The latest meme sweeping the blogosphere is the 10 Worst American list, courtesy of All Things Beautiful. I find this an intriguing exercise, and hope my contribution to the discussion provides some enlightenment. I've intentionally excluded living individuals, and military and political leaders from the Civil War. Also excluded was Benedict Arnold, the inclusion of whom is simply too trite.

1) Margaret Sanger -- A eugenist who admired Hitler's racial cleansing laws, she started out to make sure blacks, Jews, Slavs, and other "inferior races" didn't outbreed the superior WASP and Germanic stock that she felt merited a privileged place in American society. her legacy continues in the form of the genocidal organization she started, Planned Parenthood.

2) Aaron Burr -- Certainly a murderer, arguably a traitor, Burr was the prototype for the power-hungry politician out for his own interests above those of the US. Had he managed to beat Jefferson in 1800, it might have been the end of the American constitutional system.

3) Julius & Ethel Rosenberg -- One could argue that the Soviets would have gotten the A-bomb in a few years without these spies, but together with Alger Hiss they made the anti-Communist hysteria of the late 1940s and 1950s seem perfectly reasonable. While their supporters claim that they were framed, the Verona documents make it clear that they were guilty as homemade sin.

4) Alger Hiss -- Betrayed his country to the Soviets for years as he climbed his way through the State Department.

5) Hugo Black -- The only Klansman to serve on the Supreme Court, he is the person responsible for incorporating Jefferson's "wall of separation" analogy into legal dogma. He built his career on the anti-black, anti-Catholic, anti-Semitic platform of the KKK, and never really renounced the religious bigotry that went with that affiliation.

6) Thaddeus Stevens -- This Radical Republican was among the most malignant of his breed in Washington during and after the War Between The States. He was instrumental in implementing harsh Reconstruction policies that ultimately harmed the freed slaves he sought to help, and he was key to the efforts to hamstring Andrew Johnson, leading eventually to the impeachment of Johnson on charges of violating a law that did not apply to his actions.

7) Alfred Kinsey -- Pervert extrordinaire who paid pedophiles to molest kids as a part of his research. His work provided the scholarly justification for the Sexual Revolution, one of the more harmful social developments of the 1960s.

Richard J. Daley -- His corrupt power in Chicago was such that he could provide graft galore and steal a presidential election with impunity. Not even Boss Tweed could manage the latter.

9) Elbridge Gerry -- Ever wonder why they call it gerrymandering? This is the guy who created the practice of drawing political district lines for partisan advantage.

10) J. Edgar Hoover -- For all the good he did, his rogue operation of the FBI gave that agency inordinate power with little supervision. He is the very exemplar of what we should fear in the way of government run amok.

DISHONORABLE MENTIONS: Elijah Muhammad, John F. Kennedy, Joseph Kennedy, Richard Nixon, Nathan Bedford Forrest, Roger Taney, Andrew Jackson, Tim McVeigh, Gus Hall, Al Capone.

Living figures who will be eligible for inclusion five years after their deaths: Michael Moore, Cindy Sheehan, George Soros, Ibrahim Hooper, Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, Louis Farrakahn, John Walker, Jr. Johathan Pollard, Bill Clinton, Teddy Kennedy, Ward Churchill, Jane Fonda, John Kerry, Maxine Watters, Cynthia McKinney.

Posted by: Greg at 06:29 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Confederate Yankee points to this article from the News-Observer about the Wilmington Riot of 1898.

The 1898 riot that killed an unknown number of blacks in Wilmington was part of an organized, statewide effort to put white supremacist Democrats in office and stem the political advances of black citizens.

And in the wake of the riot, white supremacists in state office passed North Carolina's Jim Crow laws.

Those laws disenfranchised African Americans until the civil rights movement and Voting Rights Act of the 1960s.

In a 460-page document released today, the Wilmington Race Riot Commission describes the riot and accompanying coup d'etat as a watershed moment in North Carolina history.

"Because Wilmington rioters were able to murder blacks in daylight and overthrow Republican government without penalty or federal intervention, everyone in the state, regardless of race, knew that the white supremacy campaign was victorious on all fronts," the report says.

