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HORIST: What would America be without the Democrat Party?

HORIST: What would America be without the Democrat Party?

Let’s take a trip to America’s past … to the time before the Civil War.

The first thing we can say that if it were not for the Democratic Party, slavery would have likely ended by the mid-1800s.  By the 1850s, the nation was pretty much divided on the issue of slavery – with the Democrats as the stalwart supporters of the evil institution.  The primary opposition came from the Whig Party – although they were divided.  Among the more prominent Whigs of those days was an Illinois lawyer named Abraham Lincoln.

This led to a realignment of the abolitionists in the form of the new Republican Party.  The catalyst for its creation was opposition to slavery – made clear by its earliest platforms.  Every notable abolitionist – like the suffragettes that followed – embraced the Republican Party.

Democrats continued to fight for slavery.  The divisive issue was inflamed by the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act by congressional Democrats under the leadership of Illinois Democrat Senator Stephen Douglas – who clings to history largely for his debates with Lincoln.  The Act that introduced slavery to the new western territories was what brought Lincoln back into public life.

Without the Democratic Party, it is unlikely that there would have been a Civil War.  Absent Democrats’ ferocious opposition to abolition and their power in Congress, it is very arguable that slavery would have been legislated out of existence.

The Civil War was launched by Democrats in response to the election of Lincoln.  They began seceding from the Union even before the 16th President was even inaugurated.  Slavery and white superiority were so important to Democrats that they were willing to leave the Union and commence a tragically deadly war to preserve those traditions.  Their obsession for slavery cost the lives of more than 600,000 Americans – and that was at a time when the population was one-tenth of what it is today.

Well … thankfully the Democrats lost the war.

In the era of Reconstruction, Republicans passed the Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution – GUARANTEEING Negro Americans, including former slaves, the full rights of citizenship.  That should have ended the issue, but it did not.  Democrats fought the amendments, federal laws and court rulings to maintain a culture of white supremacy.

During Reconstruction, Black citizens – even in the south – were able to vote, start businesses and sit anywhere they chose in public and commercial places.  Many were elected to public offices – from city councils to both chambers of the United States Congress.  Of course, they were all Republicans.

Even during this period, however, Democrats organized vigilante opposition in the form of the Ku Klux Klan, the Knights of the White Camellia, the White Citizens Councils, the Red Shirts and other paramilitary terrorist groups.

In the Compromise of 1877, federal troops were withdrawn from the old Confederacy and Democrats responded like a coiled rattlesnake. With their illegal and unconstitutional terrorist groups they took over the south in a series of bloody coups – literally running Black and Republican officeholders out of town at gunpoint — at least those they did not murder.  And those they did not expel or kill, they simply prevented them from voting.

Their success in reclaiming power in what became known as the “solid Democrat south” led to 100 years of institutional racism.  Under the Democratic Party’s rule, there was never a legal and constitutional election during that dark century in American history.  And there was an ongoing wave of murders of Blacks, Republicans and anyone sympathetic to the plight of Black rights.  The entire justice system in the south – including federal judges – was corrupted into the agencies enforcing racial injustice at all levels.

During this period, Democrats in the north perfected their own unique form of institutional racism in the major cities to which many former slaves migrated in the belief that there would be relief from the persecution they suffered under southern Democrats.  It was dubbed “de facto racism.”

This was a much more subtle – but equally effective – form of racism.  It was even more pernicious because it circumvented the laws by establishing informal and unofficial racist political, commercial, social and cultural discrimination. Because it was more policy and practice than the governmental de jure racism of the old south, it was more difficult to address legislatively. It was able to survive the civil rights era of the 1960s and gave us the segregated and oppressed communities we find in our Democrat-run major cities to this day.

These racist practices in our cities have been allowed to flourish because the national Democratic Party looks the other way – just as it looked the other way when powerful Democrats ran the southern states.

Even in the civil rights era of the mid-Twentieth Century, it was Republicans who enacted the first civil rights legislation since Reconstruction — delayed for generations by  Democrat opposition and filibusters.  They were the 1956 and 1960 Civil Rights Acts.  And this was over the opposition and the successful watering-down efforts of Democrats, including then-Senate Minority Leader Lyndon Johnson and a young senator named Jack Kennedy.

