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Thread ID: 3978 | Posts: 12 | Started: 2002-12-12
2002-12-12 05:11 | User Profile
[url=http://www.nationalreview.com/george/george121002.asp]National Review Online[/url]
Can George W. Bush and the Republican party really afford to have Trent Lott (R., Miss.) be its face in the United States Senate? The question has to be pondered as the wannabe Majority Leader tries to dig himself out of his latest mess.
As everyone knows by now, in a Thursday testimonial to the retiring Senate legend, Lott said, "I want to say this about my state: When Strom Thurmond ran for president we voted for him. We're proud of it. And if the rest of the country had of followed our lead we wouldn't have had all these problems over all these years, either."
"These problems?" When Thurmond ran for president in '48, it wasn't as a Republican or Democrat. It was as the candidate of the State's Rights Democratic party ââ¬â founded explicitly to keep Jim Crow alive.
On Friday, Lott spokesman Ron Bonjean tried to cover for his boss with a two-sentence statement: "Senator Lott's remarks were intended to pay tribute to a remarkable man who led a remarkable life. To read anything more into these comments is wrong."
Unfortunately, those words just didn't cut it. The incoming Senate Majority Leader was speaking directly to the moment in time when Thurmond split the Democratic party over Harry Truman's embrace of a civil- rights agenda.
From the Mississippi State Democratic party's official sample ballot for the 1948 election, here's some of the "problems" that Mississippians feared: "A vote for Truman electors is a direct order to our Congressmen and Senators from Mississippi to vote for passage of Truman's so-called civil rights program in the next Congress. This means the viciousââ¬Â¦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."
Perhaps Sen. Lott should ask Alabama-born Condoleezza Rice ââ¬â whose childhood friends were killed in a church bombing ââ¬â if she believes her life would have been better if Strom Thurmond had become president.
So, Monday night, faced with mounting criticism of his comments, Lott issued another apology. This time, it was, "A poor choice of words conveyed to some the impression that I embrace the discarded policies of the past. Nothing could be further from the truth, and I apologize to anyone who was offended by my statement." "Discarded policies" ââ¬â that's a quaint, benign quaint phrase that effectively sidesteps the real horror that was Jim Crow. The new statement itself was very nice and, all things considered, one might give Lott the benefit of the doubt ââ¬â if he didn't have a record, unmatched by any other current leading Republican of paying homage to a romanticized view of the "old South."
That's right. This isn't the first time Lott has been caught up in "a poor choice of words."
*In a 1984 speech to the Sons of Confederate Veterans in Biloxi, Miss., Lott declared: "The spirit of Jefferson Davis lives in the 1984 Republican platform."
*In 1998, it was revealed that Lott had spoken several times to the Council of Conservative Citizens, a "racialist", neo-white supremacist organization. Lott claimed that he didn't know about their philosophy, believing it to be a benign "conservative" group. In fact, he had written a regular column for the CCC's "Citizen's Informer" publication over the course of several years. It's also rare for any member of Congress to write for an outside group's publication without getting an idea of what positions the group advocates.
Furthermore, Lott's uncle popped up to say that his nephew well knew what the CCC was about. Just ten years ago, Lott praised the CCC's philosophy. A year before all this came to light, Lott hosted the CCC in Washington.
Several black Republicans (including this writer, a Republican National Committee staffer at the time) approached Lott to address the problem. He demurred. His office made it clear that the senator had said all he intended to say about the CCC.
Yet Lott plays the "image" game when he feels like it. On at least one occasion, when he was Senate Majority Whip, black staffers were abruptly summoned into his personal office ââ¬â to provide "color" to photos in a media profile.
This is a problem unique to Trent Lott, not a "southern conservative" one. Newt Gingrich of Georgia, and Texans Dick Armey and Tom DeLay, the architects of the 1994 GOP takeover of the House, are all southerners. They've all been attacked for various "sins" against liberal orthodoxy on Medicare, taxes, regulation, etc. But none has left a trail of offhanded racially charged comments. Lott has ââ¬â and doesn't seem to care.
We're supposed to believe that this latest gaffe is "a poor choice of words" ââ¬â one that just happens to pop up over and over again?
Yes, maybe African Americans need to "get over" slavery and Jim Crow. But why can't Trent Lott "get over" the civil-rights movement?
