white incomes tripled from 1939-1960, and if one can own a house in a nice area, why not? It was a symbol of success. Later, the Black, Hispanic, and Asian middle classes moved to suburbs as well, and to the extent anyone remains in the city, to that extent they aren't their race's middle class. The "white flight" as described by Kontextless Kevin Kruse and other narrative pushers is nothing but a conspiracy theory. * * * Misleading Phrasings and Framings, or My Deconstructive Delight! Deconstruction time! Now that we've seen the raw data and done the analysis, let's reverse engineer how those promoting the Magical Switching Parties Conspiracy Theory did it. First, they hype 1964 while not showing us the details of 1968, by "using states to conceal what counties reveal" in order to hide the continuity 1952/1956/1960/1968/1976/1980. The continuity into the 1980 election is concealed through use of entire state maps, firstly be omitting the percentages, secondly by omitting the county maps, thirdly by omiting other characteristics that would tell us who was voting for who, such as income/class, the urban & suburban verus rural divide, and the Outer South/Deep South cultural areas the voters inhabited. There's a selective focus on the South in 1972, when Nixon won the whole country. Then there's how they portray 1964. It's portrayed as a landmark, a watershed. They make statements like "Republicans won white vote starting in 1964/ever since 1964," Well, Republicans won the white vote in 1952, 1956, 1960, and many before (though to find requires looking pre-New Deal era). The Republicans won the white vote in 1860 and 1864 as well. They lost the Black vote in the 1930s, but had they beaten Roosevelt in 1940 or 1944, they'd have "won the white vote" then too. But the timeline is artificially begun in 1964 to push the narrative. That's like saying "ever since yesterday, my roommate has been sober." While true, they've no doubt been sober at some point before yesterday as well, though that's not the impression the literal text conveys. Also, both parties were majority white throughout their entire history; the Democrats, if that has changed, it has changed in the last cycle or two. (Winning most of the minority vote doesn't necessarily mean that the party is mostly composed of minorities) We see similar tricks used to describe the growth of the GOP, starting the timeline in 1960 or 1964 or whatever date is convenient for the theory. The GOP was gaining a seat here and there mirroring Ike's strongest areas, such as some urban and suburban seats in Florida and Texas during the 1950s. The growth is also seldom subdivided into Outer South or Deep South, to disguise that the GOP did best where racism didn't. A focus on the Deep South and misrepresentation of several cycles undergirds the narrative as well. The story they want to tell is that "three straight elections of not-Democrats, begun by Goldwater, with one interruption from Carter, then Reagan seals it." Not only must county vote patterns be concealed for this story to work, it counts on belief that Goldwater, Wallace, and Nixon were peas in a pod with the same broad worldview. Kevin M(ontebank) Kruse on Twitter relates the anecdote of George Corley Wallace trying to become Goldwater's VP, but it was Goldwater's people who did the refusing. They were selling something different, and their vote profiles outside the Deep South show it. In the 1964 Democratic primary, for example, big-spending liberal Wallace did well in Baltimore, Milwaukee, and Gary, whereas Goldwater did not. (Ripon 36). Wallace came from, and returned to, the Democratic Party, and Wallace's voters mostly became Carter's voters. Reagan won white-collar and wealthier whites, and barely carried most Southern states in 1980, winning most of what he won by under 5%, many by under 3%, and failing to take Georgia. Also, those whites in the South weren't "conservative Southern whites." If they were so "conservative," they wouldn't be electing representatives who weren't. Not only were most of the segregationists left of center (voteview.com), so were the other Democrats voted to replace them for an average of several decades more. These socalled "conservative Southern Democrats" that with Republicans supposedly made between "conservative coalitions" or "conservative majorities in congress," how about you tell me what great "conservative bills they passed?" Oh, that's right they didn't, because Southern Democrats weren't "conservative," and voted with their party, and against Republicans the majority of the time. Yet no amount of evidence keeps MSPCT advocates from repeating this trope repeatedly. Southern Whites are lumped together, and they say "the GOP won a majority of Southern Whites"--but which ones? When we subdivide them by income, urban vs. rural, age, white collar versus blue collar, Outer South versus Deep South, we see the one that is less racist becoming Republican and more racist staying Democrat. And of course, the story of Black voters, when and why they became Democrats, and what they supported before then is simply not delved into * * * * * How Blacks Became Democrats: The True Story of Dubious DuBois and His Pernicious Myths

Blacks Before DuBois and The Big 1930s Sellout: Republican, Capitalist, and Conservative How Blacks became Democrats? There's more than meets the eye. Firstly, many people believe it happened in the 1960s, over civil rights. It didn't. The black vote moved from being over 70% Republican in 1932 to about 75% Democrat in 1936, and the GOP has never won a majority of the Black vote, nor anything close, since 1932. The Black vote switching to the Democrats in the 1930s means that Blacks voting Democrat is not about civil rights. The Big 1930s Sellout was about the New Deal, and all the government jobs Democrats created, at taxpayer expense. True, most relief programs excluded blacks and second rate government jobs were the best offered because FDR needed Southern Democrat support for his bills (for more see Columbia historian Ira Katznelson's Fear Itself), but in the Depression, it seemed the best deal available. Better still, recognizing FDR's meddling prevented recovery. But I will not fault black voters for misunderstanding economics, because given FDR's margins of victory, it is clear most of the country didn't understand economics either. But even this raises another question. Following the 1921 stock market crash, the government stayed out and the downturn ended inside 18 months. Most depressions quickly end, absent political meddling. Black votes stayed Republican. Even the "Long Depression" of the 1870s and the 1890s downturn failed to shake their loyalty. Why the 1929 crash? The only answer is the previously conservative capitalist black voter now embraced government as the solution. The leftist narrative that the GOP was "liberal" then and that Blacks were voting for a "liberal" party is an attempt to hide that Blacks weren't always liberal, and don't have to be liberal now. It is an attempt to hide that the conservatives of their did the heavy lifting for civil rights when it was neither easy nor popular. It is an attempt to hide that there was a shift. A philosophical shift indeed, but how did it happen? Who made it happen? As recently as Booker Washington, death in 1915, most blacks were capitalists. The answer appears to be W.E.B DuBois, a man whose civil rights bona fides need more scrutiny then they get. For example, DuBois attacks Booker Washington in his book The Souls of Black Folk, ignoring the context of Jim Crow's imposition in the 1890s and the weak hand he was dealt, and accuses him of being an Uncle Tom for his Atlanta Compromise. Yet DuBois was the real sellout, backing the Klan enthusiast Woodrow Wilson, who promptly segregated the Federal government and caused a Klan revival. And we know Booker Washington did more for civil rights than DuBois, as he spoke out against lynching, lobbied congress to ban it (and railway segregation), and most significantly, though at the time, invisibly and secretly, funding lawsuits against various features of Jim Crow from vote deprivation to the Bailey v. Alabama anti-peonage case. (Robert Norrell, Up From History (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2009), 83, 392, 406) But what did DuBois achieve for civil rights? Nothing...in between endorsing Wilson and several foreign despots.

Who Was W.E.B. DuBois and What Ideas Did He Promote? DuBois he was influential, as a pernicious mythmaker responsible for any number of ridiculous lies. James Weldon Johnson said effects on Black attitudes as great as Uncle Tom's Cabin on antebellum public. As for why all too many of today's black socalled "leaders" mirror his dislike of Booker Washington, it may have something to do with him making statements like this: "There is another class of colored people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs, and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Having learned that they are able to make a living out of their troubles, they have grown into the settled habit of advertising their wrongs--partly because they want sympathy and partly because it pays. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievences, because they do not want to lose their jobs." (My Larger Education, Being a Chapter from My Experience (1911), Ch. v: The Intellectuals and the Boston Mob, pg. 118). Washington never preached hatred of America either. Of Washington, C. Van Woodward said, "The businessman's gospel of free enterprise, competition, and laissez faire never had a more loyal exponent." That such a man was viewed as Frederick Douglass' successor tells us Blacks weren't liberals before The Big 1930s Sellout; they were conservatives and capitalists knowingly backing a conservative capitalist Republican Party. Southern Blacks created and ran their own businesses, becoming barbers, undertakers, restauranteurs, shopkeepers, etc. "According to the most conservative estimates, the living standard of the average southern black more than doubled between 1865 and 1890. But this only made southern whites more angry and vindictive." (CARNES GARRATY 540) There once was Black Wall Street, destroyed in the Tulsa race riot of 1921. But ever since W.E.B. DuBois and the switch to the Democrat party, the initiative was drained, and the thinking of the community became government-centric, to the point where bogus accusations of racism are thrown at Nixon for advocating the very "Black capitalism" that was once commonplace! And this hatred of capitalism has only grown, stoked by Democrats to this day, and expresses itself by hatred of whatever capitalists still show up in the hood, be they Jewish, Korean, or Arab.

DuBois and His Great Love For Dictatorships W.E.B. DuBois praised Stalin, writing "Stalin was a great man; few other men of the 20th century approach his stature," and that he "set Russia on the road to conquer race prejudice" (DuBois, on Stalin, National Guardian, March 16, 1953) Yes, he wrote that in 1953! Even most liberals had figured out Stalin was toxic by then! W.E.B DuBois admired Hitler as well, as "absolutely necessary to get the state in order," and "showed Germany a way out," making the country a "content and prosperous whole." In 1937, he wrote "There is today in some respects more democracy in Germany than there has been in years past." He even said Nazi was more rational becaues it was based on "reasoned prejudice or economic fear," , contrasting American [Democrat] racism unfavorably with it. As late as 1955, he credited Hitler, who "built a magnificient system of roads and excellent public housing, controlled finance and wages, owned railroads, telegraphs and telephones." (Werner Sollors, "W.E.B. Du Bois in Nazi Germany," Chronicle of Higher Education, November 12, 1999, chronicle.com; Philip S. Foner, ed., W.E.B. Du Bois Speaks (New York: Pathfinder, 1988), p.286, 319) Dubious DuBois was more concerned with progressivism and elitism than freedom. The NAACP grew annoyed his pro-dictator pronouncements, compounded by his 1934 reversal, for reasons known only to him, on "separate but equal." This confused the NAACP and the resulting argument preceded DuBois' resignation from the organization. This is not to say DuBois opposed civil rights but whenever asked to prioritize technocracy or civil rights, technocracy invariably won. Seen in this light, his choice of Wilson in 1912 only figures.

His Role in The Big 1930s Sellout W.E.B DuBois, or as we should perhaps call him, Dubious DuBois, was a well-educated elitist. As an elitist, he was a socialist. As a socialist, he hated capitalism, and loved big government, and was willing to distory history and recast Blacks as inherent anti-capitalist radicals...even though Blacks in his day created a very capitalist Black Wall Street and even though to this day radical anti-capitalist candidates like Bernie Sanders don't get black support. In Black Reconstruction (1935), he declared Blacks always were--or should be--anti-capitalist, and his formulation was as follows: Capitalism = slavery, so resistance and stalling under slavery = parallel to foot dragging under capitalism now; that slaves were analogous to labor unions. REALITY: Abolitionists were Republicans and CAPITALISTS, who opposed slavery because, among other things, it was a form of legalized, government-enforced theft, the opposite of capitalist free exchange But he had to leave that part out because he loved big government and wanted Blacks to become Democrats, because they were the party of big government. The problem was that the Democrats were also the party of lynching and Jim Crow, on the heels of being the party of slavery. So how was Dubious DuBois to move Blacks from being Republican capitalists who started and ran their own businesses (Black Wall Street) to Democrats begging the government and demanding handouts and government programs ? Dubious DuBois found his solution in BLAMING AMERICA. In his 1903 work The Souls of Black Folk, Dubious DuBois launched the bogus narrative that "America" was a "guilty nation" rather than the Democrats being the guilty party, that "white people" were all guilty. To that end he invented a conspiracy theory blaming America itself, with big government as the solution; for if "America" and "White people" were all guilty anyway, why not vote for the Democrats? This pedantic and silly story is what Democrats still run with. The New York Times 1619 Project is just an updated version of Dubious DuBois original hitjob. After beginning the tradition of blaming "America" for slavery in The Souls of Black Folk (1903), DuBois dreams bigger. In The Negro (1915), DuBois promotes anti-capitalist sentiments, and has what can vaguely be described as a racialized, Pan-African version of Lenin's Imperialism, before Lenin (1917) wrote his book. In Darkwater (1920), we see a racialized exploitation/imperialism theory at least this early, maybe before. In historical context, this comes right after the Russian Revolution. DuBois also proved an early trendsetter in not only blaming America, but pretending it is the worst of all countries, saying not only is the South "America's Belgium" vis a vis the Congo (Darkwater 34; see also Darkwater 50, "No nation is less fitted for this role" & surrounding paragraph.) Mind you, all he complains about was previously a regional problem, increasingly taken national by the federalizing of discrimination, courtesy of the very Woodrow Wilson he endorsed (and continued by FDR later). Darkwater also mentions no party names, and Lincoln only once. It's like there's some weapons-grade obfuscation underway. In Black Reconstruction (1935), W.E.B. DuBois portrays the GOP as taken over by business interests by the 1870s, which per DuBois speak for a capitalism that is merely a parallel exploitation system to slavery. Throughout the book, there is no sense that the country itself is largely innocent, that a particular political party is guilty, and that this particular political party is the one DuBois wants his followers to vote for in 1936. Insofar as he recognizes guilt on the Democrat side, he characterizes such officeholders as "conservative," in a usage of the word that is flatly absurd and is contradicted by their actual voting records (which we'll cover in the "Platforms" chapter). Not content to push his narratives in his written works, his spoken word spreads the fake stories as well. His Niagra Movement Speech (1905) attacks capitalism, makes no mention of which party did Jim Crow, spends more time attacking capitalism than the party that was lynching, and the only party he attacks by name is...the Republicans, it seems a civil rights bill should have been passed, given the large GOP majority at the time. Perhaps it should have passed, but to pretend America is guilty rather than the Democrats is still absurd, as is his speech at 1949 Scientific and Culture Conference for World Peace in New York, in which he expounds on his vision of a worldwide race war, whereby the a rising coaliition of color and socialism would overwhelm a white and capitalist oppressor. Yes, most left-wing racebaiting, including the pretend connection between racism and capitalism, including the equating of socialism with anti-racism: it's nothing but recycled DuBois. It's the work of a guy who endorsed Mussolini, Hitler, Stalin, and Woodrow Wilson, of a guy who achieved NOTHING for civil rights. That's where their ideas are coming from. * * * Black Votes Since The Big 1930s Sellout: Not Fitting the Narrative

Blacks Became Democrats, But Didn't Change the Party; the Party Changed Them The FDR administration, despite the exclusion and segregation, seemed the best deal at the time. By January 1935, 3 million Blacks worked on relief projects, began switching to Democrats. Black votes flipped to Democrats in 1936, as a result of the New Deal (Samuel Lubell, White and Black: Test of a Nation, 2nd ed (New York: Harper and Row, 1966), 57-58) "In Farewell to the Party of Lincoln: Black Politics in the Age of FDR (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983), Nancy J. Weiss argues that the Roosevelt administrations political and symbolic gestures towards Afro-Americans were too minimal and unconvincing to explain the mass switch of black party loyalty, and concludes instead that jobs from the broad recovery effort rather than specific civil rights policies explain the partisan shift." (GRAHAM 483) Nor did Black presence force the party to reform, because FDR could win without Blacks, as he did in 1932. He made no more than token efforts. Blacks only get social security because Republican control 1952-1954. Black presence in the party didn't cause reform. Only the failure of racism to hold the Outer South 1952-1960 did that. Democrats got most of the Black votes in 1952, with segregationist John Sparkman as the VP choice, and in 1956, after Stephenson condemned Brown v. Board, and in 1960, despite Nixon's better civil rights record. Black votes were nearly unamimously Democrats throughout, North and South, rich and poor, liberal or conservative. (Shafer & Johnston 55-59) The collapse of the remaining Southern Black Republicanism 1956-1964 is a combination of a class shift (poorer Blacks voting more) and that Ike's high 1956 precentage was the result of Democrat blacks staying home, not any philosophical movement toward the GOP in 1956. Contrary to accusations against Black Republicans, Blacks moving Democrat in desperation are the real sellouts. Democrats didn't even pretend to care about civil rights in the 30s, being sustained by racists, North (unions) and South (Klansmen). What has kept Blacks Democrats is beliefs, a common mythology. The Black vote supposedly left for good because of Republican failure to deliver the goods economically; yet an even longer failure by Democrats to deliver the goods hasn't brought them back. It's the DuBois "America is guilty/capitalism is racist" narrative, followed by the Magical Switching Parties Conspiracy Theory, which created a policy preference outlasting the original crisis.

Blacks Were Democrats In the South Before 1960 Black voters in the South were also Democrats since the 1930s. Outer South states and urban areas had more black voting than Deep South and rural areas. The number of Black voters was depressed by restrictions, but not to zero. The lower voting is the point, only that there was any and it was practically all Democrat, before the 1960s, which nukes from orbit any number of fake stories. The big obstacle to Black voting was not the relatively inexpensive poll tax (about $300 in today's money) but all the all white Democrat primary, which blocked Blacks from voting whether they paid the tax or not. Smith v. Allwright struck this down in 1944, and Black voting surged. Not to anything like 1965 levels, by magnitudes more than before the decision. The Southern Regional Council said 600,000 blacks were registered in the South by 1947, a figure Bartley (New South 171-172) thinks is almost certainly too high--he thinks the same of most SRC-generated figures. But other SRC publications, for what its worth, say Blacks cast 6% of overall Southern ballots 1952-1960. (Margaret Price, The Negro Voter in the South (Southern Regional Council, 1957); Margaret Price, The Negro Voter in the South (Southern Regional Council, 1959); "1960 Voter Registration Statistics," in Southern Regional Council Papers, Atlanta University Center.) Astounding as this is to modern readers, who were told their whole lives Black Democrat voting in the South started in the 1960s, this was hardly unknown in its own time. There's the newspaper writer V.O Key cites on pages 290-291. "It's a very long passage, the length of which would add nothing to this short book, but it concludes: "Now if anybody thinks we ought to leave this Democratic ship and jump back into the Southern Republican skeleton and help put some meat on its bones, they have got some more thought common. Brethren, we had too hard a time getting on this ship and we are going to stay, sink or swim." (C. Blythe Andrews in Florida Sentinel (Tampa), November 29, 1947) Then Key tells us of a federal court decision on a local case similar to 1944's Smith v. Allwright (Chapman v. King, 154F (2d) 460 (1946), clearing the way for Blacks to vote in Georgia's 1946 governor's contest. "Perhaps Negroes are the most cohesive group opposing Talmadge. An estimated 85,000-100,000 actually cast ballots in 1946 when they voted for the first time in numbers." (Key 126) Since the spike in Georgia in 1946, Black votes, Democrats all or nearly all, continued to rise after Smith v. Allwright (Key 521, 526-527) Organized efforts existed, with names like the Atlanta Negro Voter League, the Durham Committee on Negro Affairs, Greensboro Citizen Committee, and Houston Council of Organizations. Their efforts elected officials like Atlanta Mayor WIlliam B. Hartsfield (1937-1941, 1942-1962), Congresswoman Helen Douglas Murray (1946-1947), Memphis Mayor Edmund Orgill (1956-1959), Nashville Mayor Ben West (1951-1963), and Winston-Salem Mayor Marshall Kurfees (1949-1960). (New South 173) Local White Democrat leadership coopted this electorate as well. "The fact that black political organizations often insisted on receiving campaign "expense money" before endorsing a white [Democrat] candidate furthered the influence of well-endowed white [Democrat] political factions." (New South 173-174). Before long this starts to sound like the Ike Brown racket in Noxubee. V.O. Key mentions a political advertisement by a Black political club in a 1947 primary. "The Political Club believes in clean politics, and will react against anyone who will seek to purchase votes" they said, while demanding improvements in the district, and a hint they'd like an auditorium and gymnasium added to the local school. (Key 654) This government-centric thinking common since The Big 1930s Sellout came with much doubletalk, as though transactions involving other peoples' money could be anything but a quid pro quo. Democrats in the South sought to "Irish-ify" blacks, and employed money and liquor to buy black votes, running the Tammany playbook in the South as well, (Key 648) complete with bribing community leaders to endorse and admonish votes for the preferred candidate. Key mentions a Tuscumbia County (Alabama) liquor referendum in March 18, 1946 described a get out the vote campaign of mass bribing discharged black soldiers. (Key 651) JFK won South Carolina in 1960 because of the Black vote, thereby showing Southern Black loyalty preceding the Civil Rights Act. Nor was it because JFK talked a good game on Civil Rights or intervened for MLK, because Adlai Stevenson got a majority of the Black vote as well, when he repudiated any such talk, warning of "groping experiments" in reaction to the Brown v. Board decision. As to claims plummeting Republican Black vote % 1956-1964 demonstrate something: 1) Democrats smeared Goldwater as racist, 2) Democrats got black votes for the very same segregationists, Eastland, Stennis, Wallace, Talmadge, etc post 1965, 3) 1964 is the most anomlous election in American history, any series of data containing that year should be taken with several grains of salt, 4) Ike's 1956 percentage was high because Black Democrats were unenthused about Stephenson's pro-segregation comments, not because any philosophic movement back towards Republicans, and 5) to use 1956 and 1964 is to use the highest point since 1932 and lowest point ever to evaluate a trend that actually took thirty years.

The Worst Sellout of All In pro-life circles there often circulates a particular Margaret Sanger quote, "We do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population," adding that "the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members." (Margaret Sanger to C. J. Gamble, 10 Dec. 1939, Gamble Papers, box 195) It should be noted the context softens the statement, she says "there's a rumor going around to that effect" not "we're planning to do this" per se, though as a eugenicist she certainly wants fewer people she considers dysgenic; so the true statement is still, as the cool kids say, "problematic," if not as bad as the original claim. But I was more taken in by the other part of the statement, the idea that passing money to black ministers can make bad PR go away. The ease with which the anti-religious Sanger could suggest such a thing made me wonder if it was a common tactic. Though I had no proof at first, it's right there in pages 648-655 of V.O. Key's Southern Politics: the business of Democrats bribing Black ministers. "The receptivity of Negro ministers to contributions in return for promises to throw the vote is traditional. [13] The inclination has not disappeared. A well-posted informant, for example, estimates that 65% of the colored men of the cloth sold out in the 1946 Savannah municipal elections, but their flocks did not follow. One minister expressed the old notion that the black man would not benefit from the controversy whichever side won and that he might as well get what he could out of it: "big money, and I mean big money." (Key 654) Key mentions efforts of other leaders to restrain this sort of thing, but the presence of such efforts underscores it being a thing in the first place. So bribed ministers turning out the vote for Democrats (Souls to the Polls???)....which reminds me, who's paying for Sharpton to fly private? To be fair, I'm sure Democrat politicians did quid pro quo with white ministers as well. My point is those white ministers don't then turn around and claim they voted for the Democrats because of civil rights. "Critics described the Black preacher as a "most devoted 'Uncle Tom,' the transmitter of white wishes, the admonisher of obedience to the caste system." Wyatt T. Walker of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference estimated that no more than one in ten black ministers participated actively in the civil rights movement, and in the climactic demonstrations of 1963 in Birmingham, only about 20 of the city's 250 black preachers were involved. (James H. Cone, Black Theology and Black Power (New York, 1969), 106; William Brink and Louis Harris, The Negro Revolution in America (New York, 1964), 108, in Bartley, New South 292) A minor correction: he should say "transmitter of white Democrat wishes." Up on historymatters.gmu/edu one can find a posting of Theodore H. White, "The Negro Voter: Can He Elect a President?" Collier's, 17 August 1956, 19: One Reverend Rains recounts a meeting in Memphis of ministers, where he was told it was illogical for him to be raising money for the bus strike in Alabama while voting Democrat. "And they're right," says the Reverend, his voice rising and breaking. "What are we doing up here? These knock-kneed ministers, eating chicken, getting fat, telling people to vote Democrat--and people listen to them! They know they're lying when they tell the people to vote Democrat" (Audience groans, murmurs, "That's right.") "Do you know we've got the balance of power in our votes? What are we going to do with it?" Sadly, the answer was "vote for the very segregationists" and all it took was the same bogus, deceptively crafted narrative of "the parties switched" to sustain it. As one author reveals, "the impact of African American voters witnessed the eventual solicitation of Black voters by such long-time segregationist Democratic politicians as George Wallace and John Stennis." (RHODES 112) We're told they "changed," yet Thurmond claims to have changed too and he didn't get their votes. Why? Because narrative, that's why. That Democrats obtained black votes for the very same segregationists, Eastland, Stennis, Wallace, Talmadge, etc, debunks the notion anything the Republicans did caused any great disturbance that drove them to the Democrats; some tiny handful of hapless wannage segs like Rubel Phillips or Alfred Goldthwaite or Bo Calloway or Rubel Phillips or Gil Carmichel ran...therefore, vote for the real thing and pretend you're striking a blow for civil rights? How does that work? * * * * * Recapping It All So in this chapter we learned, Goldwater was no watershed, that Republicans were winning Southern states in the 1950s Presidentially, and at other levels in the 1990s. We learned the GOP support was strongest and earliest where racism is least and economic development was greatest. We learned that the whites who turned the South Republican were those least interested in race and most interested in capitalism and upward mobility. We also learned that Nixon's strength doesn't match the "Southern strategy" accusations levelled against him, and mirrors Eisenhower's strength instead. We learned that the Democrat pivot to public affirmations of civil rights support only happened after it was clear they were losing the South. We learned that the Black votes, previously a capitalist and conservative vote, became Democrat in the 1930s because W.E.B. DuBois converted them into Democrats who favored bigger government. We learned Blacks in the South were already Democrats, and even in some locales, casting decisive votes for Democrats, before the 1960s, which nukes the MSPCT from orbit. We learned that segregationist incumbent Democrats were kept in power after the supposed party switch by Black votes, something that really doesn't fit the narrative, but demonstrably happened. Finally, we learned W.E.B. DuBois is the source of the blaming "America" and blaming "white people" for the crimes of the Democrats, as well as the originator of the story that capitalism is "racist," which means the 1619 Project is not only not cutting-edge; it's a low-grade imitation of a prepackaged narrative from over 100 years ago. * * * Chapter 3: Continuity of Ideology, or The Platforms Didn't Switch * * * * * Definitions

Labels to Claim, Labels to Blame Before deciding whether conservatives are guilty of something, it may be worthwhile to define the term "conservative." When labelling civil rights opponents "conservative," Democrats almost never do define, explain, or defend their criteria. This method is what I call "Labels to claim, labels to blame," using repetitively a series of indefensible labels to channel the reader's thoughts to the specific conclusion the author is selling through incorrect labelling, "slander as history," as it were. Democrats employ these narrative-driven definitions of conservatism, the story they want to tell determines how they will define "conservative," the definition will be crafted to fit the predetermined narrative.

A Word on Labels In Historical Settings Applying labels in historical settings is difficult. The only fair thing to do is ask what people believed and did first, then decide what to call them second. For instance, the word "liberal," in the parlance of most anyone before FDR, meant someone favoring laissez-faire economics and limited government. In many foreign countries, the word still means that. After all, it's about liberty (liberalism), not "governmentism." This means the term "liberal democracy" refers to the 1800s Founding Fathers copycats worldwide who wanted elected, limited governments with individualism and free markets. The use of the words "liberal democracy" today, without the disclaimer that the "liberal" in "liberal democracy" is the "CLASSICAL liberalism" of the 1800s is designed to mislead the reader into thinking today's big government liberals are somehow responsible for, and are an inseparable feature of, modern democacy, and that replacing them with, say, a Viktor Orban, a Nigel Farage, or a Donald Trump equates with ending democracy itself. Also, if any Southern Democrats call themselves "conservatives," what were they "conserving?" Details trump Labels; they didn't stand for what the GOP did, then or now. And if you think this is some lame excuse I cooked up, try finding anyone in Lincoln's time using the word "liberal" to mean what it means today. Go ahead, I'll wait. FDR at his 1932 DNC acceptance speech called Democrats the party of "real progress, of real justice, of real equality," "the bearer of liberalism and progress," "a party of liberal thought, of planned action, of enlightened international outlook, and of the greatest good for the greatest number of our citizens," and they must "feel that in everything we do there still lives with us, if not the body, the great indomitable, unquenchable, progressive soul of our Commander-in-Chief Woodrow Wilson." (Address Accepting the Presidential Nomination at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, July 2, 1932) Notice "liberalism and progress" are declared alike, and that "a party of liberal thought," is also one of "planned action," presumably economic, given the subsequent New Deal.

Academics Don't Understand Conservativism Academics are liberals citing each other, and the reason they've convinced themselves conservatives are so evil is they haven't read conservative authors, and it shows. Their definitions and their characterizations of conservative thought, as well as who they assess as pivotal in developing it, is way off. Many errors also arise from looking at Europe's conservatism, and projecting it onto America, when American conservatives not grasping the last remnants of the ancien regime, but conserving a Revolution. One common assertion is that conservatism is defined by opposition to equality, one easily corrected by referring to 's explanation that a society that puts equality before liberty winds up with neither (like the USSR) as opposed to a society that puts liberty before equality and ends up with both (the USA). The belief one value should be prioritized when the two are in conflict does not equal a wholesale rejection of the other value. Liberal academics' belief conservatism opposes equality is the framework in which they pronounce conservatism racist, as they assume conservative beliefs regarding class translate to their beliefs about race. Conservatives aren't racist. In fact, they don't spend much time thinking about race. Why would they, when they're not racist? Only racists spend large amounts of time obsessing over race. But if Conservatives put liberty before equality, how can they not be racist? Because conservatives are individualists, as opposed to racism, which is collectivist. One must see others as mere members of a group, mere facets of a Borg, as it were, before one can be a racist. To someone with an individualist ethic, it is silly to render judgement for things other than behavior, and even for someone valuing tradition, demogogues riling people up on a racial basis contravenes social stability. In American Conservatism, racism is definitionally excluded because conservatism is individualist. In Leftism, it is collectivist, and racism, while it can well be absent, not necessarily excluded. On a parallel track, Conservatives rule-of-law arguments lead to equal rights conclusions. Unlimited government picking winners and losers, as favored by the left, does not. Indeed, the likes of Ibram X. Kendi now demand laws to discriminate in favor of economically lagging groups until the resulting statistics become equal. As for their "studies" showing conservatives less disturbed by racial inequality, all that shows is conservatives believe people have it within their power to fix their own problems, that more conservatives believe in Horatio Alger stories as a general rule, as it were. If conservatives believed it out of racism, they'd see inequality as a general principle as a problem until race was introduced (and they don't). The accompanying belief to "they reject equality" is they believe conservatives are all about preserving traditional hierarchies. Conservatives tend to be about preserving traditional institutions, whether they're hierarchies or not, because of the belief that got to be traditional by working better than the alternatives. If conservatism is about wholesale endorsement of hierarchy, it will be difficult to account for their complaints about unelected bureaucrats, unelected cancel culture, unelected race grifting peddlers of wokeness and so forth. Insofar as we defend hierarchies, Conservatives want it natural, individualist, meritocratic: The social order average people choose. Leftists want unnatural, collectivistic, group-based, top down hierarchies: The social order elitists choose. Conservative definitions by liberal academics essentially consist of saying "liberalism is nice, therefore conservatives are mean and nasty, therefore anything mean and nasty must be conservative." This--their feelings alone--is the foundation of all their proclamations that conservatives are authoritarian, racist, sexist, and that the National Socialists or Southern Democrats were conservative. Notice that their definitions of what is conservative are seldom if ever based on having read anything written by conservatives; liberal academics are giving their own ill-informed opinions, trying to diagnose conservatism as a pathology, from the outside. It all rather resembles the state of medicine before anyone dissected humans to learn how they actually work. "They were nasty, therefore they must be conservative," falls short when squared with their actual platforms and voting records. In passing, it also reminds me of a social sciences academic named Bob Altemeyer, and his assertion all authoritarianism is inherently right-wing. He "proved" how malign conservatives were with a game simulating international relations, in which conservatives destroyed the world in a nuclear war and liberals achieved world peace. How he explains Ronald Reagan's success against the USSR doing the exact opposite of what liberals wanted is left to your imagination. In both that case and this one, we can tell their theorizing is wrong by its failure to predict real world results.

Southern Democrats Labelled "Conservative" Using Dubious Definitions Southern Democrats are defined as "conservative," and their supporters are described as "conservative white Southerners," and MSPCT narratives typically focus on the journey of "conservative white southerners" to the Republican party. How and why these "conservative white southerners" were, according 1930s opinion polls, the most fervent New Deal supporters is left to your imagination. (NEW SOUTH 23-24) Segregationist Democrats voted for the New Deal, a decidedly not conservative thing to do, and indeed, most of their positions were mainstream within the Democrat Party. Some cornered leftists pronounce said Segregationists to be "racial conservatives" or "social conservatives." Affirmations of faith and family or anti-communism cited from them, out of context, the relevant context being that a majority of Americans of all political persuasions would have defended religion and the traditional family and been anti-communists (except for a few academics and their kooky 60s students). They were pro family? Well, so were their opponents! Before the 60s, it wasn't partisan to suggest kids needed two married parents and that religion was a beneficial force in society. As for the "racial conservative" label slapped on segregationist Democrats, how curious that support for segregation wasn't "conservative" in the Northeast, Midwest, or Plains. If it's only "conservative" in the most Democrat region in the country, one has to wonder if the term "racial conservative" was invented to circumvent the obvious fact of their voting records in order to push a narrative. In any case, anyone trying to insist segregation is inherently conservative will have a hard time explaining why TODAY there are segregated dorms on liberal campuses, complete with segregated freshman orientation and graduations (apparently if you call segregation "black only," nobody can tell it's segregation anymore). Also, some of the most liberal cities and states in the country exhibit the most residential and/or school segregation in the country. (For more see: Dana Goldstein, " 'Threatening the future': The High Stakes of Deepening School Segregation," New York Times, May 10, 2019) To say nothing of the CHAZ/CHOP zone making preposterous demands for segregation in Seattle hospitals (I still think it's hilarious that even after the CHAZ/CHOP commies murdered 2 people, the only thing that made the Seattle government send in the cops was the protestors menacing the Mayor's house). But perhaps they were "conservative" in the sense they were defending a long-standing or traditional order? But even this is a flawed definition. Was Hillary Clinton and the DC Swampocracy "conservative" for resisting Trump? For the sake of correctly understanding the world around us, conservative must mean more than just "defense of the status quo." What is the substance? I've seen the word "conservative" applied to those who resisted democracy's rise in the 1700s-1800s, and to those who resisted the rise of Marxist dictatorships (which liberals always think will be democracies, until they get to power and prove otherwise). The word "conservative" is applied to the old guard who resisted Gorbachaev in the USSR, as well as to the more hardline religious clerics in Saudi Arabia. If the same word is being used to describe atheist central planners and religious theocrats, the word is reduced to meaninglessness. The point of this is, the word "conservative" cannot be rightly used without reference to what is being conserved. What were Southern Democrats conserving? A relatively new system they created in the 1890s, in contrast with the system Republicans defend, from the 1770s, with roots that go back even farther to John Locke in the 1680s, and arguably to the English Leveller movement of the 1640s. A system of using the government to engage in social engineering, as opposed to a system of limiting government to the protection of person and property. In closing, it's a smear, leftist historians use the same word to describe Segregationists that we use to describe ourselves. It's an academic dirty trick. If we called ourselves Porcupines, Dan Carter and Kevin Kruse would declare the segregationists "Porcupine Southern Democrats." If we called ourselves Platypuses, Dan Carter and Kevin Kruse would label the segregationists "Platypus Southern Democrats." You see how this game works? Whatever label we give ourselves, they'll use that label to describe the bad guys of history, even though we don't believe the same things as the bad guys of history, all as a way for the Academic Bodyguard of the Democratic Party to pretend that contemporary Republicans are a continuation of the horrors of history. * * * * * Southern Democrats Were Not Conservatives: An Exhaustive Proof

The "Wings Narrative" Was Practically Invented to Bolster This Theory The regular trope of the Democrat historians is the Wings Narrative, asserting each party had a conservative wing and a liberal/progressive wing, leaving you with the impression both wings are of equal size, and that conservatives in either party are equally right wing, and that progressives in both parties are equally left wing. But the word "wings" is misleading. A bird has two wings of equal size; the parties, did not. The word "faction" would be better, and indeed the "Progressive Wing" of the GOP was not anything close to half the party. Logically a free market party wouldn't have had many progressives. Narrative pushers convey the impression that the "conservative" wings were equally conservative and "progressive" wings were equally progressive. As we shall see when we get into the voteview.com/DW-NOMINATE system of scoring lawmakers, the "progressive Republicans" were still considerably more conservative than "conservative Democrats." "Progressive Republicans" were progressive for their party, not in any absolute sense. "Conservative Democrats" were conservative for their party, not in any absolute sense. The "conservative Southern Democrats" were only "conservative" compared to New York City and San Francisco and Chicago Democrats. They were to the left of the national average and well to the left of the typical Republican. Hence why so few switched parties! If it wasn't so, there would have been more than 2 Dixiecrats changing parties. Furthermore, the Magical Switching Parties Conspiracy Theory's precious Wings Narrative cannot explain why the particular Dixiecrats that switched (Strom Thurmond, Albert Watson) were the ones that switched, or why the one who became an independent (Harry Byrd) was the one who did so. DW-NOMINATE scores can explain that, as all three had more conservative scores. The Wings Narrative also hinges on backwards projection. Present political traits are projected onto the past, without bothering to prove it. New England Republicans are assumed liberal on the basis of today's New England. Southern Democrats are assumed conservative then, because today's South is conservative. At no point did anyone ask "why are these core GOP seats they still hold in New England in New Deal era voting pro-business/anti-New Deal," or look at Southern Democrat voting records or rhetoric. Did Southern Democrats speak and vote in the way a "conservative" wing of a party would?

