What Do We Care About?

The southern Democrats were the party of slavery and, later, segregation. It was former Governor George Wallace, who stood in the southern schoolhouse door to block desegregation! The vast majority of Congressional GOP voted for the Civil Rights of 1964-65. A large majority of those opposed were southern Democrats. Southern Democrats led to infamous filibuster of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. In 1972, Wallace was shot and paralyzed, and Nixon began to tilt the south to the GOP. The old guard Democrats began to fade away while a new generation of Southern politicians became Republicans. The GOP was for local and small government. Southerners wanted less government and the GOP seemed to be a natural fit.

The Dixiecrat platform quoted the 1840 Democratic platform, which was the platform of the great Democratic President Martin Van Buren. President, Van Buren faithfully followed the Constitution, so his platform was fewer than 1,000 words long. But was an especially valuable guide for constitutionalists. The part quoted by the Dixiecrats resolved: That Congress has no power under the constitution, to interfere with or control the domestic institutions of the several states; and such states are the sole and proper judges of everything pertaining to their own affairs, not prohibited by the constitution…. The 1840 platform went on to warn, that Abolitionism would endanger the Union. As a result of the Civil War, the Constitution was changed, and the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments were added. From the late 1870s onward, the equal-protection clause and the prohibition of racial discrimination in voting were nullified in much of America. In seeking to enforce the Constitution, President Truman was following in the footsteps of constitutionalist President Van Buren. The Dixiecrats made sure not to quote another paragraph of the 1840 platform: that every citizen and every section of the country has a right to demand and insist upon an equality of rights and privileges, and to complete and ample protection of persons and property from domestic violence or foreign aggression. That statement is the principle on which the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments are based. States' rights were not a legitimate constitutional basis for states to violate the constitutional rights of their citizens.

States’ rights refer to maintaining political powers and opposed to federal government mandates. Did people benefit from unions? Would racial equality ever be accepted? Would civil rights be constitutional? Can it be said that the Dixiecrats left the Democratic Party to join the Republican Party? That remains to be further discussed. Too many people have sacrificed for the good of all.  Yet, we think that we have "arrived" by our own means.  Greed and power are now in the hands of a few that govern. And those that are in power are bought and paid for. Those that have will never get, and that those that do, will not give, at least, not in this world. Having money is not a problem, the love of money and not helping those that are helpless, is.  We must remain vigilant!  Too many wolves are misleading the sheep and we are very forgetful.