Sunday, December 11, 2005

How did the Republicans lose black voters?

While I agree that many members of the Civil Rights movement have devolved into demagogues, I take exception with the notion that the Martin Luther King did more harm than good.

His I have a Dream speech was one of the great moments in American history. The fact that the man was flawed does not change that.

The Republican party was founded in part as the antislavery party and following the Civil War it was difficult to find a black American who did not support the Republican party.

So, what happened?

The first Ku Klux Klan founded in Tennessee in 1865 was rabidly antiRepublican. In fact in 1868 they claimed to have murdered 1300 Republicans. In 1871 US Grant got the Grant Civil Rights Act, also known as the KKK Act, passed to put an end to its influence.

The Hayes Compromise of 1876 was meant to bring the North and South together, but in fact it costs blacks many of the gains they had made and left them feeling abandoned.

The KKK did lose influence until The Birth of a Nation released in 1915 portrayed the organization as the defender of white womanhood and moral values.

The MSM strikes again and the second KKK was born, not a nation.

The second KKK gained most of its influence in the North among Repbulicans where it developed an antisemitic, antiCatholic, antiimmigrant and of course racist philosophy. It reached its peak in 1924 when Klansman Edward Jackson ran as a Republican and won the Governorship in Indiana. In 1926, the Grand Dragon D.C. Stephenson would be convicted of rape and murder. The scandal would do irreparable damage to the Klan. But the attitudes remained.

Lyndon Johnson could not have passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 without Congressional Republicans and yet Barry Goldwater, the Republican nominee was an opponent of the legislation.

I think the Republicans lost the support of black Americans because they were divided at their base. Divided between conservatives who were believers in states rights and suspicious of black activism in particular and change in general which made them vulnerable to the rhetoric of the Klan... and their true self.

Their true self was the reformer who believes in government by the people, for the people. This division is the reason the Democrats got credit for finishing what the Republicans started.

Ken Mehlman said as much in a recent address to the NAACP. He said "We were wrong".

Now conservatives can either accept that and learn from it or they can attack a black preacher who was shot by a white supremist.

92 comments:

Rick Ballard said...

There is little doubt that Goldwater's opposition to and vote against the '64 CR bill was pivotal in moving a large section of the black vote from the Republican column to the Democrat column. His motives for opposition were not racist at all (research his work in Arizona). He saw that the act would result in what in fact did happen. The establishment of a privileged class via Nixon's implementation of Johnson's Executive Order establishing affirmative action.

Piling stricter welfare rules (no man allowed in the house) on top of AA was a central "cause" of the social disintegration that occured in a portion of the black community. It's true that AA also seems perfectly made to fit the needs of the historicists but it is difficult to tie MLK's socialist leanings to Nixon or Johnson's action.

It is interesting to note that the Dems seized upon the black Revs (Jesse and Al are only two of hundreds) as the means to ensure that blacks kept the deal made with LBJ. It is also interesting to note MLK's use of the "Rev. Dr." appellation to advance his image and secure his symbolic status.

Even more interesting is the fact that the black bloc no longer has any weight at all. They traded short term gain for long term loss in the political arena.

chuck said...

David,

There is more than one key on the piano. You should try some of the others now and then.

Unknown said...

Mark:

I refuse to talk to you.

Unknown said...

david:

I have said before that I work for a home health care agency here in rural Indiana.

Most of our clients are white and most of them are on medicaid or medicare.

Many of them have family who have resources, but since the government will pay for their care why should they? Of course if the government did not pay for their care they might not be middle class.

My mother went on medicaid after she had brain surgery that required the use of all of her resources.

She lost everything.

I had to put her in a nursing home because she was blind and required 24 hour care, she was completely dependent on the government at that point.

Was she part of a permanent underclass? Am I because I let the government take care of her? Does the fact that we are white excuse us?

I think that you are giving Goldwater and the rest of them a free pass. If they had done the right thing long before that it would not have been an issue.

Back in the day of agrarian populism teamsters came into being because railroad barons were abusing farmers who needed their grain hauled. There used to be labor riots in this country because people wanted fire escapes at their place of work or regular pay day.

