A Libertarian's Thoughts on Whatever

Thursday, December 19, 2002

 
Ok, so I am getting really tired of this whole Trent Lott situation. Trent, please step down as majority leader. Whether or not you are a racist, you are just hanging onto your position for power at this point. You're hurting your party, and you will hurt the country. You could have pretty easily avoided all this, but you didn't, and now you must step down.
There are many interpretations as to what Sen. Lott meant by his comments. The obvious one is that he thinks we would have been better off with segregation. That certainly might be what he meant. But I doubt it. More likely he was talking as one former racist to another, being overly jocular about their shared past. Or maybe he meant that trying to force integration faster than people were ready for it caused more racial strife than would have occured otherwise. Perhaps he wasn't talking about segregation at all, maybe he was talking about foreign policy, and thinks President Thurmond would have been far superior in dealing with the USSR, and wouldn't have taken actions that pissed off the Islamic countries. I really don't know. If Sen. Lott had credibly stated what he meant as soon as it became an issue, he could have stopped all this before it began. Because he didn't, we are left to assume the worst. Even though I doubt the worst is true, it's too late to fix the problem now. Remain a senator, let your constituents decide if you should serve another term, but step down from the leadership.
Another point. Bill Clinton is treated like a god by most democrats. His mentor was Fulbright. Fulbright was as at least as rabid a segregationist as Sen. Thurmond used to be. Yet when Clinton speaks and writes about Fulbright in glowing terms, saying how great he was, no one ever slams him as a racist. Why is that?
Maestro 4:32 PM