Professor’s Classroom
Subject: Politics/Government
2010/12 Elections
My recent encounter with the Southern Republican Leadership Conference in new Orleans got me to thinking about American history and political parties and the way things change….the SRLC showed me that the GOP is not ready for prime time politics…..in fact I thought about a time in our history….the year was 1852…..
Actually, it started as an anti-immigration movement in the 1840’s and morphed into the American Republican Party in 1843…..then in 1855 renamed itself as the American Party…..the “know nothing” tag came from when a member was asked about the party’s activities they would reply “I know nothing”…….by 1856 the “Know Nothings” were in decline in the North, but still active and alive in the South…these partiers were locked on to the slavery issue and the growing concern of run away Unionism…..the platform of the Know Nothings sounds kind of familiar:
- Severe limits on immigration, especially from Catholic countries
- Restricting political office to native-born Americans
- Mandating a wait of 21 years before an immigrant could gain citizenship
- Restricting public school teachers to Protestants
- Mandating daily Bible readings in public schools
- Restricting the sale of liquor
Okay the history lesson is over (for now) and I move on to the meat of this post……
I am comparing the GOP to the old Know Nothing Party…..because, while they are Not the same there are some similarities, since the days when the neocons took over the party it seems to be moving in the direction of the KNP…….look at the GOP’s stance on immigration, look at the religious stuff, look at the attempts to restrict cigs…look at the birthers…..look at the education position of the party…..I guess some of these stances come with the title “Republican”…….
The GOP does have some fine thinkers, though I may not agree with them, they are good……the problem is that the leadership is weak and ineffective except in misinformation…..there is the possibility that the GOP could shot itself in the foot in the next election…..it is time for the “good old boys” to step aside and allow a younger more energetic Repub to take the reins……even the Tea Partiers, who are for the most part conservative, is trying to defeat Repubs in some states and if they are successful I look for them to go national……
The popular position today is opposition to Obama…I think it is a good position for the 2010 election, but it will NOT work in the national election of 2012….they need to find new voices to represent the party….voices of logic and reason….not the hyperbole and hatred they have now…..
Please, do not misunderstand, I am not condemning all repubs or conservs, just the antiquated thinking that still prevails within the ranks of the GOP……you can do better!
I think “Republican” is a complete misnomer. Like the UK’s British National Party (BNP), they are really nothing of the sort.
Like the BNP, the Republicans are pretty far to the right, anti-immigration and supposedly soically “nationalist” but there the similarity ends. Except as a backlash to the utterly ridiculous political correctness of our own literally “Know Nothing Party” (Labour) which has created racism where there was little or none before they meddled, the BNP has little support in the UK.
However, in the USA, it appears to me that the Republican Party should at present be renamed the GBP (the God Botherer Party) because they seem to cheerfully embrace all the old outdated superstition and uneducated ignorance of the religious fervour that has blighted so much of humanity for thousands of years.
It’s sad, but I fear that even less than you suppose has changed at the heart of such people’s thinking in the last 150+ years (or the last several thousand years for that matter) – in fact, they seem to me to be returning to the stupidity of their roots.
At least in the UK relatively few people seem to give a damn about the largely irrelevant and often corrupt churches any more – whether those people are “religious” at heart or not. Unfortunately, that does make the followers of Islam quite hard for us to understand since their relative piousness tends to be at odds with our way of thinking.
Still, in the main, if it were not for the very real threat from extremists that Labour’s silly ideas permit and even support financially on our streets, “live and let live” would I think prevail quite easily.
This is why I equate the GOP to the Know Nothings…….they are clinging to ideas that are out of date…….they have no leader…….and they have no ideas…..there are some good thinkers with good ideas in the GOP but the old guard marginalizes them to protect their grip on the Party……
Of course – this happens throughout life and it’s one of the human traits that needs to be worked around.
This is why, if you separated the politicians from the influence of the party, then you would have the situation where elected members influenced their party rather than the other way round… THEN things would begin to change – possibly for the better at times!
The GOP kinda reminds me of what Plato thought of democracy, “leadership by the stupid, who make unrealizable promises to the ignorant”……..
I think that’s a pretty good summary of ALL politics!!
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