DavesPaper.com | by Dean Allen | August 20, 2021
[First essay in a series]
The first big assault on American Exceptionalism came in 1965. They called it a civil rights movement. They knew the name would deflect a lot of nice people who would have stopped it cold if it was truthfully described. Civil rights a frontal assault on American culture, pretending to be about race.
The fruit of diversity is division. The apple does not fall far from the tree. Words in our language have meanings. Many of them also have common roots, in which case, the meanings are related.
We regularly hear the drumbeat of propaganda about presumed virtues of diversity. The word diversity shares the same root as divorce, divided, division, diversion, divest, divert, divergent and the like. Not at all the way to build a strong, peaceful nation where commerce flourishes and people rise to become their very best possible selves.
All Americans should have said in the early 1960’s that civil rights was evil and destructive. Since the burden of that particular cultural attack fell disproportionately upon Southerners, the rest of America turned a blind eye to the very real corrosive effect it has had on American culture.
Diversity was doing exactly what it is supposed to do, dividing Americans against each other. Not just White from Black, but north from South. Mainstream churches came down on different sides. Media outlets regularly skewed stories to support one camp, at the expense of the other, inevitably at the expense of truth too.
The corrosive rot sat in. Churches became more concerned with changing contemporary culture, than with spreading the gospel. Media organizations saw the gradual, but discernable, breakdown of the once strong wall between hard news and editorial opinion.
The strongest change was, of course, in the political parties. Voters disgusted with Democrats embrace of socialism, no matter the excuse, decided to leave and become Republicans.
Republicans were unsure what to do with all these new voters knocking at the door, eager to become Republicans. Some within the GOP, sensing majority status in legislative bodies, wanted to embrace the new converts to Republicanism into a proverbial big tent.
More establishment Republicans, content with being the loyal opposition, were much more concerned all these new conservatives would disrupt a delicate balance within the party which allowed them to control the party. The old guard was much more interested in continuing to control the Republican Party. In contrast, conservative leaders like Ronald Reagan and Barry Goldwater, were interested in governing.
The Rockefeller Republicans had no real agenda to govern the whole nation. Conservatives had clear vision for the future of America. We wanted to restore those elements of American culture that had allowed us to civilize a continent and raise the standard of living of the whole world in the process.
Voters leaving one political party, for the other party, are a leading indicator something has gone bad wrong in the party they are leaving. The Democrats were bleeding conservatives at an alarming rate by the end of the decade of the 1960’s.
The very last conservative who ever ran for president of the United States as a Democrat, was Alabama Governor George C. Wallace. In 1972 Wallace opposed Senator George McGovern. McGovern went on to lead the Democrats to the worst defeat they have suffered in modern history. Nixon won 520 to 17 in the electoral college. The Democrat ticket had prevailed only in Mass. and the District of Confusion.
The Democrats were bleeding conservative voters at an even more alarming rate now. Knowing their problem was worst in the South, Democrats nominated the liberal scalawag governor of Georgia, Jimmy Carter. That made the problem worse, not better. Voters fleeing the Democrat Party wanted a candidate with a conservative philosophy, not merely someone from the geographical South. We saw the Carter nomination as insulting and the Carter family embarrassing.
The Carter’s went to Washington like the Beverly Hillbillies went to California. The Carter family made Southerners look like we were all hicks and rubes. There was presidential brother Billy, whose affinity for beer, and lack of long term planning, led on more than one occasion to public urination. The matriarch of the family was a motorcycle riding, Holy rolling, tongue talking, female preacher.
In 1980 Ronald Reagan brilliantly sucked all the remaining conservatives out of the Democrat column, telling them they could now call themselves “Democrats for Reagan.” They came over in droves and never looked back. 1976, was the last time any of them ever voted for a Democrat.
Conservative voters leaving the Democrat Party starting in 1964 was a leading indicator, conservatives had been neutralized inside the party and there was nothing there for them any more.
In contrast, elected officials leaving the party, are a lagging indicator things have changed. They are not driven quite as much by ideology and principles. It is more of a matter of writing on the wall. They are no longer going to be reelected unless they change party labels. Most of those changes were over by 1994, a Republican sweep year.
More tomorrow.
Email Dean Allen at dean.allen_author@yahoo.com
Dean Allen website: http://freedomsource.org/
