REDISCOVERING
AMERICANISM, AND THE TYRANNY OF PROGRESSIVISM
(New
York, etc.: Threshold Editions, c2017)
By
MARK R. LEVIN
Rev.
by Hugh Murray
For
the past two years I have been listening to Mark Levin on his radio
program, and though I differ with his commentary occasionally,
generally I am impressed by his research on current affairs and his
knowledge of the law. On a visit to my public library recently, I
saw one of his books on display and borrowed it.
Though
Levin makes a strong argument in Rediscovering Americanism
that “America's founding principles are eternal principles,”(233),
I came to the end of the book feeling deceived, that Levin, in order
to construct for his book an easy case, avoided some major
contentious issues.
One
of the eternal truths Levin cites throughout his book is - the
simple, stirring words at the beginning of the Declaration of
Independence, words meant to justify the colonial rebellion against
King George of England. “That all men are endowed by their Creator
with certain unalienable rights, among them life, liberty, and the
pursuit of happiness.” Levin notes that this was not original with
the colonials, for the ideas, grounded in Biblical notions, had been
elaborated upon and developed by various thinkers as part of the Age
of Enlightenment. Jefferson composed these common ideas into the
Declaration, and it is a powerful assertion of the basic rights of
all.
The
American rebellion was successful, and many leading rebels were
transformed into leaders of a new nation. After the Constitution was
adopted and George Washington elected President, the Federalists
dominated the new government. But divisions arose, and Thomas
Jefferson, along with Aaron Burr and others, founded an opposition
party, the Democratic-Republicans, usually deemed the origins of what
would later be called the Democratic Party.
Jefferson
was so admired over time that he would become one of the most honored
Democrats. In the 1960s Pres. John Kennedy remarked that at some of
his dinner soirees in the White House, when he would invite prominent
guests in many fields, that his dinner parties were the most
intellectual of any in the White House, except when Jefferson had
dined alone.
In
the 20th century, while Republicans might have Lincoln
suppers to provide speeches for the faithful and urge contributions
to the GOP, the Democrats had their fund-raising dinners to
commemorate the birthdays of Jefferson and Pres. Andrew Jackson, the
Jefferson-Jackson Dinners. So Levin seems correct; the words of
Jefferson, if not quite eternal, continued to inspire the Democratic
Party 2 centuries after his composition of the Declaration.
On
Mount Rushmore, where 4 American Presidents' heads are chiseled into
a mountain, Jefferson's is the only Democrat so honored - with
Washington (Federalist), Lincoln, and Theodore Roosevelt (both
Republicans). After the election of Democrat Franklin Roosevelt in
1932, the New Dealer began to ponder a memorial to Jefferson; FDR
laid the corner stone in the late 1930s, and the Jefferson Memorial
in Washington was completed after WWII. On the walls of the monument
were famous words of the nation's 3rd President - words
now inscribed in stone to inspire Americans of later generations.
The monument included a sentence from Jefferson's Autobiography, 27
July 1821: “Nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate
than that these people [the slaves] are to be free.” Conservative
critics complained that the monument's editors failed to include the
very next sentence Jefferson wrote - “Nor is it less certain that
the two races, equally free, cannot live in the same government.
Nature, habit, opinion has drawn indelible lines of distinction
between them.” Just as the makers of the monument to Jefferson in
mid-20th century sought to censor the words of the man to
be honored, distorting his thought on the issue of race, I am left
with the same impression reading Levin's omission of much of American
history. Into this vacuum Levin inserts assertions about the
“eternal truths” - truths that Levin has selected and deems
eternal. Instead of rose-colored “truths,” it might be better to
review the reality in black and white.
While
Levin quotes the Declaration that all men are endowed with
unalienable rights, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and
similar phrases in the various state constitutions adopted in the
Revolutionary era, there remains the question of how Jefferson,
Madison, and many founders reconciled such language with the reality
of slavery. And even beyond slavery – could two or more dissimilar
races live under the same government?
Levin
writes as if all the Founders were color blind on the question of
unalienable rights. Were they?
After
the US won independence, Jefferson proposed an earlier version of the
Northwest Ordinance, which with modifications was accepted in 1787.
In effect, it excluded slavery from what is now Ohio, Indiana,
Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin. Had the slave-owner Jefferson
been converted by the eternal truths of his own words in the
Declaration that somehow slavery was wrong? I doubt that. By
excluding slaves, the Ordinance was also excluding most Black people
then in the US. Runaways found in the new territories were to be
returned to their slave owners. Moreover, the conservative Levin
might have to ponder how the Federal Government was encouraging
education in those territories with the Northwest Ordinance.
As
the colonials won their freedom from Britain, soon there were efforts
to outlaw slavery, and in the North slavery declined (sometimes
abolition might come quickly, in other states slowly). In the South,
when plantation owners sought to emancipate their slaves, at times
upon the death of the owner, there was a new problem. Some judged
free Blacks a danger, especially if the area contained a large
proportion of slaves. Thus, when various prominent Americans thought
of the best way to free slaves, especially in the South which had a
higher proportion of Blacks, they often conjoined the notion of
manumission with removal, so the American Colonization Society was
created and sought to repatriate freed slaves to Africa. With
American support, the nation of Liberia was founded and its capital
named after an American slave-owning President, James Monroe.
Monrovia remains its capital.
During
the war of the American Revolution, the Tory (Loyalist) Governor of
Virginia, Lord Dunmore, in November 1775 promised freedom to Black
slaves who would fight for the Crown against the colonial rebels.
The American rebels asserted that runaways who took up arms against
their masters would be executed. The small British forces in
Virginia lost, and when Dunmore departed by ship, he took 800 to
2,000 Blacks with him. Gen. Henry Clinton later made a similar
proclamation concerning all the colonies, but he took only 3,000
Blacks with him upon defeat and evacuation. The Blacks who joined
the Crown's forces were shipped to Nova Scotia, and some of them
would eventually leave for Freetown in West Africa.
