There is a new study out by a pair of political scientists saying that the current Republican caucuses in Congress are the most conservative in a hundred years. I think they are underestimating.
The 1911-12 congressional Republicans, after all, at least had some Teddy Roosevelt Republicans still in the Congress, so while a distinct minority, the party had some reformers and moderates in their caucuses. No, I think you would have to go back into the 1800s, into the Republican Congress swept into power with William McKinley's 1896 election, to find a party as thoroughly reactionary as this one. This is somehow appropriate, because these Republicans clearly do want to repeal the 20th century. Starting with the early Progressive movement reforms Teddy Roosevelt got accomplished, the tea party GOP is trying to roll back all the progress our country has seen over the last century plus.
Let's go back to those late 1890s Republicans -- who they were, what they believed, how they operated. This was the heart of the era dominated by Social Darwinists and Robber Baron industrialists, and the McKinley presidency was the peak of those forces' power. The Robber Barons were hiring the Pinkertons to (literally) murder union leaders, and were (literally) buying off elected officials to get whatever they wanted out of the government: money for bribery was openly allocated in yearly corporate budgets. These huge corporate trusts were working hand in hand with their worshipful friends in the Social Darwinist world, the 1800s version of Ayn Rand, who taught that if you were rich, it was because that was the way nature meant things to be -- and if you were poor, you deserved to be. Any exploitation, any greed, any concentration of wealth was justified by a survival of the strongest ethic. It was an era where Lincoln's and the Radical Republicans of the 1860s' progressive idea of giving land away free to poor people who wanted to work hard to be independent farmers through the Homestead Act was being overturned by big bank and railroad trusts ruthlessly driving millions of family farmers out of business. The Sherman Anti-Trust Act was being completely ignored by McKinley. And of course, none of the advances of the 20th century were yet in place: child labor laws, consumer safety, the national parks or later environmental laws, consumer safety, popular election of Senators, women's suffrage, a progressive tax system, decent labor laws, a minimum wage, Social Security, Glass-Steagall, the GI Bill, civil rights laws, Medicare, Medicaid, Legal Services, Head Start. None of it existed.
Flash forward to today. With the exception of women's suffrage (and given the gender gap, I have no doubt that secretly Republicans would be happy to get rid of that), various high-level Republicans from this session of Congress have argued for the repeal or severe curtailment of all of those advances. This is not just Conservative with a capital C, but Reactionary with a capital R.
This is why the worship by so many pundits and establishment figures of bipartisanship and meeting in the middle as the all-around best value in American politics is so fundamentally wrong as a political strategy for Democrats. With the Republicans in Congress actually wanting to repeal the gains of the 20th century, for Democrats to meet them halfway becomes a nightmare strategy. Repealing half of the 20th century is just not a reasonable compromise, even though that would be meeting the Republicans halfway. What we need to do instead is to propose our own bold strategy for how to move forward and solve the really big problems we have. Our country needs to have this debate, and I am confident once people understand the two alternatives, they will choose our path forward rather than the Republicans' path backward.
Ultimately, this is a debate about values. Conservatives believe in that old Social Darwinist philosophy: whoever has money and power got that way because nature intended it, and they ought to get to keep everything they have and to hell with anyone not strong to make it on their own. Selfishness is a virtue, as Ayn Rand said; greed is good, as Gordon Gekko proclaimed in the movie Wall Street; in nature, the lions eat the weak, as Glenn Beck happily proclaimed to a cheering audience. That is the underlying ethic of the Ryan-Romney Budget. What progressives argue is the opposite: that we really are our brothers' and sisters' keepers; that we should treat others as we would want to be treated, and give a helping hand to those who need it; that investing in our citizens and promoting a broadly prosperous middle class that is growing because young people and poor people are given the tools to climb the ladder into it is the key to making a better society and growing economy.
The debate is well worth having. The good news is that the Republicans are hardly shying away from it: by embracing this radically retrograde Ryan-Romney Budget, they are wearing their hearts on their sleeves and openly yearning to return to 1896. The Democrats should welcome this debate with open arms.
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Slavery was still being practiced in Alabama into the 1920s. Congress did nothing about this.
Lynching was still being practiced as a method of terrorizing a large group of citizens into the 1960s.
The Willson administration severely damaged race relations with its segregation practices.
But these are social issues rather than economic ones, although they were to some extent prompted by economic issues, and they certainly had economic ramifications.
while there are many exceptions, the overall decay and rot is pervasive and omnipresent.
there are major corruptions(a) religion is at the center of the rot.clergy of all types and faiths are corrupt and barbaric.rituals worshipping god are without moral foundation and blind,mindless faith rules. greed rules, especially for power over the State and the minds of its followers.
Dogma is rigid and unchanging. organized religion is,to be blunt, just another American business,just as filthy,rotten,power driven,amoral as any mutinational company using child slave labor to make its products in overpopulated places.
(b) power comes from the barrel of a gun- Mao might have said it but America has been doing it from the start. The gun came with the explorers and
as primitive as native americans were, europeans were much worse. and why not? they were doing the same thing for centuries in their own sick societies. Barbarity of every kind was commonplace.Dissent was met with punishment and death.
so america picked up the banner of barbarism and still flies it.Witness the mass murderers,gun loving violence of today.
(c) the business and political world have merged into one big machine.It gorges itself with uncontrolled hedonism,,a list of behavior rivalling any Sodom in history.America practices it and worships it and watches it,as entertainment.
america asks for god to bless it,as an admission of its sin.
Interestingly there's also the creation of a bunch of philanthropists prepared to share their good and prodigious fortunes but as we know, there's a preponderance of less generous fat cats, alas.
If you read Bill Bishop's "The Big Sort" you will understand what is happening to our country. For the last 30 years people have been moving around and sorting themselves into ideologically similar communities. These polarized constituencies are electing legislators who increasingly toe the party line both left and right.
Most importantly as districts become more and more safe legislators have no need to compromise. As a matter of fact compromise will most likely get them unelected.
There have been many articles about the disadvantages of huge countries and the built in problems with trying to get anything approaching consensus. There is a possibility that the US has simply become too big and too diverse to govern under our present system.
Dividing the country into ideologically similar regions for the purpose of running everything but defense, international relations and certain treasury functions is becoming very attractive to both conservatives and liberals. Sometimes it is just not worth arguing with those whose entire mission is to throw a monkey wrench into the gears of civil government.
Comparable to what we see today in the "South". Relatively low wages, not much in benefits. No labor unions, much like you see now south of the Mason-Dixon line. Comparable in part with Europe, where the northern tier of countries enjoys higher living standards than the lower tier does. This is likely how the present US, broken up into separate independent nations would look like. There would also "illegals" sneaking in from the "red" nations to the richer "blue" nations. Interesting concept, although likely not anything we'll ever see actually happen short of some revolution.
"The Democrats should welcome this debate with open arms..." and unwavering souls, would I warn. No more niceties, not with these gopers.! This time, the fight is not to win some advantages. This time, the fight is for mere survival.
Let's hope our laws hold up against the regressive TeaPublicans, and that union members will not be murdered (literally) by corporate thugs. But I'm afraid that our easily-manipulated electorate will fall for the phoney advertising by the Corporate SuperPacs, which are out to murder (literally) the American Dream.
Yes, with other people's money, of course. Liberals give substantially less to charities or churches than conservatives (a documented fact). But when it comes to using the power of the state to back up their largesse with your money, they are as generous as people can be.