Posted on 07/23/2003 10:03:09 AM PDT by justshutupandtakeit
In Back to Basics for the Republican Party author Michael Zak (FR's distinguished patriot, Grand Old Partisian) undertakes the heroic and herculean task of clearing the name of the Republican Party from the thicket of lies, distortions and misrepresentations which has been cultivated by the Democrat/media alliance. Since any partisian argument in today's America must begin with the refutation of chronic and consistent lies told about the GOP, Zak's book provides the necessary ammunition to do just that.
This well-written, interesting and enjoyable tour of GOP history can be of use to any patriot who wants to know the truth about the histories of the two major parties. It traces the origins of the GOP to the proto-Republican, Alexander Hamilton, and the Federalists and that of the Democrat Party to its ancestors Jefferson, Clinton and Burr. A brief survery of Federalist and Whig antecedents and policies is sketched to give historic context to events. Since the GOP was created and grew in opposition to the policies and failures of the Democrat Party to extend the benefits of the Constitution to all Americans, that party's history is also examined.
And a sorry history it is. A story of treachery, short-sightedness, racism and economic ignorance unfolds as we see the Democrats consistently for 170+ years fight against allowing the Blacks a chance to achieve full freedom and economic success. Opposition to that fight has defined the best of the GOP's actions. Every advance in Civil Rights for Blacks has come from GOP initiatives and against Democrat opposition. Every setback for Blacks achieving constitutional protection has come from Democrat intitiatives and against GOP opposition. Racists have led the Democrats during most of their history, in sharp contrast to Republicans. All the evils visited against Black are of Democrat design. Democrats created and maintained the KKK, the Jim Crow laws, the Black Codes, it was Democrats lynching Blacks, beating Blacks, exploiting Blacks and perpetrating murderous riots which killed Blacks in
Zak rescues the reputation of the party from the slanders thrown against it during the Civil War and Reconstruction, many of which are popular around FR. He also clearly shows the mistaken disavowal of GOP principles which brought the modern party to its lowest state and allowed the demagogues of Democrats to paint the party as "racist." This was because of the disastrous turn to States' Rights which grew from the Goldwater campaign. It was the final straw in the process which transformed the share of the Black vote from 90-95% GOP to 90% democrat. A modern tragedy of immense proportions.
This is a book which should be studied carefully by Republicans in order to counter the barrage of Lies trumpeted daily by the RAT/media. While it is a work of a partisian, Back to Basics does not hesitate to point to GOP mistakes, failures and incompetence in carrying out its mission nor does it neglect to give Democrats credit when credit is due for actions which are productive of good for our nation as a whole. Unfortunately, those are far too few.
In order to effectively plan for the future we must be fully aware of the past, Zak helps us achieve that awareness.
Try the actual vote totals. Maybe you can count that high.
That you are sane?
Depends. Not all northerners by residence are yankees, though most yankees are northerners. Yankee is a characteristic defined by obnoxiousness, a tendency to shoot one's mouth off, and an habitual inclination towards interfering with the way other people from regions other than the north live their lives.
Wow. A book on the Republican Party, and Mr. Z neglects to include some of the more famous members of the party - I wonder why?
What is the book - 20 pages? No influence? How can you write about the "Republican" Party and omit Garrison, Phillips and the more famous abolutionists/fire-eaters? Their posistion IS the position you assert that was held by the Republicans, which is not the postion held by Lincoln.
Only for someone to stupid to understand the post. GoPartisan attempts to make hay of the [alleged] "fact" that maybe 300,000 Southerners supported the Union (3.3%), yet is oblivious to the fact that almost HALF of the Northerners (meaning millions) were not supporters of Lincoln/Republicans.
Since you apparently believe that blacks only fought for Rhode Island in the Revolutionary War, I believe it safe to assume you don't know lots of things. Black Americans, slave and free, fought in the Regiments and Militias of many of the colonies. And they refused British bribes of immediate emancipation to do so.
Inspector Steiner's report would have to be read in its entirety in order to know what he really said
Maybe he said what he said. How about Frederick Douglass? Here's what he had to say about black SOLDIERS in the Confederate Army:
"There are at the present moment many colored men in the Confederate army doing duty not only as cooks, servants and laborers, but as real soldiers, having muskets on their shoulders, and bullets in their pockets, ready to shoot down loyal troops, and do all that soldiers may to destroy the Federal Government and build up that of the traitors and rebels. There were such soldiers at Manassas, and they are probably there still...Rising above vulgar prejudice, the slaveholding rebel accepts the aid of the black man as readily as that of any other." - Frederick Douglass, 1861.
