Re: Most Republicans remain as committed to big government as the Democrats

What's Left of the Old Right       PDF
Reclaiming the American Right: The Lost Legacy of the Conservative Movement, Justin Raimondo, ISI Books, 369 pages
By Anthony Gregory

Human Events, the periodical that takes credit for "leading the conservative movement since 1944," has indeed captured the spirit of conservatism since its inception. Felix Morley, opponent of political centralism and foreign war, co-founded the publication; six years later he broke with it over the Cold War. Today, he wouldn't recognize it.

Now the paper generally offers undying loyalty to American aggression, the GOP, and the official Right's talking points. It features shrill partisan commentators such as Ann Coulter and knee-jerk attacks on all things Democratic or "Islamist." At the same time, however, Human Events also publishes Pat Buchanan, dissenter from Bush's (and McCain's) foreign and domestic policies and critic of U.S. wars going back to the 19th century. This dissonance reflects the central paradox of conservatism today­the tension of supporting both traditional limited government and the expansionary warfare state.

To strengthen one's grasp on the struggle within modern conservatism, I recommend Justin Raimondo's Reclaiming the American Right, first published in 1993 and now reprinted with a new introduction by George W. Carey and critical essays by Scott P. Richert and David Gordon.

As Raimondo tells it, the American Right was hijacked shortly after it was formed. The Old Right "was that loose grouping of intellectuals, writers, publicists, and politicians who vocally opposed the New Deal and bitterly resisted U.S. entry into World War II." It comprised Hoover Republicans, disaffected progressive Democrats, individualists, and Middle American populists who wanted freedom and peace. Its members survived and opposed the early Cold War before being crowded out by the New Right.

The antagonists here are big-government conservatives, from William F. Buckley Jr. to the neocons. Raimondo examines several waves of destructive infiltration into the Right by leftists. James Burnham, who broke with Trotsky over support for the Soviet Union, personified the first coup. He abandoned the dialectical materialism that saw communism as inevitable and, in his famous The Managerial Revolution (1941), he described a "new ruling elite ... made up of administrators, technicians, scientists, bureaucrats, and the myriad middlemen who have taken the means of production out of the hands of the capitalists." He cheered the Cold War for regimenting American society and in 1953 became associate (later senior) editor at National Review. He was, Raimondo notes, "a decisive influence on what was to become the fountainhead of American conservatism."

The second round of infiltrators was led by Max Shachtman from the Trotskyite Workers Party. Shachtman believed that "Stalinism had become the barbarism predicted by Trotsky" and that "there was no ... alternative to the totalitarian brutality of the Kremlin except the imperfect but democratic United States." Eventually, the Shachtmanite "conception of Stalinism ... as the 'mortal enemy of Socialism' ... became the ideological cornerstone of anticommunist leftism in the late 1950s." The anti-Stalin Left blended in with conservatives, accepted propaganda financing from the CIA, and embraced the Cold War­often in the name of socialism. The Right became home to ever more ex-Communists, Trotskyites, social democrats, and a myriad of pro-war liberals. Neoconservatism rose in intellectual influence.

It is tempting, therefore, for anti-interventionist rightists to decry the hawks among them as imposters and perpetual war as a leftist program smuggled in by socialists with no claim to true American conservatism. But such a thesis oversimplifies. Much of the World War I opposition came from the Left, as did many of our Old Right heroes. In a terrific chapter on John T. Flynn, Raimondo explains that this 1930s muckraking journalist was a "conventional liberal, whose views were not out of place in that bastion of liberal orthodoxy, The New Republic." And what was a liberal back then? "Flynn supported the Democratic Party platform of 1932, which called for an end to the extravagant spending of the Republicans, a balanced budget, and the abolition of the new government bureaus and commissions." It also opposed fiat money, alcohol prohibition, high tariffs, and belligerence abroad.

"But Flynn was soon disillusioned," writes Raimondo. "During the first hundred days of his administration, Roosevelt racked up a deficit larger than the one it took Hoover two years to produce." Flynn was "particularly horrified" by FDR's National Recovery Administration, which was largely modeled on Mussolini's corporatism. He called it "probably the gravest attack upon the whole principle of democratic society in our political history." The New Deal radicalized Flynn against the central state as his liberal colleagues swooned over FDR's corporatism. Raimondo explains, "The entry of the United States into World War II completed the transformation of Flynn from a disenchanted liberal to a proto-libertarian advocate of laissez-faire and non-intervention."

Other Old Right stalwarts came from the Left. Rose Wilder Lane was a communist sympathizer, but "quite unlike her opposite numbers in the Future Neocons of America contingent," she turned against socialism and came "to challenge the central premise of statism." H.L. Mencken was not a conservative but a radical. There is nothing right-wing about his shockingly irreverent Notes on Democracy, which lambastes nationalism, small towns, creationism, religion, prohibition, World War I, and puritanical busybodies. As for Albert Jay Nock, today's conservatives might see his views on family, landownership, and police as "Cultural Marxism." And the anarchistic Frank Chodorov warned that anyone who called him a conservative would "get a punch in the nose."

On the other hand, the Old Right was thoroughly anti-egalitarian, traditionalist, anti-internationalist, and anti-modernist. Raimondo's hero Garet Garrett, for example, upheld Americanism and nationalist freedom. The great Colonel McCormick was no leftist, nor were Robert Taft or Howard Buffet, leaders of the GOP's anti-Eisenhower wing.

As the Old Right lost the day, however, opponents of war and statism looked elsewhere. The intellectual leader of modern libertarianism, Murray N. Rothbard, split from the Right during the Cold War, sought alliances with the New Left, and worked to, in Raimondo's words, "reorient libertarian thought away from the pessimism of the [Old Right] Remnant by harking back to the optimism of nineteenth-century liberalism."

Rothbard's outlook transcended Left and Right. On foreign policy, he argued that all modern war, by expanding the state and killing the innocent, failed the libertarian test. This went much further than the America First position, which relied on nationalism to curb warmongering.

By the 1990s, when Raimondo wrote Reclaiming the American Right, the Cold War was over and he and Rothbard sensed new opportunities rightward: "Some conservatives looked for new enemies to conquer. But others were reminded of the original concept of the Right's anticommunist crusade as a temporary expedient, an extended but necessary diversion from the main task of building a free society." Seeing libertarians abandon principle­some backed Operation Desert Storm­and Buchananites echoing America First, Rothbard, Raimondo, and others spied the possibility of a new Old Right alliance of libertarians and conservatives against the welfare/warfare state.

That decade gave reassurance to such hopes. When Bill Clinton pursued an illegal war on Serbia and sought unconstitutional police powers, Republicans objected. In 2000, George W. Bush called for a more "humble foreign policy." Then 9/11 happened. Almost all right-wingers reverted to Cold War-style support for the total state in the name of national security. But a conservative remnant has survived with its sanity. Raimondo maintains his affinity with that minority, while encouraging coalitions with the Left against the unlimited war on terror. In this magazine in 2004, he endorsed Ralph Nader as the Old Right choice.

For some libertarians, however, a fusion with conservatism has become impossible. Today, one of the modern Right's fiercest critics is Lew Rockwell, Rothbard's student and colleague, a proponent of paleo alliances in the 1990s, a friend of bourgeois values and the Old Right. Last month, Rockwell spoke at Ron Paul's Rally for the Republic in Minneapolis. "I for one no longer believe that Bush has betrayed conservatives," he said. "In fact, he has fulfilled conservatism, by completing the redefinition ... that began many decades ago with Bill Buckley. ... What does conservatism today stand for? It stands for war. It stands for power. It stands for spying, jailing without trial, torture, counterfeiting without limit, and lying from morning to night."

By contrast, Scott Richert's essay at the end of this edition draws a distinction between conservatism's defense of liberty and the "(abstract) libertarian ideal of nonaggression." For Richert, the trouble with neoconservatism "is not that the wrong ideology won, but that ideology won at all." True conservatism is grounded in Russell Kirk's "permanent things," not abstractions: "Rather than attempting to 'reconcile liberty and tradition,' we need to recover the traditional roots of liberty and recognize that liberty without tradition cannot long survive." This difference in emphasis will always separate libertarians from paleoconservatives, even as we all celebrate the generation that opposed FDR and Truman.

But which movement today best embodies the Old Right spirit? Ron Paul's coalition is, like the Old Right, loose, populist, independent, traditionalist, and radical­the "realignment" in politics that was Colonel McCormick's dream. In the end, however, Paul's campaign was more libertarian than conservative, appealing more to Democratic and independent voters than to Republicans.

Modern conservatives would have despised the Old Right. Indeed, in November 2004, Sean Hannity denounced McCormick for publishing classified information in the Chicago Tribune. In January 2005, Rush Limbaugh loudly accused left-liberals of abandoning the resolute interventionism of FDR and Truman. Regnery Publishing, which used to bring out criticisms of World War II, today prints books defending Japanese internment.

Conservatism today is not too ideological or insufficiently traditional. Rather, it is ideologically devoted to the wrong traditions. It sees the U.S. empire, the police state, the Republican Party, and other right-wing symbols as proxies for freedom, as institutions worth more than liberty. It has adopted coercive nationalism and utilitarian collectivism and cast away the traditions of constitutionalism, freedom, and natural law on which bourgeois values depend.

