When the Republican Party supported 'wage-earners'

          The Republican Party has long been identified as the "party of big business'.  Their opposition to raising the minimum wage, their refusal to support legislation which protects the rights of workers and their attempts to break unions would certainly give one reason to believe that the GOP has always allied itself with big business.  However, that is not true.
          To say that the group of people classified as "wage-earners" was crucial to the development of the Republican Party would not be an understatement.  "Wage-earners" in a society that prided itself on "independent yeoman farmers" was seen by most Southerners and some Northerners as a form of "slavery" far worse than anything in the South.  However, the founders of the Republican party saw this group of laborers, who they believed had both the opportunity and motivation to improve their condition in life because they were free to earn wages, as a symbol of the free Northern society.  As Eric Froner noted, "Republicans consolidated the free labor ideology and gave it its deepest meaning."  A meaning that had been enshrined in the Declaration of Independence and forever protected and guaranteed by the Constitution: freedom.
          For the Republicans, a slave society was "the antitheis of free" and the key to the free society in the North was the idea that upward mobility existed.  Those who were born poor were not condemned to remain poor all their lives.  Nor, for that matter,  were they condemned to a life of labor.  Many "wage-earners" believed that their jobs were not the "end", but rather a "means to an end": ownership of land and independence.
          Republican political thought and ideology was based on the idea of "free labor", that is, a labor force whose members were free to choose the type of work they would do, the manner in which they would dispose of their earnings, how long they would work and at what rate of pay.  They were, as Abraham Lincoln would say, free to enjoy "the fruits of their labor".  Granted this utopian ideal never really exist, and the same "free labor" ideology was used to protect employers from government interference regarding regulation of the work place and prevent employees from a legal recourse to address their grievances. However, people in the North believed that this ideal society could exist, and the only obstacle in its way was the slave society of the South.
          When Salmon Chase wrote and spoke about the SlavePower of the South which dominated the Federal Government and threatened to dominate the country, the implications were clear.  The imposition of Southern society on the North would not only reintroduce slavey to a section of the country that had rid itself of that "peculiar institution", but would also destroy the upward mobility and lack of "class structure" that the North saw as one of its greatest assets.  The South, in the opinion of the Republicans and many Northerners, was ruled by a small slave-owning planter aristocracy that impoverished a large group of white people because there was no chance of upward mobility, refused to accept change because it threatened their status and power, and enslaved an even larger group to do the work that they refused to do.
          The most important contribution made by this new group of "wage-earners" was not that they comprised sixty percent of the Northern population and therefore, if they voted as a group, would give any national candidate a clear majority in the North.  Rather, the concept of "free labor", which they symbolized, became a unifying force, not only within the newly formed Republican party and throughout Northern society, but also offered the common ground upon which many Northern Democrats and former Whigs could agree.
          For Northern Democrats who now felt alienated from their party because of their anti-slavery stance but never would have joined forces with Whigs or embraced Whig ideology, the issue of  "free labor", which "lay at the heart of Republican ideology" allowed them to join the Republican party without necessarily compromising their beliefs.  These Democratic leaders who would exert considerable influence in the still developing party were from the Jacksonian era.  They saw the idea of "free labor" as not only compatible with Jacksonian democracy, but as a natural extension of it.  Just as universal male suffrage had opened the doors of government to the common man and put him on the path to independence but allowing him a political voice, so "free labor" would open the doors of land ownership to those born in poverty and ensure that the egalitarian society of independent landowners envisioned by the Founding Fathers and put forth by both Jeffereson and Jackson as the ideal would flourish.
          Much to the dismay of Abolitionists and Radical Republicans who called for the immediate destruction of the institution based  on moral precepts, Slavery was not seen, by a significant number in the North, in terms of how it degraded and/or abused the slaves.  Rather, it was seen in terns of how it degraded and/or abused the poorer whites in society.  Northern political leaders  and journalists wrote at great length about the degradation of the poor white Southerner who, because of the aristocratic nature of the South, had no chance for upward mobility, and who, because this same Southern aristocracy viewed menial labor by whites as demeaning, were forever doomed to a life of poverty.  Their Northern brothers, however, had, through "free labor" the chance to move up the social ladder.  The extension of this "free labor" into the South would offer the same freedom to poor whites.
          Given the fact that the majority of whites during this period, North as well as South, believed the white race was superior to the black, the promotion of "free labor" and the containment of slavery to one section of the country was yet another source of unity.  By keeping Slavery and blacks out of new territories and states, the homogeneity of the white race in those areas would be protected.  People may have believed Slavery that Slavery was morally wrong.  They may have viewed Slavery as a contradiction to the democracy.  They may have understood that no country can profess to be free when slavery exists.  But they did not believe in total and complete equality between the races.
          The "wage-earners" and the idea of a society built on "free labor", not slavery, was the glue that held the North together.  Whatever their political and philosophical differences, Northerners, as a society, believed that "free labor" was necessary to maintain their ideal of a country which offered its citizens a "national freedom" and the opportunity to achieve economic independence.

