Thursday, July 31, 2003

THE DINGELL NON-RESIDENT TROUBLEMAKER LETTER really needs to be read in full. The Weekly Standard quotes it ("Boss Dingell, Iraq, Penthouse, and more," 08/04/2003, Volume 008, Issue 45, closed site):

Mr. Connerly:

The people of Michigan have a simple message to you: go home and stay there. We do not need you stirring up trouble where none exists.

Michiganders do not take kindly to your ignorant meddling in our affairs. We have no need for itinerant publicity seekers, non-resident troublemakers or self-aggrandizing out-of-state agitators. You have created enough mischief in your own state to last a lifetime.

We reject your "black vs. white" politics that were long ago discarded to the ash heap of history. Your brand of divisive racial politics has no place in Michigan, or in our society. So Mr. Connerly, take your message of hate and fear, division and destruction and leave. Go home and stay there, you're not welcome here.

With every good wish,

Sincerely yours,
John D. Dingell
Member of Congress

Mr. Connerly's reply points out the obvious:
Ironically, your advice is the echo of southern segregationists who sought the comfort of states' rights to practice their discrimination against black Americans. . . . There is such an eerie similarity between them and you that it bears comment.

-George Wallace, Lester Maddox and others wwwho shared their rabid and abhorrent views believed in treating people differently on the basis of skin color . . . and so do you.

-They wanted to practice their brand of racccism free from the interference of "meddling, outside agitators" . . . and so do you.

-They called those who disagreed with them and merely wanted to exercise their right to assemble "carpetbaggers" and "non-resident troublemakers" who were "stirring up trouble where none exists" . . . and so do you.

Liberals, like the segregationist Southerners, like to say that they definitely have problems with race, due to the reprehensible behavior of certain poorly conditioned people, but they are solving the problems in their own way. This way hasn't quite solved the problem in past decades, but things were much worse before (in the Reconstruction 1870's or the Jim Crow 1930's) and another few decades ought to do it. And in both cases, the failed solutions were obvious Democratic-party pandering to politically influential groups which actually heightened race consciousness and created most of the problem they purported to solve.

[ http://php.indiana.edu/~erasmuse/w/03.07.31a.htm ]

 

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