Yet,
it was the Radicals of the French Revolution, those whom Levin seems
to detest most, who may have done more to abolish slavery. While
Levin sees the eternal truths in the Judaeo-Christian system, natural
law, and God, as the basis for the unalienable rights with which all
men are created, can you have unalienable rights and morality without
Natural Law and God?(19) Things moved swiftly in France. Louis and
Marie Antoinette became prisoners, deemed traitors for trying to
encourage other nations to invade revolutionary France. In the
American colonies, the official church in most areas, the Anglican –
was headed by King George III, the man the revolutionaries judged a
tyrant and enemy of the people. As backlash, this conflation of king
and church led to disestablishment of the official churches in much
of the South, and defections to Baptists and Methodists
congregations. Things went further in France. The Rights of Man
were proclaimed. A new scientific approach was explored, finding new
measures like centimeters to replace references to the king's body
parts. The king's church came under critical scrutiny, too, and soon
the Christian calendar was replaced with Year I of the Revolution,
and a “rational,” 10-day week initiated, which was more in accord
with the the centigrade measurements. The Cathedral of Notre Dame in
Paris was converted into the Temple of the Goddess of Wisdom, and
Robespierre, himself, wore a Roman toga to activate the new (and very
old) approach to religion and morality. Even a new, more humane
method of execution was invented and improved, and henceforth crowds
could watch and cheer as nobles, and even the royals were beheaded.
Thomas Paine, who had written so much to stir the souls of American
colonials to rebellion, was at first welcomed in the new Republican
France, but he was insufficiently politically correct, and ended in
prison, where he then wrote an attack on the Christian Bible, The
Age of Reason. What makes the radical Jacobins so important for
America, is that some of the Jacobins were determined to extend the
Rights of Man to the Black slaves of Haiti. Robespierre eventually
had so much power and signed for the executions of so many, that too
many feared him, and they, in turn, turned on him. He too was
executed, and the “Reign of Terror” ended. But soon a Black,
former slave, Toussaint L'Ouverture was in command of Haiti. The
French National Assembly had seated a Black and a Colored to
represent the island, and the Assembly abolished slavery in its New
World islands. But with the fall of the radical Jacobins, would the
French demand the return of slavery, as they returned to the 7-day
week, the Christian calendar, and the Roman Church?
Napoleon
rose to power in France. Instead of a king, the French now had an
Emperor, and he envisioned a New World empire. Louisiana from
Montana to Minnesota and down the Missouri and Mississippi rivers to
New Orleans was then Spanish, but Napoleon had placed a brother on
the Spanish throne, so he could retake the former French colony in
the heart of North America. Moreover, Louisiana once extended to Ft.
Duquense (Pittsburgh) and the lands north of the Ohio River. Before
Napoleon could create this Louisiana empire, he had to retake the
island of Haiti from the slaves. While some attribute the failure of
the French military to disease, the rebel slaves won the day.
Haiti's is the largest successful slave rebellion in history.
Meanwhile,
the new American nation was quite naturally concerned about the
possibility that the port of New Orleans might prevent export of all
the American products beginning to flow down the Mississippi on
rafts. A bottleneck at the mouth of the Mississippi would curtail
profits and probably reduce the growth of America in the
trans-Appalachian territories. Americans sought to purchase New
Orleans. With the defeat of the French forces in Haiti, Napoleon
scrapped his Louisiana fantasy, and offered to sell the entire
territory. America nearly doubled in size with the Louisiana
Purchase. It is rarely mentioned, but with this purchase, America
began another experiment: could an overwhelmingly Protestant nation
(the whites and Blacks), absorb and unite with Roman Catholic
Louisiana? In 1803 there was not a single, legal Protestant church
in New Orleans or west of the Mississippi. By the 1830s New Orleans
was the largest city in the American South, a title it would retain
until 1960 – a Catholic enclave (at least among the white
residents), in the overwhelmingly Protestant South}.
Haiti
had an impact on the US. Many of the refugees who fled the rebellion
in Haiti came to New Orleans, and this included whites, free
coloreds, and slaves. Perhaps a quarter of the Crescent City's
population were Haitian refugees in the early 1800s. Though
historian Herbert Aptheker found 250 slave revolts in the American
South, most may have been more fear than reality. But the reality of
Haiti fed the fears. This was one reason in parts of the South there
was a determination to prevent slaves from becoming free or even
learning to read. The American Colonization Society was thus
acceptable, for it was a way to get the freed Blacks away so they
could not cause a slave rebellion here. Occasionally there were a
few major slave revolts in the US; Nat Turner's 1831 insurrection in
Virginia, and the lesser-known, larger, 1811 German Coast rebellion
in Louisiana, but the militarization of the South with local white
militias was meant to prevent insurrection, and they were generally
successful. Nevertheless, there was the fear of free Blacks, and
even in more tolerant New Orleans, things grew more difficult for
Free People of Color. Although many whites might value an invitation
to the Quadroon Balls, and the armed Free People of Color had helped
Gen. Jackson defeat the British in the Battle of New Orleans in 1815,
by the 1850s laws were passes so that FPCs had to wear identifying
clothing so others would recognized them (like Jews had to wear
yellow stars in German-occupied Europe by 1939 and the early 1940s).
When war broke out between the North and South in 1861, in New
Orleans the Free People of Color marched and volunteered to fight for
the South, but their offer was rejected by Confederate authorities.
Eventually, most of the FPCs joined the Union Army instead.
But
New Orleans, with its Catholic dominance, a major port of the new
nation, a large slave market, but an influential group of FPCs, plus
growing numbers of Americans who came from up river and immigrants,
especially from Ireland to escape the famine, arriving as ballast to
stabilize the boats that would return to Britain with cotton, this
more easy-going culture was not typical of America. Indeed, some of
the free Blacks, studied in France, and one Black family of 13 owned
a total of 215 slaves in 1830. There was an opera house and the
French language, and newspapers competed with English. Alas,
occasionally yellow fever epidemics would decimate large numbers of
the population. New Orleans culture was fascinating, but it was not
typical of America.
More
typical was the rest of the new nation. Even before the US was a
nation, there were widespread impulses that brought forth that
nation. And though Levin and most stress the rationalist and
scientific impulses of the Enlightenment, that seemed to find
fruition in the American Revolution, expressed not only in the
Declaration of Independence and the American Constitution, it was
seen also in the religious aspects of the era. Prior to the
Revolution, there was the Great Awakening (1730-40s) of fiery
preaching and mass meetings that provided an emotional side to
religion often lacking in the government-supported Anglican churches
of the South, or the official Calvinist churches of New England.
The
evangelical preaching of the Great Awakening often occurred outdoors.
The ministers, like Jonathan Edwards, appealed to the emotions,
demanding that the listeners not simply assert that they were
Christians, but use their embrace of Jesus to reform their lives;
they could be reborn if they accepted Jesus fully, not simply
intellectually, but in every way. The effective preaching, along
with the music that often accompanied these revivals, appealed beyond
any one church. Many attended – Baptists, Methodists, Lutherans,
Dutch Reformed, Congregationalists, Presbyterians, and even some
Anglicans. It was a mass movement. And in parts of the South, the
preachers let Blacks attend, even slaves. Some preachers urged
slave-owners to educate their slaves so they might read the Bibles.