Most people don't expect a 100-year old Thurmond or an 85-year-old Robert Byrd (D., W.V.) to completely escape their racist pasts. But Trent Lott is an adult baby boomer, of the same generation as the current and previous presidents. The leaders of this generation supposedly went through the '60s and supposedly learned a few things about race. That seems true of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. But Trent Lott is waxing nostalgic about the Confederacy and Dixiecrats.
For Republicans who don't want to ponder the potential ramifications of race on the party, consider that this is a man whose cluelessness extends beyond racial matters:
This is the same Trent Lott who oversaw the continual shrinking of the Senate Republican majority between 1996 and 2000.
This is the same Trent Lott who seemed oblivious that a frustrated Jim Jeffords would bolt the party, and had the Senate over to the Democrats.
This is the same Trent Lott who ticked off social and defense conservatives in 1999: As Air Force Lt. Kelli Flinn was being court-martialed for having an affair with a married man and lying about it to a superior, Lott declared that the military had to "get real." Rather than punishment, Lott felt that "at the minimum, [Flinn] ought to get an honorable discharge."
George W. Bush and his guru-advisor Karl Rove have to ask if this is a man who should have a prominent position in the "new" Republican party. It's not as if there aren't more interesting alternatives: The ideal choice would be telegenic Bill Frist of Tennessee. As chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, he helped restore the GOP majority. (The one downside for Frist is that the surgeon may be too smart for the position. As one veteran Senate staffer put it, "The smart guys don't win these leadership races because it would be too intimidating to the other senators. You have to be just smart enough to do the job, but not so smart as to make the other members of the club feel inadequate.")
There's also Kentucky's Mitch McConnell, the incoming Senate Majority Whip. He's a forceful champion of free speech, especially in opposition to the McCain-Feingold version of "campaign-finance reform."
Even outgoing Whip Don Nickles of Oklahoma would be an improvement ââ¬â and someone who pushes real tax reform. In other words, these are people who have some genuine ideas and can be good spokesmen for the party and its principles. In all cases, they'd be a significant improvement to lead the GOP.
Ultimately though Bush, Rove, and Co. have to ask: "Do they want someone who deserves to be Senate Majority Leader ââ¬â or a man who seems to continually fantasize being white majority leader?"[url=http://www.libertypost.org/cgi-bin/readarticle.cgi?101+7092]LibertyPost[/url]
2002-12-12 06:12 | User Profile
Well, he could always say to hell with the GOP and change to an Independent or (gasp) America First Party. I bet he'd get re-elected, too.
If he keeps speaking his mind, the publicans liable to run an opponent against him in a primary anyway.
2002-12-12 06:20 | User Profile
Makes more sense to post this here instead of opening up yet another Lott thread...
Trent Lott - This Black Man's Perspective
By J.J. Johnson, Sierra Times Editor in Chief Published 12. 11. 02 at 10:24 Sierra Time
By week's end, incoming Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-MS) will be politically beaten up so badly that it'll be hard to show his face in Washington, let alone hold on to his majority chair. On the left, the big bats are swinging over remarks made at Strom Thurmond's 100th birthday celebration - the story that just won't go away. Even well known Republicans are finding his comments "indefensible".
But from this black man's ranch, his comments don't need defending. They should be addressed - honestly.
Here's what started the whole mess.
"I want to say this about my state," Lott said last Thursday. "When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him. We're proud of it," he said to applause. "And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn't have had all these problems over all these years either." - Trent Lott.
Since Thurmond ran for President in 1948 on the 'segregationist' ticket, the statement makes Lott look like a racist, according to pundits.
For the record, I do not believe Trent Lott to be a racist, but here's the shocker: Even if he was, I wouldn't care. Since I don't live in Mississippi, I don't have a say in who should represent that state in the U.S. Senate. But it's the last part of his statement that should be examined thoroughly: "And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn't have had all these problems over all these years either."
You see, the black loud mouths now clogging the airwaves are calling for his head, which is easier than addressing the fact that 'forced integration' was a seed that did cause many other problems over the years. It's not polite these days to talk about riots, civil-rights demonstrations which in turn gave an excuse for the "women's liberation" movement (assisted in the breakdown of families and turn abortion into an industry), "gay rights" movement, frivolous lawsuits from both sides, legislation that discriminates against while males, turning Supreme Court nominations into circuses, the destruction of large segments of the black community, labor regulations that have crippled the manufacturing base in this country, and an all-knowing, all powerful federal government having no respect for the rights of states.