Southern Democrats Were Liberals Southern Democrats weren't conservative. I'll give some anecdotes here before turning to voting records, just to vividly illustrate the labels to claim/labels to blame go really haywire sometimes. John W. Davis, the 1924 Democrat candidate for President, is characterized as being part of some high tide of American conservatism. The juxtposition of racism and leftism contained in him guts notions the two are opposites. Davis opposed anti-lynching laws, supported the poll tax, was the co-author of the Clayton Act...and the founding President of the COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS, was in on the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a Trustee of the Rockefeller Foundation, defended Alger Hiss as a character witness, defended separate-but-equal in the Brown vs. Board case, Briggs vs Elliot, and had a progressivist regulator's mindset in general. While he did represent businesses fighting New Deal rules in court and denounced the Klan and defended Black voting rights, it is important to note that his legal career is what he did when paid and his political career is what he did when in power. Defender of lynching and CFR president, poll tax supporter and Alger Hiss defender...? Don't let any liberal tell you that defending Jim Crow is "conservative" because even a casual look-over of its leading defenders reveals they're practically all doctrinaire liberals on everything. There was a reason Democrats never expelled them from the party. On the Congressional level, John T. Robinson, Senator of Arkansas, VP to Al Smith 1928. From something as basic as his Wiki page one can learn he's a strong Wilson policy backer, "He championed the Keating-Owen Child Labor Act, and worked to enact bills to regulate railroads and other key industries. He led the Senate to arm merchant ships and voted to declare war on Germany. He also led the unsuccessful effort in the Senate to ratify the Treaty of Versailles. Robinson was regarded as a progressive in Woodrow Wilson's image." "As Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal 'marshall,' he ensured the passage of countless bills relating to the Depression and social policy, his most impressive victory being the Emergency Banking Act, which he pushed through both houses of Congresss in seven hours." Robinson even backed FDR's court packing scheme (he'd been promised appointment on said court). More academic sources only reinforce the point, though it remains amusing to see the labels clash with the reality. Carter Glass, D-VA, introduced the Federal Reserve Act, which passed with far greater Democrat support, and near unanimity among Southern Democrats. James Vardaman, D-MS, was a longtime Mississippi Senator, who said the existence of billionaires caused paupers. Fellow Mississippi Senator Theodore Bilbo, and James F. Byrnes, D-SC, backed the New Deal (which polled better in the South than anywhere else) John Sparkman, D-AL, gave a talk at the 1955 Jefferson-Jackson Day dinner, and asserted the Eisenhower administration favored "trickle down" economics, and that their school and road plans aimed to help investment bankers. Does that sound like a "conservative?" Lister Hill, D-AL, sponsored bills like the Rural Telephone Act, the Rural Housing Act, the Vocational Education Act, and the National Defense Education Act of 1958, as well being a key backer of the LIbrary Services Act to obtain federal funding for rural libraries. Allen Ellender, D-LA, was praised by LBJ during the bill signing for his role in getting the Food Stamp Act of 1964 through the Senate. In the process, Ellender opposed and defeated three amendments. One of them, by John Sherman Cooper (R-KY) would have required all unemployed able-bodied heads of households to partake in work-relief programs, a "work requirement," as it were. Would a "conservative" oppose a welfare work requirement? Richard Russell, D-GA, was the chief sponsor of the National School Lunch Act, and a backer of rural electrification and farm loan initiative. The man who led the filibuster against the 1964 Civil Rights Act, is also the man who said no child should go hungry simply because they were in a poor state, that the school lunch bill was his greatest achievement in his 40 years in government. In passing, this parallels today, in that the poorest regions of America (Jim Crow South then, today the urban ghettos, barrios and rural Indian reservations) are run by the same party (Democrats) in a capitalism-hating way, accompanied by Federal-level panhandling to rescue them from their own mismanagement. In this light, it is little mystery why Southern Democrats liked big government. As LBJ told to sway any doubters, "What are you worried about? It's not coming out of your pocket. Any money spent down here on New Deal projects, the East is paying for." (Johnson quoted in The Years of Lyndon Johnson, by Robert A. Caro (New York, 1983), 471-472) Turning to governors, George Wallace, D-AL, went hard-left populist in 1968. The notion he's running to Nixon's "right" can't withstand a look at his 1968 American Independent Party Platform, which demanded more job training for "all Americans willing and able to seek and hold gainful employment; more federal monies for transportation, education, and even the space program; a significant increase in Social Security benefits; and more support for elderly health care." Wallace also wanted a ban on right-to-work laws. As New Leftist Jack Newfield wrote in 1971, "I cannot recall either Johnson in 1964 or Humphrey in 1968 campaigning on any positive or exciting ideas that might excite the almost-poor workers, whose votes they took for granted...In contrast, George Wallace had been sounding like Williams Jennings Bryan as he attacked concentrated wealth in his speeches..." Bryan is a fair comparison, but so is another left-populist Southern governor, Huey Long. Which reminds me, how'd Huey Long get elected in Deep Southern Louisiana in the 20s and 30s if they were so "conservative?" Long's slogans, "Every Man a King," "Share Our Wealth," and demanding confiscation of family incomes over $5 million and 100% taxes on incomes over $1 million, his complaints FDR didn't go far enough...and the Deep South elects him! And people who sounded like Huey Long, such as Vardaman and Bilbo as Governors before they became Senators, were once commonplace in the South. "As Larry Sabato has pointed out, they [New Southern governors] were "far less progressive on economic policies than many of the populist, segregationist governors of earlier times." (Larry Sabato, "New South Governors and the Governorship," in Contemporary Southern Politics, ed. James F. Lea (Baton Rouge, 1988), 200) Claims the South and its Democrats were "conservative" and the Northeast and its Republicans at the time were "liberal" can't survive a look at the rhetoric, platforms, and voting records of all involved

DW-NOMINATE: Introduced, Explained, Reliability Defended Nor were these examples atypical, as DW-NOMINATE scores illustrate. Award-winning political scientists Keith Poole and Howard Rosenthal developed a vote scoring database, called DW-NOMINATE (Dynamically Weighted NOMINA[L] Three-step Estimation). Available at voteview.com, it charts every legislator ever to cast 25 or more roll call votes on a 2-axis system, accompanied with a numerical score available in tabular form. An article at themonkeycage.org ("Polarization is Real (and Asymmetric), by Nolan McCarty, May 15, 2012) sheds more light on DW-NOMINATE's inner workings. The original W-NOMINATE system, which weighted each session of Congress separately, was refined by DW-NOMINATE (Nolan M. McCarty, Keith T. Poole and Howard Rosenthal. Income Redistribution and the Realignment of American Politics. AEI Studies on Understanding Economic Inequality. Washington D.C.: AEI Press, 1997). The midpoint of both the x-axis and y-axis is not grading reps on a curve, but the absolute ideological midpoint, achieved in DW-NOMINATE through the use of "bridge" legislators. "Bridge" legislators are long-lived members of Congress used as a common yardstick to compare lawmakers who never served together, like gauging teams against common opponents in sports. The x-axis, which comprises most of the score, is the "economic/redistributive" scale, which measures what you'd think, aka enthusiasm for free markets vs support for more government. What the Y-scale measures varies by era: slavery in the 1860s, farm radicalism and bimetalism in the 1890s, civil rights in the 1960s, culture war issues in the 1980s/1990s, etc. As Poole and Rosenthal are academics, I suspect they're liberals; as liberals, I suspect they score support for segregation as "conservative." I'll use their scores, as is, though I previously disputed the notion segregation is conservative. However, even scoring it their way, it is clear nearly all the segregationists were big government guys. On another important note, Keith Poole wrote a 2007 article, "Changing Minds? Not in Congress?", showing that "bridge legislators" can be validly used, because most long term sitting Members of Congress do not wildly change their views in their time in Congress. This discovery is huge for any number of reasons.

The Huge Implications of Lawmakers Not Changing Their Voting Habits But returning to the 1960s and 1970s, and some of the votes made, the constancy of legislators has implications. If the DW-NOMINATE is reliable, then legislator voting tendencies are constant over time; if their voting is constant over time, then the pathway for the "big switch" via the same people voting differently is closed. Only wholesale replacement of personnel could do it. As for claims GOP voting in Congress was "different"; was their ideology different, or were the contents of the bills they were now asked to vote on different? (Equal opportunity bills vs quotas & equal results bills: a group of individualists who believe in capitalist meritocracy would vote "yes" on the first and "no" on the second, without any inconsistency or reversal necessary.) As for a real change involving replacement of legislators, the post-Watergate 1974 elections saw many longtime Republicans ousted. As the GOP rebuilt 1976-1980, they did indeed take a turn to the right, but, matching the earlier point, this ideological drift required a change of people (and the new direction wasn't racist either, more on that later). Says Poole: "Though Democrats have not moved nearly as much to the left as the Republicans have to the right, they have also contributed to polarization, in our opinion, by embracing identity politics as a strategic tool. In Roosevelt's New Deal, the Democrats advocated redistribution and regulation of business. These issues remain active to some extent, but with time emphasis has shifted to issues centered on race, gender, ethnicity, or sexual preference. (John Gerring. Party Ideologies in America, 1828-1996. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998) This distinction, however, is not necessarily picked up in roll call voting. But it does represent and important rhetorical shift from the Roosevelt and Truman-era Democratic party that likely worsens political and social divides." [emphasis mine] This distinction explains a lot. Poole & Rosenthal's claim the GOP led asymmetric polarization clashes with my own (and many others') perception the Democrats became more radical than ever. Their rhetoric and campaigning went off the rails, but they ran out of legitimately new ideas a generation ago, and vote for the same failure as always.

The "Conservative Coalition" Is a Hoax and This Has Been A Known (or at Least Knowable) Fact Since at Least 1949 So the segregationists were pro-New Deal, pro-Fair Deal, pro-most of the Great Society, and had voted for pratically everything Woodrow Wilson had wanted. A common retort among leftist narrative pushers is that, at some point after 1936, there was a "conservative coalition" of Southern Democrats, who were somehow conservative after all, despite having just voted for the New Deal, despite many of them having been state level politicians making left-of-center pronouncements and having done left-of-center things. The narrative pushers fail to comprehend that anyone with an internet connection can check out the actual voting records, such as at voteview.com, with the DW-NOMINATE system developed by award-winning political scientists Keith Poole and Howard Rosenthal. Failing that, there's also V.O. Key Jr., who in Chapters 16 & 17 of his 1949 classic Southern Politics, evaluates "Solidarity in the Senate" and "The South in the House," and discovers quite the opposite of the "there was a conservative coalition" silliness. Key looks at seven sessions of Congress, the first year of all Congresses 1933-1945, as first years produce more legislation and less election season antics. Key finds in the Senate, most Southern Democrats opposed most Repubicans on 60% of all roll calls, and joined Republicans AND Northern Democrats on 30% of roll calls (the common sense "pave a road here, build a bridge there, rename a post office in Podunk Junction" kind of laws.) Only on TEN PERCENT OF ROLL CALLS do Southern Democrats vote with Republicans against Northern Democrats. (Key 349-350) The "conservative coalition" trope rests on nearly nothing. Even excluding votes where all three groups agreed, votes with other Democrats outnumber votes with Republicans against other Democrats 6 to 1. Furthermore, of the isolated issues where the Republicans and Southern Democrats agreed, most were labor union issues, or failing that, agricultural ones. (Key 356) Southern Democrats favored high spending on rural issues. So their idea of "conservative" really amounted to getting their fair share of the loot, a fight over spoils rather than one over principle. Additionally, there were some issues where there were "coincidences" for reasons that, if taken out of context like Kevin Kruse loves to do, would look bad: "Two race issues, oddly, are included in the 26 roll calls. In 1943 Republicans joined with Southern Democrats, with a majority of non-Southern Democrats in opposition, to recommit a bill for Federal aid to education. Just before the recommittal, an amendment had been adopted to prohibit discrimination on account of race or color in the expenditure of Federal funds by state schools. Southern disagreement with the anti-discrimination clause coincided with Republican dissent from the principle of Federal aid. At the same session a vote on the soldier voting bill brought Southern Democrats and Republicans together.The Republicans did not want the soldiers to vote Democratic. The Southern Democrats did not want colored soldiers to vote." Coincidences like these, on a limited number of issues, are hyped even more when they happen in the 60s or 70s, out of context, without explanation, by the narrative pushers. Key finds the same story in the House, looking at the first sessions (1933, 1937, 1941, 1945), finding even stronger preferences there. Southern Senate Democrats voted against Republicans 60% of the time; in the House, it was 70%. (Key 371) Southern Democrats opposed unions, but weren't free market on other matters: "In 1941 Southern Representatives solidly backed a provision of the Selective Service and Training Act broadening the power of the President to seize defense plants when production was interrupted. While the provision looked primarily to the seizure of struck plants, it authorized seizure when production was impeded by any cause. Republican leaders attacked the bill as a property conscription measure. Representative Harness thus vowed: 'I do not believe that we should permit the seize-property to strike at labor and our free-enterprise in this indirect manner...While this legislation was designed primarily to break strikes, it goes far beyond that and endangers our entire economic system.' The AFL and CIO opposed while the administration supported the measure. Southern Democrats, unmoved by the threat to free enterprise, had the satisfaction of supporting the Administration, backing the defense program, and perhaps taking a crack at labor. [1] It required the compounding of the triple motive to produce this high cohesion." (Cong. Record, vol. 87, pt.6417-25) (Key 372-373) Key concluded: "On a few roll calls Southern Democrats and Republicans unite against non Southern Democrats, but this sort of split between Southern and Northern Democrats occurs far less frequently than all the talk about it might lead one to suppose. [Hear that, Kevin Kruse?] In the four House sessions [1933, 1937, 1941, 1945] analyzed this type of coalition existed on 28, or 10.2% of the 275 roll calls." (Key 374) MSPCT proponents have continued to insist otherwise. Most notably Kevin Kruse, who purportedly is a professor at Princeton in between writing his interminable Twitter threads. Kruse pushes the "Conservative Coalition" hoax, which, per the V.O. Key he pretends to have read, is only 1/10 of all roll call votes. For more See V.O.. Key, Jr, Southern Politics in State and Nation, Chapters 16 & 17 . When you're done with that, Check out, Ira Katznelson; Kim Geiger; Daniel Kryder. "Limiting Liberalism: The Southern Veto in Congress, 1933-1950," Political Science Quarterly, Vol. 108, No. 2 (Summer, 1993), pp. 283-306. Katznelson et. all conclude Southern Democrats, though they broke ranks on civil rights and labor union issues, were reliable party votes on budgets, planning, welfare, and regulation measures. "A majority of Southerners voted to establish Social Security, regulate utilities, expand work relief, and even, before 1938, to pass labor legislation like the Wagner Act and the Fair Labor Standards Act, which established a minimum wage." (Tea Party Yankees", by Seth Ackerman, in Jacobin, October 14, 2013) Another tell? Kruse can't name many Democrat members of this supposed Conservative-Coalition-That-Is-Only-10-Percent-Of-Votes. He names Josiah Bailey (NC, -.118), Harry F. Bryd (VA, +.188), Carter Glass (VA, -.304 ), Walter George (GA, -.064), "Cotton Ed" Smith (SC, -.298) , and Millard Tydings (MD, -.111), which while more conservative than a typical Southern Democrat, still score left-of-center on Voteview. He also glosses over incidents like what happened when GA Gov. Talmadge tried to tangle with Roosevelt. In 1936, he attempted to challenge Russell and lost. His handpicked Gubernatorial candidate, Charles Redwine, lost to pro-New Deal Eurith D. Rivers. The South, even the Deep South, preferred the New Deal. While mentioning FDR's favorite candidates losing in 1938 primaries, he ignores how Segregationists keep voting for his policies anyway, and FDR remaining popular in the South anyway. As for some later Southern Democrats, Kruse's thesis is Southern Democrats stayed Democrats to prevent liberalism? How? By voting for it? And vote for it they did, as any segregationist's Voteview profile can tell you under the "party loyalty" percentage. Kruse uses Americans for Democratic Action and American Conservative Union ratings but not Voteview/DW-NOMINATE to conceal that ADA, ACU, and other activist pressure groups scored legislators only on issues that matter to them. This results in a phenomenon political scientists call "artificial extremism," in which every candidate is always "literally the most radical ever, can you believe it?" Closing the loop here, the 1948 Dixiecrats, who indeed said some anti-New Deal/pro-capitalist things, flopped in most of the South precisely because they challenged big government, the dogma of Democrats North and South. Southern Democrats like John Sparkman and Richard Russel appealed to the necessity of guarding New Deal programs when admonishing their constituents to vote Truman. Were there truth in this tale of "conservative coalitions" and "conservative White southerners didn't like the New Deal," then Thurmond should do well even where not listed as the official Democrat candidate. After all, George Wallace (pro-big-government/big-spender) ran 3rd party and DID win states/win huge chunks of the vote. Yet we don't see that from Thurmond, who tops 15-20% only in states where his state-level backers got him listed as the official Democrat. (In Alabama, they did one better and got Truman kicked off the ballot altogether). There was no simply Southern electoral base for free market enthusiasm as existed in staunchly, longtime Yankee & Republican rural upstate New York or small-town central Ohio. Nor did this stop in 1948. Useful reads are articles like NR PLUS Elections, "Joe and the Segs," By Kevin D. Williamson, June 21, 2019, and especially "Tea Party Yankees", by Seth Ackerman, in Jacobin, October 14, 2013. From Ackerman, "In fact, all of Lyndon Johnson’s major War on Poverty programs were enacted with a majority of Southerners voting for final passage. The 1964 Economic Opportunity Act — the omnibus bill establishing Job Corps, a federal work-study program, adult education funding, and various other things — was sponsored in the House by staunch anti-labor segregationist Phil Landrum of Georgia, and passed with 60% of Southern Democrats voting in favor, even as 87% of Republicans opposed it. Likewise, Medicare passed in 1965 with 61% of Southern Democrats in favor and 93% of Republicans opposed. The 1964 Food Stamp Act, after an intra-party log-rolling deal involving farm subsidies, went through on virtually a straight party-line vote." (Tea Party Yankees", by Seth Ackerman, in Jacobin, October 14, 2013). Even Richard Russell, more rightward than most Southern Democrats, took greatest pride in the school lunch bill, proclaiming, "No one should seek to deny a poor child in a poor state a lunch at school because both the child and state are less able to pay than a wealthier child in a wealthier state." And Williamson notes that as Ronald Reagan denounced Medicare as creeping socialism, Talmadge was busy voting for it. As Segregationist Democrats voted for Social Security, anti-New Deal Republicans like Warren Austin and Frederick Hale opposed it. Hale also opposed FDR putting Klansman Hugo Black on the Supreme Court. The reliable votes of Segregationists on all non civil rights issues was well known at the time. For example, during the planning to advance the 1964 Civil Rights Act, Senator Joe Clark's (D-PA) suggestion of punishing Southern Democrats was rejected. "[Senate Leader] Mansfeld, and to a lesser extent, Humphrey, urged a much softer line. [They] pointed out that party unity was essential, that other bills would be coming along, and that we should attempt to be charitable at this point in time." (LOEVY 132) Senate Democrat leadership also avoided hardball maneuvers against Southern Democrats (LOEVY 178) as Mansfeld "needed their cooperation and support on countless items of Senate business each session." (Staff memorandum to Senator Mansfield, October 30, 1963, and November 14, 1963) (LOEVY 179) The record is clear, yet contemporary Democrats would have you believe segregationists were forerunners of , Newt Gingrich, the Tea Party, and Donald Trump. Most dishonest is Kevin Kruse's Twitter threads, where defines "conservative" as "segregationist" and vice versa. Like I said: Labels to claim, labels to blame. There's nothing to it except for the labels. * * * The State Level Is No Different: Mostly Left of Center We see little difference on the state level: most Southern Democrats were no more conservative than their reps in DC. Virginia was a notable exception, and Texas became one--but only as it became less Democrat in the 1940s. But by-and-large, to anyone insisting Southern Democrats were "conservatives," before or after the 1960s, I challenge you: What great piece of conservative legislation that would do the Tea Party proud came from any Southern state 1865-1980? It's what we should expect to see if the "big switch" story is actually true.

In general, most Southern states had individual followings of candidates based on their personal appeals, with little in the way of permanent party structure. The unity around Democrats nationally left no real need for it. (Key 16). "Courthouse cliques," the local machines in these largely rural areas, were the conceptual equivalent to Tammany, though the number of people and the amount of money involved were of course much smaller. Many counties in many states had local bosses, able to sway their county's votes, and usually for a price (though some in Arkansas were apparently too proud to take the money and insulted if you tried). Machines with statewide pretentions usually existed coincident with a GOP presence worth fearing, such as Tennessee and North Carolina, and the statewide Byrd Machine existed without serious GOP statewide challengers.

In Virginia: of all the Southern Democrats who were called conservative, the Byrd organization is one of the few where it's something resembling true. As a critic said, "Byrd and his closest friends and advisors are Tories in the 18th Century meaning of the word." Byrd and company insisted on paying for internal improvements with cash on hand instead of borrowing money or issuing bonds. It was basically an oligarchy, but one that feels obliged to at least vaguely mirror public opinion (Key 19), and by contemporary accounts, more or less honest (Key 19, 32), which is not typical for machines.

In Alabama, most of those holding state legislative seats depended on a personal following of "friends and neighbors" support pattern among counties, and statewide party machinery was largely absent, (Key 46-47), The result was most in the legislature had no real fixed principles, no permanent factions, and little luck enacting any consistent platform (Key 44-45), though some, such as quite left-leaning governor Burt Folsom, vainly attempted to: "He [Folsom] proposed $57,000,000 new revenue per year for educational purposes, for increased old-age assistance, and for highway construction. Business interests inaugurated a campaign in opposition, under the leadership of the director of public relations of the State Chamber of Commerce. (Birmingham News-Age-Herald, March 16, 1947) The governor's revenue commissioner boosted the assessment of the Southern Railway Company, with a statement that the assessment had been kept low through 'political pressure' " (Birmingham News-Age-Herald, August 9, 1947) The Black Belt areas of Alabama, for all the alleging they were conservative, gave FDR his strongest support in the state. Far from enacting conservatism, they spent their time enacting very little at all.

Tennessee had the E.H. Crump machine, based out of Memphis. In theory, Tennessee had 1,600,000 or so potential voters, but turnout was usually about 25% (400,000), except for 1920 isolationist anti-WW1 backlash and 1938 FDR court-packing backlash. 25% of the regulars were GOP, so real election is the 300,000 in the Democrat primary, of which the 50,000 in Crump's Shelby County could be swung decisively any which way. (Key 60-61) Crump's machine was once tricked, during 1926 Democrat Governor primary, by Austin Peay and his operation, which "arranged for telegrams from several eastern Tennessee cities to the McAllister headquarters in Nashville reporting that Govenor Peay was leading by smaller majority than was actually the case. These reports stimulated high glee in McAllister headquarters and also formed the basis for the estimate of the required majority from Shelby." And so Crump's machine was tricked into stuffing the ballot box by less than the required amount, and their candidate, McAllister, lost. (Key 63) Black votes within Memphis proper were for Crump, though outside Memphis their loyalty was less solid. (Key 75)

Florida, as of the 1940 Census, had 48.1% of its population born out of state, the next closest in the South being Arkansas with 22.3% (Key 87). In Florida it was every man for himself, with little in the way of permanent issues or permanent cleavage of interests. Personal following are attached to candidates and vanish when they do, were not generally transferable to others by endorsement, and not always transferable to onesself when running for different office. (Key 103-105)

Georgia, previously multifactional (Key 107), became bi-factional, with Eugene Talmadge as the issue; every Democrat primary 1926-1946 he was running for something. (Key 106-107). Georgia's county-unit system rewarded ignoring the cities (Key 115, 119), city baiting against blacks and whatever urban Blacks voted for (Key 121), and made it profitable for politicians to do their best Tom Watson impression (Key 117-118), which meant combining sectional and race prejudices. Thusly Talmadge bragged he did not want to carry any county with a streetcar. Talmadge opposed many New Deal programs, though this may have had more to do with who got to be the boss. He tried running his guys in against FDR in one primary but FDR's favorites won instead. The Deep South liked bigger government. Talmadge pushed for farmers' interests, assailed State Department of Agriculture for its inspection of fertilizers and other farmers supplies. He advocated of poll tax repeal, attempting to get poorer farmers to back him. (Key 115-116) County campaigning revolved around getting local politicos to deliver votes, sometimes by dispensing bribes. Key cites a "politician of wide experience" as stating he puts $10,000 (in 1949 dollars) into 50 doubtful counties. (Key 121, 123)

South Carolina, having the largest population of Blacks, had some of the most Negrophobia-driven politics, mirroring Mississippi's situation.. James F. Byrnes was a more tame and temperate statesman by comparison (though only by comparison, as he too was a staunch segregationist whose 1940s dalliances in giving Black schools more funding than White schools was to fortify the legal case against what he figured were imminent court challenges). More bombastic and disgraceful examples were "Pitchfork Ben" Tillman, Cole Blease, and "Cotton Ed" Smith, on part with Mississippi's Varadman, Bilbo, and Rankin. (Key 130) "Pitchfork" Ben Tillman unified rural South Carolina owners, tenants, and farm workers against the towns (Key 136, 143), played populist anti-capitalist demagogue more generally, and disenfranchised Blacks during a state constitutional rewrite out of a belief that the coastal town elites would win their votes otherwise. Coleman Blease followed the Tillman path, and was Governor Tillman's floor leader. Blease's "original contribution is found in his ability to make a class appeal without offering a class program." (Rupert B. Vance, "Rebels and Agrarians All," The Southern Review, IV (1938-39), p.34 (Key 144)) Olin D. Johnston, New Deal supporter, was part of the Tillman/Blease line of politicians, if support areas & rhetoric & voting record are any indication. (Key 145) The state had its political machines as well. Senator Edgar Allen Brown entered Senate 1929 and his "Barnwell [County] ring" dominated the state senate, the more weighty body, though not all his chums were Barnwell boys. Governor Johnston fought the ring over highway commision control (Brown's brother-in-law was chief). (Key 152-155) Charleston had a political machine, complete with the kind of rigging of Northern Democrat machines. (Key 133-134) This machine's sheer brazenness is jarring: "It has been far less consistent over the past two decades than the Memphis machine in delivering the vote to state-wide candidates. The local explanation is that the machine has had discretion enough not to report 90 per cent of the vote for its candidate when only 60 per cent would serve. In quite recent primaries, discretion has been supplanted by one of the organization's periodic slumps, and by the introduction of voting machines." Even more interesting is Key's footnote for this fact: "One erstwhile gubernatorial candidate reported that the Charleston leaders asked him what size vote he wanted from Charleston. He recalled with a mild astonishment persistent after several years that these leaders "were not embarassed at all by these conversations." "

In Lousiana, Huey Long rose to near dictatorial powers, as he proclaimed inequality the problem, educational opportunity the culprit, and taxing corporations to fund more and better schools the solution. He spent much of his political career feuding with Standard Oil and other major oil companies. (He owned stock in some of their rivals). He compelled rate reductions at the phone company. (Key 158). Long distributed schoolbooks to children rather than schools, so that Catholic kids got them too in a way to circumvent constitutional bans on religions school aid. He also used radio and his own supporters distributing literature to circumvent hostile press. (Key 162) Long's machine put out full slates of candidates, thorough and extensive like a Northern machine, and possession of a legislature on the same page as Governor Huey Long ensured success in enacting his agenda. (Key 169, 173)

Arkansas politics were mostly issueless (Key 184-186), and even the personal followings of candidates can be quite fickle. In the Democrat primaries that were tantamount to election in those days, contests that went to a second round often didn't have the same people winning the same neck of the woods both times. (Key 187) In absence of issues, they bickered about who was most "qualified," (Key 186-187) and tried to sway county potentates who could sway or leverage the county's denizens into voting the desired way. (Key 195). "One politician with considerable statewide experience classified the vote into three categories. One group of voters is controlled by local leaders who will agree to swing the votes they influence for fifty or a hundred or five hundred dollars, depending on the numbers involved. These leaders say they pass the money on to their voters, but probably seldom do." "A second category of voters consists of those controlled by local leaders (in sub-county areas usually who will not sell their influence. There are many such leaders our practical politician assures us. They would be insulted if you offered them money. It would be "like waving a red flag." They throw their support to the candidate they believe to be the "best man" for the office. Much of a candidate's task is to reach and sell these leaders the idea that he is the "best man." (Key 195-196) Various potentates also "trade out," promising to, for example, tell their followers to support the other man's candidate for local assessor if he tells his followers to supports your candidate for school superintendent. (Key 196) Interestingly, most didn't think this crossed an ethincal line, which they insisted was drawn elsewhere: "Arkansas politicians make a recondite differentiation between machine counties and crooked counties. A machine county is not necessarily crooked nor is a crooked county necessarily a machine county. Yell County, for example, one politician assures us, is a machine county but not crooked. With considerable regularity it returns an overwhelming majority (75-90%) of its vote for its favorite for governor. The boys in Yell merely get together and decide how the county is to go and that's all there is to it. The leaders of a crooked county, on the other hand, manipulate the count or returns for a consideration." (Key 196) After World War 2, Sid McMath and imitators led the "G.I. Revolt" against crooked local government practices, running their own slates of candidates. In some areas, they were more successful than others, due to said corrupt practices, such as those of Crittenden County machine boss Judge C.H. ("Sly Cy") Bond: "In the plantation precincts the custom has been to offer a ballot already marked with the request that he sign it. * And obliging election officials have marked the ballot for citizens too busy to show up at the polls. Pressure on employers brought the discharge of workers who voted wrong." Futhermore: "In Arkansas, the voter signs a duplicate ballot which is preserved in a separate box which is not supposed to be opened in except in case of contest. The common rumor is that in some counties officials regularly inspect the duplicates." (Key 203) *Just like Noxubee and Ike Brown! How can the parties have "switched" if they're acting the same?

North Carolina had a serious GOP-Populist Party fusion (two-parties backing one nominee) tickets in the 1890s, wresting control of the state legislature in 1894 and the governorship in 1896. Stoking white supremacy propaganda, accusing Republicans of corruption and blaming it on Black voters, the Democrats regained the state house by 1898 and the governor's mansion in 1900. (Key 209). North Carolina was run by Key terms a "Progressive Plutocracy." Furnifold Simmons organized the 1898 effort and turned into something of a machine, which sent Simmons to the Senate 1900-1930. He lost his seat to Josiah Baily after he backing Hoover in 1928. (Key 212). Western North Carolina was richer than North Carolina, and resented paying for the Eastern part of the state. (Key 220) North Carolina was unusual in having a quasi-competitive Republican party, its support based in the Westernmost mountains and hills, where the GOP had been strong since the Civil War. The Democrats in the state were organized and disciplined at a level approximating Northern Democrat machines, as they took very seriously the danger, however slight, that Republicans could replicate the triumphs of the 1890s if they slacked off. (Key 220, 223)

Mississippi had some of the most racially inflamed politics, its only serious rival was South Carolina, which, not coincidentally, was its only rival for Black percentage of the population. (Key 229) The Delta against the Hills was the major possible if frequently unrealized cleavage. The Delta had rich soil, the hills had dirt poor "redneck" farmers, who worked very hard on unproductive land to eke out a meager living. They were good organizational material for demagogues like James. K Vardaman and Theodore Bilbo (Key 230-231), but few politicians built lasting coalitions on these lines, and the Delta won by default when they didn't. (Key 246) As for Vardman's pitch, "He bundled up all the Populist doctrines--anti-corporationism, the cause of the common man--with the advocacy of white supremacy" (Key 232). The same man who said educating blacks spoiled a field and and made an insolent cook also got through legislation to limit corporations in the state to $2 million in property and declared "Millionaires produce paupers--the concentration of riches in the hands of the few breeds poverty and squalor among the many." But for the use of the somewhat archaic word "paupers," it could pass as a line Bernie Sanders might say. The other major political figure to note from this era is one who is undoubtedly the single biggest jackass in the history of American politics. No, don't kid yourself; nobody alive is worse, or is ever likely to be worse, than Theodore Bilbo. Once upon a time (pre 17th Amendment), Senators weren't directly elected, so state legislatures voted for them. LeRoy Percy was elected after 57 ballots. Enter Theodore Bilbo, claiming he was offered a bribe to back Percy, but that he had voted Vardaman anyway. He waved before a grand jury cash he'd supposedly been given...then it turned out many of the bills were issued AFTER the day he said he'd gotten the money. He was nearly expelled from the Mississippi Senate over it, which resolved he was "unfit to sit with honest, upright men in a respectable legislative body, and he is hereby asked to resign." (Quoted by Allan A. Michie and Frank Rhylick, Dixie Demagogues (New York: Vanguard Press, 1939), p.94) But, as LeRoy's miffed son William Alexander Percy elaborates: "Bilbo did not resign; he began to build a political career on the old plea of persecution...All over the state roved the self-accused bribe-taker vomiting his own infamy" (William Alexander Percy, Lanterns on the Levee, (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1941), Chap. 13. "The Bottom Rail on Top," pp. 147-148) After not resigning, and having made a jackass of himself for more than a decade, the man who once deflected charges of bigotry by declaring he was for "every damn Jew from Jesus Christ on down (Senate Committee investigating the National Defense Program, 79th Cong., 2d. Sess., Hearings, Transactions between Sen. Theo. G. BIlbo and Various War Contractors, Pt. 2, Exhibit No. 112), was in 1946 accused of not being white supremacist enough. He opposed the poll tax, but as he explained, only because he wanted poor whites to vote. Bilbo won reelection, but soon encountered a more debilitating problem. He'd had some..."questionable" dealings with war contractors. The Senate debated whether to seat him. He went home, and died in his mansion before this was ever resolved; yet another Democrat "man of the people" who got rich in office. Theodore Bilbo was also, in FDR's words, "a real friend of liberal government," and self described as "100% for Roosevelt and the New Deal." (Ira Katnelson, Fear Itself (New York: Liveright Publishing, 2013), 84-88). That was also true of those he endorsed: "In 1919, unable to succeed himself, he threw his strength behind Lee M. Russel;, another old Vardaman man, and during Russell's term violent "resentments against all 'enemies of the people'--deep jealousies and hatreds, inhibited for years--sprang savagely to the surface...in the minds of the newly powerful hill people of Mississippi, the large corporations and 'trusts' became confused with their old masters, the delta folk" Mississippians did not have much in the way of trusts to attack, but they took it out on Ford dealers and insurance companies." (Key 241, citing C.E. Cason, "The Mississippi Imbroglio," Virginia Quarterly Review, 7, (1931), pp.235-236) Paul Johnson, running against Fielding Wright for governor in the primary (the real election then) accused Wright of being funded by a major oil corporation. (Key 236-237) Pre-1960s Mississippi was both racist and about as ANTI capitalist as it was possible to be, outside of the USSR.

Texas, mirroring Florida, was only sparsely settled (by white men anyway) by 1860, and consequently never developed as many areas deriving their wealth from slavery, with less Negrophobic politicking after the Civil War as a result. (Key 254) By the time Key is writing, Texas is the noveau riche state of its day, and conversations were becoming increasingly philosophical, pondering the role of government, by the newly rich "fearful lest they lose their wealth" freshy accumulated against the backdrop of the New Deal's increasing government. The New Deal debate began to trump all else, and were class-based and statewide, not regionally concentrated. (Key 259-261) Like the rest of the South, 1890-WW1 saw a debate over corporate regulation and taxation, public utilities, and general government policy, with the preference at the time being for bigger government. Governor James Stephen Hogg and his successors Charles A. Culbertson and Thomas M. Campbell fought progressive battles. Campbell's administration sought to "strengthen antitrust legilation, instituted control over lobbies, provided for regulation of public utilites by municipalities, enacted a maximum hour law for railroad labor, adopted a pure food act, pushed measures permitting increased taxation, effected tax reform and strived generally to make government better serve the mass of citizens." (Key 261-262) "Farmer Jim" Ferguson used price controls on farm-tenancy rentals, which was ruled unconstitutional, but farmers gave him support for trying. He also increased state education spending, and was a big spender generally. He ran "Ma" Ferguson to circumvent his own ban on running. She failed re-election in 1926 for issuing 2,000 pardons in 20 months, and charges of "irregularities" in highway construction. (Key 263-265) Also of note Wilbert ("Pappy") Lee O'Daniel, who per voteview.com has a pretty conservative DW-NOMINATE score and voting record. But, consistent with my declarations of a then-liberal South, he was born in Ohio and raised in Kansas. He parlayed being a sales manager of a flour mill into a radio show, then into a run for Governor, then into a run for Senator. (Key 265) Many local machines on the Mexican border had votes, real and fraudulent, for a price. The local bosses, or jefes, were straongly in control of their counties and difficult to go around, and sometimes they'd prove fickle, the last candidate there with the cash undercutting the previous one. One of the better known was George Parr, "Duke of Duval," who swung 1948's Senate contest for LBJ, giving him an 87-vote victory. (Key 273-274) Some German counties were GOP, and stayed such, resenting past Confederate reprisals. They sometimes voted for the rare cases of actually conservative Democrats like Pappy O'Daniel or Beauford Jester (ran for governor) (Key 275-276) * * * * * Democrats: Continuous Anti-Capitalism and Big Government Fervor From Andrew Jackson Until the Present

Constant Since Jackson Segregationist support of the New Deal wasn't a reaction to the Depression, but reflected a long-held anti-capitalist philosophy. The narrative would have us believe the Democrats were a small government party that liked states' rights, that it was conservative socially and economically. This is part of the overall con, to tell the electorate this racist party was the conservative party of its day, as a setup to the magical switching parties conspiracy theory, so that when things "switch" the racism and capitalism go together, transferred onto the Republicans. One small problem: the Democrats hated capitalism then too, and saw no problem using the government to award themselves the hard-earned money of others back then either. Nor did they have any constant position on states rights. Andrew Jackson was quite willing to trample claims of states' rights coming from South Carolina in the 1832 Nullification Crisis, and in the 1850s Democrats had no problem trampling the states rights of northern states to be free states. Andrew Jackson's other claim to fame was dismantling the Bank of the United States. Opponents of the Federal Reserve cheer this. While I count myself as a skeptic of the Fed, it should be noted he took the money and deposited in the vaults of state banks, which his opponents called "pets." Many saw Jackson's plans as a mere patronage scheme (Holt 24)

Tammany of The South Democrats don't like people prying into their origins, namely, a land-thief, a planter , and the inventer of the poltical machine and ethnic mobilization, or Andrew Jackson, the Virginia Junto, and Martin Van Buren. As Steven Inskeep relates in Jacksonland, Jackson had cronies (often his business partner John Coffee) survey Indian land for advance sale. Then he made a pretext to drive Indians off their land, sold the land at bargain basement prices, which he could afford to do because as a general his conquest was taxpayer funded. His greatful beneficiaries then later gave him their votes. Indeed, he wins every county in Alabama and Mississippi in both his Presidential wins, and loses only one in 1824. Nor is that coincidence, as Jackson remarked to one of his cronies, John Coffee, that selling the land obtained after the Horsehoe Bend Massacre (Southern Alabama) would someday yield him a whole lot of votes. (Timothy Horton Ball and Henry Sale Halbert, The Creek War of 1813 and 1814 (Montgomery: White, Woodruff & Fowler, 1895), 276-277) No wonder he'd soon fall in with Van Buren, Jackson already had what I shall term the "Tammany of the South," and it shows Democrats favored "redistribution" from the beginning. It also shows "redistribution" isn't far removed from outright theft. Jackson differs from the Founders, some of whom like Patrick Henry, John Marshall, and Thomas Jefferson proposed intermarrying and integrating the Indians (Ralph Lerner, The Thinking Revolutionary (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987), 163). What Jackson did is not paralleled by anything the Founding Fathers did: disease is not genocide, whereas Andrew Jackson's actions were a choice. Also, unlike Jackson, Jefferson and Washington, never enriched themselves off of land stolen from the Indians.

Democrats Always Hated Markets And Capitalism Democrats have hated markets from the beginning, from the advent of the market revolution itself. Their chief accusation against market economies it the exact same as today: that it took equal men and rendered them unequal, that it made rich richer by making the poor poorer, and that its operation was inherently undemocratic and inherently a threat to democracy itself. While facing the Whigs, Democrats sometimes claimed, not always plausibly, to support small government (Tammany anyone? To say nothing of Jackson's landgrabbing shenanigans). Insofar as they ever objected to more government during their contests with the Whigs, it was because they believed that Whiggish solutions would use government, particularly the federal government, to impose the market economy, thereby enriching those connected to the Whigs at the expense of those who weren't. In their formulation, the market economy was something unnatural and undemocratic that had to be imposed by government to occur. Democrats have continuity of purpose in opposing markets, and insofar as they switched to using more government to rein in markets (Progressivism, New Deal, Great Society), it is a switch in strategy, not in purpose. Thanks to the Civil War, they realized that they had to stop resisting Federal control, and instead become Federal control, in order to better restrain markets. True, at various times, the Democrats have been more amenable to market economies than others, but in a two party system, the question "compared to what?" becomes supremely relevant. At no time was the Democrat party the more capitalist, more free market party. For what it's worth, at no time was the Democrat party more committed to civil rights either, they only became equally committed later and engaged in a lot of spin. For all the assertions that something must of changed simply because time passed, consider that the Catholic Church had more or less the same doctrines for 2,000 years. Yet we're not supposed to think a political party can for 200 years?

Philosophy of Government vs Level of Government Republicans want to use government to do nothing but protest people and property. Democrats want to use government to do everything but protect people and property. Federal vs State = irrelevant; which level of government is merely tactical. Relevant is role of government. Opposing lynching and Klan while opposing New Deal and Great Society is consistent with Lockean minarchism, which the GOP believed in, more or less, from Lincoln to Trump. The question is not the level of government. but the philosophy of government. It therefore is no shift in philosophy for the Republicans to have favored use of the Federal government to prevent illegal secession during the Civil War, while declining to use the Federal government to micromanage the economy today: someone committed to the Founding principles would take both stances without any contradiction. As for why the GOP is more inclined to favor state level over the federal level now, it bears asking whether something happened to the extent of federal government power and spending between, oh, about 1930 to about 1980? Southern Democrats advocated white supremacy before the discovery of Nazi deathcamps, after which they rebranded themselves "segregationists." Kari Frederickson documents their pivot from explicit racialism to constitutional (or quasi-constitutional) arguments like "states' rights." (Kari A. Frederickson, The Dixiecrat Revolt and the End of the Solid South, 1932-1968, 133) Segregationist anti-federal assertions differ from Republican opposition to Federal control because the GOP has pre-1950s record of wanting , and always to preserve markets, never Jim Crow.This whole situation unfairly tars a valid constitutional principle with guilt by association. Federal power achieved nothing for civil rights when in Democrat hands. The salvation for civil rights came courtesy of the Republican Party, not the federal government. For what its worth, the Democrats stance still isn't consistent, only their singleminded pursuit of their goal. For example, in 2009 they said Arizona can't enforce federal immigration law if the federals don't want them to. Now they say California should be allowed to flout federal immigration law, impede federal enforcement, and get subsidized for it. They're taking the cartels' side of the argument in both cases, but which level of government they favored is inconsistent.

