It is truly amazing how hard the people at PragerU work to undermine the truth. Case in point: one of their more popular 5-minute videos titled, "The Inconvenient Truth About the Democratic Party." You can watch the video yourself, here.
It's almost exactly the same nonsense I debunked four years ago when Dinesh D'Sousa attempted this same historical rewrite. You can see that blog post here.
Once again, we are treated to the history-bending meanderings of Carol Swain, professor of political science and law at Vanderbilt University. According to Swain, the Democratic Party was the party who, back in the 1800's, 1) defended slavery, 2) started the civil war, 3) opposed reconstruction, 4) founded the Ku Klux Klan, 5) imposed segregation, 6) perpetrated lynchings, and, much later, 7) fought the Civil Rights Acts.
As usual, Carol is only half right. The half she is ignoring is that northern Democrats opposed all of the items on her list.
The break between northern and southern Democrats had been brewing for decades before it came to a head in the years just before the Civil War. But the break finally occurred in 1860, when liberal Democrats in the north and conservative Democrats in the south broke down over the issue of slavery. When the Southern Democrats couldn't get their way at the 1860 convention, an extra-militant group of them known as the "Fire Eaters" staged a walkout! The Southern Democrats then held their own convention, and elected their own candidate, John C. Breckenridge, who had been the vice president under James Buchanan. The Northern Democrats picked Stephen A. Douglas as their candidate. Douglas was so opposed to the expansion of slavery in Kansas and elsewhere that he came up with the "Freeport Doctrine," which basically said that the Dred Scott decision by the Supreme Court could be circumvented simply by not funding any police force meant to enforce slavery or the recapture of runaway slaves! Naturally, the Southern Democrats weren't going to have anything to do with that! The split between the Northern Democrats and the Southern Democrats was one of the key factors which allowed Abraham Lincoln to win a plurality, take the Electoral College, and become the 16th President of the United States.
Had this break not existed, Lincoln would not have won.
After the Civil War, the Democratic Party reunified, but there was always an uneasy split, and an uncomfortable alliance, between the liberals of the North and the conservatives of the South. What unified them was Christian values, and a desire to help the poor as Jesus taught.
When abortion got added to the mix in the 1980's, all that changed.
The Republican Party, it should be noted, had a similar, if less divisive split, with northern Republicans being largely anti-union conservatives in favor of big business, and southern Republicans being liberals who opposed Jim Crow laws, albeit quietly (because open opposition might get them killed).
While it's true that Southern Democrats defended slavery, opposed reconstruction, and imposed segregation, they did not, by themselves, start the Civil War. The Civil War was started by a matrix of parties and interests, all of whom agreed that imposition of federal laws upon southern states' rights regarding slavery was going too far.
It is also not true that Democrats founded the Ku Klux Klan. True, its founders were mostly Southern Democrats, but not all of them. And, it should be noted, at its height, the Ku Klux Klan was most popular, not for its stance against Civil Rights, but for its stance against the Catholic Church! The KKK was seen as a W.A.S.P. movement! Not necessarily an anti-black one.
Swain points out that in the Dred Scott decision, the seven Supreme Court justices who voted in favor of Slaves being property were all Democrats, while the two who opposed the decision were Republicans. That's barely true, because both parties were relatively new at that time. Technically, most of the justices were actually Whigs! But of the seven "Democrats," four were from the south: James Wayne (Georgia), John Catron (Tennessee), Peter Daniel (Virginia), and John Campbell (Alabama). The three from the North, Samuel Nelson (Pennsylvania), Robert Grier (New York), and Chief Justice Roger Tanney (Maryland), all predated the northern/southern Democratic party split due to their advanced age. Their opinions were less about being Democrats and more about being elderly conservatives.
Swain points out that John Wilkes Booth, who shot Lincoln, was a Democrat. She again fails to note that he was a Southern Democrat. And Lincoln's successor, Swain adds, was also a Democrat (back when a vice-presidential candidate was often a member of the opposing party). She neglects to mention that Johnson was born and raised in North Carolina, and later ran for office in Tennessee, making him a very definite Southern Democrat.
Yes, Johnson opposed Lincoln's plan to integrate the freed slaves. Yes, he and the Southern Democrats opposed the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution. But again, Swain absolutely neglects to point out that these were all Southerners, and that the Democrats in the North largely supported these measures! Swain's claim that "these measures only passed because of universal support from the Republicans," ignores the fact that there weren't all that many Republicans in Congress at the time, and that if it weren't for Northern Democrats, these amendments would have failed!
