[lbo-talk] An Anti-Labor Day

R rhisiart at charter.net
Tue Sep 7 01:52:04 PDT 2004


At 05:03 PM 9/6/2004, you wrote:
>Quoth Alexander Cockburn:
>
> > Democrats voting to over-ride Truman's veto of Taft-Hartley: 24
> >
> > Byrd Va
> > John Connally Tx
> > Eastland, Miss
> > Ellender La
> > Fulbright Ar
> > George Ga
> > Hatch NM
> > Hoey NC
> > Holland Fl
> > Maybank SC
> > McLellan AK
> > McKellar TN
> > O'Connor MD
> > O'Daniel TX
> > Overton LA
> > Robertson Va
> > Russell GA
> > Stewart TN
> > Tydings MD
> > Umstead NC
>
>What a dilettante and fool Cockburn is. Just look at those states. How many
>of those Southern Democrats would be Democrats now? James Fucking Eastland?
>Give me a break!

try senator byrd, who's more outspoken against the iraq war than the current democratic presidential candidate. how about senator fulbright of fulbright scholar fame? bill clinton worked for fulbright, who allegedly was his mentor.

you have zell miller who was a kerry booster until recently; not on this list, of course, but the same kind of dixiecrat the democrats found acceptable for decades.

it's irrelevant how many would be democrats now. this list conveys a strong sense of what the democrat party was then. what party, other than today's republican party, would enjoy having senators eastland, russell and the rest of this rogues gallery in it? the democratic party during the era of taft-hartley, and almost 20 years subsequent to that period.

these kinds of "gentlemen" were not discarded by the democratic party: they discarded it.


>What ahistorical crap. Maybe we could hear more from Cockburn about Hitler's
>Keynesianism?

cockburn's main point, if i understood him correctly, is that there's very little difference between the democrats of the taft-hartley era and of today. his example is NAFTA. 40 percent of a democratic party without all these dixiecrats voted in favor of NAFTA, a treaty sponsored by the democratic, neoDixiecrat president Bill Clinton.

one thing that stands out between these two eras is that harry truman, a democrat, vetoed taft-hartley whereas bill clinton advocated, worked for and signed NAFTA legislation. the dixiecrats voted to over-ride truman's veto. their modern day heirs in both parties voted and worked for the passage of NAFTA.

hardly ahistorical. plus ce change, plus ce la meme chose. the system still works in favor of the economically powerful at the expense of most americans. you have a lot of running dogs to defeat, john, in both parties.

R


>- - - - -
>John Lacny
>http://www.johnlacny.com
>
>People of the US, unite and defeat the Bush regime and all its running dogs!



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