Justin's Political Corner

In a syndicated column Friday, conservative commentator and former Republican presidential adviser Pat Buchanan called for a “moratorium on immigration from the Islamic world” in response to the Boston bombings. Calling the bombings “the dark side of diversity,” Buchanan asks, “Why are we bringing all of the world’s quarrelsome minorities, and all the world’s quarrels with them, into our home?”

Buchanan’s call to ban immigration from entire swaths of the world is nothing new. In a 2011 interview with the American Family Association’s Bryan Fischer, Buchanan agreed with Fischer that the U.S. should ban Muslim immigrants and the construction of mosques.

Buchanan has also claimed that Mexican immigrants are causing the “death of the West” and staging “an immigrant invasion of the United States from the Third World.”

h/t: Right Wing Watch

As the LGBT community continues to challenge discrimination and win their cases — be it discrimination by florists, bed & breakfasts, or T-shirt printers — conservatives have portrayed themselves as victims, claiming that recognizing LGBT people equally violates their religious beliefs. Their rhetoric has increasingly suggested the need for a backlash, which is exemplified in a new op-ed from Fox News contributor Pat Buchanan. Writing for the extremist site WorldNetDaily, Buchanan argues that the advent of LGBT equality could mean the so-called “culture wars” might have to become literal with conservatives brazenly violating the law.

Buchanan juxtaposes LGBT rights with the racial civil rights movement, openly admitting that religious leaders will have to preach “principled rejection” and encourage their congregations to disobey laws. He believes “treating black folks decently” is the Christian thing to do, but the same can not be said for the LGBT community.

Such civil disobedience would be a sight to behold: individuals marching demanding their right to discriminate. It would not likely live up to the nation’s creed as King intended. Fifty years ago today he wrote, “The goal of America is freedom,” and Buchanan and his fellow conservative Christians cannot change the fact that the inclusion of LGBT people is required to achieve that goal.

For obvious reasons, the American conservative movement has long been dogged by accusations of racism and racial insensitivity. From their famed Southern strategy to their determined efforts to suppress minority voting via phony voter ID initiatives to their race-baiting Obama attacks, conservatives have made clear their opposition to a tolerant, multicultural America. In fact, much of their electoral strategy relies on scaring older, white voters about blacks and Hispanics taking over “their” country. 

So it’s not uncommon to hear a prominant conservative, even one who holds elected office, make patently offensive remarks. Yet some occasionally hit an unimaginable low. This week, it was revealed that Republican Rep. Jon Hubbard has published a book in which he wrote that “[T]he institution of slavery that the black race has long believed to be an abomination upon its people may actually have been a blessing in disguise. He defended his book on Wednesday,telling the Jonesboro Sunthat he still believed slavery to be a blessing because it helped blacks come to America. Yes, he praised slavery. And when given the opportunity to backpedal, he doubled down. 

You may think that this does not occur often. You would be wrong. Here are a few other prominent conservatives who have suggested slavery was not all that bad.

1. Pat Buchanan. In his essay “A Brief for Whitey,” Buchanan suggested that slavery was a net positive, saying that,“America has been the best country on earth for black folks. It was here that 600,000 black people, brought from Africa in slave ships, grew into a community of 40 million, were introduced to Christian salvation, and reached the greatest levels of freedom and prosperity blacks have ever known.”

2. & 3. Michele Bachmann and Rick Santorum. Bob Vander Plaats, the leader of the arch-conservative Family Leader, a religious organization that opposes same-sex marriage, got GOP presidential candidates Bachmann and Santorum to sign his pledge asserting that life for African Americans was better during the era of slavery: “A child born into slavery in 1860 was more likely to be raised by his mother and father in a two-parent household than was an African American baby born after the election of the USA’s first African-American President.”

4. Art Robinson. Robinson was a publisher and a GOP candidate for congress in Oregon. One of the books he published included this evaluation of life under slavery: “The negroes on a well-ordered estate, under kind masters, were probably a happier class of people than the laborers upon any estate in Europe.”

5. Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson. Peterson is a conservative preacher who articulated this bit of gratitude: “Thank God for slavery, because if not, the blacks who are here would have been stuck in Africa.”

8. Trent Franks. Franks is the sitting congressman for the second congressional district in Arizona. As shown here, he believes that a comparison of the tribulations of African Americans today to those of their ancestors in the Confederacy would favor a life in bondage: “Far more of the African American community is being devastated by the policies of today than were being devastated by the policies of slavery.”

9. Ann Coulter. Known for her incendiary rhetoric and hate speech, Coulter was right in character telling Megyn Kelly of Fox News that, “The worst thing that was done to black people since slavery was the great society programs.”

10. Rep. Loy Mauch. This Arkansas GOP state legislator has found biblical support for his pro-slavery position. He wrote to the Democrat-Gazette to inquire, “If slavery were so God-awful, why didn’t Jesus or Paul condemn it, why was it in the Constitution and why wasn’t there a war before 1861?”

h/t: Mark Howard at AlterNet

Here we see CNN contributor and Andrew Breitbart editor Dana Loesch defending recently-fired MSNBC contributor Pat Buchanan, saying that Buchanan’s First Amendment rights have been violated by a “progressive” conspiracy to silence “diversity of thought:” Controversial Pat Buchanan Forced Off of MSNBC by Van Jones, Media Matters - Big Journalism.

“Diversity of thought” is a rather ironic phrase to apply to Pat Buchanan, a man who is viciously opposed to diversity in any other form. And “controversial” is an oddly watered down word to apply to someone who has a history of associating with open white supremacists. But on with Loesch’s apology for Pat:

Of course, when Dana Loesch says “I’ll debate you in the public square,” she actually means she’ll call you a “pervert” and a child molester.

But it’s really awful that poor Paleo Pat’s constitutionally guaranteed free speech has been unceremoniously stripped away by the evil liberal cabal, isn’t it?

For more on this abominable censorship, read Pat Buchanan’s latest column atTownhall.com, RealClearPolitics.com, HumanEvents.com, World Net Daily,Creators Syndicate, and practically every other right wing site on the Internet.

Meanwhile, in objective reality, Pat Buchanan’s First Amendment rights have not been “abridged,” because the First Amendment pledges that the government will not make laws censoring speech, and Buchanan’s firing by MSNBC has nothing to do with the government. As you can see, he is still perfectly free to promulgate his hateful ideology at any website and/or cable news channel that will allow it. (Hey, Fox News — opportunity’s knocking.)

Dana Loesch clearly doesn’t understand the First Amendment to the US Constitution.

h/t: Little Green Footballs

It’s officially the end of an era for MSNBC and Pat Buchanan. How … anticlimactic:

My days as a political analyst at MSNBC have come to an end.

After 10 enjoyable years, I am departing, after an incessant clamor from the left that to permit me continued access to the microphones of MSNBC would be an outrage against decency, and dangerous.

The calls for my firing began almost immediately with the Oct. 18 publication of Suicide of a Superpower: Will America Survive to 2025?? […]

Pat then goes on to blame loudmouthed Obama supporters, homosexuals, Jews, and I don’t know, maybe werewolves. Yeah, let’s say werewolves.

Buchanan’s recent book may have been MSNBC’s excuse for finally taking him off the air for good, but it seems mostly to be a “final straw” sort of thing.

Buchanan has been mourning the downfall of white America for a considerable time now, so this latest book was hardly new ground for him. He has been accused of anti-Semitism even by such conservative stalwarts as William F. Buckley, and got in hot water a few years ago for a bizarre column proposing that Hitler was misunderstood. No, his pissy statement sells himself rather short on the number of ridiculously bigoted things that would regularly come from his mouth. No matter what he said on air or off, though, the network would always prop him up in front of the television cameras.

h/t: Hunter at Daily Kos

Pat Buchanan’s explanation for his problems at MSNBC is exactly what you might expect: “Militant gay rights groups” and “people of color, Van Jones” are responsible.