Capitalism Support Is Not Racism, Big Government Is Not Civil Rights Democrats routinely equate what is not equivalent. Today they equate the Great Society with Civil Rights and opposition to one is equated with opposition to the other in order to push the bogus narrative that big government and civil rights go together, and that small government is a partner with racism. This leaves them unable to explain why Republicans voted "yes" on civil rights and "no" on Great Society welfare programs. Also unexplainable is why segregationist Democrats voted yes on Great Society programs (and the New Deal, for that matter), while voting no on civil rights. Textbooks give us the "Northern Democrat version" of what happened, in which Republican opposition to Great Society welfare programs equalled hidden racism, even though welfare is unrelated to civil rights and practically nobody from 1860 to 1965 claimed any such connection. * * * Antellum Democrats

Democrats Said Slavery Was Good for Slaves The Founding Fathers had varying degrees of decisiveness or hypocrisy on the slavery question, but none ever denied Blacks were included in the Declaration, at least in theory, and certainly none of the Founders ever advanced the idea that slavery was good for the slave, as the Democrats would with their "positive good" doctrines. In fact, nowhere before and nowhere else did anyone before or except the Democrats have such a doctrine. Charles R. Dew was an economist at William and Mary, who made the first serious defense of slavery as positive good in 1832. It was a response to the nearly succesful Virginia House of Burgesses attempt to pass emancipation, and to Nat Turner slave revolt of 1831. This motivated aggressiveness amidst Democrats, for if slavery was a positive good, its expansion was therefore a logical course of action. (John Ashworth, Slavery, Capitalism, and Politics in the Antebellum Republic: Volume I, Commerce and Compromise, 1820-1850. Cambridge University Press, 1995.,p.357) The Democrats defended slavery as a positive good. Yes, some people before the 1830s expressed similar sentiments (Robert Walsh in 1819), but never had a political party embraced it. Notable advocates included John C. Calhoun, James Henry Hammond, Henry Hughes, George Frederick Holmes, Thomas R. Dew and Edmund Ruffin, and George Fitzhugh (more on him later), Democrats all. All declared slavery to be no evil, to be beneficial to the slaves as well as the masters, and some, such as Hammond and Calhoun, called Jefferson's "all men are created equal" doctrine to be wrong. The positive good defense was also a repudiation of the Founders' belief that slavery was more or less headed for inexorable extinction. In other words, Democrats rejected the principles of our Founding, and they knew it. Many Southerners before the 1830s agreed slavery was in the abstract an evil, and while far too much vacillating was done, slave states contained more anti-slavery societies than the free states. Until the Democrats decided on censoring them, that is.

Whigs Didn't Use Positive Good Arguments, Only Democrats Did Whigs didn't use positive good arguments; their case was the immediate abolition of slavery endangered social stability. Henry Clay believed the state of nature had equality, but society had inequality, and feared ending slavery would lead to a war for ascendency, because there would always be an ascendent group. His argument was practical rather than based on positive good or , perhaps insincere, perhaps self-serving, but decidedly not racial. (Daniel Walker Howe, The Political Culture of the American Whigs, University of Chicago Press, 1979, p.133-134) It was a sentiment similar to Jefferson's: "We have the wolf by the ear, and we can neither hold him, nor safely let him go. Justice is on one scale, and self-preservation in the other' " (Thomas Jefferson, "Like a fire bell in the night" Letter to John Holmes, April 22, 1820) While some small number of Whigs subscribed to the positive good school, it was also hedged with reservations of qualifications that were lacking from Democrats. The overwhelming majority of Whigs went nowhere near the doctrine. Northern Democrats didn't believe slavery to be a positive good, though they did help Southern Democrats defend it. (John Ashworth, Slavery, Capitalism, and Politics in the Antebellum Republic: Volume I, Commerce and Compromise, 1820-1850. Cambridge University Press, 1995, p.206) On a related note, yet another thing Democrats blame on America, Manifest Destiny, it turns out the Democrats were the big boosters of the idea. The Democrats base of poor farmers loved the idea of free land at anothers' expense, whereas Whigs generally opposed Manifest Destiny, saying the nation should build up its cities and better develop what we already had before entertaining the idea of grabbing more. (David S. Heidler and Jeanne T. Heidler, Manifest Destiny (Greenwood Press, 2003) Nor is Manifest Destiny simply cut-and-pasted from the Founders, who admired Indians. Patrick Henry, John Marshall, Thomas Jefferson proposed intermarriage and integration. "What they thought impossible with respect to blacks was seen as highly desirable with respect to Indians." (Ralph Lerner, The Thinking Revolutionary (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987), 163) Washington's vision: "It was a vision in which westward expansion of an American empire coexisted alongside the preservation of the original Americans." (Joseph Ellis, American Creation (New York: Vintage Books, 2008), 139) Add Positive Good and Manifest Destiny together, and we have Democrats wanting to annex Texas in order to expand slavery, and accused the Whigs opposing them of being abolitionists. (Cooper, Politics of Slavery, pp.196-216, in HOLT 178-179) This led to Democrats and Whigs in the South attempting to "outslave the other, such as Whigs nominating slaveholder Zachary Taylor (HOLT 268) The Democrats "won," radicalizing them in time for the Civil War. Nor was this merely an obsession of Southern Democrats. Northern Democrat Stephen Douglass wanted slavery expanded West and South. ( Henry V. Jaffa, Crisis of the House Divided (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009), 48)

Wage Slavery! Southern defenders of slavery called capitalism "wage slavery" (Eric Foner 1995 [1970], Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology of the Republican Party before the Civil War, New York, NY, Oxford University Press, p. xix. Derrick Jensen (2002). The Culture of Make Believe, New York, NY: Context Books.), as did the Democrat-voting trade unions in later decades. As Lawrence Glickman writes in his book A Living Wage: American Workers and the Making of Consumer Society, "references ['to wage slavery'] abounded in the labor press, and it is hard to find a speech by a labor leader without the phrase" (Lawrence B. Glickman (1999). A Living Wage: American Workers and the Making of Consumer Society, Cornell University Press, p19) Slavery's Democrat defenders argued slaves were better off because they didn't have to figure out how to feed and clothe themselves the way capitalist workers did. Incredibly, some more modern academics (Margo and Steckel 1982, Fogel 1994, p. 391) have tried to argue this was the case. It is hard to see why, except for the fanatical dislike of free market capitalism animating the modern left. But returning to the antebellum left, the worst invoker of the "wage slavery" trope was undoubtedly George Fitzhugh, author of Sociology for the South and Cannibals All!, and a regular writer for Richmond Enquirer and De Bow's Review. * * * George Fitzhugh: The Leading, Most Influential Defender of Slavery Hated Capitalism, and Other Inconvenient Facts Omiitted by the Left

Fitzhugh: His Contents George Fitzhugh was the leading defender of slavery in the antebellum South. He was a Democrat who also branded himself a socialist, and insisted that socialism is only "the new fashionable name for slavery." (If only his modern Democrat successors would be so candid!) In his 1854 work, Sociology for the South, Fitzhugh said capitalism was inciting "a war of the rich with the poor, and the poor with one another," (p 22) which would leave free blacks "far outstripped or outwitted in the chase of free competition." (p 84) In other words, he is the father of the argument that Blacks need Democrats to take care of them because they can't take care of themselves in the free market. Fitzhugh attacked not just abolitionism, but the foundations of free societies themselves. He attacked Adam Smith and the free markets he espoused, on his way to also attacking John Locke and Thomas Jefferson, and endorsing the Sir Robert Filmer and his work Patriarcha that John Locke had refuted with his Second Treatise of Government. (COUNTERPOINT 134). Anticipating later Democrat talking points, Fitzhugh said free markets only enriched the strong and impoverished the poor, adding that the greater profitability of capitalism only proved they'd exploited workers more than masters exploited slaves (Fitzhugh, Cannibals All!, 17-19). He says slavery was the answer! "Slavery, is a form, and the very best form, of Socialism." (Sociology for the South, p 27-28) Denouncing free markets, he says "Socialism proposes to do away with free competition; to afford protection at all times to the laboring class; to bring about at least, a qualified community of property, and to associate labor. All these purposes, slavery fully and perfectly attains. (p48) He explains his only quarrel with Marxists is their belief socialism will lead to freedom (and he was right). "Socialism is already slavery in all save the master. ...Our only quarrel with Socialism is, that it will not honestly admit that it owes its recent revival to the failure of universal liberty, and is seeking to bring about slavery again in some form. (p 70) Fitzhugh expanded on previous themes in his 1857 work "Cannibals All!" likening business owners to cannibals,and to blast Northern "wage slavery" in much the same fashion as the Democrat-supporting Black-man-excluding unions would. It all ties together, for capitalism was in their minds as bad or worse than slavery. Per Fitzhugh, "the unrestricted exploitation of so-called free society is more oppressive to the laborer than domestic slavery" (Fitzhugh, Cannibals All, 1857, Preface, p. ix) His remedy for capitalist-inflicted inequality? More slavery! He declared "nineteen out of every twenty individuals have...a natural an inalienable right to be slaves." (Fitzhugh 1857, p 102) "It is the duty of society to protect the weak;' but protection cannot be efficient without the power of control; therefore, 'It is the duty of society to enslave the weak" When some said his logic would lead to enslaving whites, Fitzhugh said, why not? "It is a libel on white men to say they are unfit for slavery" (George Fitzhugh. Horace Greeley and his Lost Book, Southern Literary Messenger Volume 31, Issue 3, 1860)

Fitzhugh: His Centrality and Lasting Philosophy Fitzhugh was no obscure crank with atypical views. He was heavily promoted by James D.B. DeBow, through his De Bow's Review. George Frederick Holmes, foremost Southern reviewer, boosted Sociology for the South, which became a best seller, whose, first printing sold out in a few months. (COUNTERPOINT 128) The author angered Lincoln more than any proslavery writers, and his "House Divided" speech paraphrases a Fitzhugh op-ed, though Lincoln mistakenly credits Richmond Enquirer's editor Roger A. Pryor, for the unsigned op-ed. (COUNTERPOINT 130) Cannibals All! drew more attention from William Lloyd Garrison's "Liberator" newspaper than any other book. (Phillips, Michael (2007). "George Fitzhugh 1806-1881).* In: Junius P. Rodriguez (ed.), Slavery in the United States: A Social, Political, and Historical Encyclopedia, Vol. I, ABC-CLIO, p. 285.) Fitzhugh and his "slavery is good and capitalism is bad" argument was mainstream Democrat ideology, even if many rejected white enslavement. The anti-capitalism he espoused continued in the South long after his lifetime.

Fitzhugh: His Company Fitzhugh had company, like William Yancey, Robert Barnwell Rhett and Henry Hughes, who wanted to reopen the slave trade. Hughes thought a little bigger and supported reopening the slave trade in order to repatriate blacks and replace them with warantees who would learn the duty of work from birth to serve the state. Hughes called this concept he invented "warrantism," in which the owners was a "warranter" and workers the "warantee." This implies strong central government, forcing all warrantors and warantees to work. He argued "men cannot be owned," that masters and slaves were both "servants of the social order" (Jeffrey P. Sklansky, The Soul's Economy: Market Society and Selfhood in American Thought, 1820-1920, Chapel Hill, North Carolina: University of North Carolina Press, 2002, pp. 95-103) Hughes blasted abolitionism as 'rebellion against the state,' and he fit right in with Fitzhugh, who wanted more government. "More of government is needed...Government is the life of a nation, and...it is absurd to defined on paper...what they shall do and not do." (Fitzhugh, Sociology for the South and Cannibals All!, many page numbers cited.) Furthermore, "Government may do too much for the people, or it may do too little. We have committed the latter error." (George Fitzhugh, Sociology for the South, or the Failure of Free Society (Richmond, 1854), 145) * * * Slavery & Big Government

The Slave Power Was Big Government John Calhoun, briefly a Whig, rejoined the Democrats in 1837, fuming that abolitionists were taking over the Whig party, and that soundest friends of slavery were to be found in the Democrat party, (HOLT 95), and they did not disappoint. Slavery was upheld by big government, and its respective party. Van Buren and Jackson arranged for the gag rule and the suppression of abolitionist literature from mails to the South. (HOLT 44) New laws rained down, prohibiting manumission of slaves, banned slaves purchasing their own freedom, laws restricting the movment of free blacks within the South, laws against disembarking free black merchant sailors in southern ports, culminating in laws like the Fugitive Slave Act, a federal law infringing on the states' rights of free states. (Thomas D. Morris, Southern Slavery and the Law, 1619-1860 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996); Andrew Fede, People Without Rights: An Interpreteation of the Law of Slavery in the US South (New York: Garland, 1992; Larry Schweikart, The Entrepreneurial Adventure: A History of Business in the United States. (Forth Worth, TX: Harcourt Brace, 2000), 170-172) All of the above was, of course, upheld by gun control laws--indeed, one of the reasons SCOTUS ruled against Dredd Scott was that (and they explicitly say this in the ruling) were they to concede he was a citizen, that would by implication allow Blacks to have guns. The Slave Power, Democrats who'd controlled their states to serve the planter class, now attempted to mirror this feat at the Federal level via the Fugitive Slave Acts, the machinations leading to Bloody Kansas, and Dredd Scott to impose their will nationally. Some say the Slave Power was an overblown threat made up by Northern Republicans to unify the party, and point to the fact the North was adding population--and House seats--faster than the Democrat Solid South. However, much of that growth arose from non-Anglo Saxon and hence largely Democrat immigration tipping New York. Lincoln survived 1860 in a 4 way race, with 11 fewer hostile states in the 1864 mix. 1868 and 1872 benfitted from Black Republicans, but the 1876-1896 elections featured slim margins despite Democrats' Confederate legacy. Long story short, it was no exaggeration, and Lincoln's House Divided speech said as much. The violence in Kansas, assault on Senator Sumner, attacks on abolitionist press, the Ostend Manifesto (proposed takeover of Cuba, future Democrat President James Buchanan the reputed author), the Fugitive Slave Act and related attempts to stop Northern juries from nullifying its enforcement, and the Dred Scott decision evidence the Slave Power's existence. And the Slave Power, through the Democrat Party they controlled, knew that defense and expansion of slavery depended on government coercion, not on the free markets that they themselves had denounced as "wage slavery." * * * * * Republicans: Free Labor, Free Soil, Free Speech & Free Men The Republican Party was capitalist in 1860, capitalist in 1960, and capitalist today. Any support for markets and self-sufficiency and love of Horatio Alger-type stories derives from sources other than coded, hidden racism. Their capitalist roots, interlocking with anti-slavery sentiment, are seen early, in the 1858 "Irrepressable Conflict" speech by William H. Seward (Lincoln's future secretary of state. Seward spends the first three pages elaborating on the superiority of the "free labor" (capitalist) system to slavery, contrasting the two as if they were different--because they are. Next to nobody (if anybody at all) of that era disputed that slavery was the opposite of free-market capitalism. It is only contemporary leftists who claim slavery = capitalism. On page 4, he describes the Democrat dependence on on slave states: "The very constitution of the Democratic party commits it to execute all the designs of the slaveholders, whatever they may be. It is not a party of the whole union, of all the free states and of all the slave states; nor yet is it a party of the free states in the North and in the Northwest; but it is a sectional and local party, having practically its seat within the slave states, and counting its constituency chiefly and almost exclusively there. Of all its representatives in Congress and in the Electoral Colleges, two-thirds uniformly come from these states. Its great element of strength lies in the vote of the slaveholders, augmented by the representations of three-fifths of the slaves. Deprive the Democratic party of this strength, and it would be a helpless and hopeless minority, incapable of continued organization." (William H. Seward, "The Irrepressible Conflict," Rochester, Monday Oct 25, 1858)

Not to be outdone, Lincoln affirms capitalism in a full throated defense, gutting progressive attempts to lay claim to him. He supported markets internally, tariffs externally, and exact equal application of the law, much like Trump. Lincoln believed in capitalist opportunity, declaring, "every man can make himself" and "the man who labored for another last year, this year labors for himself, and next year he will hire others to labor for him." (Abraham Lincoln, Speech at Kalamzoo, Michgan, August 27, 1856, Collected Works of Abrham Lincoln, Volume 2, 364). Lincoln saw no problem with people getting rich, or that some got rich faster than others. "It is best for all to leave each man to acquire property as fast as he can. Some will get wealthy. I don't believe in a law to prevent a man from getting rich; it would do more harm than good. So while we do not propose any war on capital, we do wish to allow the humblest man an equal chance to get rich with everybody else." More Lincoln: "Property is the fruit of labor--property is desirable--is a positive good in the world. That some should be rich shows that other may become rich, and hence is just encouragement to industry and enterprise." Rejecting Bernie Sanders' ideology of envy, Lincoln said, "Let not him who is houseless pull down the house of another; but let him labor diligently and build one himself, thus by example assuring that his own shall be safe from violence when built." (Abraham Lincoln, "Reply to a Committee from the Workingmen's Association of New York," March 21, 1864 (Complete Works, X, 53-54)) Tying his belief in capitalism to his opposition to slavery, Lincoln said, "Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally." (March 17, 1865, speech before 140th Indiana Regiment) Lincoln declared slavery evil because it was theft, describing it as a case of "You work, I eat." He also stated, "As each man has one mouth to be fed, and one pair of hands to furnish food, it was probably intended that that particular pair of hands should feed that particular mouth." (Abraham Lincoln, Address by Abraham Lincoln Before the Wisconsin State Agricultural Society in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, September 30, 1859) So, Lincoln is a capitalist and an individualist, whose opposition to slavery meshes with his capitalism.. He's no leftist, he's no progressive, he's one of those "pull yourself up by your own bootstraps" kind of guys, and he's the one who ended slavery. That's right: slavery was ended by a CAPITALIST president of a CAPITALIST party. Go home 1619 Project, you're drunk!

As the Democrats drifted from the Founders wishes, so did the GOP uphold them, and one can draw a straight line from Jefferson to Lincoln. Per Jefferson: "To take from one, because it is thought his own industry and that of his fathers has acquired too much, in order to spare others, who, or whose fathers, have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association, the guarnatee to everyone the free execrise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it." (Thomas Jefferson, The Writings of Thomas Jefferson (Washington, D.C.: Thomas Jefferson Memorial Association, 1904), p. 466) Per Lincoln: "The man who labored for another last year, this year labors for himself, and next year he will hire others to labor for him." "Let not him who is houseless pull down the house of another, but let him labor diligently and built one of his own." (Abraham Lincoln, cited in Eric Foner, Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men (New York: Oxford University Press, 1970), p. 20, 30----) That line continues, more or less, from Jefferson, through Lincoln, to modern Republicans. Perhaps not as straight as between Jefferson and Lincoln, perhaps a speedbump here and a detour there, but true enough. Republican defense of limited government follows Jefferson's credo that "An elective despotism was not the government we fought for." (Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia (New York: W.W. Norton, 1982), p.120). And their loathing of handouts started long before the 1960s, as they despised it from Tammany Hall or the New Deal, aka, the Tammany on the Potomac. At this point it must be said Republicans are not perfect, but between them and Democrats, there remains no comparison. As Democrats vandalize and demolish Jefferson and Lincoln statues, and deface the monument to the Union's Black 54th Massachusetts Regiment, it seems safe to say Republicans probably pay better fealty to our Founders' principles. * * * * * The Civil War, Reconstruction, and History in General Until the 1890s

The Anti-Capitalist Confederacy The Confederacy, as I elaborated in the introduction, contra Thomas E. Woods and Thomas DiLorenzo, was an anti-capitalist entity, whose government nationalized large swathes of the economy, debased the currency and wantonly confiscated property to further the war effort. As I further elaborated, the planter class was disdainful of Yankee capitalism and avidly consumed works by George Fitzhugh, Henry Hughes and others who said the same.

The Republicans' Capitalist Reconstruction The Freedman's Bureau, as an extension philosophically of a Yankee GOP capitalism, had hoped to incentivize work ethic among former slaves. Under slavery the incentive is to withhold effort; under the free labor system, the incentive is the opposite, and not working can mean not eating. The Freedman's Bureau had 40 acres and a mule schemes, but Democrat President Andrew Johnson dismantled such schemes and sent land from the Bureau back to the planters. Deprived of all material for material inducements, the Bureau was reduced to teaching and preaching, which, got basically nowhere, at which point they threw up their hands in exasperation. (COUNTERPOINT P40-41) In passing, it's not socialist or leftist to support schemes like Forty Acres and a Mule, because it moved land from actual slaveholders, to actual slaves, and followed the natural rights principle of recopense when someone benefitted from stolen property. (SCHWEIKART P363) There is nothing about such a scheme that would offend John Locke, or require the logic of a Rosseau or a Marx to support.

The Democrats' Anti-Capitalist Opposition to Reconstruction Post-War Democrats imposed Black Codes, requiring annual employment contracts, prohibited movement between counties without official permission (sounds more like the Soviet internal checkpoints than anything American), and the use of "vagrancy" charges (to nail anyone trying to get a better job while they're busy looking for one). All anti-free market. Also, huge license fees on recruiters from other states trying to lure freedman. Also, occupational licensing to keep blacks out of profitable professions; the fees could of course be paid by those established in the trades, but a freshly freed slave was not likely to have the cash on hand. (SCHWEIKART P367-8,) For example, South Carolina required any "person of color" to get license to do the "business of an artisan, mechanic, or shop-keeper, or any other trade, employment, or business." A license cost $100, and was valid for only 1 year. All of this upheld by, of course, gun control laws. Hmmm, now who still pushes gun control laws?

The GOP Didn't Sell Out; Jim Crow Wasn't Imposed in 1876, but in the 1890s Rutherford B. Hayes' advisors assured him enough Democrats who were ex-Whigs existed were more moderate and inclined to protect freedman from violence. This informed Hayes' decision in 1876, and was more or less right until 1890. Blacks, while sometimes impeded or intimidated, continued to vote to a great degree until the 1890s, and Black officals continued to be elected (STRANGE CAREER 52-54). The Democrats 1890s takeover ended this moderation. Little worthy of the name Jim Crow came into effect before the 1890s. C. Vann Woodward in Strange Career of Jim Crow, pages 31-47, details the general lack of anything resembling systemic segregation before the 1890s. A statute here and there, but unsystemic, and comparatively tame, even for residences and railcars. For example Charles E. Wynes, Race Relations in Virginia, said " 'the most distinguishing factor in the complexity of social relations between the races was that of inconsistency. From 1870 to 1900, there was no generally accepted code of racial mores.' During those three decades, according to this study, 'at no time was it the general demand of the white populace that the Negro be disenfranchised and white supremacy be made the law of the land.' Until 1900, when a law requiring the separation of the races on railroad cars was adopted by a majority of one vote, the Negro sat where he pleased among the white passangers on perhaps a majority of the state's railroads." (Charles Wynes, Race Relations in Virginia, 1870-1902 (Charlottesville, Va., 1961), especially 68, 149-150) Other states were similar. Via Woodward: "A Northern reporter remarked with puzzlement in 1880 upon "the proximity and confusion, so to speak, of white and negro houses" in both the countryside and cities of South Carolina. This pattern of "proximity and confusion" continued for decades in the older parts of the South." (STRANGE CAREER 32) " 'Perhaps the most striking aspect of race relations in Louisiana from 1877 to 1898,' according to a recent study, 'was the absence of system. There existed no consistent, thorough, and effective system of social control, legal or extralegal, governing relations between the races. The place of the Negro and his relationship to the white many haad yet to be carefully defined." (Henry C. Dethloff and Robert R. Jones, "Race Relations in Louisiana ,1877-1898," Louisiana History, IX (Fall, 1968), 305) (COUNTERPOINT P212) No doubt there were abuses, but it was sporadic rather than systemic. For example, Plessy had a hard time finding a railroad that cared enough about having the law enforced onboard, complicating his court challenge quest. Businesses generally despised the laws for adding to their expense. (COUNTERPOINT P219-220) * * * What Was Jim Crow, Who Imposed It?

Jim Crow Was Government Restriction of the Market, Not the Will of the Market The standard leftwing talking point proceeds as if whites imposed segregation on the job market without government assistance, and that big government needs to step in to save blacks from racist capitalism. The historical facts say that whites were unable to impose segregation on the job market, and required the assistance of government laws, Jim Crow laws, in order to do what the market alone would not do, and that including bans on private discrimination in the 1964 Civil Rights Bill was more about launching a false narrative that blacks needed big government than addressing any demonstrable problem. In other words, it is another part of the Big Lie, pretending America's founding and America's free market traditions are the problem rather than the Democrats' perversions of them that is the problem. The contract enforcement laws and vagrancy laws, laws inhibiting migration to better paying jobs, are best understood as attempts to create by law a labor-market cartel, to achieve what markets wouldn't do. Occupational licensing laws, enticement laws, contract enforcement laws, restricting competition in the labor market to at time at the start of each contract year; vagrancy laws, to prevent blacks from having time to shop around for better pay, emigrant agent laws, to hamstring labor recuiters, and convict lease. In other words, this was the opposite of the free-labor system championed by Lincoln and the Republicans, in which the labor was free to shop around whenever and however he chose, to hold out for whatever wages he thought he could get by so doing. (Jennifer Roback Morse, "Exploitation in the Jim Crow South: The Market or the Law?", September 26, 1984, American Enterprise Institute, adapted from a longer article thereafter appearing in The University of Chicago Law Review, Fall 1984.) Competition between white employers and landowners collapsed any purely economic attempts to suppress Blacks. (Robert Higgs, Competiton and Coercion: Blacks in the American Economy, 1865-1914 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1977), 47-49, 130-131) Black pay and sharecroppers' shares rose. Black per capita incomes grew more rapidly than whites over last 1/3 of 19th Century. (Robert Higgs, Competiton and Coercion: Blacks in the American Economy, 1865-1914 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1977), 102, 117, 144-146) The failure of government-less suppression preceded big government Jim Crow installation.

Where Did Anyone Get the Idea Jim Crow Was Conservative or Capitalist? Where did people get the idea that Jim Crow is anything big big government anti-free market interventionism? There are three basic reasons. Firstly, because narrative pushers focus solely on the social and political aspects, the slights of exclusion, the denial of the vote, the enforcement via lynching and intimidation. But only certain political aspects: gun control's role is omitted, as is the massive Democrat voter fraud; and the economic regulation is of course omitted, from occupational licensing, emigrant agent laws, vagrancy laws, and anticapitalist rhetoric. Secondly, while narratives can be used to drum up support for a law, the 1964 Civil Rights Act had one embedded in the law. The ban on private discrimination pushed the narrative that Jim Crow was private discrimination. Finally, much instructional material focuses on where the signs were, in businesses, rather than on who made it the rule, the government. One way to cut through the fog is to ask what happened to Rosa Parks. Was she merely kicked off the bus? No, she was arrested. Arrests indicate a law, laws indicate government action. Jim Crow = big government. And that tells us something about the solution. Big government was not needed to deal with segregation. The application of the 14th and 15th Amendment as written is all that was needed. The Privileges or Immunities Clause barred state laws that violated liberties. Due Process, Equal protection clauses. The problem presented by Plessy v. Ferguson is a problem of a court evading the plain language of the amendments. The way to solve it is to apply the Constitution as written, not by empowering the courts to evade it. Long story short, the 14th and 15th Amendments were the answer, the only thing standing in the way of what was right, then as now, were judges appointed by Democrats. Finally, in Numan V. Bartley's New South: 1945-1980, it's hard to read through and miss the countless instances in which segregationist die-hards were undercut by other elements who were worried about losing Northern business investment dollars. If Jim Crow was so capitalist, why is capitalism what held back staunch segregationist elements from doing more damage than they already did to the civil rights movement?

Progressive Jim Crow The progressive movement in the South and the movement to disenfranchise Blacks and segregate them were one in the same. Progressive reformers rode to power on white supremacy, from Hoke Smith (GA), Charles B. Aycock & Josephus Daniels (NC), Carter Glass & Andrew Montague (VA), Braxton B. Comer (AL), to Napoleon B. Broward (FL). (STRANGER CAREER 91) Thomas Dixon was the literary accompanyment to the mass disenfranchisement/white supremacy installation. Him and others: Charles Carroll, "The Negro a Beast"; or, "In the Image of God" (1900); William P. Calhoun, The Caucasian and the Negro in the United States (1902); William B. Smith, The Color Line: A Brief in Behalf of the Unborn (1905); Robert W. Shufeldt, The Negro, A Menace to American Civilization (1907). These authors (Democrats all) did to literature what the Dunning School did to history. This is the period where the myth was spun. (STRANGE CAREER 94) Pivoting to address more modern distortions, much of the historiagraphy about rich and poor, rich planters and poor populists and and class maneuverings and minutia is in my estimation designed to conceal that it was the Democrats, and in particular their rabid base instead of their tepid establishment, that imposed these indignities. The rich and the business owners didn't demand segregation. People who liked big government did. The masses, the rabble, the crackers did, they were also the ones demanding more government to rein in the rich and the business owners. (STRANGE CAREER 49-80) The repeated use of the word "conservative" is misleading with regard to rich Southern Democrats & planters. "Establishment" or "Haves vs Have-nots" makes more sense; the DW-NOMINATE Poole/Rosenthal scores of even the "conservative" and "Bourbon" Democrats were pretty left of center. Southern segregation, was entirely the work of Democrats; and insofar as it existed anywhere in the North, I'll lay even money a comparing the areas of support for it with county/district maps of where Democrat support within those states arsis from would prove quite illuminating.

Segregation, from Zoning Laws to the New Deal "The 1880 census showed that, in Detroit, it was not uncommon for blacks and whites to live next door to each other. (David M. Katzman, Before the Ghetto: Black Detroit in the Nineteenth Century (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1973), 35, 69, 102, 200) Zoning laws began, depending on who you ask, in Los Angeles in 1908 or NYC in 1910. Zoning laws weren't invented to segregate, but segregationists recognized the possibility. (STRANGE CAREER 100). Baltimore led the way in 1910, banning home purchases beyond existing race majority areas, expelling Blacks from longtime neighborhoods. The 1917 Buchanan v. Warley case, overturned a racial zoning law in Louisville, Kentucky, the Court declared it a violation of , thus of the 14th Amendment. Southern cities simply ignored the ruling. Then came the New Deal. As Richard Rothstein's book, The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America.. In 1933, the federal government responded to a housing shortage with a housing program, that included state-sponsored segregation. This is where the "projects" come from. The Federal Housing Administration, established in 1934, ensured it by refusing to insure mortgages in/near Black neighborhoods, aka "redlining," all while subsidizing subdivisions for whites, and requiring no such home be sold to blacks. This segregated blacks farther away from job opportunities. FHA's excuse was Blacks buying homes caused property values to go down, when the data says they went up on account of blacks being willing to pay so much to live there, just to get out of redlining hell. "Redlining" refers to the color coded maps developed by the Home Owners' Loan Corporation for use by the FHA, which colored most anything near Black neighborhoods red, "too risky" to insure the mortgages of. (Despite the "Corporation" in the "Home Owners' Loan Corporation," it is a government-created monstrosity, meaning redlining is the work of government policy, not the private sector). Per the Federal Housing Administration's Underwriting Manual: "incompatible racial groups should not be permitted to live in the same communities" also, suggesting highways were an ideal way to separate Black and White neighborhoods. (Terry Gross, "A 'Forgotten History' Of How The US Government Segregated America," May 3, 2017, NPR, about Richard Rothstein's book The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America) In passing, I should note that the Democrats were the ones who passed the bills making the FHA that did this. Republicans didn't think it was the proper role for government, then or now. Yet, by the time we get the post-60s riots, the Kerner Commission's Report moved the blame, faulting "white racism," party unspecified, implying America and capitalism did it, not big government action. (CARNES GARRATY P811) None of this owes anything to the American Founding: Search the Founders' works in vain for the kind of rhetoric common to Democrats of this era. Also, returning to the start of this chapter, FDR's 1932 DNC speech invoked Woodrow Wilson and promised to finish what he started, and Wilson rejected the Founding: "We are not bound to adhere to the doctrines held by the signers of the Declaration of Independence." (Woodrow Wilson, "The Author and Signers of the Declaration," September 1907, teachingamericanhistory.org) Wilson then debunked the idea racism and progressivism are mutally exclusive by segregating the Federal government, and this precedent the Roosevelt administration followed. Their union base excluded Blacks, as did most New Deal programs via exclusion of domestic workers and farm laborers. Most blacks worked in those occupations. Government make-work programs were segregated, the best jobs for whites, and the aforementioned FHA made loans to blacks contingent upon where they wanted to move. FDR blocked anti-lynching laws, and Northern Democrats prevented any override of his veto. (Ira Katznelson, Fear Itself (New York: Liveright Publishing, 2013), 167-168). FDR put Klansman Hugo Black on the Supreme Court. Southern Democrat preferences were federalized via official government policy, all of which would have been impossible without the enthusiastic complicity of Northern Democrats, who today pretend "the South" did it rather than an entire party, North and South.

Who's Still Doing it? The left still ironically embraces segregation: CHAZ/CHOP demands: "1) We demand the hospital and care facilities of Seattle employ black doctors and nurses specifically to help care for black patients." Apparently if you call something "black only" nobody can tell it's segregation anymore. Theodore Bilbo and Marcus Garvey ironically agreed, each for their own reasons. Bilbo considered black separatism a Plan B if Jim Crow ever collapsed. But back then they were more candid; now Democrats think calling it something else makes it something else. Ted Rorhlich, "2 Studies Find Bias in Rentals," , September 27, 1999. "Despite being one of the most diverse metropolitian areas in the world, Greater Los Angeles remains a hotbed of racial and ethnic housing dscrimination. Two recent studies of rental practices found that Latino landlords are discriminating against African Americans, and black landlords are discriminating against Latinos, as levels comparable to those practiced by whites against minority groups a decade ago." Which is a clever way of saying others are discriminating more against each other NOW than whites are NOW. Then there's Dana Goldstein's article, " 'Threatening the future': The High Stakes of Deepening School Segregation," in the New York Times, May 10, 2019. She elaborates, New York, California, Maryland, and Illinois had the most school segregation for Blacks, the situation worsening since 1988. What is more, school quality is appalling: a 2017 Department of Education study showed 75% of black males in Democrat California couldn't pass the reading and writing test. And liberals oppose school vouchers. Then there's the segregated dorms on campuses, segregated freshman orientations and graduations. The more woke, the more segregation. If "institutional racism" exists, blame the Left, they control every major institution in America: media, colleges, administrative government, Hollywood, big tech, etc. If institutional racism causes problems in Democrat areas, that means the Democrats are racist. They tell some silly stories trying to get around it. Take for example the case of Freddie Gray: 2 of the six cops were black, the judge was black, the states attorney was black, the police chief was black, the city council was mostly black, the mayor was black, in a country with a black attorney general and a black presdent. The Democrats then blamed "institutional racism" and a "white power structure." We are dealing with people who are stuck in a 1960s paradigm (minus understanding which party the segregationists belonged to, of course.)

Who Opposed it the Whole Time? Who opposed this the entire time? The Republican Party. Slavery, the Klan, and Jim Crow are dead today because of the Republican Party, which is now accused of owning all three. The Republican Party invented civil rights. They own it. Democrats can't be the party of civil rights because they spent the first 100 years opposing it and the next 50 perverting it. Equal application of the law wasn't their hallmark them nor is it their objective now. Civil rights are about obtaining equal application of the law, which Democrats have always rejected on some rationale or the other. The GOP pushed the Civil Rights Act of 1875, even after the 1874 result, nearly passed the 1890 Federal elections act, GOP POTUS Benjamin Harrison favored a constitutional amendment to overturn the 1883 Civil Rights Cases that gutted the Civil Rights of 1875 There were the various effots by George Tinkham (R-MA, voteview score +.502, good luck Kevin Kruse pretending he's a "liberal Republican"), "conscience of the House," December 6, 1920 offered resolution for Committee of Census to investigate black disenfranchisement. (Times, Special to the New York (December 6, 1920, "DEMANDS INQUIRTY ON DISFRANCHISING; Representative Tinkham Aims to Enforce 14th and 15th Articles of Constitution. ASKS REAPPORTIONMENT House Resolution Will Point Out Disparity Between Southern Membership and Votes Cast", The New York Times.) The Old Right of the 30s and 40s fought Jim Crow, lynching and racial injustice before it was cool. Hamilton Fish (R-NY) and Robert Taft (R-OH) blasted FDR for opposing anti-lynching bills, voting rights, and military desegregation. The conservative Chicago Tribune was the only major news outlet to investigate and denounce Japanese-American internment. Even 1952 appeals by GOP chairman Guy Gabrielson to Dixiecrats was devoid of race. Joseph Lowndes, in From the New Deal to the : Race and the Southern Origins of Modern Conservatism, tries to spin it as part of a tradition of oblique references to race. Nixon sponsored the 1957 Civil Rights Act, the first successful civil rights bill in 87 years. He was not accused of being against civil rights, as far as I can tell, until 1968. (GRAHAM 29) Nixon was anti-communist, and the to brand such a prominent anti-communist as racist fit into a larger meta-narrative, pushed by the left to this day, that opposition to socialism equals racism, which mirrored a trend in Soviet propaganda at the time as the USSR backed 3rd-world insurrection. This narrative, equating white racism and colonialism with capitalism, is taught as fact to children today. Nixon blasted JFK and LBJ as "a man who had voted against most of these propopsals, and a man who opposes them at the present time." (GRAHAM 30) Yet Blacks voted for JFK, despite Nixon's better record. Senator Everrett Dirksen and House Republican Leader Charles Halleck blasted JFK's civil rights record. (GRAHAM 31) Note what constrained JFK was not the GOP, but his own party. Ike felt uneasy about Brown v. Board, fearing it ultimately had set back progress. He supported in principle legal equality but doubted that laws and court decisions could fix attitudes, which is where it all hinged long term. (NEW SOUTH 231) He feared a repeat of Reconstruction's failure. Ike thought lasting progress only would work if locally-begun, and elimination of prejudice itself was less prone to reversal than laws. (Dwight David Eisenhower Diary Series, 1953.) (NEW SOUTH 230) Again, shrinking from controversy--but who made it a controversy? Also, note the Goldwater-like sentiments that it was a heart problem, note it was longtime GOP belief post Reconstruction, and GOP had been source of all previous civil rights laws, they just didn't think it was a be-all-end-all. Ike contended with Democrat majorities 1954-1960, which watered down Civil Rights bills. (NEW SOUTH 235) The seniority system enabled segregationists to block civil rights bills in committees. The Democrats could have ended the seniority system but didn't, finessing racists and civil rights advocates for support. (NEW SOUTH 237) Republicans, with no such problem, voted more strongly for civil rights laws in the 1960s, even though the black vote had left them three decades prior: in other words, Republicans supported rights for blacks, even when it hurt. Meanwhile, Democrats didn't even pretend to care until it hurt, until they were already losing the South.

The "Liberal" Republicans "But those civil rights supporting Republicans were 'liberal' Republicans," screech the narrative pushers. At this point, you may suspect this isn't true either, and you'd be right. Republicans in general backed the bills, and as for any Republicans they are pleased to calle "liberal," they may be liberal compared to some other Republicans, but take on these statements for size: how many of them could be uttered by a Trump or a Reagan or a ? Take the "liberal" : "We Republicans should say to the voter: We offer you a Welfare Society without a welfare state...We think the desire for security is normal and human and good, in war and in peace, and that we can have it without red tape, without bureaucracy..without sacrifice of opportunity and without loss of personal liberty." On Civil Rights, he had said "If we are to win the struggle for the minds of men--particularly in Africa and Asia--we must show at home that we practice what we preach about equal rights for all, and that what we do is animated by spiritual values." On the Soviet menace: "Here is a government, well-known for its expansionist proclivities and armed to the teeth which...has repeatedly used force...When such a government insists on secrecy it is in effect also insisting on preserving its ability to make a suprise attack on humanity...If it ever should be accepted that the Soviet Union can maintain a double standard whereby they have thousands of spies and subversive agents everywhere while protesting one harmless [U2 spyplane] observation flight, the free world would surely be in great and peculiar danger." ("The Public Record of Henry Cabot Lodge," Congressional Quarterly, March 13, 1964, pp. 508-509) Pro civil rights, and ANTI-communist? So much for the bogus narrative capitalism is racist. (KESSEL 51) Governor George Romney said "America desperately needs is a program based on a modern application to our present day problems of proven American principles. What is wrong with America today? Well, for one thing, as spending goes up, morality goes down. One of the strongest forces at work to undermine our morality is the relentless growth of centralism with its corresponding decline in individual morality." After pointing to the Northern Democrats who felt that all things must be accomplished at the Federal level and to South Democrats who used states' rights as a cloak for inaction, Romney declared: "The Republican position must be that each state not only his responsibilities, but each state must move to nest these responsibilities...Only the Republican party is in a position to prevent the substitution of centralism for the limited and balanced government established by the Constitution. By doing s0 we will make a modern application of proven American principles to one of today's pressing problems." (KESSEL 53-54) Governor William W. Scranton: "We must unfetter Americans from excesses and needless taxes, but we must also demand the integrity of a great nation's tax dollar. We must keep America in the leadership of the Free World, and to do so we must strengthen our moral foundations at home. We must defend the equal rights of all Americans under the law, but we must also courageously say that the real battlefield of human rights are not the in the law books, but in human hearts. We must lead America towards solutions for the human problems created by the age of automation, but we must also provide a framework of free enterprize under which American business--not American government--creates prosperity."--"addressing Republican diners in Indianapolis that January [1964] evening" *unknown date, not clear from the book. (KESSEL P55) Governor Scranton, speech at Economic Club of New York, one week before New Hampshire Primary: "The whole point of the Republican insistence on strong state governments is the Republican belief that state governments can in many areas accomplish more and do the job better than the central government can...We can devise a hundred bold new attacks on the problems of America and we can do it without going outside the framework of the Constitution and the federal principle." (KESSEL P66) After talking like that, Scranton, Lodge & Rockefeller all fought each other for the Northeast in the 1964 GOP Primary, implying at recently as 1964, the Northeast GOP was not liberal. "For some time now," wrote Duane Lockard in the late 1950s, "the leadership of elements of both factions (of the New Hampshire Republican party) have been of decidedly conservative hue--the distinction has been that of more-conservative versus the less-conservative" (New England State Politics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1959), p.50) (KESSEL P59) And then there's the matter of Joe McCarthy, who was pro-civil rights and anti-communist. That makes liberal narratives explode. The press recycled passages from segregationist Millard Tydings. McCarthy was also opposed by segregationists like Fullbright, who McCarthy called Halfbright. And let's not forget the smears against Nixon, hated first and foremost for his anti-Communism. Domestically he was quite liberal, with wage and price controls, the EPA creation, federal food stamp expansion, etc. He was smeared as a racist, among other things, because as an anti-communist par excellence, the left saw the chance to launch a narrative that anti-communism equalled pro-racism. (TREASON 196-197) * * * * * Republicans' Roll Call Votes Didn't Switch Why did any Republicans vote "no" on any such laws, whether the 1957, 1960, or 1964 Civil Rights Acts, the 1965 Voting Rights Act, the 1968 Fair Housing Act, or the 1972 Equal Employment Opportunity Act? Not for the same reason as segregationists. We can tell because 1) they represented districts and states without segregation, or at least lacking de jure segregation, and 2) the Democrats not using this line of attack tells me they've got nothing. It was mostly or entirely the usual quaint points about Federalism, New Deal-era carrying over, those who didn't believe the EEOC wasn't just another stealth NLRB, and weren't reassured by Humphrey's or Dirksen's promises.