At the same time, libertarians often neglect their own radical history. Far too many have backed Bush's war. Both libertarians and paleocons would profit from reading Raimondo. We are not the same movement, but we have common cause and overlapping heritage. Revisiting these traditions will help remind non-Hannitized conservatives of the ideals they are supposed to uphold and provide libertarians with the crucial history behind their own beliefs and tradition.
__________________________________________

Anthony Gregory is research analyst at the Independent Institute, a columnist at LewRockwell.com, and adviser for FFF.org. Visit him at AnthonyGregory.com.

http://www.amconmag.com/article/2008/oct/06/00029/

Re: Most Republicans remain as committed to big government as the Democrats

That would eliminate most of the party.

On 03/26/2011 11:19 AM, Keith In D.C. wrote:

Those "Republicans In Name Only" who do not hold fiscally conservative, "constitutional/libertarian"  values and tenets, and who have infiltrated our Party. 

On Sat, Mar 26, 2011 at 1:53 PM, MJ <michaelj@america.net> wrote:

I haven't lost hope!  Stay the course, and let's take our Party, as well as our Nation back!!

Take it back from whom?

Regard$,
--MJ

The Origins of the GOP
by Thomas J. DiLorenzo

Some very silly books have been written about the history of the Republican Party (and the Democrat Party). They tend to read like The Story of Moses, with Christ-like figures overcoming tremendous roadblocks to achieve greatness and sanctify not only themselves, but the entire nation. They are usually written by political hacks and funded rather surreptitiously by various business and other special-interest groups that are associated with the Party. Such books, of course, are pure baloney: "GOP" should really stand for "Gang Of Plunderers."

The Party of Plunder

As soon as the newly-created GOP gained enough power in the late 1850s, the first thing it did was to get the U.S. House of Representatives to pass the protectionist Morrill Tariff during the 1859­60 session, before Lincoln's election and before any southern state had seceded. The Party then vigorously defended southern slavery. Two days before Lincoln's inauguration, after the seven states of the lower South had seceded and taken their fourteen senators with them, the Republican-controlled U.S. Senate passed a constitutional amendment (that had already passed the House) that would have forbidden the federal government from ever interfering with southern slavery. Two days later, Lincoln would pledge his support for this amendment in his first inaugural address, saying he preferred that the defense of slavery in the Constitution be made "express and irrevocable." He also promised in that same address a federal invasion of any state that failed to collect the newly-doubled U.S. tariff rate.

The GOP opposed the extension of slavery to the new territories, not southern slavery, and it did so for the basest of reasons. Reason number one was the desire to keep all blacks ­ slave or free ­ from the territories, which the Party wanted to be an all-white preserve. To the GOP "free soil" meant soil that was free of black people, not freedom per se. That's why states like Illinois, "Land of Lincoln," had previously amended their constitutions to make it illegal for black people to move into them. The few blacks who did reside in these areas had virtually no citizenship rights and were grossly discriminated against in all aspects of their lives.

The second reason for opposing the extension of slavery to the new territories was to limit congressional representation of the Democratic Party, which would have been increased due to the Three-Fifths Clause of the U.S. Constitution, which allowed for every five slaves to be counted as three persons for purposes of determining the number of congressional representatives in each state. Thus, pork-barrel politics and white supremacy were the reasons the "Grand Old Party" gave for opposing the extension of slavery in 1860.

As for politics, the purpose of the GOP's quest for political domination was so that it could finally adopt the old mercantilist economic agenda of the Whigs, who were mostly transformed into Republicans when the Whig Party fell apart in the early 1850s. Once the south seceded, and the Southern Democrats left Congress, the GOP immediately pushed through the entire Whig economic agenda.


Lincoln's "New Deal"

Incapable of ever doing anything but praising the early GOP, most contemporary historians, who are largely ignorant of economics, praise this "achievement" to the treetops. A good example of this appears in the October 2004 issue of The Smithsonian magazine, in an essay by Lincoln biographer David Donald entitled "1860: The Road Not Taken." The essay is part of a "what if" symposium that poses the question of what America would look like had the outcomes of the presidential elections of 1860, 1912, 1932, and 1980 been different.

Donald zeroes in on the Lincoln administration's "social legislation." Had Lincoln not been elected, the Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer writes, a sizeable Democratic minority in Congress

Would have blocked the important economic and social legislation enacted by the Republicans during the Civil War. Thus, there would likely have been no high tariff laws that protected the iron industry, so essential in postwar economic development, no Homestead Act giving 160 acres to settlers willing to occupy and till land out West, no transcontinental railroad legislation, no land-grant colleges, no national currency or national banking system, no Department of Agriculture to offer expert guidance on better seeds and improved tillage. Without such legislation, the economic takeoff that made the United States a major industrial power by the end of the century would have been prevented . . .

Like most Lincoln scholars who comment on economic issues, Donald is mostly ignorant of the subject he is speaking of. Protectionist tariffs made the U.S. steel industry lazy and inefficient by isolating it from the rigors of international competition. Consequently, it became a perpetual whiner and complainer about the "unfairness" of competition ­ the spoiled brat of the American economy. For decades, it has lobbied for protectionism that has plundered the American consumer, made the industry even lazier and more inefficient, allowing it to pander to its unions and their grossly inefficient featherbedding rules, and generally made it far less competitive that it would have been under a free trade regime. Despite a century of "protection," the steel industry has all but disappeared from my home state of Pennsylvania, for example.

Furthermore, the higher steel prices caused by protectionist tariffs have always been harmful to American steel-using industries, which includes virtually all of American manufacturing. Thus, GOP protectionism was a serious drag on American industrial success during the late nineteenth century, contrary to Donald's assertions. American industry grew despite these foolish and counterproductive policies, not because of them.

Late nineteenth-century tariff protection was especially harmful to American agriculture. American farmers have always sold a large portion of their output on foreign markets. Tariffs that reduce the volume of international trade end up reducing the amount of money that our foreign trading partners have with which to purchase American goods, especially American agricultural output. That's why the farmers of the Midwest were vociferous proponents of free trade during the late nineteenth century. GOP protectionism did far more harm to American farmers than any conceivable good that David Donald's beloved U.S. Department of Agriculture bureaucracy could ever have done. Not to mention the fact that our trading partners often retaliated with protectionist policies of their own that blocked the sale of American goods in their countries.

As for the Homestead Act, the majority of the land given away under the Act, as historian Ludwell Johnson has shown, went to timber and mining companies, most assuredly in return for political campaign contributions from those same companies. And the giving away of the land, as opposed to selling it, was a political impetus to keep tariff rates high ­ and economically destructive ­ during this pre-income tax era when the majority of federal revenues came from the tariff.

The government-subsidized transcontinental railroads were arguably the worst examples in all of American history of the corruption and inefficiency that is always associated with government "public works" projects (See Burton Folsom, The Myth of the Robber Barons). They resulted in the Credit Mobilier scandal of the Grant administration, and fueled the arguments of the "progressive movement" to have government regulate and control American business. By contrast, James J. Hill built his highly successful transcontinental railroad, the Great Northern, without a dime of government subsidy.

Land-grant colleges opened the door to the politicization of higher education that plagues virtually every American college and university today, and is the inevitable result of the politicization of education. The Department of Agriculture was never necessary to educate farmers about the latest seeds; the free market can handle such tasks much more efficiently. Instead, the Department of Agriculture has always been, first and foremost, an enforcer of the agricultural cartel operated by federal politicians on behalf of a very important political bloc, farmers. It is the U.S.D.A. that paid farmers for not raising crops and livestock during the Great Depression, when thousands were starving or suffering from malnutrition. Its programs of paying farmers for not farming have always been simply special-interest politics designed to allow federal politicians to buy votes (with taxpayers' money) from farm communities by plundering American consumers with the higher food prices that are caused by these policies.

The Lincoln administration's banking legislation, which Donald also praises, was a precursor to the inflationary-spiral and depression-generating policies of the Fed. They replaced what economic historian Jeffrey Hummel described as the most stable banking system in American history, the so-called free-banking system that existed in the two decades prior to the war, and opened the door to a tremendous centralization of governmental power. That of course is exactly what the Republican Party, comprised of the political descendants of the Federalists and the Whigs, always wanted.

As economists Mark Thornton and Robert Ekelund, Jr., note in their book, Tariffs, Blockades, and Inflation: The Economics of the Civil War (p. 99):

The flurry of new laws, regulations, and bureaucracies created by President Lincoln and the Republican Party is reminiscent of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal in the 1930s, for the volume, scope, and questionable constitutionality of its legislative output. . . . [I]t should not be too surprising to learn that the term "New Deal" was actually coined in March 1865 by a newspaper editor in Raleigh to characterize Lincoln and the Republicans and persuade North Carolina voters to rejoin the Union. The massive expansion of the federal government into the economy led [historian] Daniel Elazar to claim that "one could easily call Lincoln's presidency the New Deal of the 1860s."

