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.
You cannot escape the accuracy of Hamilton's own words. Those words call for widespread economic intervention including protectionist tariffs, so-called internal improvements expenditures, and an interventionist federal monetary policy. Live with it.
Hamilton understood the roll of an appropriate taxation policy, unlike his critics, nor was his tariff "protectionist".
The most famous tariff ever proposed by Hamilton was in his defining economic doctrine, the report on manufactures. That tariff was by definition protectionist. Live with it.
Protectionism did not come until after he was in the ground.
False. Hamilton himself argued for protectionism at length in his report on manufactures, and the first congress enacted a protectionist provision for a list of select new england manufactured goods in the first tariff act they adopted. That provision extended a 15% protective rate to the selected goods - three times the general import rate of 5%.
Capitalism is impossible without a strong legal system
Perhaps, though that of course depends entirely upon what is meant by a strong legal system and the basis in which that legal system is grounded.
Capitalism is also impossible without a money supply or capital which were created by the debt program.
False. Capitalism functions quite well with intrinsically valued monies such as gold serving as the exchange medium. The issuance of debt to create short term gains upon the backs of untold others at a future time can be used to augment wealth in a given situation, but it too comes with a cost in both opportunity and substance.
There is no capitalist state without a nationalized money supply or control of the money supply by the government
Defining the concept of capitalism in its universality by the tangible mediocrity of what the world currently has to offer in frequency is an inherently fallacious appeal in ad populum. The widespread use or popularity of a wrong no more makes it right than gratuitously claiming the same.
nor will there ever be again.
Then allow me to ask you to prove it. Also allow me to advise you against the difficulty of this seeing as the indefinite and everlasting future is inherently uncertain to a demonstrable degree. For that reason one should avoid making comments that attempt to insert certainty into what may not be demonstrated as such, meaning you need to employ more care in determining the words you use.
You obviously have no idea what mercantilism was though I have posted definitions from dictionaries for you in the past.
Seeing as your anonymously cited dictionary definitions were either overly simplistic, wrong, or both, and seeing as you have demonstrated no absence of knowledge as to the nature of mercantilism beyond your own, such a comment is without merit or substantiation.
As is typical you just ignore whatever doesn't fit your distorted view of the world, change meanings of words when inconvenient and make up words when ordinary ones don't fit.
That a person such as yourself - the same individual who has disputed at length the meaning of simple terms such as monarch, state, and union when explicitly used in a plain and easily understood context - would even begin to implicate others in the act of changing word meanings is, by its very nature, an act of hypocrisy so great as to parallel Jesse Jackson's counseling of Bill Clinton on the sinfulness of adultery in absurdity. That aside, you have utterly failed to substantiate your allegations beyond the gratuitious flatus voci that they are, thus they may not be considered meritous of any further attention.
Curious. Not even FDR, who singlehandedly authorized the Japanese internment policy and appointed a known klansman to the supreme court? Not even LBJ, who regularly used the n-word as a part of his habitually crude conversational language?
You are misinformed, not they. Some were taken at Gettysburg.
After WW II the Allies were assisting nations whose infrastructure had been devastated. The last rebel state left by the Union was Texas. Texas suffered no appreciable infrastructure devastation. They must have been there for some other reason.
They flocked to the enlistment center and said, "I want to join up and fight to save the free market society!"
Or did millions fight, and hundreds of thousands die, to abolish the idea that the Constitution was a compact? The lads are charging, bayonets fixed, yelling "Down with the compact! Down with the compact!"
The Louisiana Purchase, Thomas Fleming, 2003, p. 170
On the night before the duel, Hamilton wrote a letter to a leading New England Federalist, stating his final opinion of the plan to secede. "Dismemberment of our empire," he wrote, "will be a clear sacrifice of great positive advantages without any counterbalancing good." Why? Secession would not cure "our real disease; which is DEMOCRACY."
This is from a new book and the quote is not footnoted.
The book jacket claims:
Thomas Fleming is the author of more than forty works of history and historical fiction ... He contributes regularly to American Heritage and many other magazines and is a frequent guest and contributor on NPR, PBS, A&E, and History Channel programs. A Fellow of the society of American Historians, he has served as chairman of the American Revolution Round Table and as president of the PEN American Center.
This is really the nugget that's at the core of our arguments:
[1] Man is fundamentally flawed and should not be given control.
[2] Man is fundamentally flawed and should not be given freedom.
I could write a book the size of Paritsan's explaining why I think the way I do; it would not change your mind. The fact is that the nature of man is opposed to both self-rule and rule of others. There's little we can do about it.