Yes, most African-Americans who were elected to Congress after the Civil War were Republicans. Swain correctly points out that Democrats did not elect a black man to Congress until 1935. (Actually, 1934, because Arthur Wergs Mitchell, the Congressman in question, didn't take office until 1935.) What she deliberately overlooks is that this was two years after Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected, and his New Deal brought African-American voters over to the Democratic Party in substantial numbers for the first time.
By the mid 1930's, the Democratic Party was beginning to change.
Swain goes on to point out that, after the Civil War ended, Democrats roared back into power in the South, and enacted many restrictive laws against the newly freed slaves, including poll taxes, literacy tests, property restrictions, and of course, Jim Crow laws. She points out that the founder of the Ku Klux Klan, Nathan Bedford Forrest, was himself a Democrat. But guess what she neglects to mention? That's right! She leaves out the fact that these were Southern Democrats, and that the Democrats to the North disagreed with all of it!
Yes, Woodrow Wilson was a racist dick who screened "Birth of a Nation" at the White House. Yes, he was a Democrat. But he was also a pre-FDR Southern Democrat! The persistence of Carol Swain's refusal to acknowledge this simple fact of history is remarkable! It is a deliberate and malicious attempt at taking a giant eraser to much of American history.
Swain then delves into what she perceives as Democrats' opposition to the Civil Rights Act of 1964. I have already dealt with that in a previous blog post, so I'll keep it brief, here. Swain points out that over 80% of Republicans and less than 70% of Democrats voted for the Civil Rights Act. She says that the only serious opposition to the bill came from Democrats. She is correct in that the filibuster of the Senate bill was organized by Democrats. But guess what? She neglects the "southern" part of that equation, yet again! And while 80% sounds like more than 70%, we must remember that Republicans were a minority in both House and Senate. Only 41% of the House of Representatives were Republicans, and in the Senate, it was only 33%. So while 80% sounds laudable, both parties still passed the Civil Rights act with overwhelming majorities. And again, the Southern Democrat equation cannot be ignored. Unless your name is Carol Swain, that is.
But then Carol Swain tells the biggest whopper of all! She says, "But then, Democrats came up with a new strategy. If blacks are going to vote, they might as well vote for Democrats. As Lyndon B. Johnson said, "I'll have them Ni**ers voting Democrat for 200 years.' So now, the Democratic party prospers on the votes of the very people it has spent much of its history oppressing."
Okay, LBJ was a weirdo, and a bit of a racist himself. But he stuck with JFK's promise to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to implement the Civil Rights Acts. When push came to shove, he did the right thing. And yet again, she ignores that the Democratic votes which opposed blacks were 1) SOUTHERN, and 2) CONSERVATIVE. In the Dixie South, votes were driven by Jesus, and White Folks.
Oh, one more thing, the reference LBJ thing should remind us all of one overriding truth: DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR. WAS ALSO A DEMOCRAT!
When Christian Conservatism turned to the Republican party to endorse its fight against abortion in the late 70's and early 80's, it sealed the deal which completed the transformation of the racist Southern Democrats into dog-whistle racist Southern Republicans!
Swain says, "Democrats falsely claim that the Republican party is the villain, when in reality, it's the failed policies of the Democratic party that have kept blacks down. Massive government welfare has decimated the black family, opposition to school choice has kept them trapped in failing schools, politically correct policing has left black neighborhoods defenseless against violent crime."
Let's unpack all this: Has government welfare really been the thing which drove apart black families? Not quite! Most government assistance goes to white people! In 2015 (the most recent numbers I could find) 24.9 million whites were on government assistance vs. 11.2 million blacks. And in 2017, 6.2 million working-age whites were lifted above the poverty line in 2014 compared to 2.8 million blacks. If welfare is driving apart families, why isn't it white families that are being driven apart?
It turns out that black women married at a higher rate than white women during the 1950's! This tapered off in the 60's, and really began to go south in the 70's and 80's. Why the sudden decline? The answer, of course, has to do with economics, not welfare. In the 70's, white flight took white residents out of the cities, taking many jobs with them. Globalization and the sending of central-city manufacturing jobs overseas certainly didn't help, either. Young black men without a job are neither inclined to marry, nor are marriage material. Young black women who want to marry find that men without employment are not good prospects as husbands. And, of course, targeted policing took many men of marriageable age out of the equation. It's hard for a black man to marry and support a family from behind bars.
