Is the GOP just a big joke?

[Enraged Slith]

I have never seen or heard of a group of people so determined to destroy a civilization in my life. How anyone still supports them is beyond me. Let's look at a laundry list of some of the things they've done so far to save America from Obama:

 

- Continued to fart all over those fat cat state workers who, by far, are the most significant portion of America's deficit (who cares if it's a breach of contract if no one is going to defend them, anyway?)

 

- Attacked unions for being possibly the only organizations with enough muscle to stand up to their bullhockey.

 

- Cut spending for unimportant public institutions like education.

 

- Opted for segregated schools because poor people don't deserve opportunities and shouldn't be allowed to corrupt their more fortunate cousins (this one's for NC, woop woop!)

 

- Continued to cut taxes for businesses and the wealthy (has this created any jobs ever? More importantly, has this ever created jobs for Americans?)

 

- Poo-pooed federal grants because the government can't tell me what to do. (more NC love here)

 

- Spent valuable time attacking the health care bill (if you can't afford health insurance, you don't deserve to live) and public radio (liberal bias because they examine issues without bias).

 

- Zero effort on job creation. Actually, they've probably accomplished the opposite.

 

Just as a note, I keep up with the news but I am not a good authority on it. If I'm wrong about any of these or you have some valuable perspective, please educate me. I'm currently waiting and hoping for state employees to simply abandon their positions.

[Ceiling Durkheim]

This has been bothering me as well. In part I worry that I'm a dyed in the wool liberal who just isn't receptive to the other side's viewpoint, but this has definitely been bothering me. The point about education seems especially glaring: one can't get out of an introductory economics course without learning that capital is a very important factor in economic growth. Education is the most straightforward, and arguably the most efficient, way to generate human capital. If we accept these premises, the conclusion seems an obvious QED. Short of extreme, Rand-esque economic libertarianism (and let's face it, most Republican legislators are anything but consistent in their economic libertarianism, e.g. the massive spending on prisons that comes from being 'tough on crime'), I just can't see any reasonable justification for doing aught but throwing large amounts of money at American schools. I agree with various conservatives who say that money is no substitute for good planning and implementation, but this only means that we should spend money on the right things, not that we shouldn't spend it.

[Soul of Wit]

You're pretty dead-on. If anything, you're too kind to the once-conservative party. I say once-conservative because they haven't been fiscally conservative in decades.

 

Healthcare reform is needed (among other reasons) to reduce the deficit. The new law does too little to reduce the deficit, but it does reduce the deficit. I trust the Congressional Budget Office, and so does anyone who has checked out their track record on such things. They say that repealing the law will increase the deficit.

 

If you survey Americans on how to lower the deficit, you find that members of the tea party are pretty much clueless on how to go about it. They don't even know where to begin. Most Americans (the non-tea partiers) have a pretty clear idea. They want less spending on defense. This idea becomes even stronger if they realize how much of that defense spending is not even in the budget. Americans are also steadfast against corporate welfare. The idea that there should be subsidies for corporations that are already making massive profits and paying zero taxes? That is particularly galling to most Americans.

 

How do you get out of a great recession? You stimulate the economy.

 

Q: How do you not do that?

A: Give more money to those who are well off.

 

If you don't understand this then you don't understand how to get rich. You get rich by not spending money. You invest the money. Investments don't help the economy recover as quickly as spending. It's not even close.

 

Q: How do you actually do that?

A: Give more money to those who are out of work.

 

Unemployment benefits circulate and reverberate around the economy like no other government spending. The money is spent in places that preserve and create middle-class jobs. Number two on the list of economy-boosting government spending is targeted job credits. See how both of these things relate to employment?

 

Americans (I think foolishly) voted for Republicans because they wanted jobs. What have the Republicans done to create jobs? Nothing.

[Kelandon]

Well, the Republican party is not completely uniform. On one extreme, there's Sarah Palin, who speaks entirely in cliches, catchphrases, and abstractions (what you might call value-based rhetoric) and lacks any factual basis for her statements or specific plans for accomplishing, well, anything. (I'm over-generalizing a little here, but frankly not much.) On the other extreme, there's Rand Paul, who very much believes what he says and has plans to accomplish things, most of which are bad but would in fact have the effect of reducing the deficit, etc. (You might call this fact-based rhetoric.) For example, Rand Paul is one of the only Republicans who's talked seriously about tackling the entitlements (Social Security, Medicare) and military spending that are the overwhelming majority of government spending and must be dealt with in order to bring long-term fiscal solvency to the federal government's budget. I'm not sure that Sarah Palin even knows what a deficit is and how it differs from a debt, or what percentage of the budget is spent on Social Security vs. Medicare vs. defense vs. discretionary stuff.

