|
|
|
|
The Rat
SFN Regular
Canada
1370 Posts |
 Posted - 07/01/2009 : 07:28:25
|
Please understand that this is coming from a Canadian who, like most of us, can't make head nor tails of how your system works (or doesn't. Anyone remember 8 years of GWB? ) But I have often thought that if I were forced to leave this beautiful country and take up residence to the south I would become a member of the Republican Party. I will give you all a few seconds to allow your hearts to stop fluttering.
Why would a left-leaning liberal like me take such drastic action? Simple - I believe that it's time the Republican Party was dragged, kicking and screaming if necessary, back to its roots. If memory serves the two prime movers and shakers in the early days of the party were Abraham Lincoln and Robert Ingersoll. Judging by what I have read from them and about them it can be said that they were the antithesis of what we see in the modern version of the party. They were supporters of labor, not big business. They believed in civil liberties, not domestic spying on citizens. They supported the rights of women and minorities. They stood firmly for separation of church and state, not sucking up to fundamentalist religion. (Ingersoll's writings make it clear that he was at the very least an agnostic, bordering on outright atheist. Lincolns views show that he was certainly no lover of organized religion).
In short, they were flaming LIBERALS! Left enough to make Limbaugh's head explode. Pinko enough to induce Michael Savage to jump off a bridge. Ann 'The Man' Coulter would be reduced to a trembling wreck.
Since it is often easier to change an organization from the inside rather than with outside pressure, I believe the time has come for an insurgency in the party to help ensure that "government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth".
Discuss.
|
Bailey's second law; There is no relationship between the three virtues of intelligence, education, and wisdom.
You fiend! Never have I encountered such corrupt and foul-minded perversity! Have you ever considered a career in the Church? - The Bishop of Bath and Wells, Blackadder II
Baculum's page: http://www.bebo.com/Profile.jsp?MemberId=3947338590 |
|
|
Dude
SFN Die Hard
USA
6891 Posts |
Posted - 07/01/2009 : 07:47:36 [Permalink]
|
Both major US political parties have traveled a twisted path over the last century. There is no way you can reconcile the GOP of today with the party that Lincoln started.
Mostly you can thank the neo-conservative recruitment of the religious right into the GOP for that. After civil rights laws were passed a LOT of southerners left the dems and became prime targets for the new GOP to recruit.
The neocons hit political gold too, because the social issues the retards care about do not conflict with the corporatist/imperialist philosophy of the typical neocon.
Through clever marketing and highly (masterful really) use of rhetoric the neocons rode their new stalking horse to power in 1980. 20 of the last 28 years (pre-Obama) have been republican presidencies.
But yeah, if a republican stood up today and adopted the philosophy of Lincoln, the talking heads would (mostly) explode with accusations of communism/socialism/muslimism/whatever other nonsense thing they could think of.
|
Ignorance is preferable to error; and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong.
-- Thomas Jefferson
"god :: the last refuge of a man with no answers and no argument." - G. Carlin
Hope, n.
The handmaiden of desperation; the opiate of despair; the illegible signpost on the road to perdition. ~~ da filth |
|
 |
|
|
BigPapaSmurf
SFN Die Hard
3192 Posts |
Posted - 07/01/2009 : 07:48:07 [Permalink]
|
| I'm starting a new party, the Pimps and Ho's Party, BYOB, free cover for chicks. |
"...things I have neither seen nor experienced nor heard tell of from anybody else; things, what is more, that do not in fact exist and could not ever exist at all. So my readers must not believe a word I say." -Lucian on his book True History
"...They accept such things on faith alone, without any evidence. So if a fraudulent and cunning person who knows how to take advantage of a situation comes among them, he can make himself rich in a short time." -Lucian critical of early Christians c.166 AD From his book, De Morte Peregrini |
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
Should progressive Americans join the G.O.P?
