American the Beautiful

America The Beautiful
by Joan Swirsky - joanswirsky@cusc.org
November 7, 2008

“The sun will come out tomorrow,” Little Orphan Annie sang in “Annie,” the long-running Broadway classic.

Well, on the morning of November 5, the sun wasn’t shining for over 55-million Americans, including me, who voted for a McCain-Palin administration. But the sun was blazing in another way for the historic election of Barack Obama as the first person-of-color to be elected President of the United States.

For those who witnessed, as I did, the violent racial strife of the 1960s, the assassinations of the most ardent advocates of minority civil rights, and also the redemptive messages and effective actions of Martin Luther King, Jr., a Republican, it is stunning to realize that, not 40 years after blacks were being murdered for aspiring to equality, a person-of-color has been elected to the highest office in the world.

And for those of us lucky enough to have also witnessed men walking on the moon, the fall of the Soviet Union, and the invention of the Internet, President-elect Obama’s election is yet another affirmation of the exceptionalism of America – its limitless opportunities, God-given freedoms, bountiful generosity, and the essential optimism and decency of its citizens.

For nearly two years, our electorate has watched and listened as the candidates presented their versions of the American Dream, explained or rationalized their past and current associations, and defended their stupefying verbal gaffes.

Like other conservatives, the American Dream I prefer is about small government, low taxes, a free-market economy, domestic-energy independence, a judiciary that strictly interprets the Constitution, and value for the life of the unborn. But the American electorate – besieged by a shaky economy and entranced by a charismatic “change” agent who stood for none of these values – strangely opted for a candidate who touts big government, high taxes, strict curbs on domestic drilling (and the destruction of the coal industry), leftwing Supreme Court justices in the mold of Ginsburg and Stewart, and a remarkable disdain for the value of in-utero infants.

It almost makes you believe that the people who voted for Obama have been living in an alternative universe. After all, under the first six years of President Bush’s stewardship, the economy soared to heights previously unknown, consumer confidence was at an all-time high, unemployment levels were unprecedentedly low, and the affordability of both gas and food was never a topic of conversation. But from the minute Democrats gained control of Congress in 2006, the downward spiral began:

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Consumer confidence plummeted.
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The cost of regular gasoline soared.
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Unemployment escalated by 10%.
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Households saw $2.3 trillion in equity value evaporate through stock and mutual fund losses.
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Home equity dropped by trillions of dollars and untold numbers of homes are in foreclosure.
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Food prices skyrocketed over 30% in 1 year.

In spite of this, our electorate selected a man who promises a trillion dollars in new spending and draconian tax hikes on the most productive members of our society. His election inspired plenty of dancing in the street – both here and overseas – but the stock market reacted by taking the greatest plunge in history after a presidential election. It’s going to take a whole lot of “hope” to get us out of this Democrat-created mess!

That said, if the Supreme Court decides that Mr. Obama meets the Constitutional mandate of being a legal citizen of the United States – an issue that has still not been resolved – I wish him good health, as well as wisdom and strength, in the daunting tasks that lie ahead of him.

If The Supreme Court Decides…?
At this point, Supreme Court Justice David Souter's Clerk informed Philip J. Berg, the lawyer who brought the case against Obama, that his petition for an injunction to stay the November 4th election was denied, but the Clerk also required the defendants to respond to the Writ of Certiorari (which requires the concurrence of four Justices) by December 1. At that time, Mr. Obama must present to the Court an authentic birth certificate, after which Mr. Berg will respond.

If Obama fails to do that, it is sure to inspire the skepticism of the Justices, who are unaccustomed to being defied. They will have to decide what to do about a president-elect who refuses to prove his natural-born citizenship.

“I can see a unanimous Court (en banc) decertifying the election if Obama refuses to produce his birth certificate,” says Raymond S. Kraft, an attorney and writer. “They cannot do otherwise without abandoning all credibility as guardians of the Constitution. Even the most liberal justices, however loathe they may to do this, still consider themselves guardians of the Constitution. The Court is very jealous of its power – even over presidents, even over presidents-elect.”

Also remember that on December 13, the Electoral College meets to casts its votes. If it has been determined that Mr. Obama is an illegal alien and therefore ineligible to become President of the United States, the Electors will be duty-bound to honor the Constitution.


Giving Credit

Mr. Obama’s victory on November 4 has been attributed not only to his own personality and message of “change” and “hope,” but also to a highly efficient ground operation, an uncritical – indeed fawning – leftwing media, and the ability to raise a staggering $650 million (much of it from foreign sources, the names of whom have still not been reported). Also unreported, but a crucial part of his success, has been the heroic work done – historically – by Republicans.

It was a Republican, Abraham Lincoln, who sacrificed everything – including his life – to fight a Civil War that ended slavery.

