Tag Archives: Martin Luther King

May 18, 2013 · 9:51 AM

Glenn Beck: NAACP Is A ‘Joke’, White People Were Lynched And Other Topics Of His Latest Rant

Let’s be clear here, Glenn Beck wants to replace his  former Fox News colleagues as the most outrageous commentator in the media.  His brand of manufactured outrage sells and believe me he’s selling and his audience is buying: his books, lectures, rallies and so on.   Having said that, what blows my mind is that millions of people listen to this clown and believes every word he utters.  To that, I say: Yikes!

The Huffington Post

Although President Obama condemned the Internal Revenue Service for singling out conservative groups in the months leading up to the 2012 election, former NAACP Chairman Julian Bond called the organization’s actions “completely legitimate.” And it was that sentiment that set conservative radio host Glenn Beck off, calling the entire organization a “joke” and an “affront” to what former black civil rights leaders stood for.

“They are a joke, and an affront to everything that Martin Luther King and anybody who ever… Booker T. Washington, Frederick Douglass, you are an affront to their memory,” Beck said.

While discussing the IRS scandal, Beck hurled insults at the Obama administration and the NAACP, saying the White House was concentrating on revenge and that the century-old African-American organization was illegitimate.

Beck went on to try to drive his point home with an even stranger defense, asserting that 20 percent of lynchings performed by the Ku Klux Klan were of white people–a point he apparently “hates to keep bringing up.” He then went on to compare those white people who were lynched to members of the Tea Party.

“You know what, I contend the white people that were lynched are exactly the kind of people that would be in the Tea Party today,” he said.

Beck’s sentiments have us scratching our heads a bit, but then again what else is new? From calling the president a girl, to saying African American is not a race we can’t say we’re all that surprised by his latest rant.

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March 22, 2013 · 1:51 PM

What It Means To Be A Progressive: A Manifesto

Well stated…

Think Progress

People often ask what, exactly, do progressives believe?  Over the past few years, we’ve worked with a great group called the American Values Project, representing a cross section of leaders from think tanks, philanthropic organizations, and environmental, labor, youth, civil rights, and other progressive groups, to try to distill progressive beliefs and values into clear language in one digestible resource.

The result of this collective effort is called Progressive Thinking: A Synthesis of Progressive Values, Beliefs, and Positions.  The document is free and we encourage you to read, review, critique, and pass it around to others.  As the handbook states, the central progressive message is one of fairness and equality:

Our approach is simple to summarize and is built upon the ideas of generations of progressives from Theodore Roosevelt and Franklin Roosevelt to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Barack Obama:  everyone gets a fair shot, everyone does his or her fair share, and everyone plays by the same rules. As progressives, we believe that everyone deserves a fair shot at a decent, fulfilling, and economically secure life.  We believe that everyone should do his or her fair share to build this life through education and hard work and through active participation in public life.   And we believe that everyone should play by the same set of rules with no special privileges for the well-connected or wealthy.

The book is divided into sections outlining the overall progressive story, foundational beliefs about government, the economy, and national security, and the application of this framework to contemporary issues.  It also includes a number of useful speeches and essays that show progressive values and beliefs in action throughout our nation’s history.

In terms of values, Progressive Thinking breaks down the four pillars of progressive thought as follows:

1. Freedom.  In terms of our political foundations, the most basic progressive value is freedom. This also happens to be one of the most contested values in American life.  Progressives have a two-part definition of freedom:  “freedom from” and “freedom to”.  First, we believe that all people should have freedom from undue interference by governments and others in carrying out their private affairs and personal beliefs.  This includes our rights to freedom of speech, association, and religion as well as the freedom to control our own bodies and personal lives.  Second, we believe that all people should have thefreedom to lead a fulfilling and secure life supported by the basic foundations of economic security and opportunity.  This includes physical protections against bodily harm as well as adequate income, economic protections, health care and education, and other social provisions…