Not all owners agreed, and in some states, after news of Haiti, it
was illegal to teach a slave to read. The preachers were not
abolitionists, but declared there would be equality in Heaven for all
the Godly folks. The use of music and the lack of interest in
theology, the belief that a truly motivated Christian could preach
the Gospel, was interpreted so that even uneducated, but sincere
people could preach. This might have meaning for Black slaves,
especially when masters did not want slaves to attend the same church
as their owners.
Not
all congregants appreciated the emotionalism of the Great Awakening.
In some churches there was a reaction, one that stressed restraint,
reason, and science, with more contemplative sermons and responses.
As the fighting against the King's troops erupted in New England,
some of the churches decided to reject both king and the trinity;
they became Unitarian. King's Chapel in Boston became Unitarian, as
did the one whose steeple signaled one if by land and 2 if by sea.
John Adams, 2nd President, and his son John Quincy Adams,
were both Unitarians. Although Jefferson remained high church, he
was accused of being in infidel when he ran for president, and many
see in him a Deist. He also wrote a few sentences sympathetic to the
Unitarian movement, and helped chemist Joseph Priestly, the
discoverer of oxygen, when he had to flee England because he was
Unitarian. Moreover, Jefferson wrote for himself what is called the
Jefferson Bible, the New Testament but with all miracles expunged.
In
early America, before there were many Jews, - Unitarians and Quakers
often provided some of the cultural cohesion for the new nation. And
many of these would be linked with reform – Horace Mann in founding
public schools, Ralph Waldo Emerson was for a time a Unitarian
minister, the Harvard Divinity School became Unitarian by 1818 and
remained so for several decades. The church was influenced by the
German Transcendentalists, and some partook in communes. With
Quakers and others, Unitarians were active in women's rights,
abolitionism, prison reforms and reforms for the mentally handicapped
(Dorothea Dix, Unitarian, and next century Jane Addams, member of a
Presby. Church but regularly attended the Unit. one; she was also
founder of Hull House, and one of the founders of the ACLU), Civil
War nurse and founder of the American Red Cross, Clara Barton (a
Universalists, but now it is part of the UUA). Rev. Theodore Parker
was such a staunch abolitionist that when he preached, he had a
pistol in the lectern to prevent anyone from trying to remove a
runaway slave back to the South. After the war began, Col. Robert
Gould Shaw, Unit., was selected by the Gov. of Massachusetts to lead
the 54th Mass. Volunteer Infantry, the first Northern
regiment of Black troops. Shaw and some of his troops are depicted
in a famous bronze high relief monument by Augustus Saint-Gaudens
across from the Mass. State Capitol on the Boston Commons, and the
regimental story is best known through the 1989 film, “Glory.”
Yet,
there is more to the story of Unit. Reform in 19th century
America, a story purposely deleted today to avoid embarrassment, like
the additional sentences that might have marred the Jefferson
Memorial. There were Unit. Churches beyond Boston, beyond even New
England. Who founded the Unit. Church in Washington, DC? Who
founded the one in Charleston, SC? They were both founded by the
same man, a Senator, a Vice President of the US, and a prominent
politician. John C Calhoun of South Carolina, the defender of
states' rights and the right to secede from the national union, and
an opponent of abolitionism. Calhoun too was a Unitarian.
But
perhaps Calhoun's Unitarianism was not such an aberration. If the
church stressed reason and science, what was the scientific view of
race in the 19th century? Here is how google summarized a
Boston Globe article (27 Jun 2012) about a 19th century,
highly respected Harvard professor: “The 19th-century
Swiss-born naturalist Louis Agassiz was a revered figure at Harvard
University. He was also a racist who commissioned humiliating
photographs of slaves and Brazilian natives.” The distinguished
scientist did not believe all people were equal. Google summarized a
Harvard Gazette piece (19 May 2007) on another aspect of the
scientist Agassiz :
“Unfortunately
Agassiz chose the wrong side in what turned out to be the 19th
century's greatest scientific controversy, and as a result ended his
career as something of an anachronism. The controversy was over
Charles Darwin's 'on the Origin of Species by Means of Natural
Selection,'...”
And
on the subject, what was Darwin's views on race? Though Darwin the
individual may have been quite sympathetic to Blacks, his writings
may be less so. In his “Descent of Man,” Darwin describes the
white races as “civilized,” while the others, including Blacks,
are described as “savage” races. And the implications of his
work are, in time the civilized will eliminate the savage races.
How
would the new America cope with numerous Black slaves in the South
and uncounted Amerindians in the coastal states and far more beyond
the Alleghenies? In the North, where Blacks were a smaller
percentage of the population, slavery was voted out of existence
quickly, or in some states gradually to apply to all those legally
bound. But the importance of the cotton crop to the South led to
extensive use of slave labor on plantations. What should be the role
of the races in the South. During the War of 1812. the Americans
hoped to conquer Canada, and failed. The British attacked the new
capital of Washington, burned the White House, and Pres. and Mrs.
Madison were fortunate to escape capture by the red coats. While
peace-talks inched forward in Ghent, Belgium, the British decided to
take New Orleans, which would bottle up the Americans at the mouth of
the Mississippi. British and Spanish joint ventures, along with
Indians might solidify Spanish rule in Florida, and with a British
victory in New Orleans, the British and Spanish might win much of the
Mississippi valley to a new venture with aid from the native French
and Indian populations to push the Americans back across the
mountains.
The
British, who had just defeated Napoleon in Europe and burnt the
American capital were confident. Andrew Jackson, who had had little
support from the Federal govt., was much on his own as the British
threat approached. Jackson called upon all the people of New Orleans
to help in its defense – those of French and American extraction.
He called upon the pirates led by Jean Lafitte to help. And he got
help from local Indians and Free People of Color. Slaves helped dig
defensive trenches. Though numbers by authorities vary, the British
lost about 2,000 casualties, including Gen. Packenham, a relative of
Wellington. The Americans lost from 25 to 100. The peace treaty,
unbeknownst to those this side of the Atlantic, had already been
signed before the battle, but some provisions were ambiguous, so that
ownership might depend on who held certain territories at the
conclusion of the war. Jackson's victory removed the ambiguity –
New Orleans, and the Mississippi valley were to remain American.