As documented by Diane Alden for Newsmax.com:

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During the Civil War, Republicans planned the most significant amendments ever to our Constitution and enacted – despite fierce opposition from the Democrats – the 13th Amendment to ban slavery, the 14th Amendment to protect all Americans regardless of the color of their skin, and the 15th Amendment to extend voting rights to African-Americans.
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“Every man that wanted the privilege of whipping another man to make him work for nothing, and pay him with lashes on his naked back, was a Democrat. Every man that raised bloodhounds to pursue human beings was a Democrat. Every man that cursed Abraham Lincoln because he issued the Emancipation Proclamation was a Democrat," wrote Robert Ingersoll in 1876.
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For its first 80 years, the Republican Party was the only one to provide a home for African-Americans. Until well into the 20th century, every African-American member of Congress was a Republican. The same was true for nearly all state legislators and other elected officials.
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In 1888, Republican Senator Aaron Sargent introduced the "Susan B. Anthony" Amendment to the Constitution, according women of all races the right to vote. Strong Democrat opposition to what would become the 19th Amendment delayed ratification until 1920.

But that’s ancient history, you say. Okay, how about the 20th century?

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In the 26 major civil rights votes after 1933, a majority of Democrats opposed civil rights legislation in over 80 percent of their votes, while the Republican majority favored civil rights in over 96 percent of the votes. See here and here.
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When President John F. Kennedy was a senator from Massachusetts, he could have voted for the 1957 Civil Rights Act pushed by Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson, but he didn’t. This Act only passed with the help of Republicans. After JFK was elected president, he failed to suggest any new civil rights proposals in 1961 or 1962.
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In 1963, Kennedy decided to act on the 1964 Civil Rights Act, but faced a filibuster by southern Democrats. Republicans favored the bill, which would have failed without their votes.
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Hubert Humphrey, a member of Congress when Democrats held both houses of Congress, admitted that, “without the leadership and help of Republicans,” legislative efforts “would have been watered down or failed because of obstinate Democrats – i.e., the Dixiecrats.”
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The fact that Democrats are quick to take credit for the Civil Rights Act and for the civil rights movement itself is both phony and a self-absorbed vanity,” Alden says.
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The Republican Leader in the Senate, Everett Dirksen (R-IL), wrote the 1960 Civil Rights Act, and was the person most responsible for defeating the Democrat filibuster against the 1964 Civil Rights Act. The 1964 Civil Rights Act passed the House of Representatives with 80% Republican support but only 61% of Democrats.
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In the Senate, 82% of Republicans supported the bill compared to 69% of Democrats.
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Similarly, the 1965 Voting Rights Act was supported in Congress by a higher percentage of Republicans than Democrats. Democrats vigorously opposed Republican efforts to protect the civil rights of African-Americans, from Reconstruction until well into the 20th century. In much of the country, racist Democrats virtually destroyed the Republican Party, which did not become a force in those areas until President Reagan's message of freedom and equality prevailed in the 1980s. Today, the Republican Party continues its historical commitment to civil rights at home and around the world.
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In 2004, [America celebrated] the 150th anniversary of the GOP as well as the 50th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education – a watershed of the modern-day civil rights movement. In May 1954, former Republican Governor and GOP vice presidential candidate Earl Warren, appointed Chief Justice by Republican President Eisenhower, wrote this landmark decision declaring that "separate but equal" is inherently unconstitutional. To help enforce this principle, the Eisenhower administration drafted the 1957 Civil Rights Act and guided it to passage over a Democrat filibuster.

The Four S’s
In Why Martin Luther King, Jr. was a Republican, Frances Rice, Chairman of the National Black Republican Association, tells us that, “in that era, almost all black Americans were Republicans. Why? From its founding in 1854 as the anti-slavery party until today, the Republican Party has championed freedom and civil rights for blacks. And as one pundit so succinctly stated, the Democrat Party is as it always has been, the party of the four S's: Slavery, Secession, Segregation and now Socialism.” Rice continues:

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It was the Democrats who fought to keep blacks in slavery and passed the discriminatory Black Codes and Jim Crow laws.
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The Democrats started the Ku Klux Klan to lynch and terrorize blacks.
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The Democrats fought to prevent the passage of every civil rights law beginning with the civil rights laws of the 1860's, and continuing with the civil rights laws of the 1950's and 1960's.

It was Republican President Dwight Eisenhower who pushed to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1957 and sent troops to Arkansas to desegregate schools.
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Much is made of Democrat President Harry Truman's issuing an Executive Order in 1948 to desegregate the military. Not mentioned is the fact that it was President Eisenhower who actually took action to effectively end segregation in the military.

