So far I've been informed that Calvin Coolidge was a klansman . . .
Allegedly, at least two presidents were Klan members at one time: Warren G. Harding and Harry S. Truman:
* Harding actually never was a Klansman, but there's evidence that people tied to the Klan spread speculation that he
was a member because he spoke frequently
against the Klan.
* Similar speculation may have gone forth about Coolidge, especially considering the Klan was a hot issue in the 1924
presidential campaigns, after his Democratic opponent, John W. Davis (a segregationist), asked Coolidge to speak at
some event at a time when Coolidge's son was dying, which of course devastated the president. Not long after he
buried his son, Coolidge gave a speech before a Catholic Holy Name Society parade in which he pled for
racial and religious tolerance---at a time when he rejected an invitation from the Klan to appear at a parade of their
own.
* Truman
did pay a Klan membership fee in 1924, when he was running for a judgeship, but he did it for political
expediency; the Klan was powerful in his home state and two opponents had Klan support. Truman went far enough
to be inducted, but never took any known active role in the organisation or among the membership and, in fact,
demanded the return of his membership fee after a Klan demand that he agree not to hire Jews or Catholics if
he was re-elected. (The demand hit Truman where he lived personally: he'd commanded a World War I squad most of
whom were Catholic men.)
. . . Reagan hated veterans . . .
He hated veterans so much that he signed the legislation changing the original Veterans Administration into the
Cabinet-level Department of Veterans Affairs before he left office, though it took effect after the inauguration of
George H.W. Bush.
. . . and Thomas Jefferson wanted to use the law to silence the press.
Jefferson became
disenchanted with the press during his presidency---he was buffeted by a number of newspapers
over such matters as Thomas Paine's return to America after the French Revolution imploded, the Sally Hemings affair
(hammered at particularly by a disgruntled former ally who'd been a) the last newspaper editor released when the original
Sedition Act expired and Jefferson pardoned those convicted under it, and b) spurned for a job in the Jefferson Administration,
though it seems from most readings that that wasn't half as hammered away at as the Paine return), among other matters---
but there's little to no indication that Jefferson, however disillusioned, sought to use the law to silence the press. Indeed,
for all the battering he sometimes took in the press, he could still write:
I deplore . . . the putrid state into which the newspapers have passed, and the
malignity, the vulgarity and mendacious spirit of those who write them . . . These ordures
are rapidly depraving the public taste. It is however an evil for which there is no remedy;
our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being
lost.
p.s. Something both sides seem at times to forget:
Sorry, Journalists: Trump Isn’t The First President To Threaten The Press
