Compromise with the Rebel?

President Obama is continuing to do what he promised the American People he would do. And he is being slammed for it. It is almost as if Americans EXPECT that the elected President will not deliver or even address the issues that elected him.

President Obama promised post partisan politics. He has reached out to a Republican Party that is getting increasingly partisan and racially charged to its core.

This partisanship is reflected in a most disturbing statistic. The south is becoming almost completely Republican, both nationally and locally. This conservative strain is a direct reaction to the Civil Rights movement and the election of a Black President.

This year marks the 150 mark since the outbreak of the Civil War. I can remember 1960, which was the Centennial of the Civil War. In 1960 legal segregation still ruled the south. African Americans, in fact all of color, were kept from voting in the south. Racial segregation in housing and jobs existed throughout the country. “The south shall rise again”, was a common rallying cry.

What kept this from happening was that the south was almost exclusively in the Democratic Party. The reason for this was twofold: 1. Southern whites would not join the Republican Party of Lincoln and Grant, because they had defeated them in the Civil War. 2. Democrats in the south embraced the New Deal, because it fought against the Wall Street establishment and northern business community that had been such a critical factor in the Civil War.

In short, the Civil War, even though it was 100 years old, still directly affected American Politics in 1960. Southern Democrats were a vital part of the Democratic Party. And, some of those southerners were becoming more progressive in many ways, including race relations, because of the Democratic Party’s affinity for the labor movement. Moreover, the African American contribution to the nation during World War II and Korea had moved some southern Democrats to begin to entertain concepts of equal opportunity and the destruction of the Jim Crowe system in the south.

The 1960s changed all that. When Lyndon Johnson helped pass the Civil Rights Act and the Voter Rights Act; the hard core race haters in the southern democratic wing of Democratic Party left the party. They held their breath and moved into the party of Lincoln because the democratic party was beginning to not only fight for equal rights, but actually was courting African American voters; the progressive southerners stayed in the democratic party; the racists left.

Nixon’s southern strategy proved the seismic shift in politics. From 1968 on five Republican Presidents were elected, only three Democrats; and the last one was Black!

This has prompted another shift in American Politics. The south is becoming more reactionary in response to the election of Obama. Rural areas of the nation, including border states like Missouri and Kansas, are becoming more Red, as a racial reaction of white middle aged men ripples across the nation. The Tea Parties, who are almost exclusively white, are the vanguard of this reaction.

So, as we “celebrate” the 150 anniversary of the Civil War, that killed almost 500,000 people in a country of a few million and we again see the country dividing. What is amazing is race is again the catalyst, masquerading as a revolt against “big government”.

And the consequences of this? We hear from the Texas governor that his state may secede, because of the federal government (Black President). We hear southern Republican call for celebrations of the Civil War and leave slavery as a cause completely out of them. Then, when reminded about things like the Emancipation Proclamation, a strained apology is reluctantly offered.

These are the facts: the southerners who seceded from the Union were traitors. Under the Constitution of the United States (that conservatives like to use in its literal application) traitors were to be executed! The south seceded because the north would not allow slavery to expand, and the slave trade was finally condemned by the rest of the civilized world. The south was the only place in the world with such an extensive and lucrative system of slavery. Lincoln was elected with the promise to end slavery. Abolitionists were pushing the fledgling Republican Party to actually enforce what Lincoln campaigned on. The south seceded because the “peculiar institution” of slavery was being directly challenged. This institution had produced a life style comfort and privilege amidst incredible poverty. Essentially the rich plantation owners of the south motivated the poor whites to fight to the death to protect their immoral, and unjust economic system (sound familiar?).

So we witness the first African-American President, and his bi-racial background is a perfect definition of the term, grovel to the southern dictated Republican Party, reaching out to compromise.

And the compromise is allowing the richest Americans to continue a totally worthless tax cut, that is bankrupting the government. Once again, the rich, benefiting from an unfair and immoral system, are using southern racists to protect their interests.

Obama should stop compromising with these rebels and follow the example of Lincoln.

Traitors are traitors, no matter which century they occupy.