The historian Daniel Elazar who is cited by Thornton and Ekelund put together the following table to characterize "Lincoln's New Deal":


Lincoln's New Deal

• Morrill Tariff (1861)
• First Income Tax (1861)
• Expanded Postal Service (1861)
• Homestead Act (1862)
• Morrill Land-Grant College Act (1862)
• Department of Agriculture (1862)
• Bureau of Printing and Engraving (1862)
• Transcontinental Railroad Grants (1862, 1863, 1864)
• National Banking Acts (1863, 1864, 1865, 1866)
• Comptroller of the Currency (1863)
• National Academy of Sciences (1863)
• "Free" Urban Mail Delivery (1863)
• Yosemite Nature Reserve Land Grant (1864)
• Contract Labor Act (1864)
• Office of Immigration (1864)
• Railway Mail Service (1864)
• Money Order System (1864)
  
• Source: Daniel Elazar, "Comment," in D. Gilchrest and W. Lewis, eds. Economic Change in the Civil War Era (1965), pp. 98­99.

More importantly than this legislation, the GOP orchestrated the abolition of the voluntary union of the founding fathers and in its place put a non-voluntary, consolidated empire, waging total war on fellow citizens for four long years in order to succeed. Their stated motives were never to abolish southern slavery, as mentioned above, but they skillfully used the slaves as pawns in their imperialistic scheme, causing the U.S. to become the only nation on earth in the nineteenth century to associate the violence of war with the abolition of slavery. The GOP continued to use the ex-slaves as political pawns during "Reconstruction," a twelve-year plundering expedition throughout the South. When the military occupation ended in 1877, the hapless ex-slaves were then left to fend for themselves against a vengeful population. The Gang of Plunderers did nothing to help them, for Reconstruction was over and they voted overwhelmingly Republican anyway.

Having declared that it possessed "a treasury of virtue" for having "saved the union" and freed the slaves, the GOP then enjoyed a monopoly of political power for decades. Such "virtue" was immediately used to wage a campaign of ethnic genocide against the Plains Indians ­ to make way for the government-subsidized railroads, announced General Sherman, who was the commanding general of the campaign for many years. The South ­ and the rest of the country as well ­ was plundered by protectionist tariffs for the next fifty years by the "virtuous" GOP, primarily for the benefit of the Party's big-business supporters.

To this day politicians -- especially Republican Politicians -- use the fake history of the origins of the GOP as the Party of Saints during the Lincoln era to "justify" any and all manner of interventions, from an expanded welfare state, to the nationalization of the education system, to the current regime's attempt at imperialistic conquest in the Middle East. But in reality it's the same old Gang of Plunderers.

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Re: Most Republicans remain as committed to big government as the Democrats

Reclaiming the American Right

The Lost Legacy of the Conservative Movement

by Justin Raimondo

 
The Old Right and the Future of Conservatism
by Patrick J. Buchanan

Note from the editors: We reprint below Patrick J. Buchanan's Foreword to the second edition of Justin Raimondo's 1993 book, Reclaiming the American Right The Lost Legacy of the Conservative Movement.

What happened to the American Right? What became of a movement once so united and disciplined it could deliver the presidency, consistently, to the Republican Party?

That the old house is divided, fractured, fallen, is undeniable. The great unifier, Ronald Reagan, is gone. The cold war that brought conservatives together, is over. With the Berlin Wall down, the captive nations free, the Evil Empire dissolved and subdivided, many on the Right have stacked arms and gone home. Once there, they have discovered that we come from different neighborhoods, honor different heroes, believe different ideas. To understand the new rifts on the Right, scholars have begun to research its history, explore its roots. Latest to do so is Justin Raimondo, who, in this book, argues that conservatism is a cause corrupted and betrayed. His is a story of heroes and villains, heresies and excommunications, faithfulness and betrayal – a veritable Iliad of the American Right.

Raimondo's book goes back sixty years to the days when the Old right first rose in rebellion against the New Deal and FDR's drive to war. Believers in limited government and nonintervention, the Old Right feared involvement in a second world war would mean permanent disfigurement of the old republic, and a quantum leap in federal power that could never be reversed.

But history is written by the winners.

And these men lost it all: jobs, careers, and honored places in their nation's memory. But they never lost their principles. Garet Garrett, John T. Flynn, Frank Chodorov – who has heard of this lost platoon of the Old Right? They went down fighting and ended their lives in obscurity, resisting the clamor to sign up for the cold war.

Theirs, declares Raimondo, is the lost legacy. And the failures of conservatism are traceable to the Right's abandonment of that legacy. Beginning in the mid-fifties, the Right was captured and co-opted by the undocumented aliens from the Left, carrying with them the viruses of statism and globalism.

First in from the cold, Raimondo writes, came the Communists, refugees from Stalin's purges, from the Hitler-Stalin, and Moscow's attack on the Baltic republics and Finland. First among these was James Burnham, ex-Trotskyist of whom Orwell wrote that he worshipped power. Burnham went o the masthead of National Review from its founding in 1955, to become grand strategist of the cold war. He would be awarded the Medal of Freedom by Ronald Reagan himself . . . but, Raimondo argues, Burnham was never a true conservative; indeed, was barely tolerant of conservatives. A Machiavellian after renouncing Marxism, Burnham preached "American Empire" as the necessary means to combat Communist empire and was first to call for the creation of a "democratic world order."

A second wave of migrants was the neoconservatives. Though Trotskyist, socialists or Social Democrat in their youth, by the mid-sixties they were JFK-LBJ Democrats orphaned by a party dedicated to the proposition that Vietnam was a dirty, immoral war. In 1972, they signed ads for Richard Nixon, a man not widely cherished among their number in his Alger Hiss and Helen Gahagan Douglas days.

With Reagan's triumph, the neocons came into their own, into his government and his movement. Raimondo echoes the Old Right journalist who calls the neocons the cow-birds of conservatism, migratory fowl that wait for other birds to build their nests and lay their eggs, then swoop down, barge in, and kick the first birds out. If conservatism has failed, he writes, it is "because a Trojan horse inside the movement has been undermining the fight against big government. Since the mid-fifties . . . these interlopers have acted as a Fifth Column on the Right: conciliating the welfare state, smearing their Old Right predecessors, and burying the real story of how they came to claim the mantle of conservatism."

And today? "Two traditions stand head-to-head, contending for the future of the . . . movement. One piously holds out the promise of enterprise zones from South Central Los Angeles to Mogadishu, while the other dares utter the forbidden phrase, America First!" Written in defense of, and in the style of, the dead lions of the Old Right whom Justin Raimondo reveres, Reclaiming the American Right is not about olive branches; it is about conflict, about taking back the movement, about taking back America. Richly researched, beautifully written, passionately argued, Reclaiming the American Right is targeted at the "new generation of conservative theorists and activists [that] yearns to get back to first principles and get in touch with its roots." Many will call this revisionist history of the Right, but even those who work for consensus need to understand how those who do not believe, feel and think. And the timing is perfect. For, suddenly, all the new issues before us, Bosnia, Somalia, foreign aid, NAFTA, intervention, immigration, big government, sovereignty, bear striking resemblance to the old.

http://antiwar.com/raimondo/book1.html

Re: Most Republicans remain as committed to big government as the Democrats

I think you have it BACKWARDS (largely). Some of the Old Right fits your claims, but history fails (unless of course you are identifying rhetoric).

Regard$,
--MJ

For the "Third Party System," which had existed in America from 1856 to 1896, was comprised of political parties, each of which was highly ideological and in intense conflict with the opposing party. While each political party, in this case the Democratic, the Republican and various minor parties, consisted of a coalition of interests and forces, each was dominated by a firm ideology to which it was strongly committed. As a result, citizens often felt lifelong party loyalties, were socialized into a party when growing up, were educated in party principles, and then rode herd on any party candidates who waffled or betrayed the cause. ... For various reasons, the  Democratic and Republican parties after 1900 were largely non-ideological, differed very little from each other, and as a result commanded little party loyalty. In particular, the Democratic Party no longer existed, after the Bryan takeover of 1896, as a committed laissez-faire, hard-money party. From then on, both parties rapidly became Progressive and moderately statist.  -- Murray Rothbard



At 02:19 PM 3/26/2011, you wrote:

Those "Republicans In Name Only" who do not hold fiscally conservative, "constitutional/libertarian"  values and tenets, and who have infiltrated our Party. 

On Sat, Mar 26, 2011 at 1:53 PM, MJ <michaelj@america.net> wrote:

I haven't lost hope!  Stay the course, and let's take our Party, as well as our Nation back!!

Take it back from whom?

Regard$,

--MJ

The Origins of the GOP

by Thomas J. DiLorenzo

Some very silly books have been written about the history of the Republican Party (and the Democrat Party). They tend to read like The Story of Moses, with Christ-like figures overcoming tremendous roadblocks to achieve greatness and sanctify not only themselves, but the entire nation. They are usually written by political hacks and funded rather surreptitiously by various business and other special-interest groups that are associated with the Party. Such books, of course, are pure baloney: "GOP" should really stand for "Gang Of Plunderers."