 

I can understand the appeal of the Rand Paul side of the GOP, but I frankly have never understood the appeal of the Tea Party crowd. I mean, except that they promise the impossible: we'll not touch entitlements, not reduce military spending, and not raise taxes, but we'll also balance the budget! This is mathematically impossible.

 

Well, that's not entirely true. You could just about do it if you otherwise eliminated the entire federal government. Not only would you not send any money to the states (in the form of grants) for education, roads, etc., but you also would not have any government organizations whatsoever. No federal judges. No CIA or FBI. No Congress. No president. No nothing. I don't think we would even have diplomats in other countries if we cut absolutely everything but entitlements and the military. But I don't think that any Tea Partier is seriously considering this.

 

But the appeal of the impossible is pretty strong, especially if a bunch of authority figures (candidates for national office, a "news" anchor) say that it is possible over and over again. Have your cake and eat it too! Wouldn't it be nice? I guess that's how that crowd has come to prominence.

 

I also think that the American public has a generally poor understanding of most of the issues. (Understandably, I might add; the issues are pretty complicated, and people are busy. They elect representatives so that they don't have to research every last bill themselves.)

 

But honestly, I'm not entirely sure what's been driving the long, gradual transformation of the Republican party from a legitimate organization (from its founding to the 1970's) to the monstrosity that it is today. I mean, obviously Reagan was the original catalyst, but most of that was before I was born. How did he do it? And how did the party of Lincoln become the party of Reagan, the two Bushes, and now Palin and the like? I had an Astro professor who said that rather than saying, "I don't know," to anything, he'd just say, "That's an active area of research," because the two were essentially the same. I'm pretty sure explanation for the transformation of the Republican party since the 1980's is an active area of research.

[Student of Trinity]

I'm Canadian and I live in Germany, but I've lived in the United States at various times for a number of years in total. One time I was buttonholed on the street by a Democratic Party activist of some sort, who still asked me to support them somehow even after I explained that I wasn't a US citizen.

 

I said I just didn't have the resources to get into nation-building.

 

(Okay, I'm not sure now that I actually said that at the time. Maybe I actually did; sometimes these things come to me. But if not I should have.)

 

The United States of America had a very good 20th century, overall. And that's remarkable enough for a culture that is still so beholden to the thinking of the 18th century. But there are limits. The chickens are coming home to roost. With a quarter-billion people, a big chunk of a fertile and resource-rich continent, and two centuries of industrial infrastructure, the United States of America is still going to be a top-tier power for the foreseeable future: economically, scientifically, militarily, culturally.

 

But there's going to be a lot of shaking down as twenty-first century reality starts to bite. Roughly half the American population supports a party whose policy is largely delusion. This cannot endure. God is not mocked.

[Dintiradan]

Please note the following is the non-expert view of a relatively younger person who doesn't really pay all that much attention to foreign politics.

 

I think the U.S.'s preference of "value-based rhetoric" over "fact-based rhetoric" for the past decade, and the rise of Bush 2 and Palin and the like, can be attributed to Clinton, specifically the Lewinsky affair. Note that this isn't primarily due to Clinton having an affair. This didn't help the Democrats any, but the shift of power and values isn't due to this. Note that this isn't primarily due to Clinton lying about the affair. This certainly didn't help the Democrats any, but the shift of power and values isn't due to this.

 

No, what I think caused the shift of power and values is due to Clinton's quibbling. The infamous "That depends on what your definition of 'is' is" line. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Suddenly, being an intellectual means you equivocate. The popularity of people like Bush 2 and Palin skyrocket, because they have an image of being plain-spoken, giving out 'homespun advice', and standing for simple values.

 

An aside: I'm as much against cultivating an 'intellectual' image as I am against cultivating a 'plain-and-simple' image. Think of Michael "I'm a Harvard professor!" Ignatieff (this has gotten better, slightly).

[Student of Trinity]

American anti-intellectualism is an old tradition. But I'm inclined to agree that Bill Clinton breathed fresh life into it.

[Randomizer]

The Republicans are right that if you drop minimum wage to the levels of the Asian sweatshops (less than 3 cents per day), then you can create millions of low wage jobs in the US. These jobs won't provide enough income to support workers here, but there will be more jobs.

 

This is the Wal-Mart system carried to an extreme where you can lower costs for items, but then you no longer have workers at the current US standard of living. The "rich" would be unaffected by this because their incomes won't be cut. There aren't that many bosses that would cut their wages in proportion to that type of cut for their workers.

[Drayk Armitage]

Clinton's line was stupid and didn't help anything, but one stupid line doesn't doom a generation to superficial politics.

