LPVA Candidate Cliff Hyra Denounces Negative Campaigning

At a press conference on the state capitol grounds in Richmond on Thursday, November 2, Libertarian nominee for Governor of Virginia Cliff Hyra strongly criticized his opponents -- Republican Ed Gillespie and Democrat Ralph Northam -- for misleading and negative campaigning, designed more to frighten voters than to persuade them.

Here is a video recording of the complete news conference:

And here, courtesy of the Hyra campaign, is a transcript of his prepared remarks. (It does not include his answers to questions posed by members of the news media.)

"Thank you all for coming. When I first decided to run for Governor of Virginia, I chose to make respect a central tenet of my campaign. All Virginians deserve respect, regardless of their backgrounds or beliefs- and regardless of their political opinions. I feel strongly that it is a mistake to demonize those who disagree with you. Our political opponents are not demons- they are our brothers and our sisters, and they bleed like we bleed, and they want, at a high level, most of the same things that we want.

"I wish that the other candidates felt the same way. I have watched with growing dismay over the last weeks as initial civility has given way to wild-eyed accusations and divisive rhetoric.

"What is politics coming to, what is our society coming to, when two candidates for state-wide office spend millions of dollars on ads accusing their opponent of sympathizing with violent street gangs, pedophiles, white nationalists and neo-Nazis, and of harboring supporters who want to run over our children with trucks. I cannot begin to describe my disappointment. I fear for the future of our Commonwealth and of our nation, when even the most staid candidates feel they have to descend to this level of discourse to win an election, and are willing to do so.

"My family was talking in general terms about the rhetoric we had been hearing, when my seven-year-old daughter asked me “Do grown-ups really fight like that?” and I said “Well, these two do” and she said “They’re acting like children!” and I said “You’re right.” It’s unbelievable to me that I have to be the grown-up in the room, because these 60-year old men, these establishment politicians, a sitting lieutenant governor and former chairman of the RNC, apparently think that the best strategy for getting elected to the highest office in the state is name-calling. I feel like telling them 'Don’t make me turn this car around!'

"Virginia’s voters want to make their decisions based on the issues. When I talk to Virginians all over the state, they are disgusted by the ads they see. What is important to them is the economy, education, healthcare, criminal justice. Not monuments. Not Enron.

"So with five days to go until election day, I ask all candidates to STOP the attack ads. From now until election day, please join me in refocusing the election on meaningful issues that have a real impact on the material well-being of Virginians. Let’s make sure voters have the information they need to make a reasoned decision. To that end, I have completed a series of seven issue papers, elaborating on my positions on seven of the most important issues to Virginians: jobs and growth, healthcare, business regulations, criminal justice reform, education, pipelines and environmental regulations, and taxation. I will be releasing these over the next few days, and hope that we can shift the debate back to critical topics such as these.

"And I ask the people of Virginia to look past the mud-slinging, compare the positions of all three candidates,and learn about my positive proposals to improve the lives of all Virginians. I am the only candidate who will fix our broken income tax code by exempting the first $60k of household income from the state income tax, the only candidate who will end the drug war and legalize marijuana so that we can give people struggling with substance abuse the help they need and redirect resources to other critical areas, the only candidate opposing the abuse of eminent domain, the only candidate not proposing billions of dollars in new government spending, the only candidate who would scrap SOL testing and replace it with something better, and the only candidate who emphasizes improving our tax and regulatory environment to support our small businesses and local entrepreneurs, instead of giving away millions of taxpayer dollars trying to lure in big corporations from out of state.

"I want all Virginians to know that there will be a third candidate on your ballot on November 7, a candidate with a positive vision for the future of Virginia who understands how important it is that Virginia be both innovative and inclusive, and who truly respects all Virginians. If all the negative ads have turned you off the election and you are thinking of staying at home on election day, please come out and vote NO to the negativity, and YES to civility and respect. Thank you."

