Confederate Control of Polling Places?

Writing in the Atlantic magazine, Ari Berman says that, on a recent visit to Chapel Hill NC, he discovered that Southern states are planning to suppress voting by requiring a valid photo ID card! In an article entitled "Voter Suppression: The Confederacy Rises Again," Berman writes:

Eight of eleven states in the former Confederacy have passed restrictive voting laws since the 2010 election, as part of a broader war on voting undertaken by the GOP. ... [It's] breathtaking to consider the different ways Republicans have sought to suppress the minority vote in the region.

Not sure exactly what the Confederacy has to do with this. Of the myriad complaints liberals make about the Confederacy, I can't remember them ever claiming that Jefferson Davis demanded photo ID cards to vote.

And what is the big issue about photo ID cards anyway? The North Carolina DMV doles them out to everyone, even non-citizens.

And there's this:

North Carolina Democratic Governor Bev Perdue twice vetoed efforts by North Carolina Republicans to pass a strict voter ID law before the 2012 election. If GOP gubernatorial candidate Pat McCrory wins in November, it’s all but certain a tough voter ID law will be among the first pieces of legislation he signs.

That sounds like the strongest endorsement yet for McCrory in 2012.

Verbalizing in Valdese

People in Valdese are up in arms over a speech made at its Founders Day Festival by Archdale pastor Herman White. One of the "credible" witnesses claims "he heard White saying things like black people should still be slaves and that the races should not mix."

Since there's absolutely no chance that those things were actually said, what is motivating the false claims? Apparently, White's "racist remarks" were the fact that he criticized Abraham Lincoln and called the Gettysburg Address "political garbage." As libertarian commentator Britt Combs sees it, "The mere suggestion that federal power is anything less than divine marks the speaker irrefutably a racist."

Nail on the head. As another libertarian, Rand Paul, recently discovered, as soon as the feds discover that someone with a microphone is onto them, the klan-watchers come out and start discovering [planting?] white sheets in closets.

Unfortunately, Combs takes his analysis one step farther:

What White, the SCV, the League of the South, the Southern Party and all the other pro-South groups miss is this: The Confederate government was evil too. ... If there is a future for freedom, if libertarians succeed in resisting the growth of Washington's empire, if Americans regain an interest in individual liberty, property rights, human rights and all that, it won't have anything to do with the C.S.A.

Evil? What exactly was "evil" about the closest thing this world has seen in the past 150 years to a true American constitutionalist government with respect for states rights? Of course, the answer is slavery, under which "priceless individuals were murdered and ruined." Murdered?

Like Paul, who was eventually convinced to denounce the South of the 1960s, Combs has fallen for the media manipulations and distortions about the South of the 1860s -- the same manipulators and distorters that rose up to attack Herman White last week.

Yes, the Confederacy wasn't perfect, and it's a good thing that slavery is gone. But it was hardly a unique institution to the Confederacy [a nation that only lasted about four years]. And equating the institution to murder is downright ignorant.

What Combs and other small-government types should understand immediately is this: The Confederacy is attacked, not because it promoted slavery, but because it promoted freedom. And that's the same reason White was attacked last week, and the same reason Paul was attacked the week before that. The same fate will meet Combs or anyone else who comes remotely close to helping "Americans regain an interest in individual liberty, property rights, human rights and all that." Anyone who doesn't have the stomach for it needs to get out of the fight right now.

Self-Reliance, Kennedy-Style

Billy Kennedy, candidate for US Congress from the 5th District of North Carolina, says his campaign is about "self-reliance" and "us governing ourselves." Sign us up!

On second thought, don't. Kennedy's bizarre concept of "self-reliance" and "people governing themselves" apparently involves massive federal intervention into every corner of our lives--from healthcare to education to the environment to the economy to the transportation system!

Kennedy says he has a real problem with "these people that bash government day in and day out, and then, on their own, take advantage of it." As if we're not allowed to criticize the size of government if we use the services that are paid for by our own money through the confiscatory federal income tax system.

Maybe Kennedy should consider running for Congress in Massachusetts.

Tea Party Takeover

A columnist for the Durham Herald-Sun compares the "Tea Party" movement to the Ku Klux Klan. Paul Scott says the Klan was formed because "following the end of the Civil War, there was a dramatic surge in African American political power." Since Barack Obama is now President, history must be repeating itself. Oh, and both the Klan and the Tea Party held their first conventions in Nashville!

Actually, Nashville has pretty much been a consistent harbinger of death for independent political movements in recent history. It was where the famed Southern Party split in two in 1999, and where the Reform Party was forever fractured just one year later.

