Grand Old Partisan definitely did not attend yesterday's re-opening celebration for the African-American Civil War Memorial and Museum in Washington, DC. No, it wasn't just the hefty $50 entrance fee.
Beyond outrageous was that all the honorees were Democrats. Senator Jim Webb, Senator Mary Landrieu, Representative Jesse Jackson, Delegate Eleanor Norton Holmes and Mayor Vincent Gray are all proud members of the Party of Slavery. Not just the Party of Slavery, Democrats are also the Party of the Confederacy, the Party of Jim Crow, and the Party of the Ku Klux Klan.
According to its website, the museum chose not to honor any Republicans, members of the Party of Emancipation, even though it was the GOP that enlisted the 200,000 African-Americans who fought for the Union during the Civil War.
Ironically, the event took place on the anniversary of the day in 1866 when congressional Republicans overrode a Democrat president's veto of the Freedman's Bureau Act. Today is another important anniversary, of the Republican Party's 1862 Confiscation Act, which declared slaves held by (Democrat) rebels to be "forever free."
Here is what a Republican president, Abraham Lincoln, had to say about Democrats:
"The Republican Party, on the contrary [to the Democrats], holds that this government was instituted to secure the blessings of freedom, and that slavery is an unqualified evil. [Republicans] will oppose in all its length and breadth the modern Democratic idea that slavery is as good as freedom."
Abe certainly was Honest! And here is what his "most generous friend," Owen Lovejoy, had to say about Democrats:
"The principle of enslaving human beings because they are inferior, is this: If a man is a cripple, trip him up; if he is old and weak, and bowed with the weight of years, strike him, for he cannot strike back; if idiotic, take advantage of him; and if a child, deceive him. This, sir, this is the doctrine of Democrats and the doctrine of devils as well, and there is no place in the universe outside the five points of hell and the Democratic Party where the practice and prevalence of such doctrines would not be a disgrace."
Plus ça change....
Michael Zak is a popular speaker to Republican organizations around the country. Back to Basics for the Republican Party is his acclaimed history of the GOP, cited by Clarence Thomas in a Supreme Court decision. He is also the author of the 2005 Republican Freedom Calendar. His Grand Old Partisan website celebrates more than fifteen decades of Republican heroes and heroics.
My father, of blessed memory, wrote a book now available on Kindle:
Dear Michael Zak,
Content is very important, and facts really matter to this museum curator. The shame and "disgrace" is that you did not explore the American story presented in the museum. The contents of the gift shop, which is where you saw the image of the President of the United States, should not be the way you judge a museum. Sadly, some Americans have become so partisan that they cannot read beyond the cover of a book or more literally an image in a gift shop.
I do recommend you go beyond the gift shop and read the work of and listen to the lectures of a fellow member of your party who wrote the script and selected 95% of the images in the museum.
If you had gone beyond the museum's gift shop, you would have learned the fact that the Massachusetts regiment was not "the first regiments of African-American soldiers" as you have been led to believe. It was the ninth African American regiment to be organized. The first African American regiment was organized in Louisiana and mustered into the Union Army in September 1862 by General Benjamin Butler, who happened to be a Democrat at the time. American regiments of African descent in South Carolina and Kansas had also been organized before Massachusetts even began recruiting. Also Andrew Johnson did not get rid of America's African descent soldiers. Under his administration, they became 40% of the regular army's infantry and cavalry. However, as a Republican, I am proud to report that General Grant and the Republicans in Congress were directly responsible for this fact.
As the curator and assistant director of the African American Civil War Museum, I appreciate that these facts matter. Indeed, I ensured that such facts and other facts, which have been suppressed by Democrats and Republicans over the past hundred years, are in our exhibit because facts matter. Yet, sadly you chose not to learn these facts that you are clearly ignorant of because of a single image you saw in the museum gift shop. Partisan behavior prevented you from being properly educated by the Republican who wrote the exhibit script.
I personally look forward to educating you on this subject in order to help you understand the facts. I realize that your error was one of ignorance, and our museum will be happy to relieve you of that burden.
Hari Jones
Curator, African American Civil War Museum
Posted by: Hari Jones | October 17, 2011 at 08:42 PM
Democrats should first apologize for being the Party of Slavery and the Confederacy and Jim Crow and the Ku Klux Klan, and then we can discuss why the museum did not invite anyone from the Party of Emancipation.
Posted by: Michael Zak | July 25, 2011 at 02:33 PM
That might be true - and is - historically. However, the unfortunate reality is that the GOP has championed the new racial caste system (mass incarceration & the "War on Drugs"). Moreover, I'm willing to bet that the GOP had little to no involvement with any legislation authorizing the funding to move and reopen the Civil War Museum & Memorial.
So then we are forced to beg the question: why would any of the current Republicans be honored?
Posted by: Jabriel Ballentine | July 25, 2011 at 11:12 AM