That's right - state's rights: The key platform of the defunct 'segregationist party'. Democrats today call this 'racist', yet we still do not see the Republican Party giving an endorsement to a "white congressional caucus", exploiting blacks merely for votes, tolerating avowed black racists to hold seats of power in their party, or having a scumbag of a white house resident and proudly calling him, "The First Black President". Nor do we see most republicans legislating programs that have set the movement for black equality on its ear.
I won't list many of the ills plaguing the black community at this time, but virtually all of it can be directly related to the Democratic Party - the one now pointing the finger at Trent Lott.
You will hear the elite among us say how forced integration was a good thing. I remember forced integration. I remember being pulled from my home, away from my friends and family to a strange neighborhood. I remember it being more difficult for my parents to be active at my school - being so far away and all. I remember the race riots. I remember going from one year yearning to get a good education, to a year later wanting only to escape that schoolhouse every day.
Democrats will rail against the segregationist party, and the media will repeat their platform that "No federal bayonet will force a Negro into our homes." In the late 40's and 50's, it was part of the Southern battle cry. Then again, the south held the greatest percentage of blacks in white homes. The key word in the above statement was the word "force". Sure, maybe they were maids, butlers, gardeners, etc. But they got paid, and they weren't over 50 percent of the prison population while being only 13% of the overall population.
No, we dare not talk about such things. Let's just beat up on Trent Lott.
Perhaps the "problem of these years" as Trent Lott said, was the ongoing 'balkanization" of this country due to the new tyranny of 'political correctness'. All of it having to do with the states not having the right to dictate their own affairs. If you didn't like it, you had the right to freely move to another state. Not any more.
I suspect there are many other blacks who took Lott's comments with a grain of salt. He clearly has the support of many black in his state - a state that voted to keep the confederate banner on their state flag - with the help of black voters last year. But you won't be hearing too many of those voices in the media.
However, in my opinion Lott's statement has caused problems for the Republican Party, and it is they who should step in to correct the matter. As his apology has been accepted by this black man, but he didn't need to give one. Much more troubling than his statement is the fact that he has now given a cadre of black liberals (and their pandering white counterparts) a platform on which to pontificate. I was just getting comfortable turning on a television and not having to listen them. It is for this reason, and this reason only, that this author feels the Republicans should not give the Democrats what they want - Lott's resignation. They should, however elect a new Senate Majority Leader (from the South or the West), and then reach out to the black community that has been used and abused by the real 'segregationist party' for the last 40 years.
If I lived in Mississippi, this black man would cast a vote for Trent Lott proudly, but if it's worth getting Jesse Jackson & company off the airwaves, the Republican Senate should choose another leader. After all, aren't there more important issues to be discussed?
2002-12-12 07:36 | User Profile
Funny how this BS comes from National Review Online. What a sad descent that publication has undergone since the 50s and 60s when Buckley defended the South and state's rights and even affirmed this a White Man's civilization. Details are over at [url=http://amren.com]http://amren.com[/url] on this matter.
**Perhaps Sen. Lott should ask Alabama-born Condoleezza Rice ââ¬â whose childhood friends were killed in a church bombing ââ¬â if she believes her life would have been better if Strom Thurmond had become president. **
Suggestions like this always go right up my ass. Frankly, I don't give a damn about Dr. Rice, not because I have anything against her or against Blacks, but because I don't think that's what politics is about. Politics is about securing your own interest and the interest of those you care about, by extension. And those ties and connections tend to have boundaries and limits, and these have historically followed racial and cultural borders, regardless of what the egalitarians might wish and hope. People can whine and moan and preach about the common good and all that idealistic crap, but at the end of the day, that's just not the way it works. Anybody who thinks of looking out for the other guy all the time while ignoring their own interests is asking to be screwed. It's suicidal, misdirected altruism. And you can't care about everybody, because if everybody's your brother, then you have no brothers. Dr. Rice can take care of her own interests and advocate those for herself and her brethren just fine. If I'm obligated to factor in her people's interests, then who will look out for mine? Jesse Jackson? Martin Luther King, Jr's. Ghost? I don't think so. Everyone can have an interest, except White people.
Yet Lott plays the "image" game when he feels like it. On at least one occasion, when he was Senate Majority Whip, black staffers were abruptly summoned into his personal office ââ¬â to provide "color" to photos in a media profile.
