The Republican war on democracy

From the NY Times:

To the Editor:

Re “The G.O.P. Goes Full Authoritarian” (column, Dec. 11):

Paul Krugman is demonstrably right that “the G.O.P. is an authoritarian party in waiting” and that “the G.O.P., as currently constituted, is willing to do whatever it takes to seize and hold power.” But not just currently.

Rollbacks of democracy have been central to Republican rule for the better part of two decades. 

The Republicans’ contempt for democracy was enthroned when their Supreme Court majority overrode Florida’s legal election procedures to install George W. Bush as president in 2000.

Ohio’s Republican secretary of state, Kenneth Blackwell, was already carrying out ballot restrictions in 2004. 

In the years since, with the spread of Republican control in the states and the Supreme Court’s rollback of federal voting rights in Shelby County v. Holder (2013), voter purges, minority vote suppression and extreme gerrymandering have accelerated.

The G.O.P. has needed no lessons from Viktor Orban, Hungary’s dictator. The Republican Party hasn’t been waiting. It’s been speeding.

Todd Gitlin

New York

Rob's comment:

And the racist Republican Southern Strategy goes back to Ronald Reagan. Later: Wrong! Actually, the strategy can be traced back to Richard Nixon.

See also Fifty years after the Southern strategy began, the tide is turning again.

How Steven Spielberg learned to count

From the NY Times:

What are your earliest memories of being different?

My grandmother taught English to Hungarian Holocaust survivors in Cincinnati. I was 2 or 3, and I would sit with them around the table. That’s where I learned my numbers — on the arm of an Auschwitz survivor who showed me the numbers of his forearm. That was my “Sesame Street.” That’s how I first learned to count.