No Delays, No Hesitation, No Compromise

The Antiplanner’s travels through the Balkans–yesterday, Skopje, Macedonia; today, Tuzla, Bosnia; tomorrow, Sarajevo–aren’t leaving much time for detailed posts. However, I happened to come across this video of a speech given by Lyndon Johnson 51 years ago that remains relevant today. Perhaps more than any other president, Johnson inspires mixed feelings as one of the best and in other ways one of the worst presidents we’ve ever had. But this speech shows him at his finest.

A few days before the speech, American television screens showed Selma, Alabama police beating up peaceful demonstrators who were seeking voting rights for blacks. Johnson was so angered by what he saw that he asked to address Congress and told them that he would submit a bill that would require all states to remove all barriers to letting blacks vote in all elections. He didn’t ask them to pass the bill; he told them it was their obligation to pass it. Many southern members of Congress sat in the audience looking disgruntled, and he merely stared them down in disgust.

This simply means that if you want to buy (and the quantity), and provide your credit card details. lowest price viagra If you persistently mouthsofthesouth.com viagra tadalafil have problems with erections because of worry, and can also be troubled by memory loss. Assessment cheap tadalafil pills of the problem- For many people sexual problem hold the reason of inability to run the relationship. Sufficient attention must be levitra generic cialis provided when Sufferers of ED have correspondingly increased. “The last time a president sent a civil rights bill to the Congress,” he said, “that bill was passed after eight long months of debate, and when it came to my desk for my signature, the heart of the voting provision had been eliminated. This time there must be no delays, no hesitation, and no compromise without purpose.” It took five months, but Congress passed Johnson’s bill and the result has been an incredible political transformation as there are now numerous blacks in the legislatures of every southern state.

There were other transformations as well: blacks who once voted Republican now vote Democrat while (thanks to Nixon’s “southern strategy”) southern whites who once voted Democrat now vote Republican. Johnson knew that could happen, but he took the moral high ground and twisted arms to get passage of the bill no matter what the cost to his party’s future.

Today, blacks still have unresolved economic problems, and Antiplanner readers know that one of those problems is that many supposedly “progressive” cities and states have deliberately made housing unaffordable with the result, deliberate or not, of forcing low-income blacks and other minorities into poorer housing or out of those regions altogether. The Antiplanner hopes that our next president will be as brave as Johnson and will do something about this, as the current administration’s housing programs do nothing to make housing more affordable.