Lyndon B. Johnson (1963-1969)
Iwill avoid discussing LBJ’s adventures in foreign policy. Like Mr.Carter, his presidency was so full of mishaps there is not enough spaceto cover them all, and Johnson’s foreign policy was particularlycontentious. Rather, I will focus on his long lasting social policieswhich have had lasting, regressive, deadly effects.
Lyndon Baines Johnson’s policies laid the groundwork for victicrats JesseJackson and Al Sharpton. Inner cities and black America havebeen relegated to poverty and lack of incentive to succeed as a directresult of Johnson’s socialist policies. Many contemporary historiansmay consider LBJ a “progressive pioneer” but I see a different story.
Johnsonwas sworn in as our 36th president at Love Field in Dallas, roughly 100minutes after the assassination of John F. Kennedy in November 1963.LBJ was preceded by a romantic figure cut down in Johnson’s homestate.
Thoughhe was elected in 1964, the GOP may have aided that victory with asomewhat polarizing candidate in Arizona senator, Barry Goldwater. TheRepublican nominee had a great record of supporting civil rights, butGoldwater opposed certain preferences in the bills that became theCivil Rights Act. His vote against it ultimately led to a 44 to 6 statetriumph for LBJ in the general election. Johnson benefited greatly froma profound expansion in liberal control over much of the mainstreampress, Hollywood, and academia, a process that, of course, continuestoday.
Notremembered much in current history textbooks or the media of today, wasthat in the 1920s Republicans proposed anti-lynchinglegislation, reflecting back to Civil War times when Democrats,including founders of the KKK, had been involved in this horrific act.The legislation passed the House , an opposition speech was given by a Democrat Congressman from Texas named Lyndon B. Johnson, but was killed by the Democrat-controlled Senate. Finally in 1939 it passed the Senate.
LBJ and the Southern wing of the Democratic Party persisted in supporting anti-black positions. Consider, as LBJ’s term neared:
– In 1956, Democrats expressed their opposition to the desegregation decision of Brown v. Board of Education in the “Southern Manifesto.” One hundred members of Congress, all Democrats, signed the manifesto.
– In 1957, REPUBLICAN President Eisenhower authored a Civil Rights Bill,hoping to repair the damage done to blacks and their civil rights byDemocrats for nearly a century. Passage of the bill was blocked bySenate Democrats.
– In 1959, Eisenhower authored a VotingRights Bill, again, in an effort to undo the disenfranchisement ofblacks by Democrats through poll taxes, literacy tests, and threats ofviolence by the KKK. And once again, passage of the bill is blocked bySenate Democrats.
But then, following the JFK assasination:
-In 1964, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964. This is the laworiginally authored by Eisenhower in 1957. Democrats, including SenatorRobert Byrd (a former KKK member), filibustered the bill. Once thefilibuster was overcome, a larger percentage of Republicans voted for passage than did Democrats.**
– In 1965, Congress passed, and President Lyndon Johnson signed into law, the Voting Rights Act of 1964. This is the law originally authored by Eisenhower in 1959.A filibuster was prevented, and passage of this bill also enjoyedsupport from a greater percentage of Republicans than Democrats.Johnson, of course, is now president and gets “credit” for thislegislation — authored by Republicans, designed by Republicans to undoa century of damage done by Democrats, and voted for by a greaterpercentage of Republicans than Democrats.
– This was followed by the Great Society programs designed to eliminate poverty and racism.
Atthis point, the media and academic elite began using a powerfulcombination of information control and revisionist history to engineera massive electoral shift. Falling for the blandishments ofthe Democrats and their media allies, blacks, once exclusivelyRepublican, began voting Democrat in numbers greater than 90 percent,
Theactual consequences of Johnson’s Great Society were disastrous forblacks, discouraging initiative, encouraging a sense of entitlement andvictimhood, and creating a permanent dependency class. Until 1965, 82%of black households had both a mother and a father in the home — astatistic on par with or even slightly higher than white families.After 1965 (the year the Democrats and President Johnson decided it wastime to stop oppressing blacks and start “helping” them), the presenceof black fathers in the home began a precipitous decline; today, theAmerican black out-of-wedlock birthrate is at 69%.
Unlike itssocialist cousin (the New Deal), the Great Society emerged in a periodof prosperity. Johnson presented his goals for the Great Society in aspeech at an elite liberal public university, the University ofMichigan, in May 1964. So-called “do-gooder liberals,” having littlefaith in their common man, loved its aims. The elitist “White Guilt” (see Shelby Steele’s book of the same name) resulted in terrible long-term impacts. Soonafter, the programs were heavily criticized by conservatives as beingineffective and creating an underclass of lazy citizens. They have beenproven correct. Current evidence makes Johnson the villain. If he werealive today to see the effects, he’d cringe.
Socialism clearly makes individuals worse.Incalculable damage has been done to the black family by theneo-socialist policies begun under Johnson, which are a perverted formof what Eisenhower wisely began a decade prior. And for that, evenignoring the Vietnam adventure, LBJ goes down as one of our three worstpresidents of all time.
**While this analysis seems to be in the tank for lifting up “Republicans” — a position that is meaningless under a two-for-one party system given each sides propensity for multiculturalism — it nevertheless reveals a major source of European Americans’ population decline in 34 years.