 

The Lewinsky scandal was big in part because Clinton's presidency was relatively uneventful. It was a time of economic prosperity, and the U.S. military action that went on (everything from the Balkan War to Rwanda) was viewed by most U.S. citizens as significantly less important than either Iraq war.

 

It was also big because the Republicans pushed it, inflated it, and made it huge. That was nothing new: both parties have always done that. What was new, I think, was how well it worked. People really ate it up. They didn't want to remove Clinton over it, for the most part, but they sure wanted to watch that news coverage! Lewinsky was sort of the Vietnam of political sex scandals: there was way more coverage available, in far more depth, than there had been for previous scandals. But whereas photos and videos of Vietnam decreased support for war, all the Lewinsky stuff only increased America's appetite for distracting scandals.

 

I think a certain amount of the shift in political discourse is related to relative prosperity and large amounts of leisure time and the cultural shifts that come with those. The Republicans have capitalized on that better than the Democrats have. But I imagine politics has always been this way: the better image wins out over the better idea, and once in a while you get a Russ Feingold for a few terms, but mostly you get Nancy Pelosi and Sarah Palin and so on.

[Callie]

...because the Democratic Party is clearly righteous.

 

Also, if this is an April Fool's joke, it's a very bad one.

[Dikiyoba]

Originally Posted By: Excalibur

...because the Democratic Party is clearly righteous.

Certainly not, but Dikiyoba wil take Coexist bumper stickers over Birther bumper stickers any day.

[Dantius]

See, I used to consider myself a member of the GOP, and I still endorse many of their policies on foreign affairs, crime, gun control, etc., but I've always been a strong advocate of Keynesian economic theory, which is really not a very good idea when one is trying to fit in in a party defined essentially by a desire for economic libertarianism and deregulation and small government (Also for its strange support of religious whackjobs. On a tangent, I've never understood why the GOP puts up with people who literally do nothing but make it look bad when it comes out they've been snorting crack off a male stripper's chest after they finish delivering their anti-gay sermons. It is hilarious, though, just not exactly good for the Party).

 

So recently, I've pretty much decide "Well to hell with you [guys]," and switched to voting Democratic much more often (For the record, I've voted HW, Clinton, Clinton, W, Kerry, Obama, which does actually put me at more D's than R's, but hey). I still support Republicans for state office more often than not, simply because I always get this weird slimy feeling after voting for an Illinois Democrat .

 

Click to reveal.. (References the Lewinsky scandal, wouldn't want to scar the minds of SW's multitude small children)

Since the thread seems to also seems to have a little too much Clinton bashing for my tastes, I'd simply like to point out the fact that, as a Clinton apologist, I firmly believe that the President can have sex with whomever he pleases, if he can manage to both balance the budget, execute successful military action overseas with minimal loss to US lives, and preside over one of the largest economic expansion ever, and if he wants to lie about it, then the US public really should have better things to do with their newfound giant piles of cash than focus on whether or not the President is having sex with his secretary.

[Rowen]

I feel that we are forgetting how true the saying "Ignorance is bliss" really is. Life seems so much better when I decide to be blind to the reality around me and many people choose to live blind because of that.

 

Blind people make really bad guides.

 

Amen to this:

Originally Posted By: Danty

Click to reveal..

Since the thread seems to also seems to have a little too much Clinton bashing for my tastes, I'd simply like to point out the fact that, as a Clinton apologist, I firmly believe that the President can have sex with whomever he pleases, if he can manage to both balance the budget, execute successful military action overseas with minimal loss to US lives, and preside over one of the largest economic expansion ever, and if he wants to lie about it, then the US public really should have better things to do with their newfound giant piles of cash than focus on whether or not the President is having sex with his secretary.

[Ceiling Durkheim]

I think one of the main appeals of the religious wackjobs is that there are a lot of them, some of them are very rich (and generous campaign donors), and up until the late '70s/ early '80s they didn't vote very much. Getting out the evangelical vote was quite a coup for the Republican party.

 

As for Clinton: I'm not crazy about the fact that he explicitly lied to the American people, even if it was about something of so little consequence. What really pisses me off about the types who like to bash Clinton is that many of them also go around praising Reagan, and ignoring Iran-Contra. In which the president explicitly lied to the American people...about contravening a congressional mandate and selling arms to terrorists.

[Student of Trinity]

If an American ambassador to China had gravely offended his hosts by showing everyone the soles of his shoes, that would have been a pretty reprehensible failure on his part. The fact that there was nothing particularly wrong with his footwear would have been no excuse: foreign cultural taboos are something you're supposed to deal with respectfully, or don't go into diplomacy. The consequences may be irrational, but they're real, and it's your job to avoid them.