2.  Opportunity.  Complementing our commitment to human freedom is our belief in opportunity.  Like freedom, the concept of opportunity has two components:  one focuses on political equality and the other on economic and social arrangements that enhance our lives.  The first component of opportunity prohibits discrimination against anyone based on race, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, religious faith or non-faith, or disability.  It also means embracing the diversity of American society by ensuring that all people have the chance to turn their talents and ambitions into a meaningful life, not just the rich and powerful or dominant racial and ethnic groups.  The second component of opportunity involves the conditions necessary for people to be secure and to move up in life—health care, education, a decent job, labor rights, a secure retirement…

3.  Responsibility.  Along with freedom and opportunity comes responsibility — personal responsibility and the responsibility we have to each other and to the common good.   Personal responsibility requires each of us to do our part to improve our own lives through hard work, education, and by acting with honesty and integrity.  Responsibility to others and to the common good requires a commitment to putting the public interest above the interests of a few and an understanding that strong families and communities are the foundation of a good society.  It means working to achieve greater social justice and economic conditions that benefit civil society broadly.  It demands an open and honest government and an engaged and participatory citizenry…

This requires pubic investments in things like transportation and trade, innovation, a skilled workforce, courts to protect patent rights and contract agreements, public safety and other measures that support the creation of wealth and help to make individual prosperity possible.  It also requires progressive taxation, meaning those who have and earn more should pay more to help support the investments in things like schools, transportation, and economic competitiveness necessary to advance the interests of all.

A key component of responsibility involves ecological and social sustainability.  This requires on-going stewardship of our land, water, air and natural resources, smart use of energy, and the responsible consumption of goods…

4.  Cooperation.  Rounding out these political values which are primarily directed at the rights, opportunities, and duties of individuals is the basic progressive value of cooperation.   Cooperation is the foundation of our most important social institutions including our families, our communities, and our civic and faith groups.  Freedom without cooperation leads to a divided society that cannot work together to achieve common goals and improve the lives of all.  Cooperation as a value requires that we try to be open-minded and empathetic toward others and that we are accountable for their well-being as they are accountable to us.  Progressives believe that if we blindly pursue our own needs and ignore those of others, our society will degenerate.

Successful families and communities cannot exist without cooperation.  We also value human interdependence on a larger scale and accept the importance of looking beyond our own needs to help others and find global solutions to global problems.

As progressives gear up for inevitable fights over taxes, budgets, and social policy, we shouldn’t forget about the importance of values in explaining who we are and what we want to achieve. We believe in freedom with opportunity for all, responsibility to all, and cooperation among all. We believe that the purpose of government is to advance the common good, to secure and protect our rights, and to help to create a high quality of life and community well-being. We want decent paying jobs and benefits for workers and sustainable economic growth. We want growing businesses producing the world’s best products and services. We want an economy that works for everyone, not just the few. We want all nations to uphold universal human rights and to work together to solve common challenges. This is what a progressive America looks like.

 

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March 21, 2013 · 5:01 PM

The US Capitol Is Full of White Supremacists

Wade Hampton, Robert E. Lee, John C. Calhoun, and Kirby Smith

I read this article while waiting at one of my two appointments earlier.  I’m compelled to share it with my Fifth Column friends…

Mother Jones

When a statue of civil rights icon Rosa Parks was unveiled in the Capitol’s Statuary Hall in late February, it joined an exclusive club. The collection includes generals and statesmen, inventors and priests—as well as some of the most notorious leaders of a five-year armed insurrection that left 600,000 people dead in the name of protecting white Americans’ rights to own black Americans as slaves. What all the people portrayed in Statuary Hall have in common, with few exceptions, are two things: They are white, and they are men.

There is one Latino represented in the collection today. There are six American Indians, one Hawaiian, and zero African Americans. (Parks and Martin Luther King Jr. are both featured as part of a separate collection.) If it were any less diverse it would look like the Senate. But if the Architect of the Capitol is uncomfortable with the composition of its collection, it has an odd way of showing it. The biographies of the collection’s most notorious members make no mention of their hard-earned legacies perpetuating and reinforcing a culture of white supremacy.

