The speech North Carolina Republicans don't want us to hear

Sen. Michael Garrett laid out how the recent gerrymandering is tied to rising authoritarianism.

Last week, Republicans in the North Carolina legislature stole another Congressional district to give the GOP an additional seat the U.S. House of Representatives. Protected themselves by gerrymandered legislative districts, they had no fear of accountability for a virtually unprecedented mid-decade redistricting. The only thing they have to fear is the judgment of history and they are trying to avoid that, too.

As Republicans moved to redistrict the competitive First Congressional District held by Democrat Don Davis, state Senator Michael Garrett rose to give a floor speech condemning the action. Garrett told the truth on the Republicans.

In 18-minutes, Garrett laid out the stakes of extreme gerrymandering, saying “Democracy dies when we politicians rig the game when we draws lines to choose our voters instead of letting voters choose us…That’s not democracy, folks. That’s tyranny with a prettier name.” He laid the blame on Republican leaders more beholden to Donald Trump than the people they’re supposed to serve. It’s a powerful and eloquent speech.

Apparently, Republicans didn’t want to hear it. They don’t want their children and grandchildren to hear it, either. When state Senator Lisa Grafstein asked for the remarks be entered into the record, GOP Senator Buck Newton opposed the measure. A floor vote fell along party lines, killing the measure and keeping Garrett’s words out of the permanent record.

In other words, the Republicans in the senate not only oppose democracy, they oppose free speech, too. They want to control the way history is written. Suppressing Senator Garrett’s words is an attempted historical cover-up. Republicans know what they are doing is wrong and they don’t want people to remember that they were publicly called out for it before the vote.

Controlling the historical narrative is important for the would-be authoritarians who now dominate the Republican Party. They know the power of the lie to justify unjustifiable actions.

In the decades following the Civil War, Southern historians rewrote the history of the South to justify Jim Crow. They told a story that downplayed the evils of slavery and created the Myth of the Lost Cause, where honor and chivalry, not slavery and poverty, dominated the culture of the antebellum South. Carpetbaggers and free African Americans became villains while former Confederates became protecters of virtue and culture.

Today, those same forces want to build a narrative of grievance to justify rigging Congressional districts, changing the rules of elections, and creating the Myth of Voter Fraud, instead of a Lost Cause. As Senator Garrett said, democracy is undergoing a stress test and Republicans are doing all they can to break it. The authoritarians want a return to the one-party South, this time under a Republican label but with the same populist values that reject diversity, pluralism, and civil rights.

Stand up for free speech. Take a moment to watch Senator Garrett’s speech. Share it widely and let people know what the GOP in North Carolina doesn’t want us to hear.