On Saturday, MSNBC President Phil Griffin addressed Buchanan’s recent absence from the network, where he hasn’t appeared as a pundit since October, saying that Buchanan may not be allowed back because of some of the views in his book, “Suicide Of A Superpower.”

“Pat and I are going to meet soon and discuss it,” Griffin told the Bill Carter of the New York Times.

The book is Buchanan’s latest treatise on the decline of America at the altar of diversity, and in it he waxes nostalgic about the segregation era, among other things. Sample quote, from the chapter “The End Of White America”: “Those who believe the rise to power of an Obama rainbow coalition of peoples of color means the whites who helped to engineer it will steer it are deluding themselves. The whites may discover what it is like to ride in the back of the bus.”

Read more selections from the book here.

For years, the civil rights group Color Of Change (which was founded by Van Jones) has been calling on MSNBC to fire Buchanan, who has a long history of making racist and anti-Semitic comments in his books, and even in his appearances on the network. At one point he referred to President Obama as “your boy” during a discussion with host Al Sharpton. At another time hecalled the President’s Nobel Peace Prize an “affirmative action Nobel.” Then there was hiscolumn — briefly promoted by MSNBC on its website — that argued that Hitler didn’t really want war.

In October, Color Of Change, as well as gay rights and Jewish groups, upped the pressure on MSNBC after Buchanan released his book — and even appeared on the white supremacist radio show The Political Cesspool to promote it.

“During the period of the book tour I asked him not to be on,” Griffin said of the hiatus. “Since then the issue has become the nature of some of the statements in the book.”

“The ideas he put forth aren’t really appropriate for national dialogue, much less the dialogue on MSNBC,” he added.

Buchanan has denied that he is suspended, appearing on Hugh Hewitt’s radio show to claim that he’s “had some medical issues at the end of the year which were pretty problematic, and so I’ve sort of been out of speaking and things like that.” He added that “on Drudge Report, somebody said I’ve been suspended. But I don’t know anything about that.”’

h/t: Jillian Rayfield at TPM

Conservative contributor Pat Buchanan’s tenure at MSNBC may have finally come to an end.

AP reports that MSNBC president Phil Griffin has indicated the controversial former presidential candidate will not be allowed back on the network after the release of his latest book. “Suicide of a Superpower” has been roundly condemned for its racially-charged content, including chapters titled “The End of White America” and “The Death of Christian America.” Griffin said, “When Pat was on his book tour, because of the content of the book, I didn’t think it should be part of the national dialogue much less part of the dialogue on MSNBC.”

As ThinkProgress has reported, Buchanan has a long history of bigotry and has made many offensive statements while in the network’s employ. 275,000 people signed a petition calling on MSNBC to fire him.

Finally, he’s gone!!

h/t: ThinkProgress

Conservative commentator Pat Buchanan has been suspended indefinitely from MSNBC, according to a statement from that network’s President Phil Griffin. An Associated Press article on CBSNews.com blames reaction to Buchanan’s latest book Suicide of a Superpower for his ouster from the cable network, as well as a campaign by the advocacy group, Color of Change.

The former Nixon aide has long courted controversy. In April of this year he said that President Obama’s path to the White House was the result of “Affirmative Action all the way.” In 2009, he asserted that the U.S. “has been a country built, basically, by white folks.”

MSNBC’s Griffin apparently believes, however, that Buchanan’s newest work has crossed a line.Suicide of a Superpower came out in October and features chapters with titles like “The End of White America” and “The Death of Christian America.”

He also refused to reveal any details about the terms of Buchanan’s contract with the network or whether it would be renewed.