According to Hilary Shelton, the Washington director of the NAACP, the collection’s biographies amount to a “whitewash” of history.

“It becomes revisionist when they don’t talk about the real context in which these struggles that are going on,” Shelton told Mother Jones. “We would not want to see them edit it out either. But we would like to make sure that there is a clear understanding of what was going on in the country at those times.”

Alexander Stephens, the vice president of the Confederacy and one of two Georgians in the collection, is described in his official bio as “a dedicated statesman, an effective leader, and a powerful orator.” But his most famous oration, the 1861 speech in which he explained that that the South’s “foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man,” goes unmentioned—as do all of the blemishes on his record. The biography make no effort to explain how someone whose singular legacy split the country in half might be considered a statesman.

Representing the South Carolina delegation is former Senator, Vice President, and Secretary of War John C. Calhoun—who blocked the annexation of Mexico on the grounds that only white people could be free—and Wade Hampton, a Confederate cavalry commander best known for expediting the end of Reconstruction in his state through a paramilitary organization known as the Red Shirts, who massacred black voters. On his Capitol résumé, Hampton is described as “a symbol of South Carolina politics,” glossing over the bloody tactics that made him so.

As journalist Nicholas Lemann documented in Redemption: The Last Battle of the Civil War, “an anti-Reconstruction historian later estimated that 150 negroes were murdered in South Carolina during the [1876] campaign, while the Democrats’ official leader…was campaigning as a statesman.”

Continue here…

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February 27, 2013 · 7:48 AM

How Do You Steal a Dream? Supreme Court hears suit to kill Voting Rights Act

I’m inclined to believe that this Supreme Court (The Rehnquist/Roberts Court) does not want to tarnish it’s legacy further and thus, will reach a just decision on the issue…

Greg Palast

Jim Crow is alive and well — and he has mounted a new attack on the law Martin Luther King dreamed of: the Voting Rights Act.

Today, February 27, the Supreme Court will hear a suit brought by Shelby County, Alabama, which challenges the right of the Department of Justice to review changes in voting procedure. Example: Attempts to cut the number of early voting days, to expunge “illegal alien” voters without any evidence, refusing Spanish-language ballots, have been blocked by the Department of Justice and courts because they have stopped Black and Hispanic citizens casting ballots.

Sixteen states are subject to this “pre-clearance” law, every one with a history of Jim Crow rules such as “literacy” tests — Blacks had to recite the Constitution, Whites “Mary Had a Little Lamb.”

Dixie moans it’s been picked on unfairly, but the “pre-clearance” states, chosen by an arithmetic formula, include all or parts of the “Confederate states” of California, Arizona, Alaska and New York.

All those above the Mason-Dixon line are on the civil-rights hot-water roster because of a history of hostility to Hispanic citizens. In 2006, for example, the Republican Secretary of State of California rejected 42% of voter registration forms because the names were “unusual” and difficult to type into records! The names, like Chávez and Muhammad, were only “unusual” for Republicans.

New York’s mayor Michael Bloomberg is happy to pre-clear his city’s changes with the Justice Department and has told that to the Court. But once again, as Dr. King said in his Dream speech, in Alabama, the “Governor has his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification” — to nullify the 15th Amendment’s right to vote and to interpose himself between federal law and the enforcement of this basic American right.

And the Southland? In 2000, Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris purged tens of thousands of African-Americans from voter rolls, labeling them “felons” when their only crime was VWB: Voting While Black. All — every one — were innocent. And again, in 2012, Florida Governor Rick Scott targeted 180,000 voters, mostly Latinos, as illegal “alien” voters. The Governor, when challenged by the Justice Department, cut the “alien” list to 198 but in the end, could only produce evidence against one.
If it were not for Section 5, the pre-clearance law, the purges, gerrymandering and other racially bent trickery rampant in Florida, Arizona (with its profiling and harassment of Hispanic voters) and Alaska with its bias against Native Americans would be so much worse. Without review — and the threat of review — Americans would once again lose the rights that the Constitution promises, won with the blood of our Fathers.