This fool makes it sound like it's solely an opportunistic move. Okay, sure that's one element, being that Lott is a politician in this PC day and age so he has to burn incense at the right altars and bow before the right idols if he's to remain in good graces with our Overseers. But that's not all there is to it--the whole "include people of color in the picture thing" is motivated by a desire to avoid legal liability and the like, since there are activists out there who will scream there aren't enough Black faces in the picture. Don't blame Lott for a larger problem: Whites are beaten dogs at this point who grovel before TPTB in reference to all these taboos Lott's innocuous comments seem to have run afoul. Of course, the most desirable and honorable thing for Lott to do isn't apologize but tell his critics to screw off, which of course he won't do--so Lott is blameworthy to that extent. Call it a lost opportuniy on his part to strike a blow for an American renaissance, no organizational pun intended.
But Trent Lott is an adult baby boomer, of the same generation as the current and previous presidents. The leaders of this generation supposedly went through the '60s and supposedly learned a few things about race.
Quite the opposite: that particular generation learned nothing about race, but forgot everything previous generations of Americans stretching back to the Founders knew about it. It was a period of mass insanity, deliberate amnesia, and a radical break with American tradition and institutions, and it constituted a major leap toward the Gates of Hell for this country--not to mention for the stock of people that founded and built it. As someone born in 1977, I curse that criminal, treasonous generation that came before me and I seek to use everything available to me for the rest of my life to undo everything those despicable hippie types did.
**Ultimately though Bush, Rove, and Co. have to ask: "Do they want someone who deserves to be Senate Majority Leader ââ¬â or a man who seems to continually fantasize being white majority leader?" **
Tell ya what, let's dump Bush, Rove, Sharon, and Co. instead. And please, bring us a white majority leader--that's precisely what the doctor ordered. No, Lott is not he, he's too soft and out of it for that. But Lott has done something valuable with all this--he's exposed the balance of power in this country, made visible and conscious the mental and spiritual chains that now bind down the White man. More and more people see this "apology" litmus test. We'll know the tide is turning when the next Lott down the road says he's not going to apologize, and, in fact, it's the Left and pseudo-Right that owes us the apology.
2002-12-12 11:54 | User Profile
**Perhaps Sen. Lott should ask Alabama-born Condoleezza Rice ââ¬â whose childhood friends were killed in a church bombing ââ¬â if she believes her life would have been better if Strom Thurmond had become president. **
Your friends would be alive today, Condi....since a segregationist President would have ensured a South free of racial unrest and church-bombings.
Much more importantly, blacks today would be more self-sufficient than they are now. How easy it is to forget that 'segregation' didn't mean "keep the niers down" but "keep them apart"...and that **meant true black communities, with black-owned homes & businesses and safe streets, and real 'community leaders': business and clergy, not the rib-sucking rabblerousers who seized the vacant throne afterwards. Which was only vacant because Jewish 'civil rights' taught you dependance and weaned you from responsibility and normal ambition.
The great "boon" of integration...for blacks.... is that the generations that followed could now push brooms in the McDonald's, Wal-Marts and Rite-Aids that subsequently flooded into black areas and drove black entrepreneurships into the grave marked JIM CROW. No amount of welfare and setasides could hope to replace or even approach the self-reliance that comes from membership in a healthy (if separate) society based on family, church and entrepreneurship.
2002-12-12 17:05 | User Profile
How come nobody's brought up Senator Robert Byrd's name yet? Here's a guy who flat-out used the "n-word" on Meet The Press. Then, it's revealed he's a former KKK member.
Lott has done neither. I swear, the Stupid Party is reknown for leaving their own out to dry. McAuliffe said the James Byrd dragging ads in Texas were legitimate and fair. Gore telling a black church in Memphis that a strict constructionist "sounds a lot like reconstruction"
Yet these f-ers never get any flack. We can blame the media all we want, but it's the Stupid Party that believes they have to play in a rigged game they can't win.
