THE ROBERT W. WHITAKER ARCHIVE

BUGS HISTORY | 2011-03-12

In 1915 the Supreme Court had to knock down the very obvious violation of the fifteenth amendment that was the Grandfather Clause.

BoardAd was giving me some particulars about which states allowed women to vote in 1915.

There is a connection here that relates to real history. The problem is that we ignore real history to concentrate on Marxist Historical Inevitability or other nonsense.

In 1920 women were given the vote by constitutional amendment.

So why did the NAACP win its first big legal battle on the Grandfather Clause?

Because no one else at the time was interested in it.

So how did a number of states allow women to vote with a bewildering set of restrictions?

Because, in each state, somebody was INTERESTED.

This is important to BUGS.

While so many others say it's all about Exposing Them, the Conspirators, and the entire commentary class talks about Historical Inevitability, we say that what matters is that WE, we few, are going to get the message manageable, and then we are going to get our message out.

That concept is absolutely alien to the Marxist and the Conspiracy Theorist. They see a world in which Geniuses and Capitalists have taken control.

There is a story in each state which allowed the vote. There is a story in the restrictions in each state.

BoardAd tells me that a lot of states only allowed women to vote in school-related issues. Every state that allowed women to vote unconditionally was a state that needed to attract female immigrants.

And in a lot of cases, when you look at the state and the exact restrictions, your reaction is "What the hell?"

By which question you are cheating yourself. Behind every single case and every single restriction is a story, a story of someone and of a society and exactly what that person was balancing and thinking about.

In other words, real history.

SHIRT-TAIL NAPOLEONS | 2007-11-02

This is a useful term.

A commenter mentioned a deputy sheriff who insisted, like the cop father on Frasier, that nobody without a police costume should have a gun. That is, after all, the one thing a person who barely got through high school gets from being a cop: having a gun on.

I remember in one of my visits to a police area, seeing an ugly old man in shirtsleeves with a .44 Magnum. He had a look on his face that said, "See? I can carry this thing in the open." He was the poster-child for Shirt-Tail Napoleons.

Give a little man a little authority and he goes nuts about it. The more a cop is for gun control, the smaller a man he is.

GOOD POLITICS IS STEPPING ON THE RIGHT TOES | 2003-01-11

Until September 11, 2001 anything anti-white was good and all racial profiling, no matter how realistic it was, was bad. Police were indicted for checking out black people despite the fact that black people were ten times as likely to be up to something criminal as whites were.

Blacks were given jobs that white workers wanted and everybody cheered.

After all, the only people hurt by anti-white policies of this kind were working people. Rich people have plenty of police protection, so it didn't really matter if the police were made less efficient by being forced to check out as many whites as blacks.

But after September 11, 2001, all these silly anti-profiling ideas began to hit people who mattered. Nobody minded when busing led to dangerous schools where children were searched.

But after September 11, 2001 white American grandmothers were being strip-searched and the media started raising hell.

No, it wasn't just that grandmothers were being searched that caused all the trouble. What mattered was that the WRONG grandmothers were being searched.

At the airports after September 11 the whole nonsense of nondiscrimination began to cause problems for people who fly in airplanes. Al Gore got searched. Rich people got searched. Potentially dangerous Arabs did not get searched because profiling was outlawed.

Step on white working people and the media will worship you. But the minute you hit the upper middle class, expect to get kicked in the teeth.