At the same time, we cannot ignore the Jim Crow and José Crow tactics that create long lines of voters of color in Ohio and other states.

Presidents Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan signed massive expansions of the Voting Rights Act, tripling its reach. It is time to extend the law’s protections again — to Ohio, to Wisconsin, to everyone.

When every American is protected by the Voting Rights Act review of voting changes, then all of us may be secure that our votes will not be nullified by politicians abusing the voting system to seize office through tactics racist in effect, if not intent.

A half century ago this year, Dr. Martin Luther King shared his dream with America:

“I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.’

“We can never be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

King’s dream is the American Dream — which no Court should take away. It is a mighty stream which must touch all citizens in every state.

Without “pre-clearance,” the Voting Rights Act is an empty promise — with purged, blocked and intimidated voters having to protest after an election to the very officials elected by the vote thievery that put them in office.

If this Supreme Court removes “pre-clearance” Section 5 on the grounds that it does not apply to every state, then the solution is simple and just: apply pre-clearance to every state.  Every American deserves a review by Justice of laws which tell us who can vote — and who can’t.

As King admonished us, we must not be satisfied when we see Black folk, a half century after the passage of the Voting Rights Act, stand in line for six hours to vote whether in Miami or in Cleveland.

We petition the Court and Congress to let freedom ring.

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January 20, 2013 · 2:21 AM

Limbaugh Tarnishes Civil Rights Movement To Advance Pro-Gun Agenda

Rush Limbaugh has never espoused truth, logic or common sense.  So, surely he has no incentive to start now…

Think Progress

Conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh sought to equate the fight for African American civil rights with opposition to gun safety on Friday, suggesting that the movement could have better protected itself from segregationists had it been armed. Limbaugh specifically signaled out Rep. John Lewis (D-GA), a nonviolent civil rights activist who was beaten during the 1965 voting rights march from Selma to Montgomery.

“Try this,” Limbaugh said. “If a lot of African-Americans back in the ’60s had guns and the legal right to use them for self-defense, you think they would have needed Selma? I don’t know. I’m just asking. If (Rep) John Lewis, who says he was beat upside the head, if John Lewis had had a gun, would he have been beat upside the head on the bridge?” Listen:

http://soundcloud.com/thinkpro/limbaugh-on-gunsLewis has issued a response to Limbaugh, noting that “Our goal in the Civil Rights Movement was not to injure or destroy but to build a sense of community, to reconcile people to the true oneness of all humanity.” “African Americans in the 60s could have chosen to arm themselves, but we made a conscious decision not to. We were convinced that peace could not be achieved through violence. Violence begets violence, and we believed the only way to achieve peaceful ends was through peaceful means.”

Civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr — a strict disciple of nonviolent resistance — was shot by an assassin in 1968. In the wake of his death — as well as the murders of John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, and Malcolm X — Congress passed, the Gun Control Act of 1968, the nation’s first comprehensive federal firearms regulation. Unfortunately, gun advocates have seized on King’s legacy to prevent gun safety reforms and are hosting a Gun Appreciation Day for the weekend of President Obama’s second inauguration. Larry Ward, chairman of the event, claims that it “honors the legacy of Dr. King.”

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January 18, 2013 · 12:35 PM

Gun Appreciation Day Sponsored By American Third Position, White Supremacist Group

Gun Appreciation Day

The Huffington Post

Firearms enthusiasts around the country are being encouraged to head down to their local gun shops on Saturday, constitutions and American flags in hand, to send a message to President Barack Obama about Second Amendment rights — and, of course, to buy more guns.

The event is being billed as Gun Appreciation Day and has backing from white supremacist group American Third Position (A3P), Media Matters reported on Friday.

