Posted by
Andrews on Saturday, April 12, 2008 2:20:15 PM
In my earlier post, I mentioned a
list of points trying to dismiss McCain as a viable candidate. At the time I only mentioned one specific point, but now I want to address another:
1. John McCain voted against establishing a national
holiday in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Now he
says his position has "evolved," yet he's continued to
oppose key civil rights laws.
I have heard this argument before, and it has never made sense to me. The underlying assumption seems to be "Opposition to the King holiday is only possible if one is a racist." But I just do not see how opposing the creation of a federal holiday, even one honoring King, of necessity proves one is a racist.
For example, I can argue for not creating a new federal holiday for anyone, and race does not have to enter into it. Federal workers already have more holidays than any private company, or most states, provide. To have yet another day where they are paid for not working seems a bad idea. If we are going to pay for a truly massive federal bureaucracy, we should at least get as much labor out of them as the private sector would. (Then again, as the federal government seems to do more harm than good, maybe I should be arguing for 351 more holidays instead.)
If we want to speak of this specific holiday, I can make arguments as well. As Lincoln's birthday is no longer observed, the only holiday to commemorate an individual, other than Christmas, is Washington's Birthday/Presidents Day. To add a King holiday is to place Martin Luther King above Abraham Lincoln. Now, it is arguable whether King or Lincoln did more for the nation, but to argue for Lincoln is hardly to declare oneself racist.
If I can come up with two perfectly valid arguments in about two minutes, the assumption that racism must be at the root of any opposition to the holiday is patently false. There were probably some who opposed the holiday based on race, but they were certainly not the majority. And from
McCain's own explanation, I see that he definitely had arguments which had nothing to do with race.
As for the second part of the argument, it is the same as the suggestion that in championing property rights and states' rights Reagan was a closet bigot. There are many valid reasons to oppose what liberals term "key civil rights" bills. If they could, they would label every one of their bills as "civil rights" to cut off debate. Just because a bill is so labeled, there is no reason to assume that any opposition is founded on racism. In fact, many bills called "civil rights" have nothing to do with minorities, and some of those that actually do deal with minorities end up doing more harm than good. Whatever the case, most bills in recent times labeled "civil rights" are also blatant breaches of property rights, breaches of right of assembly, or are simply yet more federal government subsidies and handouts. So, what this "opposition" part of the complaint really means is "McCain has not voted the Democrat party line", which is hardly a reason to oppose him.
But, of course, those bringing up McCain's opposition to the King holiday are not interested in truth. McCain has explained his position, should they care about the truth. What they want is to suggest McCain is racist, to insinuate that thought into the minds of voters to help prop up the flagging Obama candidacy.
Now, I am hardly a McCain partisan. If you check out old blog posts (starting
here,
here,
here, or
here), you will see I have been critical of the man. But I am a fair man (as you can see by my defense of
Obama against unfair critics), and I think this is just an absurd charge to level against the man.
If you are a liberal, fine, then oppose McCain because he is not liberal enough for you. But please do not try to paint the man as a closet racist simply because he fails to faithfully follow the liberal agenda.
UPDATE (04/12/2008)
To be fair, the same site's guest review of "
An Inconvenient Truth" does take Gore to task for doing nothing about the environment while in office. The writer obviously buys into the AGW theory, but he rightly criticizes Gore for not following through on his beliefs. (Warning for those who follow the link, the language is a bit rough.)