David Frum agrees with me, sort of. I guess it's obligatory to roundly denounce any suggestion that segregation was a good thing. I thought that was self-evident and settled, and didn't need some kind of loyalty oath.


I think that a case can be made that the Civil Rights movement has had some unfortunate results: polarization, an obsession with minority status, political correctness, affirmative action and the ability to intimidate with the mention of bigotry and racism. It has also resulted in many African Americans becoming racists and hating America. And it has given us Jess Jackson, Al Sharpton and Cornell West.


Does this mean I would go back to the days of Jim Crow? No. I think that the hate and resentment of defeated white southerners poured out on black citizens for 100 years after the Civil War was a shame to all citizens of the U. S., Northerners included. And no, I don't think we'd be better off if Strom Thrumond had been elected president.


Trent Lott voted for Thurmond. He made arguments supporting segregation. Some small part of that feeling remains in his memory, and some of it slipped out, just as Robert Bird's gaffe in an interview with Tony Snow. Then there's Bill Clinton whose protean memory allowed him to remember that as a boy he had wondered why blacks were treated so badly. Thus he became our first black president. I suspect that Lott and Bird are more honest, in their senior moments, but I'm sure as I can be that they aren't about to advocate returning to those times.


It's an old fight that was decided a long time ago. Why start it again?