Keep him off of MSNBC for good!

h/t: David Ferguson at Raw Story

MSNBC contributor Pat Buchanan has made a career out of bigotry. His thoughtful contributions include calling gays satanists, praising the Nazis and the KKK, decrying Dr. Martin Luther King as a fraud, and telling African Americans that they should be grateful for slavery. While touring the networks to promote his latest book, Suicide of a Superpower: Will America Survive to 2025?, he stopped by a white nationalist radio program The Political Cesspool which was only too happy to advertise his theories. In response, African-American civil rights organization ColorOfChange.org and CREDO Action gathered 275,000 people who are demanding that MSNBC President Phil Griffin fire Buchanan immediately. The ColorOfChange.org petition reads, “Buchanan has a long and consistent history of peddling white supremacist ideology as legitimate political commentary, on your network and elsewhere.” Noting that Buchanan has the right to express his views, the petition says “he’s not entitled to a platform that lets him broadcast bigotry and hate to millions. If MSNBC and NBC want to be seen as trusted, mainstream sources of news and commentary, you need to fire Buchanan now.” Buchanan has not appeared on MSNBC since he began promoting his book on Oct. 22.

On Saturday night, Pat Buchanan appeared on the white nationalist radio program The Political Cesspool to promote his new book. During the nearly twenty-five minute interview, Buchanan attacked the country’s increasing diversity and warned that America would face numerous problems when whites become a minority.

Buchanan has a long history marred by bigotry and hostility toward minorities. He recently released a new book, Suicide of a Superpower, which claims that America is disintegrating as whites lose their majority status. Buchanan also serves as a political analyst for MSNBC — an affiliation that was mentioned by host James Edwards after the interview and on the program’s website.

The Political Cesspool describes itself as representing “a philosophy that is pro-White … We wish to revive the White birthrate above replacement level fertility and beyond to grow the percentage of Whites in the world relative to other races.”

The Anti-Defamation League has criticized Edwards for having “white supremacist views” and interviewing “a variety of anti-Semites, white supremacists, Holocaust deniers, conspiracy theorists and anti-immigrant leaders.” The Southern Poverty Law Center wrote in 2007 that The Political Cesspool host “has probably done more than any of his contemporaries on the American radical right to publicly promote neo-Nazis, Holocaust deniers, raging anti-Semites and other extremists” and that his program “has become the primary radio nexus of hate in America.”

The SPLC notes that The Political Cesspool’s guest roster reads like a “Who’s Who” of radical racists, with guests like “white supremacist” Sam Dickson; “white supremacist” Paul Fromm; anti-Semitic professor Kevin MacDonald; and “neo-Nazi activist April Gaede.” Edwards has also hosted former KKK leader David Duke, of whom Edwards writes: “Contrary to the false image of a drooling ‘racist’ that the MSM would like to paint, David is a very thoughtful, intelligent, and gracious individual.”

Edwards posts his thoughts on The Political Cesspool’s website about topics like:

• Slavery. “For blacks in the Americas, slavery is the greatest thing that ever happened to them. Unfortunately, it’s the worst thing that ever happened to white Americans.” August 11, 2008.
• LGBTs. “Fags”; “perverts”; “sodomites”; “Until 1973, the American Psychiatric Association rightly listed homosexuality as a mental illness. It still is, of course, just no longer an officially listed one. Political correctness took care of that.” April 21, 2009; July 11, 2011; July 6, 2011. 
• Jews. “I have no idea why so many people dislike Jews … This appeared on Daily Kos yesterday. The author is Tim Wise, a well known Jewish anti-white activist. I’m reprinting it here, bad language and all, so people can get a glimpse into how the people who really run this country think. To put it bluntly, people like Tim Wise are filled with a venomous hatred of white people like you and me. And they run Washington, Wall Street, and the news and entertainment media.” November 4, 2010.
• Martin Luther King Jr.: “MLK’s dream is our nightmare.” February 9, 2011.
• Whether “interracial marriage should be illegal”: “Despite constant brainwashing and relentless media propaganda, there still remains a great number of people in Mississippi who adhere to the values of their parents. … The media will predictably dismiss the voters of Mississippi as ‘hicks’ and ‘rednecks,’ but their opinion on this matter is perfectly legitimate.” April 8, 2011.
• “Interracial sex.” “One of the most popular movies right now is Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants: 2, which is being marketed directly to teenage girls. It’s been out about a week and has already grossed almost $25 million dollars. What’s it about? White girls having sex with non-whites. Which is white genocide. … Interracial sex is white genocide. Period.” August 14, 2008.