Even Horace Greeley, yet another REPUBLICAN, mentioned the fact that black soldiers were in the Southern Confederate Army, and not segregated into one-color units either:
"For more than two years, Negroes have been extensively employed in belligerent operations by the Confederacy. They have been embodied and drilled as rebel soldiers and had paraded with white troops at a time when this would not have been tolerated in the armies of the Union."
Maybe Frederick Douglass and Horace Greeley were really secret democrats...at any rate, your continued attempts to deny black Americans of their historical contributions do not help the Republican Party. In fact, they contribute greatly to further the current democrat stereotypes of it.
Yes, I typed it. I started at the little feather quill immediately preceding the quote that I had previously posted which you asserted was out of context.
I went to the beginning to the passage to ensure that I had complete context.
You claim that President Lincoln 'barely' won reelection, even though he had 55% of the popular vote, and then claim that as evidence that almost half the people didn't support the war. Franklin Roosevelt won reelection in 1944 with only 53.4% of the popular vote. Does that mean that almost half the people didn't support that war either?
Have you ever bothered to read the ratification declarations from the Constitutional Convention? Those of some States contained conditions that say really neato-peachy-keen things like "the powers granted under the Constitution being derived from the People of the United States may be resumed by them whensoever the same shall be perverted to their injury or oppression" and "That the powers of government may be reassumed by the people, whensoever it shall become necessary to their happiness."
A State's right to reassume the powers it ceded to the Union were very clearly stated when the union was created. Also, you may be interested in what James Madison, the "Father of the Constitution", thought about it: "Each State, in ratifying the Constitution, is considered as a sovereign body, independent of all others, and only to be bound by its voluntary act" (James Madison, Federalist Papers, Number XXXIX).
We Republicans place ourselves at another disadvantage in the battle of ideas by ripping from socialists a label which describes them so well. Opponents of progress are those who want to conserve the age-old rule of the few over the many and the cultural stagnation this entails. Socialists are the true conservatives.[1] Republicans try without success to affix this conservative label properly to our Party, using as adhesive such adjectives as "dynamic" or "compassionate" or "progressive." Trouble is, though our Republican Party definitely is dynamic and compassionate and progressive,[2] conservative it is not[3].
[justshutupandtakeit 281]
To: nolu chan
That statement is true. It is the liberal program which has become conservative,[4] republicans are trying to change that. Forces which fight against change are the conservative ones in standard verbiage.
What we consider conservative are the ideals of classical liberalism.[5]
Conventional political terminology has become confused and less useful. Whig and Tory is about as appropriate.
Maybe we should start thinking about coming up with new terms that are more accurate.
281 posted on 07/25/2003 3:12 PM CDT by justshutupandtakeit (RATS will use any means to denigrate George Bush's Victory.)
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Exam Time:
[1] Conservatives are really Socialists
[2] Republicans are really Progressives
[3] Republicans are not really Conservatives
[4] Liberals are really Conservatives
[5] Conservatives are Classical Liberals
FINAL EXAM
FREEREPUBLIC.COM ~ The Premier Conservative News Forum
Wait, gimme a mulligan on that last one.
FREEREPUBLIC.COM ~ The Premier Conservative Liberal News Forum
STATE | E.V. | LINCOLN | McCLELLAN |
---|---|---|---|
CA | 5 | 62,053 | 43,837 |
CT | 6 | 44,673 | 42,285 |
DE | 3 | 8,155 | 8,767 |
IL | 16 | 189,512 | 158,724 |
IN | 13 | 149,887 | 130,230 |
IA | 8 | 83,858 | 49,089 |
KS | 3 | 17,089 | 3,836 |
KY | 11 | 27,787 | 64,301 |
ME | 7 | 67,805 | 46,992 |
MD | 7 | 40,153 | 32,739 |
MA | 12 | 126,742 | 48,745 |
MI | 8 | 91,133 | 74,146 |
MN | 4 | 25,031 | 17,376 |
MO | 11 | 72,750 | 31,596 |
NV | 2 | 9,826 | 6,594 |
NH | 5 | 36,596 | 33,034 |
NJ | 7 | 60,724 | 68,020 |
NY | 33 | 368,735 | 361,986 |
OH | 21 | 265,674 | 205,609 |
OR | 3 | 9,888 | 8,457 |
PA | 26 | 296,292 | 277,443 |
RI | 4 | 14,349 | 8,718 |
VT | 5 | 42,419 | 13,321 |
WV | 5 | 23,799 | 11,078 |
WI | 8 | 83,458 | 65,884 |
TOTAL | 212 | 2,218,388 | 1,812,807 |
Unfortunately they are. They migrate down from the north and take up residence there.