How much easier would it have been to do the right thing in the first place?

Unknown said...

Rick:

Which means what? Because of Goldwater's fear of where the Civil Rights Act might lead black people were to be deprived of the right to vote and own property and get an education unless the local white people said it was ok fine with them?

It was 1964 and blacks were being killed for registering other blacks to vote..what were they supposed to wait for?

Jamie Irons said...

Terrye,

Very valuable post.

Thanks.

Rick Ballard said...

"How much easier would it have been to do the right thing in the first place?"

Why is it the government's responsibility to define or do the "right" thing? In what sense is distributing or assigning personal responsibility to society as a whole "right"? What is "right" or "fair" or "just" about forcing an individual who makes ten times the average income pay twenty times the average tax burden?

"Of course if the government did not pay for their care they might not be middle class."

Of course if the government did not pay for their care, the cost of that care might be so low as to not be a burden. Or health insurance might not be as costly, so that a person who decides to risk going without it would be self-limiting the amount of care they could receive as a function of public charity.

There will always be X% of the population permanently unable to care or provide for themselves, always have been and probably always will be. There is also X+% who will go through periods where circumstance overwhelms even good planning and personal responsibility.

Defining X and X+ is the real problem. Otherwise people will take advantage of the programs to the extent that you note - where children don't take any responsibility for the care of their parents. Of course, "doing the right thing" wrt Medicare also established a political class susceptible to "scare the geezer" demagoguery.

Were the pols who passed it more concerned about "doing the right thing" or creating more rent seekers? The answer lies (IMO) in the original definition of the class to receive the benefit.

Which returns us to the true genius of LBJ - he understood the use of fear upon the general population better than anyone since FDR and possibly better than FDR himself.

Goldwater voted against the CR act of '64 as a matter of principle concerning opposition to the establishment of a special class of citizen. What he feared came to pass with the Nixon enforcement of LBJ's executive order. He voted against the Voting Rights Act of '65 because he felt it to be unconstitutional in that it only pertained to 14 Southern states.

I certainly don't think that the blacks should have waited. It is a true shame that they had to wait as long as they did. The origins of the problem go back to the compromise made by the Founders at the time of the writing of the Constitution. That compromise, because it was rooted in unprincipled assertions backed by an unwillingness (or inability) to deal with economic consequences has proven to be the most expensive political error committed in the history of the country. It was a wrong decision, made on the basis of expediency and we've been paying the price for it ever since.

My only point is that Goldwater was not a good enough politician to have made his votes on the CR bills on the basis of political expediency while LBJ was as masterful and cynical politician as lived in the 20th century.

Doing "the right thing" is an unatural act for good politicians. That's why they consistently screw up when they try it.

flenser said...

"This division is the reason the Democrats got credit for finishing what the Republicans started."

No, it is not. The Democrats themselves were far more divided than the Republicans, yet they somehow were awarded the mantle of "champions of civil rights."

As David indicates, this occured because of our old friends in the MSM, in whose black and white world all Republicans are evil and all Democrtats are pure and noble.

The Democrats were a racist party at their inception, they were racist in the sixties, and they remain racist to this day. To be sure, their targets change over time. But their basic stategy of pitting one group against another has never changed. Jews are just the latest "evil other" the party has found useful.

Unknown said...

Rick:

Well if they are not supposed to do the right thing what the hell is the point?

And there already was a "special class of citizen". He was the citizen who could wear the uniform of the United States, but not buy a house in your neighborhood. He could bleed to death in the parking lot of an all white hospital..but he could not vote.

Hanging all the responsibility on the founding fathers with a laissez faire attitude is exactly what costs the Republicans the black vote. They want it both ways, they want credit for the Civil Rights Act, but they still want to defend Goldwater for not supporting it.

A lot of good that did some poor bastard having to pay a poll tax.

And you know what else? It ain't welfare if it is your mother...I do not know one single conservative who has turned down medicare or medicaid for his family on the grounds of principle.

