[PEN-L:33057] Re: Trent Lott

["Michael Hoover" <HooverM@xxxxxxxxxx>]

>>> jdevine@xxxxxxx 12/12/02 12:47PM >>>
Bob Herbert in the NY TIMES says:>There are calls now for the ouster of Trent Lott as the Senate Republican leader. I say let him stay. He's a direct descendant of the Dixiecrats and a first-rate example of what much of his party has become.<
For people who don't know, "his party" is Bush's GOP, once known as the party of Abraham Lincoln.
Jim Devine
<<<>>>

trent lott, what he said, the sentiment he expressed,
his bigoted past, his neo-confederate views, etc. are
not real issue...being a dixiecrat descendent is closer
to what this is about but whose party it is moves
away from focus, lincoln's name has potential to
cloud vision but maybe not as much as those partial
to 'honest' abe might think...at stake: 'american
problematic' itself...

u.s. slavery implicated everyone - laws forbid
liberation, laws made it illegal to speak/
write about abolition, 'free states' were
obligated to return fugitive slaves, slaves lived
among populace (europe's slaves were
overseas and 'hidden')...example of
limitations of isaiah berlin's contrasting
'negative' to 'positive' liberty...

slavers were big-time proponents of
former for those like themselves...as
were white citizens generally during
'jackonian era' and beyond in favoring
'limited gov't' because it would not
have means to reduce them to political
conditions of blacks (either pre-civil
war slaves or post-civil war 'second class'
citizens)...black rights have always
required elements of positive liberty
(affirmative action) and present day
battles over affirmative action indicate
that 'majority will' remains opposed
to african-american equality...

as tocqueville suggested more than fifteen
years ago, political problems become legal
ones in the u.s (recall how abolitionists'
trust in constitution left them clinging to
belief that courts would get rid of slavery
on case by case basis)...post-civil war
'reconstruction' amendments and federal
laws ostensibly guaranteeing legal/equal
rights to freed slaves enacted by numerical
minority faction of northern republicans did
not last...

neither emancipation of slaves nor african-
american citizenship rights occurred via
'democratic process'...aboilition of slavery,
although not initially intended, resulted
from civil war and elimination of de jure
discrimination came through courts
(*the* irony of post-ww2 u.s. 'democracy')...

so-called 'southern way of life' is, in many
ways, the u.s. way of life...  michael hoover