The History of the Plantation Party

I have wanted to see something like this in writing for some time. I hear pundits explain some of this or toss it out in generalities, but this article from Reason.com is a good review of the Democrats (or "Plantation Party") role in race discrimination and violence. In part:

In fact, as the historian David Southern has documented, the worst evils of the South's Jim Crow regime, including segregation, disfranchisement, mob violence, and lynching, all "went hand-in-hand with the most advanced forms of southern progressivism." Remember that progressives wanted an interventionist government with sweeping powers to regulate all walks of life, an approach that fit nicely with Jim Crow's bullying assault on economic liberty and freedom of association....

Have some ugly views cropped up at the recent health care protests? Sure. But to take that as evidence of a century-long battle between enlightened liberal reformers and knuckle-dragging laissez-faire racist goons is to believe in a self-serving fairy tale. It's time for any pundit who thinks that way to grow up.