Glenn Beck and Elements of the Right Wing

Inspecting the fabric of America to understand nativist/supremacist tendencies is a complicated matter, John.

Prior to the Civil War, from 1861 to 1865, often referred to by some in the South as the War Between the States, nearly half of the states of United States of America seceded from the Union.

At that time, nearly 400 years of enslavement of Africans and the descendants of Africans had occurred in the land, first during the period when the land was recognized as British colonies, later to be known after 1776 as the United States. The seceding states were located in the South.

No matter how loudly some Southerners proclaim otherwise, the state's right's issue that brought about the secession of the Southern states was their desire to maintain the institution of slavery and allow for its expansion.

Today, states rights are the articulated demand being made by the Republican Party and the extreme Right Wing OF the Republican Party, the TEA Party, as they call for getting 'government out of the states' business'. 

After the war ended in 1865, those disaffected elements among Southerners were now forced to endure a new reality not of their choosing. With the federal government under the Republican Party's control, the process of Reconstruction was implemented with the use of federal troops to assure melding of the newly emancipated descendants of Africa into the nation.

This came at a great cost to the South as land they believed theirs was confiscated, laws were written with the intent to suppress the Southern states' ability to rise up again. The fierce opposition to the handling of the South evidenced itself in the Democratic Party.

After the Civil War, many Republicans, the so called party of the Great Emancipator Abraham Lincoln, became angered by their party's actions against their brethern who had seceded, defecting to the Democratic Party.

After the Compromise of 1877, where Democrats and Republicans struck a deal to allow Republican Rutherford B. Hayes to be President of the United States, IF the administration removed federal troops that were responsible for enforcing the laws meant to incorporate the newly freed so called Negroes into American society, giving them the right to vote and be treated as citizens, then came the Black Codes and Jim Crow.

After the Compromise of 1877, all of the Black legislators that had previously been elected were slowly voted out of office. The discriminatory Black Codes and Jim Crow laws replaced slavery and ruled the land, primarily in the South, for nearly 100 years, although the North had its own versions of discriminatory practices. (A minor example, in Philadelphia, PENNSYLVANIA where I grew up, NOT the other Philadelphia in the South in MISSISSIPPI, there was a time when Black people were not allowed to try on clothing before purchasing.)

This carried on into the 50s and 60s, with the Civil Rights Era, when finally, nearly 100 years after the initial emancipation of Black people from chattel slavery, challenges to the status of Americans of African descent as second class citizens, which replaced being enslaved, were made by Americans of all racial composition.

Meanwhile at this time, as the Democratic Party added a civil rights platform to its party during the Civil Rights Era, there was ANOTHER crossing of party lines, this time Democrats heading into the Republican Party, the party that, after the Civil War 100 years before, had began to take on characteristics of the pre and post Civil War Democratic Party that had fought to disenfranchise the newly freed formerly enslaved African Americans.

Nixon has been credited with devising the so called Southern Strategy in 1968 but, in reality, the strategy had been used by both parties back and forth since the Civil War.

All of this is to say, race issues in America and the belief that Black people are trampling on or will be trampling on or are PLANNING to trample on the rights of White people, is an American institutionalized belief held by certain elements in American society.

In many ways, in most recent times today, the new embrace of so called Libertarianism has allowed an ACCEPTABLE way to claim that discrimination is okay. Although Libertarians will claim abhorring discrimination of any kind, saying it is not the role of government to tell private owners of establishments they should not discriminate. The lesson that should be allowed for these owners to learn is that discrimination is bad for business.

That sounds real good as an ideology but, Americans of African descent lived the example for nearly 100 years that leaving certain elements to themselves to self correct didn't happen.

So, the extreme Right Wing elements of today see hope spring eternal in candidates, like Ron Paul and his son, Rand Paul, who claim to be Libertarians or embrace the beliefs OF Libertarianism, with the so called ideals of libertarianism now primarily popping up in the Republican Party and its offspring, TEA party.

The articulated positions of TEA Party favorite Rand Paul have bolstered the hopes of the nativist/supremacist community, resulting in their donating to Rand Paul's campaign. It would seem, for the supremacist community, the possible return of discriminatory practices, sans the racial rhetoric, will do just as well. 

The growing undercurrent of intolerance that has bubbled up to the surface would conceivably allow any and all forms of discrimination to be revisited as libertarian principles are argued as seeking smaller government.

Republican candidate Rand Paul of Kentucky, seeking a senate seat, has stated he has issues with civil rights, disability rights, etc., basically ANY laws that he finds not fitting the libertarian ideal. He has stated he takes issue with nearly 90 years of American legislation. It is unknown whether IF elected, he will spend his time trying to craft legislation to revisit the issues with which he has issues.

Republican Tom Tancredo of Colorado, this past February 2010 at the National TEA Party Convention in Nashville, Tennessee, called for the re-institution of literacy tests, tests that were ruled unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court in the 1960s.      

To this suggestion, Mr. Tancredo was rewarded with laughter and applause from the TEA Party crowd he was addressing. I wrote about the legislation that abolished the poll tax and the literacy tests in The Voting Rights Act of 1965 Ended the Use of Literacy Tests.  

You may be right, John. It may take letting these guys run things into its most perverse realization of the efforts of the extreme Right, possibly bearing the fruit of some of its elements' desire to deprive many of the so called promise of America.