• Women in the military. “Women have many natural gifts that men don’t have. A man, for instance, could never properly fill the vitally important maternal role that women (used to) play, but dressing up and pretending to be a soldier isn’t what God had in mind for the fairer sex. How intimidating do you think it would be to see a platoon of homosexuals and women (and homosexual women) charging a bunker? Do you think we could have taken the beach at Normandy with an army like that? That’s a serious question. The answer, of course, is no.” September 21, 2011.

During the interview, Buchanan warned about the consequences of whites becoming a minority in America:

EDWARDS: Moving on to another aspect of your excellent new book, which I have a review copy right here on my desk in the studio, you write that white America is an endangered species. Pat, what’s America going to look like if indeed whites do become extinct?  

BUCHANAN: Well, I don’t think whites are going to become extinct. But certainly not in the near future. But what is happening, as you see in California, where Americans of European descent are already a minority and that is true in Texas and it is true, I believe, there is one other, New Mexico and Hawaii. And in this decade, I think, six more states will pass the tipping point where whites become a minority.

I think the best way to understand what America will look like is to look at California today. I think that is pretty much what America will look like. The Hispanic population will be immense. A 150 — excuse me, 135 million, according to the Census Bureau statistics, and if you look at California, the golden land, which used to have — I mean everybody went there, it was paradise. The soldiers who went out to the Pacific came home, went through there, and then went out and made their homes. And what is happening out there, James, is that — I mean, look at the bond ratings, it’s at the lowest in the country. The taxes are enormously heavy, they’re on the well-to-do and the successful. It is what they’re doing in the country now and these folks are leaving the state and many of the poor, illegal immigrants, one-third of them head for California, you’ve got a black-brown war of the underclass going on in Los Angeles, according to Sheriff Lee Baca, in the gangs and in the prison, and of course the welfare state is bankrupting California. And they’ve got some of the highest taxes in the nation. So I think—this is what the country is going to look like.

Buchanan was asked later in the program by Edwards about his chapter on the “cult” of diversity:  

EDWARDS: You know, when you talk about the cult of diversity in the book, and this is a follow-up to the topic that we’re on, it seems as though the white politicos who are explicitly involved, they seem to work against their own group interests, rather than for them, as the minorities do. Again, this chapter that you write on the cult of diversity, I have to ask this question, why do white liberals remain entranced by diversity when the social and cultural effects of diversity are almost entirely negative for themselves and their children and grandchildren.

Buchanan replied: “Well, I think there’s many people candidly who — I’ve been asked on radio, that ‘what is wrong if a — I mean, why isn’t it a really good thing when whites become a minority nationwide and we’re all part of minorities?’ And I say, you know, this thing, I mean, real problems are attendant to this” and cited “racial preferences and affirmative action.” Buchanan added that white males are “really the ones who are the  victims of affirmative action, not the beneficiaries, and yet they’re thirty percent of the country but they’re seventy-five percent of the dead  and wounded coming back from Afghanistan. That’s not a formula for social peace.” 

Buchanan also told Edwards that he thinks America will “be a Balkanized country, sort of a Tower of Babel” when whites are no longer in the racial majority.

