Harry Browne on "The Lott Affair".

[ishmael]

Any libertarians lurking? Anyone else fed up with the politics as usual BS between the Dems and the Repubs?

I don't agree with everything Harry has to say -- tt has a tingle too much of conspiracy about it --but it's a refreshing third viewpoint on the Lott debacle.

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=30070

[ 12-20-2002, 11:10 AM: Message edited by: ishmael ]

[Joe ( Cold Spring on Hudson )]

Interesting point of view Ish. I wonder if Lott handled it differently how it would be received. Who knows who pulls who's strings these days. I'm still trying to figure out the spin on the WAR with Iraq. Who's next North Korea HOW ABOUT THIS - HOW ABOUT WE GET BINLADIN FOR CHRISTMAS. Remember Dubya Saying DEAD OR ALIVE.

Binladin remember him thing guy long beard blew up the Twin Towers -no not the new Lord of the Rings Twin Towers - you know the big buildings in NYC remember them??? Hmmm wonder what ever happen to Binladin we never seem to hear about him anymore. I guess were too concerned about some silly guy saying something silly at a birthdayparty.

[ 12-20-2002, 11:19 AM: Message edited by: Joe ( Cold Spring on Hudson ) ]

[Wayne Jeffers]

Jack,

That column is mostly nonsense.

Strom Thurmond was a one-issue candidate. "States rights" was a code phrase for segregation. He had no other issue. He carried four extremely racist states in the south.

See, the problem was that the Democrats proposed to enact some anti-lynching laws. Thurmond and his band walked out. Lynching was one of the principal means for enforcing segregation.

And I get a little weary of people comparing Lott to Robert Byrd. Over the last 20 years, Byrd and Thurmond both have a voting record on civil rights that is vastly more favorable than Lott. And I've never heard reports of either Byrd or Thurmond waxing nostalgic for the good old days when folks in the Deep South knew how to deal with uppity n*****s.

Wayne

[John of Phoenix]

I don't consider myself a Libertarian, but I have LOOOONG been fed up with party politics. It's hard to find a politician that puts the Nation before party or self-interest.

I wondered why Lott didn't come up with some kind of, "THAT'S not what I meant!" excuse, but I suppose he preferred to go down as a racist rather than a lying racist.

[Ken Hall]

I voted for Harry Browne in 2000, but he lost me with his post-9/11 commentary. Came just this side (or maybe that side) of blaming America.

I flirted with the LP for a long time, but I won't be joining. Not because of Browne...just because their true believers are as doctrinaire as anyone else's. Phooey.

[Wayne Jeffers]

Jeff,

Well, I've got to disagree. smile.gif

Thurmond was a one-issue candidate in 1948: defense of segregation and the Jim Crow laws and lynching that enforced it. Nicholas Carey made a helpful post in the other Lott thread last evening.

"how quick (media) is to call any fiscal conservative a member of the lunatic fringe."

Jeff - I am a fiscal conservative. The current administration is interested only in cutting taxes for the wealthy. There's an important difference. Notice how the natinoal debt will balloon in the next few years. Is that fiscal conservative?

Lott is no fiscal conservative. He is the GOP King of Pork. Just listen to the moaning coming from Miss on the goodies they'll miss out on now.

"But I am a conservative in that I think a program should prove it can actually work; that good intentions are not enough for Washington to be throwing millions down the drain."

You've described pragmatic, not conservative. I'm a pragmatist, too. I'd like to see that test applied also to spending on weapons systems which have no hope of ever working.

"I wonder if Lott was remembering Thurmonds racism (repudiated long ago after all) . . ."

It can legitamately be debated whether this was Lott's intent at the time he made the statement. Perhaps he was mostly mindless when he said what he did about Thurmond's 1948 racist campaign. I note that Thurmond has a more favorable voting record on race issues than Lott in the last 20 years.

"The reporting has been of what Dem. Party spokes-persons have to say about it all."

It was mainly the Republicans who were decrying Lott's statement. They realized that this was likely to be an albatross around the party's neck in trying to enact their agenda on anything dealing with race issues.