Hyra's remarks have been reported by the Richmond Times-Dispatch ("Calling himself the 'grown-up in the room,' Libertarian Cliff Hyra bashes Gillespie and Northam over harsh attack ads," by Graham Moomaw), Radio IQ/WVTF ("Libertarian to Other Candidates for Governor: Grow Up," by Mallory Noe-Payne), Augusta Free Press, The Washington Post ("Libertarian for Va. governor calls on rivals to drop the ‘wild-eyed accusations’," by Laura Vozzella), WVEC-TV in Norfolk ("Polling at distant third, Libertarian Cliff Hyra leans on independents in governor's race," by Janet Roach), RVA Mag ("Libertarian Candidate Cliff Hyra Holds Press Conference, Calls for Civility in Election," by Caitlin Barbieri), Community Idea Stations ("Libertarian Gubernatorial Candidate Calls For An End To Attack Ads," by Saraya Wintersmith), Bacon's Rebellion ("Take Back the Discourse — Fight for Civility!," by James Bacon), the Free Lance-Star, the Daily Progress, and the Roanoke Times.

Today's RTD: Should presidential electors exercise independent judgment?

In the commentary section of today's Richmond Times-Dispatch, I argue that presidential electors can, and should, exercise independent judgment when they cast their states electoral votes in December.

In "Electors should vote their consciences," I begin by telling the story of Roger MacBride, a Virginia elector in 1972 who was pledged to vote for incumbent Republican President Richard Nixon. MacBride chose, instead, to cast his ballots for the Libertarian ticket of John Hospers and Tonie Nathan.

The Libertarian Party had been founded barely a year earlier, and its presidential ticket appeared on the ballots of only four states. (Nixon, you may recall, thumped George McGovern that year, winning every state but Massachusetts and the District of Columbia. He went on to resign in disgrace two years later.) The notoriety MacBride achieved by this brazen act catapulted him, four years later, to become the LP's second presidential nominee.

While "faithless electors" may break the law in some states, what few court decisions that have addressed the matter indicate that presidential electors may vote their consciences:

State laws (like Virginia’s) that bind electors to particular candidates have rarely, if ever, been tested. An Oklahoma elector in 1960 who voted for Virginia Sen. Harry F. Byrd rather than Richard Nixon did so even though he was threatened with a $1,000 fine. “I am not worried about $1,000,” he said, and the only penalty imposed on him was a refusal to pay his travel expenses to Oklahoma City.

Few court decisions have addressed the independence of presidential electors. An 1896 Kansas court decision said that electors were under “no legal obligation” to support any particular candidate and were “authorized to use their own judgment as to the proper eligible persons to fill these high offices.” In 1948, the Ohio Supreme Court ruled that all electors were free to vote as they pleased, because it was “only by force of a moral obligation, not a legal one, that the presidential electors pledged to certain candidacies fulfill their pledges after election.”

Each elector can make up his or her mind about whether to follow the election returns or to vote independently, but this year's decision making process carries unusual moral and ethical weight. Both of the two largest parties have nominated flawed presidential candidates. While Democratic electors are, for the most part, satisfied with Hillary Clinton (if not enthusiastic about her) as their party's candidate, Republican electors are, like Republicans at large, conflicted about Donald J. Trump.

So, I argue:

The electors’ right to independent judgment may be most pertinent this year, when GOP presidential electors are expected to vote for a nominee who has brought shame to their party. The vulgar and impolitic Trump has expressed contempt for the Constitution, undermined confidence in the integrity of the electoral system, dismissed any interest in the legislative process, and been at loggerheads with time-tested conservative, Republican values.

A Republican “faithless elector” in 2016 will bravely and astutely avoid the future taint of association with Trump, the most unfit character ever to seek the presidency, simply by casting his ballot for Gary Johnson (my choice, and the choice of this newspaper) or another suitable person.

If either Democratic or Republican electors, in Virginia or elsewhere, choose to vote their consciences on December 19, I'll give them full credit for having moral courage. It would be nice to think my op/ed piece influenced their choices -- and perhaps some of them will have seen it, since (if the metrics app is believable) more than 3,700 readers have recommended the article to their friends on Facebook.