Buchanan’s interview gained notice over the weekend among a certain segment of Buchanan’s fan base. The white supremacist group Council of Conservative Citizens promoted the interview on its website. And the National Policy Institute, which the SPLC describes as a “white supremacist think tank,” posted the interview on its NPI TV page.

It’s extremely unlikely that Buchanan was unaware of the program’s views when he appeared on the program. Media Matters, The Southern Poverty Law Center and The Anti-Defamation League criticized Buchanan for previously appearing on the program. Buchanan guested in 2006 and 2008. In a 2008 press release, ADL National Director Abraham Foxman said of Buchanan, “It’s not as if he did this by accident.” Foxman added, “Anyone who would have made inquiries into the nature of this program would have realized that it is an outlet for racism, anti-Semitism and hate.”

Pat Buchanan is, among other things, an MSNBC contributor with a new book out, Suicide of a Superpower: Will America Survive to 2025? As his “last political will and testament,” the book’s thesis is centered on “cultural collapse” of the nation and “the slow death of the people who created and ruled the nation” — namely, white people. In an op-ed for CNS News yesterday, Buchanan outlines the three major consequences America will face without enough white people to save it.

First, the Republican party, which “routinely gets 90 percent of its presidential votes from white America,” will come to an end, especially since crucial GOP states like Texas are “hispanicizing.” Second, the “millions of immigrants, legal and illegal” who “do not bring the academic or professional skills of European-Americans” will replace actual “taxpayers” and suck the government dry. Finally, test-scores will nose-dive because “more and more children taking those tests will be African-American and Hispanic”:

Third, the decline in academic test scores here at home and in international competition is likely to continue, as more and more of the children taking those tests will be African-American and Hispanic. […] Can the test-score gap be closed? With the Hispanic illegitimacy rate at 51 percent and the black rate having risen to 71 percent, how can their children conceivably arrive at school ready to compete?

Given that minorities are bad at school, Buchanan goes on to warn that the “burden” of academic excellence thus “falls almost entirely on white males.” This is, of course, just the latest attempt of the MSNBC contributor to pass off derogatory, bigoted, and ignorant racialism as analysis. Some low-lights from Buchanan’s long and distinguished history in bigotry:  

-Christian Terrorist Was ‘Right’: Buchanan wrote that while the right-wing Norwegian terrorist Anders Behring Breivik was a “calculating killer,” he “may be right” about “a climactic conflict between a once-Christian West and an Islamic world that is growing in numbers and advancing inexorably into Europe for the third time in 14 centuries.”

-No Help For White Males: In August, Buchanan complained that President Obama hadn’t hired enough white males to the civil service, saying there is “affirmative action for women, for Hispanics, and for blacks, but none for white males.”

-Too Many Jews: Last year, Buchanan argued that now-Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan’s nomination meant there would be too many Jews on the High Court bench. “Jews, who represent less than 2 percent of the U.S. population, will have 33 percent of the Supreme Court seats. Is this the Democrats’ idea of diversity?”

-Legal Immigration Is An Invasion: The Virginia Tech shooting in 2007 spurred Buchanan to declare that the shooter, Korean student Cho Seung-Hui, got into the country because legal immigration is “the greatest invasion in history.” We shouldn’t be surprised that “some are going berserk here,” he said.

-Slave Descendants Should Be Grateful: In 2008, asserting that “no people anywhere has done more to lift up blacks than white Americans,” Buchanan says because it was here that 600,000 slaves eventually learned of “Christian salvation” and got “affirmative action,” black people should stop complaining. “We hear the grievances. Where is the gratitude?”

-Hitler Was Courageous: In 1977, Buchanan wrote that while Hitler was “indeed a racist and anti-Semitic to the core,” Americans overlooked the fact that he “was also an individual of great courage, a soldier’s soldier in the Great War, a leader steeped in the history of Europe.”