I guess that's what you get when you combine a neo-reconstructionist agenda, a disregard for factual accuracy, and a zeal for money into a heavily politicized history book.
Make no mistake - the history of the Republican Party is an interesting and lively topic as well as a story that needs to be told. There are many, many Republicans in history who deserve no less, and a few disreputable types who at least merit a discussion. But when somebody reaches into the barrel of Republican apples, bypasses all the shiny ones, and pulls out the half-rotten one with a bite out of the side and worms in it to venerate, the question of purpose, if not competance, comes into play. As best I can tell that is what Partisan did in his probably well-intentioned but terribly misguided book.
Think about it - He could have written a book telling the story of GOP legends like Barry Goldwater, Calvin Coolidge, Strom Thurmond, Thomas Reed, Everett Dirksen or any number of other interesting and deserving Republican leaders from our party's past. Nor did he need to isolate only the politically appealing ones. He could have talked of Thomas Nast, Marc Hanna, Milward Simpson, William McKinley and Joe Cannon. The possibilities are many. But what does he do? He pulls out two bona fide American scoundrels, Sumner and Stevens, then slaps them on the cover. He reaches in for vile atheists like Robert Ingersoll and the habitually corrupt charlatans, knaves, and con men who inhabited the Grant White House. Then he writes an entire book devoted to venerating these same pieces of human refuse as the core and central tenet of his "vision" for the Republican Party! Talk about a wasted effort...
Correct me if I am wrong, but I don't believe that Tom Dewey ever advocated a ceasefire with Hitler as part of his campaign. Thus your analogy is flawed.
That's a very good question to ask considering that the Republican Party in its earliest days expended considerable energies attempting to obtain the support of the abolition movement's leaders. Interestingly enough, some of those same abolitionists had plenty of questions of their own about the motives of their solicitors:
Hon. William H. Seward
Boston Jany. 22 1860
Sir,
Your note of the 11th was not recd. until the 21st. It was read with some surprise, and with more regret, to say nothing of other sentiments.
The note is marked private. I decline the confidence. Both your notes came into my hands fairly without my having authorized any implication of privacy. And although I may not think it proper or any longer feel disposed, to use the one to Mr. South in the particular manner I had desired to do, I shall nevertheless, since you are a public man, feel at perfect liberty to use both of them in any other manner, however public, as evidence of your unfaithfulness to freedom, and your own convictions of the true character of the constitution, which you have sworn to support.
And if in so doing, I shall chance to embarrass the plans of the Chases, and Summers, and Wilsons, and Hales, and the other jesuitical leaders of the Republican party, who profess that they can aid liberty, without injuring slavery; who imagine that they can even be champions of freedom at the north, and at the same time avowedly protect slavery in the south, where it is; and that they can thus ride into power on the two horses of Liberty and Slavery if I should happen to embarrass these plans, I shall not feel that that consequence is one which I need to care to avoid. I had had some hope that you would put you foot on these double-faced demagogues, and either extinguish them, or compel them to conduct, for the time being, as if they were honest men. But it seems that you have decided rather to throw yourself into their arms, commit your fortunes to the keeping and do nothing on behalf of liberty, that may embarrass their operations.
In contrast to your conduct, I take the liberty of exhibiting to you that of Senator Brown of Mississippi. In the Senate Decr. 2 1856 (As reported in the Congressional Globe) after describing the book as an argument in favor of the constitutional power of Congress, not only to interfere with, but to abolish slavery in the southern States of the Union, he said The Senator [Wilson] did not say what I am willing to say myself that the book is ingeniously written. No mere simpleton could ever have drawn such an argument. If his premises were admitted, I should say at once that it would take a Herculean task to overthrow his argument.
Although Mr. Brown thus left it to be inferred that he thought there might be some error in the premises, he made no attempt to point to any.
Thus an open advocate of slaver from Mississippi, virtually makes more concessions to the anti-slavery character of the constitution, than a professed advocate of liberty, from New York, notwithstanding his private convictions of the truth, thinks it for his interest, under existing circumstances, to claim for it.
I shall very likely make the whole of this correspondence public; and if it shall serve any purpose towards defeating yourself and the Republicans, I shall be gratified; for I would much rather the government be in the hands of declared enemies of liberty, than in those of treacherous friends.
Lysander Spooner
No it's not. McClellan made it clear that his acceptance of the Democratic nomination also included his total rejection of the Valandigham peace plank. The most fundimental difference between the two candidates was the fact that President Lincoln had two conditions for peace: reunification of North and south, and abolition of slavery. McClellan had only one: reunification of the North and south. So regardless of who had won in 1864 then war would have continued.
Okay, we keep seeing this, but now here I am, again, asking: How was slavery a big government program?
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