Let's not also forget the Republican elephant in the room - abortion. With Republicans increasingly insisting that young black teenage mothers not abort their fetuses at 15 and 16, the number of unwed black mothers shot way up. Contraception has always been one of the surest means to bring economic prosperity to the poor - but Republicans will have none of it!
What about school choice? Is that keeping blacks trapped in failing schools?
School choice is an interesting concept. Put forth by economist Milton Friedman, it pits schools against each other in competition to see which among them teach better. Ideally, this should mean that all students benefit. But is that the case?
As it happens, no. What charter schools tend to do in school choice situations is known as a "three-week drop." The charter school receives the voucher payment from the family of the student. Then, if the student needs extra help with his or her learning, he/she gets dropped after three weeks! The charter school gets to KEEP the voucher money! And the poor student? He or she has no choice but to go BACK to the public school system, which has no choice legally but to accept that student, for free. Thus, the public schools do not improve with this kind of "competition." Instead, the public schools get shat upon, while the charter schools get to artificially inflate their academic achievement numbers. The students who get kicked out lose, the drop out rate among those kids rises, poverty increases in the neighborhood, and so does crime and hopelessness.
There must be a better way.
And there is! Imagine if white people were still living predominantly in the inner cities. The higher cost of education there would simply be passed off as the higher cost of city living! Instead, with blacks dominating inner city schools, the higher cost is presumed to be a failure of the overall system.
I call bullshit!
The solution is to ante up the money for the best damned schools available within the cities! Yes, it costs more, but it also pays off, more! And consider, it will also integrate cities, as whites in the suburbs come back to the cities to take advantage of the best schools available!
It's a win-win!
Allow me to plug the idea of boarding schools. They are proven to work. They shut out problems like gangs, drugs, and poverty. Students in a boarding school have two worries: their next homework assignment, and their next test. And that's the way it should be! Yes, boarding schools cost more, but they REALLY WORK! And if, for the same amount of money as 10 failing public schools, you can buy 6 really great boarding schools which work well, would you be willing to pony up the money for the remaining four?
I'd bet you are!
You see, school choice is really a way of streamlining schools, not improving education. It essentially says, "We'll fund education, but only if it doesn't cost one, single dollar more than is absolutely necessary!"
Swain really tied a Gordian knot with her run-on phrase, so let me loosen the last loop: "politically correct policing has left black neighborhoods defenseless against violent crime."
Now, she could be referring to the recent movement to "defund" excessive policing from the inner city due to its proven inherent, structural racism. But Swain did this video back in 2017, long before George Floyd became the poster-child for everything wrong with the structure of policing. No, by "politically correct policing," she can only mean the removal of racial profiling. That's honestly what she means by "leaving black neighborhoods defenseless against violent crime." She really thinks that cops roughing up more black kids is going to help prevent crime?! Well, time proved her wrong, didn't it?
Swain could have had a real argument against the Democratic party if she'd chosen to argue that centrist Democrats, like Bill Clinton or Joe Biden, went along with Republican anti-crime efforts in the early 90's with their efforts at building "Super-Max" prisons, and solving crime by locking more of it up. All this really did was create a new industry of private jails which has become a new form of oppression against black people. ("Orange is the new black.") But then again, had she made that argument, she would have to defend Republicans who went along with it, too. Perhaps she just doesn't want to deal with that little problem.
"So when you think about racial equality and Civil Rights, which political party should come to mind?" asks Swain.
I think we know the answer to that one.
Look, if Swain had confessed the past sins of the Republican party, and made a pitch that the Republican party of the future was committed to returning to the anti-slavery and Civil Rights platforms of its pre-Nixonian past, she might have a case. She might even win over a few legitimate converts. Hell, as a fiscal conservative, even I would find that sales pitch appealing! But instead, she chooses to - yes, the phrase is appropriate - white wash the past, pretend that the Republicans never appealed to the Southern Conservative Democrats or persuaded them to change parties, both for the sake of segregation and, later, abortion.
And furthermore, it was all concocted to make Republicans seem non-racist in the era of Donald Trump, the most obvious racist president we've ever had, and that includes Nixon, Wilson, and Andrew Jackson!
Hey, Carol! Want to make the Republican party REALLY seem anti-racist? Then FIRE TRUMP! Start over!
Meanwhile, I hope Carol enjoys her 30 pieces of silver. May she use it to buy a Potter's Field.
Eric
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