Republican Platforms Didn't Switch Your challenge, should you choose to accept it: Show some example of a platform or rhetoric switch. Where are the examples of the pro-civil rights Republicans starting to talk like Segregationist Democrats? Where are the Segregationist Democrats who started sounding like civil rights Republicans? Show an old Democrat and Republican platform on an issue about slavery or civil rights. Now show a newer, post 1964 platform with the Democrat and Republican positions reversed. It can't be done. Not even the 1964 GOP Platform, promising: "full implementation and faithful execution of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and all other civil rights statutes, to assure equal rights and opportunities guaranteed by the Constitution to every citizen." and "improvements of civil rights statutes adequate to changing needs of our times" as well as "such additional administrative or legislative actions as may be required to end the denial, for whatever unlawful reason, of the right to vote" So, Kevin Kruse, so Dan Carter, where's the "dogwhistle?" Where's the "party switch?"

Republican Policies Didn't Switch And regardless of platforms, Republicans never adopted segregationist policies. There is no racist policy held by 1960s Democrats that was adopted by the post 1960 Republicans. Some have tried to say affirmative action, but affirmative action can be opposed by reasonable people on its merits, and is not proof of a "switch," because there was no movement pushing FOR it before the 1960s. Liberals like Hubert Humphrey, George McGovern, Edmund Muskie, and Adam Clayton Powell all opposed racial preferences in the debate on the 1964 Civil Rights Act. (Humphrey was BOTH pro civil rights AND anti communist, debunking the narrative again. A founder of ADA, an anti-communist liberal group. Humphrey had fought to keep commies out of the Minnesota Democrat party in the mid to late 1940s. (Iric Nathanson May 23, 2011 "Into the bright sunshine'--Hubert Humphrey's civil rights agenda," MinnPost.com) Also, "Affirmative action mainly benefitted African Americans who sought entry into graduate and professional schools, employment and promotion in the public and corporate sectors, and contracts for minority business firms." (Hugh D. Graham, The Civil Rights Era: Origins and Development of National Policy, 1960-1972 (New York, 1990, 186-277, 377-92) The most conservative of Republicans, like Illinois Senator , Ohio Senator Robert Taft, and CA Senator Bill Knowland led the fight for civil rights. Nor should that surprise: Conservatives aren't threatened by self-sufficent blacks, Black success doesn't scare us. And we certainly don't call them "Uncle Toms" for succeeding. In short, Republicans were constant: their support of the civil rights laws was nothing unusual. The real question is why Democrats switched. Northern Democrats for, but defended lynching in New Deal era. What happened that changed their minds? Not the 1963 riots, no previous riots had changed their minds, or had made civil rights bills urgent. What got them desperate between 1960-1963 that made them want to move on something they'd been content to grandstand on, that they begged for Republican help to pass a bill? Was it about civil rights, or about launching a narrative once they realized they couldn't stop civil rights? What evidence is there that this was driven by a moral awakening? * * * There Was A Pivot: Why Did Democrats Switch?

Democrats Never Backed A Civil Rights Bill Before 1957 The Democrats made a pivot. 1957 featured the first civil rights bill that a majority of Democrats had ever voted in favor of. As recently as the 1930s, Northern Democrats had helped uphold FDR's lynching bill vetoes and confirm Klansman Hugo Black to SCOTUS. What changed? True, various executive orders and actions and flourishes of egalitarian rhetoric from FDR to Truman to JFK were issued, but this only goes to highlight the lack of Democrats supporting Civil Rights in Congress. (GRAHAM 10). One bill did fail though, but it was pre-failed by design: Truman included employment regulations to a proposed civil rights bill, guaranteeing it would fail. The GOP gladly backed all civil rights bills that are actual civil rights bills, but never ones that contained trojan horses to control the economy. (NEW SOUTH 96-97)

Truman's Fraudulent Claims of Civil Rights Virtue Speaking of Truman, the mystery gets more intriguing because of him. Following a spate of post-WW2 racial violence, Truman made the Presidents Committee on Civil Rights, which recommended ending segregation. (To Secure These Rights: The Report of the President's Committee on Civil Rights (New York, 1947), 166) Truman ignored the report until he needed, as Strom Thurmond noted. Frank W. Boykin (D-AL) quotes Truman thusly: "Frankly, I don't believe in this civil rights program any more than you do, but we've got to do it to win." (Donald R. McCay and Richard T. Reutten, Quest and Response: Minority Rights and the Truman Administration (Lawrence, Kansas, 1973), 149) As for his order desegregating the military, it took Ike to enforce it. Truman was happy to bury all talk of civil rights in exchange for segregationist support against Joe McCarthy. Yes, that's right, segregationists opposed McCarthy. But returning to the main subject, while election year conversions are hardly unusual for politicians, why a "conversion" to civil rights? Why did he think he needed it to win, when Democrats had never needed it to win before? Even more intriguingly, why were Democrats taking credit before the goods were even closed to delivered? Consider the ridiculous 1948 DNC civil rights plank: "The Democratic party is responsibile for the great civil rights gains made in recent years in eliminating unfair and illegal discrimination based on race, creed, or color." (Key 335) * * * Reasons That Don't Explain The Pivot

Not Anti-Communism Before proceeding to the real explanation, we must address some incorrect ones. The Cold War hardly explains it. Fear of embarassment by Soviet propaganda is not convincing explanation. It never phased the Democrats from 1920 to 1960, and besides, Democrats didn't even pretend to be anti-Communist before the 1946 shellacking where GOP took both House and Senate, after discovery the Roosevelt administration contained Soviet agents. (Sam Tanenhaus, "Un-American Activities," The New York Review of Books (reviewing Arthur Herman, Joseph McCarthy: Reexamining the Life and Legacy of America's Most Hated Senator, New York: Free Press, 2000; David Halberstam, The Fifties, New York: Fawcett Columbine, 1993, p.53) Nor was it a reaction to riots and unrest: there'd been unrest before, without stirring up any interest in civil rights. Why was unrest in 1963 any different?

Moral Reformation? Not So Fast! Democrats would have you believe their party underwent a moral transformation. Truman aside, the story hinges on LBJ leading his party's moral transformation, which there is no evidence for. LBJ as recently as 1957 watered down Civil Rights legislation with legislative and procedural maneuvers, before taking up the mantle of civil rights in 1963. What changed between 1957 and 1963 that caused this? Moral reformation seems unlikely, as any number of sympathetic biographers like Doris Kearns Goodwin, Robert Dallek, and the less sympathetic but very thorough Robert Caro document no such thing. He used the N-word routinely after 1964, after the supposed transformation, and as for women, let's just say he'd be gone in 5 minutes in this #metoo era. Typically people making a dramatic change in their lives possess uncontainable desire to tell others, complete with a story of what changed them, a la St. Paul's "road to Damascus" episode. Yet none of LBJ's biographers detail any such conversion, LBJ himself never claimed a moral conversion, there's no Witness-style recounting of his errors and how he saw the light. He moved seemlessly from defending segregation to pretending someone else did it all, mirroring a large section of his party. Likewise, take Robert Byrd, KKK member, leader of a Klavern in Sophia, West Virginia, and Hillary's political mentor. Where's his conversion story, or the evidence of a moral reformation? Ditto for any other Democrat of the era, from LBJ to Eastland to Stennis to Hollings? The only Democrat I am aware of who even advanced a story, true or not, for how he came to see the light was George Wallace. On a grander scale, where's the Democrat Party's gut-wrenching soul-searching accounting of how they when wrong and how they saw the light? And consider they had large majorities in Congresss for nearly all the time between 1932 to 1962, yet displayed no interest in civil rights bills until the very end. Why did this alleged reformation occur when it did? * * * The Real Reasons for the Pivot The real reason for the Democrats pivoting is that racism was the losing side, losing both credibility and popularity. There is no evidence Democrats supported civil rights until it was clear it would be the winning side. First, it failed them in the North. Northern Democrats drew support from organized labor, which regularly excluded Blacks from being members. The parallel efforts of Southern unions to corner the labor market drove blacks out of many skilled professions they'd previously performed. Jim Crow laws restricted or banned "emigrant agents" recruiting Blacks for Northern employers, and racist Democrat unions engaged in violence against Black workers, particularly when Blacks were hired as strikebreakers. Then came the Steele case of 1944. The Steele case (Steele v. Louisville and Nashvillle Railroad Company, 323 U.S. 192 (1944), barred unions from racial discrimination, with the threat of union decertification to back it up. (GRAHAM P102-103) But even more devastating, it was even beginning to fail them in the South. Pro-civil rights Eisenhower won Southern states in 1952 and 1956, Nixon retained most such gains in 1960. Democrats saw racism decline to the point it couldn't even keep the South in their column, not even when they ran Southerners as VP on three straight tickets (John Sparkman of Alabama, Estes Kefauver of Tennessee, LBJ of Texas). Democrat Presidential candidate Adlai Stephenson in 1956 reacted to Brown v. Board saying "we don't need reforms or groping experiments." Although Ike avoided a clear stand, Stephenson had taken a marginally clearer stand opposed to it. (Robert Mickey, Paths Out of Dixie: The Democratization of Authoritarian Enclaves in America's Deep South, 1944-1972. Princeton University Press, February 19, 2015, p.187) By 1960, it was clear that Civil Rights was winning in the courts, and the Civil Rights movement was starting to win on the ground too. In 1962, Alabama Democrat Senator Lister Hill darn near lost his Senate election, prompting experts to proclaim a two-party system had arrived in the South. Even White Southerners themselves thought desegregation was inevitable. In Early 1956, 55% of Southern Whites thought it was inevitable, falling to 43% as Little Rock started, and rising to a majority by the fall of 1958. By early 1961, 75% of ALL Southerners thought so. (George Gallup in Nasville Tennesseean, February 29, 1956; October 15, 1958; February 12, 1961; Melvin M. Tumin, et. all, Desegregation: Resistance and Readiness (Princeton, 1958); Helen Gudet Erskine, "The Polls: Race Relations," Public Opinion Quarterly, XXVI (1962), 137-48.) All of this was in turn the byproduct of a previous development: the discovery of the Nazi deathcamps. Racism took a massive hit in intellectual credibility. Adolf HItler, of all people, ironically dealt a mortal wound to the intellectual and moral credibility of all theories of racial superiority. his means Democrats saw racism failing to hold the South, and THEN pivoted; they might not keep the South, but they wanted to at least have their narrative. The idea the parties "switched" was more about getting the votes of whites than of Blacks; Democrats already had the Black vote, but Whites becoming less racist meant Democrats had to get out in front of things, fast! If this seems incredible, consider you've witnessed a parallel phenomenon in your own lifetime with Obama's reversal on gay marriage. As late as 2012 he disavowed the idea, but after the 2015 SCOTUS ruling, he decks the White House in rainbow illumination in self-congratulation, acting as if he'd held this stance all along. In passing, it must be said that Bill Moyers alleged LBJ quote about "I fear we lost the South for a generation" is most likely bogus. The quote first appeared in Moyers' 2004 book Moyers in America, AFTER the GOP already took the South in the 1990s at the non-Presidential levels of government. Besides, LBJ by his own admission thought about politics 18 hours a day. Are we to believe he didn't know the Democrats were already losing the South by 1960? It was so close that without the fraud, the ticket he was on wouldn't have even carried his home state of Texas! Now it is hardly unusual, and rarely scandalous, that a politician flip-flops when compelled by voters, but it is a scandal to claim the proponents of civil rights magically turned against it. * * * * * But What Subsequently?: 1964 and the Goldwater campaign

Goldwater's Civil Rights Act Vote Caused Nothing, Blacks Were Already Democrats Goldwater's civil rights vote explains nothing, as Blacks had been Democrats since 1936. Even those pointing to Goldwater's miniscule black support percenage need to explain why it only affected Goldwater and not segregationist Democrats like NC Governor Dan K. Moore, who received 97% of the Black vote (Ripon 59) or how 40% of Arkansas black voters had backed Orval Faubus (Ripon 33). Even in states won by LBJ, segregationist Democrats who voted no on the civil rights bill were elected handily. Yes, Goldwater in 1961 did say, "We're not going to get the Negro vote as a bloc in 1964 or 1966, so we ought to go hunting where the ducks are," but what was the context? Goldwater had just seen 1960, in which after Brown v. Board, after 2 civil rights bills, after sending the troops to desegregate Little Rock, Nixon's black vote was DOWN from Eisenhower's,falling from 39% to 32%. So his strategy didn't drive Blacks to Democrats; if anything Blacks being Democrat in spite of Republicans' superior civil rights record drove his strategy.

The Exonerating Context of Goldwater's Vote Goldwater was a founding member of the Arizona NAACP, pushed to integrate Phoenix schools and then as Governor, the Arizona National Guard. His 1964 CRA objection was based on his own quirky formulation of free market beliefs: unlike the Democrats, he had no record of racist statements or actions that would lead us to doubt his own quirky objections were the real reason. Love it, hate it, think he's nuts, but it's really the reason. He thought because he as governor had desegregated, that desegregation could be done on the state level, no feds needed. In theory yes, so long as your governor is Goldwater rather than or George Wallace. As for his vote, Goldwater explained his CRA 1964 vote thusly: "I wish to make myself perfectly clear. The two portions of this bill to which I have constantly and consistently voiced objections, and which are of such overriding importance that they are determinative of my vote on the entire measure are those which would embark the Federal Government on a regulatory course of action with regard to private enterprise in the area of so-called public accomodations and in the area of employment...I find no constitutional basis for the exercise of Federal regulatory authority in either of these areas...If it is the wish of the American people that the Federal Government should be granted the power to regulate in either of these areas and in the manner contemplated by the bill, then I say that the Constitution should be so amended...If my vote be misconstrued, let it be and let me suffer the consequences. Just let me be judged in this by the real concern I have voiced here and not by words others may say about what I think." (KESSEL 103-104)

Goldwater Opposed Segregation and His History Shows His "States' Rights" Is Of A Different Kind Than Segregationists Goldwater never said anything pro-segregation. Goldwater's own view was that civil disobedience against segregated establishments would be preferable to Federal intervention. Quirky, yes, racist, not really. Goldwater's states' rights kick didn't start in 1964. It was one of the reasons he gave for running for Senate in 1952. (John W. Dean and Barry M. Goldwater, Jr., Pure Goldwater, 1st Ed. (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), p72) He supported integration but believed, perhaps naively, Ike's use of federal troops was unnecesary. (Lee Edwards, Goldwater: The Man Who Made a Revolution (Washington, D.C.: , 1995), p233) Goldwater spoke to the Senate on April 8, 1957: "It is true after 20 years of New Deal-Fair Deal experiments in socialism, Americans have been considerably softened to the doctrine of federal paternalism but what degree of slavish economic indulgence should be treated with lessons in free enterprise and States Rights, not as the President recently suggested in a speech in Washington by educating peopple--to accept federal moneys for a project which they ought to be paying for themselves, directly through their State and local governments. It is equally disillusioning to see the Republican Party plunging headlong into the same dismal state experienced by traditional Democrat principles of Jefferson and Jackson during the days of the New Deal and Fair Deal. As a result of those economic and political misadventures, that great party has lost its soul of freedom; its spokesmen are peddlers of the philosophy that the Constitution is outmoded, that States Rights are void, and that the only hope for the future of these United States is for our people to be federally clothed, federally supported in their occupations, and to be buried in a federal box in a federal cemetary." (Congressional Record, April 8, 1957) Goldwater just made two references to states' rights, in the context of opposing New Deal-style policies, in 1957, seven years before 1964, contrary to the LIE that "states rights" is necessarily a racist code word. For DEMOCRATS, it was. For Republicans, it was no such thing, and never was, and never has been. A vicious lie has been corrected!

Goldwater's A Strategic Dunce, Not A Dogwhistling Mastermind Goldwater's campaign showed him a strategic dunce, not a dogwhistling mastermind. For starters, he initially hadn't planned to run. (Most who succeed in winning the Presidency had aspirations and laid plans and lined up backers for a long time.) F. Clifton White, onetime chairman of Young Republicans, assembled in with associates in Chicago in 1961, where they engineered a plan to ensure the nomination of a hitherto to-be-determined consevative. In February 1963, they formed a National Draft Goldwater Committee. (KESSEL 41-42) Once Goldwater's fan club convinced him he should run, he threw his hat in the ring. He chose Bill Miller as his running mate because "Bill drives Lyndon nuts," to which Miller replied "Barry's a Protestant and a Jew and I'm a Catholic and anyone who votes against that ticket is a damned bigot." (RIPON 19) For Goldwater's campaign to be the work of evil genius, it would have to be both, and it was neither. We answered evil before, but would a strategic genius attack the Tennessee Valley Authority in Knoxville, the administration's poverty bill while in Appalachia, farm subsidies at the National Plowing Contest in Fargo, North Dakota, and Medicare while in St. Petersburg, Florida? (RIPON 26, KESSEL 197) During the New Hampshire Primary, Goldwater declared America's missiles weren't dependeable, in DC, he told Young Republicans "at best, political platforms are a packet of misinformation and lies. (KESSEL 60) Why assume someone so tone deaf would know how to court racists with clever hidden appeals? Goldwater's candidacy was secured in much the same manner of McGovern's 1972 candidacy: activists with organized and vehement enthusiasm, but no clear plan beyond winning the primary. (Kessel 128-129) Kessel cites two unnamed political veterans, one of whom declared they didn't think Goldwater's campaign had a strategy, and a second who said they were trying to scale up precinct politics to the national level. "You can't do that at the national level. On the national level, you have to create an atmosphere of enthusiasm. This permits the organizational work to go forward on the state and local level." (Kessel 173) Nor does his travel schedule display much strategy, with time to visit among other places Salisbury MD, Dover DE, Bristol TN, London KY, Belleville IL, Cedar Rapids IA, Oshkosh WS, Altoona PA, and Cheyenne WY, none of which could swing the election. (KESSEL 214-215) Goldwater gave an October 16 speech in Chicago about Civil Rights. (KESSEL 208) He wanted a speech that was statesmanlike that no one would interpret as an appeal to white backlash. (KESSEL 209) He condemned compsulsory segregation and compulsory integration, declaring, "Our aim, as I understand it, is neither to establish a segregated society nor to establish an integrated society. It is to preserve a free society." (KESSEL 210) So rejecting both sides and appealing to a almost nobody held is supposed to be the "dogwhistle" we're told about? The proof of an evil genius? It's just quirky, not evil (and certainly not genius). Goldwater further elaborated "Some laws will help, but they cannot be relied upon to provide the full solution--indeed, even a major part of it. This is a moral problem, and local leadership is needed to make headway in solving it. The best thing the President can do is to use his office to persuade and encourage localities to take up the task of leadership." (KESSEL 210) He's an impractical hyper-libertarian idealist, not a bigot; he's answering questions no one asked, and not answering questions people did ask. But charges of "coded racism" are a stretch and then some. He never endorsed segregation and made no segregationist appeals in either his campaign ads or his speeches. The reason some people think he did is they have failed to distinguish between Goldwater and his campaign on the one hand, and some of his Southern backers, who saw in him, not what he had said, but what they wanted to see. Goldwater never promised to protect segregation, his objection to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was based on other reasons. (KESSEL 209) One of his last events was in Columbia, SC, appearing on stage with a number of segregationists. He gave the SAME civil rights section he used in his Chicago speech, suggesting no special message for racist. (October 30,1964, broadcast on 87 stations throughout the South). (KESSEL 216)

Distinction Must Be Made Between His Surrogates and Self-Declared Boosters, Most of Whom Were Cleaned Out By Ray Bliss He had a divided party, his candidacy was divisive within the GOP. Goldwater's Civil Rights Act 1964 vote incited Governor Scranton (R-Pennsylvania) to run. Goldwater pledged to enforce the 1964 CRA if elected, but gave other self-undercutting & confusing statements such as "I am unalterably opposed to such discrimination, but I also know the government can provide no lasting solution...Government can do little more than offer moral leadership and persuasion. The ultimate solution lies in the hearts of men." (Ripon 28) For all the hullaboo about convention fights, the domestic part of the platform were not very different than in 1960. (KESSEL 110) The platform committee rejected strengthening an already strong civil rights plank. (KESSEL 112-113) Goldwater's backers channeled money into the RNC's Southern Division and tilted their focus towards white Southerners, de-emphasizing big city, black and labor voters (Ripon 24, 30) But trying to win votes by in the South and trying to win votes from Segregationists are two different things; Eisenhower's and Nixon's campaigns won the non-racist upwardly mobile whites, who Goldwater at least imagined he was going to get. Goldwater's unhelpful surrogates played up his civil rights vote. Also, regarding any claim of bad behavior about Goldwater backers at the 1964 Republican Convention or elsewhere, first we should note there's no proof he or anyone atop the GOP ordered any of it. Second, a distinction needs to be made between Goldwater' campaign as such, and people outside his campaign that saw in him what they wanted to see in him. Goldwater had a long pro-civil rights record, minus one vote for his own quirky reasons that he acknowledged could be misunderstood. And post Goldwater, Ray Bliss and company took over the RNC and cleaned out or at least heavily moderated the lot of them, 1964 onward. Bliss took the party towards a more mainstream strategy and "focused on developing strong organizations in major metropolitan areas and onhelping statewide and congressional candidates run progessional campaigns" (Joseph A. Aistrup, The Southern Strategy Revisted: Republican Top-Down Advancement in the South (1996), 32, citing J.F. Bibby and R.J. Huckshorn, "Out-party strategy: Republican National Committee rebuilding politics, 1964-66," pp.205-202 in B. Cosman and R.J. Huckshorn (eds.) Republican Politics: The 1965 Campaign and Its Aftermath for the Party, (1968)

Goldwater No Watershed, Except in Democrats Launching Racebaiting and Nazi Smears as a Strategy The only sense in which the 1964 election was a watershed is that the Democrats deployed racebaiting and accusations of in a campaign for the first time, a staple of their strategy since. It got started even before the election, however. Joseph Alsop wrote a column, called "Matter of Fact," which upon closer examination is really just an opinion column pretending to be news. An easy example of this is his article "Matter of Fact : The Southern Strategy Is Segregationist Strategy," [this appeared in Hartford Courant, Hartford Connecticut, 7 Dec 1962, p18] which purports to know the motivations of everyone in the GOP, but cites no inside sources or documents (Sounds like "Russian Collusion"). This drivel is cited as gospel by advocates of the Magical Switching Parties Conspiracy Theory. At almost no point does it occur to them to cite someone actually doing it, to show it from the writings of anyone involved, the testimony of the accusers is taken to be proof enough. And then when they do cite anyone involved, they're in the habit of misquoting them, or mischaracterizing their writings (such as the portrayal of The Emerging Republican Majority as a racist strategy book). Goldwater knew it too. "The phase ["Southern Strategy"] itself, so far as I know, was originated by columnist Jospeh Alsop in 1962 and 1963." (CONSCIENCE MAJORITY 51) In other words, the Democrats were in the process of launching this narrative before the Civil Rights Act was even passed, proving it is a fraud beyond any doubt. In 1962, CBS did a hit piece originally called "The Conservative Revival," likening conservatives to all sorts of bigots and racists. The name of the hit job changed to "Thunder on the Right" before airing. Originally Goldwater lured in by contention it was to be an objective documentary. It "was watered down to a half-hour presentation called "Thunder on the Right," in which sincere and reasonable conservatives, myself included, were lumped together with all kinds of racists, bigots and kooks from the Far Right." (CONSCIENCE MAJORITY 47-48) CBS Eric Severeid asked Goldwater 2 1/2 hours of questions then edited in one question, regarding the . CBS called this half hour special "Thunder on the Right" and repeatedly juxtposed kooks and racists and cut back and forth to Goldwater (who everyone at the time knew perfectly well was POTUS candidate prospect. They knew exactly what they were doing.) (CONSCIENCE MAJORITY 174-175) While the 1964 Republican Convention was going on, CBS ran a special (Goldwater thinks July 12) from somewhere in Germany. CBS Daniel Schorr pushed narrative Goldwater was trying to link up with Fascist groups in Germany, claiming: "It is now clear that Senator Goldwater's interview with Der Spiegel with its hard line appealing to right-wing elements in Germany was only the start of a move to link up with his opposite numbers in Germany." Schorr falsely claimed that an Evangelical Academy near Munich where Goldwater spoke was a neo-Nazi gathering place. In reality Goldwater had never heard of the school, never spoken there, and that respectable officals like Chancellor Adenauer had spoken there--without being called Nazis. Then the New York Times piled on, Arthur J. Olsen, "Senator in Touch with Bonn Right," which falsely claimed Goldwater was "in frequent and friendly correspondence for some time" with Sudeten leader Hans Christoph Seebohm--recently in a dispute regarding "militant" statements--and "other conservative German politicians." On top of this came a claim that Goldwater gave an interview to the radical weekly Zeitung and Soldaten Zeitung. (CONSCIENCE MAJORITY 179-181) Democrats did much the same in the campaign. Others expanded on Alsop's prepackaged narrative by labelling longtime Republican positions "racist dogwhistles." Consider this New Yorker hitpiece: "He [Goldwater] did not, to be sure, make any direct racist appeals. He covered the South and never, in any public gathering mentioned "race" or "Negroes" or "whites" or "segregation" or "civil rights." But the fact that the words did not cross his lips does not mean that he ignored the realities they describe. He talked about those realities all the time, in an underground, or Aesopian language--a kind of code that few in his audiences had any trouble deciphering. In this code "bullies and marauders" means "Negroes." "Criminal defendants" means negroes. States rights means "opposition to civil rights." "Women" means white women." This much of the code is as easily understood by his Northern audiences as by his Southern ones, but there are also some words that have a more limited and specific meaning for the Southern crowds. Thus, in the Old Confederacy "Lyndon Baines Johnson" and "my opponent" means "integrationist." "Hubert Horatio" (it somehow amuses Goldwater to drop the "Humphrey") means "super-integrationist." "Federal judiciary" means "integrationist judges." It would be going too far to say that Goldwater touched Southern sensibilities on race when he brought up Bobby Baker, the TFX controversy, fiscal, or "Yo-yo" McNamara, and he certainly was not arousing them when he talked of the T.V.A. in Knoxville and Medicare in Orlando. One always had the feeling, though, that the Goldwater Republicans in the South could find a racial or regional angle in almost anything." (Richard H. Rovere, "The Campaign: Goldwater, " New Yorker, September 25, 1964, though the New Yorker's web address says "10/03/1964" for some reason.) Notice how a premise (these words have hidden racist meanings) is presented as a conclusion (these words have hidden racist meanings). Unless you already believe it, there's no way to reach that conclusion. But the New Yorker wasn't the only culprit. On October 13, 1964, 725 Episcopal (very liberal denomination) Bishops, priests and laymen issued a widely statement accusing Goldwater of using racism as a political weapon, and of "equating the Negro struggle for freedom with crime and violence in the streets." (Ripon 28) Goldwater of course had said no such thing. Theologians led by Reinhold Niebuhr endorsed LBJ in a Christianity & Crisis magazine editorial. (Ripon 29) The Nazi claims, set up earlier, were reinforced by a parade of highly political psychaitrists. "I believe Goldwater has the same pathological make-up as Hitler, Castro, Stalin and other known schizophrenic leaders" said Chester M. Johnson, Jr. of Long Beach, California. G. Templeton, Glen Cove, New York declared, "if Goldwater wins the Presidency, both you and I will be among the first into the concentration camps." Concluding all this without examining Mr. Goldwater in a patient setting is of course highly improper for any number of reasons, as many before this present author have already expounded at length, and I won't bore you with the details here, as it really isn't the point of this book. No mention was made of his long pro-civil rights record, plus he was badgered continually to disavow KKK, a trick repeated on trump. Meanwhile, LBJ had actually been in the Klan. Goldwater's camapign is no watershed, his share of the Southern votes was barely higher than Nixons, in many areas he lost ground, and the South was trending GOP since 1936, over economics. The only lasting significance of the 1964 Presidential Election is that it was the beginning of the Democrats calling every Republican since then a racist as a campaign tactic. Having hit the jackpot the first time they played the Calling-Everything-Racist Slot Machine, they kept pulling the lever like an addict, with inconsistent results since; however, most of their policies have proven to be barely mitigated disasters, so without the race-baiting, they would have been left in the dust long ago. The centrality of race-baiting to the modern Democrat party is hardly something you'd need to read between the lines to see. * * * From the People Who Brought You the "Southern Strategy" The Supposed Southern Strategy and the "Goldwater is an psychiatric patient Hitler 2.0" are just part of what they do. To detail some others, the left-wing press once said AIDS would affect all of us. We're still waiting for their proclaimed heterosexual AIDS outbreak. (Jonathan Alter, "Press Coverage of AIDS Has Left Some Things Unsaid," Newsweek, September 23, 1985.) People Magazine in 1985 said AIDS "poses a growing threat to heterosexuals." AP 'science writer' Malcolm Ritter wrote, Today's Focus: "Hudson's AIDS May Dispel Myths of the Disease," Associated Press, July 26, 1985 (quoting Richard Dunne, executive director of the Gay Men's Health Crisis.) Bob Greene wrote a piece "The AIDS Epidemic: Not for Gays Only" in the Chicago Tribune, January 30, 1985. "Research studies now project that one in five--listen to me, hard to believe--one in five heterosexuals could be dead from AIDS at the end of the next three years. That's by 1990. It is no longer just a gay disease. Believe me" ("Women Living With AIDS," The Oprah Winfrey Show, transcript of February 18, 1987, p.2) For all the shade thrown at Fox, which in fairness is more of an opinion and commentary channel, since when has Fox been caught promoting a hoax? Like "Hillary will win," "Russian collusion," "Jussie Smollet was the victim of a real attack," "the Covington Catholic boys were literal Nazis intimidating that Indian activist" (Talk about an EXPENSIVE mistake!), "Trump leaving Syria will get the Kurds massacred" (complete with ABC trying to pretend footage of people firing guns at a gun range in Kentucky was a raging battle in Syria LMAO!) Yes, Fox does commentary, sometimes even commentary with a definite point of view, but at least the stories they comment on ACTUALLY HAPPENED! * * * * * The GOP in General: Continuity In Civil Rights Support

Civil Rights Act Rationales and Housing Act Reasoning The Democrats based their proposals on the commerce clause rather than the 14th Amendment, to avoid Mississippi Senator Eastland's judiciary committee. This raised GOP eyebrows, as they resented the commerce clause, used by FDR to roll Republicans during the 30s and 40s, and thought the 14th Amendment the more proper basis. (GRAHAM 80-81) The real GOP objection was roving enforcement, not initiated from any individual's specific complaint, and carried out by an agency not elected by anyone. (GRAHAM 88) "Mrs. Murphy's boardinghouse" was a recurring GOP talking point of the Civil Rights Act debate, aimed at ensuring the bill stayed focused on the problem instead of defining everything as a public accomodation to go powergrabbing. "Mrs. Murphy was a mythical widow who had been introduced into the public accomodation debate by Republican Senator George Aiken of Vermont" (GRAHAM 89) Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy swayed many Republicans with expert witnesses who testified the commerce clause was a sounder basis for anti-discrimination laws. Witnesses included Erwin N. Griswold of US Commission on Civil Rights (also dean at Harvard Law School) and Harvard Professor Paul A. Freund. Professor Freund argued the 14th Amendment's sweeping nature made it more of a risk, and the commerce clause was more tailorable to specific problems, such as exempting Mrs. Murphy's boardinghouse; and furthermore, that their memory was wrong, that pre New-Deal era laws had been plenty sweeping and intrusive without being based on the commerce clause. (Hearings, Senate Commerce Committee, 88th, Cong. 1st. Sess., part I (1963), 1183-1190.) (GRAHAM 91-93) "In particular, Dirksen's only problem with the bills revolve around the relationship between the federal government and the independent businessman. These are in no way related to the racial problem as such, but to the old fear of so-called big government" (LOEVY 99-100) The GOP was never wild about administrative enforcement, preferring judicial enforcement instead. This resulted from the New Deal National Labor Relations Board experiences, whereby the NLRB exhibited an overwhelming pro-labor bias against the GOP's business backers. (GRAHAM 129-130) Additionally, Republicans and their business backers despised the lower evidentiary standard employed by administrative tribunals, which while civil rather than criminal, asked whether there was "substantial evidence" for the complaint rather than the judicial civil standard of "preponderance of the evidence." Dirksen's challenge was to devise a way to gut plans of an overpowered Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) harassing businessmen on technicalities, but also avoid Southern "paper-FEPCs" (Fair Employment Practices Commissions) that would flout the law altogether. Dirksen didn't want the actions of Southern Democrat governments cited as pretext to restrict Northern businessmen, hence subsection (d) Sec 709 Title VII, exempting organizations already reporting to state/local FEPCs from having to deal with EEOC harassment. (GRAHAM 193) Dirksen's more judicially-focused solution was that the Attorney General would be empowered to file suits based on a "pattern or practice." (GRAHAM 146, 148, also LOEVY 256-257) Dirksen feared bureaucrats would impede hiring and firing on merit, and his fears were well-founded. In Illinois, a Black Motorola applicant flunked his test and sued, backed by the Illinois Fair Employment Practices Commission, and a court ruled the test was unfair because it didn't account for "inequalities and differences in environment" (and the telephone lines will?) (Illinois FEPC Charge No. 63x-127. On the Motorola case see generally the New York Times, March 13, May 29, July 19, November 3, 20, 22, and 26, 1964; Michael Sovern, Legal Restraints on Racial Discrimination in Employment (New York: Twentieth Century Fund, 1966), 73, n36; Ray Marshall, The Negro and Organized Labor (New York: Wiley, 1965), 252) (GRAHAM 149) It is against this backdrop that we have any Republicans voting "no," for very different reasons than the Southern Democrats: Hickenlooper of Iowa, and Cotton of New Hampshire, thought Dirksen's compromises still gave too much away. For example, Cotton wanted the threshhold for businesses to fall under the act to be 100 or more employees, not 25. (New York Times, May 20, 1964, p.1, p.34, in LOEVY 280-281) All of the above led to recurring fights over cease and desist power for the EEOC, some version of this question resurfacing practically every time civil rights came up again in the legislature. (GRAHAM 255-257) Democrat proposals routinely involved expansion of Federal power, such as John Conyers 1966 proposal to create a Federal Fair Housing Board, complete with cease and desist authority, orders enforceable through federal courts of appeals (GRAHAM 261) Also, Holy Cow, John Conyers was in Congress forever! In contrast to sweeping Federalization schemes, Dirksen achieved some exemptions from the 1968 Fair Housing Act for single family owner-occupied sold or rented by owner. The final bill thus covered 80% rather than 91% of total housing, but the GOP then signed onto the bill. (GRAHAM 271) Some (Arlen J. Large, "Federal Power and Flexible Senators," Wall St. Journal, 13 March 1968) argued Dirksen's Senate delegation post-1966 was more liberal, but this depends on belief support for the Fair Housing Act was un-conservative once homeowners dealing on their own behalf had their property rights protected. His support for the 1968 bill after opposing the 1966/1967 bills is because the 1968 bill was a materially different bill, making it no inconsistency needing Large's explanation.

Voting Rights Acts and Antics The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was enacted with stronger proportional support from Republicans than Democrats, which is odd, because we're told the parties "switched" in 1964 and 1965 is after 1964. Drafting the Voting Rights Act revolved around how best to end suppression of the vote. Some Northern states had poll taxes or literacy tests too, though they had no history of abuse; this made crafting the exact language trickier. The bill was to be face-neutral but targeting the South. (GRAHAM 171-2) In 1970 Voting Rights Act renewal, Nixon wanted to expand it to cover the whole country. Section 4 (triggering oversight) and Section 5 (preclearance) were written as TEMPORARY precisely because they had singled out states. Local control of elections was the norm, anything singling out the South was assumed by 1965 Voting Rights Act to be a temporary contingency to fix a demonstrable and specific problem, after which normalcy would resume, Black rights protected but US norms intact. The rising number of unremovable Black voters would be the failsafe. Black registration and voting to indeed jumped 1964-1968, the problem had been largely remedied for all meaninful purposes (some localities dragged feet but were losing court battles).(GRAHAM P347-348) Democrat fearmongering over Shelby v. Holder (2013) rests on the assumption Section 5 was central to the Voting Rights Act, when, per the authors of the law, it was not. (GRAHAM 356) The key section of the law used to wreck remaining Southern resistance was Section 4, not Section 5. The Voting Rights Act was reenacted with amendments in 1970, 1975, and 1982 (GRAHAM P171) The 1970 renactment was accompanied by much unnecessary drama by narrative-pushing Democrats. Nixon's revised Voting Rights Act proposed expanding it's application nationwide, which was opposed by Northern Democrats. (GRAHAM 361) Democrat-compromised civil rights organizations accused him of backing a "Southern bill." (GRAHAM 351) Demonstrating that the Democrat party now had the civil rights leaders on a leash, Clarence Mitchell called the vote a "cataclysmic defeat for civil rights engineered by the President," adding "the Klan was on the floor of the Congress today, waiting to lynch Negroes at the polls." (Wall Street Journal, 12 December 1969) This is, of course, a strange way to characterize a bill that extends all the good things about the Voting Rights Act to the entire country. * * * The Corruption of the Civil Rights Movement

Quotas Are Not Civil Rights; Quotas Are a Spoils System & Machine Politics Disguised as Social Justice The Civil Rights movement moved from individualism and personal liberty pre-1968 to collectivism and material equality post-1968. Implementation had changed the goals. (GRAHAM 457) The original goal of the civil rights movement was the elimination of race as a factor, not its magnification. But thanks to quotas and set asides, now it's as relevant as ever. The problem with Jim Crow was that it was not a meritocracy. Eliminating meritocracy where it still exists will not fix anything. Quotas and set-asides are nothing but a spoils system under a new name, at expense of someone who looks like the perpetrator. The whole setup, most deleterious to the stability of a democracy, mirrors what the Irish backbone of Democrat machines did at the expense of Anglo-Saxons, who had the same background as the British occupying Ireland but had done nothing to them personally. Then there's the question of in-group benefits. Quotas benefit a few and hurt a lot. Imagine the harm inflicted by incompetent doctors and teachers on parents and children by quota-promoted losers. How many more generations of black childrens' education are we willing to sacrifice on the altar of tokenism and symbolism? Why is it a moral imperative anyone gets a job they're unqualified for? There are costs to putting identity ahead of basic standards, and those costs are not going to be borne by those making the decisions for political reasons, and the costs are not guaranteed to fall on those who can afford them. Not surprisingly, those who passed civil rights bills in the first place opposed this craziness.