-Jay
2002-12-12 17:43 | User Profile
Gore telling a black church in Memphis that a strict constructionist "sounds a lot like reconstruction"
Gore said that? Hold the show! His Dem speechwriters need a remedial U.S. History post-1865 course. Reconstruction was the effort by the Union (urged by Radical Republicans in the Congress) to punish and impose its mores on the South--the Klan fought Reconstruction--it wasn't something they supported. Efforts at Reconstruction were pro-Black. Gore's comment makes no sense--it's a glaring historical gaffe. I'm not surprised at the context in which Gore made this remark, though--only Blacks could swallow something like that. Who was the pastor, Don King? I can see him now, saying, "That's ergregious racist reconstructamation!" I'm sure it went over quite well with his audience.
2002-12-12 23:46 | User Profile
This whole business with Lott is no surprise. First of all, apologies are worthless; it's just a way of saying "We've just kissed and made up; now get lost". It's just common protocol for any major figure to do that when he says something that isn't p.c.
Honestly, I don't think anything Lott said about Thurmond was wrong. His words echo the sentiments of a great many people who have to hide their views for fear of persecution. For a country that prides itself on being "free" and "democratic", it sure seems like the Soviet Union to me.
That NR piece was comical; I think the writer, in reference to his remarks on Condoleeza Rice and her friends being part of a church burning/bombing-whatever-, should wonder whether that church was destroyed by a fellow Negro, for they sure seemed to do their part in those oh-so-horrific black church burnings. <_<
2002-12-13 04:01 | User Profile
What Frontpagemag read have said:
GoPostal: [url=http://www.frontpagemag.com/GoPostal/?ID=5057]http://www.frontpagemag.com/GoPostal/?ID=5057[/url]
Related threads:
So What If Thurmond (Or Goldwater) Had Won? [url=http://forum.originaldissent.com/index.php?act=ST&f=3&t=4868]http://forum.originaldissent.com/index.php...t=ST&f=3&t=4868[/url]
Lott under fire [url=http://forum.originaldissent.com/index.php?act=ST&f=3&t=4779]http://forum.originaldissent.com/index.php...t=ST&f=3&t=4779[/url]
More Lott [url=http://forum.originaldissent.com/index.php?act=ST&f=3&t=4854]http://forum.originaldissent.com/index.php...t=ST&f=3&t=4854[/url]
2002-12-13 04:05 | User Profile
PaleoconAvatar,
Yes that was a great article.
The Decline of National Review [url=http://amren.com/natlreview.htm]http://amren.com/natlreview.htm[/url]
In fact, the National Review of the 1950s, 60s and even 70s spoke up for white people far more vigorously than Pat Buchanan would ever dare to today. The early National Review heaped criticism on the civil rights movement, Brown v. Board of Education, and people like Adam Clayton Powell and Martin Luther King, whom it considered race hustlers. Some of the greatest names in American conservatism?Russell Kirk, Willmore Kendall, James Kilpatrick, Richard Weaver, and a young Bill Buckley?wrote articles defending the white South and white South Africans in the days of segregation and apartheid. NR attacked the 1965 immigration bill that opened America up to Third-World immigration, and wrote frankly about racial differences in IQ...
?Why the South Must Prevail?
A famous example of the early NR stance on race was an unsigned editorial of August 24, 1957, titled ?Why the South Must Prevail.? It was almost certainly written by Mr. Buckley, since he uses similar language in his book Up From Liberalism. The editorial argued against giving blacks the vote because it would undermine civilization in the South:
?The central question that emerges . . . is whether the White community in the South is entitled to take such measures as are necessary to prevail, politically and culturally, in areas in which it does not prevail numerically? The sobering answer is Yes?the White community is so entitled because, for the time being, it is the advanced race. It is not easy, and it is unpleasant, to adduce statistics evidencing the cultural superiority of White over Negro: but it is a fact that obtrudes, one that cannot be hidden by ever-so-busy egalitarians and anthropologists.?
?National Review believes that the South?s premises are correct. . . . It is more important for the community, anywhere in the world, to affirm and live by civilized standards, than to bow to the demands of the numerical majority.? ...
But Mr. Buckley?s magazine stood firm. A book review from the July 13th issue of the same year?1957?by Richard Weaver was called, ?Integration is Communization.? Mr. Weaver found Carl Rowan?s Go South to Sorrow ?a sorry specimen of Negro intellectual leadership,? and went on to express deep suspicion about the whole integrationist enterprise:
? ?Integration? and ?Communization? are, after all, pretty closely synonymous. In light of what is happening today, the first may be little more than a euphemism for the second. It does not take many steps to get from the ?integrating? of facilities to the ?communizing? of facilities, if the impulse is there.?