A Belated Birthday Salute to Shirley Temple Black (1928-2014)

Earlier this week the world celebrated William Shakespeare's 450th birthday.  The Bard of Avon was born on April 23, 1564.

In the midst of the fireworks and toasting, it appears we forgot that the late Shirley Temple Black would have celebrated her own birthday that day.  She was born on April 23, 1928, so she'd now be 86 years old.
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On Valentine's Day, a few days after the former child star and diplomat passed away, the Richmond Times-Dispatch published an article I wrote about her, a tribute of sorts, titled "Shirley Temple Black: politician, diplomat, feminist."

With Ambassador Black's birthday in mind, here it is, with the citations omitted from the RTD version now hyperlinked:

When Shirley Temple Black became the State Department’s chief of protocol in 1976, her appointment was seen as an oddity because she was the first woman to hold that office. The press focused on her dimples, not her diplomacy.

A female chief of protocol no longer seems odd. In fact, eight of the 14 people who succeeded Ambassador Black in that role have been women, including the current (acting) chief, Natalie Jones, and her two predecessors.

Many of the obituaries published since Black died on Monday have focused on her childhood acting career. Black’s much longer career was in public service, beginning with an unsuccessful campaign for Congress and ending with her tenure as U.S. ambassador to Czechoslovakia at the close of the Cold War.

Black was not the first female show-biz figure to enter politics and diplomacy. For example, playwright Clare Boothe Luce (like Black, a Republican) was elected to Congress from Connecticut in the 1940s and later served as ambassador to Italy and Brazil.

When Black ran for Congress in a special 1967 election, she would have been the only woman in California’s congressional delegation.

“I think men are fine and here to stay,” she said announcing her candidacy, “but I have a hunch that it wouldn’t hurt to have a woman’s viewpoint expressed in that delegation of 38 men — especially since there are 10 million women in California.”

In retrospect, it was probably better that Black lost that race — although President Gerald R. Ford said later that he “thought she would make an excellent member of the House of Representatives” — because her talents lay outside electoral politics.

After her stint as Richard Nixon’s envoy to the United Nations, Ford appointed her ambassador to Ghana, at the time a sensitive diplomatic post, one that would have been expected to go to a career Foreign Service officer.

By all accounts, however, Black acquitted herself well and adapted to the mundane, routine tasks required of an ambassador. As one newspaper story about her explained in August 1975, this involved “regular staff meetings, wading through more than 200 telegrams daily from the State Department, keeping abreast of the latest U.S. policy statements, receiving visitors and at the end of a long day attending the merry-go-round of official functions and receptions which consume a large slice of any ambassador’s time.”

Despite these successes, when Black was appointed chief of protocol in July 1976, the news media — and a good many of her diplomatic colleagues — treated her condescendingly. The headline of one profile of her emphasized her dimples. As the first woman in the post, she confronted what was then called “male chauvinism” and disdain from her boss, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.

“He told me he was skeptical of my credentials,” she told a reporter at the time. “As a child, he had seen my films and that’s the extent of his knowledge of me.”

Black initially found herself excluded by male diplomats in social settings simply because of her gender. After a formal dinner, when the men retreated to a private room for brandy and cigars — it sounds so “Downton Abbey”! — she would excuse herself in spite of knowing that substantive, not frivolous, conversations would take place there.

Later she chose not to leave. “I join the men for cordials and I instruct the women to follow me. There’s no room for exclusivity.” In the mid-1970s, that was taking a major stand in favor of gender equality.

Black later was nominated by President George H.W. Bush to be ambassador to Czechoslovakia at the very moment the Soviet Union’s grip on its Central European satellites was let loose.