Quotas and Compensatory Theory Were Opposed By All Involved in Creating the Civil Rights Laws The creators of the civil rights laws opposed compensatory theory and quotas, and nobody advocating them today inherits the moral authority of the civil rights leaders and politicians of this era. Start with JFK, he opposed quotas, "I don't think quotas are a good idea. I think it is a mistake to begin to assign quotas on the basis of religion, or race, or color, or nationality. I think we'd get into a good deal of trouble." (White House press conference, 20 August 1963. Public Papers of John F. Kennedy (Washington: US Government Printing Office, 1964), 633-634; "Kennedy Opposes Quotas for Jobs on Basis of Race," New York Times, 21 August 1963) (GRAHAM 106) So did Democrat Peter Rodino (Hearings, Subcommitte No. 5, House Judiciary Committee, 88th Cong., 1st sess., 26 June 1963, 2239-40.) (GRAHAM 109) So did LBJ, Bayard Rustin (a "democratic" socialist), so did the NAACP. (GRAHAM 110) So did Humphrey, in March 1964: "Contrary to the allegations of some opponents of this title, there is nothing in it that will give any powers to the Commission or to any court to require hiring, firing, or promotion of employees in order to meet a racial "quota" or to achieve a certain racial balance." (Humphrey, quoted in 110 Congressional Record pt.5, 30 March 1964, 6549) Humphrey explains: "The proponents of this bill have carefully stated on numerous occasions that title VII does not require an employer to achieve any sort of racial balance in his work force by giving preferential treatment to any individual or group." "Since doubts have persisted," Humphrey explained, "subsection (j) is added to state this point expressely." (US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Legislative History of Titles VII and XI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. (Washington: US Government Printing Office, n.d.), 3005, in GRAHAM P192-193) So did Joseph S. Clark (D-PA) and Clifford P. Case (R-IN), who in addition to denying quotas were part of the law, further said "There is no requirement in Title VII that employers abandon bona fide qualifications tests where, because of differences in background and education, members of some groups are able to perform better on these tests than members of other groups. An employer may set his qualifications as high as he likes, he may test to determine which applicants have these qualifications, and he may hire, assign, and promote on the basis of test performance." (Clark and Case, quoted in 110 Congressional Record, pt. 6, 8 April, 1964, 7213) Even the New York Times could figure it out: "misrepresentation by opponents of the civil rights legislation are at their wildest when discussion this title [Title VII.]" "It would not, as been suggested, require anyone to establish racial quotas." "To the contrary, such quotas would be forbidden as a racial test. The bill does not require employers or unions to drop any standard for hiring or promotion or membership--except the discriminatory standard of race or religion." (New York Times, 8 May 1964) Dirksen would support anything, so long as it wasn't an attempt to backdoor an NLRB-equivalent that would attack the private employers the GOP long defended (GRAHAM 141, 147) Nor was Dirksen's fear hidden animus, as the scenario he feared had actually happened in Illinois. A baseless claim of a biased test came from an unqualified applicant, and the Illinois FEPC sided with him (Motorola Inc. v. Illinois FEPC, 51 CCH Lab. Cas. par. 51, 323. The Illinois Supreme Court in 1966 ultimately sided with Motorola.) The text of the law as well as the statements of its crafters and supporters contrast with the interpretation of the courts. It is a case of what the law said, while judicial fiat inserted things that were not said in the law. The mechanism for the 1964 Civil Rights Act was democracy. The methods by which quotas were created were never put to a vote, hence the resentment. This all means present day race-hustlers like Ibraham X. Kendi, Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, and Shaun King are not covered by the moral legitimacy of the 1960s Civil Rights movement; how can they be, when what they advocate is something completely different? At the risk of getting monotonous, Humphrey told the Senate in 1964 that "Title VII prevents discrimination," because, "it says that race, religion, and national origin are not to be used as the basis for hiring and firing." Title VII's central purpose, Humphrey explained, was "to encouage hiring on the basis of ability and qualifiations, not race or religion." (110 Congressional Record, pt. 6, 8 April 1964, 7213) What Kendi, Jackson, Sharpton and King advocate is the very thing the civil rights movement rejected. The Civil Rights movement initially recoiled at quotas among other things because it would entail racial record keeping, such as had been done by Nazis, by Jim Crow institutions, by many universities as a tool for anti-Jewish discrimination (college quotas), and was just thought of as un-American altogether. Clarence Mitchell, NAACP chief Washington lobbyist: "It seems to me incredible that the government of the United States, recognizing there is a nasty, underhanded little system for keeping track of people through a cute little code system...would make it easy for discrimination by saying 'Oh, no, you don't use obscure little marks. You put a nice big thing which shows this is a Negro so you don't have to put on your glasses to find out." (Transcript, White House Press Confererence on EEO, 83-84, EEOC Library (GRAHAM 198-199) But the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission had its own objectives, of discarding mere nondiscrimination, and its leaders discovered numerous "backdoors" in order to, over the objections of NAACP veterans, collect racial statistics. Alfred W. Blumrosen took leave from Rutgers, "borrowed PCEEO 'zero-lists," (lists of companies with zero black workers.) "...The candid Blumrosen admitted that his 'creative' reading of the statute [709 (d)] was "contrary to the plain meaning." (Alfred W. Blumrosen Black Employment and the Law (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1971), 72, in GRAHAM 194-195) Their excuse for doing this was an idea called "compensatory theory.'

Compensatory Theory, Quotas, and Institutional Racism Replaced the Original 1865-1965 Goals Compensatory theory and visions of quotas corrupted the civil rights movement. The original goals of the civil rights movement as forwarded by Republicans aimed to end lynching, poll taxes, and segregation (aka, using legitimate functions of government to protect people and property). Democrats perverted this into a movement based around government programs, preferential policies, and lax enforcement of the general laws (even though that helped a handful of criminals at the expense of the majority of blacks). Indeed, Democrats pervert any movement about rights into a pressure group to expand government and control speech, and in this case that meant the use of compensatory theory. Compensatory theory, stating that an equal playing field isn't enough, that recompense and official favoritism are morally due to compensate for past outrages, has some issues of its own. Compensatory theory has has no limiting principle, and application of it is often impractical. I might say, "The airline treated me shabbily, therefore, I am entitled to fly the plane," yet I suspect there'd be no willing passengers on that plane. Flaws and all, by 1970 civil rights coalition displaced the original goal of equal treatment with demands for proportionally equal group results. (GRAHAM 370) Quotas and demands for proportional representation fail to recognize disparities can have explanations other than racism, an obvious fact brushed aside by saying "institutional racism." Stokely Carmichael invented the idea of "institutional racism," as contrasted with Gunnar Myrdal's notion that racism was individual Southern White pathology to be cured, a matter for an individual to overcome within himself through education/attitude change, to accustom onesself to the integration MLK would later champion. In contrast, the Marxist Carmichael, in between promoting "black power" and equating bettering onesself to "selling out," also declared "Integration is a subterfuge for the maintenance of white supremacy," (CARNES GARRATY P810). This clearly marks him as one of the "ethnic leaders" per Sowell's criteria, trying to preserve a group from assimilating so as to keep himself as the leader of a herd. Why else would he invent concepts like "institutional" racism right as all manner of institutional barriers to black advancement were being dismantled? New Great Society government bureaucracies siphoned off SNCC and CORE leaders. (NEW SOUTH 366-377) This is likely the origin of the preposterous claims that cutting government is racially motivated. This in turn followed from an earlier losing of the way. Blacks became Democrats in the 1930s under the influence of DuBois (The Big 1930s Sellout"), so by the 1960s the civil rights leadership acquired a government-centric worldview (government must guarantee equal results). 30 years of New Deal thinking spread economic illiteracy, and a corresponding suspicion of capitalism and private sector solutions, an erroneous belief American society was racist rather than Democrats, and a certainty that government was the cure. Disparities could have no cause but capitalist employer discrimination, not defective government schooling, not Democrat union racism. Racism loomed as a dangerous force animating society rather than a mere speedbump whenever not animated by government. The direct and demonstrable connections between big government policy and racism from Fitzhugh to Tillman to Bilbo and beyond were disregarded, Black economic progress 1865-1920 was downplayed, as was Black Wall Street, and more government was pitched as the answer. Disparities demanded quotas, citing present statistics. Nobody asked if Black unemployment was lower than White unemployment before the New Deal (it was), or pondered whether laws mandating burdens on employers would be disproportionately impacting those who could least afford it. In other words, the costlier any new hire became, the less inclined employers were to give blacks from inferior Jim Crow schools a chance, when they'd been willing to before.

Middle and Upper Class Blacks the Biggest Beneficiaries of Affirmative Action Middle class blacks benefit from affirmative action. (GRAHAM 475 & 569) "Conservative and market oriented critics have argued that government welfare and affirmative action programs cripple their intended beneficiaries by encouraging dependency rather than the ability to compete for real economic benefits. See , Ethnic America (New York: Basic Books, 1981); Walter E. Williams, The State Against Blacks (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1981); and Charles Murray, Losing Ground (New York: Basic Books, 1984) Nor is this uncommon, as the best-off members of preferred groups in similar preferential policies in Maylasia, Sri Lanka, India, and Nigeria receive most of the beneift of the preferential policy, rather than those members of the group most in need of benefitting.

Most Blacks of the Civil Rights Generation Rejected Affirmative Action In a Gallup Poll, October 1977, with Bakke front and center for public attention: Americans rejected preferential treatment by a 8-to-1 margin, including two-thirds of of blacks. (George H. Gallup, The Gallup Poll: Public Opinion, 1972-1977, vol. II (Wilmington, Deleware: Scholarly Resources, 1978), 1059) A Media General/Associated Press poll in August 1988, asked "blacks and other minorities should receive preferences in hiring to make up for past inequalities." 79-15 opposition overall, whites 85-10 against, Hispanics 64-31 against, Blacks 47-44 against. (The Polling Report, 22 August 1988) Perhaps it's because they realized affirmative action puts a question mark (asterisk) by every black achievement. Perhaps they realized it was because most of them weren't the ones benefitting.

Bonus: The NAACP Needs Their Reputation Reevaluated One of the surprising things in my research is how baffling the conduct of the NAACP has been for its history. Both it and its founders seemed to throw more effort in getting Blacks to abandon Republicans than in advancing civil rights. It will come as no surprise the aforementioned DuBois was involved, and he had help. Unlike Frederick Douglass and Booker Washington, neither DuBois nor most NAACP cofounders lived under slavery. Most weren't even Southern, which explains why they even pondered which party to back. Many early members' were socialists first and civil rights supporters second, such as William English Walling, Mary White Ovington, Lincoln Steffens (also a Stalin and Mussolini fan, though disenchanted with Stalin by 1931), John Dewey, A. Philip Randolph, Jack London (eugenics lover), and Max Eastman (later became more conservative). Socialists' ulterior agendas outweighed any help they provided. DuBois and company blamed America to deflect Black attention from the fact the pro-capitalist GOP ended slavery, a fact that might preclude supporting socialism. They did little good, with statements like this one in 1926: "Our political salvation and our social survival lie our absolute independence of party allegiance in politics and the casting of our vote for our friends and against our enemies whoever they may be and whatever party labels they carry." (Annual Report of the NAACP (1926), 32) Just six years after Mr. Klan Revival Woodrow Wilson was in the White House, the NAACP struggles with which party to support. The organization then spent the 1930s and 1940s urging endless patience with a Democrat party that had never done anything for civil rights, and no patience with a Republican party that had done everything that had even been done for civil rights. True, they could say "What have Republicans done for me lately," but at the same time, they could say (but didn't) "What have the Democrats done for me EVER?" The NAACP's playing stupid games likely set back civil rights several decades: they should have encouraged blacks to move north, vote Republican, and wait for reapportionment to give said states more votes. Instead, they had to wait for the discovery of Nazi deathcamps to do the changing of minds that their stupid games could not. As an addendum: Hugh Davis Graham in the Civil Rights Era (1990) notes the NAACP papers in the Library of Congress reveal little internal debate on throughout the 1960s, quite unlike those of the National Urban League. (GRAHAM 111) Graham writes they "give the appearance of having been sanitized prior to accession," and puzzles at the idea there was no discussion of equal opportunity versus equal results, of quotas, of compensatory theory, of policy in general. (GRAHAM 479) * * * EEOC and Equivalents: Redefinitions

EEOC, FEPC, Other Such Commissions Are Redundant The FEPCs and the EEOC and similar commissions are redundant as the market already punishes discrimination (that's why Jim Crow had to be government-mandated). Democrats, their racism thwarted, tried to make lemons out of lemonade by labelling the market racist, framing the government involvement in Jim Crow out of the picture, and portraying opponents of centralized power as covert bigots.

The EEOC, By Its Own Admission, Was Changing It's Mission. Nor is this idea the EEOC engaged in willful mission creep my own conclusion. The EEOC's lawyers admitted in their official history that their "disparate impact" standard exceeded their mandate, that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act required intent, or mens rea--which has only been a thing in Western law since Ancient Rome. (Alfred W. Blumrosen, Black Employment and the Law (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1971), 172-80; Harrell R. Rogers, Jr., and Charles S. Bullock III, Law and Social Change: Civil Rights and Their Consequences (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1972), 113-37; EEOC Administrative History, [LBJL, 1969] 248; 110 Congressional Record 5 June 1964, 8194) The NAACP, pivoting from its original pro-equal opporunity, anti-quotas position, consulted with EEOC lawyers to develop reasons to disregard intent. They reasoned pairing intent, a criminal law concept, with a civil penalty of a mere fines, created a mismatch in favor of discriminators. (Samuel C. Jackson, "EEOC vs. Discrimination, Inc.," The Crisis (January 1968): 16-17) (GRAHAM 248-250) Whatever you think of that argument, the fact is it was not what Congress had actually enacted, and that if you want a different law, we need to have Congress pass it. "Backdooring" ones wishes, however just, through unelected agencies, sets bad precedents for future bad actors. Clifford Case, Joseph Clark's floor co-manager in passing the 1964 Civil Rights Act, told the Senate: "Title VII clearly would not permit even a Federal court to rule out the use of particular tests by employers." "No court could read title VII as requiring an employer to lower or change the occupational qualifications he sets for his employees simply because fewer Negroes than whites are able to meet them" (110 Congressional Record 6415 (1964)) Yet by August 1970, the EEOC demanded equal rejection rates on employment tests, not a valid test per se; the goal became avoiding "disparate impact". (Phil Lyons, "An Agency with a Mind of its Own: The EEOC's Guidelines on Employment Testing," New Perspectives 17 (Fall 1985): 20-25; Personnel Testing and Equal Employment Opportunity, eds. Betty R. Anderson and Martha P. Rogers (Washington: US Government Printing Office, 1970) Americans had no backlash against civil rights (else the civil rights laws would have been repealed), and neither did the GOP. The backlash was against the redefinition from individual equal opportunity to group-based quotas. Harvard sociologist Nathan Glazer reviewed the Civil Rights Commission 1970 report (The Federal Civil Rights Enforcement Effort: A Report to the United States Commission on Civil Rights (Washington: US Government Printing Office, 1970), producing his analysis (Nathan Glazer, "A Breakdown in Civil Rights Enforcements?," The Public Interest (Winter 1971) Glazer found it bizarre that the Civil Rights Commission declared enforcement was breaking down as the number of enforcement officials grew, and that there was little mention of discrimination at all. The Civil Rights Commission abandoned the elimination of discrimination as its criteria, shifting to full statistical equality, and proportional representation. So by 1970 at the latest, the original definition of discrimination and civil rights had been discarded. (GRAHAM 457-8)

EEOC Bickering Over Cease & Desist Nixon's subordinates didn't care for the EEOC having cease & desist authority any more than the earlier Dirksen, or any more than New Deal Republicans cared for the NLRB, as the GOP was long a pro-capitalist party. Per Arthur Burns, "The words cease-and-desist and NLRB are inflammatory words to most businessmen." (Proposed Message to Congress on "Equal Employment Opportunity," n.d. [April 1969], box A10, Equal Opportunity, Burns papers, GRFL) (GRAHAM 426) Cease and desist authority for the EEOC had become a litmus test among liberal Democrats by the end of LBJ's administration. (GRAHAM 420) In 1971, Rep. Augustus Hawkins introduced his own cease and desist bill (HR 1746) with labor and black groups supporting. The GOP backed John T. Erlenborn substitute bill (HR 9247), supported by Chamber of Commerce & National Association of Manufacturers. The GOP was joined in pushing Erlenborn bill by Southern Democrats, but for different reasons.(Congressional Quarterly Almanac: 1971 (Washington: Congressional Quarterly, 1972), 644-649) Reasons that long predate the 1960s. Because of these different reasons, this =/= a pathway to the GOP for the segregationists. Who came to who? Who was Muhammad and who was the mountain? (GRAHAM P434) In practice, EEOC was overwhelmed by complaints. FY 1968 saw 15,000 complaints, successfully concilated in only 513 cases, with a backlog of 30,000 complaints, average processing time 18 months. Hugh Davis Graham thinks its because retail-complaint model rather than because it is a government bureaucracy itself, though I disagree. (GRAHAM P422) In any case, the Republicans wanted court enforcement instead of unchecked EEOC power for constitutional and business/free market and federalism reasons. Southern Democrats wanted no enforcement at all, and figured the Republican approach was marginally closer to it. Republicans and Northern Democrats bickered about whose enforcement would be stronger. While Republicans and Southern Democrats may have overlapped in hostility to EEOC coverage over state and local governments, that wasn't the heart of the biill. The Republicans noted that court enforcement was faster "(by 1971 the EEOC already had a 21-month backlog of approximately 25,000 complaints, and NLRB cases under cease-and-desist authority were avarage 630 days to resolve)." The Republicans further noted the average time for a non-jury trial in federal courts was 8 months. Courts were faster, more thorough, more fair, as the threshhold was "preponderance of evidence," with broad discovery backed up by judges' contempt power. ("Minority Views on HR 1746," House Report 238, 58-67) (GRAHAM P435) Neither enforcement method had yet been used in civil rights law, but they were bickering over whose enforcement was better, ergo, Republicans were still pro-civil rights in 1971, Magical Switching Parties Conspiracy Theory notwithstanding. (GRAHAM P436)

Southern Democrats neither switched parties nor changed their ways, as the debate surrounding the Equal Employment Opportunity Act of 1972 demonstrated. (GRAHAM 440) A handful of Republicans voted against the majority of their party, against Nixon's position, but for different reasons than Segregationist Democrats. Many weren't from states that ever had de jure segregation, like Hruska & Curtis (NE), Cotton (NH), and Young (SD), for them it was about abstract objections to federal power. (GRAHAM 442) In any case, the basic pattern from the 1964 Civil Rights Act repeated itself, and the Equal Employment Opportunity Act became law, a success of Nixon's "floating coalition," in which he used the Southern Democrats' help to block giving the EEOC cease and desist powers, but then rallied Republicans to block Southern Democrats from gutting the Philadelphia Plan. (GRAHAM 443) * * * Court-Assistance for Redefinitions & Mission Creep

Courts & Sociology We saw a pivot where courts, even for the best of reasons, invented the law as they went. Both Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) and Brown v. Board (1954) rested more on contemporary sociology than the Constitution. (GRAHAM 366-367) Justice Brown, in Plessy: "We consider the underlying fallacy of the plaintiff's argument to consist in the assumption that the enforced separation of the two races stamps the colored race with a badge of inferiority. If this be so, it is not by reason of anything found in the act, but solely because the colored race chooses to put that construction upon it." (Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 US 537 (1896), at 551). Justice Warren, in Brown: "To separate [schoolchildren] solely because of their race generates a feeling of inferiority as to their status in the community that may affect their hearts and minds in a way unlikely to be undone." (Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 US 483 (1954) at 494-95) The Warren Court feared backlash if they issued the legally correct ruling, so they built it on sociology, which has drawbacks of its own. (GRAHAM 368) Courts in the United States v. Jefferson County Board of Education, 372 F.2d 836 (5th Cir, 1966), and Green v. County School Board of New Kent [E.VA] County, 391 US 430 (1968), showed willingness to use Housing Education & Welfare (HEW) statistics (and statistics more generally) as a barometer for justice. (GRAHAM P374) Stats and sociology are not bad, but they are also not law. Speaking of law, the very word means something that is always constant. A law of physics is just as true as it was 500 years ago as it is today, and will be just as true 500 years from now. It will be just as true in Papua New Guinea as it is in France. Equality under the law means the same process must be equally true for all. It was developed in reaction to laws that favored the Kings and aristocracy over the commoners, and it IS the pinnacle of human legal thinking. The compensatory theory that replaced it, is not. Compensatory theory replaced colorblindness, as "Classic liberalism's injunction to stop doing evil could not seem to repair the collective damage quickly enough to bring equal opportunity to these historically victimized citizens in their lifetimes." (GRAHAM 370) The Warren and Burger courts ruled accordingly, and "By 1970, the civil rights coalition was displacing the original formula of equal treatment for individuals with a formula of proportionally equal results for groups." Sometimes it was out of exapseration at Southern resistance, as with the Jefferson case. Sometimes it was out of misguided benevolence, in which justices didn't consider the downsides of bending the law, even for the best of reasons. In this author's opinion, it would have probably worked out better for all involved in the long run to just apply the law as written.

Employment Law and Voting Districts The same compensatory doctrines spread to other areas of the law, applied by administrative agencies as well as courts. The EEOC's own recounting admits Congress's intent with the 1964 Civil Rights Act "establishes that the use of professionally developed ability tests would not be considered discriminatory." [98] ([98] EEOC Administrative History, Vol. I, LBJL, 1969, 17) (GRAHAM 388) Duke v. Griggs got tests overruled, "Griggs redefines discrimination in terms of consequences rather than motive, effect rather than purpose." (Alfred W. Blumrosen, "Strangers in Paradise: Griggs v. Duke Power Co. and the Concept of Employment Discrimination,"Michigan Law Review 71 (November 1972); 59-110) Courts also scrutinized voting rules. In Allen v. State Board of Election (1969), SCOTUS ruled distict drawing to dilute strength can be a civil rights violation. This invited dispute from Justice Harlan, grandson of the dissenter in Plessy v. Ferguson, said the VRA a) rested on Section 4, not court-cited Section 5 (legislative history backed him, GRAHAM 380), and b) deciding whether every local change helped or hurt black voters was not always clear. Comparing an at-large system to a district system, he wrote: "Under one system, Negroes have some influence in the election of all officials; under the other, minority groups have more influence in the selection of fewer officials. If courts cannot intelligently compare such alternatives,"Harlan said,"it should not be readily inferred that Congress has required them to undertake the task. (Allen v. State Board of Elections 393 US 544 (1969), at 586) * * * * * Republican Consistency Redux: Backlash Against Redefinitions

Backlash Against Redefinitions To speak of anyone covertly appealing to racist backlash implies a majority in support of racism. If there was, there would be the clamor and the political strength to repeal civil rights laws or impose segregation, as was done in the 1890s, 1912, and the 1930s when the Democrats surged into power. Yet despite all the talk of Republicans and "conservative" Democrats comprising a supposed "conservative coalition," it never happens, not even post-1972. This is because there was no "backlash" against civil rights. There was a backlash against the redefinition of civil rights from a matter of equal opportunity to a matter of taxpayer-guaranteed equal results. It's not a question of "too fast" or "too slow," but "wrong direction." In a similar vein, Republicans didn't "reverse" themselves on their support of the Environmental Protection Agency or the Equal Rights Amendment for the same reason. Back in 1969, the Cuyahoga River caught on fire. Smog clouded many major cities. So an agency was created to take drastic action in the face of a demonstrable problem. Compare and contrast with their abuse of the Clean Water Act to harass homeowners for making a pond on their own property and similar outrages as outlined in 's Government Bullies. If someone mission creeps beyond their original mandate, it is not a display of inconsistency to oppose them at that point. Likewise, the Equal Rights Amendment originated before the Roe v. Wade decision. Newer generations of feminists insisted that the ERA would protect abortion, which of course is not what the ERA had meant prior. So again, it's not inconsistent to change your answer if the question changed, and it certainly isn't a "move to the radical right wing"--the Republicans weren't doing much moving at all, their opponents were embracing as core doctrines things the most radical positions on matters that hadn't even been major issues ten years prior.

1966 Was Backlash Against the Great Society, Not Civil Rights 1966 wasn't racial backlash, but anti-Great Society backlash. The resultant Congress did pass the 1968 Fair Housing Act. For another, so much else was going on, from the sexual revolution, to the riots, to the student unrest, to the bombings, to rapidly rising crime, to an increasingly unpopular (and undeclared by Congress) Vietnam War, and as we saw in the "Voters" Chapter, the geography of where the GOP gained their seats says it wasn't a backlash on civil rights. Inflation rose, and peoples' nominally rising salaries caused "bracket creep," putting them in a higher tax bracket, at a time when new programs were created. (CARNES GARRATY P832) Opposing "big government" is not coded racism. Not only did GOP opposition to such predate the 1960s, government really did grow dramatically in this period. State and local government employment grew by 4 million, or 40%, during 1960s. (Matthew A. Crenson and Frances E. Rourke, "By Way of Conclusion: American Bureaucracy since World War II", in State: Bureaucracies and Policies since World War II, ed. Louis Galambos (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987), 148) The Federal government bureaucracy added 400K jobs during the 1960s, and there was a big explosion in spending, much of it non-military. The defense share of the overall budget dropped by 1/5, despite the Vietnam War, a "welfare shift." (Samuel P. Huntington, "The Democratic Distempter,"The Public Interest 41 (Fall 1971): 13) The Federal government budget doubled, from $92 billion in 1960, to $195 billion in 1970. Federal Register regulation grew sixfold 1969-1974. (Hugh Heclo, "Issue Networks and the Executive Establishment," in Anthony King, ed., The New American Political System (Washington: American Enterprise Institute, 1978), 89-90) (GRAHAM 463) The backlash that put Nixon in the White House was not racial, but social, and only got angry and energetic in the face of the student and anti-war violence. (James W. Button, Black Violence: Political Impact of the 1960s Riots (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978), 78-79) (GRAHAM 273) This meshes with Scammon & Wattenberg's aforementioned study of the 1968 election. But how do we know they weren't secretly motivated by race too? How could the Republicans in the South become anti-welfare crusaders a la Newt Gingrich? Obviously racism, right? Not at all. They didn't just oppose welfare for black people; they opposed it for everyone. It's not about who's getting, it's about who's paying. As for surveys showing a backlash, it's worth noting that NES (National Election Studies) surveys complicate the matter by changing question wording. The 1950s wording was: "If Negroes are not getting fair treatment in jobs and housing, the government should see to it that they do." The 1960s wording was : "Should the government in Washington see to it that Black people get fair treatment in jobs, or should the government in Washington leave these matters to the states and localities?" The 1970s-onward wording was: "Some people feel that the government in Washington should make every possible effort to improve the social and economic position and other minority groups. Others feel that the government should not make any special effort to help minorities because they should help themselves. So this means the socalled "white backlash" is largely a matter of a different answer to a substantively different question; better treatment is free, but the demands for equality of results cost money (and an indeterminate amount at that; even costly things can be embraced when the cost is known before the commitment is made, ex car and house purchases.) Opposition to welfare was a policy position, not a racial position. (Shafer & Johnston 74-81, 125) All the attitudes (opposing welfare, job guarantees, etc) are compatible with being for small government and individualism. (It's not about who's receiving; it's not even about who we think it's receiving; it's about who we KNOW is PAYING.) (Shafer & Johnston 117, 119) So if this is so, then where did people get the idea the GOP became anti-civil rights?

Democrats Slapping the Civil Rights Label on Non-Civil Rights Issues: A Brief History This idea arose because Democrats started pretending that non-civil rights issues were somehow civil rights issues. Here's how the scam works: Liberals first slapped the "liberal" label" on civil rights, then slap the "civil rights" label on everything liberals wanted in the first place, long before they even pretended to care about civil rights. We see this in the narrative-driven insertion of race into non-racial topics, "environmental racism," or the AOC's idiotic proclamation on Twitter (and she's a twit) COVID-19 deaths proved institutional racism. Democrats not only racialize everything, they then analogise everything to the civil rights movement, such as amnesty for illegals, feminism, gay marriage, transgenderism, fat acceptance, etc. Independently of the merits of each of these things (which I am not commenting on here), they are NOT literal carbon copies of the unique Black experience, and it strains both history and credulity to stretch analogies this far. The analogies get more strained over time, as Democrats have slapped the civil rights label on committing voter fraud, even though the only people who ever stopped Blacks from voting were Democrats. (The recency of this narrative is also suspicious, as Democrats got black vote in the 1930s, but we didn't hear any sustained claims voter ID was racist until about 2012 or so. As recently as 2011, Rhode Island got a voter ID law because of the insistence of, and because of a bill written by...Black Democrats!) The Democrats fake civil rights concerns are not about past wrongs, but present politics. For example, illegal immigration or any claim that affirmative action should include Latinos. Hispanics like Tejanos who lived in Texas since 1848, or such as California Hispanics, did face discrimination prior to the 1960s, when civil rights laws were passed. At this time, 1848-1964, the illegal aliens of today were not even living in the United States; if anyone owes them anything for doing them wrong, it's their own governments, not American taxpayers. This is a case of stolen valor, whereby Democrats pretend that illegal aliens, who lived through none of the discrimination of American Hispanics, and were even not present in the United States at the time discrimination was actually occuring, are somehow entitled to credit for it by virtue of having the same skin color. Democrats are basically saying "You weren't oppressed, but you look like someone who was, so that's good enough. Oh, and please do vote Democrat." Nor is it racist to enforce our immigration laws, as illegal immigration is a behavior, not a race; it would only be racist to oppose Mexican border-jumping if conservatives accepted the same behavior from other groups. But conservatives would also object if the offenders were Canadians or Russians or Chinese. There are many practical reasons for skepticism over open borders, none of them racially motivated. Progressives once rejected self-sufficient legal immigrants for eugenics reasons; this is no equivalent to Conservatives rejecting illegal immigrants for economic reasons (as well as the "voting Democrat" reason). Most immigrants are lower-skill and blue collar; no wonder the journalists and celebrities who don't know any blue collar workers think its no big deal. Crime is a valid concern: Latin America is home to 41 of the 50 most violent cities on planet, and 16 of worst 20 countries for murder rates. It is absolutely true most Latinos are not criminals, and cannot be refused on this basis; however it is also true that without a wall, we can't control our border, and thus have no idea who we're getting, good or bad. With a wall, we can separate the wheat from the chaff. Concern over national national sovereignty is a valid, non-racist objection: A woman's allowed to say no, and so is a country (Lady Liberty says #metoo), and fundamentally, immigration policy is for the American public to decide, not the Chamber of Commerce, not machine politicians, not cartels, not the United Nations, not and his human-trafficking NGOs, etc. What we have here, is a case of powerful political interests using the civil rights label as a club to bludgeon civil society to bowing down to what is good for the elites. No one should submit to this malicious labelling, this racial bullying, for example labelling all opponents, up to and including the not-particularly-white Candace Owens a "white supremacist." Anyone talking about "white supremacy" today operates in bad faith: There has been no white supremacy for decades, and when there was, Democrats ran it. A party that has endorsed practically every anti-American despot of the past 100 years does not have the moral authority to issue definitions of human rights. Accordingly, rioting, looting, and jumping the border, are not human rights. A party that ran slavery, Jim Crow, did every lynching, and had its constituents comprise every racist mob does not have the moral authority to issue definitions of civil rights. Accordingly, proportional spoils systems, exemption from the general laws, and committing voter fraud, are not civil rights. Democrat reading of the 1960s parodies their reading of the 1860s. It's a new "Lost Cause" mythology, except the civil rights cause didn't actually lose. Both are attempts to demagogue the issue to perpetuity, perpetrated by people who would see racism if you gave them a Rorshach Test.

No, GOP Election Integrity Measures Are Not The Continuation of Democrat Voter Suppression A report emerged in 1968, documenting various evasion measures at the county level in especially Alabama and Mississippi. (US Commission on Civil Rights, Political Participation (Washington: US Government Printing Office, 1968) While praising 94% of the 593 counties covered by the VRA for compliance, the report mentioned 38 drew complaints, 75% of which were in Alabama and Mississippi. These rebels were hammered down using Section 4, not Section 5, which appears to be rarely used except as a cudgel against GOP attempts to clean up election rigging. Segregationist Democrats had engaged in: "Such racist manipulations of otherwise permissible changes including switching from district to at-large elections, switching from elective to appointive office, extending the terms of elective offices and even abolishing them, increasing the minimum qualifications and filing fees for office, and preventing newly elected officials from obtaining required bonds." (GRAHAM 357) Notice what we do not see: We see no mention of anything like GOP attempts to ensure the integrity of the vote, such as voter ID requirements, citizenship requirement checks to register, purging dead, inactive, or incorrectly spelled/duplicate/wrong address voters, or preventing ballot harvesting by third parties. This is because GOP attempts to clean up voter fraud are...actually attempts to clean up voter fraud. Democrats have stuffed the ballot box since Tammany Hall in the 1830s. The Whigs complained about it at the time, and when the Republicans replaced them, they too complained about Democrat election rigging. And despite loud, screeching, racebaiting spin and narrative pushing, none of those segregationist proposals is equivalent to what the GOP does today. Which brings us to the 2013 case of Shelby v. Holder. It had been 40+ years since it was a problem, nearly everyone involved is dead (and voting Democrat). Constraining present Republicans from stopping fraud because past Democrats suppressed the vote is illogical. Conspiracy theories aside, nobody has shown voter turnout fell because of Shelby or because of voter ID or because of dead peoples' names being purged from the voter rolls. It's always theoretical, nobody has even an anecdotal case of someone entitled to vote who was denied. Turnout can drop because the candidate is Hillary rather than Obama too, you know. Obama's turnout is NOT the historical baseline for black voting, it was an anomalously high turnout. And what specifically is discrminatory about requiring a photo ID to vote? It is not like the poll tax, in no state does it cost more than $25, and the Obama-Holder Department of Justice sued states like Texas, which gave IDs away for free. Canada has voter ID, Mexico has voter requirments too. If it's not "racist" in Canada, and if it's not "racist" in Mexico, then it's not "racist" here either. Nor are Canada and Mexico anamolous, as nearly every industrialized country requires it, and if that's a good enough reason to push for changes to our healthcare system, then by golly that's a good enough reason for voter ID. The UN and State Department both recommend the use of ID to stop voter fraud both in the modern world or the 3rd world. Democrats also accuse other Democrats when it suits them, which means it's just a tactic. After the Democrat primary in Michigan 2020, AOC accused establishment Democrats of voter suppression. In the 2018 Georgia Governors' race, despite the highest Black turnout ever recorded, accusations were levelled of, wait for it...voter suppression. It's the NARRATIVE-NARRATIVE-NARRATIVE at work. Photo ID is also needed to for alcohol, cigarettes, opening a bank account, applying for welfare, unemployment, renting or buying a house or a car, boarding an airplane, getting married, buying a gun, picking up a perscription, purchasing nail polish at CVS, purchasing cold medications, and entering a federal building. Hell, you need a photo ID to see Eric Holder give a speech about why photo ID voting requirements are racist. (No, I'm not making that up.) * * * Nixon's Campaign & Transition Vindicated, Along With Some More Modern Republicans

The Supposed Southern Strategy: Theoretical Problems With the Evidentiary Basis of the Accusation The claim is Nixon fine-tuned Goldwater's earlier efforts into a campaign of refined and clever appeals to coded racism, in order to get disgruntled segregationists on board with his campaign and/or future Republicans, and that this was the trick that turned the South Republican. This plan, the story goes, was then expanded by later Republicans such as Reagan or Trump, and that they appealed to a more or less constant supply of racism-animated voters, via covert appeals to voters who knew their racism was no longer publicly acceptable but were just as racist as the segregationists before them. This framework is then used to explain Republican attacks on Obama, Obamacare, any Black man or woman dissed by Trump, and expanded to explain any friction between Trump and anyone else. "He's scared of strong women," aka, women so strong they can do anything but bear to hear different opinions. A reliable peddler of this sort of thing is Dan Carter, who in his 1996 book From George Wallace to Newt Gingrich: Race in the Conservative Counterrevolution, 1963-1994, claimed Newt Gingrich and the Religious Right's rhetoric about welfare and single motherhood was racially motivated. It couldn't possibly be because the Bible frowns on unmarried sex, oh no, it's gotta be racism. (Someone needs to tell him that as recently as the 1960 census Black marriage rates were higher than white marriage rates, meaning there's nothing inherently "black" about illegitimacy, and thus criticism of it is not "racist.") And so we get into fantasy land, in which mini-conspiracy theories are stacked upon a broader one, in which the sheer number of purported pieces of evidence no matter how flimsy, the sheer number of accusations no matter how uncorroborated, becomes a form of "social proof" in itself. "How could so many accusations all be wrong," thinks the average person. Well, if the accuser is a liar, they can easily all be wrong! There are serious theoretical problems with the story, which in summary are 1) lack of documentary evidence, be they documents or recordings, 2) all the contemporaneous evidence is accusations from the outside, 3) all the evidence from the inside comes decades later from people with an ax to grind and isn't corroborated by documentary evidence (and the substance of them is just a cut-and-paste of the earlier accusations from the outside), and 4) and even if all of the above weren't issues, it still contradicts the actual voting data! The voting data is the failsafe, by which we know for sure this story can't be true, and that there must be some other explanation for these quotes and characterizations and accusations, which we'll explore in detail next. * * * Theoretical Problems With Having a Supposed Southern Strategy

They Wouldn't Have Needed To The idea that the GOP would appeal to the Supposed Southern Strategy to win racist votes is ridiculous. They were already winning Southern states without having to do any such thing. Eisenhower in 1952 won Texas, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Virginia, and Florida. Eisenhower in 1956 won Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Tennessee, Virginia, and Florida. He narrowly missed in North Carolina both times. Nixon in 1960 won Oklahoma, Tennesee, Virginia, and Florida, narrowly missed in South Carolina, and was cheated out of Texas. Also, look at the 1972, 1980, 1984, and 1988 elections: we're supposed to believe a "Southern strategy" of appealing to racists and segregationists explains national landslides because, why? Because otherwise liberals will jump up and down pointing to the 1964 anomaly again?

