Leaving
a Democrat Upbringing
Published in Marietta (GA) Daily Journal, 7/29/20
My political
conversion was gradual. Salvation didn’t come to me in a moment. It took two
brothers, a columnist, a presidential candidate, and 7 years to be born again.
A
political junkie by age 13, I grew up under segregationist governors in
Mississippi and studied all of them. Some were serious politicians; others were
showmen. All were segregationists and Democrats.
So were all of
Georgia’s governors until Jimmy Carter’s inauguration day conversion. Arkansas had Faubus, Mississippi had Barnett,
Alabama had Wallace, and Georgia had Maddox and Carter. In fairness, Carter
changed course in his inaugural speech. Nobody can say, however, that he
campaigned as a racial healer. He was one-third segregationist (he praised
Wallace and promised to invite him to come and speak in Georgia), one-third
anti-segregationist (he spoke kindly-when not disparagingly-of Martin Luther
King), and one-third populist (he called his lawyer opponent Carl Sanders
“cufflinks Carl”). .
Alas,
neither the Mississippi, the Georgia, nor the national Democrat party has yet
to acknowledge its racist past. Nary a word was ever raised about the KKK past
of Robert Byrd or South Carolina’s pride and joy, Strom Thurmond, before he
left the party to become a Republican. Today Democrats want every Republican to
apologize for every sin they ever committed, despite their own unacknowledged
racist past.
Typically
when we speak of peace, we’re referring to peace among nations. But today
America’s chief concern is domestic peace. This past Monday night marked the 61st
consecutive night of rioting and violence in Portland, Oregon. The three
networks and the cable stations have shown mere snippets of the nocturnal
lawlessness but online, Breitbart News and other outlets have offered extended
viewing of each night’s hours-long destruction, abuse of police, the burning of
stores, and the dumping of garbage in front of the police and setting it afire.
Democrats are still defending the disorder.
The
carnage is of a magnitude we have seen on television many times, but in other
countries. Surely it appears to the world that America is no longer a field of
dreams. Democrat leaders are absolutely
silent about the carnage. So are most Republican leaders. The destruction,
however, is taking place in Democrat-ruled cities. Democrat mayors and
governors are the ones responsible for quelling the lawlessness.
The
whole picture reminds me of my ideological conflict from age 13 to 20. I grew up
in a Democrat family. Republicans were oddities. Little did we know that our
two older brothers, less than ten years removed from action in World War II,
were changing from Democrat to Republican. They admired Eisenhower. They argued
with our father about race. The war had changed them politically. Democrats
were still fostering the prejudices my brothers had shed because of their
military life.
I
often asked myself, “Who is right? Daddy, or Paul and Pete?” The emergence of
JFK didn’t help any. He was idealistic and appealing, but Paul and Pete were
afraid he, though a war hero, might be a secret racist. After all, he was a
Democrat.
Lyndon
Johnson’s candidacy and presidency settled everything for me philosophically.
Assuming the presidency after JFK’s assassination and elected in his own right
in 1964, Johnson successfully shepherded the Civil Rights Bill through
Congress, but all of his other policies led to what big government always leads
to: centralized power, excessive regulation, and dependency. It was obvious
that LBJ’s future was FDR’s past: government, government, government.
By
age 20 I sensed that America’s Little House-on-the-Prairie spirit and ruggedness
were dying. The Great Society nanny state was the culprit. Dependency on
government was spreading. Black intellectuals like Ward Conerly, Shelby Steele,
and Thomas Sowell have argued that Johnson’s War on Poverty increased poverty,
especially for blacks, because it enabled and heightened a spirit of poverty,
not a “can do” spirit or work ethic.
It
came to pass, however, that conservative columnist William F. Buckley entered
my world, cultivating it for the conservatism of Senator and presidential candidate,
Barry Goldwater. With the help of Buckley’s columns and Goldwater’s little
book, “The Conscience of a Conservative,” I came to know what I truly believed.
I knew that my brothers were right and my father and other Democrats were
wrong.
Today
LBJ’s “children,” (government employees, bureaucrats, public health experts,
Democrat politicians) are insisting we must have an indefinite lockdown. They,
of course, have secure, “essential” jobs. They have no fear of unemployment.
Buckley
and Goldwater’s children are standing at the precipice and are yelling, “Stop!”
My two brothers are looking down – at Portland and other cities – and are
shaking their heads at what is going on in the nation for whom they trudged
across Europe, often going hungry.
Roger Hines
7/29/20
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