Lonzie Cox, Jr. – 3/25/12

This page was last updated on March 27, 2012.

Santorum dangerous to nation; Lonzie Cox, Jr.; Beaver County Times; March 25, 2012. I am not related to Mr. Cox.

Most of Mr. Cox’s at least 73 letters since 2004 are tinged with race, and all take leftist positions. The most recent previous Cox letter I critiqued was “Zubik put words in President’s mouth.”

Below is a detailed critique of the subject letter.

“Until Alabama’s segregationist governor, George Wallace, curled his lips and spat out the term ‘liberal’ as a curse word, most Americans would have confused a conservative with a conservationist.”

[RWC] This whole letter is nothing more than Mr. Cox’s delusion, fantasy, hallucination, et cetera. If you are not familiar with Mr. Cox’s letter-writing body of work, you’re in for a big surprise at the end of the critique. Before or after you read Mr. Cox’s letter, please read “Lefty race baiters,” “Democrats – The party of civil rights – not,” and “Republicans – Civil Rights.”

“Conservative and liberal were not commonly used terms. The neoconservative movement of Buckley and Reagan served as a cover for what had previously been defined by the raw term of segregationist. Segregationists dominated U.S. politics from the Reconstruction, fueling the Jim Crow era, which wasn’t slowed until Roosevelt’s New Deal.”

[RWC] You will find Mr. Cox doesn’t give us his definition of “neoconservative.” When someone uses the term “neoconservative/neocon,” that’s usually a sure sign he’s merely repeating what he heard from some lefty activist or website. Sometime I’ll have to list all the definitions of neoconservative/neocon I’ve received from lefties.

President Woodrow Wilson, a Progressive Democrat, segregated the federal Civil Service. FDR ran a segregated military and put American citizens in internment camps just because they were of German, Italian, or Japanese descent.

“The true conservative/segregationists included Wallace, Jesse Helms, Orval Faubus and Strom Thurmond of South Carolina. Thurmond had led the Dixiecrats out of the Democratic convention of 1948 and into the Republican Party after Johnson and the Democrats supported civil rights and women’s rights.”

[RWC] History doesn’t support Mr. Cox’s desire to brand conservatives as bigots, racists, segregationists, et cetera. “Conservative Democrat” is an oxymoron. All of the gentlemen Mr. Cox mentioned were Democrats. Messrs. Helms and Thurmond became Republicans in 1970 and 1964, respectively. In the case of Mr. Faubus, Republican President Eisenhower in 1957 sent the U.S. Army to enforce civil rights when Democrat Governor Orval Faubus used the Arkansas National Guard to block black students from attending a Little Rock high school.

“[President Lyndon] Johnson and the Democrats supported civil rights and women’s rights?” Democrats, who had significant majorities in both houses of Congress, filibustered the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Republicans delivered the votes for cloture. In the Senate, only 69% of Democrats voted for the act while 82% of Republicans supported it. Of the “nay” votes, 78% were by Democrats. In the House, only 61% of Democrats voted for the act while 80% of Republicans supported it. Of the nay votes, 74% were by Democrats. That voting trend continued for the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

While President Lyndon Johnson gets credit for signing the 1964 Civil Rights Act, Democrats like Mr. Cox don’t mention he was also responsible for watering down President Eisenhower’s 1957 Civil Rights Act. Democrats controlled both houses of Congress during this time. Then-Senator Johnson was worried the bill would prove divisive for the Democrat party. As we learned in 1964, his concerns were well founded.

“Now the Republican presidential candidates argue over who is the most conservative -- meaning bigoted. Santorum wins that contest. In the U.S. Senate, Rick Santorum went all in with the old secessionist, Jim Crow Republicans who dominated the Republican scene when Santorum was there.”

[RWC] Which conservative principles are “bigoted?”

“Jim Crow Republicans?” Beginning in the 1870s, Jim Crow laws were enacted in the South after Democrats pushed out Republican officeholders.

“Just like Gingrich, northerner Rick Santorum absorbed the racism of the southern right wing- standing by Trent Lott when Lott fell for praising Strom Thurmond’s racist history.”

[RWC] Mr. Cox has been pushing his “Santorum is a racist” BS for at least four years. You’ll note that at no point did Mr. Cox tell us what Messrs. Gingrich and Santorum or Republicans in general did that was racist.

As for “Trent Lott … praising Strom Thurmond’s racist history,” Mr. Cox hopes we forgot what really happened. The “racist” remarks were part of a toast Sen. Lott gave at Sen. Thurmond’s birthday party. He said something like “we wouldn’t have today’s problems if you had been elected president,” referring to a campaign Thurmond ran in the late 1940s for a party that advocated segregation. By all accounts, Sen. Lott was simply trying to flatter a 100-year-old man. Was the comment stupid? Yes. Racist? Probably not, but I don’t know the man. I could be wrong, but I suspect Mr. Cox doesn’t know Sen. Lott either.

“Rick Santorum is a hyper neoconservative and that’s what makes him dangerous to a peaceful and prosperous America.”

[RWC] Wow! Mr. Santorum is not just a mere “neoconservative,” but “a hyper neoconservative.” That must be really bad. <g>

OK, at the beginning I told you if you were not familiar with Mr. Cox’s letter-writing body of work, you were in for a big surprise at the end of the critique and here it is. After Mr. Cox wrote about segregationists, both real and imagined, did you notice whom Mr. Cox didn’t mention? If you guessed the-late Sen. Robert Byrd (D-WV), you are correct. Sen. Byrd was a Kleagle (organizer) in the KKKK (Knights of the Ku Klux Klan), said he would not serve in an integrated armed forces, filibustered and voted against the 1964 Civil Rights Act, was the only senator to vote against the Supreme Court nominations of both Thurgood Marshall (1967) and Clarence Thomas (1991), and referred to “white niggers” during a 2001 television interview. Mr. Cox ignores racism in his own political party but feels compelled to fabricate it for his opposition.

Here’s part of what I wrote in my critique of Mr. Cox’s letter entitled “Byrd can’t be forgiven racist past:” “In his nearly 60 letters since 2004, Mr. Cox never mentioned fellow Democrat Robert Byrd’s ‘racist past’ until after Mr. Byrd’s death. Heck, Mr. Cox even ignored (denied?) Mr. Byrd’s existence in 2004 when he wrote, ‘[Zell] Miller is the last of the old segregationist Southern Democrats.’ Now, though, Mr. Cox dedicates most of a letter to Mr. Byrd’s racism. As long as Mr. Byrd was alive and able to cast votes for leftist policies, Mr. Cox said not a peep. It’s not like Mr. Cox didn’t have the opportunity. Readers familiar with Mr. Cox’s letter-writing body of work know he sees bigotry and racism everywhere he looks, even when it’s not there. Mr. Cox simply has double standards, one set for those who agree with his beliefs and another set for those who don’t.

Incredibly, just over two weeks after the above letter about Mr. Byrd, Mr. Cox wrote a letter praising Mr. Byrd. In my critique of that letter, I wrote, “Based on the apparent change of heart in this letter, it appears Mr. Cox’s fellow travelers (aka ‘A friend’) ‘took him to the woodshed’ for bashing a fellow lefty for racism. Then again, perhaps Mr. Cox had second thoughts on his own and decided to be honest. That is, Mr. Cox can ignore the racism of political allies.”