As the communist government in Prague began to unravel, Black had the foresight to reach out to Vaclav Havel, who later became the country’s first freely elected president in nearly 50 years. By then, the media had discarded the condescension and referred to Black as “a seasoned diplomat.” One 1991 report noted that upon taking her post in Czechoslovakia two years earlier, Black “immediately made contact with Havel, then a dissident playwright. Their series of secret meetings (grew) into a firm friendship.”

That same report illuminated Black’s cheeky side. The ambassador would go out on her balcony wearing a black T-shirt emblazoned with her initials — STB — “which also was the acronym of the now-disbanded Czech secret police.”

When asked what became of the STB’s secret agents, Black quipped: “Most of them are driving taxis.”

Although she will be mostly remembered as a movie star, Shirley Temple Black deserves a great deal of credit for being an unexpectedly feminist diplomat who broke the glass ceiling more than once.

Richard Sincere writes about politics at BearingDrift.com and about culture at RickSincere.com. He can be reached at ricksincere@gmail.com.

In my research for this article, I came across this interesting interview with Shirley Temple Black on NBC's Meet the Press from 1969. What's striking to me is how she comes across as nervous and tentative, not what one would expect from someone who grew up in the spotlight. To be fair, this was an early TV appearance in her role as a public official (at the time, she was a representative of the United States to the United Nations) and so she may have been unused to discussing policy issues with journalists.

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Shirley Temple Black is the subject of a book published this month, The Little Girl Who Fought the Great Depression: Shirley Temple and 1930s America by John F. Kasson. Also, according to NBC29 news, Wilson Memorial High School in Augusta County (Va.) is mounting a stage version of Shirley Temple's 1945 movie, Kiss and Tell, with a cast that includes both students and teachers.

'America Could Use a Good Dose of Calvin Coolidge' Revisited

Three years ago today, the Richmond Times-Dispatch published an opinion piece I wrote and headlined it "America Could Use a Good Dose of Calvin Coolidge."

Somehow that entire day's newspaper failed to be preserved on the Times-Dispatch web site. (Try it: you'll get a 404.)

A few paragraphs of the article made their way into a blog post later that day, but the whole thing has been unavailable (except in print, or perhaps on microfilm) since July 4, 2010.

I thought it might be worthwhile to revisit "America Could Use a Good Dose of Calvin Coolidge" today, given the Coolidge revival that I reference in a piece I published on Examiner.com early this morning.

In that piece, based upon an interview with the Heritage Foundation's director of American studies, Matthew Spalding, I note that a number of scholars have lately begun focusing their research and writing on the man from Plymouth Notch, Vermont:

Several books on Coolidge have been published recently, including Amity Shlaes' best-selling biography, Coolidge; Charles C. Johnson's Why Coolidge Matters: Leadership Lessons from America's Most Underrated President; the National Notary Association's similarly titled Why Coolidge Matters: How Civility in Politics Can Bring a Nation Together; and Calvin Coolidge: A Documentary Biography, by David Pietrusza.

If anything, the mood of the country in 2013 makes the headline even more relevant now than it was in 2010.

So here is my Times-Dispatch op-ed piece on Calvin Coolidge, now accessible through a Google search.

Most Americans know that two of our country’s Founders – John Adams and Thomas Jefferson – died within hours of each other on the Fourth of July in 1826, the 50th anniversary of American independence.

Fewer might be aware that, five years later, the fifth President, James Monroe, also passed away on the same date.

Fewer still know that Calvin Coolidge, our 30th President, was born on the Fourth of July in 1872.

The much underrated Coolidge is a unique American success story. First elected to public office as a member of the city council of Northhampton, Massachusetts, Coolidge climbed the ladder of government service to clerk of courts, state representative, mayor, state senator, lieutenant governor, governor, vice president, and President of the United States. No other president, before or since, has had such an extensive and varied career in elective office.

In his 2008 book, The Cult of the Presidency, the Cato Institute’s Gene Healy wrote that Coolidge is remembered “mostly for his reticence and for fiscal policies that combined Yankee parsimony with generous tax cuts.”

