There is a modern notion among the Republicans and their most vocal acolytes such as Dinesh D’Souza and Mark Levin that the Republicans are the healers and the Democrats are the racists. One political party and its advocates invent as much as the other.
These two devotees calling themselves conservatives, strain to blame the Democrat party for slavery, Jim Crow and most every other popular racial badness. The Republicans supposedly are angels wiping out these evils. Mostly this is a lot of claptrap–but then we are dealing with political parties—the womb of prevarication.
Dinesh D’Souza is a naturalized American who seems to know as much about his adopted country’s history as most people know about the political structure of Somalia.
He claims the Democrats were responsible for slavery as if American political parties in the 17th century existed and/or had any power to finance slave ships. If his target is the Democrats (former Democrat/Republican) of the late 18th and 19th century they were, as a party, no more or less responsible than the Whigs. Many, if not most, slave traders were Northerners regardless of political party. In any event, political party members were not then (nor now) a majority of the people. And Democrats held high numbers both North and South.
Actually, the Republicans, for the most part, were not opposed to slavery. They just did not want it extended into the western territories. They sided with the abolitionists only in that they wanted slaves freed so as they might be repatriated to Africa. Several thousand freed slaves were transported to Liberia in this attempt.
Furthermore, it was the Corwin Amendment introduced in 1860 by prominent Republicans William H. Seward and Thomas Corwin that would have kept slavery in perpetuity. The amendment was only ratified by two border states, Maryland and Kentucky and three Northern states: Ohio, Rhode Island and Illinois (which had passed laws prohibiting entry by free blacks into the state).
Proposed Corwin Amendment:
“No amendment shall be made to the Constitution which will authorize or give to Congress the power to abolish or interfere, within any State, with the domestic institutions thereof, including that of persons held to labor or service by the laws of said State.””
And Abe Lincoln’s position on race and what today is called racism is legendary. “I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races,”
D’Souza also claims that Jim Crow features were Democrat innovations. In fact, the Republicans who controlled the South during the military occupation following the war, forced the Black Codes, nonexistent in the South, on the South in 1866. The Black Codes were a Republican concept. And Northern Republicans were the creators of the later to come Jim Crow Laws. See The Strange Case of Jim Crow by Pulitzer Prize author C. Vann Woodward.
Mark Levin’s every other riposte, it seems, is “shut up you idiot.” Such crafty rejoinders by Levin leave you wondering why he bothered with a law degree. He could have opened a bar with AOC and tossed such invectives while downing a shot or two on the house.
Mark Levin says “There was a civil war that was fought, fought between two groups – one group, states’ rights, and slavery; another group, federalism, and anti-slavery. Now, that’s simplistic, but you get the point.”
Not only is it simplistic, but it is also foolish. Federalism is not nationalism, which is what Levine preaches. The concept of federalism in the United States (the states united in a federated union) is that of state sovereignty i.e states’ rights, which oversee the federal government. So, he is saying the same people politically, were both for and against slavery. Levine view is the simplistic one. But then, his temper tantrums bode his character.
In a free society, Levin can say anything he wants—and he usually does. But then so does Dinesh D’Souza; he of histrionic scholarship.
