[AtLast]

Originally Posted by dreadgeek

In fact, as things stand right now the modern conservative movement is *counting* on historical amnesia. The examples are legion but I'll list just a couple of ones that really have my gall up:

1) Martin Luther King, Jr. was a Republican. In fact, there appears to be NO evidence that this was the case other than the word of his niece Alveda King. However, his son says his father was not a Republican, he voted for LBJ in '64 (who, if memory serves, was a Democrat) and in his autobiography he is quoted as saying that the '64 GOP convention was a "frenzied wedding ... of the KKK and the radical right". What's more he would NOT have supported the GOP of today. Which, actually, leads to the next issue.

2) It was the Democrats that were the party of segregation and Republicans that was the party of civil rights. This is *partly* true but it does not tell the whole story. The South was solidly Democratic until the mid-1960s. As such, there were a lot of segregationists and it WAS the party of segregation--at least the Southern flank of it was. However--and this is critical to understanding what happened--after Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act, the South started to swing toward the GOP. At this point, most of the people who had been pro-segregation Democrats (Dixiecrats) became Republicans. So it was Conservative Southern Democrats who were transformed into Republicans--they didn't shed their racism when they moved from the D column to the R column. The Republican party would like people to forget that Jesse Helms and Strom Thurmond and Trent Lott and Haley Barbour were ALL--to a man--pro-segregation Democrats who became embittered pro-segregation Republicans. One unintended consequence was the shift of the two parties---the Democratic party moved Left and the Republican party moved Right. Although, to be honest, the Republican party moved more to the Right than the Democratic party moved to the Left.

3) Washington, Jefferson, Paine, Adams, Franklin and Madison were all what we would now consider to be evangelical Christians. They were not. Washington, Jefferson, Adams, Franklin and Madison were all deists. Paine was an atheist. Not a SINGLE one of those men would pass muster as a Christian the way that is defined within the Religious Right, the Tea Party or the Republican party.

The list could go on and on but those are three particularly pernicious myths that the Republican party is trying to perpetuate and are hoping that Americans overall cultural amnesia will allow them to get away with the bait and switch.

Cheers
Aj

So much misinformation along the political front. Number 3 is so very telling in terms of the wing-nut wagons of far right Christian folks...

Something that always bugs me is the modern day concept of what puritans were really like.... OMG!! Talk about fact distortion for one's own agenda!!

Thanks for these points, Aj. When will ever learn to reseach matters and not just accept some media blitz!!

I don't really have a problem with disagreement unless whoever is disagreeing just has not done any homework. The whole revision of facts is getting very scary... look at Texas and the proposals for US History taught in the public schools!