Gen. Jackson became such a hero, in the Presidential race of 1824 he
won more votes than any of his opponents, but the House of
Representatives chose John Quincy Adams as President. Jackson ran
again in 1828 and won decisively, the many new voters rejecting the
aristocratic airs of the old Federalist and Virginia dynasties of the
Democratic-Republicans. Jackson had been born in a log cabin, was a
fighter and a duelist, and gathered together a rag-tag army to save
New Orleans and the West for America. He was a “populist”
Democrat President. Jackson was also a slave-owner, and saw nothing
wrong with that. He had fought Indians who had massacred whites
settlers, but was happy to have other Indians join with him in a war
against those who sought to rid the land of the whites. He was
delighted when some Indians helped in the Battle of New Orleans.
But
when in the State of Georgia and territory of Alabama, disputes rose
between the “civilized” Indians and whites, Pres. Jackson took
the side of the whites. Eventually, he demanded the removal of the
Indians, including the “civilized” ones to the west – what
would become Indian Territory, and later Oklahoma. When the US
Supreme Court overruled his decision, Jackson famously asserted that
the Court had made its decision; now let it enforce it. Without the
capitulation of the Executive branch, the Court was powerless; the
Indians were removed to the west. Jackson was so popular, he was
often credited with re-inventing the Party first established by
Jefferson and Burr. Clearly, Jackson believed that America was
primarily for white people and their values. Yet, he was also
strongly for one united nation. When Calhoun of South Carolina
promoted nullification of a tariff, and possible secession, Jackson
was totally against. Calhoun had been VP under Jackson during the
general's first term. For his second term, Jackson replaced Calhoun
with Martin van Buren. America remained basically a white people's
republic.
Slavery
grew as an issue. Even in 1820 there was a major debate on admitting
Missouri as a state, for it would enter as a slave state, tilting the
balance in favor of slave states in the union. A compromise was
reached when a part of Massachusetts, what we call Maine today, was
admitted simultaneously as a free state, and the balance was
retained.
There
were anti-slavery elements in the South, including those who defied
the law and taught their slaves to read, to those who might let a
slave earn money in the city and purchase his freedom. Later, some
very few might even help slaves escape, writing passes for them. In
the North there were egalitarians, but many opposed slavery because
they did not want Blacks to come to their state. Former Pres. John
Q. Adams returned to the House of Representatives where he openly
opposed slavery. As an attorney, he helped defend the slaves who
rebelled and took charge of the Spanish ship Amistad which sailed
into American waters. With Adams' help, the rebellious slaves won
their case and were returned to Africa. Demands by Spain for
compensation for its loss of property went unfulfilled. The slave
issue seemed to grow in the 1850s, and the Whig Party, even with
anti-slavery advocates like Adams, eventually floundered as the party
sought to compromise the subject. A new party devoted to preventing
the expansion of slavery, the Republican Party was born. A
generalization is in order – most Americans remained Protestants.
The South outside of Louisiana was overwhelmingly Protestant, and
would later be called the Bible Belt. The North developed industry,
and attracted more immigrants, some of whom were Roman Catholics.
There were sufficient conflicts of culture that the Know-Nothing
Party, or American Party rose, and it tended to be anti-Catholic and
anti-immigrant. There was another area of division over religion.
Many Americans wanted to expand and grow crops in the sparsely
populated area west of the Sabine River in today's east Texas. They
were granted permission, indeed, initially encouraged by the Mexican
government, but they had to pledge to become Roman Catholics. Later,
the Mexicans also demanded an end to slavery, which would have
restricted cotton culture and profits of the Americans. Then Antonio
de Santa Ana became military dictator of Mexico and the Americans of
Texas revolted. Democrats like Jackson and Pres. Polk were
delighted; while some of the new Whigs opposed any war with Mexico,
which they considered to be a war on behalf of slavery. Adams in
Congress, and the young Abraham Lincoln were examples of Whig
opponents of the war. (In the following election, Lincoln lost his
House seat.) Eventually, the American army marched into Mexico City,
- the Mexicans were thoroughly defeated, and Texas, California, and
parts of other states were ceded to the United States.
Interestingly, some Irishmen who had fled the famine across the
Atlantic, joined the American army, were sent to fight in that war,
but they preferred to fight beside their fellow Catholics rather than
for Protestant America. The San Patricio Battalion changed sides,
and there is a monument to them in Mexico.
But
America was not consumed with anti-Catholicism. Pres. Jackson
appointed a Catholic from Maryland to his Cabinet – the first
Catholic to hold such a high post. Later Jackson demonstrated his
tolerance once again when he appointed the same Catholic to be Chief
Justice of the US Supreme Court. Justice Roger Taney was the first
Catholic appointed to the high court. It might be instructive to
contrast the Chief Justice's view of the eternal truths of the
Founding Fathers with the view of Mark Levin. Wikipedia describes
Taney thusly:
“He
delivered the majority opinion in Dred
Scott v. Sandford (1857),
that ruled, among other things, that African-Americans, having been
considered inferior at the time the United
States Constitution was
drafted, were not part of the original community of citizens and,
whether free or slave, could not be considered citizens of
the United States, which created an uproar among abolitionists and
the free states of the northern U.S.
“The
Taney Court ruled that persons of African descent could not be, nor
were ever intended to be, citizens under the U.S. Constitution, and
that the plaintiff (Scott) was without legal standing to file a suit.
The framers of the Constitution, Taney wrote, believed that blacks
"had no rights which the white man was bound to respect; and
that the negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for
his benefit.”
Was
this an eternal truth of the Founding Fathers?
As
slavery became the dominant issue in American politics, parties
re-formed. Most of the South was Protestant, but the denominations
split north and south – Northern Baptists opposing Southern
Baptists, and similar divisions among Methodists, Presbyterians, etc.
In the South most began to drift more heavily into the Democratic
Party, with some remaining with the Whigs under a different name.
But in the North Protestants tended to dislike slavery and were
attracted to the Republican Party. In the racial crisis of the early
1960s in New Orleans, Judge Leander Perez, a leader of the White
Citizens' Council was excommunicated by the Catholic Archbishop of
New Orleans. Perez shot back, the Jesuits used to own slaves! I
could not confirm that they owned any in Louisiana, but in 1838
Jesuits in Maryland sold 272 slaves from that state who ended on
plantations in Louisiana to pay the debts of Georgetown College (now
University). The Catholic minority in the North tended toward the
Democrats, and many working class whites feared competition from
Blacks and any newly freed slaves. Their view was, why fight to end
slavery, which would only hurt the white worker in the long run? The
anti-draft riots in New York City during the Civil War were also
anti-Black riots. Many Catholics saw the Democratic Party as the
tolerant party.