That “Yankee parsimony” is on display in a short film that is thought to be the first time a U.S. president appeared in a “talkie” – a movie with sound. In this four-minute clip (viewable on YouTube), Coolidge says that he wants to “cut down public expense. I want the people of America to be able to work less for the government and more for themselves. I want them to have the rewards of their own industry. This is the chief meaning of freedom. Until we can reestablish a condition under which the earnings of the people can be kept by the people, we are bound to suffer a very severe and distinct curtailment of our liberty.”

“Liberty” is a theme that appears again and again in Coolidge’s speeches and essays. In 1924, Coolidge published a volume of his writings, called The Price of Freedom. For a man known as “Silent Cal,” Coolidge was unexpectedly loquacious and sage.

In his short (437-word) inaugural address as vice president, Coolidge, referring to the responsibilities of the United States Senate, said that body’s “greatest function of all, too little mentioned and too little understood … is the preservation of liberty. Not merely the rights of the majority, they little need protection, but the rights of the minority, from whatever source they may be assailed.”

Coolidge took his oath of office seriously. He believed that, under the Constitution, the authority and reach of the federal government were severely limited and that the rights of the people were expansive. And he ran a tight ship: The entire White House staff under Coolidge consisted of fewer than 40 people; the Obama White House has more than 60 working in the press office alone.

Addressing the American Bar Association in 1922, Coolidge remarked:

“So long as the National Government confined itself to providing those fundamentals of liberty, order, and justice for which it was primarily established, its course was reasonably clear and plain. No large amount of revenue was required. No great swarms of public employees were necessary. There was little clash of special interests or different sections, and what there was of this nature consisted not of petty details but of broad principles... What the government undertook to do it could perform with a fair degree of accuracy and precision.”

Then came the big “but”, as Coolidge lamented the growing size and scope of government in the previous two decades:

“But this has all been changed by embarking on a policy of a general exercise of police powers, by the public control of much private enterprise and private conduct, and of furnishing a public supply for much private need.”

After 88 years, these words could have been written yesterday.

Perhaps being “born on the Fourth of July” imbued Coolidge with a predilection to take the Founders at their word when they said they were creating a republican government of limited and specified powers. Perhaps his views simply reflected his sober, thrifty New England upbringing. Perhaps he was just unusually intelligent.

Whatever the case, we could use a solid dose of “Silent Cal” in the 21st century.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Richard Sincere is the author of Sowing the Seeds of Free Enterprise and The Politics of Sentiment. He blogs about politics and culture at www.RickSincere.com.

For further reference, check out my report on Amity Shlaes' lecture at the Heritage Foundation in February; my audio interview with her at CPAC; and my Virginia Politics on Demand post on Coolidge and civility.

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Replying to Critics of My RTD Piece on Theodore Roosevelt

Over the weekend, the Richmond Times-Dispatch published an opinion piece I wrote with the headline, "Why does Obama channel racist TR?"  It ran in six columns across the top of the Op/Ed page on Saturday, accompanied by a photo of Teddy Roosevelt.

In the article, I take note of President Barack Obama's recent speech in Osawatomie, Kansas, a small town that had been the location of an earlier speech (in 1910) by former President Theodore Roosevelt, in which he introduced the phrase "a square deal" as the theme of his upcoming campaign to regain the presidency.

Roosevelt split the Republican party in 1912, forming the Bull Moose party as a vehicle for his planned return to office, while the GOP nominated the incumbent, Roosevelt's hand-picked successor, William Howard Taft.  The divide between factions of the Republican party led to the election of Woodrow Wilson.

The key paragraph in my Times-Dispatch piece was this:

The sad fact is, Theodore Roosevelt was an unabashed racist who celebrated genocide. He was a Nobel Peace Prize winner who glorified war and facilitated the Japanese conquest of Korea. He was a eugenicist who thought only fit people (as he, or the government, defined them) should be able to reproduce.

My point in bringing this up was that it is strange that the country's first African-American president would want to wear the mantle of a man who, according to most accounts (and his own words), held non-white races and non-Anglo-Saxon ethnic groups in contempt.


