Watching the news this week, this saying came to mind, “Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” Scholars agree this came from the writings of George Santayana. Right after the Civil War, there was a period that has been labeled the Reconstruction Era. It lasted until 1877. During the Reconstruction Era, Blacks in the South ran for office and were successful and gained many of the civil rights promised in the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments to the Constitution. When the last of the Federal troops left the South, laws started to be passed which would become known as the Jim Crow Laws. Some laws were local while others were statewide. They were designed to strip the Blacks of their civil rights in a “lawful way.” It wouldn’t be until the 1960s that Blacks began to regain the rights they had right after the Civil War.
I thought I better review a little history because if you’re like me it’s been a lot of years since I sat in a history class. What I wanted to say in this blog wouldn’t make sense without this background. One of the first things that the Jim Crow laws did was to stop Black from voting. This was done in a variety of ways I won’t get into, but they ranged from poll taxes to being asked to recite a portion of the Constitution. Today, there is a movement by the conservatives to find ways to limit the voting power of the liberals. Why would this be true? The definition of conservative is basically they don’t like to see change traditional institutions. Given that, what is it they see in liberals that would make them want to limit the right to vote? The one tenant of liberalism that seems to bother most is what I call “fairness.” It simply the idea everyone should be given an equal chance at life and begins as far back in life as prenatal care. Liberals see no problem in offering people ways to advance in life. Conservatives reaction to that is usually something along the lines of “No one helped me.” This would seem to be a shortsighted point of view since as people advance and become more comfortable they tend to become the conservatives.
The important thing here is that attempting to limit change by limiting voting rights we would be violating the very thing our country was founded on. It is reflected in the opening line of the Declaration of Independence, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” Let’s remember and not repeat history’s mistakes.
