Are Conservative Republicans racist and violent as the Mainstream media and Liberal democrats espouse??

Lately I have become SO sick and tired of the Mainstream Media labelling conservatives/Republicans as racist, bigoted, hate spewing, violent, etc...

Today I decided to do some fast research and just see how republicans have fared over the years when it comes to civil rights, racism, and violence. Please read what I have put together as it represents some measure of effort and expenditure of time.

It's a little long, but it's WORTH IT

DOC

Are Conservative Republicans racist and violent as the Mainstream media and Liberal democrats espouse??A concise history of Republican vs. Democrat political actions from 1857 to Present

-James Buchanan, Jr. (April 23, 1791 – June 1, 1868, Political party: Democratic) was the 15th President of the United States from 1857–1861. As President he was a "doughface", a Northerner with Southern sympathies who battled with Stephen A. Douglas for the control of the Democratic Party. By the time he left office, popular opinion had turned against him and the Democratic Party had split in two. His handling of the crisis preceding the Civil War has led to his consistent ranking by historians as one of the worst Presidents in American history.He served as minister to the Court of St. James's (Britain) from 1853 to 1856, during which time he helped to draft the Ostend Manifesto, which proposed the purchase of Cuba from Spain in order to extend slavery. The Manifesto was a major blunder for the Pierce administration and greatly weakened support for Manifest Destiny.

-Buchanan and The Dred Scott case: Buchanan referred to the territorial question as "happily, a matter of but little practical importance" since the Supreme Court was about to settle it "speedily and finally". Two days later, Chief Justice Roger B. Taney (a fellow alumnus of Dickinson College) delivered the Dred Scott Decision, asserting that Congress had no constitutional power to exclude slavery in the territories. Much of Taney’s written judgment is widely interpreted as obiter dictum — statements made by a judge that are unnecessary to the outcome of the case, but in this instance they delighted Southerners while creating a furor in the North. Buchanan was widely believed to have been personally involved in the decision, with many Northerners recalling Taney whispering to Buchanan during the inauguration. Buchanan wished to see the territorial question resolved by the Supreme Court. To further this, he personally lobbied his fellow Pennsylvanian Justice Robert Cooper Grier to vote with the majority to uphold the right of owning slave property. Abraham Lincoln denounced him as an accomplice of the Slave Power, which Lincoln saw as a conspiracy of slave owners to seize control of the federal government and nationalize slavery.Buchanan, however, faced further trouble on the territorial question. He threw the full prestige of his administration behind congressional approval of the Lecompton Constitution in Kansas, which would have admitted Kansas as a slave state, going as far as offering patronage appointments and even cash bribes in exchange for votes.

-Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 created the territories of Kansas and Nebraska, opened new lands, repealed the Missouri Compromise of 1820, and allowed settlers in those territories to determine if they would allow slavery within their boundaries.  The act was designed by Democratic Senator Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois.

The act established that settlers could vote to decide whether to allow slavery, in the name of popular sovereignty or rule of the people. Douglas hoped it would ease relations between the North and the South, because the South could expand slavery to new territories but the North still had the right to abolish slavery in their states. Instead, opponents denounced the law as a concession to the slave power of the South. The new Republican Party, which was created in opposition to the act, aimed to stop the expansion of slavery, and soon emerged as the dominant force throughout the North.

 

  -Abraham Lincoln (February 12, 1809 – April 15, 1865, Political party: Whig (1832-1854), Republican (1854-1864)) was the 16th President of the United States. He successfully led the country through its greatest internal crisis, the American Civil War, preserving the Union and ending slavery. He introduced measures that resulted in the abolition of slavery, issuing his Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 and promoting the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which passed Congress before Lincoln's death and was ratified by the states later in 1865. President Lincoln is widely considered by most historians as one of the greatest Presidents in the history of the United States.