 

The chief executive of a democracy is the nation's ambassador to itself, because that's what leading a democracy means. You have to create consensus, or as close to it as possible. So the American President is supposed to respect American taboos, even if they're irrational, as long as there's no overriding public good at stake. Clinton didn't, and that's a grave failing.

[Dantius]

Originally Posted By: Student of Trinity

The chief executive of a democracy is the nation's ambassador to itself, because that's what leading a democracy means. You have to create consensus, or as close to it as possible. So the American President is supposed to respect American taboos, even if they're irrational, as long as there's no overriding public good at stake. Clinton didn't, and that's a grave failing.

The thing about it is that it's so widespread that calling it "taboo" becomes hypocritical. For instance, Newt Gingrich, the GOP speaker of the House pushing for Clinton's removal from office (different than being impeached, which just means you're charged with whatever), later admitted to having an affair and cheating on his wife, at the exact same time he was prosecuting Clinton for lying about his affair! And plenty of other presidents have had affairs- just off the top of my head, FDR, Kennedy, LBJ come to mind, and I'm sure there were more. I was always under the impression at the time that Clinton wasn't on trial for having an affair or even lying under oath, but that he was being made to stand trial for having raised taxes on the GOP's donors so much.

[Dintiradan]

Originally Posted By: Dantius

... execute successful military action overseas with minimal loss to US lives ...

I had a rant here, but got too depressed and got rid of it.

Click to reveal..

85000 : 1

[Øther]

Originally Posted By: Dantius

Newt Gingrich

Seeing this just reminded me of something: Newt Gingrich said that he thought that by the time his children grew up, the country will have been over run by radical muslims and turned into a secular atheist state.

[Randomizer]

Originally Posted By: Student of Trinity

If an American ambassador to China had gravely offended his hosts...

In Japan, to do a Bush was based on Bush Senior throwing up on the Prime Minister at a state dinner. Foreign countries put up with a lot from us.

[Student of Trinity]

Originally Posted By: Dantius

The thing about it is that it's so widespread that calling it "taboo" becomes hypocritical.

But the United States is a very diverse society; it's more like Europe than like France or Germany. While extramarital affairs may be no biggie for a large fraction of the American population, they are still taboo for another large fraction. Of course they still happen among the taboo sector; but there they incur scandal and shame, of the kind and degree that a responsible elected official should avoid.

If you don't think adultery should be a public scandal, then fine, by all means campaign privately to change public opinion, or run for office in a northern coastal state. Don't expect to act on your views in public office at the national level, where you will antagonize a large fraction of your constituency for the sake of no public good.

The last point is important, that the offense would not be incurred in any good cause. It's quite okay for a democratic leader to offend large sectors of the public for the sake of an important principle, or to achieve some overriding practical good. But the right of public officials to commit adultery without shame is hardly a banner worth fighting under. Even if we were to grant that the stigma attached to adultery is an injustice or a stupidity, it is low on the list of injustices and stupidities whose elimination would most deserve the necessary expenditure of political capital.

To cause a scandal merely for personal indulgence is a genuine dereliction of public duty, because democratic leaders don't just have to make sound decisions. They have to lead as well as govern. They have to get the people behind their decisions. A drunkard in office damages his own ability to govern, whereas an adulterer in office arguably does not. But the adulterer damages his ability to lead, at least in America, and in a democracy this is just as important.

I agree about the hypocrisy of some Republican leaders, though. Despite his failings I see Bill Clinton as a reasonable choice for a vote, but Newt Gingrich shouldn't be electable anywhere, if you ask me.

[Soul of Wit]

Originally Posted By: Student of Trinity

... Roughly half the American population supports a party whose policy is largely delusion. ...

It's about 30%.

The Republicans win elections by getting enough independents (fence-sitters) to their side. This is easy to do when the economy is down and people ignore all other issues.

The US has been slowly becoming more conservative over time. Eisenhower (US General/WWII hero/2-term POTUS/prototypical conservative of the '50s) would be considered a liberal today. Okay, maybe a moderate Democrat. An argument can be made that Reagan would have a tough time winning a GOP primary today.

[Soul of Wit]

Originally Posted By: Dintiradan

Please note the following is the non-expert view of a relatively younger person who doesn't really pay all that much attention to foreign politics.

I think the U.S.'s preference of "value-based rhetoric" over "fact-based rhetoric" for the past decade, and the rise of Bush 2 and Palin and the like, can be attributed to Clinton, specifically the Lewinsky affair. Note that this isn't primarily due to Clinton having an affair. This didn't help the Democrats any, but the shift of power and values isn't due to this. Note that this isn't primarily due to Clinton lying about the affair. This certainly didn't help the Democrats any, but the shift of power and values isn't due to this.