It Wouldn't Have Worked If They Did Do, Plus They Just Saw It Not Work The "Southern strategy" as described is nonsense. Racism wasn't an advantage and had not been for 20 years by that point (1968). It was so much "not an advantage" that even George Wallace felt compelled to get on the right side of the issue to get reelected as Governor in Alabama in 1982! It was so much "not-an-advantage" that by 1964, even being plausibly labelled as one was enough to ensure a national landslide against you, even if you had not actually uttered anything demonstrably racist! In the wake of 1964, nobody would think this supposed dogwhistle thing was even possible. To think that "Tricky Dick" Nixon, one of the most cunning to ever play politics, would copy what he'd just seen end in disaster is about the trashiest of all trash takes in the history of trash. * * * Practical Evidence

They Said They Weren't Doing It Jeffrey Hart, Nixon campaign speechwriter, said there was no Southern Strategy, but a Border State Strategy, and called the press "very lazy." Harry Dent, told Nixon privately the administration "has no Southern Strategy, but rather a national strategy which, for the first time in modern times, includes the South." Then there's Kevin Phillips, who whatever he claims now said differently then: "the Nixon campaign contrived by the Madison Avenue crowd called for a blurring of the issues...Nixon knew his campaign stunk. He wanted to be himself and he knew he should have fought the campaign on the issues Middle America was ready for--the Agnew issues of today. But he had this big lead in August and didn't want to change a winning game plan. It was Oct. 28 before he found out from the polls he was blowing it. And it was too late then to do anything but hang in there and hope." "Phillips had one conspicuous campaign success--the urging of an Outer South Strategy aimed at capturing Florida, Tennessee, North Carolina, and Virginia, as opposed to the Deep South Strategy that had carried Wallace territory for Goldwater in 1964, but at the cost of frightening away millions of potential voters elsewhere. "My argument was this: Your outer Southerners who live in the Ozark and Appalachian mountain ranges and in the Piedmont upcountry--and now in urban-suburban Florida and Texas--have always had different interests than the Negrophobe plantation owners of the Black Belt" (James Boyd, "Nixon's Southern Strategy 'It's All In the Charts' ," New York Times, May 17 1970). So for all the talk of Phillips the Mastermind, he spent his time complaining his best ideas weren't listened to. Then there's the question of what Phillips actually said and when he actually said it. Let's start with the "when." The book was done October 1967, with only post election modifications to add. Is not a strategy, just description and future projections (Phillips 21) which only applies to Presidential election (Phillips 22) and Nixon never read more than the pre-publishing excerpts, an entirely typical thing for book writers to release. (Phillips 23) Also of note for would-be cherrypickers, check what he means by "conservative" to see if your claim makes sense: "Today, the revolt against established political interest has to be called "conservative" because the interests are "liberal," and so I have called both the anti-establishment politics of the South, West and Levittown and the emerging Republican majority "conservative," even though in many ways they are un-conservative" (Phillips 24) Then there's the "what." Kevin Phillips, in The Emerging Republican Majority, lays out a theory that oppositional voting based on ethnic patterns is what drives elections, with the accompanying claim realignment of one forces the realignment of the polar opposite, as though they were on opposite sides of an orbit. ERM is not a racist strategy book, or any kind of strategy book, but statistical analysis and prediction. The intro says so, on the first page. Anyone calling it a racist strategy book hasn't read the book. Under "hasn't read the book," you can file anyone pushing the Magical Switching Parties Conspiracy Theory. Then there's the matter of Phillips in context. From the end of his chapter on the South, I present to you: "Southern white disaffection from the Democrats has not yet generally translated itself into firm Republicanism. ON THE BASIS OF THE 1968 RETURNS, ONLY THE OUTER SOUTH IS DEFINITELY MOVING INTO THE GOP CAMP. Party strength in the Outer South rests principally on traditional mountain and Piedmont backing, rapid urban and suburban white middle class growth, and related factors; dependence on the shift of lowland Southern traditionalists into the GOP is only partial. Moreover, the two-party contest which exists in the Outer South is unlikely to impose itself on the Wallace rebels of 1968--to the benefit of the GOP. In the Deep South, however, the majority of the white electorate is suspicious of both major parties, and the Nixon administration's undoubted enforcement of Civil Rights and voting rights laws may keep third-party flames flickering. But third parties are not likely to persist long; they are the inevitable casualties of realignment. In this particular situation there are a number of factors which will push the Deep South in the Republican direction. In the first place, Negroes are slowly but surely taking over the apparatus of the Democratic Party in a growing number of Deep Southern Black Belt counties, and this cannot help but push whites into the alternative party structures---that of the GOP. Secondly, white psychological dispositions to fight a hopeless rearguard action are shrinking in the face of the inevitable...... The gathering Republicanism of the Outer South eventually dictates the coming alignment of the Deep South. FOR NATIONAL POLITICAL REASONS, THE REPUBLICAN PARTY CANNOT GO TO THE DEEP SOUTH, BUT FOR ALL THE ABOVE-MENTIONED REASONS, THE DEEP SOUTH MUST SOON GO THE NATIONAL GOP" (Emerging Republican Majority, p. 286-289) Whatever you think of his logic, notice that it is a prediction, not a strategy. Whatever you think of his prediction, it is a far cry from the claim Nixon went actively appealing to bad elements because the parties magically switched.

What They Said They Were Doing Dent's assertion of "a national strategy" that "now includes the South" was not his alone. Kevin Phillips, before his decline to liberalism, said as much, though his was prediction rather than strategy. He predicted a rising GOP majority in the sunbelt, inclusive of the South, built on the foundation of suburbs and white-collar middle class voters (and that's what Nixon won). All this was foreseen even earlier by , who in an op-ed in on May 8, 1966, declared the GOP opportunity, "a golden one; but Republicans must not go prospecting for the fool's gold of racist votes. Southern Republicans must not climb aboard the sinking ship of racial injustice. They should let Southern Democrats sink with it as they have sailed with it" adding "that Republicans 'should adhere to the principles of the party of Lincoln...and leave it to the George Wallaces and Lister Hills to squeeze the last ounces of political joice from the rotting fruit of racial injustice." On October 21, the Washington Post, "Administration Challenged by Nixon to Repudiate Racists Seeking Office" by David Broder, quotes Nixon: "I have yet to find a Republican candidate anywhere who is campaigning on the white backlash" and "It is time for the national Democratic leadership and the Johnson administration to make it clear whether it is going into the South as the party of Maddox, Mahoney and Wallace." Nixon in an October 30 column for North American Newspaper Alliance: "Below the Mason Dixon line, the party of Jefferson, Jackson and Wilson has become the party of Maddox, Mahoney and Wallace" "Lyndon Johnson, Bobby Kennedy and Hubert Humphrey have not lifted a finger or invested an ounce of their political prestige to prevent this seizure of their party in the South by the lineal descendents of "Pitchfork Ben" Tillman and Theodore Bilbo. They have allowed it to become a party in which Bull Connor is completely at home." Nixon said the new GOP in the South should rest "on four pillars: human rights, states' rights, private enterprise and a policy of peace without appeasement." Clarifying, "Republicans have rejected the old concept of states' rights as instruments of reaction and accepted a new concept: States' rights as instruments of progress," which was to be made "in the fields of health, transportation, education, and welfare." The column was released widely, to the LA Times and Philadelphia Bulletin among others. (all cited via Patrick Buchanan, "Nixon in Dixie," August 27, 2014, The American Conservative) Nor did this change post-Nixon. As one of the other accused contrivers of this "Southern strategy," Clark Reed of Mississippi, put it thusly: "He is particularly interested in the long-range prospects of the Republican Party. He says he wants it to be fiscally and socially conservative, but not racist. "It would be disastrous if the party split along lines of black and white," he said yesterday. "It's important for us to go the extra mile and extend the long hand to blacks who are seriously interested in participating in the party. As blacks become more middle class, he said, they will become increasingly disenchanted with the liberal programs of the Democratic Party. Blacks, he said, are "basically conservative, family, church and land-oriented" (Roy Reed, "Misssissippi Republican Leader," New York Times, July 30, 1976)

The Voters Confirm This Version of Events As we covered in the voters chapter, most districts from Wallace wound up in the hands of Carter later, and only voted for Nixon, along with the rest of the country because McGovern was so out in left field. Wallacites are not Nixonites. This was known at the time and has been lied about ever since. " "Republicans and Wallacites are different types of people--they belong to different kinds of clubs and churches, go different places on Saturday night and Sunday morning, and respond differently to "bigness." (James Clotfeller and WIlliam R. Hamilton, "Beyond Race Politics: Electing Southern Populists in the 1970s" in You Can't Eat Magnolias, ed. H. Brandt Ayers and Thomas H. Naylor (New York, 1972), 155) (NEW SOUTH 394) Even more closely after the elections was the analysis of two Democrat operatives, Richard M. Scammon and Ben J. Wattenberg who concluded the result rested on what they termed "the Social Issue." Noting most voters were "unyoung, unpoor, unblack," they said Humphrey's trainwreck arose from Democrats' being "soft on crime" and situated badly regarding "kidlash, morals and disruption." While race factored in somewhat, they noted "strict segregationists" in the South had dropped 20 points on polls from 1964 to 1968, and that Democrats should stop viewing law and order" as coded bigotry, "split off the Race Issue from the Social Issue" and stand for law and order and racial progress." How much more of both justice and peace the country could have had if Democrats took their advice! (Richard M. Scammon and Ben J. Wattenberg, The Real Majority: An Extraordinary Examination of the American Electorate (New York, 1970), 45, 70, 180, 285, in NEW SOUTH 398) And after Nixon, "Wallace supporters by and large supported him [Jimmy Carter] and he collected almost half the ballots cast in the region at the same time that he was the unequivocal choice of minority voters. In the South and in the nation, Carter won majorities among blue-collar workers, and Ford won the white collar precincts. By appealing to the alienated and the dispossessed, Carter sealed the expiration of the Wallace movement." (NEW SOUTH 415, from Alexander Lamis, Two Party South, 37-39, Black & Black, The Vital South, 239-31)

There Is No Documentary Support for the Democrat Version of What the Supposed Southern Strategy Was The case rests nearly entirely upon maliciously clipped and viciously interpreted quotations, because there is no smoking document. The fact the narrative-pushers, in all this time, cannot produce any RNC document that says anything resembling the accusation...that is itself a smoking gun that there's nothing but malicious interpretation behind the Southern Strategy conspiracy theory. You'd think with the between the CIA, the NSA, and the FBI , with how FDR, JFK, LBJ, and Obama wiretapped opponents they'd have found a smoking gun by now. 50 years of nothing means distorting quotes is all they have. At worst, some of the 1960-1964 Operation Dixie stuff might be insensitive, but a deliberate attempt by an entire party to appeal to segregationists on the basis of defending segregation (which is what is alleged, so nothing less will prove their case)? Where is it? The only supposed evidence appears to be newspapers of the era accusing them of having such a strategy. Documentation is where? Yes, occasionally they'll reference a letter or memo between Republicans containing the word "Southern" followed by the word "Strategy," but never any that then says "and by Southern strategy we mean appealing to segregationists with coded racial statements." It's not enough to contain the two words in that order. It has to be proven that they meant the thing that Democrats accuse them of meaning. Because, as covered before, they repeatedly said they meant appeals to the growing white-collar suburban populations of the Outer South, and that's where they'd been winning since Eisenhower. Indeed, that's where GOP support had been growing as early as the 1940s, though it didn't reach a tipping point until Eisenhower. Academically-worded smears are still smears; a hitjob with footnotes is still a hitjob.

Nixon's Appeals Weren't Specifcally Southern Nixon said the same thing nationally, without promising anything crazy. Kevin Phillips even complained about it, bemoaning Nixon was letting "Madison Avenue" advisors run an issueless campaign trying to sell the candidate. He did well in suburbs in the South true, but he did better in suburbs nationally. The rural and blue-collar South went Wallace, the suburban and white-collar South went Nixon; there's a clear geographic distinction between Wallace and Nixon backers, and there was nothing specifically Southern about Nixon's appeals. Even "law and order" wasn't specifically Southern; most of the riots and bombings were in the North. Recognizing the danger of this basic fact, narrative pushers like Matthew Lassiter, Thomas Sugrue and most notably Kevin Kruse have done a hit on the suburbs. I explained in the "Voters" chapter that suburbs didn't arise from racism, that most migration was from all-white neighborhoods not being sold to Blacks, that suburbs arose around cities with minimal black populations as well, etc. In some ways attacking suburbs is an even greater prize than the Southern strategy story, because it blames the GOP nationally. Thusly, Kontextless Kevin Kruse bets double-or-nothing on tarring the suburbs, reframing the generic as "white supremacy." But the trouble for this pivot begins almost immediately, first with the obvious: Real explanations don't need this much rescuing. Second, the failure to consider alternative reasons why anyone would populate the suburbs or vote Republican once there. Suburbanites were voting self-interest, not racial interest. The GOP made no to white unity. (Also, the fact that open appeals couldn't be made really obliterates the notion of a "white power structure," no?) Returning to self-interest, is concern over crime racist? This assumes a white suburbanite would much care whether his windows were smashed and his tires were slashed by a white man or a black man. On top of it all, where's the evidence Nixon even wanted to talk about race, or that it helped him if and when he did? Nixon's hemming and hawing was because he was a moderate and was trying to remove race as an issue; he ran a middle-class campaign, not a white identitarian one. Also, if he's such a white supremacist, how'd he win the Asian vote, winning the Chinese- and Japanese-American vote even in places otherwise as liberal as New York City or San Francisco?

Nixon's Appeals Weren't New in 1968 (or 1964) The Supposed Southern Strategy conspiracy theory rests on bad-faith interpretations of perfectly ordinary and longtime GOP appeals, as a substitue for the lack of documentation. Some even tried claiming calling someone a "liberal" is a dogwhistle (Ricky Hill (March 2009) "The Race Problematic, the Narrative of Martin Luther King Jr. and the Election of ." Souls: A Critical Journal of Black Politics, Culture, and Society. 11 (1): 133-147) Others claim that appeals for more free markets, cuts to government spending, and returns to the Founding Fathers' principles or traditional moral values are all coded racial appeals. The insurmountable problem is that Republicans talked like that before the Civil Rights era as well. What we have here is Democrats proclaiming things Republicans have said since the 1860s somehow became racist in the 1960s. Even things like letting states largely run their own affairs predates the 1960s, for example, Congressman Robert Luce (R-MA, DW-NOMINATE score +.533) in 1935 complained the emergency New Deal legislation was an "invasion of personal liberties, transfer of duties from the States to the nation, governmental financing of joint activities...the three great avenues toward centralized control, with autocracy just beyond." (Robert Luce, Legislative Problems: Development, Status, and Trend of the Treatment and Exercises of Lawmaking powers (Boston, 1935), p.677) But per the narrative, the GOP under Goldwater and Nixon employed the "racist" strategy of saying the same things in the South that they had always said nationally. Some skepticism is in order.

Gotchas Got Ya Nothing! There's nothing Nixon did that Democrats weren't also doing. Being sighted within 5 miles of Thurmond is apparently a Federal crime. Oh, by the way, if we're going to play this game, did anyone ask Jimmy Carter to disavow George Wallace's endorsements, or Lestor Maddox's endorsement? How about Hubert Humphrey compaigning with Maddox in 68 , putting his arm around him and calling him "a good Democrat?" Why is this sort of thing only mentioned when Republicans do it, even when Democrats did it too, or did it more? Could it be because NARRATIVE NARRATIVE NARRATIVE? Speaking of Jimmy Carter, the same Jimmy Carter who recently had the temerity to say the Republican conquest of the South was all about race, let's look at what he was saying and doing at the time that the parties were supposedly "switching." Carter stated in a television appearance on January 31, 1973, he wanted a constitutional amendment against busing, and sponsored anti-busing resolution at the 1971 National Governors Conference...him and George Wallace both. So with bussing, we have Democrats today, trying to take what was a national consensus, call it racist, and say the Republicans did it. Bussing kids 30 miles out of the district and county just to make statistics look pleasing to bureaucrats is one thing. But housing is another, and on April 19, 1976, he said "I have nothing against a community that is...trying to maintain the ethnic purity of their neighborhoods" and says he's for open-housing laws, but opposed to efforts to "inject black famlies into a white neighborhood just to create some sort of integration." ("THE CAMPAIGN: Candidate Carter: I Apologize," Time. 107 (16). April 19, 1976.) Then there's the matter of Carter's 1970 Governor's campaign, where Carter campaign staffers, gave out grainy photos of Carter's opponent Carl Sanders celebrating with two black men (Sanders was part owner of the Atlanta Hawks basketball team). "The Carter campaign also produced a leaflet noting that Sanders had paid tribute to Martin Luther King, Jr." "I have no trouble pitching for Wallace votes and black votes at the same time," Carter told a reporter. "I can win this election without a single black vote." Carter was endorsed by Lester Maddox, and replied praising Maddox: "He has brought a standard of forthright expression and personal honesty to the governor's office, and I hope to live up to his standard." (from Stephen Hayward's book The Real Jimmy Carter. Cited in David Freddoso, "Jimmy Carter's racist campaign of 1970," , September 16, 2009) And who could forget the ugly 1970 Alabama gubernatorial campaign of George Wallace, who stayed a Democrat and was reelected as one as recently as 1982. Was he ever censured by the national Democratic Party in any way for it? Or would that draw too much attention to the parties not "switching?"

Conclusion: Fake Fact Checks Will Fail To Prop Up The Narrative The best summary and conclusion this subject can get is Politifact's the unbelievably dishonest "fact-check" of Candace Owens, because it in one fell swoop examplifies all the tricks used to bolster this tale. It is not a good faith attempt to find the facts, but an attempt to find leftist sources that back the predetermined conclusion of the Liberal "fact checker." It cites hard-left Kevin Kruse, who wrote for the 1619 Project, without telling you he's a hard leftist. They cite disgruntled Republicans, many of whom weren't in a position to know what they were talking about, such as Clarence Townes, head of the RNC's Minority Division, who blamed Nixon for a "Southern Strategy" talking to reporters in...June 1970. She's circularly reporting what the media claimed. They don't mention any of the voting data: they don't mention Eisenhower won Southern states in 1952 and 1956, and Nixon some of those states in 1960, they don't mention Nixon won the same areas in 1968 that he won in 1960 (check out the county maps and see for yourself), and won the same areas where Eisenhower won. In light of Nixon winning where Eisenhower won and losing where Eisenhower lost, a re-examining of the quotes is in order. If the New York Times reports "John Smith confessed he robbed the bank," yet the money is still there, then the fact is John Smith did not rob the bank. And then suppose we find out the New York Times misquoted him, and John Smith really said that when he was in 3rd grade, he made a joke about robbing the bank. That's about where we are with this "fact check." Atwater was misquoted, and the Phillips quote was not subjected to any critical thinking, because what Phillips said about "negrophobic whites quitting the Democrats" was not a strategy, but a prediction. A prediction, that per Shafer & Johnston's book The End of Southern Exceptionalism, did not subsequently happen, as they show with the voter data itself. As we can see, it is important to be a facts, data, and context historian like me, rather than a quotes historian, like Carter or Kruse. * * * Only Dogs Hear Dogwhistles, or, "If They're Clever Appeals To Racism, How Come Only You Liberals Can Hear Them?"

Dogwhistles Are a Conspiracy Theory Backed Only By Spin There are various theoretical and practical problems to the idea of dogwhistles. "We can't prove you're racist, therefore you're just a very clever racist." Democrats count on it straining credulity for anyone to correct the record. They believe anyone hearing 20 claims will thing "all 20 can't be wrong; each one is 50/50 and with 20 claims, some must be true, and that's bad, I better stay away from Republicans." However, if the accuser has a compelling reason to lie (say, like having been the party of slavery and Jim Crow and lynching and race riots), then complete falsity has a HIGH probability What is their method for identifying a dogwhistle? Not simply a post hoc labelling, but a pre-explained method? I'll tell you their method: If a Republican is saying it, and it works, call it a dogwhistle! Conservatives accused of hiding their supposed racism behind something else; that things such as the American Founding or traditional values are a cover story for racism. But Democrats also say American Founding/traditional values are themselves racist. Ditto, meritocratic opposition to affirmative action and quotas. So we're being accused of using racism to hide our racism. It makes no sense, but coherency isn't necessarily the objective. Dog whistle accusations, fundamentally, attempt to move the goal posts without looking like they're moving the goal posts. It's also invalid for being non-falsifiable, circular reasoning. What alternative explanations were considered? How were they ruled out? (Also, if we must suspect anyone of covert racism, shouldn't we first suspect the Democrats, with their history of overt racism?) Dan Carter says modern conservatism is the result of George Wallace's "politics of rage" blending "racial fear, anticommunism, cultural nostalgia, and traditional right-wing economics" The problem that the GOP never adopted segregationist policies is circumvented by the assertion that the GOP taking new positions on new issues was a proxy for old positions Democrats held on now-dead issues: affirmative action, busing, traditional , tough on crime, etc. The trouble is there's nothing to support the idea that they are racist policies except for the fact that liberal historians have called them such: labels to claim, labels to blame. If opposing whatever today's establishment slaps the civil rights on is "racist," then opposing Israel is anti-Semitic, right? It's partisanship pretending to be social science. As for the claim that white racism is central to modern conservatism, what about the segregationists who voted for Wilson and FDR, and segregationist politicans who voted for the New Deal? Is Social Security a "legacy of white surpremacy and lynching?" Is the Wagner Act about fair labor practices "a legacy of segregation and the Klan?" But that's never asked, because NARRATIVE NARRATIVE NARRATIVE, that's why. The narrative is "Big government goes with civil rights, racism goes with capitalism and limited government, historical facts be damned." And the historical fact is that GOP positions weren't veiled racism. They weren't old Southern Democrat positions either. They were old pre-New Deal Republican positions.

The Tricks Used To Spin Everything as a Racist Dogwhistle Most "examples of GOP racism" depend on you believing the MSPCT in the first place, that's the foundation. But what's built upon it? Their criteria is calling all successful GOP appeals dogwhistles. But how do they construct the bogus explanations? Framing. For instance, lumping in actual improvements with unrelated leftist policies, using one to give a "halo effect" to the other. For example, the welfare state is unrelated to civil rights, yet Democrats call Republicans opposing it "racist." Which leaves them unable to explain why a capitalist GOP pushed the 1866 Civil Rights Act and opposed lynching, why the 1930s Republicans opposed New Deal welfarism and opposed lynching while FDR vetoed anti-lynching bills and then the segregationist Democrats voted for more New Deal legislation. Or, if there is a behavioral disparity between group A and group B and someone is denouncing a counterproductive behavior group B did not exhibit before the welfare state, then what race hustlers do is turn it into a civil rights issue. Look at how this is done to any GOP talk of "back in the 1950s kids had 2 parents," it's slammed with a red herring deflection about civil rights. This is nonsense. The sexual revolution is unconnected to the civil rights movmement, and no one at the time, or 1866-1966 pretended otherwise. Promiscuity does not carry the same gravitas as freedom riders. The objective of this fraudulent propaganda is to train voters to, like Pavlov's dogs, associate everything Democrats like with MLK and to associate everything Republicans like with Bull Connor. One way they do this is through the use of the word "conservative" when describing segregationists, without any justification and seldom even explanation. Then there's the "everything the GOP likes comes from bad people" framing trick. This trick involves focusing on past bigots, taking a particular opinion they held, point out conservatives today hold that opinion, and....omitting that everyone else at the time held that opinion. Everything from belief in Christianity to demands for sound money and traditional families to anti-communism have been maligned by this deceptive framing. Another trick is to spin man bites dog stories as the rule, read racism into statements that don't mention race (they do this to Trump constantly), make narrative-driven assumptions about motives, sometimes bolstered by actually racist statements from the accusers themselves. The only thing special about racism today is the rate at which lies are told about it. Yet another trick is only noticing things once the GOP started doing them. For example, gerrymandering was never called racist until Republicans got to draw the districts. In fact, good luck finding much gerrymandering criticism at all before the GOP took Congress and many state houses in 1994. Yet another gimmick is likening the unlike, equating what is not equivalent. For example, equating voter ID equated with poll taxes, when no state charges more than $25 for an ID and many give them out for free. Omission of context is a standard issue component of all of the above. For example, anything about voter ID, omit that Black turnout has grown steadily since the 1990s, voter ID or not. Omit that Black 2012 turnout exceeded that of whites nationally, including in Georgia, which had just put in voter ID. And to help the ego of poor Stacey Abrams, do not mention 2018 featured the highest black turnout in GA ever...which is somehow voter "suppression," don't ask me how. Other things to not ask me how: "Colorblindness" is now racist. Put "colorblindness is racism" into any search engine if you don't believe me. They're seriously calling the ideology of Martin Luther King Jr. "racism," which sadly means there's no compromise to be had. If one has to argue that "colorblindness" is coded racism, we've officially left this dimension and warped ourselves into another dimension. When Democrat academic shills are stuck with the argument that Republicans all speak in code and colorblindness is coded racism and not giving out free money is coded racism and opposing communism is coded racism and wanting American immigration law to apply on American soil is coded racism and wanting criminals put in prison is coded racism, what they're really doing is not indicting Republicans for racism, but indicting liberal ideas for failure. If liberal ideas had a track record worth talking about, they'd be talking about it instead of pretending to see magical invisible racism in mundane political positions the Republicans held decades before the Civil Rights Era. But it's wose than that: I can't even call them "liberal ideas." It's gotten so ridiculous that there's even been claims that calling someone a "liberal" is a dogwhistle (Ricky Hill (March 2009) "The Race Problematic, the Narrative of Martin Luther King Jr. and the Election of Barack Obama." Souls: A Critical Journal of Black Politics, Culture, and Society. 11 (1): 133-147)

Alternative Explanations Get Ignored In their zeal to smear, Democrats ignore alternative explanations. For example, their party's lurch left on non-racial issues, such as school prayer, pornography, drugs, abortion, leniency towards criminals, and weak foreign policy. Democrats, bitter they lost in 1972--when they showed us who they really are--screeched their defeat resulted from the GOP's sneaky racism, rather than promises to defend America from crime, Communism, and corruption. Most other explanations are not mentioned, much less refuted; those mentioned get mangled. GOP obsession with limited government and are products of the 1930s, not the 1960s, and writers like Dan T. Carter and Kevin Kruse KNOW THIS. These HACKS tell us the ideas John Locke and the Founders believed in, ideas dealing with PURELY ABSTRACT QUESTIONS about the role of government, somehow became racist in the 1960s, because...reasons. Statements like "taking the country back" are assumed to have a racial undertone; never mentioned, the explosion in spending or scope of government. As far as construing every GOP utterence as coded racism, the worst offender at this is Dan T. Carter, and his book From George Wallace to Newt Gingrich: Race in the Conservative Counterrevolution, 1963-1994 (1996). Carter's not just wrong, he's hilariously wrong. Not content to miscontrue the Willian Horton ad, he claims Hunt and Helms made "racist" TV ads, because their ads tied their Democrat opponents to "black leaders" like Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, as if their RADICALISM was a non-issue, only their skin color. White Southern Republicans have never showed any such disgust with Tom Sowell or Walter E. Williams and show no hesitation to vote for Tim Scott in South Carolina, Allen West in Florida, Bobby Jindal in Louisiana, or Daniel Cameron in Kentucky. His explanation for Reagan's popularity considers then botches other explanations, asserting that real household income was flat or down from 1980-1992, therefore race. This is wrong for at least 3 reasons: 1) Even if the economy was getting worse for most people, race wasn't the only issue, indeed it was seldom the issue, 2) even if the economy was getting worse for most people, perceptions trump reality for voting purposes, and 3) the economy wasn't bad for the average person, absolutely or comparatively. Gas lines and stagflation and admonitions to save energy in the Carter years was what Reagan was being compared to, hence 1980, hence the 1984 landslide. There's an added point that's seldom mentioned though: he's using household income, when real median personal income shows a rise in the 1980s. Personal/per capita always means per person, but how many is a "household?" If circumstances improve and someone can move out and start their own household, that would keep median "household income" flat even though things did in fact get better, so much so that someone could afford to start their own household. Additionally, the average prices for many consumer goods were falling during this time. On top of all this, his explanation, if true, can't explain a 49 state landslide. In short, he chalks it up to race because he doesn't understand economics, and thus doesn't understand that for the average person the economics were getting better. * * * Reply to Every Leftist by Saying "You Call Everything Racist! It's Just a Tactic" and Watch Them Melt Down

Democrats and their Faith-Based Arguments That Republicans Are Secretly Racist That the Democrats have to reach so far proves there's nothing there. >Criticism of the IRS? RACIST! "Republicans are using [the IRS scandal] as their latest weapon in the war on the black man. "IRS" is the new "N****r," says Martin Bashir of MSDNC, oops I mean MSNBC. >Having an RNC convention? RACIST! They are happy to have a party with black people drowning," says Yahoo News Washington bureau chief David Chalian, referring to the 2012 RNC convention, because obviously a political convention was scheduled months in advance to line up with hurricane. DES-PER-ATE! >Owning a gun for self defense? RACIST! "I am loathe to bring up what is in our head because we don't like to talk about it so much. But on this particular day, on Martin Luther King Day, I think this needs to be said. That imaginary person that's going to break into your home and kill you, who does that person look like? You know, it's not freckle-faced Jimmy down the street, is it really? I mean, that's not what really, that's not what really people, we never really want to talk about the racial or the class part of this, in terms of how it's the poor or it's people of color that we imagine that we're afraid of. Why are we afraid? What is that, and it's been a fear that has existed for a very, very long time," said Michael Moore, in between stuffing his face with cake. >Wanting the government to follow the Constitution? RACIST! "The language of GOP racial politics is heavy on euphemisms that allow the speaker to deny any responsibilty for the racial content of his message." Juan Williams. "References to a lack of respect for the "Founding Fathers" and the "Constitution" also make certain ears perk up by demonizing anyone supposedly threatening core "old-fashioned American values," says Juan Williams, as he enjoys his Constitutionally-protected 1st Amendment.

Are we beginning to see that calling everything "RACIST!!!!!" is not a fact, but just a tactic?

>Calling Obama angry? RACIST! "That really bothered me. You notice [Romney] said anger twice. He's trying to use racial coding and access some really deep stereotypes about the angry black man. This is part of the playbook against Obama, the 'otherization,' he's not like us. I know it's a heavy thing, I don't say it lightly, but this is "n****rization," says Toure, whoever that is. >Calling Obama a liar? RACIST! "Surrounded by middle-aged white guys -- a sepia snapshot of the days when such pols ran Washington like their own men's club -- Joe Wilson yelled "You lie!" at a president who didn't. But, fair or not, what I heard was an unspoken word in the air: You lie, boy!," says Maureen Dowd, whose other specialty is seeing sexism everywhere it isn't. Being multitalented is awesome! >Calling Obama privileged? RACIST! "Spotlighting his elite education is tantamount to racial bigotry because it insinuates that he "took the place of someone else through affirmative action, that someone else being white," says Jonathan Capeheart, conveniently ignoring that politicians long called each other elitist and out of touch, and that this "he went to an elite private school" line was first employed by Bobby Rush, Obama's first opponent. Rush, by the way, is Black.

I swear, these guys would look at a Rorschach test and see racism.

>Saying Obama kowtows to unions? RACIST! "The Republican Party is saying that the President of the United States has bosses, that the union bosses this President around, the unions boss him around. Does that sound to you like they are trying to consciously or subconsciously deliver the racist message that, of course, of course a black man can't be the real boss?," asks professional racebaiting hack Lawrence O'Donnell, who is not a journalist but plays one on TV. >Want honest elections without voter fraud? RACIST! "If you go back to the year 2000, when we had an obvious disaster and -- and saw that our voting process needed refinement, and we did that in the America Votes Act, and made sure that we could iron out those kings, now you have the Republicans, who want to drag us all the way back to Jim Crow laws and literally --and very transparently -- block access to the polls to voters who are more likely to vote Democratic candidates than Republican candidates. And it's nothing short of blatent," says Debbie Blabbermouth Schultz, who rigged the DNC Primary for Hillary Clinton. >Want your country back from abusive & intrusive lying & and spying big-brother government? RACIST! "Do you remember tea baggers? It was so much easier when we could just call them racists. I just don't kow why we can't call them racists, or functionally retarded adults. The functionally retarded adults, the racists -- with their cries of "I want my country back." You know what they're really saying is,"I want my white guy back." They apparently had no problem at all for the last eight years of habeas corpus being suspended, the Constitution being [expletive] on, illegal surveillance, lied to on a war or two, two stolen elections -- yes, the John Kerry one was stolen too. That's not tin-foil hat time," says Janeane Garofalo, who benefits from liberal privilege. Anyone else would be called a conspiracy theorist for saying things that are that much of a stretch.

Yeah. Pretty sure calling everything racist is just a tactic.

>Like Herman Cain? RACIST! "One of the things about Herman Cain is, I think he makes the white Republican base of the party feel okay, feel like they are not racist because they can like this guy. I think he's giving that base a free pass. And I think they like him because they know he's a black man who knows his place. I know that's harsh, but that's how it sure seems to me," says Karen Finney, who thinks that liking a black man is racist. >Like your guns? RACIST! "I believe the NRA is the new KKK. And that the arming of so many black youths, uh, and loading up our community with drugs, and then just having an open shooting gallery, is the work of people who obviously don't have our best interests [at heart]," says Jason Whitlock, who apparently is blissfully unaware that slavery and Jim Crow were upheld with gun control laws, enabling the Klan to run wild. Also, conspiracy theory much? They call conservatives "conspiracy theorists" for thinking politicians who proclaim they won't deport illegals are enabling illegal immigration, but this somehow passes muster? >Trying to defeat a Democrat President? RACIST! "Look at, look, the Tea Partiers, who are controlling the Republican Party....Their stated policy, publicly stated, is to do whatever it takes to see to it that Obama only serves one term. What's, what does that, what undermines that? "Screw the country, we're going to [do] whatever we [can] do to get this black man, we can, we're going to do whatever we can to get this black man outta here'....It is a racist thing," says Morgan Freeman, who I actually like very much and usually makes more sense than this. Can't win 'em all I guess. >Disliking the Obama Presidency? RACIST! "They can't stand the idea that he's president, and a piece of it is racism. Not that somebody in one racial group doesn't like somebody in another racial group, so what? It's the sense that the white race must rule, that's what racism is, and they can't stand the idea that a man who's not white is president. That is real, that sense of racial superiority and rule is in the hearts of some people in this country," says the utterly shameless Chris Matthews. >Disliking Obama? RACIST! "I think an overwhelming portion of the intensely demonstrated animosity towards President Barrack Obama is based on the fact that he is a black man, that he's African-American," says Jimmy Carter, as if his advice should be taken seriously on anything. By the way, he was endorsed by George Wallace in 1976. When is CNN going to spend 3 nonstop weeks asking him to disavow that? >The Judge Charles Pinckney episode, Evers + Mississippi NAACP chapter vouched for him, but Democrats and national NAACP accused Pinckney of being a racist anyways.

This doesn't even get into then-Chief of Staff John Kelly was called racist for calling Fredricka Wilson an "empty barrel," the ridiculous attempt to convince Americans that policies to end chain migration are racist because what else could "chain migration" be but a reference to slavery, CNN saying it was a racial slur to call Elizabeth Warren "Pocahantas," and repeated accusations that "Make America Great Again" really means "make America white again." But on the bright side, at least one fine fellow decided we should Make Libel Laws Great Again. Covington Catholic High School student Nick Sandman was a called Nazi for standing there and smiling, in the face of a thoroughly ridiculous activist banging a drum in his face (he looks like he's trying his damnedest to not burst out laughing--I don't think I could have managed it.) He deserves to be the richest teenager there ever was or will be, and perhaps some of his classmates should cash in as well.

It's official. Calling everything racist is just a tactic. Keep that in mind the next time you hear Democrats call anything (and everything) racist. It continues:

"The Electoral College is an instrument of white supremacy--and Sexism"--Slate CNN: "Math is racist. How data is driving inequality." NBC Oklahoma affiliate: "'To be white is racist.' Norman student offended by teacher's lecture." Heat Street: "Canoes reek of genocide, theft, and white privilege" says Canadian professor (Misao Dean, Prof of English, University of Victoria) Huffington Post: "North Korea proves your white male privilege is not universal. Harvard Crimson: "Everything is about race." Or how about Tim Wise's interview on MSNBC, claiming the GOP is segregationists like the Afikaner Boer party of . What's that? When did the GOP ever call for segregation? Well, they have code words, dontcha know? "Golf," "Chicago", "NBA," "Vacation," "Lazy." Did we mention that racebaiting hack Tim Wise also falsely accused of being involved in a cross-burning at Tulane University? Meanwhile, what about Harry Reid, saying Obama's a "clean" black man without the "negro dialect?" June 18, 2020, in a statement that is beyond satire, Chik-Fil-A CEO declares whites should shine black peoples' shoes to show their "sense of shame" and "embarassment" for racism June 22, 2020, not to be outdone in putting satire-writers out of a job, Shaun King calls for destruction of Jesus statues. "Yes, I think the statues of the white European they claim is Jesus should come down. They are a form of white supremacy, and always have been." Whatever he's smoking, I want some too! It sounds like great stuff! And my personal favorite, reported in many news sources at or about June 28, 2019: "North Carolina man sues Hardee's, claims civil rights issue involving hash browns." Now which political party do you think taught him to do that?

Honorable Mentions: Latino truck driver fired for cracking his knuckles, which some person at a "peaceful protest" was pleased to call a "white power symbol" (Western Journal, June 18 2020)--Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, in a April 3 2020 tweet claimed COVID death disparities were the result of racism and redlining, because city population density itself wouldn't have anything to do with infections or anything. (COVID hit cities harder than rural areas in Europe too. I suppose that's caused by redlining as well.)--Nike pulled its Betsy Ross American flag shoe because an ex-2nd string QB complained.--WAPO, July 4, 2020; "Is it time to reconsider the global legacy of July 4, 1776?"--Seriously an actual CNN chyron: "Reexamining "Independence" Day: As Americans grapple with racial reckoning, some are uncertain how to celebrate Independence Day." NBC News, Noah Berlatsky, "Trump voters motivated by racism may be violating the Constitution. Can they be stopped?" and so we see that the racebaiting is but a pretext for thought policing, which will eventually lead to arrests for mundane opinions unapproved by our betters.--New York Times, "Hong Kong Protestors Love . No, They're Not Alt-Right." Imagine being so dumb you think a frog cartoon is part of a Nazi conspiracy. By the way, when will the racebaiters condemn the literal concentration camps the Chinazis are putting Uighurs into? (to say nothing of how they treat Blacks) I understand they're a little busy condemning the most tolerant country in for imaginary institutional racism, but if they cared, they'd find the time.--David Kaufman, "The Unintentional Racism Found In Traffic Signals," July 7, 2020, Medium.com.--New York Times also had a hitpiece on the YouTubers that are replacing fake news. The pathway to becoming a Nazi, if you believe the NYT anyways is watching Milton Friedman videos, listening to Joe Rogan, dating evangelical Christians, following Jordan Peterson, or the Rubin Report. AOC even said it calling people communist had a "rich history" in "white supremacy."--Washington Post, July 16, 2019: "The culture that put men on the moon was intense, fun, family-unfriendly, and mostly white and male."--They called Candace Owens a white supremacist. At some point, we need to stop bowing and start laughing!--Steven Zhou, "How anti immigrant rhetoric crept into Chinese Canadian politics," September 18, 2018, vice.com. Apparently Chinese in Canada, just like Candace Owens, can be "white supremacists."--The Independent, June 10, 2020, "Opinion: What the white supremacist roots of biological sex reveal about transphobic feminism."--USA Today proclaimed on Twitter a "fact" check that Trump's campaign featured an "imperial eagle, a Nazi symbol." Oh, I don't know guys. Is there another country that uses an eagle as a symbol? Might even be the one Trump's the President of?--CBS This Morning: Kendi and Reynolds on new book teaching kids the roots of racism. "Words with negative connotations: Black Monday, Black Sheep, Blackballing, Blackmail, Blacklisting." EVERYTHING IS RACISM!!!!!!!!111!1--In March 2020, Black voters in South Carolina propelled a Biden resurgence. Bernie supporters complaining about the influence of the Establishment were then called racist, because how dare you call black voters the establishment, you see?--June 26 2020, Oregon and Oregon State have banned using the term "Civil War" to describe their sports rivalry because something something slavery.--Daily Beast, "Tom Brady's New England Patriots Are Team MAGA, Whether They Like It Or Not", posted on Twitter with the accompanying and appropriately pompous proclamation "Their star quarterback, coach, and owners all supported Trump. But that's no the only thing that makes the Patriots the preferred team of white nationalists." (Somehow I suspect it's written by an envious New York Jets fan.)--out.com, "Trump's Plan to Decriminalize Homosexuality is an Old Racist Tactic."--Daily Caller, "Democrats Seek to Outlaw Suburban Single-Family House Zoning, Calling It Racist and Bad for the Environment," December 23 1019--Leda Fisher, '19, Guest Writer, "Should White Boys Still Be Allowed to Talk?" February 7, 2019, ????--LA Times (Oct 6 2017): "Knowingly exposing others to HIV will no longer be a felony in California." Also LA Times (May 7 2018): "STDs in L.A. County are skyrocketing. Officials think racism and stigma may to blame."--Or Pete Buttigieg's use of the word "heartland" being called coded racial language by the Woke Brigade.--Or an Oregon school district that asked students to ponder whether PB&J sandwiches are racist.--USA Today, March 13, 2019 called pollution racist.--(RealClearPolitics and The Post Millennial) July 7, 2020, Rutgers Declares Grammar Racist--CNN, Aug 1 2019: "Have you ever noticed the popularity of white robots? The reason for these shades of technological white may be racism, according to new research"--New York Times, "I Broke Up With Her Because She's White"--Psychology Today, "Can Dogs Be Racist?," by Stanley Coren, "PhD"

Salon, "A third of Americans think white people are 'under attack' "--->Gosh, I wonder where they got that idea.

So as we get into the question of whether Nixon's, Reagan's or Trump's campaign employed coded racial language, we must ask the question: Would you buy a used car from someone who told you all the above was racist? * * * Trump Trump Trump, and the Media's Confessed Strategy of Calling Everything Racist So why are they writing headlines like that? Would you believe me if I told you calling everything racist is the admitted strategy of the liberal media? In 2008, an email listserv called "Journolist" was exposed, and indeed, the establishment liberal media does collaborate to push narratives. In the words of Spencer Ackerman, Washington Independent: "If the right forces us all to either defend [Jeremiah] Wright or tear him down, no matter what we choose, we lose the game they've put upon us. Instead, take one of them -- Fred Barnes, Karl Rove, who cares -- and call them racists." 2012 or so to the present has seen exponential incrases in the number of articles with headlines about diversity and inclusion," "whiteness," "critical race theory," "unconscious bias," "white privilege," "systemic racism," "diversity training," "privilege," "discrimination," "social justice," "police brutality," "marginalized," "people of color," "racism," "white supremacy," "intersectionality," and so forth. There were more articles on racism than during the Civil Rights era, because they were coordinating a narrative to be dropped like an atomic bomb on whoever the Republicans nominated: this was a trap set for Trump, not a reaction to his comments. They're not quoting Trump. They're not even misquoting him. They're reporting their characterizations of the quote as though it was the quote. Really. Put me to the test: look at any one of their headlines, then read Trump's full comments in context, and keep a running tally of how many headlines match what he spent the majority of the time talking about, as opposed to a "gotcha" of five or six words that look bad out of context. For a racist, it's odd he doesn't talk about race. It's his critics that keep inserting race into his comments; the same people who wrote all the silly headlines above are pretending they see it in his remarks; the same people who couldn't predict his win are convinced they understand what his comments really mean.