-The Copperheads were a vocal group of Democrats in the Northern United States (see also Union (American Civil War)) who opposed the American Civil War, wanting an immediate peace settlement with the Confederates. The name Copperheads was given to them by their opponents, the Republicans, because the venomous, although not usually deadly, copperhead snake can strike without warning (unlike a rattlesnake). While much of the nation mourned the death by assassination of President Abraham Lincoln as the savior of the United States, Copperheads celebrated the death of a man they considered a tyrant.They were also called "Peace Democrats" (although the 13th Edition of The American Pageant makes a distinction between the two, as those termed Copperheads were at the extreme end of the Peace Democrats) and "Butternuts" (for the color of the Confederate uniforms). Perhaps the most famous Copperhead was Ohio's Clement L. Vallandigham.During the American Civil War (1861-1865), the Copperheads nominally favored the Union and strongly opposed the war, for which they blamed abolitionists, and they demanded immediate peace and resisted draft laws. They wanted Lincoln and the Republicans ousted from power, seeing the president as a tyrant who was destroying American republican values with his despotic and arbitrary actions.Some Copperheads tried to persuade Union soldiers to desert. They talked of helping Confederate prisoners of war seize their camps and escape. They sometimes met with Confederate agents and took money. The Confederacy encouraged their activities whenever possible.

-Roger Brooke Taney (pronounced /ˈtɔːni/ "tawny"; March 17, 1777 – October 12, 1864 Political party Federalist, Democrat) was the twelfth United States Attorney General. He also was the fifth Chief Justice of the United States, holding that office from 1836 until his death in 1864. He is most remembered for delivering the majority opinion in Dred Scott v. Sandford, that ruled, among others, that African Americans, being considered "of an inferior order and altogether unfit to associate with the white race" at the time the Constitution was drafted, could not be considered citizens of the United States.In Prigg v. Pennsylvania (1842), the Taney Court agreed to hear yet another case regarding slavery, slaves, slave owners, and States' Rights. It held that the Constitutional prohibition against state laws that would emancipate any "person held to service or labor in [another] state" barred Pennsylvania from punishing a Maryland man who had seized a former slave and her child, then had taken them back to Maryland without seeking an order from the Pennsylvania courts permitting the abduction.

 -The "Redeemers": A political coalition in the Southern United States during the Reconstruction era, who sought to oust the Republican coalition of freedmen, carpetbaggers and scalawags. They were the southern wing of the Bourbon Democrats, the conservative, pro-business wing of the Democratic Party.In the 1870s, southern Democrats began to muster more political power as former Confederates began to vote again. It was a movement that gathered energy up until the Compromise of 1877, in the process known as Redemption. White Democratic Southerners saw themselves as redeeming the South by regaining power In 1868 white terrorists tried to prevent Republicans from winning the fall election in Louisiana. Over a few days, they killed some two hundred freedmen in St. Landry Parish. Other violence erupted, From April to October, there were 1,081 political murders in Louisiana, in which most of the victims were freedmen.[1] Violence was part of campaigns prior to the election of 1872 in several states. In 1874 and 1875, more formal paramilitary groups affiliated with the Democratic Party conducted intimidation, terrorism and violence against black voters and their allies to reduce Republican voting and turn officeholders out. These included the White League and Red Shirts. They worked openly for specific political ends, and often solicited coverage of their activities by the press. Every election from 1868 on was surrounded by intimidation and violence; they were usually marked by fraud as well. As Democrats took over state legislatures, they worked to change voter registration rules to strip most blacks and many poor whites of their ability to vote. Blacks continued to vote in significant numbers well into the 1880s, with many winning local offices. Black Congressmen continued to be elected, albeit in ever smaller numbers, until the 1890s. George Henry White, the last Southern black of the post-Reconstruction period to serve in Congress, retired in 1901, leaving Congress completely white. 

-The Jim Crow laws were state and local laws in the United States enacted between 1876 and 1965. They mandated de jure segregation in all public facilities, with a supposedly "separate but equal" status for black Americans. In reality, this led to treatment and accommodations that were usually inferior to those provided for white Americans, systematizing a number of economic, educational and social disadvantages.The origins of “Jim Crow” are well known, during the Reconstruction period of 1865–1877 federal law provided civil rights protection in the South for "freedmen" — the African Americans who had formerly been slaves. In the 1870s, white Democrats gradually returned to power in southern states, sometimes as a result of elections in which paramilitary groups intimidated opponents, attacking blacks or preventing them from voting. Gubernatorial elections were close and disputed in Louisiana for years, with extreme violence unleashed during the campaign. In 1877 a national compromise to gain southern support in the presidential election resulted in the last of the federal troops being withdrawn from the South. White Democrats had taken back power in every Southern state.[4] The white, Democratic Party Redeemer government that followed the troop withdrawal legislated Jim Crow laws segregating black people from the state's white population.

