It was only a matter of time before members of the media began labeling the current government shutdown racist. Colbert I. King of The Washington Post led the way on Friday, suggesting that the Republicans and the Tea Party had embraced “the spirit of the Old Confederacy”:
This virulent hostility to the Union led the Old Confederacy to conclude — as expressed by South Carolina — that with Lincoln’s elevation to the presidency, “the slaveholding States will no longer have the power of self-government, or self-protection, and the Federal Government will have become their enemy.”
Federal government as the enemy.
Today there is a New Confederacy, an insurgent political force that has captured the Republican Party and is taking up where the Old Confederacy left off in its efforts to bring down the federal government.
Is this new Confederacy pro-slavery, as the Old Democrat Confederacy was? Is the new Confederacy anti-federal military, as the Old Democrat Confederacy was (or as the current Democratic Party currently is, considering its illegal furloughing of federal civilian defense employees)? No, but the Tea Party is the new Confederacy nonetheless, according to King:
Its members are as extreme as their ideological forebears. It matters not to them, as it didn’t to the Old Confederacy, whether they ultimately go down in flames. So what? For the moment, they are getting what they want: a federal government in the ditch, restrained from seeking to create a more humane society that extends justice for all. The ghosts of the Old Confederacy have to be envious.
So is King just upset about small government? No, he thinks that the right’s focus on decreasing the size and scope of government is all about hatred of black Americans:
Hold on to that Confederate money, y’all. Jim Crow just might rise again….don’t go looking for a group by the name of New Confederacy. They earned that handle from me because of their visceral animosity toward the federal government and their aversion to compassion for those unlike themselves. They respond, however, to the label “tea party.” By thought, word and deed, they must be making Jefferson Davis proud today.
This is a copy of the full article provided by the Conservatives at Truth Revolt
(Photo: Wikipedia)
