Thursday, July 31, 2014

Promenading Progressive Liberal Saviors of the Oppressed


From: bernhard1848@gmail.com

One of the great liberals of the past, Senator William E. Borah, responded to the so-called "anti-lynching bill," with "[T]his is a sectional measure. It is an attempt upon the part of the States free from the race problem to sit in harsh judgment upon their sister States where the problem is always heavy and sometimes acute." During the postWW2 Second Reconstruction those truly interested in resolving race issues saw "the patient process of education and uplifting power of religion" as the most productive methodology.  Bernhard Thuersam



Promenading Progressive Liberal Saviors of the Oppressed

"One of the most telling analyses of damaging [modern-day abolitionist] self-delusion came more than a half-century ago from the late Professor Edward Augustus Freeman, an English historian of note. Writing of "Race and Language," [he] said:

" . . . . nothing can be more shallow, nothing more foolish, nothing more purely sentimental, than the talk of those who think that they can simply laugh down or shriek down any doctrine or sentiment which they themselves do not understand . . . [and] think that all wisdom is confined to themselves and their own clique . . . The most highly educated man in the most highly educated society cannot sneer them out of being."

[There] is little inclination on the part of the self-professed saviors of the Negro to understand the ramifications of a problem which they only know at a distance. Nor is there any manifest desire to see that problem as anything other than a moral mission worthy of a Twentieth Century Crusade – spearheaded by the federal government.

{What] do the Southerners of today get? From BOTH national political parties, from all three branches of the central government, and from self-appointed preceptors in other areas of government, the South gets constant pressure, and incessant vituperation, to yield the few remaining vestiges of State sovereignty, and to submit to the omniscience of a federal authority which grows by feeding on its own parts, all under the spurious label of progressive liberalism.

Indeed, in this age of phony liberalism, and those bellicose "do-gooders" who masquerade under the name of "liberals" are nothing more than dictatorial martinets whose tolerance extends only to those who think as they do.

Loud in their protestations against suppression of speech in their favor, they are just as articulate in their own efforts to deny or denounce the exercise of that same right by those who may be on the other side.

Their concern lies not so much in establishing a climate of free expression, but in exploiting a situation in which they can promenade as saviors of the oppressed.  Significantly, they frequently seem relatively unconcerned over working out a passable solution to a pressing problem, apparently preferring to aggravate the situation so that they can continue to play their self-created messianic roles to the hilt. [Son of a Northern soldier, Richard] Lloyd Jones, publisher of the Tulsa Tribune, had this to say:

"The South makes no move to direct the conduct of the North. Our regional problems are best solved in the regions where they are born. Leave the South alone."

(The Case For the South, William D. Workman, Jr., Devin-Adair, 1960, pp. 131-134)