The truth is too much help can be bad for people, but no help is not only worse.

It is like farming, people hate the subsidies when there is a lot of something... but if there was a shortage or if food prices jumped up like gas the people would be demanding that the government do something. pronto. immediately.

Unknown said...

flenser:

There are racsists in both parties and there are good people in both parties. This should be obvious to any rational person.

The history of the struggle for Civil Rights in America goes way back to before there was a media. Deomonizing the media for centuries of race relations in this country is not really fair.

I don't doubt there are partisans in the media, but they do not control everything... all the time... everywhere.

The refusal of conservatives to take any responsibility at all for their own policy is not any different than it is when some lefty idiot claims the Viet Namese were better off when the Americans ran out on them.

What I am hearing from you and david is that the Democrats with their allies in the media convinced black people that they were really the good guys when in fact the Republicans were walking on water.

Unknown said...

You know I left the Democrat Party because they let people like our pet troll mark take over the party.

But I will be completely honest here, I find some of the comments about black Americans and the underclass as well as the racist Democrats vs the nobel Republicans to be offensive. It is not that simple, that black and white.

Maybe that is me. I might be too sensitive, or maybe not. I do live in Indiana and if the Republicans are going to continue to make an issue of old Byrd and his KKK past, they might do well to remember their own party politics in states like Indiana and Oregon.

BTW, the post I did on my great grandmother...her name was Jemima. Her race uncertain.

Unknown said...

mark:

You are an idiot. Read. Washington freed his slaves at his death and made sure they were educated and cared for.

His attitude was that slavery would become a moral and economic anachronism and would be legislated out of existence over time. In the later years of his life he spent more money maintaining and caring for his slaves than he made using them.

Read His Excellecy George Washington by Joseph Ellis. John Adams by David McCullough also gives a good account of the issue of slavery in the times. It was about a whole lot more than rich men keeping property.

Slavery was not unique to the Colonies which in fact only represented about 10% of the slave trade in those days.


I forgot I am not speaking to you.

chuck said...

Markg8,

Indiana is a finger of the South that extends up into the North. At least I started to drawl when I spent some time with my cousins there.

Terrye,

Good post, BTW. I think that the perception of the Democrats as the party of liberation started back in the Roosevelt administration, with Eleanor in particular. But the major factor, IMHO, was LBJ and the fact that the Democrats were active in the critical period of to 60's. It is the old 'what have you done for me lately' method of choosing sides and I can't say that Blacks choose wrongly at the time. Add to this that many of the segregationist southern Dems switched to the Republicans at that time, helping the modern Republican resurgence. Things change, of course, and Bush is probably the least racist president in history, but perceptions always lag.

So the question is: where is the Republican party now and where should it go? I myself think that AA is, in the final consideration, in deep conflict with fundamental American values and needs to be phased out. The keys to success in this country should be hard work, competence, and a bit of luck; race should have nothing to do with it. On the other hand, there are historic residues that need to be dealt with. To my mind, that means concentrating on promoting good schools, high standards, and strict and uncompromising enforcement of laws against descrimination.

...her name was Jemima. Her race uncertain.

I wondered a bit about that while looking at her picture. Her lips didn't look Irish. What are the family stories?

chuck said...

Markg8,

Slavery, being the universal instituion it is, is still around. What are you doing about it? Someone has to pick up the slack now that the Christian churches that were its main opponents are in retreat.

chuck said...

Where is the Republican party now? Redistricting Texas and violating the Voting Rights Act.

They ain't got nothin' on California and I tend to see it as a response to historical injustice. Think of it as reparations of a sort. Then go read about the election of LBJ to the Senate and see if you don't agree with me. Texas politics isn't for the squeamish.

Unknown said...

chuck:

Redistricting in Texas only represents the political reality. The fact that Democrats can not come to terms with that is indicative of their larger problem.

I think Affirmative Action is an idea that has outlived its usefullness.

And I agree, Bush is not a racist. In fact I would say he has done more to bring diversity into national politics than Bill Clinton ever did.