Democratic leaders, including News & Observer editor Josephus Daniels, developed a strategic campaign to put white supremacist leaders in the General Assembly and U.S. Congress during the 1898 elections. The Democrats were working to drive out a coalition government of Republicans and Populists, which had the support of black voters.

In Wilmington, Democrats fueled a push against a Republican-controlled city council. The day after the 1898 election, a mob of several hundred white men burned the building of a black-owned newspaper. African Americans in the city fled as the building burned, with families hiding in swamps and cemeteries for days with little more than the clothing on their backs, said LeRae Umfleet, a researcher with the state Office of Archives and History who authored the report.

The white mob overthrew the democratically elected city council and had all black city workers fired. Leading black figures were forced out of town.

No one was arrested for this act of rebellion against lawful authority during time of war (treaty negotiations to end the Spanish-American War were still underway in Paris), and Josephus Daniels, whose active support for white supremacy in the pages of his newspaper led to him being referred to by one historian as the "precipitator of the riot", eventually became Secretary of the Navy for the entire two terms of the Wilson administration.

So the next time you hear Democrats and their allies start talking about the "Bush regime" and "taking back our country", remember that this is their heritage -- they have done it before and will do it again given the chance.

Is it any wonder that they fear the Second Amendment -- for a well-armed citizenry is the bulwark against such nefarious deeds.

Posted by: Greg at 10:07 AM | Comments (18) | Add Comment
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1 The hypocrisy of the Dems knows no bounds. These facts should be known to a lot of people, and let them judge after that. God bless

Posted by: Miguel at Fri Dec 16 23:49:47 2005 (UofLY)

2 As you have pointed out, history repeats itself time after time. With only a few changes, this could easily have been the recorded history of the Mormons being forced to leave Navoo in the middle of winter November, 1838. An extermination order was issued by the governor of Missouri, in effect giving mob rule the power to either kill or force the Mormons out of Missouri.

The point is that even in America, there has been sufficient evidence of hatred run rampant, for the purpose of race or religion it pops up from time to time in some very ugly ways.

Posted by: TF Stern at Sat Dec 17 08:05:55 2005 (dz3wA)

3 Yeah judge a political party on the happenings of 100 years ago. You can do that and we can judge the GOPigs on little things like Teapot Dome, Watergate, and Iran-Contra, difference is your shit happened in order 80, 33, and 18 years ago. G'head make that specios argument you hack ass hole

Posted by: effufucktard at Sat Dec 17 09:04:47 2005 (Sfcu+)

4 Hmmmmm -- so you equate a financial scandal, a second-rate burglary and a policy difference with the murder of 42 blacks and the overthrow of the elected government in a coup d'etat. Nice to know that you hold black lives to be so worthless.

But if you want more recent Democrat shenanigans, might I sugget that you consider the butterfly ballot created in 2000 in Palm Beach County by a Democrat official which is claimed to have disenfranchised thousands, the concerted effort by the Gore campaign to disenfranchise military voters in 2000, a century of Democrat efforts to prevent the passage of civil rights legislation championed by the GOP...

Posted by: Rhymes With Right at Sat Dec 17 12:17:03 2005 (E4lNa)

5 While my friend Effie is a little harsh in his language, any sensible person knows that the democrats of today are not the democrats of 100 years ago, and that your run of the mill racist redneck votes republican these days.

Posted by: Dan at Sat Dec 17 13:25:55 2005 (aSKj6)

6 Yeah -- maybe some of them do, but the party denounces them and works to defeat them when they run for office.

On the other hand, very special racists get the title of "elder stateman" and, when the Democrats have a majority, President Pro Tem of the Senate

Posted by: Rhymes With Right at Sat Dec 17 13:57:34 2005 (E4lNa)

7 Democrats believe in redemption. Byrd has changed with the times, and cannot fairly be accused of racism in his current behavior anymore than Bush should still be tagged with his leaving the TANG so that he could campaign for a racist.

Posted by: Dan at Sun Dec 18 06:18:39 2005 (aSKj6)

8 That's amusing -- given the fact that a courtly compliment to an old man on his 100th birthday (long after changing his stripes and supporting civil rights) was sufficient to get Trent Lott tarred as a racist.

