Dr. Carol M. Swain appeared on Fox News Channel’s Life, Liberty, and Levin with host Mark Levin this past Sunday evening to discuss historic systemic racism and the Democratic Party’s left-wing agenda.
Watch the latest video at foxnews.com
Levin: Our first guest is Dr. Carol Swain. Dr. Swain taught at Princeton where she was tenured. She was a tenured professor of political science at Vanderbilt University. She has a BA in criminal justice. A master’s in law. A Ph.D. in political science. What a remarkable woman.
She’s also part of the 1776 United that Bob Woodson has organized. And is part of the Black Voices for Trump advisory board member. And I could go on and on. Dr. Swain, your very very impressive. For people who don’t know, give us a little bit of your background.
Swain: Well I’m an American success story. I was one of 12 children born and raised in the rural south. We all dropped out of school after completing the eighth grade. I married at 16. Had my first child by 17. By the time I was 20 I had three small children. And I divorced.
I went to a community college and got the first of five degrees. And I eventually became a successful university professor earning early tenure at Princeton. I’ve won national prizes. I’ve been cited by the U.S. Supreme Court. And I love America. And if you haven’t noticed I’m black.
Levin: (Chuckles) Well, let me ask you some questions. That is a fantastic background. You’ve seen what’s been going on in this country. You’ve seen the voices on television and heard them. Athletes. Commissioner of the NFL. Hollywood. The Democrat Party on the left. Pelosi and Schumer.
First of all, I want to ask you a question. Is this a civil rights movement like the civil rights movement of the 1960s that had a specific agenda on equality, voting, access, and due process? Whereas this seems to be as I say an insurrection that has as its purpose as an overthrow of the original purposes of our government and the overthrow of our government and our economic system. What do you make of this?
Swain: I think of it as a part of the cultural Marxist agenda against America. And many of the protesters that are out there and the corporations that are giving money, I believe that they are sincere and that they believe racism in America is intolerable. That it hasn’t improved and that black people live their lives in fear. That’s a false narrative and I think it’s being pushed this year because of the election.
And I think that the situation with George Floyd that the media, the Democratic Party, Antifa, Black Lives Matter, all of those groups have an incentive to push and fan the flames so that they ended up with what we’re experiencing right now. So we are all suffering as a result of their political agenda. And it will not bring us closer together.
Levin: You know. Swain, I have to say, I look at this you look at these cities and they are run by one party with an iron fist. Mayors, city councils, aldermen for half a century at least. They are in charge of the money that comes into these communities. They are in charge of how it is distributed.
That money is laundered through their bureaucracy, their nepotism, their political cronyism. They take no responsibility for what’s going on in their cities. They blame other people. They blame systemic racism. It should be one-party states. These are Democrat states and it is amazing to me because you have Nancy Pelosi this week who announced that she wants to remove 11 Confederate statues from Congress.
And I’m thinking to myself Dr. Swain, hasn’t she been there like 30 years? She’s been speaker twice. She was there when the Democrats controlled the House and the Senate and Barack Obama was president. And only now she decides to move 11 Confederate statues? Number one, what is that going to do for the people in these communities? And number two isn’t it for her purely opportunism because she had every opportunity to remove those statues years ago?
Swain: First off I’d like your viewers to know that I was a Democrat up to 2009 but I always had a different perspective on the world. I’ve always been able to see through things. But I was there and I’ve been able to watch them over the years.
And it’s clear that this whole movement to tear down monuments I believe it’s really focused on dividing the country even further. Because the monuments are a part of our history. If we can’t learn from our history than we are in trouble. The whole situation is problematic because, with the monuments, this is something that there are monuments on all sides.
If we start tearing down monuments, what happens tomorrow when the leaders that we are celebrating today when those people fall out of favor? It’s the wrong path for our nation. It’s divisive. It’s opportunism. And it’s just meant to stir up people that are traditionalists. People that love America. People that are patriotic.
Levin: I think you are right. The notion that we are now going to tear down all the Confederate statues because Americans worship these generals. Americans don’t worship these generals. Americans mostly despise these generals or don’t even know who the hell they are.
And the fact is, you’re going to start pulling down monuments, what comes next? Any of the Founding Fathers who owned slaves and released slaves? What comes next? Books? We already know movies are being affected. Television shows are being pulled off the air. We have this bizarre purging going on. This cleaning up of history going on when in fact we actually need to know all these things as we go into the future. Correct?
Swain: It’s far more important to look at the full picture and not to judge the past by the politically correct lens that we use today.
Levin: Yes because if we judge the past by the political lens of today as you point out then we have a lot of questions to ask of the left and the Democrat Party don’t we?
Swain: Yes. (Chuckles)
Levin: How could you have voted for Robert Byrd to be the Democrat Majority Leader in the United States Senate when he had been an avowed klansman several decades before? That seems to me to be a rational question. And how could Joe Biden of worked with out of the closet segregationists in the 1970s on various crime bills and other issues if we are supposed to cleanse history?
Are we supposed to ignore that too? And may I say this to you professor, the Democrat Party, if we are going to purge society and segregation and racism, was it not the Democratic Party that led the Confederacy? Was it not the Democrat Party that gave birth to the Klan?
Was it not the Democrat Party that throughout a hundred years after the civil war led the effort on segregation and Jim Crow on poll taxes and literacy tests? I understand the Democrat Party has done some good things but if it’s in our DNA and we are systemically racist and we’re pulling down statues and we’re burning books and we’re removing TV shows, why don’t we purge the Democrat Party? Just a rhetorical point to you professor.
Swain: I agree. And the Democrat Party also fought against the anti-lynching laws. And if you look at the 1960s, the Democrats have been manipulating black people for a long time and they pay off the leaders. They pick certain ones in the black community. They pay them off and nothing good trickles down to the masses.
The Democratic Party has stood in the way of black progress. It’s standing in the way right now. And they are using black people to advance a radical agenda that I believe will be destructive to our nation and will hurt all of us and it’s hurting us right now.
Levin: And you know when I look at relatively recent history I look at 1964. The 1964 Civil Rights Act which was actually quite crucial. You look at the breakdown of the votes. In the House of Representatives, 61 percent of the Democrats voted for it and 80 percent of the Republicans voted for it. In the Senate, where it was filibustered, 69 percent Democrats wound up voting for it.
86 percent of Republicans wound up voting for it, and yet, the Democrat Party today claims to take the lead in dealing with what it calls systemic racism. Systemic racism in society. Systemic racism in police departments. That the Democrat Party is going to advance equality.
You have iconic figures in our culture. Oprah Winfrey. LeBron James. You have the commissioner of the NFL pretty much. These are all Democrats all promoting the Democrat Party. Let me circle back. Is this in many respects about power and not so much about civil rights?
Swain: It’s absolutely about power. And if you go to the Black Lives Matter website and you click on the link to donate that money is going to Democratic candidates. It’s not really advancing the cause of black people. And I think that it’s very problematic that the true statement and the slogan that Black Lives Matter in the same way that all lives matter, that because the slogan Black Lives Matter is a true statement people that want to help blacks and they’re white and being shamed.
They feel like the only way they can show support is to donate money or to acquiesce or get down on their knees before black people. And that’s not going to benefit the black community and this whole move to defund the police. I mean that’s ludicrous. That will hurt black people more than any other group.
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