I think one of the problems the Republicans had was that they did not exactly run off the Dixiecrats. They did not say "You do not belong here, we are the party of Civil Rights."

As for Jemima Sears I have tried and failed to find out where she was from. My great grandfather had been in the Cavalry in Kansas but where this young girl came from seems to be a mystery. The stories were she was creole. The west was so wild back then and life so short people lost track of their own pasts.

Unknown said...

mark:

Democrats worrying about Voting Rights is a real joke, you knwo that don't you?

And btw, if you can not take the abuse.......

chuck said...

why the rest of us don't trust you or your party one iota.

The feeling is mutual. As long as you guys can't get a majority, I'm happy. YMMV.

buddy larsen said...

hey, "Markus" over on RogerSimon--the thread a couple down, with 50-60 comments--just used the word "iota", too. Why, you little shape-shifter, you!

buddy larsen said...

Lessee, nickle-a-word, goo-goo handy, multiple punch-ins like on Joisy union jobs--the fella's a major capitalist! Why, it's like a windowshade factory, you can pull down hundreds a month!

buddy larsen said...

Do they pay off with plywood?

buddy larsen said...

Gad, imagine having to lug around a 4'x8' several-hundred pound wallet! These are MEN we're dealin' with!

buddy larsen said...

(*click*) "Mohammed al-Markus-MarkG8, we have made a large laminated deposit in the usual manner--please produce 300 blog posts immediately!" (*click*)

vnjagvet said...

I agree with most of Terrye's post.

Read Caro's bio of LBJ for an excellent in depth tour through the Civil Rights legislation during the Eisenhower and Johnson administrations. Nothing was passed during Kennedy's thousand days.

It also goes through a history of the roles of the two parties on Civil Rights matters as background.

Mark apparently has different ideas, but I do not think they are well founded, based on my studies in college and law school.

buddy larsen said...

Ah, we're ruining the thread, Peter--we have to stop the sillies or we won't hear back from the Religion of Peas.

buddy larsen said...

Well--threadkiller--sorry--just want to leave you with this extraordinarily monstrous statement from this site, which I hope is not our beloved multi-time-carded set of "Mark" thingies:

"Many of us who spent the '90s in Russia became aware over time that the aim of the United States was to create a rump state that would allow economic interests to strip assets at will. . . .

Some of us who came home after seeing this began to realize that the same process is underway in the United States: the erosion of the tax base, the gradual appropriation of the tools of government by economic interests, a massive, disorganized population useless to everybody except as shoppers. That is their revolution: smashing states everywhere and creating a scattered global nation of villas and tax shelters, as inaccessible as Olympus, forbidding entry even to mighty dictators.
— Matt Taibbi

buddy larsen said...

"...useless to everybody except as shoppers."

Useless? To "everybody"? Who is "everybody?

"...forbidding entry even to mighty dictators."

Aw, gee...what a shame!

buddy larsen said...

How can any psychologically-healthy human being STILL be a Leninist, after the throw-open of the blood-soaked monstrosity that came to final light after 1989, after the KGB began talking openly? How?

Whoever Matt Taibbi is, his statement is that of a sick, evil, satanic prowling vampire, intent on living off the blood of whomever falls under his power.

buddy larsen said...

Jeez, who wants to live in a nation of shoppers, when with just a little engineering, it can be a nation of slaves?

Charlie Martin said...

Back when they were writing the Constitution members of the VA planter class like Washington, Jefferson and Madison couldn't abide the idea of doing away with their way of life and outlawing slavery.

You need to heck your facts again, Mark. Among other things, jefferson thought that forbidding the slave trade would lead to a fading away of slavery. There is no doubt that he was severely conflicted about this, but he was also quick vehement about slavery during the writing of the Declaration.

chuck said...

Back when they were writing the Constitution members of the VA planter class like Washington, Jefferson and Madison

Let us see your class credentials, Mark. We need more labor in the camps and I suspect you qualify.

buddy larsen said...

