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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: goldworldnet who wrote (528539)	1/23/2004 11:33:21 PM
From: PartyTime	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769670

I just think that people have to learn how to enjoy their differences. I love it when folks from other places find their way to where I live; and I also love being in places where others live. We don't often enough look for the good in people, and this is unfortunate.

To: goldworldnet who wrote (528539)	1/24/2004 10:07:37 AM
From: SilentZ	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769670

>I'm going to take a break, but I honestly wonder sometimes if there are Northerners who are sorry they won the war. Never mind what history books say: the South won December 27, 2002 BY ANDREW GREELEY I don't see why there's so much trouble about poor Trent Lott. After all, the South won the Civil War--oops, the War Between the States--and they're entitled to enjoy their victory. It's their right to fly the Stars and Bars over the Georgia capital, to celebrate the ''Confederate Heritage,'' to speak at the racist, anti-Catholic Bob Jones University, to lecture to white supremacy groups, to venerate the Dixiecrat Party and its founder Strom Thurmond for his wisdom, to proclaim always their mantra of ''states' rights,'' to trim black voters off the polling lists. Admittedly, racial segregation in the South isn't what it used to be. Blacks can ride anywhere on a bus that they want to, their kids can go to integrated schools, they can vote in elections, they can work at jobs formerly off-limits to them. They're still poor for the most part and not all that well-educated (in Mississippi no one is), but that's not the fault of white Southerners. Does someone say that the Stars and Bars is the flag of a racist revolution to keep black people in slavery? Does someone argue that the ''Confederate Heritage'' is a heritage of racial oppression, rape and murder? The answer is simple: ''Hey, boys in blue, we whupped y'all fair and square. Y'all ain't nothing but bad losers.'' My ''damn Yankee'' prejudice is to say that ole Marse Abe made a mistake. He should have let the rebel states go. We didn't need them, and we'd be better off without them. The South didn't win the war, you say? Who's running the country now? Texans (or pseudo-Texans) like Bush and Cheney and DeLay, and crackers like Trent Lott, and until recently carpetbaggers like Newt Gingrich. When was the last time a Yankee was elected president? In 1960, the only Northerner since Roosevelt. Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon don't count; Orange County is Confederate country. Nixon was the one who had the brilliant idea of incorporating Strom's Dixiecrat Party into the GOP in his notorious ''Southern strategy.'' Most of the newspaper accounts of the turn of the Solid South from Democratic to Republican don't mention that the change was inspired by anger in the South at the Democratic support for civil rights and racial integration. The Democrats won the campaign but lost the war. Gettysburg was not the decisive battle of the war between the states. The 1968 and 1972 campaigns were. The ''reform'' wing of the Democratic Party threw out the unions and the Catholics and gave away the game to the Dixiecrat wing of the Republican Party. They've never figured out how to win against the descendants of Strom and Tricky Dicky. I'm not saying that all Southerners are racist (there are a lot of racists in Yankee land too--most of them Republicans). Nor do I contend that all Republicans are racists. However, the current Republican near-majority has its origins in racism. Many of the present causes of Southern Republicans--the Stars and Bars, the Confederate Heritage, Bob Jones University--are clearly causes of the antebellum South. I'm willing to accept the song ''Dixie,'' both because ole Marse Abe ordered it played for the big victory march in Washington when the war was over and because it was written by Bing Crosby, a notorious Yankee who never set foot in Dixie (actually by New Yorker Dan Emmet, whom Crosby portrayed in film). However, if the Republicans really want to break free of the Old South and become once again the party of ole Marse Abe (which they clearly don't), then they have to do more than merely drop redneck bigots like Trent Lott. They must loudly disown Bob Jones University and the battle flag over the Georgia capital and the Confederate heritage, and Jeb Bush's elimination of black voters from Florida registration rolls. I concede that the Dimmycrats (as Mr. Dooley called them) are not without faults of their own--most notably the anti-Catholicism that affects some of the leadership level, their enslavement to the teachers unions and their stand on some life issues. Yet, whatever their failings, they're not storming the Little Round Top at Gettysburg with the Stars and Bars waving and loud rebel yells. History says that Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain and the 20th Maine triumphed in that skirmish. A look at the Beltway today makes me wonder if they really did.