December 03, 2009 06:29 PM UTC

We Believe These Truths to be Self-Evident...

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• by: JO

Except when they’re not to our advantage.

Case in point: the Republican Party, 2001-2009.

Appointed lawyers supervising the civil rights division of the Justice Department during the Bush years consistently suppressed investigations and prosecutions of violations of voting rights laws. ( http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12… ). On the same day, the Times reports that a federal judge in NJ ruled that the Republicans may use voter-suppression tactics only with court permission. ( http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12… ) The two cases were entirely separate except for one thing: both involve the party that likes to claim the mantle of Abraham Lincoln but is now cloaked in suppressing votes–and make no mistake here, we are talking about black votes.

Standard American history goes sort of like this: This is the land of opportunity, where suppressed peoples came to make a new life, taste freedom, make their contribution to the world. Oh yes, we fought a war over slavery.

Non-standard American history goes more like this: South Africa and the United States were two nations ruled by European ethnic groups with large African populations. But practiced apartheid in Dutch, segregation in English. Eventually this suppression of men and women created equal was officially ended, but not without a struggle and not without violence (lynching, for example, is violent).

But it’s all history, right? Dating back to the ’60s? Except. Except in the Bush administration 2001-2009.

Lynching? No. The denial of equal rights, yes. Celebrating the Dixiecrat nominee from South Carolina by the Senate majority leader from Mississippi, yes.

Are all Republicans racists? Possibly not. But we don’t hear them saying so. We don’t hear them leading the charge towards equal rights and equal opportunities. Hell, if they do saddle their horses, it’s looking backwards.