When Erasing Symbols of Slavery, Don't Forget the Democratic Party

When Erasing Symbols of Slavery, Don't Forget the Democratic Party

Anthony J. Ciani

In the aftermath of the mass shooting at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, SC, there are increasing and ever louder calls for the removal of all symbols, objects and persons connected to slavery or the Confederate States of America. Thomas Jefferson owned slaves, and so all honors given him should be renamed, and all copies of the Declaration of Independence shredded. Robert E. Lee fought for the South, so all his effigies should be melted down and his rebel flags shredded, even though the Confederacy had nothing to do with the shooting. The Confederacy is no more; however, there still exists an organization that gained power from instituting slavery and segregation: the Democratic Party.

The founders of the Democratic-Republican Party were prominent slave holders, like Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. Its opponent, the Federalist Party, was founded by abolitionists, like Alexander Hamilton. While the main point of contention was Federalism vs anti-Federalism, the parties were strangely divided between abolitionists and anti-abolitionists. The Democratic-Republican Party split in 1832, due to the rivalry of John Quincy Adams (abolitionist) and Henry Clay (emancipator) against Andrew Jackson (slavery advocate). Andrew Jackson, Martin Van Buren (anti-abolitionist), James K. Polk (slavery compromiser), and Stephen A. Douglas (slavery fence-sitter) founded the current Democratic Party. The abolitionists wandered in the wilderness for a while, mixing with Whigs, and finally coalescing into the Republican Party in 1854, with abolition as its singular purpose.

During the first half of the 1800's, slavery was a contentious and persistent issue. Many slave owners and Democrats viewed slavery as a necessary evil, and abolition as unnecessary contention. Thomas Jefferson advocated for mass emancipation and deportation, for he viewed the black race as too childish, and based on the 1791 Haiti rebellion, unable to handle the anger engendered by their enslavement. Another common view held that the black race was simply unable to care for itself, and thus slaves were better off under the care of their masters, and that slavery only needed greater compassion, a view still held by the Democratic Party to this day. Why do you think Democrats promote government assistance programs for African Americans? If Democrat-advocated programs are taking care of blacks, then who is the master?

Even if they publicly stated that slavery was wrong, Democrats consistently worked against abolition and emancipation, often by compromising: abolitionists get a free state, slavers get a slave state. In this way, Democrats could publicly side against slavery, while obtaining the support of wealthy slave owners. Does this tactic seem familiar, on other issues? No slaver ever supported a Republican; they meant what they said and did what they meant, and it started a war.

But that was yesterday's Democratic Party! Guess again. After the Civil War, Democrats implemented new strategies to re-enslave or oppress African Americans. They introduced things like Jim Crowlaws. President Woodrow Wilson (D) segregated the Army and Federal government. They were integrated by Republicans before him, and again by Republicans after Roosevelt. President Roosevelt appointed a leader of the Ku Klux Klan to the Supreme Court, and another KKK leader, Robert Byrd, was a prominent Democratic Senator for decades. Republicans had tried to pass the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts since the mid-50's, but Democrats blocked them, until President Johnson (D) gutted the Acts and passed them as part of a scheme to pacify blacks and snare their votes.

Presidents Roosevelt and Johnson passed public assistance, known as the War on Poverty, and heavily promoted it among African American neighborhoods. For many African American communities, it might be better termed the War on Prosperity. When real African American leaders like Bobby Gore rose up to free blacks from their new masters, Democrats like Mayor Richard J. Daley were more than happy to pound them back down. The Democratic Party has employed a new generation of house slaves, called community organizers, to convince African Americans that all of their woes are due to their skin, and to train blacks to beg for government to take care of them, unaware of their new master.

Martin Luther King Jr. had a dream of a colorblind society. How strange that after his death, two very well connected Democrats, Jessie Jackson (who was there when it happened) and Al Sharpton, profited greatly from fomenting racial tension in a race-aware society. The Democratic Party has an evil and vile history of slavery and racism, that continues to this day, and it deserves to be erased. Will any reporter ever ask Hillary or Barack when they will leave the Party?

Blind abandonment of symbols, organizations and persons for their association with slavery or the Confederacy is counter-productive. General Lee's battle flag is also known as the "rebel flag", and has long been a symbol against central authority. It was, after all, the symbol of the rank-and-file soldiers, for whom the Civil War was by far about resisting an intrusive Federal government, and by less about slavery. General Lee, who adopted the flag as the symbol of his army, had a rather interesting view on slavery: it was immoral and wrong, but The Allmighty intended it, for the betterment of the black race.  A Merciful Providence, to whom two thousand years are but as a single day, that would lead the black race [in America] to better things.

What are these better things? One hundred and fifty years later, African Americans have been the victims of a public education, community organization and welfare scheme, carefully designed and orchestrated to tie them forever to their new master: Government under the Democratic Party. A better, more compassionate form of slavery, as advocated by the slavers. The new house slaves, the Jacksons, Sharptons and Crumps of the Democratic Party and Grievance Industry, have fixated African Americans on the ire of their slave blood and color of their skin, to distract them from the pecking party meant to subjugate them, but this tactic can backfire.

It should be obvious from the founding of this Country, but nearly every person here has slave blood. Rather than being privately owned, we were all government owned serfs (slaves, in another language), with kings, dukes, counts, barons and knights as our masters. A better, more compassionate form of all-powerful government, as Democrats love to advocate, is as illusory and oppressive as a better, more compassionate form of slavery. Absent the propaganda, African Americans are about as conservative and libertarian as it gets. Filled with the ire of slavery and ever more anti-authoritarian, perhaps they will one day forever leave the Democratic Party and join with other conservatives to reestablish the promise of a free America, for everyone.