No, what I think caused the shift of power and values is due to Clinton's quibbling. The infamous "That depends on what your definition of 'is' is" line. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Suddenly, being an intellectual means you equivocate. The popularity of people like Bush 2 and Palin skyrocket, because they have an image of being plain-spoken, giving out 'homespun advice', and standing for simple values.

An aside: I'm as much against cultivating an 'intellectual' image as I am against cultivating a 'plain-and-simple' image. Think of Michael "I'm a Harvard professor!" Ignatieff (this has gotten better, slightly).

Anti-intellectualism is not at all new. It was around when the US was founded in the 18th century. More recently, Adlai Stevenson lost both of his runs against Eisenhower in the '50s. He would be a prime example of an intellectual losing to a down-to-earth candidate.

As for Clinton? One of the biggest digs against intellectuals is that they tend to be relativist in their philosophy. A relativist sees the world in shades of grey and not as black and white. This is good, in that it shows open-mindedness. It can have its drawbacks, because a relativist will fail to see the moral component of day-to-day issues. They can rationalize almost anything, because they tend to see all sides of the argument. Clinton did, in fact, feel your pain.

Clinton had the magic of being both an intellectual and down-to-earth. Ignatieff surely wishes that he had that persona. Those in the South knew Clinton as a bubba. My thought on him is that I don't care where he sticks his (expletive deleted) as long as he's a good POTUS. He was.

[Drayk Armitage]

Very well said, SoT.

 

Originally Posted By: Soul of Wit

The Republicans win elections by getting enough independents (fence-sitters) to their side.

At the moment, BOTH parties win elections by getting enough "independents" on their sides. One of the few positive outcomes (IMHO) of the nasty political fighting and polarization of views of the last decade is that fewer Americans identify unswervingly with one party. Fewer Americans make a straight party vote where they just vote for every candidate of their party. It doesn't change the political landscape much, but it means people are using their brains at least a little bit more.

 

Eisenhower's political views were interesting. In terms of domestic policy, he expanded social service programs and transportation infrastructure and pushed for racial integration, although he wasn't much of an idealist about it. Not much like today's GOP. On the other hand, most of his cabinet consisted of business leaders. And in terms of foreign policy, he intervened all over the place, both with armed troops and with assassinations. This was during the Cold War, so it's hard to compare this to Neo-Con ideology; but both approaches were very concerned with tactical control of the Middle East.

 

All in all, I think Eisenhower would be considered a moderate Republican, perhaps a bit to the right of today's "RINOs" ("Republicans in Name Only") like Olympia Snowe.

[Randomizer]

Running as an intellectual was part of what doomed John Kerry. The deep dark secret of his Vietnam years that finally came out after the presidental election was that his Yale GPA was lower than non-intellectual George W. Bush. Appearence was everything.

[Ceiling Durkheim]

Yeah, Eisenhower's definitely an interestingly mixed one. I'm pretty horrified at the Eisenhower administration's role in overthrowing Mossadegh in Iran, but he made big strides on racial integration, and he said things against war and the military-industrial complex that few Democrats today have the courage to say.

 

It's also worth noting that the Democrat=liberal/Republican=conservative formula of the contemporary US hadn't entirely solidified by Eisenhower's time. It was well on its way, and had pretty much reached its modern configuration by the time of Kennedy and LBJ, but it was still somewhat in flux around the Eisenhower era. The New Deal set Democrats up as champions of the welfare state, but especially on the subject of race the stances of the two parties didn't settle down completely until around the time of the Civil Rights Act. As noted, Eisenhower presided over the first major integration of schools, and up until the Truman administration and sometimes beyond, the strongest segregationists were mostly Democrats. Strom Thurmond ran against Truman for the 1948 Democratic presidential nomination, and it took 'til the 1950s and '60s for many 'Dixiecrats' like Thurmond, Jesse Helms, et al, to jump ship for the Republican party.

[*i]

Certainly, Eisenhower's foreign policies caused a lot of problems we are trying to mop up today; however, considering we still had the paranoia inspired from the echoes of the Second World War coupled with the escalation toward what appeared to be inevitable nuclear armageddon, these actions seem more understandable, and perhaps even necessary in light of the greater evils.

[Student of Trinity]

It startles many foreigners today to learn that the Republican Party really was the party of Abraham Lincoln. Of course, that mainly just shows that the US is far to the right of the rest of the world. Most humans find the current Republican party repulsive, and have a hard time reconciling that with their admiration for Lincoln.