The
first person of Jewish heritage to enter the US Senate was David Levy
Yulee in 1845, representing the state of Florida. Because he
converted to Christianity, some might contend that the first Jew
elected to the US Senate was therefore Judah P. Benjamin in 1852.
Benjamin represented Louisiana. Both he and Yulee were slave-owners
and defended that institution. Benjamin would also be the first Jew
to serve in a President's Cabinet, holding several posts including
Sec. of State for Pres. Jefferson Davis of the CSA. While the South
showed tolerance to this religion, during the war, Union Gen. Ulysses
Grant displayed a different approach. In mid-December 1862 Grant
ordered the expulsion of all Jews in his jurisdiction, giving them 24
hours in which to leave. Grant was in charge of lands about the size
of 6 Rhode Islands, centered around Memphis, Tennessee, and including
parts of that state, Kentucky, and Mississippi. On January 4, 1863,
Pres. Lincoln officially rescinded Grant's order, but some contend
Lincoln had voided Grant's order only 3 days after it was issued in
December.
In
1858 in Illinois, the prominent Democratic politician, Stephen
Douglas, engaged in a series of debates with his Republican rival for
the US Senate, Abraham Lincoln. What did the Great Emancipator say?
Here is an excerpt from one of the debates by candidate Lincoln:
“While
I was at the hotel to—day, an elderly gentleman called upon me to
know whether I was really in favor of producing a perfect equality
between the negroes and white people. [Great Laughter.] While I had
not proposed to myself on this occasion to say much on that subject,
yet as the question was asked me I thought I would occupy perhaps
five minutes in saying something in regard to it. I will say then
that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any
way the social and political equality of the white and black races,
[applause]—that I am not nor ever have been in favor of making
voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office,
nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to
this that there is a physical difference between the white and black
races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living
together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as
they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the
position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am
in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race.
I say upon this occasion I do not perceive that because the white man
is to have the superior position the negro should be denied every
thing. I do not understand that because I do not want a negro woman
for a slave I must necessarily want her for a wife. [Cheers and
laughter.] My understanding is that I can just let her alone. I am
now in my fiftieth year, and I certainly never have had a black woman
for either a slave or a wife. So it seems to me quite possible for us
to get along without making either slaves or wives of negroes.”(18
Sept. 1858)
Douglas
won the Senate seat for Illinois, but Lincoln's views were so popular
that in the Mid-West, he would become the leading Republican
candidate for President in 1860.
Indeed, there was a deju vu aspect to the Presidential election, for
Lincoln was the Republican nominee; and Sen. Stephen Douglas of Ill.
was the nominee of the Democrats. However, the Southern Democrats
held a separate convention and nominated Vice President John
Breckinridge of Kentucky, while the Constitutional Union Party chose
John Bell of Tennessee. Lincoln received almost zero votes in the
South, so his voters were concentrated in the North. Douglas had
support throughout the nation, but usually came in 2nd
or 3rd
in most states. He carried only one, Missouri. Breckinridge carried
most of the South, while Bell carried a few border states. Lincoln
carried most states for 180 Electoral votes; the total for all his
opponents was only 123. But the popular vote was quite different –
Lincoln led with only 39.8% of the vote. One might contend he lacked
a mandate. 60% of the electorate had voted against Lincoln. He had
to sneak into the Capital to avoid assassination, but in March 1861
Lincoln took the oath of office, being sworn in by Chief Justice
Roger Taney.
This
is not the place to discuss the Civil War. In the end, Black troops
were essential for victory. As the South crumbled, Sec. Benjamin
suggested that the CSA recruit Blacks, but that idea was again
rejected. Some Southerners believed that armed Confederate Blacks
would also mean the end of slavery. However, in Louisiana, the
governor did accept over 200 armed FPCs as part of the state militia,
and the number grew to 1,000, sworn to defend the Confederacy. After
New Orleans was captured by the Federals, some 10% of the Black
militia changed sides, became the Corps d'Afrique for the Union side.
Though the casualties were the heaviest of any American war,
nevertheless, there was a US Presidential election conducted in Nov.
1864. Many thought that if Gen. George McClellan and the Democrats
won, they would stop the enormous bloodshed and come to an
understanding and compromise with the Confederates. Lincoln and the
Republicans were sufficiently worried they dropped VP Republican
Hanibal Hamlin of Maine from the ticket, and replaced him with a
pro-Union Southern military governor of Tennessee, and a
war-Democrat, Andrew Johnson. Lincoln's party was essentially
renamed “the National Union Party.” Lincoln's worries about an
electoral defeat proved overly pessimistic, for he won about 55% of
the popular vote and a landslide in the Electoral. The people had
voted to continue the war. Several months later, the South lost.
Some stress that Lincoln changed his attitude toward Blacks during
the war. By war's end, he was proposing suffrage for some
intelligent Blacks. But Lincoln was also interested in relocating
Blacks to Haiti or elsewhere. In his 2nd
inaugural address (4 March 1865), Lincoln asserted that slavery was
the cause of the Civil War, but he ended his speech ambiguously:
“With
malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right
as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work
we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds,
...”
Was he pronouncing a mild or harsh policy toward those in rebellion
(which was still being fought)? A month later, Gen. Robert E. Lee
surrendered his Confederate army, essentially ending the war, and 5
days thereafter a conspiracy resulted in the assassination of Pres.
Lincoln. Murders can change history. Though we may argue about what
Lincoln's plans were for the victorious nation and the defeated
states, there was soon a clash between Vice President Andrew Johnson
of Tennessee and most of the Republican Congress. Using the power of
the Presidency, Johnson pardoned many of the rebel plantation
owners, which restored their lands to them. This also burst the
dreams of “40 acres and a mule,” which former slaves hoped to
receive by dividing the masters' plantations. New amendments to the
Constitution were ratified, one ending slavery, and the other
providing citizenship for all born in the US whose allegiance was to
the US (a century later, a power-grabbing liberal Supreme Court
justice, in a footnote to another case, extended citizenship to the
children of invaders of this country, thus creating the issue of
anchor babies.)
Crucial
in the power struggle was the ratification and ramifications of the
13th
Amendment, for if Blacks were no longer slaves, then they were no
longer to be counted as 3/5s of a person for apportioning legislators
in Congress. So the states with large numbers of former slaves would
now have increased representation in the House of Representatives.
