It would have been much easier to have believed that all of the denunciations of Trent Lott were being spewed from the old Soviet Union’s entrenched communists than to have to come to grips with the fact that this is the dangerous climate now existing in the United States.

Not only do we have Democrats, hoping they can flush Republican integrity down the drain - which paltry amount would not put a strain on the sewer pipes - but we also have Republicans in toto trouncing Senator Lott as roundly as the Democrats. (No wonder Samuel Francis calls them the Stupid Party.) Add to that the subversive media, which is virtually a carbon copy of Pravda, the official newspaper of the old Soviet Union, and you realize that we here have become what the Soviets once were.

What Trent Lott said was true. If the country had elected Strom Thurmond in 1948, we "wouldn’t have had all these problems over all these years." Instead, this country’s voters gave us Harry Truman, who had already negotiated away the rights of Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, and Rumania, handing them over to the Soviet Union after World II. In further concession to the Soviets, Truman helped cut up Europe to the great distress of all concerned in that part of the world. Had voters elected Thurmond, there would never have been a North Korea with which we have to deal very seriously now that they have nuclear weapons.

But it is none of these arguments which captured the attention of the "thought police." It was the new American taboo of saying anything blacks do not wish to hear. Lott may never have meant, as happily charged in the press, that we would have been better off with a segregationist President, but I wish he had. It is true, and it is time someone says so.

Flippant feminist columnist Kathleen Parker went into hysterics, asking just what kind of "problems" Lott meant. Using silly references to Hitler, she wrote, "Wonder which problems Herr Lott had in mind? That darned black vote? Those integrated public schools? Hip-hop? White flight? Black crime? The blind date that darkens the door of the white family room?" Not bright enough to realize it, she was giving all the correct answers. To think that white parents are not concerned about the racial makeup of their families and passing down inherited traits from generations back is to exhibit a profound ignorance of the importance of race in this country and in the world.

Blacks, who are very clever, have discovered a formula which has neutralized every public official in this country. It involves intimidation, threats, retribution, incessant demands, extorting money from corporations, attempting to bankrupt companies in court, and in general making themselves as obnoxious as possible so that no one will say or do anything which might displease a black man or woman.

Politicians, who make the laws, have submitted to the black agenda, and we see an increasingly socialistic government as a result. In other words, give up your liberties quietly or be prepared to suffer ignominy. There is no fight left in the white public sector. That is why we saw immediate disavowals and apologies from Trent Lott.

Would that Trent Lott cared more for his integrity than his position as Senate leader. If he really believed in the things embodied in the compliment given to a 100-year-old man on his birthday, then Lott would be worth a whole lot more to Mississippi and the rest of us as a simple Senator who just might be representing a majority of white people who have no one to speak for them.

Even those who call themselves "conservative" were among the Lott detractors, and Armstrong Williams, considered among some as a "leading black conservative," tore into Lott in savage rhetoric. Which brings me to an observation: Some blacks find advantage in masquerading as conservatives, but when it comes to race, they are not conservative with YOUR views. You better bury your own deeply held beliefs and subscribe to their odd racial opinions or have your whole existence become a nightmare. In other words, white men should "shut up." And that is basically what we have learned from the Trent Lott Affair.

(Michael Andrew Grissom is the author of Southern by the Grace of God, The Last Rebel Yell, and Can the South Survive?)

Visit Mr. Grissom’s Web Site at www.michaelandrewgrissom.com