Wayne

Nicholas' post follows:

quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Originally posted by Allen Foote:
What context were his words in when used for Strom Thurmonds 100th birthday. The fact is: Strom Thurmonds presidential campaign was as a MODERATE on the issues of segregation.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Moderate? In what sense? The Dixiecrat sample ballot for the state of mississipi in 1948, what Trent Lott is proud of, states it baldly:

quote:
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Every Mississipi man and woman must vote -- without fail -- we must show our full strength to our enemies...

REMEMBER: A vote for Truman electors is a direct order to our Congressmen from Mississipi to vote for passage of Truman's so-called civil rights program in the next Congress. This means the vicious FEPC -- anti-poll tax -- anti-lynching and anti-segregation proposals will become the law of the land and our way of life in the South will be gone forever.

If you FAIL to VOTE you are in fact casting a vote for Truman and his vicious anti-Southern program.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

You can see the entire sample ballot here -- http://mshistory.k12.ms.us/features/feature7/ms_demo_ballot.html -- courtesy of the Mississipi Historical Society.

Read the entire Dixiecrat platform at http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/dixiecrat1.html

It doesn't get any plainer that that. The whole thing was a racist diatribe against civil rights (and for lynching) for non-whites and 'foreigners'.

One more thing...Trent Lott's old Council of Conservative Citizens -- http://www.cofcc.org/ -- puts up a, err, spirited defense or Mr. Lott. Here's a taste:

quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sad, sicko raciopaths rule the day, dear friends, and they roil about like maggots in a garbage can eating the flesh of aracial whites who are too stupid to even know they're being repressed and exterminated by those who hate all whites and who seek high profile examples such as Trent Lott to condemn any expressions of white identity. And, the whites who have been weakened by years of trying not to be white, lest any non-white people be offended by their whiteness and white ways, go happily to their genocide rather than standing up and demanding the right to their own self-determination and identity.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

With friends like that, who needs enemies?

[Wayne Jeffers]

Jeff,

I'm sorry if I misunderstood or mischaracterized your remarks. You began by saying, "let me gently disagree about your characterisation of Thurmond and his era." My earlier post spoke only to his segregationist 1948 presidential campaign. I made no comments on Thurmond in general other than to observe that his voting record on issues related to race is more favorable than Lott's.

I see no benign explanation for Lott's remark. To express state pride in his state voting for the segregationist candidate in 1948 can only mean that Lott was 1) ignorant of what the 1948 Dixiecrat campaign was about, or 2) that he is proud that his state supported those segregationist views. Lott is at least guilty of stupidity not befitting a national leader in singling out an old segregationist campaign for praise. He could have given a sendoff speech praising Thurmond without singling out his 1948 campaign for praise.

After the fact, Lott handled the reaction to his comments very poorly and began to look foolish in the process. The media was mainly reporting the events. Non-racist conservative commentators were pretty uniform in distancing themselves from Lott's remarks. And it wasn't only the "liberal" media that pointed out the errors in Lott's statements attempting to explain. Here's a commentary from the National Review: http://www.nationalreview.com/kopel/kopel121602.asp Many others from conservative commentators can be found easily.

I don't buy the argument that the media has a profound liberal bias. If conservatives were honest, they would admit that their main gripe about the media is that it is too anxious to expose the wrongdoing of the right's corporate masters.

"Wayne, is the current administration only interested in cutting the taxes of the wealthy, or is that the spin put on their programs by an antagonistic media?"

The federal income tax is among our few truly progressive taxes. During the Reagan and Bush administrations, cuts in the federal income tax (cuts tilted toward the wealthy) have been offset by increases in other taxes which fall mainly on the poor and lower middle class, such as the Social Security tax. In FY 2002, $160 billion in excess Social Security tax was used to fund government operations in lieu of proceeds from other federal taxes. This was not reported as part of the declared $159 billion deficit. As a result of federal income tax cuts and program responsibility being transferred to states, states and localities have been forced to increase taxes which fall mainly on the poor and lower-middle class. The tax burden is being shifted down the income ladder.

Wayne