How Many Kids Did You Kill Today?
The New York Times like many liberal publications has been focusing on preserving Obama’s legacy in the wake of the Trump election. Today, an op ed claims Obama has the best democratic president since FDR. That’s 70 some years and a bold claim. Mainly in their dismissal of LBJ.
LBJ was a victim of history. His push on civil rights broke up FDR’s new deal coalition that depended on Southern racists to pass legislation which left out blacks and other minorities from benefiting from the greatest works of the Democratic Party. A compromise LBJ knew must pass for the nation to heal racially. On the other front, Nixon illegally interfered with the Vietnamese peace talks and extended the war by eight years. We don’t call his achievements the Great Society for nothing. His attempt to remove poverty from America was even a platform too left for Obama.
The liberal hate of LBJ seems to stem from most journalists background in the radical left of the 60’s. Could LBJ pushed more civil rights and faster? It is hard to say. On our side of the historic fence, it sure looks and sounds easy but this was also a period of time the national guard had to escort children to school. Now thanks to his efforts, we live in a land where that sounds as foreign as Star Wars. Vietnam is a complicated conflict largely escalated by LBJ before his attempts to resolve it. At the least, Obama should be judged the same for Iraq and Afghanistan. Both countries are still wracked by violence and our military still serves and dies on their soil.
In the liberal and progressive rush to canonize Obama, we miss that his legacy will take generations to understand the full effects. It is not the words of his disciples that cement his works but those who lived them.
-E.C. Fiori
The Radical Centrists 