Tim Carney wrote an op-ed in the Washington Examiner about conservatism and racism, and the piece was discussed on The Morning Joe Show. Here is premise of Carney’s article:
Liberal commentators will always say conservatives are just a bunch of racists. This is a lie. But conservatives need to do a better job convincing the racists that it’s a lie.
A handful of conservatives, including quietly influential figures in important conservative institutions, were outed last week by leaked emails as participating in a pro-Hitler, nakedly anti-Semitic, and plainly racist email list.
While liberal journalists are prone to inventing racism everywhere, this was no invention. The article in Splinter by Hannah Geis was no smear. It was serious and fair reporting that ought to cause conservatives to ask what we are doing wrong.
Tim Carney may be representative of the fifteen percent of the Republican Party who don’t approve of the overt racism that Trump and the remaining eighty-five percent of the Republican Party are comfortable with. However, what people like Carney have to accept is that they have supported the same party that the eighty-five percent have supported since the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Nixon’s southern strategy built the current Republican Party, and now that strategy is in conflict with what at least some of what Nixon’s grandchildren and
Liberals don’t promote that conservatives are racists. They promote that the Republican Party is racist, and conservatives who are not racist should leave that party. There are conservatives in the Democratic Party, the Libertarian Party and other political parties who are not racists. If the crux of conservatism is that the government should not circumvent the freedom of Americans by intruding in their private lives, I don’t believe liberals would have a problem with that, and in fact liberals would agree with that. The problem is conservatives usually want the government to be involved when they want the government’s help, but they don’t want the government to be involved when they don’t want the government’s help.
Take the example of school choice. Conservatives promote the notion that they support any ethnicity, regardless of income, to be able to attend the school of their choice, and if their choice is a private school, the government should fund that choice, just as the government funds public schools.
The truth is that before the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed, the only private schools in existence were parochial schools that were funded by churches. After the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed, and to this day, many if not most private schools were established for the expressed purpose of not having white children attend schools with black children.
If a public school in a black neighborhood does not measure up to standard of and excellent school, rather than establishing an all-black private school that only accepts exceptional students, we should fix the public school that accepts all students, regardless of their ability to learn. That point as well as privatizing public schools for the purpose of making profits from providing a basic education for all children is what separates liberals and conservatives on school choice. However, conservatives also support private schools that are established solely to prevent white children from attending schools with black children. THAT is racist, and the Republican Party supports that and some conservatives who claim not be racists continue to support the Republican Party that supports that.
All this reminds me of when I was involved in the Teenage Republicans. Hard to say if that exists anymore since I’ve been away from Republicanism since 1963, but in 1961, I was involved in this group. I quit when a bunch of Nazis attended our meeting and proposed something I’ve forgotten what it was, and the motion was tabled. Somehow, this meant that their proposal had some sort of value. At any rate, I was freaked out after that, having a Jewish father and all, so that was my last meeting. The idea that the Republican party had something to do with racism is nothing new. Its inherent racism was just jumped on by Reagan to help him win his election when he started his campaign in Mississippi. He should have been ashamed. They all should have been.
Being Republican back then meant being conservative. The frantic, racist madness of Trump’s GOP doesn’t resemble the GOP of the early 60’s in any way.
Many of the main GOP issues back then, opposing the USSR, reducing deficits, etc. are the opposite of what the party supports today.
And the preview you got back then, of tolerance and now embrace of Neo Nazis and racists has consumed today’s GOP. It has devolved from a legitimate political party to a hateful cult. And much as I am strongly Progressive, it’s healthier for our democracy to have two legit parties instead of only one and a rabid cult.
This is the myth so-called small government conservatives promote. During the cold war ALL Americans opposed the USSR, and there were no budget deficits to speak of. In fact deficits did not become a permanent fixture of our federal budget until the Reagan administration, when he initially cut taxes too much and later had to adjust them upward, but rather than taxing and spending as republicans accused Democrats of doing, republicans borrowed and spent. The level of spending never decline, but rather what was spent on changed, i.e., the old choices between guns and butter, with Democrats preferring butter and republicans preferring guns, or as Eisenhower called it, the military industrial complex.
The United States of America was founded on racism. Slaves who were treated worse than animals, built this country with free labor. There were always a small number of white people who opposed treating humans the way slaves were treated in the USA, but most white people in the USA have traditionally been racists. Although Abe Lincoln’s biological father was supposedly a mulatto slave, Lincoln did not believe the descendants of his biological father (other than himself) would or should ever be equal to white people. Although it is true that the party of Lincoln did more to bring about racial justice for black people before 1964, most of the people in the party before 1964 were also racists.
After 1964, the two major political pretty much organized around one party making efforts to somewhat right the wrongs of prior centuries (and even that was a struggle) and the other party making efforts to continue past injustices. Racial injustice is something this country has never dealt with by having a goal of righting past wrongs. Until we do that, it will always be an impediment to our country being united.