If you do not like socialism then you’re a racist. This is what Matthew Dallek is saying—and saying about Ronald Reagan. I have read hundreds, if not thousands of pages on Reagan. I have reviewed his speeches, radio addresses and remember most of the events during his time as president. A racist Reagan was not. Senator Robert Byrd, West Virginia Democrat, was indeed a member of the Ku Klux Klan, so you are on good ground calling him a racist, but not Reagan. Give me a minute to tie in the socialism part.
Mr. Dallek of the University of California, Washington Center, is asserting “states rights” equates racism in his malignant attack on Ronald Reagan—surprising even from a former speechwriter for Missouri Democrat Congressman Richard Gephardt. He recently penned an article in the August 2009 issue of The American Scholar titled, “Not Ready for Mt. Rushmore: Reconciling the myth of Ronald Reagan,” in reference to those who are appealing for Reagan to be added to this monument. However, Mr. Dallek is not just trashing Reagan with an insipid assertion of racism, nor is he running interference during Mr. Obama’s plunge in the polls. Rather, he is attempting to pave the way for Mr. Obama’s socialism.
First, Mr. Dallek is aware of Mr. Obama’s inability to perform as expected. He is currently losing many disgruntled voters who are looking for a new set of ideas and it won’t take the politically curious long to trip over Reagan’s incredible legacy. Most of Mr. Dallek’s attack is an economic one. He starts his affront on Reagan’s legacy by calling him an “angrier, more divisive figure than he is remembered.” He says that George W. Bush’s “economic failures” were a product of “Reagan’s controversial approach to tax cuts.” He then turns to Reagan’s Cold War success by referring to Rutgers historian David Greenberg who says that “[historians have] given him some credit for the end of the Cold War. While most historians would give far more credit to Gorbachev…” From the Cold War he moves to racism, “His social policies were not designed to advance civil rights, [or] promote social equality,” and “he fanned the embers of discontentment.” It is a rather brutal assault, the kind that reminds me of the vandals in France, angered by the U.S. invasion of Iraq, painting swastika’s on my great uncle’s tombstone in March of 2003 where he died liberating them in World War I.
When Mr. Dallek makes the charge of racism, he truly exposes himself as a politico. He cites a speech by Reagan given in Neshobas County, Mississippi in 1980. Mr. Dallek quips, “He struck a note of racial defiance, praising, ‘states’ rights’ as a worthy cause in the place where three civil rights workers were murdered.” The very idea of racism in this speech is as fallacious as a crooked cop’s speed trap. Deroy Murdock of National Review Online exposed this in the November 20, 2007 issue titled “Reagan, No Racist.” Mr. Murdock reveals that columnists Paul Krugman and Bob Herbert propagated the idea that Reagan was stirring the fires of racism by invoking “states rights,” as if the merest acknowledgment ipso facto means racism. However, Mr. Murdock cites the context of the speech, found by columnist David Brooks who likewise defended Reagan. In context Reagan is promoting empowerment of the local government rather than omnipotence of the Federal Government—that does sound like the Reagan.
“I believe in states’ rights. I believe in people doing as much as they can for themselves at the community level and at the private level. And I believe that we’ve distorted the balance of our government today by giving powers that were never intended in the Constitution to that federal establishment.”
States have rights and because someone is willing to stand against big government it does not follow that he is a racist. I’m rather good at playing Where’s Waldo, and that paragraph is devoid of any racist sentiments—just as Reagan was. “States’ rights” are part of the vital system of checks and balances of the United States. They can be likened to the so-called “separation of church and state” for those on the Left. Mr. Murdock also cites Reagan’s own defense, “Because I said I believed states should be allowed to regain the rights and powers granted to them in the Constitution, he [President Carter] implied I was a racist pandering to Southern voters.”
But, Mr. Dallek is not interested in facts, “If history is written by the winners, then the conservative environment of the Bush years was a logical time for the burnishing of Reagan’s reputation, and the new era of Obama is a logical time for a reassessment.” Such an unveiled appeal to politicization of history is shocking, but laying that aside, I want to touch upon his motive.
States’ rights have been the red-headed stepchild of constitutional law since they were erroneously used to defend slavery by Southern-democrats. However the rights of states were a strong force against slavery and were used by Northern states to nullify Southern states claims over “run away” slaves. Northern Republicans would claim that one state’s claim is not binding on another state. Then the Supreme Court’s Dred Scott decision ruled that slaves had no claim to freedom; they were property and not citizens. In contrast, for Mr. Dalleck’s charge of racism to be cogent, he must believe that if states have rights, then this always means slavery is allowed. If not, then he must allow that “states’ rights” were misused by slavers, and Reagan has not committed an error. Moreover, who would make the claim that states never have any rights? Only those who would say states are property of the U.S. Federal Government and following in kind her citizens.
Mr. Dallek destroys his credibility when he twists Reagan’s words out of context, implies states are without rights, fails to disclose his political background and ignores sound refutes to Mr. Krugman and Mr. Herbert’s claims by Mr. Murdock. From this point, we can say something quite disappointing: Mr. Dallek is willing to put political hubris over honesty and his professional integrity as a professor of history and political science. It is also disappointing that the Phi Beta Kappa Society allowed The American Scholar to stoop to such levels as accepting political mudslinging as scholarship.
Reagan and conservative thought were Mr. Dallek;s first victims, but he is really after something much bigger, and something current. States’ rights are the single biggest obstacle to socialism, Mr. Dallek knows this, and by falsely joining racism to states’ rights he hopes to prevent the use of this appeal from interfering with Obama’s incredible grab for power. States’ rights can stop Mr. Obama’s neo-slavery called democratic socialism.
