Senator Reid Has Party’s Reversed on Slavery, Segregation
The Emancipation Proclamation, enacted by Republican president Abraham Lincoln
John Fund at the Wall Street Journal brings some much-needed truth and perspective on Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s deception in the health care debate.
I’m talking about Reid’s attempt to vilify Republicans for opposing their attempt to socialize health care in America by claiming Republicans are always on the wrong side of history, i.e. fighting for slavery and segregation.
From Fox News:
“Instead of joining us on the right side of history, all the Republicans can come up with is, ’slow down, stop everything, let’s start over.’ If you think you’ve heard these same excuses before, you’re right,” Reid said Monday. “When this country belatedly recognized the wrongs of slavery, there were those who dug in their heels and said ’slow down, it’s too early, things aren’t bad enough.’”
Reid conveniently forgets that it was Republican president Abraham Lincoln who sent more than a quarter of a million Union soldiers to their deaths to secure the freedom of black Americans in the South, and that it was Republican president Abraham Lincoln who signed the Emancipation Proclamation, freeing those slaves.
Fund points out something else Reid “conveniently” forgets:
Historians also faulted Mr. Reid’s curious reference to the Senate civil rights debates of the 1960s. After all, it was Southern Democrats who mounted an 83-day filibuster of the 1964 Civil Rights Bill. The final vote to cut off debate saw 29 Senators in opposition, 80% of them Democrats. Among those voting to block the civil rights bill was West Virginia Senator Robert Byrd, who personally filibustered the bill for 14 hours. The next year he also opposed the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Mr. Byrd still sits in the Senate, and indeed preceded Mr. Reid as his party’s majority leader until he stepped down from that role in 1989.
As to freedom, Fund also points out that while Reid talked about efforts which expanded freedom (which his own party fought against), socialized health care is an assault on freedom, reducing the choices of Americans and robbing them of their hard-earned money to pay for such government largess.
With regard to being on the wrong side of history, we could also point out that it was the Democrat Party who fought tooth and nail every effort of President Ronald Reagan to combat communist aggression in South American and elsewhere in the world, and fought against Reagan tooth and nail in Reagan’s effort to best the Soviets economically and militarily. Consequently, the Democrats were yet again on the wrong side of history when the Soviet Union finally collapsed.
When it comes right down to it, there are precious few examples where the Democrat Party has ever come down on the right side of anything. But as long as you’re unencumbered by facts and a good education, that’s no big deal, is it?
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