-MLK Was A Fraud: In 1969, while Buchanan was working as President Richard Nixon’s speechwriter, he urged Nixon not to visit King’s widow on the first anniversary of his assassination. The visit “would outrage many, many people who believe Dr. King was a fraud and a demagogue, and perhaps worse,” Buchanan wrote, before proceeding to call King “one of the most divisive men in contemporary history.”

-KKK Has Winning Issues: In 1989, Buchanan urged conservatives to examine Duke, a former Grand Wizard in the Ku Klux Klan, and his “portfolio of winning issues.” Dismissing Duke’s history as insignificant, Buchanan praised Duke for taking on affirmative action in “hiring, scholarships, and promotions” and for denouncing “social engineers.” Buchanan said the GOP was “throwing away a winning hand” by embracing Jesse Jackson after the 1988 election, and Duke was “the first fellow to pick up the discards.”

-Gays Are Satanists: In 1990, Buchanan said the AIDS epidemic proved “our promiscuous homosexuals appear literally hell-bent on Satanism and suicide.” He still views homosexuality as “unnatural and immoral” and marriage equality as “an Orwellian absurdity.”

-The Dishwasher Liberated Women: In another book, he wrote “the real liberators of American women were not the feminist noise-makers; they were the automobile, the supermarket, the shopping center, the dishwasher, the washer-dryer, the freezer,” which all freed up “Mom” to spend more time reading.

MSNBC, please fire him at once!

Pat Buchanan is the unrepentant voice of the White Racial Id in the Age of Obama…he is so the trend setter and barometer for the Tea Party GOP on issues of race and white racial resentment. For that, I am grateful. Uncle Pat makes doing recon on his team oh so easy, as they hide their wicked pathologies in plain sight.

Last week Pat Buchanan blessed the public with two articles. The first was a great example of poo poo slinging Right-wing head cheese that included almost every talking point from the Right-wing in the Age of Obama. White racial resentment, symbolic racism, white rage, anti-affirmative action, Obama as anti-white, white victimology, yada yada was all there: Thus, I deem “The View from Martha’s Vineyard” utterly brilliant.

This is the money shot my friends. One of the old school/new school white angst memes of recent note is that President Barack Obama administers a spoils system for racial minorities. He supposedly hates white people. As a result of his anti-white zeal, Obama has set up a system of institutional “affirmative action” to hand down goodies to the colored folk, goodies which are to the exclusion of hard working white men.

In its most crude White nationalist reading, the time of the Great Recession and Right wing austerity policies will lead to “black uprisings” as the Fed’s budget is cut. In Uncle Pat’s more sophisticated narrative, the story of “black and brown equals government employees,” is a naked dog whistle that the U.S. budget should just be cut because it employs lazy “colored folks” to the disadvantage of “hard working,” “real American” whites.

This is the 21st century version of Bacon’s Rebellion folks. White elites have long known that they can motivate racially resentful white folks to act against their own class interests through appeals to the psychic wages of white supremacy and white privilege. Moreover, the feigned color blind policies of Conservatism do this work through the language of “small government” and “constitutionalism,” what are ultimately ways of talking nasty about black and brown folks without sounding racist.

Conservative wunderkind Lee Atwater said it best and most honestly with his famous quip that:

“You start out in 1954 by saying, ‘Nigger, nigger, nigger,’ ” said Atwater. “By 1968, you can’t say ‘nigger’ — that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff. You’re getting so abstract now [that] you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things, and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites.”

But here is my question. Is this new/old narrative of kill the federal government because it employs too many “darkies” just a system artifact, i.e. it exists in the political subconscious of Whiteness and Conservatism and can thus be harnessed without having to use the actual language of race?

Or is the “federal government equals employment for undeserving blacks and minorities” (and others, here meaning you lazy teachers and union members) a top down talking point, where opinion leaders like Buchanan, Fox News, and the Tea Party GOP’s leadership filter it gravity-like in a daily message to the foot soldiers of the Right, who then reproduce and disseminate it broadly?

h/t: AlterNet