-The Civil Rights Act of 1875 (18 Stat. 335) was a United States federal law proposed by Republican Senator Charles Sumner and Republican Congressman Benjamin F. Butler in 1870. The act was passed by Congress in February, 1875 and signed by President Grant on March 1, 1875. It was declared unconstitutional[1] by the US Supreme Court in 1883[2]. Many of the provisions of the Civil Rights Act of 1875 were passed into law in the 1960s with the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Fair Housing Act using the federal power to regulate interstate commerce.The Act guaranteed that everyone, regardless of race, color, or previous condition of servitude, was entitled to the same treatment in "public accommodations" (i.e. inns, public conveyances on land or water, theaters, and other places of public amusement).If found guilty, the lawbreaker could face a penalty anywhere from $500 to $1,000 and/or 30 days to 1 year in prison. However, the law was rarely enforced (especially after the withdrawal of federal troops from the South after the 1876 Presidential election) and in the 1883 Civil Rights Cases the Supreme Court deemed the act unconstitutional on the basis that Congress had no power to regulate the conduct of individuals. The Fourteenth Amendment prohibits discrimination by the state, not by individuals.

-Ulysses S. Grant[2] (born Hiram Ulysses Grant[3]) (April 27, 1822 – July 23, 1885, Political party: Republican) was general-in-chief of the Union Army from 1864 to 1865 during the American Civil War and the 18th President of the United States from 1869 to 1877Presidential historians typically rank Grant in the lowest quartile of U.S. presidents for his tolerance of corruption, but in recent years his reputation has improved among some scholars impressed by his support for civil rights for African Americans.[4]  

-Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 (1896), is a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision in the jurisprudence of the United States, upholding the constitutionality of racial segregation even in public accommodations (particularly railroads), under the doctrine of "separate but equal".

When the “equal, but separate” law passed, lawyer-editor Louis A. Martinet marshaled much of the group to test the law’s constitutionality, hired white Reconstruction judge and popular novelist Albion W. Tourgee as the organization’s lawyer, and recruited Homer Plessy to board a railroad car reserved for whites. Arrested by arrangement with the railroad company, which wished to avoid the expense of maintaining separate cars for patrons of each race, Plessy was arraigned before Orleans Parish Criminal Court Judge John H. Ferguson. Tourgee argued that segregation contravened the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments because it was a “badge of servitude” intended not to separate the races but purely to emphasize blacks’ subordinate status. It was also arbitrary and unreasonable because it allowed mere railroad conductors to determine a person’s

race and because race had nothing to do with transportation.

 After Judge Ferguson and the racist Louisiana Supreme Court rejected or sidestepped these arguments, Tourgee appealed to a U.S. Supreme Court undergoing unusual personnel turnover, adding five new justices during the four years that Plessy was pending. Different appointments might have led to a different decision. As it was, the Louisiana law was upheld, 7-1, with four of the positive votes coming from members of the more racist political party, the Democrats.  

The sole dissenter was Justice John Marshall Harlan, a Republican. Justice Harlan correctly predicted the consequences of this decision: it put an end to the attempts by Radical Republicans to ensure the civil rights of blacks and ushered in the widespread segregation of blacks in housing, employment and public life that confined them to second-class citizenship throughout much of the United States

 

  -John Marshall Harlan (June 1, 1833 – October 14, 1911, Political party: Republican) was an American Supreme Court associate justice. He is most notable as the lone dissenter in the famous 1896 case of Plessy v. Ferguson, which upheld Southern segregation statutes. 