More recently New York Times editor Dean Baquet was caught on undercover tape admitting that making everything about race was about swaying 2020, even boasting they would soon roll out the 1619 Project. I could write a whole book on the press spinning Trump's comments and actions as racist. So we'll summarize greatly (BIGLY!) Failure to address a specific point doesn't mean I lack a rebuttal, only that this book would get too long if I bothered. Begin with the "Trump caused the spike in hate crimes" [that were trending upward since 2013]," also omitting 1,000 new police departments reported their hate crime figures to the FBI that year (the FBI doesn't do its own data collecting, local cops report their data). On a semi-related note, the number of far right attacks in the West is has gone up and down over the years, but it is not a large phenomenon, nor is it anything like the highest its ever been. Always check the timeframe being presented against the timeframe for which total data is available, and you'll discover the media is cherrypicking the last dip's low point and comparing it now and trying to get you to freak out about it, often accompanied by admonishments to blame the Republican of the media's choice, be it Rush Limbaugh, be it Donald Trump, etc. Distorting data parallels distorting policy proposals, such as the DNC media mischaracterizing Trump's travel ban as a Muslim ban, citing his campaign rhetoric rather than the final proposal. Trump brainstorms spontaneously and out loud, his initial formulations are rudimentary. So are everyone else's, it's they're drafting better versions behind closed doors rather than mid-rally speech. In any case, for a supposed "Muslim ban," it was temporary, omitted most Muslim countries (only 5 included, plus two non-Muslim ones). Then there's the way the press reports his remarks, which I'll accurately summarize.

Trump: Mexico isn't sending their best, they're sending THEIR murderers, THEIR rapists ("they're" makes no grammatical or contextual sense if you bother to read the transcripts. He's complaining about Mexico's govenment rolling ours, drawing parallels between immigration and trade policy.) Media: Trump called all Mexicans rapists!

Trump: MS-13 are animals! Media: Trump called all immigrants animals!

Trump: There were fine people who protested for and against the statues. [Literally a paragraph later] TRUMP: I'm not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists, because they should be condemned totally--but you had many people in that group other than neo-Nazis and white nationalists, okay? And the press has treated them absolutely unfairly. Now, in the other group also, you had some fine people, but you also had troublemakers and you see them come with the black outfits and with the helmets and baseball bats--you had a lot of bad people in the other group too." Media: Trump called Nazis fine people! OMG!

The "fine people" hoax is particularly irksome. There were 4 groups (peaceful pro statue,violent anti statue, peaceful anti statue, violent pro statue). The press pretends only peaceful anti-statute and violent pro-statue exist, despite countless videos showing otherwise. Trump referred to the sign-wavers, not the Nazis, in saying "fine people," and everyone promoting this hoax knows better. * * * Reagan to Trump: There's No Pattern of GOP Racism, There Is A Pattern of Bogus Accusations From Democrats Calling everything racist skyrocketed during the Obama years to protect him from criticism for the job he was doing, and continued to the Trump era. However, there was no shortage of race-hustling by Democrats before. "Historian" Joseph Aistrup claimed Reagan's statements about welfare coded racism. He cites a source! And is source is a study by Communications Research Group funded by....the DNC. You know, the people that rigged the primary for Hillary. Those guys. Then there's the campaign speech smear. The smear is: "Reagan endorsed states rights in Philadelphia, Mississippi, where civil rights workers were murdered, OMG dogwhistles Southern strategy the parties switched" The attack is a lie in so many ways it's unbelievable. First, Reagan was not only NOT in Philadelphia, he was at the Noxubee County Fair, a stomping ground for political candidates since the 1890s. It is dishonest to pretend there is a hidden meaning in speaking at an event nearly 90 years old. Reagan's speech which included the phrase "states rights" (a concept found in the 10th Amendment, not invented in the 1960s) was mostly about inflation, and he was courting black voters and flew to NYC afterwords to give a speech at the Union League. Reagan's wish "to restore to states and local governments the power that properly belongs to them." reflects libertarianism. "I still believe the answer to any problem lies with the people. I believe in states' rights. I believe in people doing as much as they can for themselves at the community level and at the private level, and I believe we've distorted the balance of our government today by giving powers that were never intended in the Constitution to that federal establishment," declared Reagan, in language that could as soon been Jefferson's. For another example, they call the 1988 campaign's WIllie Horton ad "racist." Willie Horton, already guilty of resembling Charles Manson (and murder as well), was put on furlough, committed a home invasion, took Maryland resident Cliff Barnes to the basement, bound him, slashed him dozens of times with a knife, jammed a gun barrel into Barnes' mouth, and proclaimed his intention to hang him. Then Barnes' fiance arrived, so Horton cut off her clothes with a knife and raped her. (At this point Cliff Barnes decided to not vote for Michael Dukakis.) Barnes escaped hours later and finally summoned police. The Maryland judge refused to send Horton back to Massachusetts, declaring he was "not prepared to take the chance that Mr. Horton might again be furloughed or otherwise released." All this could be plausibly blamed on Dukakis' Massachusetts furlough policy, so Republicans made an ad. Democrats claimed the furloughs were a Republican policy or a mainstream national policy (not for murderers sentenced to life they weren't), tried saying it was just one case, tried a counterattack ad blaming a paroled drug dealer turned killer on George H.W. Bush, but the public was having none of it. And that's what Democrat retellings omit: Democrats only began calling the Willie Horton ad "racist" AFTER all other defenses of Dukakis' furlough policy had failed. In the 1998 congressional elections, Missouri Democrats ran an ad that began "When you don't vote, you allow another cross to burn" and ended with "Paid for by Missouri Democratic Party, Donna Knight. Treasurer." In 2000, the Democrat-controlled NAACP ran an ad proclaiming George Bush all but complicit in James Byrd's hate crime death for not signing hate crimes legislation. Bush was too busy getting the killers the death penalty to bother with grandstanding, so that made him, you guessed it, RACIST! Reagan, both Bushes, and other Republicans denounced Duke and Reagan made ads supporting Duke's 1989 opponent. It continued during the Clinton years. Bill Clinton appointed many women and minorities to insulate his radical agenda from criticism. "Radical agenda?" you may think. Most people indeed remember Bill Clinton as a moderate, but that was after the 1994 shellacking, when he was taking advice from Dick Morris and "triangulated" back to the middle. Bill and Hillary were trying to do all kinds of crazy things before being refused by voters in 1994. That midterm gave the Republicans the House for the first time in 40 years, and it's difficult to believe that being a "moderate" caused a backlash like that. As for Democrats, they explained the 1994 result by inventing the "angry white men" trope. These fellows were supposedly enraged by affirmative action, when in reality, affirmative action support dropped among all groups from 1986-1994. (HYNES 89-90) Democrat support among white women also dropped. (Ruy Teixiera, "Who Deserted the Democrats in 1994?" American Prospect, September 1995). But "angry white men" was too effective a smear to discard on account of the facts, so Democrats kept it to this day. Democrats told blacks in 2004 Republicans denied them the right to vote in the 2000 Florida election, even though the Civil Rights Commission couldn't produce a single black person prevented from voting. (Peter Kirsanow, "Florida Forever," , March 9, 2004; Brian Mitchell, "Violence, Fraud Mar '04 Election Already," Investor's Business Daily, November 1, 2004) Worst of all they smeared Judge Charles Pickering. As a young prosecutor in the 60s, he went after the KKK in Mississippi, when it was neither safe nor popular. Bush wanted to appoint him to a federal court, Democrats opposed him because he was pro-life. So what did they say? If you guessed RACIST! RACIST! RACIST! RACIST! RACIST! you'd be right. He'd reduced a sentence of in a cross burning case for an accomplice illogically sentenced to worse than the ringleader (who'd taken a plea), legally unable to raise the ringleaders sentence. Democrats pounced, outraging Black Mississippians who knew Judge Pickering, including Charles Evers, brother of murdered civil rights leader Medgar Evers, who demolished compromised, Democrat-owned NAACP official Clarance McGee on 60 Minutes over it. Neither the Republicans nor Donald Trump have any history of racism. The Democrats have a history of calling everything racist, of taking every dangling participle, every clumsy phrasing, every word that is out of order, every buzzword or poll-tested phrase the GOP says, and inventing post hoc conspiratorial rationales for it being invisibly racist. How curious the DNC media analysts can see the hidden racism in statements that Republican voters can't, all while being unable to see Donald Trump would win the 2016 election ;)

Nixon, Law & Order, and Vindication of His True Pro-Civil Rights Self With all the above in mind, let's finally turn to Richard Nixon. Nixon's civil rights record was never questioned until the 1968 election, in which his every move was maliciously reinterpreted by Democrats. Nixon's appeals would have to be 1) racist and 2) understood as such by Deep South, yet no examples exist of any explicity racist pitch by Nixon over his entire career. His slogan "acid, amnesty, and abortion" wasn't about race. The Silent Majority was less "segregation forever" and more "Okies from Muskogee ." As for dogwhistle claims, aside from the fact no one ever proved racists can comprehend messages indecipherable to the rest of us, is nobody would have gotten the idea they were dogwhistles absent the DNC media accusations. An alien from Mars viewing Nixon's commercials or speeches without hearing the suggestion they contained hidden racial appeals would not arrive at that conclusion. Also, the party accused of coded racism had no history of overt racism it would need to conceal. Nixon said some un-PC things behind closed doors, yet the worst he says in private is Black integration might take 500 years instead of 50. (Rob Stein, "New Nixon Tapes Reveal Anti-Semitic , Racist Remarks," December 12, 2010, washingtonpost.com) As for complaints about welfare or spending, the GOP, as mentioned endlessly before, opposed big government and loved capitalism for a long time. As for the go-to claim, "law and order," it's time for the civil rights LARPers to learn something: the decade between 1960 and 1970, saw murder DOUBLE, rape TRIPLE, countless other crime categories rapidly increase. Also, there were 150 riots in 1967, another 100 in 1968, countless campus disturbances incited by leftist agitators, and in the late 60s and early 70s, SDS and other hard-left radicals would set off over 2,500 bombs across the country! Nixon said "law and order" because (wait for it!)...there was an actual law and order problem in America at the time! Yet none of that gets mentioned by Dan Carter or Kevin Kruse, because it doesn't fit their prepackaged narrative.

The Consistent Republican Platform and the Civil Rights Plank Issue There existed a consistent pro-meritocracy, pro-market, pro-individualism philosophy by Republicans. It's called racist only by those who told you Hillary would win, who told you there was Trump-Russia colluson, who told you Reagan would fail to defeat the Soviet Union. They were wrong on these for the same reason: they don't understand what it is they claim to diagnose. Ike pushed Civil Rights, the VP helping him push the 1957 and 1960 bill was one Richard Nixon. The GOP never deviated from support for civil rights from the day of its founding. The 1960 platform had a civil rights plank consisting of 6 items: voting, public schools, employment, housing, public facilities and service and legislature procedure. Nixon ran on this, as did the rest of the party. No one assailed Nixon's civil rights record before his 1968 campaign. Some "historians," depending on people not knowing the context, have hyped the absense of a civil rights plank in the 1968 GOP platform, claiming it was an attempt to dogwhistle to segregationists. It was not, firstly because segregationists were a dying breed by that point, their power diminished, and 1968 as a rearguard action that nearly worked but ultimately failed, a Pickett's Charge Redux, as it were. The reason the 1968 platform lacked a civil rights plank was....because civil rights had been enacted into law by then, with the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, plus the Fair Housing Act of 1968. That's also why Nixon didn't have a civil rights task force: he thought between bills on desegregation, voting, and housing, all the ground had been covered. You see, unlike Democrats, when Republicans do something, they consider it done; they don't demagogue off of it for the next fifty years by pretending it's still not done! Between desegregation, voting, and housing, what more ground could a bill cover? Nixon's other reason was that we should wait for litigation to settle issues arising from the freshly enacted civil rights first to see if we even needed any more laws. (Author [Hugh Davis Graham] interview with John D. Ehrlichman, 5 August 1986, Santa Fe, New Mexico, cited in GRAHAM 305) Nixon explained voters in Boise, Idaho on April 1968, "we've had for ten years marches for civil rights and petitions for civil rights and the Congress has passed civil rights legislation in all fields." "But "now we've reached a watershed," "[S]peaking as somewhat of an expert in this field and somewhat an expert in law itself...I do not see any significant area where any additional legislation could be passed that would be helpful in opening doors that are legally closed." "Whether it's housing, or whether it's education, or whether it's voting rights, or whether it's jobs, civil rights legislation covers the field." (Quoted from the "Rights" issues file in Tom Cole to Martin Anderson, 2 June 1969, box 18 A6, Burns papers, Gerald R. Ford Library and Ann Arbor, Michigan., cited in GRAHAM P305-306) Nixon didn't run a whites-only campaign, but a middle-class campaign. Nixon didn't want to be beholden to black voters as a category, yet his "forgotten Americans" and "silent majority" meant anyone middle class with a stake in society, bogus accusations about "dogwhistles" to the contrary notwithstanding. Hence his "generalized campaign pledges to foster Black capitalism." (GRAHAM 304) * * * But the Quotes!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! But the Confessions!!!!!!!!!!!!

The Four Types of Failed Proof There is a series of quotations that every MSPCT pusher can recite on command as though it was their chatechism. These oft recycled quotations and "confessions" all fall into one of several categories: 1) From someone not in a position to know (ex., not at the top of the RNC, not on the Nixon campaign, etc) 2) Ex-Nixon staffers trying to get their reputation back by telling the media what it wants to hear (by recycling the media's story back to it), supported by nothing contemporaneous to the alleged actions or events, whether documentation/recordings/anything else. 3) [Highly partisan] "experts" from the outside doing "analysis" that is then printed as "news" by the papers of the day 4) Misleadingly quoted or outright fictitious So between those who wouldn't know, have nothing to back them up, are demonstrably making it up, or didn't say what they're quoted as, there's nothing left. Most Southern strategy "confirmation" depends on quoting people who didn't even work on Nixons camapign. For example, a Memo by Gordon S. Brownell to Harry S. Dent, dated October 31, 1969. Or Lamar Alexander's memo outlining a concern that if Republicans do thing XYZ, people will think it's proof of the Southern strategy. Turns out Alexander didn't even work on the Nixon campaign. All he would know is what's in the papers, he was rather busy staffing for Senator Howard Baker at the time. Additionally, most of those quoted in this line of "proof" seem to have gotten their idea of what Kevin Phillips' Emerging Republican Majority says from the newspapers rather than by reading the book itself. The book contains no strategy, much less a Southern one, and proclaims as much on the first page of the introduction; anyone telling you it's racist strategy manual hasn't read the book.

Defections That Explain Many Nixon campaign and administration heavyweights later became liberals. Even Kevin Phillips later became a liberal. Whatever he says now, he said very different things at the time. Ex-Nixon staffers H.R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman have claimed that "law and order" was a dogwhistle. However, they are just repeating in circular fashion the claim the press said at the time. That murder doubled, rape tripled, and crime generally all skyrocketed 1960-1970 conveniently goes unmentioned, as it provides a benign explanation for why Nixon might run on "law and order." In other words, they repeat what the media says in circular fashion, and have given no information, none of their claims are backed up by any contemporaneous documentation, video or audio recordings, or by contemporaneous statements many other ex-Nixon administration people. None of their "confessions" predate media accusations, which makes it all just like any number of ex-Trump administration "tell-all" books, all cribbed from the media, all circular, not corroborated by anything other than the audience's wish to believe it. Circular reporting is not confirmation, and anyone doing actual history, as opposed to narrative pushing, is supposed to be able to tell the difference! Then there's Harry Dent, whose change in tune, and any quotes about his "biggest regret" was "anything I had done to stand in the way of the rights of black people" came after a 1974 conviction on aiding an illegal fund-raising operation the White House organized. So, where are the "confirming" quotes from people who worked for Nixon who didn't have a subsequent reason to resent him?

Lee Atwater Lee Atwater and the GOP were smeared. In an interview in 1981, Atwater explained what he and the GOP were accused of (racist dogwhistling), then explained why it couldn't be true. So what did the Democrats and the media (but I repeat myself) do? They omitted his explanation of why the charges couldn't be true, then they took his "here's what we were accused of," and pretended it was a confession. Then thenation.com deceptively clipped the audio, knowing most visitors wouldn't read the transcript. Anyone reading the full interview might notice Atwater says race is de minimis by 1980, that the South had converged with the rest of the nation on that, as well as on prioritizing economics and national defense as the top issues. He contrasts Reagan's plans with "the Harry Dent-type strategy," which, looking at the voting data, didn't happen. He wasn't there, he wasn't on the Nixon campaign, he never worked with Harry Dent (who checked out of politics in 1976 right as Atwater checked in for 1977), all he knows is what he's heard second and third hand (in a courtroom that's called "hearsay" and it shouldn't be treated as "proof" by anyone fancying themself as a serious historian). Ditto any "confirmation" that bussing issue was coded racism. Atwater speculates some opposing welfare could have racial animus, but even then, voting data in Schafer & Johnston's The End of Southern Exceptionalism shows those most irked by welfare were upper income white collar types who'd vote GOP anywhere else too. Also, GOP opposition to handouts predates the New Deal; it didn't start in the 1960s. No, Atwater shouldn't have used the N-word, not even for illustrative purposes, not even while explaining Reagan was innocent. One final note, the interviewer, Professor Alexander Lamis, is simply wrong when he says Reagan is getting the Wallace voters: most of them favored Jimmy Carter and the data (even data available then) says so.

Conclusions In closing, this whole section is a collection of left-wing "almosts." They made a very specific accusation, and the quotes don't prove it. In addition, even if half these people said what they're accused of, and even if it was in a context that shouldn't lead us to doubt their motives, there's still the problem of the actual voting data. If John Smith confesses he robbed the bank, and all his neighbors affirm he robbed the bank, yet we check the vaults and the money is all still there, then the fact remains that John Smith did not rob the bank. If Nixon's ex-staffers say there's a Southern strategy, if the newspapers say there's a Southern strategy, if all academia says there's a Southern strategy, yet Nixon wins in 1968 where he wins in 1960 and Nixon wins where Eisenhower wins, how can he have used a different strategy? Different strategies win different voters. If it's not in the voting data, it didn't happen. * * * The Matter of Schools and School Choice A perfect place to pivot from Nixon's campaign to Nixon's Presidency is the matter of schools and bussing. Starting with schools, school choice is not racist, and the only people every using the phrase as a cover for racism were Democrats. What we Republicans mean by "school choice" is you shouldn't have black children consigned to a subpar "separate from white liberals but equal" school system dominated by the Tammany-style teachers unions. We get our outlook from a Milton Friedman's 1955 essay on school vouchers, The Role of Government in Education. Friedman wrote his voucher proposal before Brown v. Board was issued in 1954. He mulled over some details before publication, and we see his thoughts in the footnotes on pages 5 and 6 of his essay: "Further thought has led me to reverse my initial reaction. Principles can be tested most clearly by extreme cases. Willingness to permit free speech to people with whom one agrees is hardly evidence of devotion to the principle of free speech; the relevant test is willingness ot permit free speech to people with whom one throughly disagrees." Friedman further explains he abhors segregation and discrimination, blames government mandates for segregation in the first place, and that he believes in a private voucher system segregation would vanish over time. Whether you believe his assessment is eminantly correct or Goldwater-style naive idealism is up to you, but neither he, nor his conservative adherents, are motivated by racism when advocating school vouchers and private schools. They have, long before the 1960s, believed the private sector did a better job than government officials at just about everything except policing and national defense. And, as he says himself, he was writing this BEFORE anyone proposed any scheme remotely like his in Southern state legislatures. He didn't get it from them. In closing, to have ideas that are economically practical but politically impractical is not the mark of a racist; it is merely the mark of an economist.

The Matter of Bussing This concerns mostly the non-legal aspects of bussing, the legal aspects are covered under the section on Nixon's Presidency. Bussing wasn't popular in any region of the country, its unpopularity wasn't confined to the South, so even opposition to busing as such isn't necessarily a "Southern Strategy." Bussing was not the original intent of the Civil Rights Act's creators, was impractical in conception, muddled in implementation, unpopular in all quarters, failed to improve academic results, and only used as a bludgeon the reputation of Richard Nixon and Republicans a generation later, after much more of the electorate is composed of folks too young to remember any of this. In fact, many youngsters today have been so misinformed by their liberal teachers that they think opposition to bussing equals opposition to desegregation, which leaves them unable to explain why a majority of black parents opposed it. Let's start with intent. Emanuel Celler and Jacob Javits said the 1964 Civil Rights Act would not lead to bussing for quotas. Humphrey wrote two amendments designed to outlaw said bussing. "if the bill were to compel it, it would be a violation [of the Constitution], because it would be handling the matter on the basis of race and we would be transporting children because of race." Javits said any official trying to bend the bill into a bussing-bolstering measure "would be making a fool of himself." The Department of Health, Education and Welfare demanded mathematical ratios by bussing just two years later. Per Gallup polls in the early 1970s, a mere 4% of whites and 9% of blacks supported bussing outside local neighborhoods. Other polls showing support for the general concept does not equal support for specific bussing of kids to schools up to an hour away and an hour back. A 1978 RAND Corporation study showed many whites believed bussing negatively impacted camaraderie and school discipline. Post-Boston bussing, 60% of parents, both black and white, reported more discipline problems in schools. Children in the Northeast were often bussed from more integrated to less integrated. "The percentage of Northeastern black children who attended a predominantly black school increased from 67 percent in 1968 to 80 percent in 1980 (a higher percentage than in 1954)" (David Frum, How We Got Here: The '70s (2000), 252-264.) In 1978, Nancy St. John studied 100 cases of urban busing in the North, finding "no cases in which significant black academic improvement occured, but many cases where race relations suffered due to busing, as those in forced-integrated schools had worse relations with those of the opposite race than those in non-integrated schools." "A 1992 study led by Harvard University Professor Gary Orfield, who supports busing, found black and Hispanic students lacked "even modest overall improvement" as a result of court-ordered busing." (Gary Orgfield; Franklin Monfort. Status of School Desegregation: The Next Generation. Alexandria, VA: National School Boards Association, 1992.) " In the fall of 1971, nine out of ten Southern whites opposed the mandatory transportation of students, as did about half the blacks. "Busing as a means of achieving rapid balance in the schools," Time Magazine ventured, "may well be the most unpopular institution imposed on Americans since Prohibition." [11] George H. Gallup in Nashville Tennessean, September 13, 1971, "Busing and Strikes: Schools in Turmoil"; Time, September 15, 1975, p.35 (NEW SOUTH 423) "The similarity of white responses to busing across regions, for example, and the hypocrisy of Hubert Humphrey and other non-Southern Democratic liberals who resisted the application of integrationist remedies in their own backyards has newly exposed the emptiness of distinctions between de jure and de facto segregation (Crespino 178-180). The triumph of “moderate” politics in the South of the 1970s over the diehard segregationists still beating the same drum likewise challenges any scholar who would draw a straight historical line of continuity between the Dixiecrats and the Southern Republican party." Other polls show increasing racial tolerance among whites against this backdrop of strife over bussing, leading many on the left to say the surveys are a lie and whites, retaining their racism, just gave more adroit answers. But how then do they explain the accompanying dropoff for school integration among blacks, which peaked at 90% in 1968, then fell 30% over the next ten years? (Howard Schuman, Charlotte Sheeh, and Lawrence Bobo, Racial Attitudes in America: Trends and Interpretations (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1985), 147-62. White support for federal intevention to integrate schools peaked at 48 percent in 1966; black support peaked in 1968 at 90 percent, then plummeted 30 percentage points in the following decade.") Then there's the matter of carefully reading the questions, which reveal, despite a few caveats, general support for integrated schools. The National Opinion Research Center (NORC) polls showed "the percentage of Americans favoring school intergration rose from 30 in 1942 to 74 in 1970 and 85 in 1977, the percentage of white parents who would object to their children attending a school where more than half of the children were black also rose--from 39 in 1972 to 45 in 1977." (GRAHAM 565) We should note than being in an integrated school is a different question than being not-the-majority in said integrated schools. In any case, support for busing collapsed following revelations that its leading liberal politician and press cheerleaders sent their own kids to private schools, including Ted Kennedy, George McGovern, Thurgood Marshall, Phil Hard, Ben Bradlee, Birch Bayh, Tom Wicker, Philip Geyelin, and Donald Fraser. Ditto, many of the judges. The notion that putting kids on a bus to another school would fix the race problem all by itself is textbook magical thinking. Residency determines school assignment, so mixed schools require mixed neighborhoods. Failing that, a charter/magnet school model must replace the zipcode based system. The segregated Southern schools that Brown v Board aimed to end featured two proximal groups sent to separate schools, and a model that fixed that issue was applied to a set of circumstances that wasn't equivalent. The best answer is simply to have a system that doesn't depend on zipcode. Numerous other goods and services don't depend on our zipcode, and it is time for education to join them. An answer the like the aforementioned Milton Friedman's would be a good start. * * * The Nixon Presidency: False Accusations, Actual Progress

Timebombs: The Narratives Explode The Nixon Presidency began with a ticking timebomb in the form of a proposal from LBJ's outgoing AG Ramsey Clark, which included cease and desist powers for the EEOC. "The Nixon White House in fashioning their own bill would be forced to react to the Democrats' initiative, and to do so within a pre-emptive political context in which Democrats would equate lesser measures with opposition to sincere civil rights enforcement." (GRAHAM 421) The Democrat bad-faith accusations began as early as 1970, complete with tokenism, symbolism, and grandstanding, the sordid, now half-century pattern of equating opposition to specific civil rights proposals with opposition to the concept itself. It became a staple of their propaganda during this period; now that there was a civil rights bureaucracy, Democrats claimed to care. They have been more successful at expanding the bureaucracies claiming to help the Black community than at actually helping the black community; better at flinging bogus accusations of racism than solving the problem. "In early May, the Civil Rights Commission released a study by Richard Nathan, Jobs and Civil Rights, which the commission had funded two years earlier. Although all of Nathan's data predated the Nixon administration, the commission used the occasion of its relase to attack the new administration as "seriously deficient" in enforcing the civil rights laws." (Wall Street Journal, 2 May 1969, cited in GRAHAM 319)

Nixon Preferred Foreign Policy, Domestic Flexibility & Floating Coalitions Nixon preferred foreign policy to domestic, and far from nefarious secret appeals to racism, his domestic policy possessed little philosophical consistency at all. (Rowland Evans, Jr. and Robert D. Novak, Nixon in the White House: The Frustration of Power (New York: Random House, 1971), 11), Graham 322, 346-7, 364) All this was admitted by Ehrlichman, who told Arthur Burns, "Don't you realize the President doesn't have a philosophy?" (A. James Reichley, Conservatives in an Age of Change: The Nixon and Ford Administrations (Washington: Brookings, 1981), 139) Ehrlichman has since realized his career's post-Watergate rehabilitation depended on telling the media what it wanted to hear, so he then began saying, without evidence, the opposite, telling us that "law and order" was a code for racism. A consistency of strategy existed however, his differing motivations and directions show a strategy rather than a firm ideological preference, and that strategy was to turn Democrats against each other, exploiting internal contradictions, using all of the Republicans, plus a different bloc of Democrats, depending on the issue, to make a "floating coalition" for whichever bills he wanted at the moment (it worked better in the House than the Senate, where it takes fewer defections to kill a bill). (GRAHAM 346-347) When considering Nixon's maneuvering 1969-1972, consider that in 1968 he'd won 43%, which was barely higher than Goldwater's 39%, and lower than his 1960 performance of 48%, on the heels of crushing Democrat dominance over any lesser Republican than Eisenhower. As this and control of Congress showed, the country was majority Democrat, and Nixon needed to divide Democrats against themselves to win reelection. So he performed this political jiujitsu everywhere and on everybody. Democrat historians like to take this history, omit all that is non-Southern, focus on the South, and call Nixon's 1972 campaigning a continuation of the supposed Southern strategy. Which leaves them baffled at how Nixon wins 49 states; someday, they need to explain how his "Southern strategy" won him 62% of the vote in Hawaii.

Shiny Objects & School Desegregation Nixon's SCOTUS nominations of Clement Haynsworth and G. Harrold Carswell got attention, and are much hyped as "proof" of the Supposed Southern Strategy. While busing and judges got headlines, desegregation was the reality. The percentage of Black children in all-Black schools in the South plummeted from 70% to 18.4% in Nixon's first 2 years, and was down to 8% by the end of his presidency. So it is the supposedly racist Nixon administration that saw school desegregation, not the supposedly anti-racist JFK and LBJ administrations, even releasing a report on February 15, 1972 bragging about it, among other things (New York Times, 16 February 1972). Nixon's DOJ sued resisting school districts rather than cutting off HEW funding. This approach originated with the JFK administrations Assistant AG John Doar, who reasoned lawsuits penalized only the perpetrators, unlike funding cuts. (GRAHAM 319-321) With regard to any point anyone will make about litigation involving bussing, Title IV of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 specified in authorizing the Attorney General to file desegregation suits: "...nothing herein shall empower any official or court of the United States to issue an order seeking to achieve a racial balance in any school by requiring transportation of pupils or students from one school to another or from one school district to another in order to achieve racial balance, or otherwise enlarge the power of the court to ensure compliance with constitutional standards" So Nixon's "Southern Strategy to appeal to white racists" was to....enforce the Civil Rights laws as written? Regardless, how can it be a "Southern strategy" when busing was unpopular nationwide, even with black parents? Busing was only popular with the liberal media and politicians (with their own kids in private schools), and liberal mis-educators today who write textbooks. Something most blacks opposed and no blacks benefitted from is hardly a civil rights litmus test, and Nixon achieved desegregation by other methods. Nor is Nixon punting to the courts about courting bad elements. What did Nixon actually offer segregationists? Segregationists wanted white superiority, and all he offered was equality. Nixon's non-Southern support jumped in 1972 too, his share of the black vote jumped as well, from 9% to 18%. Much is made of his March 16, 1972 address against busing, nothing much is made of schools desegregating on his watch. It's almost as if bussing does not school desegregation and school desegregation does not equal bussing. Finally, Democrats in Congress were just as happy to punt to the courts, but it's not told that way, because, narrative!

Unions and Nixon's Philadelphia Plan: Background, Requirements, and Rationale Self-congratulation as history buried the truth. Unions did fight abuses, true! But they committed others. Many unions excluded blacks as members, which only stopped when forced to. The Steele case (Steele v. Louisville and Nashvillle Railroad Company, 323 U.S. 192 (1944), ruled unions couldn't discriminate, and the court declared the National Labor Relations Board could decertify unions that did, as happened in in the 1946 Hughes Tool case (Independent Metal Workers and Hughes Tool Co., Case No. 23-CB-429, 147 NLRB, No. 166 (1946) (GRAHAM P102-103) Many non-Southern states created Fair Employment Practices Commissions from 1945 onwards, to enforce much the same a the state administrative level, though some lacked cease & desist authority. (GRAHAM 19) Yet the gig-like nature of the construction industry made it difficult to apply to construction, without permanent, locations, employers, and unions to regulate. Enter the Philadelphia Plan, which required the construction industry in Philadelphia (the model was soon replicated elsewhere) to move towards integration, to ensure black workers comprised a given percentage range of the workforce. (GRAHAM 325-328) It was Nixon's plan for affirmative action that he, in his lawyerly way, didn't think of as affirmative action. In his mind, requiring a range by percentage rather than a strict numerical quota made it something else, leaving him free to proclaim opposition to affirmative action in his 1972 campaign while maintaining the Philadelphia Plan in practice.

Who Attempted to Stop It Robert Byrd (D-WV) proposed a rider to a hurricane relief bill that would have defunded any Federal contract that the Comptroller General declared illegal. As the Comptroller had found fault in the Philadelphia Plan, everyone knew what Senator Byrd really meant, and heated debate ensued. It passed the Democrat-majority Senate 52-37, and went to the House. Thus, in December of 1969, five years after the supposed "big switch," the Byrd Rider was opposed by a solid majority of Republicans (124-41) but a majority of Democrats supported it (115-84, Southern 61-6 for, non-Southerm 54-78). This obliterated the Democrat narrative that labor and civil rights were on the same side against "racist capitalism." (The rider in question: Sec. 904, "The Philadelphia Plan," an amendment to HR 15209, Supplemental Appropriation for 1970, S. Rept. 91-616. As amended and passed by the Senate, it was renumbered Section 1004.) (GRAHAM 339-40)

The Stupid Games of the Democrat-Captured Front Groups The Congressional Black Caucus played stupid games with Nixon for a year, until he'd had enough. They attacked him repreatedly, then we he agreed to meet with them, the CBC issued 60 demands, most of it a far left economic wish list for government-run and -subsidized everything. Nixon considered it and sent them a 115 page report from OMB on the Administration's efforts. The CBC attacked some more, and Nixon gave up. (GRAHAM 363) The NAACP, no doubt captured by the Democrat party by this point, rewarded the administration on June 30, 1970, with the baseless claim "The Nixon administration is destroying the Philadelphia Plan." (Address by Herbert Hill, National Labor Director of the NAACP, 61st Annual Convention, 30 June 1970, NAACP/LC, cited in GRAHAM 344-45) But Nixon would never do that! He was convinced the enforcement of the Philadelphia Plan would split the Democrats in two, and only an organization beholden to the Democrats could object. A baffled Nixon muttered "the NAACP would say my rhetoric was poor if I gave the Sermon on the mount" (Ehrlichman notes, Meeting with the President, 4 August 1970, cited in GRAHAM 345) Nixon's revised Voting Rights Act of 1970 applied all the good ideas to the whole country. Demonstrating that the Democrat party now had the civil rights leaders on a leash, Clarence Mitchell called the vote a "cataclysmic defeat for civil rights engineered by the President." (Wall Street Journal, 12 December 1969) Also "the Klan was on the floor of the Congress today, waiting to lynch Negroes at the polls." This is, of course, a strange way to characterize a bill that extends all the good things about the Voting Rights Act to the entire country. (GRAHAM 361) Nixon did nothing in office to undermine civil rights or their enforcement, though some have tried to claim the contrary. Demonstrating their dominance of Wikipedia editing, the liberal version of reality that is the Voting Rights Act article insists that Nixon's administration sought to not renew the Voting Rights Act. The truth is Nixon wanted to expand its benefits nationwide. It's dishonest to suggest when someone proposes modifying a bill to make it stronger and more encompassing prior to renewal that they "are not renewing the bill." But with Google searches by default bringing up Wiki articles, bad actors have realized that's the place to dominate the page editing process.

Nixon Didn't Undermine Civil Rights Enforcement Nixon's administrative agencies didn't obstruct civil rights laws. The Civil Rights bureaucracy had nothing to complain about. The EEOC's 1968 Budget and staff: $13.2 million, 359; 1972 Budget and staff: $29.5 million, 1,640. (Wall Street Journal, 11 May 1971) For FY 1973, civil rights enforcement budget increased from $49.9 million to $66.3 million, "providing for doubling of OFCC compliance checks from 22,500 in 1971 to 52,000 in 1973" (Wall Street Journal, 25 January 1972) Civil rights groups, captured by the Democrat party, shrilly shrieked about phantom cuts to civil rights enforcement. Meanwhile, FY 1974 budget doubled 1972's. EEOC budged up 107%, "contract complaince budget for all agencies rose by 66% percent, and the Justice Department's budgets for the Office of Civil Rights increased by 67%" (Business Week, 24 March 1973, 74-75.) Between 1972 and 1974 the EEOC budget rose from $20.8 million (actual) to $43 million, and the Justice Department's budget for the Civil Rights Division increased from $10.7 to $17.9 million. (GRAHAM 448) Mind you, their budgets are increasing as racism is decreasing, hence the mission creep. * * * Democrats Are Still the Problem, and Haven't Fixed Anything Democrats not only caused the problem, they didn't fix it, started claiming credit in the Truman era before anything got fixed, once it was fixed they invented a conspiracy theory to blame those who'd fought them the whole time, and created new problems, like widespread fatherlessness and destruction of school quality in the big cities. Look at the high taxes, family destruction, bad schools, unsafe streets, driving out jobs, and teaching people they're helpless to do anything except vote Democrat. And serve as props to get more federal funding, funding which never gets farther than the politicians. Problems are blamed on everyone but those running every ghetto, every barrio, every Indian reservation, who also ran every slave state, and enacted every Jim Crow law...are we seeing a pattern here? Are they really that bad at helping black people, or is it a plan to keep them down? Democrats keep Blacks distracted with claims of magical invisible racism. "Subtle racism," "unintentional racism," "neoracism," "cryptoracism," sometimes even "benevolent racism," yet the problem is not hidden, but in plain sight. It's not societal racism that ails Blacks, but public policy, coming from a particular party starting with "d." Try as they might, Democrats can't blame anyone else for this: they run the cities. Nor is it the fault of state-level Republicans, as blue cities, in blue states, even in times of blue national control, have the same problems, whether the Democrats in charge are called "neoliberal" or "progressive," whether they are black or white. Democrats distract from their record at election time with symbolic "gotchas." Old sundown laws, enacted by Democrats, unrepealed because unenforced and unnoticed, are suddenly "discovered" by the liberal media, now that Republicans run the South. Or Confederate statues. And what do I care, they're Democrats anyways, but can anyone name the black person whose life was improved in any measurable way because a statue came down? And who advocated statue removal before the 1990s GOP Southern takeover? It's an election year symbolic "gotcha." And that figures, because modern liberalism is about making elites feel better about themselves, this community and this country be damned. The elites don't suffer when outsourcing happens, their kids don't get trapped in failing schools, their jobs aren't in competition with illlegal immigrants. Liberalism is self-congratulation as social policy, poltiical correctness is the new, mental plantation, and the master's new "whip" is cancel culture. All this political correctness and racebaiting has not gotten a single child a better education, gotten anyone a better job, made anyone's rent lower, or made a single street any safer. It has, however, gotten some hucksters elected. * * * * * Contemporary Frame-Ups & Hitjobs: Fascism iIs Not Right-Wing, and the Alt-Right Is Not Conservative

Part 1: The Original Fascists Were Not RIght Wing

Fascism Is Left Wing Economically and in the Role of Government Fascists and Nazis weren't conservative. They rejected the classical liberalism of the Founding Fathers, and thought that rights, insofar as they existed, came from the state. As Giovanni Gentile, the leading Fascist thinker, put it: "Everything in the state, nothing outside the state, and nothing against the state." (A. James Gregor, Giovanni Gentile: Philosopher of Fascism (New Brunswick: Transaction, 2008), 63) Also, "For Fascism...the State and the individual are one" (Giovanni Gentile, Origins and Doctrine of Fascism (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 2009) Also, "The authority of the state is not subject to negotiation. It is entirely unconditioned. It could not depend on the people, in fact, the people depend on the state. Morality and religion...must be subordinated to the laws of the state." Furthermore, fascism is a "total conception of life...One cannot be a Fascist in politics and not a Fascist in school, not a Fascist in one's family, not a Fascist in one's workplace." "Our work as teachers is considered to be at an end when our students speak our language." (Giovanni Gentile, Origins and Doctrine of Fascism (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 2009), 28, 31, 55, 57, 67, 87) Nor is Giovanni Gentile some outlier. Mussolini acknowledged the centrality of Gentile: "It was Gentile who prepared the road for those like me who wished to take it." (James A. Gregor, The Ideology of Fascism (New York: Free Press, 1969), 223) So people like Trump and Reagan promote individualism, liberty, and free markets, Gentile promotes collectivism, communitarianism, and corporatism. But somehow conservatism is fascist? As for the National Socialists, they hated capitalism, and accused the Jews of inventing it, had central planning (by the Reichwirtschaftministerium), public works and autobahns as stimulus, price controls and wage controls. Far from being anything Reaganesque or Trumpian, the Nazis had a welfare state (Nationalsozialistische Volkswohfarhrt, NSV, National Socialist Peoples' Welfare) complete with the disbanding of all private charities so that all public assistance had to go through them. All this and more is documented in Gotz Aly's book, Hitler's Beneficiaries: Plunder, Racial War, and the Nazi Welfare State. Also, anyone running extermination camps with secret police running amok can hardly be accused of having too little government meddling in civil society. Indeed, the National Socialists are the only party in world history with the word "socialist" in the name that has people denying that it is in fact socialist. Finally, as if to add insult to injury, Hitler accused the Jews of being "privileged," a fact that is most inconvenient for those calling their opponents "privileged" today: "The deduction from all this is the following: an antisemitism based on purely emotional grounds will find its ultimate expression in the form of the pogrom. An antisemitism based on reason, however, must lead to systematic legal combating and elimination of the privileges of the Jews, that which distinguishes the Jews from the other aliens who live among us (an Aliens Law). The ultimate objective [of such legislation] must, however, be the irrevocable removal of the Jews in general." (Adolf Hitler, letter to Herr Adolf Gemlich (September 16, 1919), cited in Eberhard Jackel (ed.,), Hitler. Samtliche Aufzeichnungen 19051924 (Stuttgart, 1980), pp. 8890. Translated by Richard S. Levy; H-German Website. Found at jewishvirtuallibrary.org/adolf-hitler-s-first-anti-semitic-writing)

FDR, Democrats, Progressives, and their Great Love for Mussolini FDR and Mussolini had a mutual admiration society, writing letters to each other praising the other's work. Mussolini praised FDR's book Looking Forward and said FDR is a fellow fascist. Nazi party paper Volkischer Beobachter praised FDR's book as well: "Many passages in President Roosevelt's book could have been written by a National Socialist. One can assume he feels considerable affinity with the National Socialist philosophy." (Nazi newspaper Volkischer Beobachter, May 11, 1933; Wolfgang Schivelbusch, Three New Deals (New York: Henry Holt, 2006), 19.) Goebbels as late as 1940 insisted Nazi and New Deal policies were similar, including an article called "Hitler and Roosevelt: A German Success--An American Attempt" lamenting democracy was blocking the New Deal's completion (RENEGADE 242-243) Now if Fascists and Nazis were "right-wing," "conservative," or "capitalist," how come there's no record of them praising FDR's Republican, conservative, capitalist opponents the same way they praise FDR? Anne McCormick, in the New York Times of May 7, 1933, wrote FDR's inauguration "is strangely reminiscent of Rome in the first weeks after the March of the Black Shirts." Also, FDR "envisages a federalation of industry, labor and government after the fashion of the corporative state as it exists in Italy." FDR sent his brains trust to take notes on Fascist italy, and one of them, Rexford Guy Tugwell, called Fascism: "the cleanest, neatest, most efficient operating piece of social machinery I've ever seen. It makes me envious." (Wolfgang Schivelbusch, Three New Deals (New York: Henry Holt, 2006), 32; Rexford G. Tugwell, "Design for Government," Political Science Quarterly 48 (1933), 330) Tugwell further remarked, "Mussolini certainly has the same people opposed to him as FDR has" though "he has the press controlled so they cannot scream lies at him daily." (RENEGADE 250) Now if Fascists and Nazis were "right-wing," "conservative," or "capitalist," how come there's no record of FDR's Republican, conservative, capitalist opponents sending advisors to copy Fascist Italy's economic policies? If Fascists and Nazis were "right-wing," "conservative," or "capitalist," why is there a parade of self-declared progressives in America cheering them instead of FDR's Republican, conservative, capitalist opponents cheering them? To fight them in World War 2, after they had already attacked us, wouldn't be necessary absent this cheerleading aiding their rise in the first place. Indeed, leading progressives like Ida Tarbell, Lincoln Steffens, Horace Kellen, Charles Beard, Herbert Croly, George Soule, William Pepperell, and Philip La Folette, among others, praised Mussolini. Some, like Gertrude Stein, Lawrence Dennis and W.E.B. DuBois, even praised Nazism and Hitler, though in fairness this was a bridge too far for most US progressives. But where are the capitalist conservatives praising Fascist Italy or National SOCIALIST Germany?