Thus, by counting Blacks as one, rather than 3/5ths of a person, the
Southern states would have more representatives and more power in the
national Congress. When in the South attempts were made to organize
the Republican Party, with some whites and Blacks who had served in
the US Army, the Southern Democratic controlled police led riots
against these radicals who demanded the right of Blacks to vote.
Hundreds were killed in Memphis and New Orleans, and there was a
backlash against Southerner Pres. Johnson's lenient policies. And
in early elections, the South was returning its old leaders, choosing
for example, Alexander H. Stephens, the VP of the Confederacy to the
next Senate. In the mid-term elections of 1866, the Radical
Republicans won Congress overwhelmingly, they refused to seat
returning Confederate leaders like Stephens, and Congress nearly
impeached President Johnson.
In
reality, THE CIVIL WAR WOULD CONTINUE IN THE SOUTH UNTIL 1898. The
Freedmen's Bureau (a fed. Agency established to aid the newly freed
Blacks), Black Union veterans, “carpetbaggers,” (Yankees who came
South with nothing but what they could carry in a small luggage,
hoping to make their fortunes in the new South), and “scalliwags,”
(renegade Southerners who supported the alien Republican Party), were
on one side; Democrats and their paramilitary organizations, like the
Ku Klux Klan, Knights of the White Camellia, did what they could to
overthrow the Republican state organizations. White Democrats still
owned the land, still had many familiar with the law, and had the
support of the northern Democratic Party. In the North, there was
waning desire for a long-term military occupation of the South, and
even Northern Republicans tired of stories of intimidation and murder
of dissidents in the South. In some ways it was analogous to eastern
Europe after WWII; in the American South, idealists and egalitarian
Republicans sought to erase remnants of slavery as they tried to
reconstruct that section of the country. In Europe's east, idealists
and egalitarian Marxists sought to erase fascism and reconstruct that
section of Europe. In both cases they relied on occupation forces to
keep them in power. In 1990 the Soviets made it clear they would no
longer use their military to prop up the “socialist” governments
of eastern Europe – and they all fell with the wall. The North was
not as solidly Republican as the USSR was Communist, and most
Northern troops were withdrawn from the South in 1877; with that most
Republican state governments crumbled. In local areas, Republicans
still had a chance. However, in 1898 a revolution in Wilmington,
North Carolina overturned the voting results, - the last Black
Republican in the US House of Representatives from the South “lost”
re-election. Thereafter, only whites would represent the South for
decades into the 20 century, establishing the “Solid South” for
the Democrats. By 1900, the civil war in the South was over, and
there was little doubt, the South was white man's country.
And
the nation? In 1890 Louisiana passed a law segregating the races on
trains. A few years later a respectable African-American, Homer
Plessy, refused to move from the white car, and was arrested and
charged with violating the law. In 1896 the case went to the US
Supreme Court, which ruled 7-1 against Plessy, arguing that separate
but equal facilities were Constitutional. Segregation was thus
deemed legal, and not necessarily limited to the South, for Justice
Brown in upholding the separate but equal doctrine, cited a Boston
law requiring racial segregation of its schools. The lone dissenter,
Justice John Marshall Harlan, declared our Constitution is “color
blind,” a view rejected by the majority then, and rejected even
more vehemently by the leftists of today. Many thought the ruling
appropriate, and in accord with the scientific and political
realities of the era. By 1900 almost all of Africa was colonized
under European rule (Abyssinia and Liberia, the exceptions), most of
Asia was also succumbing to European rule (foreign troops even
entered Beijing to suppress the Boxer Rebellion.) And scientists
produced papers showing the superiority of various European groups.
America, following a war with Spain, suddenly had colonies and
semi-colonies also.
When
professorial, progressive Democrat Pres. Woodrow Wilson was elected
in 1912, he soon showed in the White House the extremely popular film
by D. W. Griffith, “Birth of a Nation.” The movie depicted the
birth of the Confederacy, Civil War, the horrors of Black
Reconstruction, and the salvation of the South by the KKK. As the
film was shown throughout the nation, it inspired a rebirth of the
KKK, even in northern and western states.
Though
the Federal civil service was much smaller a century ago, Pres.
Wilson instituted segregation inside the Federal system. And at the
end of the war to save democracy, when Wilson sought to insure a
lasting peace through creation of the League of Nations, Wilson
utterly rejected the Japanese proposal for a resolution on racial
equality. At the 1924 Democratic Convention, it took 103 ballots to
choose a candidate other than the KKK favorite.
About
the same time, the Immigration law was corrected so new immigrants
would reflect the composition of the nation in 1890 – more from
northern Europe, fewer from eastern or southern. Asians were
basically excluded. This immigration act was endorsed not only by
the influential KKK, but by the AFL labor unions.
During
WWII, following the Japanese attack on the American fleet at Pearl
Harbor in the territory of Hawaii, there were demands to round-up all
the Japanese on the West Coast, even if they were American citizens.
German and Italian foreign nationals were incarcerated, but not
American citizens of German or Italian heritage. However, liberal
Republican, Earl Warren, Attorney General of California, wanted the
round-up of all Japanese in his state, and liberal Democratic
President, Franklin Roosevelt also thought it a good idea. The
Japanese of the west coast, including American citizens were required
to be relocated into more centrally located concentration camps.
During WWII, most Blacks drafted were assigned to segregated units.
In 1950 there was little doubt that the US was still white man's
country.
In
1954 the US Supreme Court reversed itself, and ruled that separate
but equal was unConstitutional because separating by race was itself
discriminatory. Earl Warren was Chief Justice and all 9 court
members made the decision unanimous. Oliver Brown was suing the
School Board of Topeka, Kansas, showing that segregation was not
limited to the South. Several cases were bundled in this decision.
The court used sociological and psychological data to justify
overruling the Plessy precedent of nearly 60 years. Some on
Wikipedia also note that in the Cold War with the Soviet Union,
America's racial policies were being used against the West,
especially in newly independent nations.
By
1960 large scale civil rights protests began to spread throughout the
nation. New organizations, using Gandhi's non-violent methods,
sought to end segregation by means other than law cases. The
Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), and Student Non-violent
Coordinating Committee (SNCC) became the spearheads in pressing for
change. In 1963 there was a large March on Washington, at which Rev.
