Rewriting History Liberally With Lawrence O'Donnell Jr.

[XLFD]

When I have occasion to look on Facebook, I sometimes run into some liberal mumbo-jumbo from my liberal-minded friends that I usually ignore.  I sometimes get some conservative mumbo-jumbo too from my other friends, but those are usually not as fact-skewed as the tripe I received here below, accredited to Lawrence O'Donnell Jr., some clown who apparently is extremely naïve.  I glanced through it, and laughed at his knowledge of history.  Is this what the Common Core curriculum will teach us? 

The facts, if he decided to look them up for himself he would have seen:

1)  "Liberals got women the right to vote."  WRONG, they worked against it, just like giving black men the right to vote!  When the concept of suffrage surfaced in the 1800s after the Civil War the women suffragists identified with the Republican Party who were more energized at the time in getting black men the right to vote against Democratic opposition.  When a party line vote finally was made on a suffrage bill that was brought before the House of Representatives, after Democratic President Woodrow Wilson was excoriated for his views by suffragists, on January 12, 1915, it was defeated by a vote of 204 to 174, (Democrats 170-85 against, Republicans 81-34 for, Progressives 6-0 for). 

Seventy percent of the Republican Party voted for suffrage, 33% of Democrats.  Wilson reversed his view, and when the bill was finally passed in 1919, the party breakdown in the house:  304 to 89, (Republicans 200-19 for, Democrats 102-69 for), in the senate:  Republicans 36-8 for, Democrats 20-17 for.  Myth busted, more here.

 

2)  "Liberals got African-Americans the right to vote."  WRONG, multiple Pinocchios here.  The Republican Party originated among the issue of emancipation of slavery, being countered at all turns by Democratic opposition.  And why not, Republican Abraham Lincoln and his Republicans in congress, worked hard to get all colors of men the right to vote in their early years, leading to secession efforts made primarily by white Democratics from the South intent on keeping the institution.  This is well documented. 

After Republicans efforts passed the Fifteenth Amendment in 1869 giving blacks the right to vote, in 1870, the strongly Republican Congress passed an act imposing fines and damages for conspiracy to deny black suffrage. 

 

3) "Liberals created Social Security...":  WRONG, In Republican President Theodore Roosevelt’s 1912 address to the convention of the offshoot Progressive Party, he stated, "We pledge ourselves to work unceasingly in state and nation for… the protection of home life against the hazards of sickness, irregular employment, and old age through the adoption of a system of social insurance."  

However, When the Democrats instituted the program under his Democratic cousin FDR's presidency, most women and minorities were excluded from the benefits of unemployment insurance and old age pensions because of the structure engineered by Democrats.  Nearly two-thirds of all African Americans in the labor force, 70 to 80 percent in some areas in the South, and just over half of all women employed were not covered by Social Security.^[10][11] At the time, the NAACP protested the Social Security Act, describing it as “a sieve with holes just big enough for the majority of Negroes to fall through.”^[11]

Did this discrimination result from the powerful position of Southern Democrats on two of the committees pivotal for the Act’s creation, the Senate Finance Committee and the House Ways and Means Committee?  Southern Democratic congressmen supported Social Security as a means to bring needed relief to areas in the South that were especially hurt by the Great Depression but wished to avoid legislation which might interfere with the racial status quo in the South.

 

4)  "Liberals ended segregation.  Liberals passed the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act "  WRONG.  The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was to end segregation, and even though Democrats controlled both houses and the presidency, the main supporters of this were Republicans, the main opponents, Democrats.  Final House votes:  Democratic Party: 153–91 (63–37%)  Republican Party: 136–35 (80–20%), Senate votes:  Democratic Party: 46–21 (69–31%)   Republican Party: 27–6 (82–18%). 

When the bill came before the full Senate for debate on March 30, 1964, the "Southern Bloc" of 18 southern Democratic Senators and one Republican Senator led by Richard Russell (D-GA) launched a filibuster to prevent its passage.  Said Russell: "We will resist to the bitter end any measure or any movement which would have a tendency to bring about social equality and intermingling and amalgamation of the races in our (Southern) states.

The most fervent opposition to the bill came from Senator Strom Thurmond (D-SC): "This so-called Civil Rights Proposals, which the President has sent to Capitol Hill for enactment into law, are unconstitutional, unnecessary, unwise and extend beyond the realm of reason. This is the worst civil-rights package ever presented to the Congress and is reminiscent of the Reconstruction proposals and actions of the radical Republican Congress."

For the Voting Rights Act:  Senator Strom Thurmond (D-SC) retorted that the bill would lead to "tyranny and despotism", while Senator Sam Ervin (D-NC) argued that the bill was unconstitutional because it deprived states of their right under Article 1, Section III of the Constitution to establish voting qualifications, and because the bill targeted only jurisdictions that used literacy tests.

The Senate passed the bill by a 77-19 vote (Democrats 47-16, Republicans 30-2); the House passed the Voting Rights Act by a 333-85 vote (Democrats 221-61, Republicans 112-24).  Showing a greater percentage of Republicans backed the law.

 

5) "Liberals created Medicare" TRUE, BUT when Medicare was passed Democrats had control of both houses and the presidency, and so could write almost anything they want in the bill.  Even so, a significant number of Republicans voted in favor of the Medicare bill. The House adopted the conference report on July 27, 1965, 307-116, with 70 Republicans supporting it. And on July 28, the Senate adopted the final version of the bill by a vote of 70-24, with 13 Republicans in favor of the bill. President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Medicare bill into law on July 30, 1965.  So saying Republicans opposed it is ludicrous

 

6)  "Liberals passed the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act" MISLEADING, the Air Quality Act of 1967 and The Clean Air Act of 1970, were passed unanimously by both parties by voice vote in Congress.  

The Clean Water Act was a little different.  After passing the Congress, Republican President Nixon vetoed the bill due to the costly price tag ($24 Billion in 1972), however, it was overridden by the help of Republicans in Congress.  The Senate voted 52-12 to override, with 17 of the votes in favor coming from Republicans.  The House voted 247-23 to override -- a margin of more than 10-1 -- with 96 of the yeas from Republicans and 151 from Democrats.

"There are many, many federal programs that are wasteful, and many American tax dollars are idly spent on programs that do not produce commensurate results -- but that is not true of the federal pollution effort," said Sen. Howard Baker, a first-term Republican from Tennessee.

 

SO not only does Lawrence O'Donnell have his facts wrong about just about everything in his liberal-loving manifesto, he also errs badly in saying that the conservatives/Republicans worked against what he holds as good policy.  He's liberally affected with partisanship and ignorance.

[Willy]

Well done X. The bad part is that the liberals are in charge of the education system and what Mr. Oddonell had been spewing is being taught to the children. He is a prime example of how ignorant many Americans are of U.S. history. His kind will never admit to being wrong and so he will continue to spread the propaganda lies.