The Chicago Way
I am in Chicago this evening to appear on the Milt Rosenberg Show, which has been broadcast most weekday evenings on WGN since 1973 and is ordinarily devoted to the discussion of a recently issued book. Tonight, however, Milt – who was for eons a psychology professor at the University of Chicago -- a colleague of mine from Hillsdale College, and I will be discussing liberal education as an ideal and the future of higher education in America. But, worthy and worrying though that subject may be, it is not what I want to comment on.
You see, on the trip in on the South Shore Commuter Line from the South Bend Airport, where I left my car, I sat with an Irish-American whose grandparents had lived in Chicago, and he told me a story that nicely illustrates what John Kass of The Chicago Tribune calls “the Chicago way.”
Here is the tale that my friend’s father told him. There was an investigation of voter fraud in Chicago, and the investigators wrote to my friend’s grandmother, asking to interview her. This made her nervous. She was a widow and lived alone, and so she turned to her son who was away in college and asked that he return to be with her when the investigators came to see her.
And so he did. The investigator had a question or two to ask. It was 1947, and he wanted to know whether her husband had died in 1928 as the records seemed to indicate – and she acknowledged that sadly this was so. Then, the investigator posed his second question. “Why, then,” he asked, “had her husband continued voting with such admirable regularity in the two decades since his decease?”
My friend's grandmother reportedly paused then -- and for a long time. Then, if the story is true, she looked the investigator in the eye and posed a question of her own, which brought the interview to an abrupt end. “What is this all about?” she asked. “Why would anyone suppose that just because a man has died he has given up his interest in politics?”
That, my friends, is the Chicago way.
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Nov '10
Re: The Chicago Way
Or, as Al Capone was fond of saying: "Vote early — and vote often." Historians believe that Capone borrowed the phrase from Chicago Mayor William Hale "Big Bill" Thompson, who was astoundingly corrupt — even by Chicago standards. Sadly, he was also a Republican.
Jan '11
Re: The Chicago Way
The Chicago Tribune once wrote: "Once an election has been stolen in Cook County, it stays stolen."
Oct '10
Re: The Chicago Way
It is also the South Texas way. Duval County (the county next door to Webb County, where I'm originally from) was and remains notorious for its voting irregularities and other forms of political corruption. Incidentally, William F. Buckley, Jr.'s grandfather, John Buckley, was sheriff of Duval County from 1888 to 1896. WFB once said that though his grandfather died in 1903, he was listed as a registered Democratic voter in 1948 when shady vote-counting in Duval County enabled Lyndon Baines Johnson to win a disputed special election to the U.S. Senate over incumbent Gov. Coke Stevenson.
May '10
Re: The Chicago Way
Yet another reminder that laws can't save us from human nature. Laws only work when enough people are able and willing to obey and enforce them.
Culture is the key. Individuals are the way.
Jan '11
Re: The Chicago Way
As we contemplate Professor Rahe's anecdote and those of others on this thread illuminating the longstanding ruthlessness of Chicago's Democrat political machine - which actually describes ALL Democrat Party politics without exception - conservatives should draw one lesson.
If you are going to have a fight with someone whom you know uses a gun...
Bring a Gun!
In practical, political terms that means doing things like purging voter rolls, suppressing turnout in areas where votes are being bought or are openly fraudulent, and using the investigative and judicial powers of the state - once conservatives have acquired them - to indict, jail and financially ruin the Democrat opposition.
Call it the DeLay Rule.
If this seems too harsh to anyone, they can go sit in the corner and play with their pretty No-Labels.
Edited on Jan 18, 2011 at 8:52am