Nazis Weren't Social Conservatives: Eugenics is Based on Darwin Nor were Nazis social conservatives. The Nazis were revolutionaries, not just by self-proclamation, but in fact. There is no precedent in German history for their platform. There is, however, precedents in socialist thought for what they did. It's hard to find supporters of eugenics who were not self-described socialists or progressives of some stripe, on either side of the Atlantic. Conservative Christians had the biggest objection to eugenics, which as the American Eugenics Society once put it, was "the self-direction of human evolution." Since when did conservatives believe in evolution? While one can find Republicans who believed in eugenics, they were progressive Republicans. Also, the idea that there were that many conservatives among them is implausible because it was based on Darwin, which conservatives (and the more traditional they were, the more true it is) rejected Darwin; also because so many academics believed it, and fewer academics reside among us. Eugenics also assumed the perfectibility of humanity and human society, notions conservatives display extreme skepticism about, then and now. The Nazis had a Lebensborn project, which let the most eugenic SS men impregnate as many German girls as they wanted, at government expense. For all the ridiculous parallels Leftists have drawn between Nazis and Religious Right ultra-conservative Christians, it's hard to imagine getting on board with that. And Nazis knew of this traditional religious skepticism towards their eugenics; they planned to undercut it. Planned Nazi Wehrbauer settlements in the East would not include Churches, Himmler threatened to take them down if constructed: "Unlike Medieval farming villages, the Wehrbauer communities were planned to not have any churches. Himmler stated that if the clergy were to acquire money to construct churches on their own in these settlements, the SS would later take the buildings over and transform them into 'Germanic holy places' " (from Wiki "Wehrbauer," citing Felix Kersten, The Kersten Memoirs, 1940-1945. Hutchinson (1957), 136) National SOCIALISTS also made their own knock off version called "positive Christianity" who said Jesus was some Nordic hero who led a revolt against the local Jewry. Entirely not in the Bible, neither is Eugenics, which is based on Darwin. Then there's Hitler's deal with the Church, which he broke almost immediately, prompting an angry encyclical called Mit brennender Sorge. Hitler ultimately planned to exterminate the Church in Germany. (http://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/13/weekinreview/word-for-word-case-against-nazis-hitler-s-forces- planned-destroy-german.html -- "The outline, ''The Persecution of the Christian Churches,'' summarizes the Nazi plan to subvert and destroy German Christianity, which it calls ''an integral part of the National Socialist scheme of world conquest.'' ") This only mystifies those who believe was a Christian. Hitler said Christianity "systematically cultivated...human failure." "Pure Christianity...leads quite simply to the annihilation of mankind; it is...wholehearted Bolshevism under a tinsel of metaphysics." (Adolf Hitler, Table Talk 1941-1944: His Private Conversations trans. by Norman Cameron and R.H. Stevens, ed., by H.R. Trevor-Roper (London, 2000), 51, 146) Hitler wanted instead to annihilate Christianity, and had his own ideas on how to do it. "The best thing is to let Christianity die a natural death," Hitler told Himmler, early in the war. "The dogma of Christianity gets worn away before the advances of science. Religion will have to make more and more concessions. Gradually, the myths crumble. All that's left is to prove that in nature there is no frontier between the organic and the inorganic. When understanding of the universe has become widespread, when the majority of men know that the stars are not sources of light but worlds, perhaps inhabited worlds like ours, then the Christian doctrine will be convicted of absurdity." (Adolf Hitler, Table Talk 1941-1944: His Private Conversations trans. by Norman Cameron and R.H. Stevens, ed., by H.R. Trevor-Roper (London, 2000), 59-60)

How the "Nazis Are Right-Wing" Hoax Was Begun, And What Rhetorical and Framing Tricks Does it Rest Upon? The Nazis-are-right-wing hoax is the work of three communists. The first was Richard Hofstadter, whose Social Darwininsm in America (1944) is the book that launched the hoax, He redefined as Laissez Faire, ignoring that Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations (1776) predates Charles Darwin's Origin of Species (1859) by a good 83 years. Centering his book on Herbert Spencer's phrase "survival of the fittest," and citing practically the only guy ever to invoke such a thing for capitalism (sociologist William Graham Sumner), Hofstadter launched his bogus narrative. The second, Herbert Marcuse was hired by US government to offer insights to combatting Nazism. They inadvertently hired a Marxist, and the Marxist poisoned intellectual discourse by telling people Nazism was a form of conservatism, repackaging it as a form of capitalism and moral traditionalism. Marcuse later wrote an essay called "Repressive Tolerance," saying anyone he defines as "fascist' can be denied free speech, which is the basis for deplatforming and thuggery today. Much of the ironically named "Antifascist" LARPING is funded by one George Soros, who admitted on 60 Minutes to being a Nazi collaborator. (Steve Kroft, interview by George Soros, Sixty Minutes, CBS, December 20, 1998.) Finally, there's Theodore Adorno and his fraudulent F-scale, which is still in many psychology class textbooks. The books omit that Adorno was a Communist with an ax to grind. The F-Scale, in which answering like a Republican scores you as a "fascist," is 1) not based on anything fascists actually said or did, 2) It has no power to explain why Fascism arose in Italy and Germany rather than England or France. Is anyone going to argue the Italians are more repressed than the English? 3) Actual Fascists would not have scored particularly high on these test, because it leaves out the one question that does define fascism, support for centralized state control of everything. Additionally, smearing traditional morality as nascent fascism implies that a sex pervert is somehow fighting fascism, which explains the 1960s. Indeed, this notion is the root of the liberals believing their sexual licentiousness is evidence of being on the right side, as they repress the real liberty of their less wanton opponents. The kicker is that the Nazis and Fascists were pretty licentious themselves. Firstly the Lebensborn project. Hitler had a live-in girlfriend he only married a day before they killed themselves (on another entirely different note, Lothar Machtan's Hidden Hitler even makes a not entirely farfetched case Hitler was gay) Himmler had a mistress, and ran Lebensborn project. Goebbels was one to have affairs including with Czech actress Lida Baarova. Mussolini was, well Mussolini. Ostensibly married, certainly an atheist, certainly a philanderer. In the political arena, Democrats started burying past connections. FDR, trying to put his Mussolini-letter-writing days behind him, did some spin of his own, saying defining Fascism as "ownership of government by an individual, group, or by any other controlling private power." (Franklin D. Roosevelt, "Message to Congress on the Concentration of Economic Power," (Speech, April 29, 1938) That covers the "who" and "when," but what about the "how?" The hoax of "right wing" fascism depends on hiding the details that differentiate fascism, that make it what it is. We're told it's traits: authoritarianism, militarism, extreme nationalism, etc, without being told its contents. We're not told who invented it. Adam Smith defines capitalist thought, Karl Marx defines socialist thought, but who defines fascist thought? Giovanni Gentile does, and he wrote such effusive praise of big government that he's impossible to recast as "right-wing," so he's hidden from view. The Left deploys the accusation so relentlessly people are too busy cowering to demand definitions. A favorite canard is to say Nazis were the tools of big business, bolstered by hyping privitization. But Nazis weren't pawns of business, they were primarily funded by their own members, and business got on board after Nazis already had power. (Stanley Payne, A History of Fascism (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1995), 168) Privitization existed, but was "applied within a framework of increasing control of the state over the whole economy through regulation and political interference", for example, the 1933 Act for the Formation of Compulsory Cartels, put the government in the drivers seat, putting an end to a mostly self-regulatory 1923-1933 after the Weimar Cartel Act of 1923. It was a form of central planning that kept . They had central economic planning, hated capitalism, denounced capitalists as plutocrats, and represented their views as a third position. "Fascists opposed both international socialism and free market capitalism, arguing that their views represented a third position." (Cyprian Blamires and Paul Jackson. World Fascism: A Historical Encyclopedia, Volume 1. ABC-CLIO, 2006. pp.404, 610>>>George Waton, 22 November 1998, "Hitler and the socialist dream", The Independent). Marxists obfuscate by applying their own polemical definition of socialism, requiring expropriation of private property, equating Marxism with socialism itself, ignoring that Marxism is not the first or only type of socialism. They also say "Hitler persecuted Socialists," committing the same mistake: the NATIONAL Socialists hated them, not for being socialists, but for being the wrong kind of [International] Socialists. Hitler said his socialism "has nothing to do with Marxian Socialism," that "Marxism is anti-property; true Socialism is not." (Francis Ludwig Carsten, The Rise of Fascism, University of California Press, 1982, p.137. Hitler Quote from Sunday Express.) From this it is clear that Hitler's own words refute the Marxist claim and back mine: that Hitler was a non-Marxist socialist, who hated them, not for being socialists, but for being the wrong kind of socialists. And indeed Nazis were socialists; if they were just hyper-jingoistic, they'd be called Social Nationalists, but they were called National Socialists. (like "Social Democrat" vs "Democratic Socialist": which word is the noun makes all the difference) And why did they think a "national" socialism was needed? Because before World War 1, Socialist thought had believed workers wouldn't take up arms against each other. World War 1 proved them wrong. Mussolini and a few others rejected the internationalist socialism and set about making a national socialism, complete with belief in "proletarian nations" and "bourgeois nations" (A. James Gregor, Mussolini's Intellectuals (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005), 33) * * * * * Part 2: The Alt-Right Does Not Believe What Conservatives Do

The Alt-Right Isn't Right, and there's no such thing as "White" Nationalism The alt-right are a caricature of what the left claims conservatives are, as if it was a joke carried too far (jk there's no such thing). Alt-right is not actually conservative. If the alt-right and neonazis belonged on the right, they wouldn't need to invest so heavily in redefining what's right-wing. Most contemporary neonazis/alt-right/white nationalists clearly have no background in historical National SOCIALISM, and just believe what they've been taught in our defective liberal school system. They've noticed the liberal denunciations of white people; they've missed that their own race-centered logic is conceptually identical. They've concluded that if liberals denounce whites, that the opposite of this must be a conservatism that advances the interests of whites; but the opposite of identity politics is not more identity politics, but no identity politics. The left says "" to train you by repitition to associate nationalism with white racism. Contra both the left and the alt-right, there's factually no such thing as "white" nationalism. There's no country called "White." Irish don't say "Hooray for White!" but "Hooray for Ireland." There's never been an all-white country formed on the basis of being white; there have been several white nations formed on the basis of a common language, culture and history. But any white country, be it Germany, be it France, be it Switzerland, be it Italy, be it Sweden, had something more in common than a color of flesh. This is not to say you could replace half of France with Algerians or Morrocans and yet have it fundamentally be France; of course you can't. But replacing half of France with Germans or Swedes would have the same effect of eroding the fundamental French-ness of France as well.

The Alt-Right is not an extreme version of the right, nor is it merely a different, alternative version of the right; they reject too many right-wing beliefs, in my estimation, to count as right-wing at all. Rather, the alt-right, and the white nationalists are simply the newest advocates of multiculturalism, which the contemporary left must disown, despite the similar logic, lest they give the con away. They see everything through the lens of race, think capitalism and markets are the enemy of their race, and have no ethical quandry about using the government as an instrument of racial self-dealing. They are not the opposite of non-white identity politics, but its mirror image, and for this reason I reject them as part of the problem.

Nor are Alt-Righters or Neo-Nazis right-wing 'extremists', because if one is a "right-wing extremist," one would have to believe in a more extreme version of the same views (such as anarcho-capitalists taking capitalism to the extreme), not the diametric opposite (as the alt-right does), with regard to where values come from, what to make of the American Founders, individualism vs collectivism, the rule of law, free market economics, and so on. Were they "right-wing extremists," then it is strange that so many have left-wing origin stories, just like the original Fascists of Mussolini. For example, Jason Kessler, of Charlottesville incident infamy, was once an Obama supporter and Occupy Wall Street activist. ("Jason Kessler," Southern Poverty Law Center profile, splcenter.org) Nobody seemed interested in how an Occupy guy made that transition. It's almost like he's a plant, a false flag. Futhermore, his ex girlfriend Laura Kleiner who dated him in 2013 said Kessler was very liberal. "He broke up with me, and a lot of it was because I was not liberal enough...I am a very progressive Democrat, but he didn't like that I ate fish and that I'm a Christian." (Chris Suarez, "Kessler Described as One-Time Wannabe Liberal Activist," August 17, 2017, dailyprogress.com) Or take Andrew Aurenheimer, Jewish on both sides of his family, one of the coeditors of . Or take , vegan atheist who regularly wore a hoodie saying "F*CK RACISM" on it, visitor to Southeast Asia who became a rainforest activist, dated Fillipina women, and railing against Christian missionaries on his podcast. He even said he thought the white race should be bred out. "You see the way white people--and it is white people--went around the whole world and f*cked everybody. I think the white race should be bred out." He somehow wound up as the other coeditor of the Daily Stormer. Nobody knows how, in even more curiously, nobody seems interested in findout out how. Other strange groups include the World Church of the Creator, which despite the name, is an atheist organziation. Most white nationalist groups are. The only one of the "big names" in this admittedly small world of the alt-right that even seems vaguely conservative in any traditional sense would be , and he's arguably the most tame and gentlemanly of them all; I disagree with him, to be sure, but it can hardly be said he's disagreeable. I somehow can't picture him ever leading an angry mob.

First the Matter of Abortion The Alt-right is not conservative, and that's according to the alt-right. Their position on abortion, for example, amounts to "it's only bad if white people have them," and they view white familes who adopt as race traitors. But don't take it from me, take it from Richard Spencer: "I think that some people who are...in the alt-right want to believe that the anti-abortion crusade is just inherently traditionalist, that it is about making women take responsibility for their children, that it's going to make women become mothers whether they like it or not...I am a bit sceptical of this view that abortion would have inherently traditionalist consequences....And so the anti-abortion crusade becomes this 'human rights' crusade. And if you look at the writing of people like Ramesh Ponnuru (of National Review) it is directly associated with this...that every being that is human has a right to life and so on. Well that's not how we think as identitarians, to be honest. You are part of a community, you're part of a family, you're part of a collective. You do not have some human right, some abstract thing given to you by God or by the world or something like that. You're part of a community and that's where you gain your meaning or your rights. The anti-abortion crusade is often associated with family, the traditional family, but to be honest it's descended into not just a human rights dogma but a kind of dysgenic "we are the world" dogma...The most popular propaganda line for the pro-life movement is about "," how this is "destroying black communities" and indeed is a racist plot by Margaret Sanger and so on. This gets to something that I think is a bigger point, and that is the alt-right or identitatrians, we can't think about these issues in this kind of good or evil binary. We actually have to think about an issue like abortion...in a complicated manner, something that that issues deserves." "I would say that it is the unintelligent and blacks and Hispanics who use abortion as birth control, as a kind of late-term birth control...We should recognize that the pro-life movement--this is not the alt-right, this has nothing in common with identitarians, and I think we should be genuinely suspicious of people who think in terms of human rights and who are intersted in adopting African children and bringing them to this country and who get caught up on this issue. We want to be a movement about families, about life in a deep sense, not just "rights" but truly great life, and greatness, and beautiful, flourishing productive families. We want to be eugenic in the deepest sense of the word. Pro-lifers want to be radically dysgenic, egalitarian, multi-racial human rights thumpers--and they're not us." Alymer Fisher wrote column for fellow alt-righters against "the pro-life temptation" as well. Returning to Spencer, he also had a tweet, at 3:36PM (time zone uncertain, but in a Washington Examiner article, so guessing Eastern Time Zone), March 8, 2019: " was the fantasy that America can we [sic] saved. Yangism is the awareness that it can't." Aside from the bizarro world in which he'd endorse someone like Yang, since when does a real conservative give up on America? Likewise, @NickJFuentes, 8:55PM (time zone uncertain, but in a Washington Examiner article, so guessing Eastern Time Zone), March 12, 2019: "Understanding Yang Gang: 1. The country is doomed 2. The rules don't matter 3. We might as well get $1,000 a month."

Then the Matter of Their Governmental Philosophy Richard Spencer was interviewed in Dinesh D'Souza's film Death of a Nation, and an excerpt of the interview is printed in D'Souza's book of the same name on pages 268-270. Spencer's theory of government is decidedly different than that of our Founding Fathers and of conservative Republicans. Whereas Republicans and the Founders they lay claim to profess faith in God-given rights, individualism and limited government, Mr. Spencer, alt-right extraordinaire, proclaims that God-given rights are false, that rights come from the collective, whose will is manifested in the state, which he wishes to be a white-ethno state with a powerful government. Except for the his enthusiasm for limitations on immigration, he has precious little in common with Trump or any other Republican Nor is this kind of thinking unusual: When it is pointed out that the true problem with the black economic situation in America is the result of bad, socialistic public policy in the inner cities, a retort I've personally seen is that socialism works in Scandanavia, therefore whites can make socialism work, therefore it's about all the genetics. Aside from their socialism being arguably not "socialist" (Denmark's prime minister in 2015 blasted Bernie Sanders for citing Denmark as an example of "socialism," explaining at length it wasn't so), their lavish social spending only "works" because the US military is handling their defense needs, pulling most of the weight in NATO. The Alt-Right also dismisses the influence of culture, proclaiming culture is the result of race, that certain races can only create certain cultures. This differs from conservatives, who believe that cultures arise from values, and that these values often have underpinnings in traditional religion. Interestingly, the alt-right claim that race and culture are inseparable mirrors the left-wing smear that conservatives that say "culture" really mean "race," as though values arose from skin color rather than from ideas in your mind. Leaving that aside, there's some factual issues with the claim as well. Take the Germans, the same Germans who were primitive in Roman times were our future moon rocket designers at NASA. Most inventions people use today were created by folks of European extraction, but who would have predicted that as recently as 1400, as Europeans lagged behind Arabs or Chinese technologially? What genetic explanation is there for how superior people were ever behind, and then later surpassed those they trailed before? What genetic explanation is there for how the Japanese, startled at the new technology introduced to them as the result of Commodore Perry's expedition of the 1850s, are some of the world tech leaders today?

The old standby for anyone trying to call Republicans racist is David Duke, the only figure with any name recognition they can prove was associated with the Klan. And yet, for someone the Left trots out so often (and usually around elections), they don't delve very deep into his past. Start with his party affiliations, and you'll discover Duke was an American Nazi before 1975, a Democrat 1975-1988, in the Populist Party 1988-1989, a Republican 1989-1999, a member of the Reform Party 1999-2011, and then a Republican 2016-present. So here's a guy who has been part of no fewer than five different parties in his lifetime, it seems a stretch to argue he "defines" any of them, least of all a party that wants nothing to do with him. But if we're going to play that game, I should note that for the years he was actually in the Klan (1974-1980), he was a Democrat. (I notice CNN left that part out.) Furthermore, he ran in multiple primaries as a Democrat during the time in which this "big switch" was supposedly happening. More speculative food for thought while we're at it: David Duke had a gambling problem, and served a 15 month sentence in federal prison for defrauding supporters. Who's to say he doesn't still have one and isn't being a useful idiot for Democrats for cash? I mean, there must be some reason he's never mentioned...except during election seasons. Also, who endorsed who? Did Trump endorse Duke? If not, then the Left has nothing. Besides, if you want to play the endorsement game, Nazi newspapers praised FDR's New Deal. Communist dictator Hugo Chavez praised Obama's campaign (and Obama took Chavez's "Yes We Can" slogan for his own use). The leaders of al-Queda in Iraq (future ISIS) endorsed Hillary Clinton in 2008. Domestically, Lestor Maddox and George Wallace, who never became Republicans, endorsed Jimmy Carter? Did anyone ask him to disavow? And unlike Duke, Wallace & Maddox posessed real influence. It's a far more meaningful question. And as for the Klan at large, it's a nationally pathetic organization, with no more than a few thousand members. There's no evidence they voted for Trump. In fact, if anyone bothers to read what they write, they would notice they think he's been compromised by Zionists and Neocons, and by Ivanka's Jewish husband Jared Kushner. * * * * * Conclusions Our surroundings have changed, the parties have not. Look at what's said: one side says the ladder of opportunity is there and the market works fine, the other says it's not and government intervention is needed. One says leave the Founding as it is, the other says the Founding could use any number of improvements, mostly via more government. That's the argument we were having in the 1860s, the 1910s, the 1930s, and so on. Strip away the race hustling, and you'll see the parties never "switched." We're having the same argument as before. Once upon a time, "greedy rich bastard" packed the punch "racist" does now. But Democrats are fast becoming the party of affluence themselves, so the first insult won't stick, coming from them. So a longtime economics/redistribution debate has been reframed in racial terms, a class argument has simply been repackaged as a racial one, aided by a fake history of the 1960s. Nothing has "switched" about who favors civil rights and equality. The Republicans have backed civil rights and equality the entire time, equal application of laws and the results are up to you; in practice the only real choices are 1) meritocracy or 2) discrimination & favoritism. Democrats show a preference for preferences, a constant favor towards favoritism. Now if Democrats preference for preferences came at their own expense as an apology for own past actions, it would be laudable; however, it comes at their opponents' expense, and they assign the blame for said actions to their oppnents. The party of slavery and Jim Crow realized the best defense is a good offense. * * * Conclusions & Solutions * * * * * Conclusions

The Imperative of a Way Out People who lie about the past probably aren't telling the truth about the present, so let's not put them in charge of our future. This entire line of attack on the Western world, that it is uniquely racist, or unique in the extent of its racism, should be understood for what it is: an attempt to end human freedom. Western societies are free societies, and the ones idolized by racebaiters seldom are. This entire line of attack on the Western world is nearly entirely false. The West's different results are the product of being run differently. Exploitation is universal. High average living standards are unique. There's some politically incorrect fun facts that don't match the narrative: Non whites in white countries enjoy more rights than in countries where a majority of people look like them. Blacks were sold into slavery by people who looked like them and freed from slavery by people who didn't. Abolitionism is unique to the West, so don't count on slavery to stay dead if the West is destroyed. Indeed, look at the return of slave markets in Libya after it was destabilized and Al Qaeda offshoots showed up. Look at the Chicom social credit system. The non-Western world, as much as its public wants to be free, has a poor track record at preserving freedom. Has any non-Western society showed an equivalent moral awakening, from non-external influences ever? Exploitation is universal; high living standards and freedom are unique, if the west falls, democracy and freedom falls. Most democracies are Western. Most dictatorships are non Western. If the West falls, democracy falls. Support democracy? Then support the West. All who hate the West that produced democracy cannot say they are for democracy. When you attack the Founding Fathers, the West, America, Christianity, and White people, what you are really attacking is your own freedom, and the conditions outside the West prove it. True, we'll see the dedicated power-grabbing fake-victim censorship-loving leftists try to go full Walter Duranty on it, and try to sweep the non-West's human rights record under the rug. But the Democracy activists in oppressed countries, from Iran to Hong Kong to Venezuela look to US, not the Left; the oppressed people of the world know that their great hope comes from the conservatives of our country, not from those smearing our country as "racist." The leftist media called Merkel the "leader of the free world," but those in Hong Kong don't wave her flag.

They wave OUR FLAG.

Let's be the country Hong Kong thinks we are. Let's be the country the world's downtrodden think we are. The worst elements here are in league with the worst elements there, aiming to copy their tricks of oppression and censorship, for the Democrats final play, to take the plantation worldwide. Let us instead take freedom worldwide, as said by the Battle Hymn of the Republic(ans):

As He died to make died to make men holy Let us die to make men free While God is marching on

The first step to making the world freer and more just is telling the racebaiters to shove it. They don't have the moral high ground anyway. The Democrats are a uniquely malign organization. It is one thing for a Nazi or Communist Party to arise in a countries with centralized, authoritarian pasts. It is quite another for a party in a free country to propose expanding un-freedom across the land, and to fuss and fawn over every despotism opposed to the United States, from the Fascists, Nazis, Soviets, Islamists, the Iranians and Venzuelans and the Chinese (who own LeBron James, though they are courteous enough to lease him to the Lakers) We must see the Democrats as Lincoln did, understanding their goals are tyranny and slavery 2.0. God give us the vision to see them for what they are, and God give us the strength to finish what Lincoln started. * * * Solutions

We Need an Honest, Non-Racebaiting Media More than anything about immigration or bringing back manufacturing, the number one thing that will Make America Great Again is to MAKE LIBEL LAWS GREAT AGAIN. Press freedom assumes they're reporting actual news, not repeating intel community gossip. They don't do news, they do pseudo news, using pseudo events to drive division. They use loaded questions push prepackaged narratives. Endlessly asking whether Trump "accept Russian help in the 2020 election?" for instance. Same story regarding asking about David Duke repeatedly. Every time they call us racist, there needs to be a Nick Sandmann-sized payout. (I will consider the job done when the Southern Poverty Law Center declares bankruptcy). The liberal media will learn very quickly that it needs to cover news instead of pushing prepackaged Democrat narratives. Once this is achieved, we must set out to build a media that reflects America, and not just NYC and the Ivy League. Whenever an anchor or reporter calls something "controversial," they mean that liberal elites disagree with it. 9/10 of what they call controversial is not disputed at all by most of the public. Their other trick is no never call their own liberal beliefs "liberal"; they're just considered normative. And it does translate into political sympathies. The Roper Center and Freedom Forum in 1996 did a poll. 89% of journalists voted for Bill Clinton in 1992. 50% said they were Democrats, 4% said they were Republicans. And another 39% were probably Democrats that were kidding themselves, if the 89% for Bill Clinton is to be believed. It seems unlikely anything has gotten better on its own since then. What has gotten better is that more of the public understands they're being lied to. I think what gave it away was Twitter. Liberal reporters all follow each other, retweet each other, echo each other. None of them says anything original or thought provoking. Most of the intriguing content is right of center, and most of the left-wing content of interest comes from people who were reviled by the mainstream Democrats for doubting the Russian Collusion Conspiracy Theory, people like Aaron Mate, Glenn Greenwald, Jimmy Dore, Krystal Ball, and a few others. Some when confronted will say it doesn't affect their reporting, but their unbroken record of being wrong on anything of importance since 2015 or so says otherwise. It's one thing to get the 2016 election wrong, but to compound it with Russian Collusion, Jussie Smollette, Covington Catholic kids/Nick Sandmann, failed predictions killing the Iranian terrorist Solemaini would cause a war, with failed predictions of Kurdish massacres when we left Syria (complete with ABC trying to pass off footage of shooting at a Kentucky gun range with a battle in Syria), well, that's not a mistake or two. Add to that these were the same networks surprised Reagan made the Soviets fall, and who spend decades denying Stalin was a mass murderer (Walter Duranty even won a Pulitzer for denying the Ukranians were being starved), it becomes unavoidable there's something systemically wrong with their "reporting" and the worldview of prepackaged narratives that fuels it.

Where Did Media Bias Come From? Largely from newsmen who grew up and started their careers in the Great Depression. During the Depression, FDR had the FCC threaten to yank broadcast licenses of any non-compliant radio stations. He also invented the Presidential press conference, with the added twist that he and his Press Secretary Stephen Early gave favorite reporters planted questions that would be used to launch narratives. The main weapon of the biased left-wing media ever since has been the narrative, the telling of a prepackaged liberal story, and facts that get in the way are simply not mentioned. (Conscience of a Conservative 139-140). All of the above was reinforced by the Democrat Party operatives/reporters & columnists revolving door, including people like then like Frank Mankiewicz, Tom Braden, Carl Rowan, Charles Bartlett, and Leslie Carpenter. While he was not ever a DNC operative, Joseph Alsop, who cleverly crafted the "Southern Stategy" narrative was really chummy with JFK, who dropped by a party at Alsop's home on Innauguration Night. (Conscience of a Conservative 144)

Legislative Solutions We need to expand the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to prohibit employers and businesses from discrminating on the basis of lawful, constitutionally protected off-duty conduct. Many of the government employees constantly leading marches against Middle America's values and pocketbooks area already protected by the law. It's time to expand that protection to the rest of us. It is THIS, and not helping the border jumpers (or burning down our cities), that is the true civil rights issue of our time. We need to amend the law to make all professors, teachers, and media companies that promote notions like "white privilege," "white fragility," "institutional racism," or "intersectionality" FINANCIALLY LIABLE FOR ALL RIOT DAMAGES. This will guarantee at least 50 years of riot-free American life. We need to remake out libel law to ensure actual consequences befall the SPLC and ADL for maligning good people and costing their their livelihood and reputations. The organizers of any online mob to fire some nobody for what they said ten years ago need accountability as well. This is bullying dressed up as anti-bullying. It doesn't help any member of any minority in any way, and the self-righteous mugging needs to end.

Societal Solutions We need to make everyone screeching that about "institutional racism" a pariah. Make anyone who would talk about identity rather than ideas a pariah in general. Answer everyone trying to insert race into non-racial issues with "You call everything racist, it's just a tactic to get your way. It's time to stop race-hustling and discuss the issue...honestly." We also need to make the public aware of just how lucrative race-hustling is, so it's understood why anyone pushes silly "institutional racism" stories. The Southern Poverty Law Center has an endowment of over $400 million. Sharpton and Jackson rake in so much cash that a white guy named Shaun King ("Talcum X," as the interwebs has dubbed him) wanted in on the action. We need to put an end to the undue influence of the Racebaiter-Industrial Complex. We need to break up, socially and politically, anything that creates a tribal bloc vote. More integrated everything would help. Screech as Democrats might, they don't truly wish to see integration. How can they run the same kind of identity politics campaign if districts diversify? Though we shouldn't mandate this kind of thing by law, more interracial marriage wouldn't hurt. Imagine how many voters Democrats would alienate if they failed to change their everybody-hate-white-people campaign style. "My sister's married to a white man and this candidate is attacking white men, why should I vote for him?" We need to find out how "Social Justice Warriors" are created and funded, and dismantle the whole pipeline. We know college does it to them; which majors, which professors, which books, and which liberal donors fund these campaigns of cancel culture once they get out? The Social Justice Warriors use guilt, pity and intimidation. The guilt and pity gangsters who want to claim America as safe space turf for their gang. They contribute nothing and want to control everything, achieved nothing and want to ruin life for those who have. The fake victims causing real damage; they're not victims, they go around making "offers you can't refuse." The Victimhood Mafia, the Twitter Lynch Mob, the Woke Brigade, the SJW Drama Queens, the Internet Stormtroopers all, losers who achieved nothing with their lives but want to tell you how to run yours need to be removed from anything they control, most especially the media and tech. We cannot let the most whiny decide what the rest of us get to see. We need to promote real equality, the kind where the process is equal and if you want better, work for it. The real anti-racist philosophy is individualism. The real anti racist economic system is free market capitalism. The real anti racist political system is a limited government, a republic, in which elections are not about the non-intellectual and divisive politics of racial identity, but about hefty issues and ideas, such as the lofty ones on which our Great Nation was founded.

So this is the end of my book. Let's fight like hell so it isn't the end of America, and so we can make her, already more just and greater than the rest, more just still, and greater still. * * * * * APPENDIX: HOW THEY CONSTRUCTED THE MAGICAL SWITCHING PARTIES CONSPIRACY, THE ANATOMY OF A HOAX MATERIAL

How To Lie Like Dan T. Carter and Kevin Kruse For Your Fake-History-Loving Democrat Followers: Democrat-Party-Narrative-Laundering-and-Guilt-Redistribution Made Easy!

1) Take the truth (Democrats ran slavery and Jim Crow, and that the politicians responsible had liberal voting records and almost all of them never switched parties; that practically every racist lynch mob and race riot was the work of Democrat voters) 2) Emphasize only the tiny handful (Thurmond, Watson) that switched, make no mention by name of those that stayed, because people tend to remember the named better than the unnamed. Mention George Wallace as a supposed source of conservative GOP ideas that predated Wallace by a century, but do not mention that Wallace stayed a Democrat and was elected as one as late as 1982. Every racist Democrat mob is proclaimed a "white mob." Their presence in the North, then run at the state level by Republicans, is then used to pretend the whole state, region and country is guilty. The "America is guilty" narrative is created by not mentioning WHERE within the state (Democrat counties/districts) and WHO within the states (Democrat-voting Irish, Democrat-aligned Unions) actually did it in practically every single case. 3) The common trait of the perpetrators North and South was both skin color and party allegiance. But party allegiance is omitted and their white skin color is hyped. "White America" is announced to be guilty, and the only possibilty of "redemption" is voting for whatever Democrat looting scheme is being pushed in literally-the-current-year. 4) Any whites who ignore such guilt-and-pity-based appeals and vote Republican are spun as a "continuation" of the evils of the past. Present day Republican policies with demonstrably unrelated origins are proclaimed to be derived from previous evil policies, and Democrat academics generate fake scholarship to "prove" linkages that actually don't exist. For example, Republican complaints about "welfare queens" are proclaimed to be racist, and opposition to welfare and redistribution is of course racist too, up to and including the 1990s welfare reform. What they omit is that the GOP opposed redistribution going back to the 1930s New Deal and before (such as Tammany Hall) because they viewed it as theft, which is also the EXACT SAME REASON they opposed the Democrats and their slavery: because slavery is theft. 5) When there are few or no actual examples of racism left in America, the Democrats fake it. This is where campus hate hoaxes, Tawana Broadley, Jussie Smollet, etc come in. There was no such thing as a fake lynching in the Jim Crow South. The presence of fake hate crimes should tell us something about the very low prevelance of real ones. These fakes are used to pretend racism is still a gigantic problem, and the Democrat payoff from that is to blame America, its founding, and the Republican Party. 6) Smear the American Founding as racist, so that when any Republican explains they're really opposing big government for Founding/constitutional reasons, they they can still be slimed as "racist" anyways. By smearing the Founding, anyone defending themselves from contemporary charges of racism by appealing to the Founding can be framed, and accused of making "dog-whistles." And VIOLA! The exact same views of the role of government that were never called "racist" 1776-1964 have now magically become RACIST RACIST RACIST RACIST RACIST! 7) Talk incessantly about the 1964 election, and pretend no other election in US history exists. Refer to quotes by vengeful, angry ex-Nixon associates with an axe to grind, even though they have no documentary evidence or recordings to prove any of it. Take that one Atwater interview quote out of context, even though the surrounding paragraphs exonerate him. Ignore that Trump clarified "And I'm not talking about the neo-Nazis and white nationalists, who ought to be condemned totally," and play your favorite 3 and a half second, deliberately decontextualized soundbite ad nauseum and screech whenever anyone tries to correct the record. Above all else... IGNORE! ALL! THE! ACTUAL! STATE! AND! COUNTY! LEVEL! VOTING! DATA! SHOWING! NIXON! WON! IN! 1968! WHERE! HE! WON! IN! 1960! AND! NIXON! WON! WHERE! EISENHOWER! WON! AND! LOST! WHERE! EISENHOWER! LOST! WHICH! DEBUNKS! THE! SOUTHERN! STRATEGY! HOAX! AND! THAT! BLACKS! STARTED! VOTING! DEMOCRAT! IN! THE! 1930s! NOT! THE! 60s! THE! 30s! WHICH! MEANS! BLACKS! VOTING! DEMOCRAT! IS! NOT! ABOUT! CIVIL! RIGHTS! AND! THE! SOUTH! STAYED! DEMOCRAT! AT! ALL! NON-PRESIDENTIAL! LEVELS! UNTIL! THE! 1990s! * * * Notes on Sources Kevin B. Phillips, The Emerging Republican Majority was as good a politics primer as any. The basics could have been shorter and some of it is redundant but mostly good. It's reptitiousness made a 471 page book out of what could have been a 200 page book, but on the other hand, it may be why I remember its points so well. Numan V. Bartley, The New South: 1945-1980 was somewhat useful, as it was a general history of the South 1945-1980, rather than a specifically political history. It did help me track down Stokely Carmichael and his role in perverting the Civil Rights movment. V.O. Key Jr.'s classic Southern Politics was everything it was cracked up to be. The sheer flood of information was so great it took awhile to sort what was relevant (else I'd have copied more, just for being interesting) From Disaster to Distinction by the Ripon Society was interesting and useful for showing Goldwater didn't typify the party, as well as confirming Emerging Republican Majority's claim that Goldwater lost because his party abandoned him rather than LBJ converting Republicans. Some of the specific incidents of the 1964 RNC might by mischaracterized or blown out of proportion. It is, after all, a hostile critique. We'll see. Republicans in the South: In the State House, in the White House by Terrel L. Rhodes is full of data tables and charts, such as I would have created from Wiki data, except it's already done, so why not just scan it? Useful ersatz replacement for Black & Black's Rise of Southern Republicans, covers the relevant period 1960-2000 (book published 2000, context indicates pre-election). Useful to scour to see if I missed any bad facts in need of explanation or had made obvious mistakes in analysis. The Goldwater Coalition: Republican Strategies in 1964, by John H. Kessel, was somewhat useful, though it was more about the nuts and bolts of the campaign than anything. Some gems therein though. Conscience of a Conservative, by Barry Goldwater had useful exposes of the media, and of the racebaiting tricks they use. Limited, however, in the discussion of what I sought ("Big Switch" refutation) The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party, by Michael F. Holt filled in the blanks I needed, but made me aware of more blanks, namely, how did the anti-Black laws in the North get enacted? Were more of the slaveowners Whig or Democrat? What happened to Southern Whigs subsequently? And so I dug into it. The Strange Career of Jim Crow, by C. Vann Woodward filled in many of the blanks between the Civil War and 1890.