As is common with my countrymen, I come from a historically Democrat family. We voted that way all the way up until the 1960s, before slowly but surely voting for the Republicans in down ballot races around 2000. Afterwards, we were all solid Republicans. We used to be Democrats because to be a Republican was intolerable. It was the party of Lincoln and Hoover. Our move to the Republican Party wasn’t because the Republicans were good, it was because the Democrats lost their ever-loving minds in the decades between the 1960s to today. For my family, as with many others, we never left the Democratic Party, the Democratic Party left us. It’s why, despite how horrible both parties are, I feel a greater sense of sadness when I think of the Democrats. They are our ancestral party.
This is not to lionize the history of the Democratic Party. Even back in the peak of the Dixiecrat years, the Party still had many problems, namely not building an infrastructure that could sustain a serious independence movement either before or after the War. But, there is a world of difference between the Old Democrats, despite not doing everything they could or even having some poor policies, and the Coalition of the Ascendant Democrats that literally want us dead and gone. This does raise the question of how this all happened – how did the Party of Dixie turn into the party of multiculturalism, open borders, abortion, widespread iconoclasm, socialism, and the celebration of homosexuality?
As with most of history, this was a process, not an event – the rise of Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt, Kennedy and Johnson, the assassination attempt on George Wallace that ended him as a national figure, preventing Orval Fabius from speaking at the 1988 Democrat National Convention, doing the same to Bob Casey, Sr. four years later, and so on are all important events in this story. There is one event though that stands out as the point in which the Democratic Party crossed the point of no return. And, it’s one that took place far away from Dixie, the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago.
In those days, the Vietnam War raged and the Far Left was becoming increasingly violent. As a result, the public was turning ever more against them. All of this came to a head when the violent protesters tried to disrupt the DNC convention. In response, Chicago Mayor Richard Daley, himself the epitome of the Catholic political machine that dominated urban politics in the North, sent his cops to crush the protesters. And, they did and with much of the liberal intelligentsia horrified. But, the vast majority of ordinary Americans, the “Silent Majority” to use Nixon’s term, sided with the cops. To them, the cops were justified in what they did. They saw a bunch of spoiled brats and communists, who never got enough spankings at home, get a much needed back-the-blue beatdown.
Caught between the Far Left, the intellectuals who supported them, and the majority that backed the cops, the Democrts decided to make peace by appeasing the Far Left. In turn, the Party would go about dismantling the political machines in both Dixie and the North that had prevented the Far Left, which had been active in the Party since 1932, from taking over. They also set aside a number of delegates of non-whites and women, essentially breaking the hold of conservative Democrats within the Party and ending the last serious force that could have stopped the Far Left from taking over.
From that point on, it was no longer a matter of if, but when. Armed with their new power in 1972, the Far Left managed to get South Dakota Senator George McGovern the nomination. After McGovern went down in flames, losing 49 states and even losing Cook County, Illinois (Chicago), the Democratic Party actually put some restrains on them, hoping to avoid another disaster. But, because they never restored the power of the old machines, this only slowed the progressives down. So, within a few decades they completely took over the Party to the point their so called “moderates” were advocating for positions that would have have been considered like dystopian science-fiction to any sane man living in 1960.
The transformation of the Democratic Party, from Jefferson Davis to Elizabeth Warren and from George Wallace to Pete Buttigieg, is a long and winding history. One that took a long time and one where it was not always clear, at least from the perspective of the time, that the Far Left would win. As the dust settled on that hot August night in 1968, few Americans could have guessed they had just watched their country and the Old Democrats transform forever.
Yes, the Far Left lost the battle that night, but they won the war. It was a victory born out of Democrat leadership cowardice, and it was that cowardice that killed the party of Harry F. Byrd, George Wallace, John Tyler and James Polk.
-By Dixie Anon
O I’m a good old rebel, now that’s just what I am. For this “fair land of freedom” I do not care at all. I’m glad I fit against it, I only wish we’d won, And I don’t want no pardon for anything I done.
