So, getting back to the original topic, does anyone here think it was "unfair" of Northwestern University to rescind its offer of an honorary degree to Wright?

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A panda walks into a cafe. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and fires two shots in the air.

"Why?" asks the confused waiter, as the panda makes toward the exit. The panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife manual and tosses it over his shoulder.

"I'm a panda," he says at the door. "Look it up."

The waiter turns to the relevant entry and, sure enough, finds an explanation.

"Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves."

No.

On principle, I am against awarding anyone an honorary degree. It smacks of elitism and privilege, that certain people should be awarded high degrees merely because of their celebrity when we ordinary folks have to put in the time, effort, and money to actually earn our degrees!

Delighted to be of service.

In the future, I expect you'll be a tad more careful what you wish for, too.

Let's start with Strom Thurmond. Is there any doubt in your mind that this man was an unrepentant racist during his entire career? (Yes, I know he fathered a daughter by one of his Black maids in 1925; that only makes it worse.) The platform paper of the Republican party of 1948 upon which he ran for president said this: "We stand for the segregation of the races and the racial integrity of each race." (Redundancy is THEIRS)

How about Jesse Helms? If you didn't know it, Helms was obsessed with race and made it his political weapon of choice. In 1972, as a recent convert to the Republican Party, he won election to the Senate on school busing and kindred issues. In 1990, he aggressively played the race card — broadcasting a TV ad that showed white hands crumpling a job rejection letter — to repulse a challenge from Harvey Gantt, an African-American. And in his five Senate terms Helms led most of the major fights against racial change, opposing the Martin Luther King holiday in 1983 and the civil rights bill in 1991. Seems to me he was pretty clearly a bigot for the entirety of his career also.

Then there's Trent Lott of Mississippi. He's said more than once, that hardcore segregationist Strom Thurmond should have been elected president back in 1948. His exact words were these:
Those ugly remarks were sufficient to lose him his seat as Senate majority leader temporarily...but he regained it before retiring to cash in on his congressional contacts with a lucrative lobbying career.

Oh, but let's go back to the beginning! In his 1964 presidential campaign, Barry Goldwater ran a conservative campaign--part of which emphasized "states' rights" --Goldwater's that was a magnet for conservatives. Although he had supported all previous federal civil rights legislation, Goldwater made the calculated decision to oppose the Civil Rights Act of 1964. His stance was based on his view that the act was an intrusion of the federal government into the affairs of states and, second, that the Act interfered with the rights of private persons to do business, or not, with whomever they chose. In addition, Goldwater's primary delegate slate from the South had no blacks, but was filled instead with white segregationists. Does that sound like the actions of a racist to you? It does to me.

It was Richard Nixon who refined the political subterfuge of Goldwater's losing presidential bid into the Republican Southern Strategy, pandering to angry Southern whites by running on "states' rights," "busing" and "law and order," code for keeping those uppity colored people subservient. It won him two terms in the White House.

When Ronald Ray-Gun announced his campaign for the president, he did it at the Neshoba County Fair, in Philadelphia Mississippi...where Edgar Ray Killen brutally murdered three white civil rights workers 25 years earlier. And he explicitly mentioned "states' rights, a familiar nod and wink to the racist element. When his vice president went on to run for the presidency, one of the particularly scummy aspects of his campaign was the Willie Horton ad, designed to stoke the worst fears of bigots like himself. In a 1981 interview with Lee Atwater, (GOP dirty trickster and role model to Karl Rove) Bob Herbert said the following: "The truth is that there was very little that was subconscious about the G.O.P.'s relentless appeal to racist whites. Tired of losing elections, it saw an opportunity to renew itself by opening its arms wide to white voters who could never forgive the Democratic Party for its support of civil rights and voting rights for blacks." That's only one man's opinion...but can you even begin to disprove it?

I further submit that all of this constitutes anti-American behavior on the part of the Republican Party in calculated and flagrant contravention to the words of Thomas Jefferson contained in the Preamble of the Declaration of Independence of the United States:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal..."

The prosecution rests.

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Thank you.

Well, I don't know about his entire career but there's no doubt in my mind that he was a racist for a significant portion of it.

Well, they have the right to hold silly beliefs. Since I believe there's only one race (the human race), I don't happen to agree with them.

I try intentionally to ignore Jesse Helms.

See my comment regarding Jesse Helms.
See above.

While I believe in states rights, I also believe that the 14th Amendment rightly puts some limits on those rights.

Political pandering is pretty much meaningless. If people are stupid enough to believe what politicians tell them, maybe they should just stay home on Election Day.

I don't doubt that Republicans (and Democrats) have engaged in Anti-American behavior. That's just one more reason why I don't vote for them.

However, the small number of examples you provided doesn't constitute a "goodly" number. Now, how about some 21st century examples?

__________________
A panda walks into a cafe. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and fires two shots in the air.

"Why?" asks the confused waiter, as the panda makes toward the exit. The panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife manual and tosses it over his shoulder.

"I'm a panda," he says at the door. "Look it up."

The waiter turns to the relevant entry and, sure enough, finds an explanation.

"Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves."

So what you're telling me is that you ignore--BY CHOICE--all proof that there are plenty of Republican racists. And for your information, Trent Lott's bigoted remarks and the subsequent stripping of his Senate Majority Leadership DID occur in the 21st century. I'm sure you conveniently by-passed that, too.

I'm not sure there's even any point in discussing this with you further; something about "none so blind..."

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Could we also point out that the civil rights acts in the 60's were approved by a greater % of Republicans than Democrats. You've pointed out a few racists in the republican party. That does nothing for your claim that "most" republicans are racist.

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Set your destination with your heart, get there with your mind.

"The wisest men follow their own direction." - Euripides

Could you post some stats and some links, because try as I might, I find that bit hard to believe. Matters not....what has been taking place in the Repub party,of late, is tantamount to racism, and selectivity.

Wikimedia Error

Here, both parties gave a majority vote for passing it, but the republicans passed it with a much stronger majority.


Seeing as Angel mentioned stuff from 1925, 1948, and 1972, I just figured that any time frame in the last century was acceptible.

__________________
Set your destination with your heart, get there with your mind.

"The wisest men follow their own direction." - Euripides

Please! What significance does that really mean? Certainly there were other pork and legislation for which they were "for", as opposed to being predisposed to support civil rights. Come on. We're talking "Republicans"....not too many KKK'ers in the Democratic Party, you know. ( at least, not "active")