After attending the 1993 Reform Party Convention, the late Dalton Camp wrote:
"The speechifying gives off acrid whiffs of xenophobia, homophobia, and paranoia—like an exhaust—in which it seems clear both orator and audience have been seized by some private terror: immigrants, lesbians, people out of work or from out of town and criminals."
The people who support Manning and his star pupil -- the Prime Minister of Canada -- still believe the same swill. If you doubt that, remember that the keynote speaker at this year's Manning Conference was Dr. Ron Paul. Besides being a former presidential candidate, Paul has left a long paper trail. Francis Russell reminds her readers of some of the gems contained in that pile of verbiage:
Speaking at the 50th anniversary of the founding of the John Birch Society, Paul said the society was “a great patriotic organization featuring an educational program solidly based on constitutional principles … Anyone who has been in the trenches over the years battling on any of the major issues — whether it’s pro-life, gun rights, property rights, taxes, government spending, regulation, national security, privacy, national sovereignty, the United Nations, foreign aid — knows that members of the John Birch Society are always in there doing the heavy lifting.”
That would be the same John Birch Society which claimed that Dwight Eisenhower was a Communist agent. And then there was Paul's reaction to the Rodney King Affair:
The Ron Paul Political Report, published an editorial in June, 1992 in the wake of the Rodney King riots in Los Angeles. It suggested that the looting and rioting was an inevitable consequence of the federal government providing blacks with “civil rights quotas, mandated hiring preferences, set-asides for government contracts, gerrymandered voting districts, black bureaucracies, black mayors, black curricula in schools, black TV shows, black TV anchors, hate-crime laws, and public humiliation for anyone who dares question the black agenda … Order was only restored in L.A. when it came time for the blacks to pick up their welfare cheques three days after rioting began.”
The editorial was entirely consistent with Paul's statement that he would not have voted for the 1964 Civil Rights Act because "government should not dictate how property owners behave."
Then there was the problem of some of Paul's supporters, people like former Grand Wizard of the Klu Klux Klan, David Duke. When Duke threw his support behind Paul, David Frum wrote:
“Paul has just gained David Duke’s endorsement. This week, the former KKK Grand Wizard telephoned into the radio show hosted by Stormfront founder Don Black to announce his support … Mr. Black is a former Klansman and member of the American Nazi Party who founded the ‘white nationalist’ website Stormfront in 1995. He donated to Mr. Paul in 2007 and has been photographed with the candidate …
Paul was the man Preston Manning chose to keynote his conference. I note that Manning is an unapologetic Christian.
2 comments:
I read Tim Harper's piece in today's Star on the Manning gathering and he makes the point, as you do, Owen, that these guys are always on about perceived enemies, even when they are in power. The photo you included in your post probably best exemplifies the fact that the Conservative Party and its supporters consists largely of aggrieved old (and the young who think old) white men, who of course, are making the rest of us look bad.
Like their Republican cousins, Lorne, these guys are at war with the 21st century.
They weren't happy with the 20th century, either. One suspects that they secretly wish they could turn back the clock to the days of the ante-bellum South.
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