M. L. King gave his “I have a dream,” speech, and after the
revulsion following the assassination of Pres. John Kennedy, the
Civil Rights Act was passed in July 1964. The new law provided for
equal opportunity for job applicants, and it outlawed various types
of discrimination. A govt. board would have latitude to interpret
and enforce the law (the EEOC). This seemed to confirm that Levin's
interpretation of the Constitution was enacted into more contemporary
law. However, that era was to be short-lived.
Equal
opportunity and equal rights were quickly supplanted – for they did
not produce the desired equal results. The EEOC soon decided to
scuttle the law they were meant to enforce, and with the help of
liberal judges, turned the law on its head. While the law explicitly
forbade quotas, the EEOC adopted the unsupported and unscientific
view that all groups are equally gifted in all things, and if a group
is less successful in a given endeavor, the reason must be
discrimination, racism, and later sexism. Application of this absurd
hypothesis became the quicksand upon which disparate impact,
critical race studies, diversity and most other affirmative-actions
programs are justified.
When
Blacks failed objective exams, the EEOC sought to throw out the
exams, or claim the exams were biased because Blacks did poorly on
them. Eliminate the exams or make them so easy, that all takers pass
them, and in theory, all are qualified for a post, and then Personnel
(or whatever the latest name for the department), can then hire by
racial quota. Or later, sexual quota. Later, ethnic quota. But
never call them quotas, because the law makes quotas illegal. So call
the quotas “goals and timetables,” or now, “diversity.”
Through Executive Action, Republican Pres. Richard Nixon made this
national policy. The EEOC's method is to force hiring of lesser
qualified minorities or women (all now basically qualified by
simplistic exams) to fill quotas and call the process affirmative
action preferences. Equal opportunity means giving privileges to
lesser qualified candidates. As in Animal Farm, all are
equal, but some are more equal than others.
So
for the last half century in America we have not experienced equality
before the law – we have experienced anti-white and anti-male
racist and sexist laws. These rarely affect the affluent whites, but
have been devastating to the poor and many middle-class whites.
Meanwhile, mass immigration of illegals has destroyed job prospects
for many Blacks.
Beginning
in the late 1960s but reaching a crescendo under Pres. Barack Obama,
police, especially white police officers, became villains in much of
the media and vilified by liberal judges and politicians. In the
movies of the 1930s, there is often a scene where a police officer,
in pursuit of a fleeing criminal, shouts, “Stop! Stop, or I'll
shoot!” The pistol is raised and he shoots. The viewing audiences
accepted this as normal procedure to apprehend criminals. In the
late 1950s to late 60s, it was easy for TV and films to portray
sheriffs, particularly those in the South, as violent, corrupt,
racists. However, by 1970, many began to view all police as racist
bullies.
The
other change occurred in the civil rights movement. In the 1930s,
and 40s, civil rights groups, often led by Communists or those
sympathetic to that cause, tended to be integrated, stressing the
roles of Blacks and whites together. The movement of the early
1960s, more open, less rigid ideologically, also sought integration.
The methods were non-violent, protestors sought to dress in more
middle-class attire, for the point was to present a non-threatening
image. Just push for a more just solution. Not all accepted this
approach, most notably Malcolm X who sneered at the non-violent
students and mocked the “Farce on Washington.” The
segregationist Nation of Islam in June 1961 did invite a few whites
to a mass meeting of 8,000 Muslims in Washington, D. C. The few
whites so honored were members of the American Nazi Party wearing
swastikas on their uniforms. Cartoons in the NoI newspaper depicted
integrating whites with hooked noses and other Jewish stereotypes.
The NoI was a Black Nationalist organization following the path of
the immensely popular Marcus Garvey and his Universal Negro
Improvement Assn. which had massive support in the 1920s. Deported
to Britain, Garvey asserted “We [the UNIA] were the first
fascists.”
After
passage of the Civil Rights Act, integration activist organizations
began to change. One after another chapters of CORE and SNCC
expelled their white members and followed West Indian Stokely
Carmichael's call for “Black Power.” Non-violence too was
dismissed as SNCC became the Student National Coordinating Committee.
But more romance flowed round the California Black Panthers
organization, where members openly carried weapons, speeches were
anything but conciliatory, and behind the scenes, there were
allegations of drug dealing and murder. But rioting and violence
were not limited to the Panthers, or to Blacks, as anti-war protests
blossomed with flower power, which could end in clashes.
By
1970 the Civil Rights Movement had ceased to exist – except in
name. Black Power, Black nationalism, Black racism now paraded under
the false and deceptive banner of fighting for civil rights.
After
the assassination of M. L. King, sections of many American cities
burned. A blue-ribbon panel, the Kerner Commission, studied the
riots and concluded that the root causes were white racism, lack of
minority voices in the media, failure to understand cultural
deprivation in the Black communities, poverty, etc. Even when there
were no riots, Black crime rates soared; one newspaper describing the
phenomenon as a riot in slow motion. In this atmosphere, liberal
Republican Pres. Richard Nixon lobbied the NAACP to support the quota
interpretation of civil rights, and Congress very narrowly passed a
resolution to save the quota-requiring Philadelphia Plan for
construction-worker hires. Nixon then used Executive Action to make
that quota version of affirmative action national policy.
The
courts were caving to the Left, also. The Supreme Court required the
reading of the Miranda warning when police caught a thief or other
criminal - “You have a right to remain silent...” So it was more
difficult to get immediate confessions. Worse, the Supreme Court
even forbade executions as unConstitutional, even though the
Constitution itself mentions the death penalty for a crime. Lunatic
asylums were often closed, and crazy people were left on the streets,
criminals were on the streets after serving little or no time. The
social structure began to crumble with much of the physical
infrastructure. Most important, much of the increasing crime was
committed by Blacks, and when it was interracial, it was
overwhelmingly Black on white crime. Liberals demanded leniency, so
Blacks were punished less. A white murderer was more likely to be
executed than a Black one when some states re-instituted the death
penalty. By the 21st century, Blacks had invented a
knock-out game, trying to knock out a white victim with one punch,
and then show it on YouTube. Sometimes the white was robbed;
sometimes not. Just the joy of beating a white was good enough.
Meanwhile, academics proclaimed, Blacks could not be racists, no
matter what they did. And later the academedia complex asserted all
whites were racists, enjoying white privilege, and implicitly,
deserving to be beaten! And in today's America, is there a “crime”
worse than “racism”?