The 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act were only passed because of the overwhelming support of the Republican Party in opposition to filibusters and the votes of Democrats.   The GOP provided enough votes to end the Democrat filibuster – the first time that had ever happened with civil rights legislation.

For sure, this is a theoretical exercise in academic conjecture – maybe a fit subject for a college debate.  And maybe all the forces of division would have existed by another name.  But it is irrefutable that when you look at the sin of slavery, a century of official discrimination, the plight of segregated and impoverished urban Blacks today and even the failure to eradicate the marginal elements of white supremacy, they are all the sad legacy of the Democratic Party.

One can imagine that had it not been for the Democratic Party, we may well be celebrating more than a hundred and fifty years as a post-racist society in which the Black population was long ago assimilated into the full measure of personal freedom.  We may get there someday, but it has been long delayed by … the Democratic Party.  And that is a fact.

So, there ‘tis.

About The Author

Larry Horist

So, there ‘tis… The opinions, perspectives and analyses of businessman, conservative writer and political strategist Larry Horist. Larry has an extensive background in economics and public policy. For more than 40 years, he ran his own Chicago based consulting firm. His clients included such conservative icons as Steve Forbes and Milton Friedman. He has served as a consultant to the Nixon White House and travelled the country as a spokesman for President Reagan’s economic reforms. Larry professional emphasis has been on civil rights and education. He was consultant to both the Chicago and the Detroit boards of education, the Educational Choice Foundation, the Chicago Teachers Academy and the Chicago Academy for the Performing Arts. Larry has testified as an expert witness before numerous legislative bodies, including the U. S. Congress, and has lectured at colleges and universities, including Harvard, Northwestern and DePaul. He served as Executive Director of the City Club of Chicago, where he led a successful two-year campaign to save the historic Chicago Theatre from the wrecking ball. Larry has been a guest on hundreds of public affairs talk shows, and hosted his own program, “Chicago In Sight,” on WIND radio. An award-winning debater, his insightful and sometimes controversial commentaries have appeared on the editorial pages of newspapers across the nation. He is praised by audiences for his style, substance and sense of humor. Larry retired from his consulting business to devote his time to writing. His books include a humorous look at collecting, “The Acrapulators’ Guide”, and a more serious history of the Democratic Party’s role in de facto institutional racism, “Who Put Blacks in That PLACE? -- The Long Sad History of the Democratic Party’s Oppression of Black Americans ... to This Day”. Larry currently lives in Boca Raton, Florida.

18 Comments

  1. DB

    As can be seen plain as day, the Democratic Party, its roots, its drives, its basis is still based around discrimination. Today it has kept enslaved all those that succumb to the idea that free handouts are good for them, be it ADC, Welfare, Food Stamps, minority preferences or what ever. Those programs destroy the incentive to raise oneself up and work for a living. This also keeps the minorities locked into communities which cater to their every need to keep “them” in place. Any person who claims they are a Democrat today is a racist.

  2. Michael Wilson

    The Democrats are the racists as shown by their actions to this day. They lie to get people to vote for them. The only thing the Democrats have now is trying to get people to hate the other party and vote against The Republicans, not for the Democrats because their policies won’t win elections.

  3. Ron

    THE COUNTRY AND WE THE PEOPLE WOULD JUMP FOR JOY ! THE UNITED STATES AND THE WHOLE WORLD BE A BETTER PLACE TO LIVE .. WE WOULDN’T HAVE WORRY ABOUT DICTATORSHIPS AS WE HAVE NOW IN THE WORLD AND WOULDN’T HAVE TO DEPLORABLE DUMMY RAT DEMOCRATIC PARTY TO CONTEND WITH.. WE WOULDN’T THE DEPLORABLE STOOGE SQUAD SISTERS , PELOSI , SCHUMER , SCHIFF , WATER’S , NADLER AND ETC..

    • Fire21

      See, when you shout too much, you lose track of your words and leave some out!

  4. Checkflight

    Go and vote them out of power! We are still a (residual?) democracy. To that end, make sure we get voter ID, WITH citizenship proof AND enforcement!