The Party of Plunder

As soon as the newly-created GOP gained enough power in the late 1850s, the first thing it did was to get the U.S. House of Representatives to pass the protectionist Morrill Tariff during the 1859­60 session, before Lincoln's election and before any southern state had seceded. The Party then vigorously defended southern slavery. Two days before Lincoln's inauguration, after the seven states of the lower South had seceded and taken their fourteen senators with them, the Republican-controlled U.S. Senate passed a constitutional amendment (that had already passed the House) that would have forbidden the federal government from ever interfering with southern slavery. Two days later, Lincoln would pledge his support for this amendment in his first inaugural address, saying he preferred that the defense of slavery in the Constitution be made "express and irrevocable." He also promised in that same address a federal invasion of any state that failed to collect the newly-doubled U.S. tariff rate.

The GOP opposed the extension of slavery to the new territories, not southern slavery, and it did so for the basest of reasons. Reason number one was the desire to keep all blacks ­ slave or free ­ from the territories, which the Party wanted to be an all-white preserve. To the GOP "free soil" meant soil that was free of black people, not freedom per se. That's why states like Illinois, "Land of Lincoln," had previously amended their constitutions to make it illegal for black people to move into them. The few blacks who did reside in these areas had virtually no citizenship rights and were grossly discriminated against in all aspects of their lives.

The second reason for opposing the extension of slavery to the new territories was to limit congressional representation of the Democratic Party, which would have been increased due to the Three-Fifths Clause of the U.S. Constitution, which allowed for every five slaves to be counted as three persons for purposes of determining the number of congressional representatives in each state. Thus, pork-barrel politics and white supremacy were the reasons the "Grand Old Party" gave for opposing the extension of slavery in 1860.

As for politics, the purpose of the GOP's quest for political domination was so that it could finally adopt the old mercantilist economic agenda of the Whigs, who were mostly transformed into Republicans when the Whig Party fell apart in the early 1850s. Once the south seceded, and the Southern Democrats left Congress, the GOP immediately pushed through the entire Whig economic agenda.

Lincoln's "New Deal"

Incapable of ever doing anything but praising the early GOP, most contemporary historians, who are largely ignorant of economics, praise this "achievement" to the treetops. A good example of this appears in the October 2004 issue of The Smithsonian magazine, in an essay by Lincoln biographer David Donald entitled "1860: The Road Not Taken." The essay is part of a "what if" symposium that poses the question of what America would look like had the outcomes of the presidential elections of 1860, 1912, 1932, and 1980 been different.

Donald zeroes in on the Lincoln administration's "social legislation." Had Lincoln not been elected, the Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer writes, a sizeable Democratic minority in Congress

Would have blocked the important economic and social legislation enacted by the Republicans during the Civil War. Thus, there would likely have been no high tariff laws that protected the iron industry, so essential in postwar economic development, no Homestead Act giving 160 acres to settlers willing to occupy and till land out West, no transcontinental railroad legislation, no land-grant colleges, no national currency or national banking system, no Department of Agriculture to offer expert guidance on better seeds and improved tillage. Without such legislation, the economic takeoff that made the United States a major industrial power by the end of the century would have been prevented . . .

Like most Lincoln scholars who comment on economic issues, Donald is mostly ignorant of the subject he is speaking of. Protectionist tariffs made the U.S. steel industry lazy and inefficient by isolating it from the rigors of international competition. Consequently, it became a perpetual whiner and complainer about the "unfairness" of competition ­ the spoiled brat of the American economy. For decades, it has lobbied for protectionism that has plundered the American consumer, made the industry even lazier and more inefficient, allowing it to pander to its unions and their grossly inefficient featherbedding rules, and generally made it far less competitive that it would have been under a free trade regime. Despite a century of "protection," the steel industry has all but disappeared from my home state of Pennsylvania, for example.

Furthermore, the higher steel prices caused by protectionist tariffs have always been harmful to American steel-using industries, which includes virtually all of American manufacturing. Thus, GOP protectionism was a serious drag on American industrial success during the late nineteenth century, contrary to Donald's assertions. American industry grew despite these foolish and counterproductive policies, not because of them.

Late nineteenth-century tariff protection was especially harmful to American agriculture. American farmers have always sold a large portion of their output on foreign markets. Tariffs that reduce the volume of international trade end up reducing the amount of money that our foreign trading partners have with which to purchase American goods, especially American agricultural output. That's why the farmers of the Midwest were vociferous proponents of free trade during the late nineteenth century. GOP protectionism did far more harm to American farmers than any conceivable good that David Donald's beloved U.S. Department of Agriculture bureaucracy could ever have done. Not to mention the fact that our trading partners often retaliated with protectionist policies of their own that blocked the sale of American goods in their countries.

As for the Homestead Act, the majority of the land given away under the Act, as historian Ludwell Johnson has shown, went to timber and mining companies, most assuredly in return for political campaign contributions from those same companies. And the giving away of the land, as opposed to selling it, was a political impetus to keep tariff rates high ­ and economically destructive ­ during this pre-income tax era when the majority of federal revenues came from the tariff.

The government-subsidized transcontinental railroads were arguably the worst examples in all of American history of the corruption and inefficiency that is always associated with government "public works" projects (See Burton Folsom, The Myth of the Robber Barons). They resulted in the Credit Mobilier scandal of the Grant administration, and fueled the arguments of the "progressive movement" to have government regulate and control American business. By contrast, James J. Hill built his highly successful transcontinental railroad, the Great Northern, without a dime of government subsidy.

Land-grant colleges opened the door to the politicization of higher education that plagues virtually every American college and university today, and is the inevitable result of the politicization of education. The Department of Agriculture was never necessary to educate farmers about the latest seeds; the free market can handle such tasks much more efficiently. Instead, the Department of Agriculture has always been, first and foremost, an enforcer of the agricultural cartel operated by federal politicians on behalf of a very important political bloc, farmers. It is the U.S.D.A. that paid farmers for not raising crops and livestock during the Great Depression, when thousands were starving or suffering from malnutrition. Its programs of paying farmers for not farming have always been simply special-interest politics designed to allow federal politicians to buy votes (with taxpayers' money) from farm communities by plundering American consumers with the higher food prices that are caused by these policies.

The Lincoln administration's banking legislation, which Donald also praises, was a precursor to the inflationary-spiral and depression-generating policies of the Fed. They replaced what economic historian Jeffrey Hummel described as the most stable banking system in American history, the so-called free-banking system that existed in the two decades prior to the war, and opened the door to a tremendous centralization of governmental power. That of course is exactly what the Republican Party, comprised of the political descendants of the Federalists and the Whigs, always wanted.

As economists Mark Thornton and Robert Ekelund, Jr., note in their book, Tariffs, Blockades, and Inflation: The Economics of the Civil War (p. 99):

The flurry of new laws, regulations, and bureaucracies created by President Lincoln and the Republican Party is reminiscent of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal in the 1930s, for the volume, scope, and questionable constitutionality of its legislative output. . . . [I]t should not be too surprising to learn that the term "New Deal" was actually coined in March 1865 by a newspaper editor in Raleigh to characterize Lincoln and the Republicans and persuade North Carolina voters to rejoin the Union. The massive expansion of the federal government into the economy led [historian] Daniel Elazar to claim that "one could easily call Lincoln's presidency the New Deal of the 1860s."

The historian Daniel Elazar who is cited by Thornton and Ekelund put together the following table to characterize "Lincoln's New Deal":

Lincoln's New Deal

Morrill Tariff (1861)

First Income Tax (1861)

Expanded Postal Service (1861)

Homestead Act (1862)

Morrill Land-Grant College Act (1862)

Department of Agriculture (1862)

Bureau of Printing and Engraving (1862)

Transcontinental Railroad Grants (1862, 1863, 1864)

National Banking Acts (1863, 1864, 1865, 1866)

Comptroller of the Currency (1863)

National Academy of Sciences (1863)

"Free" Urban Mail Delivery (1863)

Yosemite Nature Reserve Land Grant (1864)

Contract Labor Act (1864)

Office of Immigration (1864)

Railway Mail Service (1864)

Money Order System (1864)

Source: Daniel Elazar, "Comment," in D. Gilchrest and W. Lewis, eds. Economic Change in the Civil War Era (1965), pp. 98­99.

More importantly than this legislation, the GOP orchestrated the abolition of the voluntary union of the founding fathers and in its place put a non-voluntary, consolidated empire, waging total war on fellow citizens for four long years in order to succeed. Their stated motives were never to abolish southern slavery, as mentioned above, but they skillfully used the slaves as pawns in their imperialistic scheme, causing the U.S. to become the only nation on earth in the nineteenth century to associate the violence of war with the abolition of slavery. The GOP continued to use the ex-slaves as political pawns during "Reconstruction," a twelve-year plundering expedition throughout the South. When the military occupation ended in 1877, the hapless ex-slaves were then left to fend for themselves against a vengeful population. The Gang of Plunderers did nothing to help them, for Reconstruction was over and they voted overwhelmingly Republican anyway.

