THE ROBERT W. WHITAKER ARCHIVE

Now that syndicates are taking over local newspapers, almost all Southern newspapers are like The State here in Columbia, SC. It used to be a South Carolina newspaper with our own attitudes. Now it is a Northern newspaper.

Every person hired by The State is a minor leaguer in the faceless national news bureaucracy. Each of these stamped-out little bureaucrats dreams of an afterlife. He hopes that, if he is good, he will die and go to The Washington Post.

Like all good Yankees, including galvanized ones, each of these little bureaucrats accepts every Southern stereotype his betters in Washington and New York serve up. If you are in the South or from the South, any expression of doubt about these stereotypes means your media career ends instantly.

It labels you as a Southern provincial. Every media bureaucrat must assume that Southern opinions exist simply because of provincial nastiness. Once again, if you are in or from the South, you are supposed to be even more fanatically attached to these stereotypes. Otherwise you are a Southern Provincial, and you are OUT.

So, especially in the South, media bureaucrats never hesitate to use nastiness to crush Southern opinions. For example, at the very time when The State was waging war to get the Confederate flag taken down from the state capitol dome, pictures of major independence demonstrations in Eastern Europe appeared on front pages all over America.

Prominently featured in pictures of these demonstrations were huge Confederate flags. Almost every newspaper in America carried these stories, but not The State. To include these front-page stories would require The State to show these lead photographs. This would demonstrate that the Confederate flag is a universally recognized symbol of rebellion against tyranny.

To avoid that, The State simply spiked two major international stories! This was the kind of mind control the demonstration was against. But such small-minded media bureaucrats never hesitate to use this kind of pure viciousness against what they consider Southern Evil, which has no right to be heard in their world.

But The State made a major error in fighting the Confederate flag. They let the other side have SOME right to object. They were absolutely one-sided and bent over backwards to give anti-flag people all the advantages. But they did publish letters on the pro-flag side. So they lost.

On another issue, The State fought desperately against "right to carry" gun permits. This law, adopted by some 42 of 50 states, allows a person to have a gun permit if he qualifies for it by taking a course and passing a rigid, three-month background check. Before "right to carry" laws, a gun permit was entirely a matter of political pull. You gave money to your sheriff's election campaign or you had other connections, and you got a permit. No other qualifications were required.

As Southerners, we were very much in favor of the right to bear arms. New York and Washington are against it. So The State is against it. The State declared that if people without political connections were allowed to get permits, blood would flow in the streets.

"Dodge City"! was what every major member of the news bureaucracy screamed in The Washington Post and The New York Times. So the little media bureaucrats at The State screamed "Dodge City"! Of course, despite the fact that these permits have been issued by the tens of thousands all over America for years, nothing of the sort has happened.

But the media bureaucrats ignored that, as did their big brothers in the big cities. Once again, The State took a media bureaucrat position that made no sense. And once again, because they allowed some opposition to be heard, they lost. Once again, The State favored everyone who was against "right to carry."

Of course The State printed one editorial after another which was a straight copy of editorials in The Washington Post, The New York Times and anything else by the top media bureaucrats they worship. Of course Arail had cartoons picturing "right to carry" advocates as evil, fascistic, and, above all, Provincial.

But The State allowed some opposition to be expressed in its pages. And, once again, The State lost in its battle against Evil Southern Provincialism. The State lost these two battles because it allowed the other side to speak out.

By the time they got to a third issue, they were tired of getting beaten. So they went to straight censorship. And this time, they won. Every state that ratified the Bill of Rights had and enforced an antimiscegenation law. Every state but one which ratified the Fourteenth Amendment had and enforced an antimiscegenation law. The congress which proposed the Fourteenth Amendment had and enforced an antimiscegenation law in the District of Columbia.

So in the 1960s, the federal courts declared that the Bill of Rights and the Fourteenth Amendment outlawed antimiscegenation laws. The State wanted South Carolina voters to approve this court decision by taking the antimiscegenation law out of the state constitution in the November ballot. The State had editorials demanding this. It printed letters to the editor demanding that South Carolinians get rid of antimiscegenation provisions inside thick lines around them to draw special attention to them. This was what The State routinely does when it fights Evil Southern Provincialism.

But it took another step: The State banned all opposition from its pages. Not one word of opposition to ratifying the court's unconstitutional decision was allowed. Every letter I had written to The State previously had been published. I wrote two letters

on this subject. The State did not even bother to send my letters back or openly reject them.

I called the guy in charge of the The State editorial page letters. He was forced to answer, and pleaded complete ignorance of the whole process. I sent him another letter, as I had sent the two earlier ones, both by email and regular mail. He admitted he had gotten them, but he refused even to reject them. He sounded like the operatives for Communist governments I dealt with in Eastern Europe. The proposition won, 62% to 38%. No opposition had been allowed anywhere.

And no one but Robert Whitaker has said one single word about this. To this day, absolutely nobody anywhere but me has said a word about this complete and blatant censorship. And I am NOT going to let it go.

So, now that South Carolina has agreed to the 1968 court decision removing all antimiscegenation laws in the teeth of constitutional intent, there are three lessons I want everybody to recognize

First, South Carolinians have no right to question ANY Federal court decision. We have ratified the proposition that the court can decide anything it wants to without any reference to original intent.

The second lesson is that the media bureaucracy can win if it uses outright censorship.

The third lesson is that, if outright censorship is used on a really Politically Incorrect issue like this, absolutely no one but me will object to it. So censorship works in South Carolina. And South Carolinians don't even have the guts to object to it.