For my article, I drew on the works of scholars like Thomas J. Dyer, author of Theodore Roosevelt and the Idea of Race. (The fact that a book with a title like that exists should be an indication of Roosevelt's problematic views.) Another historian I cited was Nancy Carnevale, who cited Roosevelt's disdainful views of immigrants from southern Europe in her book, A New Language, A New World: Italian Immigrants in the United States, 1890-1945.

Even the Miller Center at the University of Virginia noted that Roosevelt

did little to preserve black suffrage in the South as those states increasingly disenfranchised blacks. He believed that African Americans as a race were inferior to whites

I also quoted directly from Roosevelt's own writings.

Although I have written articles for the Richmond Times-Dispatch in the past (for instance, "Third Party Resurgence Seems Unlikely," published on August 7, and "America Could Use a Good Dose of Calvin Coolidge," published on July 4, 2010), none has received the kind of reaction that this one has.

There were comments left on the Times-Dispatch web site (and propagated through Facebook) and I also received several emails, some critical, some congratulatory, in reply to my piece.

What follows are replies to most of the comments I received, either directly or through the RTD web site.  If you haven't read the original article yet, it may be helpful to do so before tackling the responses.

One of the emails and one of the commenters took me to task for misrepresenting how Texas came to be part of the United States.

The email correspondent wrote:

Not to make a big issue, but Texas was not 'annexed' by the USA. Texas was an independent nation in 1936 and joined the Union later.

Similarly, a published comment stated:

Texas was a republic, a separate country, from 1836 to 1845. The United States annexed Texas in 1845. Do your homework!

I did, of course, do my homework before mentioning "the annexation of Texas and other territories formerly belonging to Mexico" in my article.

In fact, the United States annexed Texas in 1845. The governing law passed by the U.S. Congress to join Texas to the United States, passed March 1, 1845, was entitled "Joint Resolution for Annexing Texas to the United States." The controlling legislation from the Republic of Texas, passed in convention on July 4, 1845, was called the "Ordinance of Annexation." (The texts of both those laws can be found on the web site of the Texas State Library and Archives Commission.)

Another email came from a self-described "retired history teacher."  Given the lapses in grammar, spelling, and punctuation in the message, I print the text in full (first paragraph omitted here but shown later in this post):

Obama our nation's first Black president is trying to say that Teddy Roosevelt was a Republican, who was " progressive" and willing to move forward instead of being like the Republicans today who only move backward or not move at all. It is not about race? Its about vision of the future.

Teddy Roosevelt preached against greed of big business and worked hard to break up monopolies.

No where in your article do you mention that. If Obama understands that, why can't you?

In order for him to be re-elected our country will have to get over the race issue. Too much anti-Obama is about race. For this southern white male, and retired history teacher who supports Obama and will vote for his again no matter who the Republican is. If you think about it, it may be that your article; why would this Republican newspaper use it? To tell everyone not to forget that Obama is Black. You did it for them. Thanks alot.

Other writers (e.g., Jim Powell and Gene Healy) have addressed Roosevelt's domestic policies with regard to business and economics; that wasn't the point of my article, and that's why I did not "mention that."  I chose to write about a different topic.

What I find most odd about this emailer's complaint, however, is that he seems to imply that my article decrying racism had a hidden racist message. If so, he finds more irony in what I wrote than what I found in Barack Obama's wish to emulate a racist politician.

And, if there are Americans who are unaware that President Obama is African-American and need my reminder... well, those people shouldn't be voting in the first place. Ignorance has no place in the voting booth.

Another email correspondent writes:

This morning I read your piece on Teddy Roosevelt. It was an interesting read. Near the end you referenced two quotes from letters Roosevelt wrote, one to Charles Davenport and another to an unnamed recipient. It's my opinion that neither of these quotes supports your argument that Roosevelt was a racist as he not once makes mention of race as a factor in his breeding philosophy. You offer no additional support for how these quotes demonstrate TR's rascist views.