Having declared that it possessed "a treasury of virtue" for having "saved the union" and freed the slaves, the GOP then enjoyed a monopoly of political power for decades. Such "virtue" was immediately used to wage a campaign of ethnic genocide against the Plains Indians ­ to make way for the government-subsidized railroads, announced General Sherman, who was the commanding general of the campaign for many years. The South ­ and the rest of the country as well ­ was plundered by protectionist tariffs for the next fifty years by the "virtuous" GOP, primarily for the benefit of the Party's big-business supporters.

To this day politicians -- especially Republican Politicians -- use the fake history of the origins of the GOP as the Party of Saints during the Lincoln era to "justify" any and all manner of interventions, from an expanded welfare state, to the nationalization of the education system, to the current regime's attempt at imperialistic conquest in the Middle East. But in reality it's the same old Gang of Plunderers.

--

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Thanks for being part of "PoliticalForum" at Google Groups.
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* It's active and moderated. Register and vote in our polls.
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Re: Most Republicans remain as committed to big government as the Democrats

Those "Republicans In Name Only" who do not hold fiscally conservative, "constitutional/libertarian"  values and tenets, and who have infiltrated our Party. 

On Sat, Mar 26, 2011 at 1:53 PM, MJ <michaelj@america.net> wrote:

I haven't lost hope!  Stay the course, and let's take our Party, as well as our Nation back!!

Take it back from whom?

Regard$,
--MJ

The Origins of the GOP
by Thomas J. DiLorenzo

Some very silly books have been written about the history of the Republican Party (and the Democrat Party). They tend to read like The Story of Moses, with Christ-like figures overcoming tremendous roadblocks to achieve greatness and sanctify not only themselves, but the entire nation. They are usually written by political hacks and funded rather surreptitiously by various business and other special-interest groups that are associated with the Party. Such books, of course, are pure baloney: "GOP" should really stand for "Gang Of Plunderers."

The Party of Plunder

As soon as the newly-created GOP gained enough power in the late 1850s, the first thing it did was to get the U.S. House of Representatives to pass the protectionist Morrill Tariff during the 1859­60 session, before Lincoln's election and before any southern state had seceded. The Party then vigorously defended southern slavery. Two days before Lincoln's inauguration, after the seven states of the lower South had seceded and taken their fourteen senators with them, the Republican-controlled U.S. Senate passed a constitutional amendment (that had already passed the House) that would have forbidden the federal government from ever interfering with southern slavery. Two days later, Lincoln would pledge his support for this amendment in his first inaugural address, saying he preferred that the defense of slavery in the Constitution be made "express and irrevocable." He also promised in that same address a federal invasion of any state that failed to collect the newly-doubled U.S. tariff rate.

The GOP opposed the extension of slavery to the new territories, not southern slavery, and it did so for the basest of reasons. Reason number one was the desire to keep all blacks ­ slave or free ­ from the territories, which the Party wanted to be an all-white preserve. To the GOP "free soil" meant soil that was free of black people, not freedom per se. That's why states like Illinois, "Land of Lincoln," had previously amended their constitutions to make it illegal for black people to move into them. The few blacks who did reside in these areas had virtually no citizenship rights and were grossly discriminated against in all aspects of their lives.

The second reason for opposing the extension of slavery to the new territories was to limit congressional representation of the Democratic Party, which would have been increased due to the Three-Fifths Clause of the U.S. Constitution, which allowed for every five slaves to be counted as three persons for purposes of determining the number of congressional representatives in each state. Thus, pork-barrel politics and white supremacy were the reasons the "Grand Old Party" gave for opposing the extension of slavery in 1860.

As for politics, the purpose of the GOP's quest for political domination was so that it could finally adopt the old mercantilist economic agenda of the Whigs, who were mostly transformed into Republicans when the Whig Party fell apart in the early 1850s. Once the south seceded, and the Southern Democrats left Congress, the GOP immediately pushed through the entire Whig economic agenda.


Lincoln's "New Deal"

Incapable of ever doing anything but praising the early GOP, most contemporary historians, who are largely ignorant of economics, praise this "achievement" to the treetops. A good example of this appears in the October 2004 issue of The Smithsonian magazine, in an essay by Lincoln biographer David Donald entitled "1860: The Road Not Taken." The essay is part of a "what if" symposium that poses the question of what America would look like had the outcomes of the presidential elections of 1860, 1912, 1932, and 1980 been different.

Donald zeroes in on the Lincoln administration's "social legislation." Had Lincoln not been elected, the Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer writes, a sizeable Democratic minority in Congress

Would have blocked the important economic and social legislation enacted by the Republicans during the Civil War. Thus, there would likely have been no high tariff laws that protected the iron industry, so essential in postwar economic development, no Homestead Act giving 160 acres to settlers willing to occupy and till land out West, no transcontinental railroad legislation, no land-grant colleges, no national currency or national banking system, no Department of Agriculture to offer expert guidance on better seeds and improved tillage. Without such legislation, the economic takeoff that made the United States a major industrial power by the end of the century would have been prevented . . .

Like most Lincoln scholars who comment on economic issues, Donald is mostly ignorant of the subject he is speaking of. Protectionist tariffs made the U.S. steel industry lazy and inefficient by isolating it from the rigors of international competition. Consequently, it became a perpetual whiner and complainer about the "unfairness" of competition ­ the spoiled brat of the American economy. For decades, it has lobbied for protectionism that has plundered the American consumer, made the industry even lazier and more inefficient, allowing it to pander to its unions and their grossly inefficient featherbedding rules, and generally made it far less competitive that it would have been under a free trade regime. Despite a century of "protection," the steel industry has all but disappeared from my home state of Pennsylvania, for example.

Furthermore, the higher steel prices caused by protectionist tariffs have always been harmful to American steel-using industries, which includes virtually all of American manufacturing. Thus, GOP protectionism was a serious drag on American industrial success during the late nineteenth century, contrary to Donald's assertions. American industry grew despite these foolish and counterproductive policies, not because of them.

Late nineteenth-century tariff protection was especially harmful to American agriculture. American farmers have always sold a large portion of their output on foreign markets. Tariffs that reduce the volume of international trade end up reducing the amount of money that our foreign trading partners have with which to purchase American goods, especially American agricultural output. That's why the farmers of the Midwest were vociferous proponents of free trade during the late nineteenth century. GOP protectionism did far more harm to American farmers than any conceivable good that David Donald's beloved U.S. Department of Agriculture bureaucracy could ever have done. Not to mention the fact that our trading partners often retaliated with protectionist policies of their own that blocked the sale of American goods in their countries.

As for the Homestead Act, the majority of the land given away under the Act, as historian Ludwell Johnson has shown, went to timber and mining companies, most assuredly in return for political campaign contributions from those same companies. And the giving away of the land, as opposed to selling it, was a political impetus to keep tariff rates high ­ and economically destructive ­ during this pre-income tax era when the majority of federal revenues came from the tariff.

The government-subsidized transcontinental railroads were arguably the worst examples in all of American history of the corruption and inefficiency that is always associated with government "public works" projects (See Burton Folsom, The Myth of the Robber Barons). They resulted in the Credit Mobilier scandal of the Grant administration, and fueled the arguments of the "progressive movement" to have government regulate and control American business. By contrast, James J. Hill built his highly successful transcontinental railroad, the Great Northern, without a dime of government subsidy.

Land-grant colleges opened the door to the politicization of higher education that plagues virtually every American college and university today, and is the inevitable result of the politicization of education. The Department of Agriculture was never necessary to educate farmers about the latest seeds; the free market can handle such tasks much more efficiently. Instead, the Department of Agriculture has always been, first and foremost, an enforcer of the agricultural cartel operated by federal politicians on behalf of a very important political bloc, farmers. It is the U.S.D.A. that paid farmers for not raising crops and livestock during the Great Depression, when thousands were starving or suffering from malnutrition. Its programs of paying farmers for not farming have always been simply special-interest politics designed to allow federal politicians to buy votes (with taxpayers' money) from farm communities by plundering American consumers with the higher food prices that are caused by these policies.

The Lincoln administration's banking legislation, which Donald also praises, was a precursor to the inflationary-spiral and depression-generating policies of the Fed. They replaced what economic historian Jeffrey Hummel described as the most stable banking system in American history, the so-called free-banking system that existed in the two decades prior to the war, and opened the door to a tremendous centralization of governmental power. That of course is exactly what the Republican Party, comprised of the political descendants of the Federalists and the Whigs, always wanted.

As economists Mark Thornton and Robert Ekelund, Jr., note in their book, Tariffs, Blockades, and Inflation: The Economics of the Civil War (p. 99):

The flurry of new laws, regulations, and bureaucracies created by President Lincoln and the Republican Party is reminiscent of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal in the 1930s, for the volume, scope, and questionable constitutionality of its legislative output. . . . [I]t should not be too surprising to learn that the term "New Deal" was actually coined in March 1865 by a newspaper editor in Raleigh to characterize Lincoln and the Republicans and persuade North Carolina voters to rejoin the Union. The massive expansion of the federal government into the economy led [historian] Daniel Elazar to claim that "one could easily call Lincoln's presidency the New Deal of the 1860s."