A3P, which is listed on the Gun Appreciation Day website as a sponsor, does little through its own content to veil the fact that the political movement is dedicated to white supremacy.

In its mission statement, A3P writes that it “believes that government policy in the United States discriminates against white Americans, the majority population, and that white Americans need their own political party to fight this discrimination.”

It goes on, saying that the group aims to “stop the immigrant invasion” in order to put “America first!”

A3P has been listed as a white nationalist hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

In an email to The Huffington Post last year, A3P’s chairman candidly admitted to his white nationalism, saying that he found it a “just and proper position for all white people to hold.”

(For more on A3P’s controversial history, click over to Media Matters)

Gun Appreciation Day has raised some eyebrows for reasons apart from its questionable ties. The event’s founder, Larry Ward has rejected claims that he’s an extremist, but earlier this week he sparked outrage when he suggested that slavery could have been prevented in the United States if African Americans were allowed to carry guns.

“I think Martin Luther King, Jr. would agree with me if he were alive today that if African Americans had been given the right to keep and bear arms from day one of the country’s founding, perhaps slavery might not have been a chapter in our history,” Ward said.

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November 7, 2012 · 2:16 AM

The Conquering Hero…

The conquering hero

Congratulations Mr. President – Four More Years…

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October 22, 2012 · 7:59 AM

The New Yorker Endorsement of Barack Obama

The New Yorker 

THE CHOICE

The morning was cold and the sky was bright.

Aretha Franklin wore a large and interesting hat. Yo-Yo Ma urged his frozen fingers to play the cello, and the Reverend Joseph E. Lowery, a civil-rights comrade of Martin Luther King, Jr.,’s, read a benediction that began with “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” the segregation-era lamentation of American realities and celebration of American ideals.

On that day in Washington—Inauguration Day, January 20, 2009—the blustery chill penetrated every coat, yet the discomfort was no impediment to joy. The police estimated that more than a million and a half people had crowded onto the Mall, making this the largest public gathering in the history of the capital. Very few could see the speakers. It didn’t matter. People had come to be with other people, to mark an unusual thing: a historical event that was elective, not befallen.

Just after noon, Barack Hussein Obama, the forty-seven-year-old son of a white Kansan and a black Kenyan, an uncommonly talented if modestly credentialed legislator from Illinois, took the oath of office as the forty-fourth President of the United States. That night, after the inaugural balls, President Obama and his wife and their daughters slept at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, a white house built by black men, slaves of West African heritage.

Obama succeeded George W. Bush, a two-term President whose misbegotten legacy, measured in the money it squandered and the misery it inflicted, has become only more evident with time.  Bush left behind an America in dire condition and with a degraded reputation.

On Inauguration Day, the United States was in a downward financial spiral brought on by predatory lending, legally sanctioned greed and pyramid schemes, an economic policy geared to the priorities and the comforts of what soon came to be called “the one per cent,” and deregulation that began before the Bush Presidency.

In 2008 alone, more than two and a half million jobs were lost—up to three-quarters of a million jobs a month. The gross domestic product was shrinking at a rate of nine per cent.

Housing prices collapsed. Credit markets collapsed. The stock market collapsed—and, with it, the retirement prospects of millions. Foreclosures and evictions were ubiquitous; whole neighborhoods and towns emptied. The automobile industry appeared to be headed for bankruptcy. Banks as large as Lehman Brothers were dead, and other banks were foundering.

It was a crisis of historic dimensions and global ramifications. However skillful the management in Washington, the slump was bound to last longer than any since the Great Depression.

Please continue reading here…

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October 21, 2012 · 7:46 PM

CNN Headline: “Is Obama the ‘Wrong’ Kind of Christian?”

For years CNN was my only news source.  Then they became “Fox News Lite” and I was done with them.  This CNN headline only reinforces my decision to drop them completely.  Although the article turns out to be positive, the connotation, in my opinion, appears to be aimed at some of the more fact challenged folks who hear this stuff all day on Fox News.

Why the provocative headline?