To a certain extent, this point is valid. The quotations about Roosevelt as a eugenicist to not, in themselves, prove he was a racist. But what I was trying to do by citing them is to prove he was a eugenicist, and eugenics was largely (but not entirely) based upon racist beliefs. Prominent eugenicists like Margaret Sanger were not shy at all about expressing the racist (mostly anti-black) roots of their aims.

In that regard, a third correspondent, unaware (I believe) of the others, wrote this:

A year or so ago, I read the book "The Imperial Cruise" by James Bradley, which detailed much of what Roosevelt believed and stood for, his speeches and his actions. He was truly a bully and his beliefs concerning Eugenics, interracial marriages and his encouragement to Japan to become the dominant force in the Pacific were horrifying. By the time I finished the book, I have been wondering how we could blast his face off Mt. Rushmore without damaging any of the remaining three.

One of the commenters on the newspaper's web site seems not to have read the article I wrote because he assets:

TR was no racist. In fact, his views on race unusually progressive just like his politics in general. He believed all people should be treaty like human beings. As for his war record, there was none. In fact, he won a Nobel Peace Prize. Your reading of American history is flawed and biased. He was a patriot.

My high school debate coach taught that "he who asserts must prove." I provided evidence for my contentions, but the commenter does no more than gainsay my argument. This is not argument at all, just contradiction. The fact that I mention the dubious circumstances under which Roosevelt received the Nobel Peace Prize apparently slipped this commenter's grasp altogether.

Other correspondents and commenters rationalize Roosevelt's racist attitudes by suggesting that he was a man of his time or that he was no different than other public figures before or since.

Said one, in an email with the subject line "Your RTD Blog on TR" (has the line between blogging and newspaper opinion-writing become that porous?):

All heroes have feet of clay………………… Grow up………………………. Martin Luther King was a huge racist and adulterer…………………. Why don’t you ponder that for a while.

And another:

The same column could be written about Abraham Lincoln by harping on his placing preservation of the Union above freeing the slaves.

And the same has been said many times of Ronald Reagan, and that is far more relevant to today's political discourse.

And this one, which arrived in my email box after I began composing this blog post:

Mr Roosevelt was a product of his times; employing the teachings of evolution and carrying them out in his beliefs! Evolution teaches that life came from a simpler life form to a more larger and stronger life form. That only the strong survive and the weak fail to continue. Obama simply has no clue about the historical facts of the presidents he desires to emulate and should perform more research before he comapres himself to one of the characters of history.

Finally, the "retired history teacher" cited above began his email to me with this:

By our standards today every white male would have been racist in Rossevelt's time. By that same standard today every Black male would be racist towards whites.

I actually reject that thought. While the turn of the 20th century was no picnic when it comes to race relations -- the reprehensible Virginia state constitution of 1902 is evidence of that -- there were, in fact, principled individuals who believed fully that "all men are created equal" and who worked hard to achieve racial harmony in the face of great odds.


This was the time, remember, when groups like the NAACP had their beginnings. It was also the time, to be sure, of D.W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation, which inspired a resurgence of the KKK in the North as well as the South, and the time during which Woodrow Wilson ordered the re-segregation of public facilities in Washington, D.C.

Had it not been for those early pioneers in civic activism, law, and the humanities who fought against racism, jingoism, and eugenics, the accomplishments of the later "civil rights era" of the 1950s and '60s would have been that much harder to achieve. Were it true that "every white male" was racist toward blacks and "every Black male" was racist toward whites in 1900 and the years that followed, the civil rights movement could never have reached the launch stage.

Progress requires a core group of people of good faith who are also kind, thoughtful, fair-minded, and intelligent.  That people like Roosevelt and Wilson lacked those qualities is a good reason for us today to reassess their political legacies.

I am looking forward to any letters to the editor that appear in the Richmond Times-Dispatch in reply to my article. Once they are published, I will post links as an update, below.

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