 

But if you don't simply equate Republican with evil, you can still trace the heritage. Slavery as justified by educated pre-civil-war Democrats was a paternalism. Appropriate authorities would look after a debilitated population who couldn't look after themselves. In return, those being looked after would accept limits on their opportunities for improving their own lives. The Republicans who nominated Abe Lincoln were rugged individualists who thought everyone should have an unfettered right to benefit from their own labor. That's the historical logic.

[Drayk Armitage]

Originally Posted By: Randomizer

Running as an intellectual was part of what doomed John Kerry. The deep dark secret of his Vietnam years that finally came out after the presidental election was that his Yale GPA was lower than non-intellectual George W. Bush. Appearence was everything.

What does GPA have to do with being an intellectual? I mean that seriously; we're not talking about the difference between the kids in my algebra class who are hard working and reasonably smart and get A's and B's, and the kids who never study and get D's and F's. We're talking about rich guys attending elite colleges — colleges with at least as much social-circle influence as academic influence — where it can be dramatically easier to get A's in some courses of study than others, and where it is often easier to get A's by emulating established ways of doing things rather than by being intellectually original.

[Dantius]

Originally Posted By: Soul of Wit

Anti-intellectualism is not at all new. It was around when the US was founded in the 18th century. More recently, Adlai Stevenson lost both of his runs against Eisenhower in the '50s. He would be a prime example of an intellectual losing to a down-to-earth candidate.

I wouldn't go so far as to say that Adlai Stevenson lost to Eisenhower because he was an intellectual, I'd say he lost because he wasn't the greatest US war hero of all time. Plus, unlike his Pacific counterpart MacArthur, who was pretty much just an arrogant jackass, Eisenhower was likeable and friendly, or at least could seem as such when running. Plus, Eisenhower used television to great effect in his campaigns, while Stevenson did not, making him appear to be a much more ubiquitous figure, which also certainly helps a lot.

But the whole "war hero" bet does tend to trump just about any other factors when people are voting. Just look at Grant: Terrible, terrible president, but people elected him anyways because he was the general who saved the Union.

[Lilith]

Originally Posted By: Student of Trinity

But if you don't simply equate Republican with evil, you can still trace the heritage. Slavery as justified by educated pre-civil-war Democrats was a paternalism. Appropriate authorities would look after a debilitated population who couldn't look after themselves. In return, those being looked after would accept limits on their opportunities for improving their own lives. The Republicans who nominated Abe Lincoln were rugged individualists who thought everyone should have an unfettered right to benefit from their own labor. That's the historical logic.

I think this is a bit of an overstatement, insofar as it implies that Lincoln was nominated as an abolitionist. Lincoln was quite clear about the fact that his overriding goal was to keep the Union together, whether that meant abolishing slavery or not. The Emancipation Proclamation was as much a political move as a principled one.

[Randomizer]

The Emancipation Proclamation was purely for show since it only applied to the states not under Union control at the time.

 

Political parties shift platforms as members get replaced. Reagan swept out the older moderates that picked Ford over him in 1976. Those members were mostly gone by the time you got the fiscally irresponsible members that allowed Obama and the Democrats sweep back control of the Congress and White House. The highway to nowhere and other spending projects to buy support made the Democrats look like fiscal conservatives especially when they kept pointing out the balanced budget under Clinton.

[Student of Trinity]

Lincoln indeed said very clearly what his policies were; regarding slavery he would do whatever it took to hold the union together. But in those early days the momentum was in the other direction.

 

Slavery was a state issue; it was illegal in northern States, a constitutionally enshrined right in the the South. The United States were expanding west, and the struggle was over whether slavery expanded with them. Lincoln's party did not stand for abolition, but it stood for freezing slavery as it was, and not letting it expand into new US territories (which would eventually become states).

 

Slavery had already been abolished in the British Empire a generation ago, and subsequently in the French Empire, having been cried down as a moral abomination. The northern American states were taking off industrially while the South stuck to growing cotton. Supporters of slavery were isolated, and not stupid. The common view in the South, articulated in many publications at the time, was that slavery had to expand, or it would eventually wither and die.

 

And that was the common view in the North as well; it was Lincoln's own publicly expressed view. He, his party, and a majority of northerners were as much in favor of slavery fading away, as the majority of southerners were in favor of preserving and strengthening it.

 

So the explicit debate leading up to Lincoln's election was indeed not about immediate abolition, but about the expansion or confinement of slavery. Both sides of the debate agreed explicitly, however, that it was the existence of slavery itself that was ultimately at stake in the question. That was why the debate was so fierce. At that point there wasn't actually much demand for slaves on the western frontier. But the future implications of the Republican platform for slavery were dire enough that Lincoln's election itself precipitated secession.