The Republicans, the present day Tea Party and the colonists of the 1700s

          Thomas Jefferson, in the Declaration of Independence, wrote that "when a long train of abuses and usurpations . . . evinces a design" intended to force a group of people to live "under absolute despotism", then "it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government . . . ."
          The present day Tea Party members and supporters, as well as other conservative Republicans, like to think of themselves as carrying on in the tradition of the leaders of the American Revolution and fighting for the same freedoms against an equally tyrannical government.  Are they really continuing the good fight to protect the freedoms gained in the American Revolution and guaranteed by the Constitution and Bill of Rights?  Or are they misleading the public by wrapping themselves in the hallowed past but having little understanding as to the "abuses and usurpations" the people living in the colonies objected to in the 1700s?
          To answer that question, it is necessary to understand what some of the "abuses and usurpations" to which Jefferson referred in the Declaration of Independence.  Perhaps the best way to answer that question is to begin at the beginning with a brief explanation of how the colonies were chartered and how the first colonists viewed themselves and their relation to Britain.
          David Ramsay, in his HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION VOLUME ONE, which was originally published in Philadelphia by R.Aitken in 1789 and reprinted in 1990 by Liberty Fund, Inc. in 1990, discussed the initial grants of land to "Thomas Gates and his associates . . . adventurers  . . . empowered to transport thither as many English subjects as should willingly accompany them; and it was declared 'that the colonists and their children should enjoy the same liberties as if they had remained, or were born, within the realm'"(Ramsay HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION, VOLUME ONE, 6).  That declaration specifically guaranteed to all British citizens in the North American continent the same rights as citizens still living in Britain.  The importance of this guarantee cannot be understated.  For it was this promise of retained citizenship which formed the basis for the colonists' belief that initially Parliament, then King George III, had abused their powers and denied the colonists their rights as British citizens.
  One of the most fundamental rights of British citizens was that they could not be taxed without having given their consent through their representatives in Parliament.  If the colonists in remained British citizens and retained their rights, did Parliament have the right to impose taxes on them if they were not represented in Parliament?  The question remained unresolved until 1767.
In that year, Parliament attempted to both answer that question and assert its complete authority over the North American colonies by passing the Townshend Acts.  Many colonists believed the Acts were intended to impose a tax, not a duty.  John Dickinson, in the second in his series of "Letters from a Farmer", wrote that the acts appeared "to me to be unconstitutional, and . . . destructive to the liberty of these colonies . . . ."(Dickinson, in Greene, Colonies to Nation).  He also noted that "never did the British Parliament" until those Acts, "think of imposing duties in America, FOR THE PURPOSE OF RAISING REVENUE"(Dickinson).
Although Parliament had not previously tried a direct tax, the issue of whether Parliament had the authority to do so had been discussed in the early colonial period.  David Ramsay wrote that "Massachusetts had . . .questioned the authority of Parliament to tax them and legislate for them"(Ramsay, 14) before the charter for Pennsylvania had been granted in 1781.
James Otis had addressed the subject of taxation in his "The Rights of the British Colonies Asserted and Proved".  Otis believed that "taxation without representation" was a deprivation of a fundamental basic right and would ultimately lead to the loss of all civil rights.  He further stated "that no parts of His Majesty's dominion can be taxed without their consent; every part had a right to be represented"(Otis, in Greene, Colonies to Nation) and Parliament's denial of representation to every area of the empire "would seem to be a contradiction in practice of the theory of the constitution" (Otis).
