The Towering and Pathetic Cowardice of Republicans

On June 9, 2020, Republican Senate Majority Leader, Mitch McConnell, of Kentucky, in the aftermath of the George Floyd incident on May 25, announced to reporters on Capitol Hill that “we are still wrestling with America’s original sin [of slavery].” He later spoke of “obvious racial discrimination” in policing that would require legislation.  Senate Republicans led by black Republican Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina released the “Justice Act” on June 17, 2020, with broad guidelines for police reform.  A day earlier, on June 16, President Donald Trump signed an executive order also to promote law enforcement changes.  Joining a protest against police brutality, Republican Senator Mitt Romney of Utah stated that “We need to stand up and say that black lives matter.”  On June 11, the GOP led Senate Armed Services Committee approved a proposal to strip Confederate names from military bases.  House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-CA, said he was “not opposed” to renaming bases and agreed with some aspects of the sweeping policereform bill released by the Congressional Black Caucus.

It is one of life’s certainties that when racial tensions flare Republicans will fold into a defensive crouch and surrender to all absurd and counterfactual leftist claims such as “systemic racism,” and widespread “police brutality” targeting blacks.  They will then serve up some version of radical-progressivism-lite to cover themselves and attempt to appease the leftist mob.  It is particularly obnoxious and self-defeating because Republicans have an excellent case to make when it comes to “race” if only they would make it.  

Remember, Republicans, that your party, the Republican Party, was formed in 1856 as an abolitionist party, the purpose of which was to end slavery.  State that your greatest son, Abraham Lincoln, perhaps the nation’s most revered President and martyr, the first Republican President, liberated the slaves in a Civil War.  That cataclysm consumed the lives of 700,000 soldiers, including 400,000 mostly white Union soldiers that perished to preserve the Union and free black slaves. 

Instead of whimpering and pandering, report that it was the Democrats that seceded from the Union to form the Confederacy to keep their precious slaves and that the Civil War was not North against South, but Republicans fighting Democrats.  Include in your vapid commentary that Democrats fought reconstruction and opposed all civil rights legislation to defend the newly freed slaves.  Affirm that it was Democrat Supreme Court justices who gave us the Dred Scott decision of 1857 that declared that black slaves were “property,” the prelude to the Civil War, and the Plessy v. Ferguson decision of 1896 that established “separate but equal.”  

Recall, Republicans, that the Democrats fiercely resisted the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision that ended “separate but equal,” including 99 Democrat Senators and Congressmen that signed the “Southern Manifesto” of 1956 (with one Republican) that viciously condemned it.  Boldly emphasize that the Democrats were the party of segregation, the KKK, black codes, poll taxes, literacy tests, and Jim Crow laws.

Can you bring yourselves to recollect that it was Republicans that granted the nation the Emancipation Proclamation, the Civil War amendments, including the 13^th, 14^th, and 15^th amendments that liberated the slaves, gave them equal justice, and the right to vote, which Democrats opposed?  Or that Republicans in Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1866, overriding a veto by Democrat President Andrew Johnson, the successor to Lincoln.  Republican President Ulysses S. Grant, the conquering Civil War general who defeated the southern Democrat armies, signed into law the first Ku Klux Klan Act also known as the Civil Rights Act of 1870, the Second KKK Act (Civil Rights Act of 1871), the Third KKK Act of 1871, and the Civil Rights Act of 1875.  Recall that the KKK was a terrorist group formed by Democrats.  Report that Republican President Dwight Eisenhower signed the Civil Rights Act of 1957 and the Civil Rights Act of 1960.  Democrat President Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, but only after Republicans pushed it through both houses of Congress amidst Democrat opposition.  

But don’t stop there Republicans.  For now, it is necessary to challenge blacks themselves, their very mixed record since Great Society, their misguided acceptance of liberalism and the Democrat party, and its malign prescriptions of grievance, victimhood, identity politics, and government dependency.  Declare that there are many successful blacks in America today, along with Asians and Hispanics, including a black President, black billionaires and millionaires, black doctors, attorneys, professors, writers, businessmen, movie stars, entertainers, commentators, and athletes, and many other black success stories.  This, even as a law-abiding, taxpaying black middle-class flourishes. 

Proclaim also that taken as a whole, American blacks are the most powerful, affluent, and influential black community in the world.  Clarify that poverty, unemployment, and incarceration rates for blacks were shrinking in the decades preceding the expansion of the liberal welfare state in the ‘60s, in some cases outdoing their white counterparts.         

Do not forget that blacks live in dark blue cities and states controlled by Democrats, one-party rule for generations; virtually all of them are liberal Democrats, many of whom are also black.  The governors, mayors, city councils, school superintendents, judges, prosecuting attorneys, juries, police commissioners, and most police in these cities are liberal Democrats, 95% of whom voted for Barack Obama.  If there is systemic racism, then it would have to be the Democrat politicians, judges, lawyers, bureaucrats, officials, and citizens, many of them minority, who are the racists.  Furthermore, declare that if our institutions are “systemically racist,” including the Academy, Hollywood, Entertainment, the media, and much of corporate America, they are virtually all liberal Democrats.  It is they, then, who must be racist.

Then, Republicans, discuss conservative efforts to reform cities and help blacks break the cycle of poverty and welfare dependency.  Such proposals include school choice, charter schools, vouchers, tax-reform, enterprise zones, vocational training, community colleges, entrepreneurship mentoring, and apprenticeship programs, much of it opposed by liberal Democrats.  

Proclaim, Republicans, the glories of liberty, free markets, private property rights, and the individual, education and self-motivation, industry and enterprise, success and upward mobility, of the American Dream.  Promote law and order, the two-parent family, faith, prayer, and the Western tradition.  Defend the many accomplishments of America, our history and culture.  Speak of the rule of law, robust policing, excellent schools, and safe communities instead of mouthing platitudes about George Floyd, “police reform,” or renaming military bases, as if any of that will help blacks.  

The nation is burning before you.  The radicals seek to break the country and government on the back of race and race war.  These are communists, well-funded, organized, and ruthless.  They represent our French and Russian Revolutions.  If you allow them, they will become our Stalins, Maos, and Pol Pots.  They seek to dismantle the nation and our institutions and grind them to rubble like the buildings they loot and burn, using race to demoralize the people, destabilize our constitutional system, take over the nation, and begin a thousand years of darkness.  The stakes could not be higher.  For once, Republican eunuchs, stand up to the horde, defend the nation, our history, culture, and civilization, before the barbarians destroy it forever.

June 30, 2020 

Richard Moss, M.D., a surgeon practicing in Jasper, IN, was a candidate for Congress in 2016 and 2018. He has written “A Surgeon’s Odyssey” and “Matilda’s Triumph,” available on amazon.com.  Contact him at richardmossmd.com or Richard Moss, M.D. on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.