Man, straight out of Lenin's playbook--hammer and hammer on slavery and the Indians, until the capitalists are so brow-beaten they forget that they had nothing to do with history's great injustices, and become thus ripe for the revolution of the proletariate--which means, Dacha time for you & me, baby! And taters for the masses, and the noose for anybody that can read.

buddy larsen said...

"...you need to heck your facts....'

My candidate for the "truth through typo" award.

"Ahh, ta heck wit da faks", said Markus-the-Multiple, slouching in the shadowed doorway, finishing off the morning's third plywood & sauerkraut samwich, and shrewdly eyeballing the passing pedestrians, waiting for the little old lady sure to come, the one with the loose grip on her purse.

buddy larsen said...

Okay--I suppose that using the same phrase, with the rare word 'iota' in it, almost simultaneously on the two different URLs, could be a co-inky-dinky. My bad.

buddy larsen said...

...or even sillier (and far more dangerously gullible, at best) people assuming that there's two Mo Attas in the same biz, one with an evident record of existence, and the other an utter cipher, totally without sign of being.

buddy larsen said...

Mark-the-Multiple and Simultaneous Mo,

Sittin' in a tree,

kay-eye-ess-ess-eye-in-gee!

(:-D

Charlie Martin said...

Seneca let me make it clear, I was not calling terrye an ignorant slut. I just find her prefacing her posts with insults really bad writing. She's blowing her lede. Better to make your point and relate it to an insult if you really need to vent don't you think?

It's for Terrye to accept your apology or not, but your intention wasn't clear, and since I have the keys to the delete button, it would probably serve you well to be more clear.

buddy larsen said...

Mark, listen to me. The world is huge. The country is huge. The army is huge. The administration, the war, the domestic politics--all are big, big things, percolating with milling tens and billions of people and actions and cross-purposes.

Nobody around here--except maybe me--disrespects your or anyone else's beliefs. but the method of presentation needs to be real, and honest. When it ain't, you become the tool of your enemy, making his point for him.

We want you to be worthy of our time.

To wit: since you plaster assertions all over these threads, and so few of us have the strength to ignore those assertions, then, dammit, quit leaping from the general-to-the-specific and back-n-forth.

If you assert, say, that the war is wrong, then stay with that--answer the ripostes. Rebut the rebuttals, why dontcha.

Digging up some scandal or other is (in the huge flux, they'll always exist, and who wants to play battle-of-the-goo-goo pastes?) not the way to win anything but converts to the notion that you lefties really ain't got sh*t to say.

buddy larsen said...

And BTW, if you'd ever read Mark Twain, you'd see the method in Terrye's eye-pulling writing. You, OTOH, have aped the boilerplate pamphleteer style. Of the two, Terrye's carries, and would even if she were the Wobbly, and you were the Constitutionalist.

buddy larsen said...

Speaking of boilerplate, the sidebar I quoted above has since been taken down at needlenose' site, and replaced by an Ike Eisenhower quote (right next to the big hot pink "Welcome to Porn Valley" ad).

Mark "couldn't find" the original, but, it's up-thread, in full and in 'bold', attributed, in one of posts. I screen-shot it, too, if anyone wants corroberroberation.

buddy larsen said...

Find me a conservative pornographer--at least one whose spiel doesn't smell like a jockstrap full o' cottage cheese--and I'll send a hundred bucks to the Kerry Campaign (and post the transaction).

buddy larsen said...

PS--BTW--I couldn't agree more with the 1954 Ike "Texas Oil Millionaires" warning. He's speaking of the John Birch Society, which several generations of Dem pols--including crucially the near-USA-fatal LBJ--rode to victory over fine, excellent public servants such as Barry Goldwater (who, if anyone ever studied him, will see was anything BUT the 'Bircher on the Button' he was portrayed as).

buddy larsen said...

keedoke, mark--what did you say about terrye burying her lede with an insult? My 'mishmash' is AKA 'stream of Konshusness' and perfect makes sense many as such to. Maybe I'm just rushing your skirmish line?

Nextly, you can repeat "No WMD!" all you want, it ain't pee in a boot, as you WELL know.

(bear in mind, that's just one link off a jillion on the subject.)