Jonathan Mayew, who died before the passage of the Townshend Acts, also commented on the need for British citizens in North America to protect their rights.  Bernard Baiylin, in his book Face of the Revolution, wrote that Mayew, a Congregationalist minister in Boston, clearly believed that "No claim to a natural obedience" to any ruler or ruling body "can or should override a people's 'just concern for their own rights, or legal, constitutional privileges'"(Bailyn, Faces of the Revolution,135).  Like Otis and Dickinson, Mayew urged his listeners to remember their rights as Englishmen and defend those rights whenever the government appeared to be violating them.
"Taxation without representation" was a major issue and a dominant one in the minds of the colonists, but it certainly was not the only reason colonists were angered by the actions of Britain's rulers and their royal agents in the colonies.  John Adams and Harbottle Dorr led very different lives.  Adams would become President of the yet to be created United States.  Dorr would die leaving barely enough assets to cover his accumulated debts.  However, these two men had three things in common.  Both were born in Massachusetts.  Both came from families that were not wealthy.  Both men detested Thomas Hutchinson, the Royal Governor of Massachusetts.
Adams believed that "Royal authority in Massachusetts in the 1760s was coming to rest increasingly . . . in the hands of a single family, the Hutchinsons"(Bailyn, 17) along with their relatives and friends who "were becoming absolute monopolists of public office"(Bailyn, 17).  Adams saw the Hutchinson group as a social elite forming a ruling aristocracy based on birth not ability.  A group who would do whatever would be most beneficial to them and increase their wealth.  A group who would manipulate the facts in reports to the government in London for their own advantage.  That such a group emerged in a country that was, for the most part, devoid of a hierarchical class structure must have infuriated many colonists, particularly those men who believed themselves better able to govern their colonies.
Dorr abhorred Hutchinson.  While preserving an extensive collection of Boston newspapers, Dorr also made made countless numbers of notes on the margins of the various pages.  His "index and commentaries catalogue Hutchinson's errors, correct his misstatements, and warn at every turn of his evil intentions. . . . explodes in the margins when the hated name appears"(Bailyn, 98-9).  Dorr considered the Royal Governor to be villainous.
From the point of view of many of the colonists, chief among the "abuses" was Parliament's attempt, in the opinion of the colonists, to impose a tax without providing for colonial representation in the House of Commons or, at the very least, allowing the colonial legislatures to levy the necessary taxes.  Having long identified themselves not merely as subjects of King George III, but as British citizens, the colonists could never allow even one of their fundamental rights to be taken from them.
Royal governors, like Thomas Hutchinson, who succeeded in creating a ruling aristocracy were guilty, in the eyes of may colonists, of usurping their power.  They were not only interested in pleasing the Crown and Parliament, they were equally concerned with increasing their own wealth and power.  What have President Obama and the Democrats done that is in any way similar to what happened in the colonies?  The Tea Party and the conservative Republicans have more in common with the royal governors.

Bring 'the real facts' to the American public

Abraham Lincoln said, "I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis. The great point is to bring them the real facts."

Perhaps the greatest problem facing President Obama and the Democrats is that they have not be able to connect voters in such a way as to be able "to bring them the real facts".

The conservative Republicans, and in particular, the Tea Party, are extremely effective in their ability to deliver messages that resonate with their core group of supporters and those supporters consistently vote. They liken themselves to the group who fought and won independence from England. But their rhetoric is much closer to the political leaders in the Southern States in the years leading up to the Civil War.

Those men, primarily slave-holding plantation owners looking to not just maintain the "status-quo", but increase their own personal wealth at the direct expense of others, were able to convince poor white non-slaveholders that fighting for and maintaining slavery was beneficial for all whites, even thought that was certainly not true. They were also able to convince their fellow citizens that the Federal Government was intent upon not only usurping States' rights, but individual right as well.

Conservative Republicans and the Tea Party have convinced their supporters that any programs put forth by President Obama and/or the Democrats will do more harm than good and take away State and individual rights. Sadly, some of their most ardent supporters are not the wealthiest nor in the upper classes. The very programs they have been told to oppose are the very programs which they need now or may need one day such as healthcare insurance, Social Security and Medicaid.

A majority of Americans, including members of the NRA, believe that the country needs more restrictions on gun ownership, yet the GOP, Tea Party and NRA are fighting against any regulations and because some Democrats fear losing their seats in Congress, they will not vote for any regulations.  But clearly regulations are needed, especially a ban on assault-style weapons and clips that hold more than 10 rounds of ammunition.

We must, like Lincoln, reach out to all people, regardless of political beliefs and find the way "to bring them the real facts."

Michele Bachmann, the Founding Fathers and slavery

When U.S. Representative Michele Bachmann stated that "the Founding Fathers worked tirelessly to end slavery."  She was wrong.  Slavery did not end until the Civil War and none of the Founding Fathers were alive at the start of the Civil War.  While James Madison and George Washington and a few others left instructions in their wills to free their slaves, they did not work for emancipation.

Rather, the Founding Fathers worked tirelessly to write a constitution, create a new form of government and get the Constitution ratified.  They made comprises and one of those compromises was on the issue of slavery.  While some delegates in the northern colonies wanted slavery abolished, they knew that no constitution which prohibited owning slaves would ever get support from the delegates from the southern colonies.

While Rep. Bachmann made this error in a speech over a year ago, the significance, even now, is that she does not seem to have a basic knowledge of the early history of the United States.  This is troubling because there are people who rely on her for information.  Although members of Congress need not be experts in U. S. History and/or the Constitution/Bill of Rights, they must be certain their facts are correct.

Should United States Senators and Representatives understand the United States Bill of Rights and Constitution

Thursday, March 14 2013, Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein from California and freshman Republican Senator Ted Cruz from Texas debated the Second Amendment.  Senator Cruz attempted to argue that any restrictions on gun ownership would be unconstitutional by lecturing Senator Feinstein on the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.  Unfortunately, he does not have the knowledge to teach the Senator or anyone else about either of these documents.  He wanted to know if Senator Feinstein would approve any attempt to place restrictions on rights guaranteed by the First Amendment.  Apparently,  the Senator from Texas is not aware that there are certain restrictions on freedom of speech and freedom of the press.  The example used most often to illustrate restrictions on free speech is "You can't yell 'FIRE' in a crowded place when there is no fire." Newspapers and magazines are subject to charges of libel and/or slander if they print stories which are completely false.  These are basic examples that Senator Cruz should have known.

Unfortunately, Senator Cruz is not alone in lacking understanding of the Bill of Rights and/or the Constitution.  There are other members of Congress who also do not have a working knowledge of these documents.  In October 2010, Representative Michele Bachmann said she would hold Constitution classes beginning in 2011 taught by ultra conservatives.  She, her fellow members of Congress and all the people they represent would have been better served if they were taught by professors and/or teachers who are experts in their fields.  While every Representative and Senator does not need to be an expert in Constitutional History and/or Constitutional Law, shouldn't they at least have a basic understanding of the document?  But then again, shouldn't the people who elect them?

The Politician by H.L. Mencken

If you have never read The Politician by H.L. Mencken, here it is.  This essay is as appropriate now as it was when Mencken wrote it in 1940.

The Politician - H.L. Mencken

The Politician, by H.L. Mencken

(From A Mencken Chrestomathy, pp148-152. January 4th, 1940.)

After damning politicians up hill and down dale for many years, as rogues

and vagabonds, frauds and scoundrels, I sometimes suspect that, like 

everyone else, I often expect too much of them. Though faith and confidence

are surely more or less foreign to my nature, I not infrequently find myself

looking to them to be able, diligent, candid, and even honest. Plainly enough,

that is too large an order, as anyone must realize who reflects upon the manner

in which they reach public office. They seldom if ever get there by merit alone, 

at least in democratic states. Sometimes, to be sure, it happens, but only by a kind 

of miracle. They are chosen normally for quite different reasons, the chief of 

which is simply their power to impress and enchant the intellectually underprivileged. 

It is a talent like any other, and when it is exercised by a radio crooner, a movie actor 

or a bishop, it even takes on a certain austere and sorry respectability. But it is obviously 

not identical with a capacity for the intricate problems of statecraft.

Those problems demand for their solution - when they are soluble at all, which is not often 

- a high degree of technical proficiency, and with it there should go an adamantine kind of

 integrity, for the temptations of a public official are almost as cruel as those of a glamor girl 

or a dipsomaniac. But we train a man for facing them, not by locking him up in a monastery 

and stuffing him with wisdom and virtue, but by turning him loose on the stump. If he is a smart and enterprising fellow, which he usually is, he quickly discovers there that hooey pleases the boobs a great deal more than sense. Indeed, he finds that sense really disquiets and alarms them - that it makes them, at best, intolerably uncomfortable, just as a tight collar makes them uncomfortable, or a speck of dust in the eye, or the thought of Hell. The truth, to the overwhelming majority of mankind, is indistinguishable from a headache. After trying a few shots of it on his customers, the larval statesman concludes sadly that it must hurt them, and after that he taps a more humane keg, and in a little while the whole audience is singing "Glory, glory, hallelujah," and when the returns come in the candidate is on his way to the White House.

I hope no one will mistake this brief account of the political process under democracy for exaggeration. It is almost literally true. I do not mean to argue, remember, that all politicians are villains in the sense that a burglar, a child-stealer, or a Darwinian are villains. Far from it. Many of them, in their private characters, are very charming persons, and I have known plenty that I'd trust with my diamonds, my daughter or my liberty, if I had any such things. I happen to be acquainted to some extent with nearly all the gentlemen, both Democrats and Republicans, who are currently itching for the Presidency, including the present incumbent, and I testify freely that they are all pleasant fellows, with qualities above rather than below the common. The worst of them is a great deal better company than most generals in the army, or writers of murder mysteries, or astrophysicists, and the best is a really superior and wholly delightful man - full of sound knowledge, competent and prudent, frank and enterprising, and quite as honest as any American can be without being clapped into a madhouse. Don't ask me what his name is, for I am not in politics. I can only tell you that he has been in public life a long while, and has not been caught yet.

But will this prodigy, or any of his rivals, ever unload any appreciable amount of sagacity on the stump? Will any of them venture to tell the plain truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth about the situation of the country, foreign or domestic? Will any of them refrain from promises that he knows he can't fulfill - that no human being could fulfill? Will any of them utter a word, however obvious, that will alarm and alienate any of the huge packs of morons who now cluster at the public trough, wallowing in the pap that grows thinner and thinner, hoping against hope? Answer: maybe for a few weeks at the start. Maybe before the campaign really begins. Maybe behind the door. But not after the issue is fairly joined, and the struggle is on in earnest. From that moment they will all resort to demagogy, and by the middle of June of election year the only choice among them will be a choice between amateurs of that science and professionals.

They will all promise every man, woman and child in the country whatever he, she or it wants. They'll all being roving the land looking for chances to make the rich poor, to remedy the irremediable, to succor the unsuccorable, to unscramble the unscrambleable, to dephlogisticate the undephlogisticable. They will all be curing warts by saying words over them, and paying off the national debt with money that no one will have to earn. When one of them demonstrates that twice two is five, another will prove that it is six, six and a half, ten, twenty, n. In brief, they will divest themselves of their character as sensible, candid and truthful men, and become simply candidates for office, bent only on collaring votes. They will all know by then, even supposing that some of them don't know it now, that votes are collared under democracy, not by talking sense but by talking nonsense, and they will apply themselves to the job with a hearty yo-heave-ho. Most of them, before the uproar is over, will actually convince themselves. The winner will be whoever promises the most with the least probability of delivering anything.