Daily Kos

WTF??

Yes, that’s the headline on CNN right now.  However, the preview of the article states:

He’s been called the anti-Christ. But Obama is a “different” kind of Christian, progressives say — one who’s challenging the religious right’s grip on the national stage.

Not exactly what the headline connotes, is it?  And the article is actually positive for Obama — about how his “progressive” faith is challenging the dominance of the religious right in national discourse.  For example, though it mentions Rev. Wright, it states that Obama’s real inspiration is Martin Luther King.

But the casual reader who stops by the website (I was only there to find out what’s going on with Iran — first — talks, then denial, then the NYT headline that there are talks. CNN had nothing!*) sees the headline about Obama being the “Wrong Kind of Christian” and probably won’t read the article.

You would think the headline could be “Obama — a Different Kind of Christian” or “Obama’s Faith — a challenge to the religious right’s brand of Christianity.”  And no, putting “wrong” in quotes doesn’t help that headline.

Nearly two weeks before the election that’s irresponsible at best.

UPDATE:  Let them know.

*What is going on?

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May 13, 2012 · 5:20 AM

150 Achievements Of Liberalism That Conservatives Seek To Destroy

President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the 1964 Civ...

President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the 1964 Civil Rights Act as Martin Luther King, Jr., and others, look on. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Addicting Info

According to virtually any conservative today, the government has been just one big liberal establishment.

The current extremists that own and operate the GOP are hell bent on destroying anything and everything that even has a hint of liberalism or progressivism in it, even if Republicans helped pass it.

So what would America be like without liberals and progressives? Here is a list of programs, legislation, and achievements that we would not have if extreme right wingers had their way. Some items on this list were indeed passed or created by Republicans, but that doesn’t make them conservative achievements. It only means that at one time, Republicans favored liberalism and progressivism or that they were willing to work with Democrats for the common good.