-Thomas Woodrow Wilson (December 28, 1856–February 3, 1924, Political party: Democratic)[1] was the 28th President of the United States. He was a devout Presbyterian and leading intellectual of the Progressive Era. With Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft dividing the Republican Party vote, Wilson was elected President as a Democrat in 1912.Woodrow Wilson, a southern Democrat and the first southern-born president of the postwar period, appointed southerners to his cabinet. Some quickly began to press for segregated work places, although Washington, DC and federal offices had been integrated since after the Civil War. In 1913, for instance, the acting Secretary of the Treasury—an appointee of the President—was heard to express his consternation at black and white women working together in one government office: "I feel sure that this must go against the grain of the white women. Is there any reason why the white women should not have only white women working across from them on the machines?"[6]President Woodrow Wilson introduced segregation in Federal offices, despite much protest.[7] Mr. Wilson appointed Southern politicians who were segregationists, because of his firm belief that racial segregation was in the best interest of Black Americans and White Americans alike. At Gettysburg on 4 July 1913, the semi-centennial of Abraham Lincoln's declaration that "all men are created equal", Wilson addressed the crowd:

How complete the union has become and how dear to all of us, how unquestioned, how benign and majestic, as state after state has been added to this, our great family of free men![8]

A Washington Bee editorial wondered if the "reunion" of 1913 was a reunion of those who fought for "the extinction of slavery" or a reunion of those who fought to "perpetuate slavery and who are now employing every artifice and argument known to deceit" to present emancipation as a failed venture.[8] One historian notes that the "Peace Jubilee" at which Wilson presided at Gettysburg in 1913 "was a Jim Crow reunion, and white supremacy might be said to have been the silent, invisible master of ceremonies.”

-Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483 (1954),[1] was a landmark decision of the United States Supreme Court, which overturned earlier rulings going back to Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896, by declaring that state laws that established separate public schools for black and white students denied black children equal educational opportunities. Handed down on May 17, 1954, the Warren Court's unanimous (9-0) decision stated that "separate educational facilities are inherently unequal." As a result, de jure racial segregation was ruled a violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution. This victory paved the way for integration and the civil rights movement.

Not everyone accepted the Brown v. Board of Education decision. In Virginia, Senator Harry F. Byrd, Sr.(Political Party: Democrat) organized the Massive Resistance movement that included the closing of schools rather than desegregating them.[24] See, for example, The Southern Manifesto. For more implications of the Brown decision, see Desegregation.In 1957, Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus (Political Party: Democrat) called out his state's National Guard to block black students' entry to Little Rock High School. President Dwight Eisenhower (Political Party: Republican)responded by deploying elements of the 101st Airborne Division from Fort Campbell, Kentucky to Arkansas and by federalizing Faubus' National Guard.[25]

Also in 1957, Florida's response was mixed. Its legislature (Democrat) passed an Interposition Resolution denouncing the decision and declaring it null and void. But Florida Governor Thomas LeRoy Collins (Political Party: Democrat) refused to sign it arguing that the state must follow the Supreme Court's ruling.

Although Governor Collins, initially condemned the U. S. Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka as did almost all Southern elected officials, he fought with the Florida Legislature to attempt to prevent them from passing an "interposition" resolution which indicated the intent of the legislature to "interpose" itself between the citizens of Florida and the United States government to prevent what the legislature contended was an illegal intrusion upon the right of the state by imposing integration.

He utilized a little-known provision of the state constitution by unilaterally adjourning the legislature to prevent it from passing the resolution the first time.

After the legislature returned and passed the resolution, he had no power to veto it, because it was not a law but only a resolution expressing the sense of the legislature.However, as it passed through his office, he wrote upon the interposition resolution, the following statement, in his own handwriting:

"This concurrent resolution of 'Interposition' crosses the Governor's desk as a matter of routine. I have no authority to veto it. I take this means however to advise the student of government, who may examine this document in the archives of the state in the years to come that the Governor of Florida expressed open and vigorous opposition thereto. I feel that the U. S. Supreme Court has improperly usurped powers reserved to the states under the constitution. I have joined in protesting such and in seeking legal means of avoidance. But if this resolution declaring the decisions of the court to be 'null and void' is to be taken seriously, it is anarchy and rebellion against the nation which must remain 'indivisible under God' if it is to survive. Not only will I not condone 'interposition' as so many have sought me to do, I decry it as an evil thing, whipped up by the demagogues and carried on the hot and erratic winds of passion, prejudice, and hysteria. If history judges me right this day, I want it known that I did my best to avert this blot. If I am judged wrong, then here in my own handwriting and over my signature is the proof of guilt to support my conviction. LeRoy Collins, Governor." May 2, 1957.

The original interposition resolution can today be found at the State Archives of Florida.