Scott says that what the Tea Party considers a "patriot" is "the dude with the Confederate baseball cap and the gun rack in the back of his pickup blastin' Lynard [sic] Skynard [sic]." Sounds like our kind of patriot! But then he writes, "The Dixiecrats of yesterday are the Ultra Right Wing Republicans of today." And that's the rub.

Disparagement of Dixiecrats aside, the convention that took place in Nashville over the weekend is not a product of the same movement that held the Tea Parties across the country last April, or took part in the march on Washington in September. No, this "convention" was just another example of the neoconservatives appropriating honest middle-America dissent for Repubican purposes.

Truth be told, "Tea Party" was a bad name for a 21st-century movement. While we would always encourage people to look to history for inspiration and guidance, yesterday's issues are not today's issues. And after the leftist media began lewdly referring to the protesters as "Teabaggers", the name should have been dumped.

Hopefully, the real American dissenters (taxpayers, independents, libertarians, conservatives) who founded the Tea Parties will not be fooled by the Republican Party's attempt to get them back in line. Let the Republicans be the Teabaggers, while the rest of us keep working for real change.

Bipartisan Mismanagement

Chris Kromm of the Institute for Southern Studies frets that the North Carolina legislature is the most likely Southern state legislature to come under Republican control in the 2010 elections due to public disapproval of the Democratic party. If only 10 percent of existing Democratic seats change hands, the Republican party will enjoy an 8-vote advantage in the House and reach a "deadlock" in the Senate.




Kromm's concern seems to be that Republicans would use their newfound ability to control the redistricting process to disenfranchise "urban voters, African-Americans, Latinos and other key demographic groups." He needn't worry. The last time the Republicans held such a strategic position, they managed to squander it by scandalously selling control back to the Democrats. Just because former House Speaker Jim Black is now in prison doesn't mean that the corrupt North Carolina Democratic party is somehow above using any and all means to retain its majority.

NC Attorney General Asks for Federal Control

Who does Roy Cooper work for?

The Attorney General for North Carolina filed an amicus brief in a Supreme Court case encouraging the federal government to continue to have control over North Carolina state elections.

The case challenges the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which gives the US Justice Department total control over elections in states that have "historically suppressed minority votes." So why would Cooper, a state elected official, beg the US Supreme Court to put the federal government in charge of him?

These days, it seems North Carolina voters have more to fear from state elected officials like Cooper than the federal government. Earlier this month, the Supreme Court said the state could no longer rely on the Voting Rights Act to force the election of minority candidates. Hopefully, the Court will continue this trend and put North Carolina elections back in the hands of North Carolina voters.

Lottery Corruption Spreads to Supreme Court

Despite being passed in violation of the General Assembly's own rules and all standards of professional ethics, the North Carolina "education" lottery is here to stay.

The NC Supreme Court deadlocked in a 3-3 tie, which means that the lottery survives. Unfortunately for people who support good government and accountability, we will never know which Justices voted which way. Like everything else related to the lottery's creation, this becomes just another backroom deal that the public can know nothing about.

State Sen. Tony Rand says he's "delighted" that this "goes into the win column" in favor of the corrupt General Assembly. "To think that the taxpayers of North Carolina might be deprived that significant amount of money at a time when the state is facing unprecedented fiscal problems was a frightening thought to me." Tony, where is the money coming from if not from the taxpayers of North Carolina?

Bring Back Jesse Helms

Lots of people are missing former US Senator Jesse Helms these days. In a letter to the editor of the American Spectator, former Republican White House aide Joseph P. Duggan says conservatives need to ask themselves, "What Would Jesse Do?" While the mainstream media are sure to criticize Republicans if they fail to jump on the Obama bandwagon, Duggan reminds us that the former Senator from North Carolina was politically rewarded for acting as a roadblock:

For his success using the "hold" to delay or kill legislation and objectionable nominations for ambassadorships and policy positions, Helms was known by both friend and foe as "Senator No." ... The Senate needs a new conservative champion of foreign policy realism who will, to paraphrase Bill Buckley, stand athwart extremist nominees and noxious legislation, yelling "Stop!"

Meanwhile, in the Civitas Review, Helms Center President John Dodd attempts to answer the question, "What Would Jesse Say?" Dodd makes the case that Republicans did not lose power because they failed to work with Democrats -- but rather because they were too willing to compromise conservative principles:

[Senator Helms] would point out that we have far too often strayed from our principles on key issues in order to seek more political power. This has allowed the opposition to coopt conservatives on important issues, like the need for fiscal restraint. Senator Helms would remind us that, although we should be willing to compromise our preferences, we should never be willing to compromise our principles.

Here's hoping the next generation Jesse Helms is out there right now, about to make a big splash in North Carolina politics.