Now, lemme axe you, are you this stupid, or that dishonest?

Answer that, and then I'll read the rest of your post with the respect it will then perhaps deserve.

Or, you can let me write your rebuttal "I frankly don't give a damn whether you read my post or not."

buddy larsen said...

So, needleno...i mean mark, how many days did the revolving sidewbar have Matt Taibbi up--and why are you so defensive about it, edging in all these studiedly offhand explanations wrt my references to it? It's above, you can read it--tell us what you think of it. Details, please--give us a 'deconstruction".

Too much work, you say? But, why would it be--you spend hours on board here, you must be advocating something--so why not deconstruct Matt Taibbi
for us? If the position is any good, then it will further your intent to proselytize.

buddy larsen said...

No no, peter--you don't get it. Its very simple; it was too big for its bigness, yet too little for its littleness.

There was a "just right" in there someplace, and everybody knows precisely what happened to it--Bush stole it, hid it in the oatmeal, and then ran off into the woods with the Three Bears.

buddy larsen said...

The Kerry Campaign is over?

buddy larsen said...

And peter, it won't BE him surrendering--it'll be "us". All he'll have to do is whip the tablecloth out from under the Selectric, wrap it around his head, and go frolic in the street with a basketful of plywood christmas cards, casting them like daisies and daffodils at the feet of the Mullahs marching down 5th Avenue.

buddy larsen said...

Yup--that's whut they's up to awright.

buddy larsen said...

Liable to end up with Jeb, tho, it they keep up the attack on the west's fight for the rights of civilization.

Wouldn't THAT be *yet another* slapdown from On High? (:-D

buddy larsen said...

Actually, a pretty good comment on the wild wild East, Mark. Carry on, comrade.

buddy larsen said...

Ahrg...that first line did me a spit-take--i laffed so loud it woke up the hogs and now they're wantin' to be let out.

buddy larsen said...

Well, if Osama's short of armored divisions, he could always, i don't know, say, hijack four 767s and crash 'em into the headquarters of the nation's government, military, and financial systems.

buddy larsen said...

Sharon would have had to send Jackie Mason on an apology tour...to crowds we haven't seen since the Beatles landed in 1964.

buddy larsen said...

ha--the crates of Botox would've been stacked high on those tennis courts that Jimmy Carter had built and then wouldn't let anyone use unless they dropped by the Oval and worked out the sked with the prez.

buddy larsen said...

Yep. all fab four came down, but sadly two have since gone back up.

buddy larsen said...

Mark, I've always been an admirer of slavic culture--all joking aside. Their bitter legacy--beginning with being on the Khan's & Tamerlane's invasion routes, then the Czars tyranny, set 'em up well for absorption into Stalin's nightmare world. Imagine fighting against a Hitler who killed cities in service of a Stalin who killed countrysides. Truly a mad, mad, mad world, and always to be remembered when contemplating the actions of Pooty-poot.

But those Tigers at Kurk were new & few, if you want to sympathize with the cannon fodder, those German teens caught the worst of Kursk by far.

The nazis & commies were two armed robbers unfortunately hitting the same bank at the same time...solution, kill everybody.

buddy larsen said...

Neither of those monsters materialized ex-nihilo, though, Mark, you DO realize, don't you?

buddy larsen said...

They rode to power on the efforts of fools who could see no further than the next day's beanpot. People who placed the personal politics of petty power above the meaning of their "folk" ideals.

buddy larsen said...

The problem is that some do and some don't wannt to "Give Peace a Chance".

The problem is defining "peace', and assigning that definition a relative value.

'Peace' of freedom under elected government held to rule-oflaw, or 'peace' of bondage and starved demoralization?

Besides, Mark, you're a sensitive, has it never dawned on you that 'give peace a chance' might be a warning to NOT accept the 'wrong' peace, so that the 'right' peace may INDEED have a chance?

As in, "give PEACE a chance"?

What kind of 'peace' did we have between 1979 and 2001? A peace with a chance?

buddy larsen said...

"The problem is that some do and some don't wannt to "Give Peace a Chance".