1. The 40-hour work week.
2. Weekends
3. Vacations
4. Women’s Voting Rights
5. The Civil Rights Act of 1964
6. The right of people of all colors to use schools and facilities.
7. Public schools.
8. Child-labor laws.
9. The right to unionize
10. Health care benefits
11. National Parks
12. National Forests
13. Interstate Highway System
14. GI Bill
15. Labor Laws/Worker’s Rights
16. Marshall Plan
17. FDA
18. Direct election of Senators by the people.
19. Occupational Safety and Health Administration, Workplace safety laws
20. Social Security
21. NASA
22. The Office of Congressional Ethics. Created in 2008.
23. The Internet
24. National Weather Service
25. Product Labeling/Truth in Advertising Laws
26. Rural Electrification/Tennessee Valley Authority
27. Morrill Land Grant Act
28. Public Universities
29. Bank Deposit Insurance
30. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
31. Consumer Product Safety Commission
32. Public Broadcasting/Educational Television
33. Americans With Disabilities Act
34. Family and Medical Leave Act
35. Environmental Protection Agency
36. Clean Air Act
37. Clean Water Act
38. USDA
39. Public Libraries
40. Transcontinental Railroad and the rail system in general
41. Civilian Conservation Corps
42. Panama Canal
43. Hoover Dam
44. The Federal Reserve
45. Medicare
46. The United States Military
47. FBI
48. CIA
49. Local and state police departments
50. Fire Departments
51. Veterans Medical Care
52. Food Stamps
53. Federal Housing Administration
54. Extending Voting Rights to 18 year olds
55. Freedom of Speech
56. Freedom of Religion/Separation of Church and State
57. Right to Due Process
58. Freedom of The Press
59. Right to Organize and Protest
60. Pell Grants and other financial aid to students
61. Federal Aviation Administration/Airline safety regulations
62. The 13th Amendment
63. The 14th Amendment
64. The 15th Amendment
65. Unemployment benefits
66. Women’s Health Services
67. Smithsonian Institute
68. Head Start
69. Americorps
70. Mine Safety And Health Administration (This has been weakened by conservatives, resulting in recent mining disasters.)
71. Food Labeling
72. WIC
73. Peace Corps
74. United Nations
75. World Health Organization
76. Nuclear Treaties
77. Lincoln Tunnel
78. Sulfur emissions cap and trade to eliminate acid rain
79. Earned Income Tax Credit
80. The banning of lead in consumer products
81. National Institute of Health
82. Garbage pickup/clean streets
83. Banning of CFCs.
84. Erie Canal
85. Medicaid
86. TARP
87. Bail Out of the American Auto Industry
88. Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act
89. Wildlife Protection
90. End of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell
91. Established the basis for Universal Human Rights by writing the Declaration of Independence
92. Miranda Rights
93. Banning of torture
94. The right to a proper defense in court
95. An independent judiciary
96. The right to vote
97. Fair, open, and honest elections
98. The right to bear arms (Do you really think extreme right wingers would allow anybody besides themselves to have firearms if in power?)
99. Health care for children and pregnant women
100. A stable and strong government established by a Constitution
101. The founding of The United States of America
102. The defeat of the Nazis and victory in World War II
103. Paramedics
104. The Brady Handgun Act
105. The Glass-Steagall Act (It has since been repealed and we’ve been paying the price for it.)
106. Oil industry regulations (The Gulf paid the price after conservatives tore many of these regulations down.)
107. The Affordable Care Act which makes insurance companies more honest and fair.
108. Woman’s Right to Choose
109. Title IX
110. Affirmative Action
111. A National Currency
112. National Science Foundation
113. Weights and measures standards
114. Vehicle Safety Standards
115. NATO
116. The income tax and power to tax in general, which have been used to pay for much of this list.
117. 911 Emergency system
118. Tsunami, hurricane, tornado, and earthquake warning systems
119. Public Transportation
120. The Freedom of Information Act
121. Emancipation Proclamation, which ended slavery
122. Antitrust legislation which prevents corporate monopolies (These laws have been savaged by conservatives, which is why corporations are getting huger and competition is disappearing leading to less jobs and high prices.)
123. Water Treatment Centers and sewage systems
124. The Meat Inspection Act
125. The Pure Food And Drug Act
126. The Bretton Woods system
127. International Monetary Fund
128. SEC, which regulates Wall Street. (Conservatives have weakened this regulatory body, resulting in the current recession.)
129. National Endowment for the Arts
130. Campaign finance laws (Conservatives have gutted these laws, leading to corporate takeovers of elections.)
131. Federal Crop Insurance
132. United States Housing Authority
133. Soil Conservation
134. School Lunch Act
135. Mental Retardation Facilities and Community Mental Health Centers Construction Act
136. Vaccination Assistance Act
137. Over the course of nearly 50 years, liberals contributed greatly to the eventual end of the Cold War.
138. The creation of counterinsurgency forces such as the Navy Seals and Green Berets.
139. Voting Rights Act, which ended poll taxes, literacy tests, and other voter qualification tests.
140. Civil Rights Act of 1968
141. Job Corps
142. Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965
143. Teacher Corps
144. National Endowment for the Humanities
145. Endangered Species Preservation Act of 1966
146. National Trails System Act of 1968
147. U.S. Postal Service
148. Title X
149. Kept the Union together through Civil War and rebuilt the South afterwards.
150. Modern Civilization

It is safe to assume that if the current breed of Republicans had their way, ALL of the above list would have never happened.

The fact is, the people need government. Government protects the people from the greedy power hungry hands of the wealthy, especially when liberals are in power.

The corporations and extremists that own the Republicans today will always only do what is profitable to themselves, and would also get rid of most of the things on this list. So, the next time a conservative complains about all those “socialist” liberals, remind them of what liberals have accomplished.

Any conservative that claims anything on this list as a conservative achievement would be a hypocrite. Conservatives would lead us back to the Dark Ages. Liberals and liberal ideals have time and time again, led the way to a brighter future for everyone.

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