The historian Daniel Elazar who is cited by Thornton and Ekelund put together the following table to characterize "Lincoln's New Deal":


Lincoln's New Deal

• Morrill Tariff (1861)
• First Income Tax (1861)
• Expanded Postal Service (1861)
• Homestead Act (1862)
• Morrill Land-Grant College Act (1862)
• Department of Agriculture (1862)
• Bureau of Printing and Engraving (1862)
• Transcontinental Railroad Grants (1862, 1863, 1864)
• National Banking Acts (1863, 1864, 1865, 1866)
• Comptroller of the Currency (1863)
• National Academy of Sciences (1863)
• "Free" Urban Mail Delivery (1863)
• Yosemite Nature Reserve Land Grant (1864)
• Contract Labor Act (1864)
• Office of Immigration (1864)
• Railway Mail Service (1864)
• Money Order System (1864)
  
• Source: Daniel Elazar, "Comment," in D. Gilchrest and W. Lewis, eds. Economic Change in the Civil War Era (1965), pp. 98­99.

More importantly than this legislation, the GOP orchestrated the abolition of the voluntary union of the founding fathers and in its place put a non-voluntary, consolidated empire, waging total war on fellow citizens for four long years in order to succeed. Their stated motives were never to abolish southern slavery, as mentioned above, but they skillfully used the slaves as pawns in their imperialistic scheme, causing the U.S. to become the only nation on earth in the nineteenth century to associate the violence of war with the abolition of slavery. The GOP continued to use the ex-slaves as political pawns during "Reconstruction," a twelve-year plundering expedition throughout the South. When the military occupation ended in 1877, the hapless ex-slaves were then left to fend for themselves against a vengeful population. The Gang of Plunderers did nothing to help them, for Reconstruction was over and they voted overwhelmingly Republican anyway.

Having declared that it possessed "a treasury of virtue" for having "saved the union" and freed the slaves, the GOP then enjoyed a monopoly of political power for decades. Such "virtue" was immediately used to wage a campaign of ethnic genocide against the Plains Indians ­ to make way for the government-subsidized railroads, announced General Sherman, who was the commanding general of the campaign for many years. The South ­ and the rest of the country as well ­ was plundered by protectionist tariffs for the next fifty years by the "virtuous" GOP, primarily for the benefit of the Party's big-business supporters.

To this day politicians -- especially Republican Politicians -- use the fake history of the origins of the GOP as the Party of Saints during the Lincoln era to "justify" any and all manner of interventions, from an expanded welfare state, to the nationalization of the education system, to the current regime's attempt at imperialistic conquest in the Middle East. But in reality it's the same old Gang of Plunderers.

--
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For options & help see http://groups.google.com/group/PoliticalForum
 
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* Read the latest breaking news, and more.

--
Thanks for being part of "PoliticalForum" at Google Groups.
For options & help see http://groups.google.com/group/PoliticalForum
 
* Visit our other community at http://www.PoliticalForum.com/
* It's active and moderated. Register and vote in our polls.
* Read the latest breaking news, and more.

Re: Most Republicans remain as committed to big government as the Democrats

I haven't lost hope!  Stay the course, and let's take our Party, as well as our Nation back!!

Take it back from whom?

Regard$,
--MJ

The Origins of the GOP
by Thomas J. DiLorenzo

Some very silly books have been written about the history of the Republican Party (and the Democrat Party). They tend to read like The Story of Moses, with Christ-like figures overcoming tremendous roadblocks to achieve greatness and sanctify not only themselves, but the entire nation. They are usually written by political hacks and funded rather surreptitiously by various business and other special-interest groups that are associated with the Party. Such books, of course, are pure baloney: "GOP" should really stand for "Gang Of Plunderers."

The Party of Plunder

As soon as the newly-created GOP gained enough power in the late 1850s, the first thing it did was to get the U.S. House of Representatives to pass the protectionist Morrill Tariff during the 1859­60 session, before Lincoln's election and before any southern state had seceded. The Party then vigorously defended southern slavery. Two days before Lincoln's inauguration, after the seven states of the lower South had seceded and taken their fourteen senators with them, the Republican-controlled U.S. Senate passed a constitutional amendment (that had already passed the House) that would have forbidden the federal government from ever interfering with southern slavery. Two days later, Lincoln would pledge his support for this amendment in his first inaugural address, saying he preferred that the defense of slavery in the Constitution be made "express and irrevocable." He also promised in that same address a federal invasion of any state that failed to collect the newly-doubled U.S. tariff rate.

The GOP opposed the extension of slavery to the new territories, not southern slavery, and it did so for the basest of reasons. Reason number one was the desire to keep all blacks ­ slave or free ­ from the territories, which the Party wanted to be an all-white preserve. To the GOP "free soil" meant soil that was free of black people, not freedom per se. That's why states like Illinois, "Land of Lincoln," had previously amended their constitutions to make it illegal for black people to move into them. The few blacks who did reside in these areas had virtually no citizenship rights and were grossly discriminated against in all aspects of their lives.

The second reason for opposing the extension of slavery to the new territories was to limit congressional representation of the Democratic Party, which would have been increased due to the Three-Fifths Clause of the U.S. Constitution, which allowed for every five slaves to be counted as three persons for purposes of determining the number of congressional representatives in each state. Thus, pork-barrel politics and white supremacy were the reasons the "Grand Old Party" gave for opposing the extension of slavery in 1860.

As for politics, the purpose of the GOP's quest for political domination was so that it could finally adopt the old mercantilist economic agenda of the Whigs, who were mostly transformed into Republicans when the Whig Party fell apart in the early 1850s. Once the south seceded, and the Southern Democrats left Congress, the GOP immediately pushed through the entire Whig economic agenda.


Lincoln's "New Deal"

Incapable of ever doing anything but praising the early GOP, most contemporary historians, who are largely ignorant of economics, praise this "achievement" to the treetops. A good example of this appears in the October 2004 issue of The Smithsonian magazine, in an essay by Lincoln biographer David Donald entitled "1860: The Road Not Taken." The essay is part of a "what if" symposium that poses the question of what America would look like had the outcomes of the presidential elections of 1860, 1912, 1932, and 1980 been different.

Donald zeroes in on the Lincoln administration's "social legislation." Had Lincoln not been elected, the Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer writes, a sizeable Democratic minority in Congress

Would have blocked the important economic and social legislation enacted by the Republicans during the Civil War. Thus, there would likely have been no high tariff laws that protected the iron industry, so essential in postwar economic development, no Homestead Act giving 160 acres to settlers willing to occupy and till land out West, no transcontinental railroad legislation, no land-grant colleges, no national currency or national banking system, no Department of Agriculture to offer expert guidance on better seeds and improved tillage. Without such legislation, the economic takeoff that made the United States a major industrial power by the end of the century would have been prevented . . .

Like most Lincoln scholars who comment on economic issues, Donald is mostly ignorant of the subject he is speaking of. Protectionist tariffs made the U.S. steel industry lazy and inefficient by isolating it from the rigors of international competition. Consequently, it became a perpetual whiner and complainer about the "unfairness" of competition ­ the spoiled brat of the American economy. For decades, it has lobbied for protectionism that has plundered the American consumer, made the industry even lazier and more inefficient, allowing it to pander to its unions and their grossly inefficient featherbedding rules, and generally made it far less competitive that it would have been under a free trade regime. Despite a century of "protection," the steel industry has all but disappeared from my home state of Pennsylvania, for example.

Furthermore, the higher steel prices caused by protectionist tariffs have always been harmful to American steel-using industries, which includes virtually all of American manufacturing. Thus, GOP protectionism was a serious drag on American industrial success during the late nineteenth century, contrary to Donald's assertions. American industry grew despite these foolish and counterproductive policies, not because of them.

Late nineteenth-century tariff protection was especially harmful to American agriculture. American farmers have always sold a large portion of their output on foreign markets. Tariffs that reduce the volume of international trade end up reducing the amount of money that our foreign trading partners have with which to purchase American goods, especially American agricultural output. That's why the farmers of the Midwest were vociferous proponents of free trade during the late nineteenth century. GOP protectionism did far more harm to American farmers than any conceivable good that David Donald's beloved U.S. Department of Agriculture bureaucracy could ever have done. Not to mention the fact that our trading partners often retaliated with protectionist policies of their own that blocked the sale of American goods in their countries.

As for the Homestead Act, the majority of the land given away under the Act, as historian Ludwell Johnson has shown, went to timber and mining companies, most assuredly in return for political campaign contributions from those same companies. And the giving away of the land, as opposed to selling it, was a political impetus to keep tariff rates high ­ and economically destructive ­ during this pre-income tax era when the majority of federal revenues came from the tariff.

The government-subsidized transcontinental railroads were arguably the worst examples in all of American history of the corruption and inefficiency that is always associated with government "public works" projects (See Burton Folsom, The Myth of the Robber Barons). They resulted in the Credit Mobilier scandal of the Grant administration, and fueled the arguments of the "progressive movement" to have government regulate and control American business. By contrast, James J. Hill built his highly successful transcontinental railroad, the Great Northern, without a dime of government subsidy.