In 1963, Alabama Gov. George Wallace (Political Party: Democrat) personally blocked the door to Foster Auditorium at the University of Alabama to prevent the enrollment of two black students in what became known as the Stand in the Schoolhouse Door.[26] This became the infamous "Stand at the Schoolhouse Door," where Wallace personally backed his "segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever" policy that he had stated in his 1963 inaugural address.[27] He moved aside only when confronted by federal marshals and Deputy Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach. 

-Earl Warren (March 19, 1891 – July 9, 1974, Political Party: Republican) was the 14th Chief Justice of the United States and the only person ever elected three times as Governor of California. The Warren Court became recognized as a high point in the use of the judicial power in the effort to effect social progress in the U.S.; Warren himself became widely regarded as one of the most influential Supreme Court justices in the history of the United States and perhaps the single most important jurist of the 20th century.In addition to the constitutional offices he held, Warren was also the vice-presidential nominee of the Republican Party in 1948, and chaired the Warren Commission, which was formed to investigate the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

Conservatives Can Be Proud of Their Civil Rights Record
By: John Fonte / National Review
Thursday, January 09, 2003 

Get your history right. 

After Lott, the GOP's conservative base does not need a "heart transplant" as Senator Frist suggests, it needs a "memory transplant." Shortly after the downfall of Trent Lott as Senate Majority Leader, NRO's Jonah Goldberg noted that "Conservatives — though not Republicans — were often at best MIA on the issue of civil rights in the 1960s." That's not exactly right. Bread-and-butter conservatives in Congress (as opposed to conservative writers), that is, men such as Everett Dirksen and Bill McCulloch in the 1960s and Bill Knowland in the 1950s, were strong supporters of equal rights for all Americans. Let us reexamine the history of conservative and Republican involvement in the creation of racial equality under law in this country over the past half-century.

In the 1950s, while Republican President Dwight Eisenhower sent troops to Little Rock, Arkansas, to enforce the Supreme Court's school-desegregation ruling, Senator John Sparkman of Alabama (Democrat presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson's former vice-presidential running mate) protested this desegregation decision by signing the congressional "Southern Manifesto" attacking the court's ruling. In 1957 the Eisenhower administration, led by Republican Attorney General Herbert Brownell, steered through Congress the first civil-rights bill since Reconstruction. In that fight over protecting voting rights, veteran civil-rights lobbyist Harry L. Kingman described Republican Senate Leader William Knowland of California (a strong conservative) as a "key man in the victory." Clearly, Republican leader Knowland took a stronger pro-civil-rights stand than Democrat Senate Leader Lyndon Johnson of Texas, who at the time was accused by some civil-rights groups of introducing amendments that weakened the bill.

In examining the crucial civil-rights issues of the 1960s we should: (1) revisit the role Republicans (and particularly conservative Republicans) played in the passage of the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964, and (2) reexamine the original intent of the bill itself. Contrary to popular amnesia, it was the congressional Republicans, not the Democrats, who were most responsible for this great victory for equal civil rights for all Americans.

The civil-rights bill of 1964 was enacted with strong bipartisan and bi-ideological (conservative and liberal) support. But, the credit for the civil-rights victory has gone almost exclusively to liberals and Democrats, particularly to Senator Hubert Humphrey (D, Minn.) in Congress, and to Presidents Kennedy and Johnson. However, much of the hard work of advancing the legislation was done by congressional Republicans — conservative stalwarts including Everett McKinley Dirksen of Illinois, Charles Halleck of Indiana, William McCulloch of Ohio, Robert Griffin of Michigan, Robert Taft Jr. of Ohio, Clarence Brown of Ohio, Roman Hruska of Nebraska, and moderates such as Thomas Kuchel of California, Kenneth Keating of New York, and Clark MacGregor of Minnesota. All of these Republicans served as major leaders of the pro-civil-rights coalition either as floor managers or captains for different sections of the bill.

Although the Democrats controlled both houses of the Congress at the time, a much-higher percentage of Republicans than Democrats supported the civil-rights bill. For example, in the House, Republicans voted for civil rights by a margin of 79 percent to 21 percent, 136-35. The Democrats' margin was 153-91 or 63 percent to 37 percent.