Oh, yeah, that's right -- racist Democrats only believe in redemption for other racist Democrats. Republicans will be accused of racism without any significant evidence whatsoever. I guess I shouldn't be surprised, given that FDR is trumpeted as a friend of the blacks despite refusing to desegregate the military, refusing to push for civil rights or anti-lynching legislation, and putting a known Kluxer on the Supreme Court.

Oh, and by the way, your slur directed against Winton Blount has only one problem to it -- a lack of supporting evidence.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winton_Blount

I guess it is your own blind bigotry that leas you to presume that since the man was a Republican and a white southerner that he must be some sort of racist. I guess that makes you a lying liberal sack of shit, dan.

Posted by: Rhymes With Right at Sun Dec 18 09:24:55 2005 (bSDky)

9 No, RWR, it wasn't blind bigotry that made me call Blount a racist. It was the fact that he was part of the infamous Republican "Southern Strategy", and that he used billboards claiming "A vote for Red Blount is a vote against forced busing . . . against coddling criminals . . . against welfare freeloaders."

You may be surprised that I agree with you that Trent Lott got shafted - it was a stupid thing to say, but it shouldn't have done the damage it did.

And your silly slams on FDR may be answered by the equally silly accusation that Lincoln did not integrate the army, did not support suffrage for women, and was, similarly, a product of his times.

Posted by: Dan at Sun Dec 18 11:50:51 2005 (aSKj6)

10 In other words, you have no evidence to support an accusation of racism against Blount.

Let's look at those three points on the billboard.

1) Opposition to forced busing. A legitimate position, given that such plans broke up community ties and resulted in long bus rides for students based solely on the color of their skin. The major (if unstated) premise of the busing plans was that black students were incapable of learning if not exposed to a sufficient number of white students every day. In addition, it remains a reasonable proposition that the mandate of ending segregation set forth in Brown (designed to get kids sent to the closest school, regardless of race) did not require forced integration (which sent kids away from the closest school because of their race). In addition, the forced busing programs were imposed by judges who took away local control of schools in a fundamentally anti-democratic manner. Opposition to forced busing is therefore not proof of racism.

2) Opposition to coddling criminals. One of the major criticisms of the Warren Court of the 1960s was the emphsis on the rights of criminals and the accuse over the rights of society to punish criminals. The Warren Court revolutionized the criminal justice system in many ways -- but at the cost of making it more difficult to obtain evidence, obtain convictions, and punish criminals. Unless you believe -- as you obviously do, based upon your comment -- that "criminal" and :lack" are synonymous, there can be no case made for calling someone a racist for taking a hard-line on crime and criminal justice issues.

3) Opposition to the welfare state. Lyndon Johnson's great Society programs were controversial -- and, ultimately, a disasterous failure in that they created generational poverty and incentives to avoid getting off the government teat. Exactly as Blount and others warned at the time.

As for the Sputhern Strategy, popular left-wing mythology paints it as a plot to appeal to racism. Actually, it was a plan to strip the Democrats of their southern base by taking a middle ground between the liberal Democrats (Kennedy, et al.) of the North and the racist Democrats of the South (Wallace, maddox, Byrd, et al.). By creating a viable alternative to the racists that controlled the southern Democrats for decades (with the acceptance of the allegedly nn-racist liberal Democrats of the North), the Republicans built a non-racist conservative coalition that dominates American politics to this day.

And as for my points about FDR, i was trying to point out how Democrat Klansmen and other racists have always been embraced byt the Democrat party without really repenting of anything.

Posted by: Rhymes With Right at Sun Dec 18 12:44:28 2005 (bSDky)

11 Hah. You're still defending the billboard. Umm, sorry, I wish I had a way to break this to your more gently, but, YOU LOSE!!!! Your strained arguments don't pass the giggle test.

I don't mean to prolong your pain any further, and, if I were you, I'd probably ignore all this and tell Bush to spy on more citizens, but, anyhow, why did the republicans apologize for the "sputhern strategy" if it was so noble???

Posted by: Dan at Sun Dec 18 17:16:28 2005 (aSKj6)

12 Gee -- now we are into typo flames? That is the sure sign of a losing argument.

As for defending the billboard, you claimed that the points were racist and I explained that they are not.

