Or perhaps United States Government 101? A letter sent out by the Loudoun County Democratic Committee before the November 2nd election:
Greetings!
The following was written by Lu Ann McNabb who is on the Sully Democratic Committee in Fairfax. I think it brings Sen. Cuccinelli and his tea bagger friends into historic prespective. Read and then click here to forward to all of your VA friends
On Tuesday, vote for Steve Shannon over this extremist.
Sincerely,
Tim Buchholz
Chairman
Loudoun County Democratic Committee____________________________________________
Yesterday, my husband and I drove to Charlottesville to watch UVA succumb to Duke but that’s another story. On Route 29, we passed a flagpole with the “Don’t Tread On Me” flag flying with the Confederate flag. As many of you know, State Senator Ken Cuccinelli has adopted “Don’t Tread On Me” as his motto. But those two flags together symbolize Virginia’s shameful past- one of bigotry and intolerance. I can appreciate Mr. Cuccinelli’s defiance against the federal government by stating he will fight for state’s rights, but let us remember that it was the federal National Guard who protected the black students walking in to schools and universities from angry, screaming crowds. It was the federal Supreme Court who declared segregated schools as unconstitutional and the federal Justice Department that denied tax exemptions to churches who only allowed white children to attend their classes. It was also the federal Supreme Court that overturned Virginia’s law disallowing mixed couples to marry. And it was the Congress that gave African-American citizens the right to sit anywhere and have full voting rights.
Let us not forget what the Confederate flag stood for – and I say this as a great-great-great granddaughter of a Confederate who fought in the Alabama regiment and whose cousin owns his musket and sword. And let us be wary of these two flags that predominate at gun shows, along with the Nazi flag, representing a belief that we should not enact commonsense gun laws because for some reason background checks interferes with one’s freedom to own a gun. At the same time, these flags reflect a belief that supports governmental interference in the most personal decisions one can make.
More importantly, the pairings of those two flags symbolizes to me what is at stake in this election-whether we remain a moderate state with elected
officials who will solve problems or return to a state with a worldview that we abandoned a long time ago.Lu Ann
Do I really need to mock the comments comparing Cuccinelli’s beliefs to Nazism?
But there is one comment needs a little special attention: “[…] but let us remember that it was the federal National Guard who protected the black students walking in to schools and universities from angry, screaming crowds.”
Uh, since when was the National Guard a federal agency? Sure, they might be federally funded, but the ability for the President to deploy them within the United States is severely restricted.
Even more important, if she’s referring to the Little Rock Nine, it was the Arkansas National Guard, which has been deployed by Governor Faubus, which prevented black students from entering Little Rock Central High School. It was the deployment of the 101st Airborne Division by President Eisenhower which protected the black students.
Hell, you can even learn all about this by reading a couple paragraphs on Wikipedia:
The Little Rock Nine were a group of African-American students who were enrolled in Little Rock Central High School in September 1957, as a result of The U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in the historic Brown v. Board of Education case. Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus, in direct opposition to the Court’s ruling, activated and deployed the Arkansas National Guard to support the segregationists on 4 September 1957. The sight of a line of soldiers blocking nine black students from attending high school immediately polarized the city.
Attorneys from the U.S. Justice Department requested an injunction against the governor’s deployment of the National Guard from the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas in Little Rock. Judge Ronald Davies granted the injunction and ordered the governor to withdraw the National Guard on 20 September.[11]
As a result, elements of the division’s 1st Airborne Battle Group, 327th Infantry (bearing the lineage of the old Company A, 327th Glider Infantry Regiment) were ordered to Little Rock by President Eisenhower to enforce the court injunction during the crisis. The division was deployed from September through November 1957, when they were relieved by the U.S. Marshals.
So, did McNabb play a bit of attention during history class, or has she even read anything about the civil rights movement?