(insert 'not' between 'is' and 'that')

...pranged me whole bleedin' post, that did.

buddy larsen said...

...and the T34 was (*ahem*) an American--some Chrylser engineer--name?--design.

Rauchen Sie DAS, Hitler und Stalin!

buddy larsen said...

The Elefant tank-destroyer/flak vehicles were MK-series chassis, without the complex, expensive, slow-to-produce turret, but mounting the fearsome 88. Often called "Ferdinands"...Ferdinand-the-elephant.

buddy larsen said...

Har! ...have to hold a longeur in mid-measure, and insert "major American metropolitan skyscrapers full of innocent office workers trying to make a buck and meet the mortgage and raise their children", though.

Sounds like a fun party!

buddy larsen said...

har! ...Mooque al-Kaboom...that's cruel...how about Mark-Pac, containing 20 camel filters?

buddy larsen said...

...and an ounce of Russian caviar, with a warning from the Sturgeon General?

buddy larsen said...

...and a compass with OSHA-approved de-magnetized needle, a roll of recycled toilet paper, a map to the Channel inscribed on a Hershy bar, and two plywood prophylactics?

buddy larsen said...

Splinter group, it's too help him mount a Primary Challenge...the lady behind the counter at the unemployment agency.

buddy larsen said...

It's her mind that fascinates him.

buddy larsen said...

Oh, he has been--ever since the Mace came out.

buddy larsen said...

Kulak territory--the idiot nazis could've settled with stalin along one of the river barriers--after all the Ribbentrop/Moltov deal had set precedent--had not the partisans been emboldening stalin by chewing up the wehrmacht's rear. And the kulak remnants would've been the answer, if the aryan ideologists hadn't gone nutz with their own verbal formulae. Fatal flaw--in every criminal enterprise, every criminal mind, every criminal ideology.

Charlie Martin said...

Seneca what apology?

The one that kept us from deleting you from this whole thread.

Given the amount of typing you've done on it now, I'd think you might want to consider that.

buddy larsen said...

Or is the cliche backwards, that, rather than "the criminal mind contains a fatal flaw", that the fatally-flawed mind is apt to be criminal?

buddy larsen said...

Seneca, Larry here--me & Moe UK are gonna look mighty silly picking on a blank Shemp. ;-)

buddy larsen said...

Flush the whole thing--it's embarrassing, anyway--somehow we reverted to sophomores somewhere upthread.

Anonymous said...

But please Sir,that Terrye pulled my hair and Larsen is making faces at me...an, an I haven't had my Ritalin today.
Ah go on!Please Sir,I'll never do it again promise Sir.
Mark.

buddy larsen said...

But, back on tanks, if you want to find precedents for the military being flat unable to always be right all the time, you need look no further than than the "Ronson Lighter", the Sherman that our tankers had to go with, up against the 88 and times three better armor on the german tanks. Sherman may've been our worst mistake of the war, had we not had the tac air supremacy.

Charlie Martin said...

Mark, I'm having a little trouble following your last point. Is it that military intelligence isn't always accurate? Having done intel for a good while, I can promise you we know that. As you say, it can be like two blindfolded boxers in a large blacked-out gym.

The only thing that's worse is trying to deal with real threats with no intelligence whatsoever. As MacArthur's men at Subic Bay in 1941. Or the Poles in 1939.

buddy larsen said...

The Russian aircraft program still continues to stun. Started with the MiG-15 in Korea--where the hell did THAT come from (still to me the most beautiful airplane ever built--save for the art-deco masterpieces B-17 and P-38)?

But soon the Sabre was put against it, and supremacy was back. Again the MiG-21 in VNam--same deal, but the Phantom & Top Gun soon had AF air-supremacy back. I think the FoxBat is what you're talking about--the MiG-25? A big scare, but soon enough the TomCat and Eagle had supremacy back.

