The author doesn't exactly present a mountain of evidence to support her assertion -- a blog entry written by E.J. Dionne for Real Clear Politics, another blog entry in 2005 by Amy Ridenour, and comments made by Joe Klein on the Chris Mathews show, which were in response to Sarah Palin calling Obama's policies unAmerican. Why is it okay for the conservative right to question the patriotism of Obama and his supporters, but not for the people on the left to do the same toward their rightwing counterparts?

This is a straw man fallacy. Who is accusing members of the "tea bag" movement of being terrorists? But to pretend there are no right wing terrorists is ridiculous. The KKK and neo-Nazis are still around, and it wasn't that long ago that Timothy McVeigh performed his act of terrorism.

MyOpine states to me: "When you Communists are taught it is ethical to lie for the advancement of the cause, has it ever occurred to you that someone might have lied to YOU in order to persuade you to support THEIR cause?"

First of all I am not a communist. Secondly what you consistently fail to understand is that this has not been primarily an issue of Republicans vs. Democrats, at least not until the mass exodus from the Democratic party of white southerners that began after the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

The Republicans had a brief period where their leader abolished slavery and then the "radical" Republican congress sought to bring equal rights to black people in the south during the Reconstruction era. But after that,...

I think you don't know many liberals.

MyOpine states: "Written out of our history books are the following facts. The Republican Party was started in 1854 as the anti-slavery party and, after the Civil War, Republicans amended the US Constitution to grant blacks freedom (13th Amendment), citizenship (14th Amendment) and the right to vote (15th Amendment). Republicans then passed the civil rights laws to ensure blacks could exercise their Constitutional rights, including the Civil Rights Acts of 1866, 1867 and 1875. After Democrats took control of Congress in 1892, Democrats passed the Repeal Act of 1894 that overturned civil rights legislation enacted by the Republicans. It took Republicans nearly six decades to finally achieve passage of civil rights legislation in the...

Judith says "SRD And others who hang onto the idea that slavery was the underlying cause for the Civil War will just continue to see blacks today as carrying a huge burden. They only carry it to justify feeling sorry for themselves."

Whether or not slavery was the underlying cause for the Civil War is a question of objective fact. Considering the major legislative battles over the expansion of slavery as well as the actual physical battles, considering that slavery was the basis of the agricultural cotton economy at the time, at least for the plantation owners, and considering that we have secessiion statements from states such as South Carolina which basically said that it was to retain slavery that they were withdrawing from...

To Les and others, I have at least one ancestor who came to America as an indentured servant. Life could be harsh for these people but it was not comparable to slavery. The chief difference was that after a few years the indentured servants were released from their contracts and often given land and even a house, along with other items. My ancestors on my father's side were mostly farmers who gradually moved west.

"I mean, the pyramids weren't built with union labor, now were they? If they had, they'd be a pile of rubble by now."

This kind of comment reminds me of a redneck commentator character played by Johnny Carson, Floyd R. Turbo.

Yes, slavery, racism, political tyranny and in general man's inhumanity to man is a universal feature of the human race throughout the world. Fortunately our society advanced out of slavery and its aftermath of racial segregation. But it is still a major contradiction and a major part of our history, even written into our Constitution, where slaves were considered to be 3/5 of a man. It was the underlying cause of the Civil War. It split religious denominations. And after the war ended, there was a brief period where northern Republicans tried to bring racial equality to the former slaves, followed by a long period of almost 100 years where the former slaves were put back into a condition of near slavery and racial segregation was...

"Wilson was a horrible president. Period. I have read DuBois. He was a communist. I suppose that had I lived as a black person then, I might have been inclined to become one, as well." He was not a communist at the time he wrote about Wilson's racist policies, as editor of the NAACP's The Crisis.

"YOu liberals started the KKK and other organizations to stop the spread of Republicanism to make sure minorities would not have civil rights."

The KKK was not started by liberals. It was started by conservative whites in the South who wanted to deprive black people of the rights they had gained during the short-lived Reconstruction period.