The Right Side of History
12th January 2022
At a speech in Georgia yesterday, President Biden charged all U.S. Senators with deciding “where they stand, not just for the moment, but for the ages.” The Senate filibuster, which Biden defended passionately in 2005 and again last year, is now apparently a neo-segregationist atrocity because it stands in the way of the president’s legislative agenda.
Biden wants federal power to veto election laws in certain states, because he is on the right side of history. Of course this means if you oppose him, you are on the wrong side. “At consequential moments in history, they present a choice,” he said. “Do you want to be on the side of Dr. King or George Wallace? Do you want to be on the side of John Lewis or Bull Connor? Do you want to be on the side of Abraham Lincoln or Jefferson Davis?”
Dr King was a Republican; George Wallace was a Democrat while he was a segregationist, then switched parties when he changed his outlook. John Lewis and Bull Connor were both Democrats Abraham Lincoln was a Republican; Jefferson Davis was a Democrat. Looks like the Republicans are willling the Right Side of History sweepstakes here.
George Wallace, an actual segregationist, is like the filibuster: Biden used to like him. Now, not so much. In 1987 the Philadelphia Inquirer reported that Biden “bragged of an award he received from George Wallace in 1973.” In 1975, then-Senator Biden added: I think the Democratic Party could stand a liberal George Wallace—someone who’s not afraid to stand up and offend people.”
Here we have a president who constantly needs to distance himself from views and relationships which have come to seem morally toxic in the span of just one lifetime. You would think that experience might make him more circumspect about declaring what future generations will think of today’s political debates. Not so.
Being On The Right Side of History has been a progressive thing forever. Yet they never seem to get it right.