Land-grant colleges opened the door to the politicization of higher education that plagues virtually every American college and university today, and is the inevitable result of the politicization of education. The Department of Agriculture was never necessary to educate farmers about the latest seeds; the free market can handle such tasks much more efficiently. Instead, the Department of Agriculture has always been, first and foremost, an enforcer of the agricultural cartel operated by federal politicians on behalf of a very important political bloc, farmers. It is the U.S.D.A. that paid farmers for not raising crops and livestock during the Great Depression, when thousands were starving or suffering from malnutrition. Its programs of paying farmers for not farming have always been simply special-interest politics designed to allow federal politicians to buy votes (with taxpayers' money) from farm communities by plundering American consumers with the higher food prices that are caused by these policies.

The Lincoln administration's banking legislation, which Donald also praises, was a precursor to the inflationary-spiral and depression-generating policies of the Fed. They replaced what economic historian Jeffrey Hummel described as the most stable banking system in American history, the so-called free-banking system that existed in the two decades prior to the war, and opened the door to a tremendous centralization of governmental power. That of course is exactly what the Republican Party, comprised of the political descendants of the Federalists and the Whigs, always wanted.

As economists Mark Thornton and Robert Ekelund, Jr., note in their book, Tariffs, Blockades, and Inflation: The Economics of the Civil War (p. 99):

The flurry of new laws, regulations, and bureaucracies created by President Lincoln and the Republican Party is reminiscent of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal in the 1930s, for the volume, scope, and questionable constitutionality of its legislative output. . . . [I]t should not be too surprising to learn that the term "New Deal" was actually coined in March 1865 by a newspaper editor in Raleigh to characterize Lincoln and the Republicans and persuade North Carolina voters to rejoin the Union. The massive expansion of the federal government into the economy led [historian] Daniel Elazar to claim that "one could easily call Lincoln's presidency the New Deal of the 1860s."

The historian Daniel Elazar who is cited by Thornton and Ekelund put together the following table to characterize "Lincoln's New Deal":


Lincoln's New Deal

• Morrill Tariff (1861)
• First Income Tax (1861)
• Expanded Postal Service (1861)
• Homestead Act (1862)
• Morrill Land-Grant College Act (1862)
• Department of Agriculture (1862)
• Bureau of Printing and Engraving (1862)
• Transcontinental Railroad Grants (1862, 1863, 1864)
• National Banking Acts (1863, 1864, 1865, 1866)
• Comptroller of the Currency (1863)
• National Academy of Sciences (1863)
• "Free" Urban Mail Delivery (1863)
• Yosemite Nature Reserve Land Grant (1864)
• Contract Labor Act (1864)
• Office of Immigration (1864)
• Railway Mail Service (1864)
• Money Order System (1864)
  
• Source: Daniel Elazar, "Comment," in D. Gilchrest and W. Lewis, eds. Economic Change in the Civil War Era (1965), pp. 98­99.

More importantly than this legislation, the GOP orchestrated the abolition of the voluntary union of the founding fathers and in its place put a non-voluntary, consolidated empire, waging total war on fellow citizens for four long years in order to succeed. Their stated motives were never to abolish southern slavery, as mentioned above, but they skillfully used the slaves as pawns in their imperialistic scheme, causing the U.S. to become the only nation on earth in the nineteenth century to associate the violence of war with the abolition of slavery. The GOP continued to use the ex-slaves as political pawns during "Reconstruction," a twelve-year plundering expedition throughout the South. When the military occupation ended in 1877, the hapless ex-slaves were then left to fend for themselves against a vengeful population. The Gang of Plunderers did nothing to help them, for Reconstruction was over and they voted overwhelmingly Republican anyway.

Having declared that it possessed "a treasury of virtue" for having "saved the union" and freed the slaves, the GOP then enjoyed a monopoly of political power for decades. Such "virtue" was immediately used to wage a campaign of ethnic genocide against the Plains Indians ­ to make way for the government-subsidized railroads, announced General Sherman, who was the commanding general of the campaign for many years. The South ­ and the rest of the country as well ­ was plundered by protectionist tariffs for the next fifty years by the "virtuous" GOP, primarily for the benefit of the Party's big-business supporters.

To this day politicians -- especially Republican Politicians -- use the fake history of the origins of the GOP as the Party of Saints during the Lincoln era to "justify" any and all manner of interventions, from an expanded welfare state, to the nationalization of the education system, to the current regime's attempt at imperialistic conquest in the Middle East. But in reality it's the same old Gang of Plunderers.

Re: Wringing-the-Neck of Empty Ritual.

My New Constitution is probably 50 times more explicit about the
proper scope of government.  It most definitely limits what government
is empowered to do!  I invite you to elucidate why you suppose my even
more limited government than the Founding Fathers spelled out is in
any wise a bad idea. 

Probably, but unlikely if the 'snippets' are an indicator.
The proper scope of government is to secure (natural) rights <period>. How much more 'explicit' is necessary?

Regard$,
--MJ

It is to secure our rights that we resort to government at all. -- Thomas Jefferson to Francois D'Ivernois, 1795.

Re: Wringing-the-Neck of Empty Ritual.

Another meaningless fallacy spew from Armistead. A pity.
Post this Constitution of yours so we can all revel in its splendor -- of course doing so would further expose your failures.

Regard$,
--MJ

Much of the intellectual legacy of Marx is an anti-intellectual legacy. It has been said that you cannot refute a sneer. Marxism has taught many-inside and outside its ranks-to sneer at capitalism, at inconvenient facts or contrary interpretations, and thus ultimately to sneer at the intellectual process itself. This has been one of the sources of its enduring strength as a political doctrine, and as a means of acquiring and using political power in unbridled ways. -- Thomas Sowell


At 01:10 PM 3/25/2011, you wrote:

MJ, the party-crasher, socialist-communist is bent on destroying, not
saving the USA.  So, that YELLING, quotation-mad jerk is rightly
undeserving of a reply.  — J. A. A. —
>
On Mar 24, 12:44 pm, MJ <micha...@america.net> wrote:
> upholding this simple sworn statement: "Fair play and democracy shall
> have supremacy in the USA!"  Since socialism and communism are the
> anti-theses of fair play and of democracy, I highly recommend that no
> socialist-communist-minded air-heads ever seek public office.  If they
> Democracy is majority rule. 50%+1 lord over 50%-1. Exactly HOW is this incompatible with 'socialism and communism'?
> Why would *anyone* seeking capitalism or liberty want 'democracy'?
> Your Constitution has already been shown to embrace socialism.
> Regard$,
> --MJ"[Democracy] is a fraudulent term used, often by ignorant persons but no less often by intellectual fakers, to describe an infamous mixture of socialism, graft, confiscation of property and denial of personal rights to individuals whose virtuous principles make them offensive" -- Westbrook Pegler, popular columnist of the 1930s and '40s.

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Re: Wringing-the-Neck of Empty Ritual.

Another meaningless fallacy spew from Armistead. A pity.
Post this Constitution of yours so we can all revel in its splendor -- of course doing so would further expose your failures.

Regard$,
--MJ

Much of the intellectual legacy of Marx is an anti-intellectual legacy. It has been said that you cannot refute a sneer. Marxism has taught many-inside and outside its ranks-to sneer at capitalism, at inconvenient facts or contrary interpretations, and thus ultimately to sneer at the intellectual process itself. This has been one of the sources of its enduring strength as a political doctrine, and as a means of acquiring and using political power in unbridled ways. -- Thomas Sowell


At 01:11 PM 3/25/2011, you wrote:

MJ, the party crasher, socialist-communist is bent on destroying, not
saving the USA.  So, that YELLING, quotation-mad jerk is rightly
undeserving of a reply.  — J. A. A. —
>
On Mar 24, 1:06 pm, MJ <micha...@america.net> wrote:
> Round and round we go ... Armistead makes claims ... others request he support those claims ... he replies spewing fallacy while pretending his is not replying.
> Regard$,
> --MJMuch of the intellectual legacy of Marx is an anti-intellectual legacy. It has been said that you cannot refute a sneer. Marxism has taught many-inside and outside its ranks-to sneer at capitalism, at inconvenient facts or contrary interpretations, and thus ultimately to sneer at the intellectual process itself. This has been one of the sources of its enduring strength as a political doctrine, and as a means of acquiring and using political power in unbridled ways. -- Thomas SowellAt 12:10 PM 3/24/2011, you wrote:MJ, the party crasher, socialist-communist is bent on destroying, not
> saving the USA.  So, that YELLING, quotation-mad jerk is rightly
> undeserving of a reply.  — J. A. A. —
> >
> On Mar 23, 11:44 am, MJ <micha...@america.net> wrote:
> > And yet you AGAIN provide a response complete with the standard fallacies and name-calling.
> > As noted previously, I am a member (in good standing?) of this group. If I am crashing your socialist-communist party it is ONLY because you chose to conduct such in THIS forum.
> > Regard$,
> > --MJMuch of the intellectual legacy of Marx is an anti-intellectual legacy. It has been said that you cannot refute a sneer. Marxism has taught many-inside and outside its ranks-to sneer at capitalism, at inconvenient facts or contrary interpretations, and thus ultimately to sneer at the intellectual process itself. This has been one of the sources of its enduring strength as a political doctrine, and as a means of acquiring and using political power in unbridled ways. -- Thomas SowellAt 11:27 AM 3/23/2011, you wrote:Folks:  MJ—the lying, deranged, yelling, socialist-communist, party
> > crasher—is undeserving of being replied to.  — J. A. A. —

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Re: Wringing-the-Neck of Empty Ritual.