Basically,
since 1970, America ceased to be a white man's country. But it is
not a nation of equality, it is an anti-white man's country. The
culmination of this trend occurred under the Barack Obama
Administration. Not only had Obama sat for years in the pews of
Jeremiah Wright's church hearing his anti-white sermons, not only had
he had as a major mentor when a teenager, a Black who was a member of
the Communist Party, USA, and who wrote for the CP newspaper in
Hawaii, Obama also had his photograph taken with Rev. Farrakhan of
the NoI, and also marched in Selma beside members of the virulently
anti-white New Black Panther Party. Obama was a strong believer in
the quota system of justice; if Blacks are proportionally in prison
at rates higher than other races, the reason must be racism. So the
Administration, with his Dept. of Justice, Education Dept., and other
agencies were determined to end the “school to prison pipeline”
that placed so many minorities in jails and made it so difficult for
them to get good jobs. Their solution – don't arrest school kids
if they act up, or do a few small things, or curse out their
teachers, or hit them, or hit fellow students, - instead talk to
them, counsel them, help them.
Ann
Coulter's wonderful article (“Racial Quotas in School Discipline
Kills Kids”) explains how this policy – the “Promise Program”
- played out in Florida. The disruptive student with an Hispanic
name (he may look white, but Elizabeth Warren also looks white yet
she used her alleged status as a “Native American” to get
affirmative action minority privileges into Harvard), Nicholas Cruz
was threatening people, disruptive, doing things where he should have
been arrested. But, we don't want to have another minority youth end
in prison, so nothing was done. Cruz was not arrested; he had no
record. So when he went to purchase guns, having no record, he could
purchase weapons legally. Mr. Cruz then shot and killed 17 students
at the Parkland School in Florida. The fault was not the guns, but
the Obama policies that permitted the young man who threatened to
kill others, allowed him to have a clean record so he could purchase
firearms and follow through with his threats – killing 17. Promise
Program, or promise to kill program?
After
the Obama Adm. and media blitz against police, more police, white and
Black are being killed by thugs, and other police are reluctant to
use force against Black criminals because the media, and politicized
Police Chiefs, will make them scapegoats and call them racists.
In
today's America, being a “racist,” is probably more of a crime
than being a murderer. And only whites can be racists. I don't have
space to detail the last 50 years of anti-white discrimination that
has enveloped this land, but one can read some of the horror stories
and the cover-ups in works by Colin Flaherty.
Interesting
too is how the Left still promotes the experiment of a third-grade
school teacher in April 1968. Jane Elliott divided her class into
blue-eyed and brown-eyed students, and the latter also wore a brown
collar, so they could be readily recognized (her class was all
white.). She told the class the blue-eyed students were better,
smarter. She gave them extra play time, and more food. She
belittled the others and encouraged the blues to do so, too. Soon,
the brown-eyed lost interest, did worse on exams, and there was the
self-fulfilling prophesy whereby discrimination, even arbitrary
discrimination, could result in superior/inferior groups. The Left
has learned this lesson with a vengance. Today, in grade schools
some feminist teachers refuse to call on males in their classes,
treating them as threats to the new order. Boys lose interest and
get poor grades. At university, one professor openly wrote how she
stacked the discussions in her classes. She would call first on
Black women, then other women of color, then other women, then men in
similar order. One wonders if she ever got to call on a white male.
I had never heard of the word stacking to mean this overt method of
discrimination, but it had become a new common word for the new
common proctice. Purpose – discriminate and promote hate against
white males.
With
massive immigration, legal and illegal, that followed the change of
the immigration law in 1965, it is predicted whites will become a
minority in the US around 2050. Already, whites are victims of legal
discrimination and much illegal violent crime and continual
academedia smears. The Mandelas of South Africa were cheered in the
US and throughout much of the world. Yet, in election campaigns,
Winnie Mandela sang a song to rouse the voters, “Kill the Boers!”
These were Afrikaner farmers of Dutch descent that have been in
Africa for several hundred years. For sometime now, in the new,
lawless Republic of South Africa, many Boers have been tortured and
killed by Blacks. Recently, the Parliament voted to confiscate the
lands of the Boers. Can the two races live together under the same
government? Or to ask the question in a different manner, if whites
are being deprived of equal rights in the US while whites are still
the majority, what will happen to whites when they become the
minority?
And
what happens in the US after 2050? Can the races live under the same
government?
I
think we can, but only if we return to the notions of the civil
rights movementof the early 1960s, to threat all regardless of race,
color, or creed. To treat all equally, and ignore the results by
race, gender, ethnos. Levin quotes F. A. Hayek with words worth
pondering (201-202): “[O]nly because men are in fact unequal can we
treat them equally. If all men were completely equal in their gifts
and inclinations, we should have to treat them differently in order
to achieve any sort of social organization.”
Levin
makes an easy case in his book by asserting that the views of the
Founding Fathers are the eternal truths, that all are created equal
with unalienable rights to life liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
However, it is clear many of the Founders, and other major figures
in American history believed the races could not live under the same
government equally. And during most of American history, the two
major races, demographically, did not live here equally. Until 1960,
it was white man's country. After 1970, it has become the land of
the anti-white, with physical attacks (violent crime, often
unpunished), theft (“youths” rampage in malls, in stores, atop
cars, riots, mob actions, “protests”). Public schools, public
parks, public this or that have often become no-go zones for whites.
The government takes the taxes, but whites may be denied services
because of threats. And we have only to listen to academics to learn
of “evil” white genes and other excuses to take whatever they
want away from whites. Is the future of America an anti-white, 3rd
world country? If we continue with group rights, quotas, and denial
of the individual, that is the grim future.
The
only way all races can live under the same government is to judge
each individual as an individual, and not by race or quota. If
diversity is such a wonderful asset, why aren't people shouting at
basketball games for more white players so the teams reflect the
general population? More football teams that look like America? If
we want all races to live in peace in America, we must return to the
original meaning of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 – to treat all
without regard to race, color, or creed.
Levin's
book is deceptive because he lays out the Declaration of Independence
as the basis for the eternal truths that he sees working in
Americanism. But for this vision, Levin must ignore the counter view
of America, that it was a nation where various races could not live
under the same government, or if they did, one must be in a superior
position and the others inferior. Some of the same Founding Fathers
expressed these counter views, and one heard it again with Jefferson,
Jackson, Lincoln, Wilson, and more implicity and discreetly in more
recent national figures. This counter theme is not only audible in
words, but in the actions of this nation's leaders. For Levin to
write a worthy book, he should have confronted these counter,
possibly contradictory, eternal truths. Or can they both true?