 

The Emancipation Proclamation, which only applied to territories in rebellion, was not so much a political dodge as a legal one. Lincoln took a narrow view of the extent of his own executive powers. Slavery was clearly a states' prerogative. But he saw a loophole: he could confiscate rebel property, as a war measure. So this is what he did, as soon as he felt he had enough political support in the North. (In particular he waited for a military victory, so that Emancipation would not appear as an act of desperation.)

 

The Proclamation certainly wasn't just for show, because at that point Lincoln and everyone in the North expected to conquer the South in the near future, and free an awful lot of slaves. It had no immediate legal effect, but its legal effect was clearly going to become immense quite soon.

 

(My main sources for all this are James McPherson's Battle Cry of Freedom, an acclaimed single-volume history of the Civil War, written in 1989. (It won the Pulitzer prize.) And the recent Lincoln biography Team of Rivals, by Doris Kearns Goodwin, which won the 2005 Lincoln Prize. (Lincoln remains such a popular historical figure that somebody apparently gives an annual prize for books about him. I guess it's a narrow field, but the prize presumably means something. And Kearns has a Pulitzer for an earlier book, so she's not obscure.)

 

I mention this to show that I'm by no means an expert, but I have read a couple of decent books on the subject. I should also admit that I haven't re-read either of my books in a while now, so it's possible I'm misinterpreting them from memory.)

[Ceiling Durkheim]

Yeah, and I kind of get that with say, Nasser in Egypt because of his cozying up to the USSR and action against Israel. Hell, I can even from a certain perspective see why the domino theory made intervention in Vietnam (a bit later, but in the same vein) seem appropriate, though that doesn't excuse the Tonkin Gulf business or the disruption of democratic elections because we didn't like their results.

 

The Mossadegh case in particular pisses me off and kind of baffles me, though, in that he (and early '50s Iran in general) were neither enemies of the US, nor friends to communist powers. They'd irritated the English by nationalizing Iranian oil (a subject on which I'd say the Iranians were clearly in the right), but compared to other cases this seems a pretty limp reason for overthrowing a national leader. I mean, as of a couple years later this also gave the US a useful puppet leader in the Shah (ah, America's illustrious history of supporting murderous, oppressive despots), but that didn't seem to be the explicit intent in removing Mossadegh from power.

[Dantius]

I've heard that more books have been written about Lincoln than any other human being other than William Shakespeare or Jesus (H?) Christ. I suppose it does rather make sense, since he's probably one of the top three highest regarded Presidents in history, and he had incredibly important events happening around him at the time that he managed to triumph over, and he was president long enough ago that there's been time for the books to be written in earnest.

 

I will be so bold to predict that books about FDR will outstrip him in number and popularity eventually, though, it's just that they've only had a timeframe of about 70 years in which to be written, whereas Lincoln has had a good 150.

[Drayk Armitage]

Maybe, but I don't think so. Lincoln, FDR, and Washington consistently win the top three spots on most surveys. All three of them led the country through the three wars that affected life here the most. On top of that, Washington helped found the country, Lincoln preserved the Union and ended slavery, and FDR helped end the Holocaust and had the New Deal.

 

I would argue that for at least a few decades, shifting attitudes have been making people value Lincoln's works more and FDR's (relatively) less, and I would further argue that this shift is unlikely to change in the foreseeable future.

 

Needless to say, many Americans who lived through WW2 do not have high opinions of Germany and Japan. But kids who grow up today see a different picture: Germany and Japan are two of the U.S.'s closest allies, and people from both countries tend to be portrayed favorably in the media -- compare to Arabs, the Chinese or even the French. Now consider how cynical the younger generations are about U.S. involvement abroad. Not just Iraq and Afghanistan, kids are skeptical about the Cold War and Vietnam too. Not everyone is skeptical, but there are far more skeptics, and far fewer hardcore patriots, than a generation ago. So people think of WW2 less as having to defeat evil countries and more as having to defeat evil people who took power there.

 

The Holocaust is still pretty well abhorred, of course. But so is slavery. And that's a hotter topic, because the U.S. has an awful lot of African-Americans -- mostly thanks to slavery. 80 years ago it was still common for textbooks to present slavery in a gentle light and to claim that slavery was not what the Civil War was about. African-American Studies barely existed as an academic discipline. Today, neither of those things are true. And for people who grow up seeing increasing civil rights and equality around them, I think it's even more baffling to look back on slavery than for people who grew up seeing segregation everywhere.

 

In short, I think people see ending slavery as a bigger deal now than they used to, and people see ending WW2 as a relatively smaller deal.

[Kelandon]

Lincoln's election and the ensuing Civil War were both more or less about slavery. There's a lot bound up in that "more or less," but by and large, the statement stands.