And frankly, i don't think there should have been any apology for the Southern Strategy. Mehlman bought into the liberal Democrat mythology about it and pandered.

Posted by: Rhymes With Right at Mon Dec 19 02:44:56 2005 (vfAbE)

13 Sorry about the ding on the typo - I thought it was a pretty funny typo. But I certainly don't want to be held up for ridicule based on my typing difficulties, either.

You didn't explain that the billboard wasn't racist, you just came out with the same claptrap a racist back then would have used to excuse the positions.

And the fact that you understand the background and motivations behind the Southern Strategy better than Mehlman does is, to use a carefully chosen word, incredible.

Posted by: Dan at Mon Dec 19 04:20:38 2005 (lw0Ed)

14 Those are the arguments that would have been used because they were true three decades ago. I think it says more about liberals that they believe "Criminal=black" and "welfare cheat=black" than it does about conservatives.

By the way -- pat buchanan recently demolished the "racist southenr strategy" argument.

Posted by: Rhymes With Right at Mon Dec 19 09:09:18 2005 (KJjoZ)

15 Is that the same Pat Buchanan who defends Nazis and admires Hitler? Is that the same Pat Buchanan who called Dr. Martin Luther King a fraud? The same one who thought WMDs were called BLTs? You run in some freaky circles, my friend . . .

Posted by: Dan at Mon Dec 19 10:15:29 2005 (lw0Ed)

16 Defends Nazis -- you must mean the fellow who was "conclusively" proven to have been a sadistic concentration camp guard by the government, only to have that identification thrown out by courts in both the US and Israel.

Admire Hitler? You care to prove that? A quick Google search shows no evidence of that.

As for the King comment, you seem to have taken that one out of context. What i have found is a quote that says others view him that way, not that he does.

And why do I cite him (even though I have little use for him)? Because he was one of the architects of the Southern Strategy. That might give him a certain expertise that we both lack.

Posted by: Rhymes With Right at Mon Dec 19 12:52:06 2005 (axH3w)

17 He may have expertise in race-baiting in the south, but he doesn't have credibility. Not as much as me or you.

Posted by: Dan at Mon Dec 19 14:16:16 2005 (aSKj6)

18 No, Dan, the only race-baiting I see is yours.

Posted by: Rhymes With Right at Mon Dec 19 16:19:55 2005 (o9+7O)

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Let me begin by saying I have long been a fan of historian Niall Ferguson. Here is the sort of analysis that leads me to view him as such a gem, pulled from his critique of Nobel Literature Laureate Harold Pinter's recent anti-American screed.

Nobody pretends that the United States came through the Cold War with clean hands. But to pretend that its crimes were equivalent to those of its Communist opponents - and that they have been wilfully hushed up - is fatally to blur the distinction between truth and falsehood. That may be permissible on stage. I am afraid it is quite routine in diplomacy. But is unacceptable in serious historical discussion.

So stick to plays, Harold, and stop torturing history. Even if there was a Nobel Prize for it, you wouldn't stand a chance. Because in my profession, unlike yours - and unlike Condi's, too - there really are "hard distinctionsÂ… between what is true and what is false".

Bravo, sir. Bravo.

Posted by: Greg at 04:10 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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I pass near to her each day, travelling to and from work.

I've seen her declining over the years.

Now there may be a way to save her.

She is the Bstate's last surviving veteran of both world wars

She is a welcome friend and a formidible foe.

She is a battleship.

She is USS Texas.

The Battleship Texas may soon win a battle that few warships survive.

The nearly century-old dreadnought could be raised from the water and displayed permanently in a dry berth to stop rust from eating its hull.

"Rust is the ship's enemy," said Barry Ward, director and curator of the Battleship Texas State Historic Site. "The drier it is, the better it is."

Commissioned in 1914 and a combat veteran of both world wars, the oft-decorated battlewagon rests at the confluence of Buffalo Bayou and the San Jacinto River near the Houston Ship Channel. It was moored there in 1948 after the U.S. Navy decommissioned it and gave it to the state.

It serves as a floating museum at the San Jacinto Battleground State Historical Park and is operated by the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department.

Help save this piece of American maritime history.

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