ABSTRACT
In a shameful display of political cowardice, President George Bush's initial instinct was to attribute blame for the Los Angeles revolt on the liberal "Great Society" programs of Lyndon Johnson, a quarter century ago. Violence and arson unexpectedly struck against white-owned property across Los Angeles County. The Ronald Reagan/George Bush administration was openly contemptuous of African-American rights; it nominated virtually no people of color to the federal courts, and it openly supported the apartheid regime in South Africa through Reagan's policy of "constructive engagement". Bush's campaign cited the infamous example of black convict Willie Horton as an example of the Democrats' "softness on crime". Democracy must believe in freedom, but that freedom in author's terminology is something different from what "freedom" has come to mean in this country in the age of Ronald Reagan and George Bush, Clarence Thomas and David Duke.
