Civil rights at bayonet point. (Insider Report).

"When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him. We're proud of it," declared incoming Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) at a retirement party for Senator Strom Thurmond (R-S.C.). "And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn't have had all these problems over all these years, either." The second observation, according to the December 7th Washington Post, was greeted with "an audible gasp and general silence."

As a renegade Democratic governor of South Carolina in 1948, Thurmond ran for president on the Dixiecrat Party, which rejected incumbent Democrat Harry Truman's support for federal "civil rights" laws. Thurmond declared at the time: "All the laws of Washington and all the bayonets of the Army cannot force the Negro into our homes, our schools, our churches."

Because Lott refused to specify what he meant by "all these problems," the Post and other Establishment media organs enjoyed the luxury of casting Lott's remarks as an endorsement of the Dixiecrat Party's segregationist views -- rather than the party's ironic defense of constitutional federalism. Predictably, Lott's statement provided fodder for Jesse Jackson (who demanded his resignation), Al Sharpton, and other professional race-baiters. But it was also condemned by neoconservatives who support big government. William Kristol, editor of the neocon Weekly Standard, condemned Lott's comments as "ludicrous." David Frum of the neocon National Review complained that ...