However, the single-most-important vote for the legislation was the attempt to cut off the anti-civil-rights filibuster in the Senate. In order for the bill to pass, civil-rights supporters needed two thirds of the Senate to break a filibuster by the opposition. Republicans voted overwhelmingly to break the filibuster by 81.8 percent (27-6), but only 65.7 percent of the Democrats voted to end the filibuster (44-23). Thus, if only Republicans in the Congress had voted, any potential filibuster would easily have been overridden. But, if only Democrats had voted, the pro-civil-rights forces would not have been able to obtain the necessary two/thirds vote to break the filibuster and the civil-rights bill would have died. No Republicans in Congress, no civil-rights bill — it is as simple as that.

Only a handful of Republicans opposed the civil-rights bill. The most prominent among them was Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona, who became the party's presidential candidate in 1964. Interestingly, Goldwater had always been a strong supporter of racial equality and supported the Eisenhower civil-rights bills of 1957 and 1960 that strengthened voting rights for African Americans. As Lee Edwards noted in The Conservative Revolution: "As chief of staff of the Arizona National Guard he [Goldwater] had pushed for desegregation of the guard two years before President Truman desegregated the U.S. armed forces." Goldwater stated that workforce discrimination was "morally wrong," but worried that in the future the federal government might "require people to discriminate on the basis of color or race or religion" and, thus, in the end, opposed the bill.

The civil-rights bill of 1964 banned discrimination in voting, public accommodations, education, federal programs, and employment on the basis of race, ethnicity, or sex. In supporting the legislation, the bipartisan coalition invoked Judeo-Christian tradition, the Founding Fathers, the Declaration of Independence and particularly the concept of "equality of opportunity." Southern Democrat opponents charged that the legislation would lead to racial preferences, but the bipartisan congressional leaders clearly stated that this was not the intent of the bill.

On April 9, 1964, Hubert Humphrey replied to the allegation that Title VII on employment discrimination would lead to racial preferences by stating, "It the Senator can find in Title VII…any language which provides that an employer will have to hire on the basis of percentage or quota related to color, race, religion, or national origin, I will start eating the pages one after another, because it is not in there."

To ensure that the bill would not be misinterpreted to promote racial and gender preferences, the pro-civil forces added an amendment to Title VII, Section 703 (j) that stated, "Nothing contained in this title shall be interpreted to require any employer…to grant preferential treatment to any individual or any group because of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin…on account of an imbalance which may exist…with respect to the total number or percentage of persons of any race, color, religion, or sex, or national origin…in comparison with the total number or percentage of persons…in any community…or in any available work force…."

By the end of the debate more than 40 members of Congress denounced racial and gender preferences, and no one spoke in favor of them. Opposition to preferences was voiced by liberals including: George McGovern (D, S.D.), Edmund Muskie (D, Md.), Adam Clayton Powell (D, N.Y.), and John Lindsay (R, N.Y.), as well as conservatives including: Everett Dirksen (R. Il.), Gordon Allot (R, Co.), Frank Carlson (R, Kan.), and James Bromwell (R, Iowa).

Alas, in the decades since the passage of the civil-rights bill, judicial activism, and bureaucratic rulemaking have violated the clear intent of the Congress in prohibiting racial and gender preferences.

Since 1964, two serious efforts have been launched to recapture the American principles of individual rights and equal opportunity embodied in the original legislation. First, in the 1980s, the Reagan Justice Department under Edwin Meese and Bradford Reynolds challenged group preferences in the name of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Second, in the 1990s, the California Civil Rights Initiative (Proposition 209) and Washington State's initiative I-200, promoted by Ward Connerly, used the language of the 1964 Civil Rights Act in successful referenda that outlawed racial and gender preferences in those states.

Most conservatives and Republicans stood with Meese and Reynolds, and with Connerly. Those who did not should be ashamed of themselves, for they betrayed the spirit of Dirksen, Halleck, McCulloch, and those other rock-ribbed conservative Republicans who played such a large part in enacting the most important civil-rights legislation of the century. Conservatives and Republicans who understand both the history of their party and the bedrock constitutional and moral principles on which it rests will not permit themselves to be browbeaten by the Lott affair. Instead, they will press on by supporting a return to the original intent of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (as well as the foundational principles of the American republic) and the elimination of racial-, ethnic-, and gender-group preferences — once and for all.

John Fonte is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute