To Glenn Beck and the Tea Party new comers:

"Government is the coming together of people to do for one another collectively what they could not do as well or at all privately through the market system or philanthropy." - Abraham Lincoln (liberal!)   

“People” coming together as a “collective,” disrespecting our market system and the failures of “philanthropy?” Does that quote sound like something a conservative would say? No of course not. It sounds socialist and practically communist. In the 1860s the fairly new Republican party was comprised mostly of members with Liberal ideals. And the Democratic party members had conservative ideals. A lot of people who study American history know that, but you newbies to politics choose to not find that out, or you are just in denial. Even your leader Glen Beck didn't know that when he chose the Lincoln memorial for your fall rally in 09. There have been party ideology switches this century in the baby boomer generation, such as the conservative democrats flight to change parties after the Civil Rights Act of 1964. (the act that effectively ended legal segregation in our nation). Go ahead ask somone! The quotation above is famous in Liberal circles and was said by Abraham Lincoln (See "Lincoln's Hands," his original manuscript). If you folks, who praise President Lincoln, and think he represented your party today, knew this to begin with, you would not have been making fools of yourselves in front of the Lincoln memorial and in the minds of US historians, intellectuals and liberals, 8 out of 10 Phds, 94% of all scientists, and half of our politicians. It is apparent to me that Tea Partyers and conservatives really only like Lincoln because he freed the slaves (something that Liberals had wanted for for decades). And if they praise Lincoln then that provides cover from the media so that the conservative right doesn’t look as if they are racists. And with President Lincoln in their pockets they can attract more African American members, from somewhere. The racism of the right wing is pretty clear because of the right’s hatred for a black president who is doing less damage and more reform, that helps all citizens, than the white conservative president before him had ever done in 8 years. Where was the tea party while the white President Bush was adding more than 3 trillion dollars to our national debt for two wars that were not even necessary? Where was the Tea Party when that white President Bush gave tax cuts to rich people without even making up for it anywhere else in his budgets! President Bush was a tax and spend Republican. So was the white Ronald Reagan who tripled our national debt. Why were the Tea Partiers not carrying posters of the white George Bush as a black African witchdoctor with a bone through his nose at their tax day march? Answer: deep down inside, hidden from political correctness of our society, a black president is an affront to the sensibilities of a true conservative.

By pretending to embrace Lincoln’s party politics you conservatives are warping history. Don’t you care that students learn true facts about our past? Or does that concern mean less to you than boosting your roles by hiding behind a liberal. A liberal Lincoln who clearly used “big government,” to better the United States as whole, when the states had continuously failed to better themselves and bring fairness to their citizens?

Our government representatives have not spent 234 years passing laws willy nilly for the fun of it. Tea Partiers and other conservatives go ahead and study President Lincoln’s record of laws passed. While you are studying Lincoln’s ideals and ask yourselves which federal government laws existing today used to be run just fine without Lincoln’s ideal of what our government really is? Ask yourselves which federal laws can you honestly say were not even needed before they were created, and why were they needed, and do those problems that cause us to write laws, remain today? What were the continuing failures of small governments and individuals that caused our representatives to come together for nationwide solutions? You can also contemplate which specific laws you want to get rid of now that you think that the problems that they had addressed can be handled well at the local level? Look at your past and find evidence that supports your beliefs that the big bad government can’t do anything right. The truth is our Democratic Republic has a centralized government that does a hell of lot more good for its citizens than a pack of conservative governors running around in circles, mostly ending up where their state had started from.

At your convention last year, 80% of the audience when asked if “you have ever been involved in politics before?” raised their hands to answer no. This ignorance is really making you guys look foolish. Tea Partiers and other conservatives should return to school, take civics and United States history. Perhaps you could make a new website called Government as Seen through Tea Party Tainted Glasses.”It is an established maxim and moral that he who makes an assertion without knowing whether it is true or false is guilty of falsehood, and the accidental truth of the assertion does not justify or excuse him.”

-- Abraham Lincoln, chiding the editor of a Springfield, Illinois, newspaper

Our Congress' Wuss Factor is Our Fault

This democratic congress is finding it easy to be seen as soft on civil liberties, and by voting for militaristic measures and funding, finding it tough to be seen as soft on fighting terrorist acts. Many are complaining about this “wuss factor” seen in the democratic party’s elected representatives, and called so by an increasing number of their constituents. I know, we want to cast a schoolyard type blame, to imply some inherent trait in their characters, for their seeming inability to have a spine, but that is too easy an out for us who are seeking legitimate answers. But it is the constituents fault alone that our representatives have been voting as they have.

The fault for the democratic congress voting against civil liberties, like the expansion of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) extension bill of August, 2007, lies firmly with the people, with their knowledge, and with their willingness to communicate with their representatives. Consider it is easy to be soft on civil liberties because the constituency is relaxed on civil liberties. The people find the bill of rights too complex, too boring, too much nuance. The arguments for and against amendments in the Constitution are tedious, intellectual, and deep. Its no wonder the phones and fax machines don’t ring off the hook, from the people in the districts, save for a few dedicated civil libertarians and liberals screaming to save civil rights. Hence, it is easy to vote on the floor for measures which tip the scales out of balance from civil liberties to fighting terrorism and militarism.

In 1755 (Pennsylvania Assembly: Reply to the Governor, Tue, Nov 11, 1755), Franklin wrote: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." This is likely a truism. However a key word here is “essential,” as in our basic needs for liberty, for freedom. Too many simple thinkers can not foresee them ever losing their essential freedoms, sure losing some liberties they can concede, but the basics, just not fathomable.

UNFINISHED sorry. It just got tedious.

 

Politcal Parties Not Always Party Poopers

We Americans must accept that we have political parties and that we should find our party based upon our ideals and stick with it for awhile. Since early in our nation’s political history, partisanship has been here to stay. We must learn to grow with it, changing it from within, and enjoying its victories, and learning from its losses.

In the beginning we were not supposed to have political parties. In fact the framers spoke of the demerits of party politics in the few years before drafting a constitution. But within fifteen years of adopting our Constitution, the congress broke-off into two camps, or “parties,” and the presidential and gubernatorial candidates followed behind. Former loyalists (to the King) became the Whigs, and revolutionaries became the Federalists. The Whigs favored a strictly republic form of government with little to no citizenship representation or decision making. The Federalists favored a republic but wanted representative democracy. Thus formed the popular terms and then form parties: the Republican and the Democratic parties. Today the party conventions, primary elections, party officers both local and national, are all inventions which are not mandated in the Articles of Confederation which lay-out the architecture of our government.

We have all heard it or even said it before; “there’s no difference between the parties, they’re both a bunch of corrupt crooks and money hungry (etc..).” The statement reflects an ignorance of what is really going on. Those parties and those representatives within are no more corrupt, no more crooks, than the members of your own family, or if not, the family next door to you. Sometimes they can’t balance their check book. Sometimes the infighting is so bad, the car has to pull over off the road for the ruckus to settle. Sometimes they grow so fat and lethargic and glutinous that it becomes obvious and members must be expelled. The founders were right about the congress, its alive, its reflective of our citizenship and its no better or worse than you or I.

The parties also, each have a philosophy to be followed. Sometimes the philosophy is not written but can be examined and defined from a distance. The best way to determine a political party’s philosophy is to study their actions – as is the case with all of us, i.e. “we are what we have done.”

It is understood that there will always be two parties of merit able strength in American politics. In actuality, in most politics around the world, especially where some form of democracy is in place, a single body comprised of individual entities will form-up into legions that have coalesced into two formations.

In nature; bi symmetry is found in almost all life forms. There are not life forms where, for instance, the Democratic Party female, mates with a Republican Party male, and then an Independent and a Green Party Senator must join in to complete the process. In all warm blooded reproduction on Earth there are two phases to fertilization, the forming process (the body politic comes together), and the addition from outside of a fertilization body into the formation (a legislative act, a bill, a need, a demand).

Accept there should be two. Know that two camps of everything is natural. For example; vote for your Green Party candidates with devotion, disregarding what ever is happening in the major parties, and you really do throw away your vote. But, you also reverse the progress of a natural process that has evolved over the years. In the future, one party, or three, or four parties, will eventually be two again. Don’t put American citizens through the growing process of failed representation, all over again.

Currently in divided American party politics, one party is filled with followers who require leadership to follow, to hear its party dogma from, and to absorb that dogma into their psyche. This is one of many generalizations of the Republican Party.

The constituents who support this party are hard working, blue collar and white collar middle to lower class peoples. They are more likely to occupy the land area away from the major cities (where people live densely together they vote Democratic). They are less likely to have the time to spend investigating media reports of what politicians are doing, or which ones are responsible for what actions. They do have the time to listen to am radio in their vehicles, either at work, or driving to or from work. Since 1987 when the Ronald Reagan administration released all broadcast radio and television stations and owners from responsibility to follow an 70 years old law requiring all political opinion or campaigning be balanced with opposition, the Fairness in Broadcasting Act, religions and conservative ownership immediately moved into those markets and suddenly politically Conservative and Christian right-wing fundamentalists began owning large chunks of middle American market. The blue and white collar middle and lower working classes who really only had time to get their media from the radio in the care, could now hear Rush Limbaugh all over the country, without hearing an opposition viewpoint.

The other party proceeds slower but with more detail, more complexity, seeing and preparing for more contingencies. The members of this party base their judgments on what they have seen, or what they have read from those who make it their life’s career to know the related subjects. This is the Democratic Party and they are sort of a free pastoral range herd of independent and critical thinkers. A herd that refuses to follow a leader in any procession towards any matter they themselves have not investigated to full understanding. As disorganized as this may seem, their goals are more closely related than is first perceived. Each of them is facing toward their goal together and it’s a long term goal, with big solutions, permanent fixes to age old problems. Their goals have something else in common; for any numerous reasons, over the many years and decades, the people have not be able to reach these numerous goals themselves.

I challenge anyone reading this opinion article to disprove the following generalization which I feel accurately describes the difference between the Democratic and Republican parties:

Under Republicans

Man Exploits Man.

Under Democrats

It’s the Opposite.

This statement could be disproved by searching for legislation advocated for almost exclusively by the modern Republican party (post Civil Rights Act 1968) which does not contain provisions allowing the further, or easier, or newly created exploitation of workers, of consumers, or of immigrants, or of public servants. Go ahead look it up. The Republican party of today throws in something for the big corporations to exploit, in almost all legislation. They fight Democratic party legislation that seeks to aid and assist workers and consumers, to live better and to have equal opportunity. So, Democratic Party members and supporters seek to reverse exploitation, and Republican Party members seek to allow the exploitation of men by other men.