We've chosen our paths, unfortunately, yours seems to include trashing TJ, JM, REL, BG, apparently RR, and others whom I consider great Americans, or have at least contributed something positive to America's history. Hamilton did as well, which is why you won't see me laying into him and throwing epithets such as "Limousine Liberal of his day" at him. That I cannot tolerate one does not imply that I must engage in the other.
That you feel the need to take it to such extremes leads me to believe that perhaps you just haven't looked objectively at the argument before us. When I see things like:
[Takeit] You can read Hamilton's plan for America, it begins, "We the people..."
I can't help but jump in - if nothing else than to protect those who might believe such statements having no historical data to rely on. Hamilton's plan was rejected - it was Madison's Virginia Plan that was chosen as the basis for our constitution. We can quibble all you'd like about whether or not he called for a monarch; Madison's notes indicate that H used the word in order to diffuse worry about a lifelong executive, but apparently those at the convention heard it and thought, "He's telling me it's not, but darn... sure looks like one to me."
Never said "monarchs aren't monarchs" or " protectionism isn't protectionism."
I'll leave that one alone - beating a dead horse is not my thing this early in the AM.
Oddly, the free market hinges less on commodity labor than it does on government intervention - something popular among the early Republicans who brought the war.
The lads are charging, bayonets fixed, yelling "Down with the compact! Down with the compact!"
Interesting the way he phrases it in the initial quote: A perpetual Union formed by 'We the people.' Of course, I am of the opinion that with the millions of Northerners who sympathized with the South, combined with the Southerners, who obviously favored secession in a large majority, The People were largely against the war.
A majority of half the country did not compose a majority of those who had created and signed on to said constitution.
If true, this quote will radically change my views on Hamilton. I've always thought AH was a better man than his defenders, who seem to do their work only at the expense of H's opponents.
Come on, stainless. Your links don't show anything other than the Steiner report for support, sorry that I have a problem accepting a novel for supporting information.
For the record, again, I agree that thousands of blacks were brought along with the confederate army for use as servants, teamsters, cooks, laborers, and the like. I agree that they served from the very first days of the war. I'll even agree that many, perhaps most, came from their own free will. But that is a far cry from the hundreds of thousands of black combat soldiers claimed by people like stand waite. There is no hard evidence of widespread use of blacks in combat by the confederates. I don't doubt that there may have been exceptions but those exceptions were rare and was not sanctioned by Davis and the army high command. I post this, not in an attempt to demean the service of those blacks who served, but to try ind bring some sanity to the discussion.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, you're a legend. Now about that black Shenandoah sailor you claim was a Union POW? How about support for that? Any 'factual evidence' for that? Off the top of your head, of course.
Apparently that agenda doesn't include Black Liberation theory, since McPherson recently took revisonist historian, and black liberation theorist Lerone Bennett to task over the numerous inaccuracies written about Lincoln in Bennett's book 'Forced to Glory'. Said book has been used recently by your side to support several misguided arguments.
Or is a historian pushing a leftist agenda only when that agenda is one you diagree with?
Why don't you consult with your friend H. Dumpty and get back to me?
I have no problem with that statement because secession would not cure us from democracy but I would go back to the first
"Dismemberment of our empire," he wrote, "will be a clear sacrifice of great positive advantages without any counterbalancing good."
Even here, he refers to this nation as an empire and considering his stance on a monarchy, my statement still stands. He was no friend of a Republic. He may have felt a Republic could have possibly brought this nation closer to the monarchy he so desired. However, as evidenced again by the actions of his political grandson and the passage of the 17th, it's quite evident, to me it seems, that a Democracy twisted the right way can bring about a monarchy all by itself
Does this deserve a citation or reference from somewhere? Your Yale hyperlink speaks pretty closely to how constitutionally it all worked out, with a few adjustmemts, of course. Speaking of the Constitutional monarchy, Hamilton was correct that that was at the time the best model for government, but as he made clear, he did not intend for a monarchy per se here in the US. Could you have named a better one? I suspect not, since no other such comparable model existed. Hamilton stated the obvious.
Madison noted this effort by Hamilton to clarify his remarks, and you reproduced Madison's account of this clarification. You still have not convinced me that Hamilton had a character flaw akin to Clinton, but when you say the following,
Hamilton wanted a king and his political grandson, the 16th President, practically gave it to him
I know more about exactly what type of malcontent you actually must be. Dumping on Hamilton AND Lincoln? Surely, you have now strained your credibility here.
The South didn't win the war, nor should they have. Get over it.
Very many were, that is true. However, very many fought as soldiers. They fought like hell and killed many a Union invader. Northern Republicans and Union army veterans testify to that truth.
...And that that the idea of facing armed black men in combat, as equals, was totally foreign to the average confederate soldier and that was what they found horrifying?
Nah. My previous explanation is the correct one. That feeling of betrayal and the outrage born of it was expressed in many diaries and letters of the time.
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