  5. Call me Roy

    Two alligators were sitting at the side of the swamp near the lake. The smaller one turned to the bigger one and said, “I can’t understand how you can be so much bigger than me. We’re the same age; we were the same size as kids. I just don’t get it.”
    “Well,” said the big gator, “what have you been eating?” “Politicians, same as you,” replied the small gator.
    “Hmm….Well, where do you catch them?”
    “Down the other side of the swamp near the parking lot by the Capitol.”
    “Same here. Hmm… How do you catch them?”
    “Well, I crawl up under one of their Lexus cars and wait for one to unlock the car door. Then I jump out, grab them by the leg, shake the sh#t out of them and eat’em!”
    “Same here.” says the big gator “Do you eat Demoncrats or Republicans?”
    “I eat the Demoncrats” says the little guy
    “Ah!”says the big gator. “I think I see your problem. You’re not getting any real nourishment. You see, by the time you finish shaking the sh#t out of a Demoncrat, there’s nothing left but an a**hole and a briefcase.”

    • Conservaive Christian

      That has to be the funniest and truest thing I’ve read lately. Thank you for posting it.

    • bittersweet.2007

      LOL!, Thanks Roy, Thats Great one! LUV IT!!!

  6. Vann78

    In US history, democrat party wanted to keep slavery and opposed liberation for black people.
    The irony is democrat party today wanted black Americans vote for them.
    In political career, Joe Biden promoted racist policies.

  7. Nikita63

    Three words completely and accurately describe what America would be like without the democratic party: FAR BETTER OFF! And, as a codicil to THAT, we would not be $22 trillion in debt because of their obstinacy and fiscal irresponsibility of tax and spend STUPIDITY to provide benefits for free what taxpaying American CITIZENS pay for, but derive little benefit from the fruits of their labors. Who does benefit? Try the foreign felons by definition in every one of the last reported 564 Sanctuary Cities, all of which should NEVER SEE ANOTHER RED CENT IN FUNDING FOR ANYTHING: PERIOD! I have had a degree in GOVERNMENT for 52 years and the ONLY accurate thing I have EVER seen about the Democratic Party is it’s party symbol and mendicant mascot: THE BRAYING JACKASS!

  8. Daniel Mount

    The Real Problem is not the Democrat Party. The problem is with the Evil Democrat Politicians that are running the Democratic Party. They are Anti-American, Anti-Constitution, Anti-Christian, Anti-God, Anti-Freedom and Anti-President Trump and they are all Pro-Islam, Pro-Socialist scum that all need to be arrested and sent off to GIMO to be judged by Military Tribunal and hung.

    • Barron

      The Democratic party is but a name for those people. It is the those peoples beliefs that are against the ideals of what made America Great that is the problem.

  9. Mike Tanco

    This Democratic Party is killing our country. The way to stop this travesty, term limits

  10. Marcus

    The Modern National Democrats are Utopian Secular Socialists , Arrogant Angry Hateful Capricious Anti American Power Hungry Control Freaks Lacking any Ethical or Moral Boundaries

  11. Joy A Ferrales

    Everything the Democrats call the President, they themselves are! History Repeats Itself! Demorats I are trying to split this country again and start another Civil War!! People wake up and see the Democrats for what they really are before it’s to late! Democrat Party are a group of Hypoccrites!

    • Barron

      You are 100% correct, the Democrats did start the last Civil War and are about to start another one.

  12. Robert

    Talk about the Media being false news well this is about the falsest there is. The fact that during slavery between 1860 until 1936 the Democratic party was the hard core Conservative party, and the Republican party was the Liberal party.
    it was the Conservative party that fostered slavery and oppression of the slaves after the War, with the Jim Crow laws, the KKK, and the statues that showed the power over the former slaves, which the Conservatives still do with their Gerrymandering of a black College in the Carolina’s to make sure the Black vote meant nothing.
    https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/5/8/17271766/north-carolina-gerrymandering-2018-midterms-partisan-redistricting
    When anyone has to cheat to win it shows they are not that popular and they have to cheat to come out on top.

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