 

But I still have a problem with saying that the ideology of today's Republican Party is the same as 1861's Republican Party. There may be comparisons that can be made, but the party has radically changed over time, and so has the Democratic Party. The demographic changes are obvious (they've basically flip-flopped North and South, among other things), and the ideological changes only somewhat less so since the issues are different enough today. A statement like, "The Republicans who nominated Abe Lincoln were rugged individualists who thought everyone should have an unfettered right to benefit from their own labor," isn't really fair, though. Some sort of Marxist pro-labor sentiment didn't really underlie Republicanism, and while Lincoln himself was a country boy (a "rugged individualist"), the urban North went Republican more or less as soon as they could. The classical economic liberals of the late 19th century were Democrats ("Bourbon Democrats," for example), and these were the ones who promoted "individual liberty" in an economic sense (and of course, today the Republicans are the ones who do this).

 

The usual periodization puts Lincoln's time as the Third Party System, which ended around the close of the 19th century.

[Student of Trinity]

I may well have squinted a bit to see the roots of current Republicanism in Lincoln's day. But I didn't mean to suggest that nothing had changed. Party platforms can change significantly within four years, let alone a century. On the other hand, I do think there has to be a common thread of some sort. Times change, as well as parties, and sometimes it is by remaining the same as times change (for some value of 'same') that a party ends up changing its role.

[Drayk Armitage]

Well, what DID remain the same, if it wasn't the "rugged individualism"?

[Dintiradan]

The name, silly.

[Enraged Slith]

Wisconsin finds over 7500 Republican votes under a rock.

[TheBadAgent]

When will people learn that each party is as corrupt, moronic and deceiving as the other. It's time for an honest american to form a third party to confront this BS. We need a "cowboy" sort of person who is balsy, like able, able to get angry but not overly so, and be intelligent and to be able to think on their feet. Someone who can, during the political debate, walk up and put a fist through each frackin teleprompter's screen and say "excuse me Mr. Obama (or other politician), I want to hear what YOUR ideas about the war, not that moron's behind the TV.

 

He needs to be well known enough that the audience would support him, and so he won't be dragged off the stage.

 

Without a joke, Chuck Norris filled most of those requirements...we need another like him however that wants to put the government in its place.

[Sudanna]

lol3

[Dikiyoba]

Originally Posted By: TheBadAgent

balsy

Dikiyoba hopes that means "like balsa". And that being virtually unsinkable makes you an astute politician somehow.

[Lilith]

reminder: chuck norris has openly claimed that separation of church and state is an unpatriotic idea, and supported mike huckabee's run for the presidential nomination

[Sarachim]

Originally Posted By: TheBadAgent

When will people learn that each party is as corrupt, moronic and deceiving as the other. It's time for an honest american to form a third party to confront this BS. We need a "cowboy" sort of person who is balsy, like able, able to get angry but not overly so, and be intelligent and to be able to think on their feet. Someone who can, during the political debate, walk up and put a fist through each frackin teleprompter's screen and say "excuse me Mr. Obama (or other politician), I want to hear what YOUR ideas about the war, not that moron's behind the TV.

He needs to be well known enough that the audience would support him, and so he won't be dragged off the stage.

Without a joke, Chuck Norris filled most of those requirements...we need another like him however that wants to put the government in its place.

This is pretty much the sales pitch that the Italian fascists used. It sounds appealing, right up until you realize that putting Chuck Norris above the petty restraints of politics has the downside of making him a dictator.

[Lilith]

should i post the futurist manifesto

 

somebody tell me to post the futurist manifesto and i'll do it

[Randomizer]

Let's see actor Clint "Make my day" Eastwood was mayor of Carmel. California, actor Arnold "I'll be back" Swartzenager was governor of California, former wrestler Jesse Ventura was governor of Minnesota, ....

 

I don't think that's going to help by running Chuck Norris. None of them really changed the situation for the better.

[Dantius]

Originally Posted By: Randomizer

Let's see actor Clint "Make my day" Eastwood was mayor of Carmel. California, actor Arnold "I'll be back" Swartzenager was governor of California, former wrestler Jesse Ventura was governor of Minnesota, ....

I don't think that's going to help by running Chuck Norris. None of them really changed the situation for the better.

Don't forget good old Ronnie Reagan, either!

[Swimmin' Salmon]

Lincoln had the overwhelming support of the nationalists. He was not in favor of the 3 year waiting period for prospective citizens, and as the country was expanding westward, it was the native born Americans who (as voters) were most concerned with immigrants settling the west and locking them east of the Mississippi. That voting bloc was his "independent" voters.

[Student of Trinity]

Hey, Salmon. How are things?