Another meaningless fallacy spew from Armistead. A pity.
Post this Constitution of yours so we can all revel in its splendor -- of course doing so would further expose your failures.

Regard$,
--MJ

Much of the intellectual legacy of Marx is an anti-intellectual legacy. It has been said that you cannot refute a sneer. Marxism has taught many-inside and outside its ranks-to sneer at capitalism, at inconvenient facts or contrary interpretations, and thus ultimately to sneer at the intellectual process itself. This has been one of the sources of its enduring strength as a political doctrine, and as a means of acquiring and using political power in unbridled ways. -- Thomas Sowell



At 01:10 PM 3/25/2011, you wrote:

MJ, the party-crasher, socialist-communist is bent on destroying, not
saving the USA.  So, that YELLING, quotation-mad jerk is rightly
undeserving of a reply.  — J. A. A. —
>
On Mar 24, 12:40 pm, MJ <micha...@america.net> wrote:
> And yet ANOTHER response parading as though a response is somehow undeserving -- complete with fallacy spew.
> Is it any wonder he chooses fallacy and name-calling over the 'defense' of his nonsense exposed for what it actually is?
> Regard$,
> -MJMuch of the intellectual legacy of Marx is an anti-intellectual legacy. It has been said that you cannot refute a sneer. Marxism has taught many-inside and outside its ranks-to sneer at capitalism, at inconvenient facts or contrary interpretations, and thus ultimately to sneer at the intellectual process itself. This has been one of the sources of its enduring strength as a political doctrine, and as a means of acquiring and using political power in unbridled ways. -- Thomas SowellAt 12:08 PM 3/24/2011, you wrote:MJ, the party crasher, is bent on destroying, not saving the USA.  So,
> that YELLING, quotation-mad jerk is rightly undeserving of a reply.  —
> J. A. A. —
> >
> On Mar 22, 6:47 pm, MJ <micha...@america.net> wrote:
> > Asked and answered -- only you tried to change the subject while pretending it did not occur.ELSEWHERE in THIS thread:Socialism and communism are the anti-thesis of a representative republic or a democracy.  My New Constitution RETURNS civil liberties to the People and will fire, jail or hang those in government who support socialism and communism.  When you attack my New Constitution with your "include me" talk, you are attacking THE most pro capitalism and pro civil liberties person on the planet!  Get lost, Jonathan!  J. A. A.And now HERE in THIS thread the same person:I am personally recommending that Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and Unemployment Insurance ALL be privatizedwhile continuing to "cover" only those older or sicker people who have no other means of surviving or of getting first rate care. The implications are rather OBVIOUS, but perhaps the author fails to see his EMBRACE of socialism.There is ALSO this from the same person:Businesses or professions meeting licensing standards germane to the type and scope of work such perform, and being regularly apprised of substantive new developments, may control their own work without governmental sanction, nor, once licensed, being required to be other than self-trained to maintain continuing competency for doing safe work within their chosen type. Professionals qualified by training, testing and experience who perform safe and acceptable work within an area of their competency shall not be sanctioned for being unlicensed in another job class or licensing jurisdictionbeyond fair registration cost.  No more than 25% of regulatory board members shall have been employed in the profession or industry regulated.Again continuing to EMBRACE socialism.It should no longer be a 'mystery' why this 'constitution' is NEVER fully presented NOR that the author cannot support what drivel he presents.<sigh> Sad.As noted, were you to actually PROVIDE the text ... one would see MORE examples -- one might easily conclude THAT is essentially the reason you refuse to present and merey proclaim.
> > Regard$,
> > --MJMuch of the intellectual legacy of Marx is an anti-intellectual legacy. It has been said that you cannot refute a sneer. Marxism has taught many-inside and outside its ranks-to sneer at capitalism, at inconvenient facts or contrary interpretations, and thus ultimately to sneer at the intellectual process itself. This has been one of the sources of its enduring strength as a political doctrine, and as a means of acquiring and using political power in unbridled ways. -- Thomas SowellAt 06:43 PM 3/22/2011, you wrote:MJ: You are a deranged, socialist-communist who is clearly LYING about
> > the people-oriented content of my New Constitution!  Please reference
> > a single location whereby intervention is allowed in how private
> > property is used.  You can't do that, I'm sure!  Ha, ha, HA!  —  John
> > A. Armistead —  Patriot
> > >
> > On Mar 22, 1:03 pm, MJ <micha...@america.net> wrote:
> > > Capitalism is the FOUNDATION of a successful USA!  You
> > > aren't telling me anything that I don't tout, daily.  You are probably
> > > doing so to make the readers think it is you who have the right Ideas
> > > and I the converse.
> > > It only takes a cursory review of those pieces you have offered to see how it fails to embrace capitalism -- much less utilize it as a foundation.
> > > Capitalism is the system in which people are free to use their private property without outside interference.
> > > Your 'constitution' is filled with intervention.
> > > Regard$,
> > > --MJ "Bureaucrats write memoranda both because they appear to be busy when they are writing and because the memos, once written, immediately become proof that they were busy" -- Charles Peters.If you agree with me say something like this:  "I
> > > applaud your New Constitution!  We need less, more efficient
> > > government and the return of lost civil liberties.  Outlawing career
> > > politicians from Congress seems like a great place to start.  Good
> > > luck in everything you are seeking to do for the good of the country!
> > > — J. A. Armistead  —
> > > >
> > > On Mar 21, 11:54 am, Jonathan Ashley <jonathanashle...@lavabit.com>
> > > wrote:
> > > > John,
> > > >
> > > > eBay is a perfect example of capitalism at work. Over 2,000 transactions
> > > > are performed every minute throughout the world with no need for
> > > > government. Both parties involved in those transactions report they are
> > > > happy with the transaction 96% of the time.
> > > >
> > > > There is no need for government involvement in commerce.
> > > >
> > > > On 03/21/2011 07:15 AM, NoEinstein wrote:
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > > Socialism and communism are the anti-thesis of a representative
> > > > > republic or a democracy.  My New Constitution RETURNS civil liberties
> > > > > to the People and will fire, jail or hang those in government who
> > > > > support socialism and communism.  When you attack my New Constitution
> > > > > with your "include me" talk, you are attacking THE most pro capitalism
> > > > > and pro civil liberties person on the planet!  Get lost, Jonathan!  �
> > > > > J. A. A. �
> > > > > On Mar 19, 10:57 pm, Jonathan Ashley<jonathanashle...@lavabit.com>
> > > > > wrote:
> > > > >> Civil liberties require government permission. As I choose to be a free
> > > > >> sovereign, I do not consent.
> > > >
> > > > >> As for free enterprise, I sell on eBay. No government interference, 96%
> > > > >> successful transactions worldwide. That is as pro free enterprise as it
> > > > >> gets.
> > > >
> > > > >> On 03/19/2011 07:45 PM, NoEinstein wrote:
> > > >
> > > > >>> Jonathan Ashley isn't pro civil liberties nor pro free enterprise.
> > > > >>> So, like I first assumed, he is a socialist-communist bent on tearing
> > > > >>> down this country rather than saving it.  He should be railroaded out
> > > > >>> of the USA!  � J. A. A. �
> > > > >>> On Mar 18, 5:49 pm, Jonathan Ashley<jonathanashle...@lavabit.com>
> > > > >>> wrote:
> > > > >>>> Wanna-Be-Dictator John A. Armistead has spoken once again!
> > > > >>>> He wants to close down all news networks and outlaw political parties.
> > > > >>>> He also thinks world government proponent Newt Gingrich has "the smarts
> > > > >>>> and the temperament to be President."
> > > > >>>> On 03/18/2011 02:35 PM, NoEinstein wrote:
> > > > >>>>> Bill O'Reilly and Chris Wallace get hot-under-the-collar if a "guest",
> > > > >>>>> like Sarah Palin, avoids answering questions that tie her hands on
> > > > >>>>> issues that are in flux.  Those two Fox jerks suppose that since they
> > > > >>>>> are high paid and elitist, that people must do exactly like they say
> > > > >>>>> or face ridicule.  Within one week after my New Constitution is
> > > > >>>>> ratified, the entire Fox News Network will likely be closed down for
> > > > >>>>> not being in the best interest of the country.  But not to worry!  The
> > > > >>>>> other News Networks will be shuttered as well.  The "problem" is that
> > > > >>>>> NEWS, and commentary on that news, cannot occur on the same network.
> > > > >>>>> Of course that is only for news relating to elections or "politics".
> > > > >>>>> I put that word in quotes, because political parties will be
> > > > >>>>> outlawed!  Socialism will become a non issue,...
>
> read more »

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