R i g h t a r d i a: The Republican mythos

Saturday, August 21, 2010

The Republican mythos

The GOP would like you to beleive that they represent the heritage of the Founders. However, founders such as Jefferson, Franklin and Madison were not conservative.

Are you surprised in Texas they want Jefferson out of the history books and replaced with a Founder who thought the US was a Christian nation.

That is the second big myth: the US was founded as a Christian nation. In fact, the Establishment Clause (the first Amendment) makes it clear there is no official state religion or religious tests. The Treaty of Tripoli also makes it clear that the US is a secular state.

Article 11 of the Treaty of Tripoli reads:

Art. 11. As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion,—as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquility, of Mussulmen,—and as the said States never entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mahometan nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.

According to Frank Lambert, Professor of History at Purdue University, the assurances in Article 11 were "intended to allay the fears of the Muslim state by insisting that religion would not govern how the treaty was interpreted and enforced. John Adams and the Senate made clear that the pact was between two sovereign states, not between two religious powers."

Article 11 has also been cited by 21st-century church/state separatists as one of several documents — including the Federalist Papers papers and the Declaration of Independence — that demonstrated, according to author Brooke Allen, that the Founding Fathers "... were not religious men".

The Senate's ratification was only the third recorded unanimous vote ever taken. The treaty was printed in the Philadelphia Gazette and two New York papers, with no evidence of any public dissent.

It is risky to judge the founders by the standards of today. Historians call this present-mindedness. For example, conservatives may say that the Founders were clearly not socialistic, but socialistic thought didn't become well known until the 1870s.

The Republicans tried to take credit for the voting Rights Act of 1965. Specifically, Congress intended the Act to outlaw the practice of requiring otherwise qualified voters to pass literacy tests. The Act was signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson, a Democrat, who had earlier signed the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964 into law.

Many Republicans supported both laws but both laws were hallmarks of the Johnson administration. After the laws were signed many Democratic Dixiecrats became Republicans. The exodus of southern Democrats from the Democratic party was a big factor in the Reagan counter-revolution in the next decade.

Now Glen Beck is suggesting that the legacy of Martin Luther King was Republican and Christian. No record exists of MLK ever being a registered Republican.

King was nonpartisan in word and deed. King was driven by a moral conscience that was affirmed growing up in the historical black church along with his deeply held belief in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

According to Byron Williams, neither party has the right to lay claim to his great legacy. Of course, MLK is a hero in the Democratic party, but Democrats have rarely claimed King was a Democrat. Democrats have claimed MLK's legacy and this is why blacks and Hispanics voted overwhelmingly Democratic in the 2008 elections.

Republicans have made a ludicrous claim that MLK was in their political party.

When you a minority party you are forced to provide konservative kool aid to the party faithful using Fox News, NewsMax and talk radio.

It also produces politicians like Sarah Palin and George w. Bush, who are bull shit artists.