President Kennedy was opposed to the 1963 March on Washington by Dr. King that was organized by A. Phillip Randolph who was a black Republican.
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President Kennedy, through his brother Attorney General Robert Kennedy, had Dr. King wiretapped and investigated by the FBI on suspicion of being a Communist in order to undermine Dr. King.
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In 1968, after riots broke out in Tennessee where a teenager was killed, Democrat Senator Robert Byrd, a former member of the Ku Klux Klan, called Dr. King a "trouble maker" who starts trouble, but runs like a coward after trouble is ignited. A few weeks later, Dr. King returned to Memphis and was assassinated on April 4, 1968.
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Although affirmative action now has been turned by the Democrats into an unfair quota system, affirmative action was begun by Nixon to counter the harm caused to blacks when Democrat President Woodrow Wilson in 1912 kicked all of the blacks out of federal government jobs.

It was Republicans who founded the historically Black Colleges and Universities.
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Critics of Republican Senator Barry Goldwater who ran for president against Democrat President Lyndon Johnson in 1964, ignore the fact that Goldwater wanted to force the Democrats in the South to stop passing discriminatory laws and thus end the need to continuously enact federal civil rights legislation.

President Johnson, in his 4,500-word State of the Union Address delivered on January 4, 1965, mentioned scores of topics for federal action, but only thirty five words were devoted to civil rights. He did not mention one word about voting rights.Then in 1967, showing his anger with Dr. King's protest against the Vietnam War, President Johnson referred to Dr. King as "that Nigger preacher."
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Contrary to the false assertions by Democrats, the racist "Dixiecrats" did not all migrate to the Republican Party. "Dixiecrats" declared that they would rather vote for a "yellow dog" than vote for a Republican because the Republican Party was known as the party for blacks. Today, some of those "Dixiecrats" continue their political careers as Democrats, including Democrat Senator Robert Byrd who is well known for having been a "Kleagle" in the Ku Klux Klan.
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Republican Senator Strom Thurmond defended blacks against lynching and the discriminatory poll taxes imposed on blacks by Democrats. If Senator Byrd and Senator Thurmond were alive during the Civil War, and Byrd had his way, Thurmond would have been lynched.

“Today,” Rice says, “Democrats, in pursuit of their socialist agenda, are fighting to keep blacks poor, angry and voting for Democrats.” In 2004, they blocked passage of a bill to renew the 1996 welfare reform law that was pushed by Republicans and vetoed twice by President Bill Clinton before he finally signed it. They are opposed to school-choice opportunity scholarships that would help black children get out of failing schools, and they blocked Social Security reform, even though blacks on average lose $10,000 in the current system because of a shorter life expectancy than whites (72.2 years for blacks vs. 77.5 years for whites).

“Democrats have been running our inner cities for the past 30-40 years,” Rice adds, “and blacks are still complaining about the same problems. Over $7 trillion dollars has been spent on poverty programs…with little, if any, impact on poverty.”

These are facts – you know those pesky little things that liberals abhor. But in spite of the Democrats’ historical racism, their abominable record in serving the needs of the black community, and their obvious inability to handle our economy, there’s a new Democrat in town, once again promising the moon.




Will The Sun Come Out Tomorrow?

Mark Alexander, the publisher of www.patriotpost.us, quotes George Washington, who said: "We should never despair. Our situation before has been unpromising and has changed for the better, so I trust, it will again. If new difficulties arise, we must only put forth new Exertions and proportion our Efforts to the exigency of the times."
Alexander, ala FDR, calls the election of Barack Obama “a date which will live in infamy.” “Liberals have elected a Socialist with deep ties to cultural and ethnocentric radicalism, and his executive and legislative agenda pose a greater threat to American liberty than that of any president in the history of our great republic.

“Obama has twice taken an oath to "support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic" and to "bear true faith and allegiance to the same." He has never honored that oath, and, based on his policy proposals and objectives, he has no intention to honor it after again reciting that oath on 20 January 2009. Obama seeks to, in his own words, "break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution."

My perspective is not so bleak. We still have an influential conservative media, a growing number of exciting conservative stars on the political horizon, and an electorate that voted in huge numbers for a Republican candidate who was outspent by multimillions, shamefully savaged by a biased media, and distrusted by many of his fellow Party members. We won’t make that mistake again! And we won’t make the mistake of not reminding the electorate just how contributory we Republicans have been in fighting the Democrats to bring about true racial justice in our country.

Until and unless the socialists among us take away our rights, my country will always be America the Beautiful to me.


About the Author

Joan Swirsky, is a Featured Writer for The New Media Journal. A New York-based author and journalist, she was formerly a longtime health-and-science and feature writer for The New York Times Long Island section. She is the recipient of seven Long Island Press Awards.
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