Some years ago I accompanied a candidate for the Presidency on his campaign-tour. He was, like all such rascals, an amusing fellow, and I came to like him very much. His speeches, at the start, were full of fire. He was going to save the country from all the stupendous frauds and false pretenses of his rival. Every time that rival offered to rescue another million of poor fish from the neglects and oversights of God he howled his derision from the back platform of his train. I noticed at once that these blasts of common sense got very little applause, and after a while the candidate began to notice it too. Worse, he began to get word from his spies on the train of his rival that the rival was wowing them, panicking them, laying them in the aisles. They threw flowers, hot dogs and fivecent cigars at him. In places where the times were especially hard they tried to unhook the locomotive from his train, so that he'd have to stay with them awhile longer, and promise them some more. There were no Gallup polls in those innocent days, but the local politicians had ways of their own for finding out how the cat was jumping, and they began to join my candidate's train in the middle of the night, and wake him up to tell him that all was lost, including honor. This had some effect almost as powerful as that of sitting in the electric chair. He lost his intelligent manner, and became something you could hardly distinguish from an idealist. Instead of mocking he began to promise, and in a little while he was promising everything that his rival was promising, and a good deal more.

One night out in the Bible country, after the hullabaloo of the day was over, I went into his private car along with another newspaper reporter, and we sat down to gabble with him. This other reporter, a faithful member of the candidate's own party, began to upbraid him, at first very gently, for letting off so much hokum. What did he mean by making promises that no human being on this earth, and not many of the angels in Heaven, could ever hope to carry out? In particular, what was his idea in trying to work off all those preposterous bilebeans and snake-oils on the poor farmers, a class of men who had been fooled and rocked by every fresh wave of politicians since Apostolic times? Did he really believe that the Utopia he had begun so fervently to preach would ever come to pass? Did he honestly think that farmers, as a body, would ever see all their rosy dreams come true, or that the share-croppers in their lower ranks would ever be more than a hop, skip and jump from starvation? The candidate thought awhile, took a long swallow of the coffin-varnish he carried with him, and then replied that the answer in every case was no. He was well aware, he said, that the plight of the farmers was intrinsically hopeless, and would probably continue so, despite doles from the treasury, for centuries to come. He had no notion that anything could be done about it by merely human means, and certainly not by political means: it would take a new Moses, and a whole series of miracles. "But you forget, Mr. Blank," he concluded sadly, "that our agreement in the premisses must remain purely personal. You are not a candidate for President of the United States. I am." As we left him, his interlocutor, a gentleman grown gray in Washington and long ago lost to every decency, pointed the moral of the episode. "In politics," he said, "man must learn to rise above principle." Then he drove it in with another: "When the water reaches the upper deck," he said,"follow the rats."

Republican hypocrisy

          Republicans Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham have stated that they will block Ambassador Rice's nomination as Secretary of State if President Obama should choose to nominate her because she misled the the American people on the events in Benghazi on Sept 11.  They certainly have a right to voice their opinions.  In the days following the attack, the Republicans called for a thorough investigation into exactly what went wrong that led to the deaths of Ambassador Chris Stevens, diplomat Sean Smith and former Navy Seals Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods.  There should be an investigation so that this does not happen again.
          Where was the Republican outrage when Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice and the Bush administration misled and lied to the American people, and to the world, about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and connection to the attacks on September 11, 2001 to justify attacking that country?  Were were the calls by Republicans to investigate any of the seven attacks on U.S. Embassies and Consulates?
          Where was the Republican outrage when the Bush administration labeled anyone who spoke out against the Iraq war as unpatriotic?  Where was the Republican outrage when the Bush administration made the decision to stop news agencies from showing pictures of caskets of American soldiers killed in the Iraq war?  The Bush administration claimed they were respecting the privacy of the dead soldiers and their families.  But the reality is that they were worried that if Americans saw too many caskets, they would stop supporting a war that was unjust.
       Republican outrage would have more credibility if it were not dripping with hypocrisy.