Lester Maddox Said It Best or At Least Very Clearly
The Governor of Indiana isn't Lester Maddox and Indiana isn't 1960's Georgia, or at least that is what we would like to believe about them and about ourselves.
Lester Maddox of autographing pick ax handles fame after chasing out three black patrons from his restaurant did so to protect the rights of private property and his personal beliefs.
I read this in an article by John Avlon for the Daily Beast.
Lester denied his actions had anything to do with race, and somewhere along the line, intolerance goes on the down low and the argument is re framed as an attack on personal property and government taking away liberties.
As I remember those arguments, Faulkner's comment about the past never being dead or even past. seem to apply. Liberty versus the tyranny of a despotic government.
This controversy about religious freedom in Indiana is just more of the same, the targets for intolerance may be different, instead of property rights, religious freedom can be substituted property rights. In the 1960's, civil rights legislation was viewed as a threat to personal property and individual freedom.
Feeding black folks at the back door was standard operating procedure, they just couldn't sit at the lunch table.
This is a national issue because it wraps up in a tidy little bow a lot of the little secrets that allowed Lester Maddox to get elected in Georgia and is being used as a wedge now to fire up folks on this and other issues where they feel threatened and vulnerable to get votes.
Lester Maddox of autographing pick ax handles fame after chasing out three black patrons from his restaurant did so to protect the rights of private property and his personal beliefs.
I read this in an article by John Avlon for the Daily Beast.
Lester denied his actions had anything to do with race, and somewhere along the line, intolerance goes on the down low and the argument is re framed as an attack on personal property and government taking away liberties.
As I remember those arguments, Faulkner's comment about the past never being dead or even past. seem to apply. Liberty versus the tyranny of a despotic government.
This controversy about religious freedom in Indiana is just more of the same, the targets for intolerance may be different, instead of property rights, religious freedom can be substituted property rights. In the 1960's, civil rights legislation was viewed as a threat to personal property and individual freedom.
Feeding black folks at the back door was standard operating procedure, they just couldn't sit at the lunch table.
This is a national issue because it wraps up in a tidy little bow a lot of the little secrets that allowed Lester Maddox to get elected in Georgia and is being used as a wedge now to fire up folks on this and other issues where they feel threatened and vulnerable to get votes.
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