Russia fools the lay folks because Moscow still ain't fully plumbed and a Russkie vacuum cleaner wighs 35 tons. But a command system can yank smart 10 year olds and pull 'em together on a project--and whale the hell out of us--for a time.

buddy larsen said...

you say barbarossa guaranteed a death-match--but nazi & commie were in a violent ideological propaganda war throughout the 30s, right up until they made the '39 treaty and went into Poland as instant allies. If eastern front had frozen WWI style, the two could've easily treated. No problem with the public opinion, you see.

buddy larsen said...

USSR could've traded Caucasus, BTW--Soviets were already subverting Iran & it's oil--and the warm-water port NKA Kuwait.

Who'd've stopped em? Maybe the Manhattan Project. So here we are full circle, back in Manhattan.

Charlie Martin said...

(still to me the most beautiful airplane ever built--save for the art-deco masterpieces B-17 and P-38)?

Oh, now that's just silly.

buddy larsen said...

Okay, most beautiful biplanes? WWI-era, British SE-5. I'll try to find a pic--

buddy larsen said...

http://perso.wanadoo.fr/warbirds_en_normandie/1900-1935/Images/Fokker%20Albatros/Se5%207%20sol.jpg

Hard to see it, but she's a two-seater.

buddy larsen said...

From here (use drop menu)

buddy larsen said...

Interesting pictographic element to this flight of two P-38 Lightning squadrons (lead squadron in 'finger-fours')

Luther said...

Sorry Buddy, but finally something I can agree with Markg8 on. The F-86 is much more lovely. Unless of course you have Janet Leigh(?) standing next to her Mig-15 in "Jet Pilot". I was glad John Wayne turned her, but boy, was she a 12 year olds fantasy. I can still remember that white sweater and leather jacket.

buddy larsen said...

Nah, the guy the Shah replaced was the USSR's boy--that's why Dulles had us in the game to begin with. I'm just say IF a stalemate had happened eastern front, the oil needn't've been a truce breaker. But this is all the wildest possible speckle-a-shun.

I'm just talking total package with MiG-15. They weren't 'spose to have things like that--Sabre was a gorgeous plane, but for sports-car design lines, that little 15 was a motor with a man on it that could go high in a hurry. Sabre was better plane, of course--by what 10-to-1 kill-ratio? And that's with MiG alley having a no-pursuit back door for 'em--which mitigated the weak evasion-dive if they hugged the river. and, it Osirak...Orisak is over on the Mohawk...or is that Oriskany? McArthur and the poles, if they'd had the best intelligence in the world, they wouldn't've BEEN outgunned. Best for last, "Jet Pilot", Janet Leigh--oh, man, me, too, I was SO conflicted--she was a RUSSIAN...but...but....

buddy larsen said...

Mark--please--I don't mind batting the birdie back and forth with you, but these long multi-topic refutations are taking a toll on my other duties. I've sat here two straight days trying to extract you from your cherry-picking modus-operandus, but I'm afraid diminishing returns are setting in. Let me answer you in kind: Democrats have forked tongues and long pointy tails, nyahhh!

buddy larsen said...

PS--yes, FDR fought a good war. Better intell would've allowed him to protect Corrigedor. Better Polish intell would've allowed the Poles to concentrate at the schwerpunct. Duh.

The rest of your post is just more BDS baloney. Might as well just say anything--no Jews in the WTC, how 'bout.

buddy larsen said...

Your one-two punch* needs to evolve.

*1)"Many Republicans woke up this morning." (truth, a-priori)

*2)"They then spent the day silently dreaming of ways to harm the nation." (speculation, but following #1, borrowing some sheen of veracity)

buddy larsen said...

Our impasse is over what is meant by "better intell".

You are meaning better tactical intell, I mean better *strategic* intell.

Savak was bad, Shah was a disaster, Dulles boys, all rough stuff.

How much of it would've occured without a hostile, aggressive, war-footed, ideology-driven, thug-ruled, world-domination-fixated (proudly and publicly so) USSR just over the border?

Yes, we did some warped stuff, but it was to hold the line against something that would've been far worse for the world and all the little people in it, had we not.

Quit looking at everything thru your soda straw, mark.

When one includes the context, one has a chance to achieve a little credibility.

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