Rhythmic Admirer of the Day
By Shorter Kathryn-Jean Lopez: Why should the fact that we were staunch, substantive supporters of Southern apartheid during the Civil Rights movement stop conservatives from claiming Rosa Parks’ legacy?
And for some bonus history, what did the conservative President at the time–who the NR considered a wet–feel about civil rights?
Indeed, while Brown was under consideration, Warren was seated at a White House dinner near John Davis, the 1924 Democratic candidate for president and lead counsel for the South, Eisenhower told Warren at length what a great man Davis was and that southerners were not bad people, just concerned lest their “sweet little girls be seated alongside some big black bucks.” –Lucas Powe, The Warren Court and American Politics, 36.
And, of course, we can see this conservatives-have-always-been-liberals routine in the Mehlman House of Fog Memo. For many years, Samuel Alito has been widely considered by both admirers and detractors as a staunch Federalist Society conservative, supporting “states’ rights” but skeptical of privacy rights and the rights of the accused. And then Monday morning he’s appointed to the Supreme Court, and all of a sudden he’d have to take a sharp right-hand turn to see William Douglas…