He concluded with a restatement of the principles of voluntary association. ?In a free society, associations for educational, cultural, social, and business purposes have a right to protect their integrity against political fanaticism. The alternative to this is the destruction of free society and the replacement of its functions by government, which is the Marxist dream.? Government?s current ?civil rights? powers to limit freedom of association have, indeed, brought virtually every corner of our lives under bureaucratic control, but would NR dare say so today?
Likewise in 1957, Sam M. Jones interviewed segregationist Senator Richard Russell of Georgia. In a Q&A format, Mr. Jones asked, ?Do the people of the South fear political domination by the Negro or miscegenation or both??
Senator Russell replied, ?Both. As you know, Mr. Jones, there are some communities and some states where the Negro?s voting potential is very great. We wish at all costs to avoid a repetition of the Reconstruction period when newly freed slaves made the laws and undertook their enforcement. We feel even more strongly about miscegenation or racial amalgamation.
?The experience of other countries and civilizations has demonstrated that the separation of the races biologically is highly preferable to amalgamation.
?I know of nothing in human history that would lead us to conclude that miscegenation is desirable.? ...
?Brown, as National Review declared many years ago, was bad law and bad sociology. We are now tasting its bitter fruits. Race relations in the country are ten times worse than in 1954.?
In the 1960s NR continued to oppose the civil rights movement and the assumption that race could somehow be reduced to irrelevance. A July 2, 1963, editorial declared: ?The Negro people have been encouraged to ask for, and to believe they can get, nothing less than the evanescence of color, and they are doomed to founder on the shoals of existing human attitudes?their own included.? Race, as AR continues to point out, cannot be made not to matter, and NR once understood that.
An article by James Kilpatrick in the September 24, 1963, issue argued that the Civil Rights Bill (eventually passed in 1964) should be voted down. He wrote, ?I believe this bill is a very bad bill. In my view, the means here proposed are the wrong means. . . . In the name of achieving certain ?rights? for one group of citizens this bill would impose some fateful compulsions on another group of citizens.? After it passed, an editorial declared: ?The Civil Rights Act has been law for only a little over two months, yet it already promises to be the source of much legalistic confusion, civic chaos and bureaucratic malpractice.?
...
Do go to the AR site and read the rest
2002-12-13 15:26 | User Profile
Originally posted by PaleoconAvatar@Dec 12 2002, 17:43 > Gore telling a black church in Memphis that a strict constructionist "sounds a lot like reconstruction"**
Gore said that? Hold the show! His Dem speechwriters need a remedial U.S. History post-1865 course. Reconstruction was the effort by the Union (urged by Radical Republicans in the Congress) to punish and impose its mores on the South--the Klan fought Reconstruction--it wasn't something they supported. Efforts at Reconstruction were pro-Black. Gore's comment makes no sense--it's a glaring historical gaffe. I'm not surprised at the context in which Gore made this remark, though--only Blacks could swallow something like that. Who was the pastor, Don King? I can see him now, saying, "That's ergregious racist reconstructamation!" I'm sure it went over quite well with his audience.**
No what he actually said was something along the lines of "when I hear strict construction of the constitution, I wonder if these people are talking about reading the document as it was when certain people were only 3/5 of a person"
2002-12-13 15:50 | User Profile
Originally posted by oldrightlibertarian@Dec 13 2002, 11:26 > Originally posted by PaleoconAvatar@Dec 12 2002, 17:43 > Gore telling a black church in Memphis that a strict constructionist "sounds a lot like reconstruction"
Gore said that? Hold the show! His Dem speechwriters need a remedial U.S. History post-1865 course. Reconstruction was the effort by the Union (urged by Radical Republicans in the Congress) to punish and impose its mores on the South--the Klan fought Reconstruction--it wasn't something they supported. Efforts at Reconstruction were pro-Black. Gore's comment makes no sense--it's a glaring historical gaffe. I'm not surprised at the context in which Gore made this remark, though--only Blacks could swallow something like that. Who was the pastor, Don King? I can see him now, saying, "That's ergregious racist reconstructamation!" I'm sure it went over quite well with his audience.**
No what he actually said was something along the lines of "when I hear strict construction of the constitution, I wonder if these people are talking about reading the document as it was when certain people were only 3/5 of a person"**
Thanks for that clarification--that makes more sense, at least in the context of Gore saying it.