Today's Quiz
If you’re like me you enjoy the quizzes that show up daily on Facebook. Do you recognize the Presidents or can you name the villains in the Dick Tracy comics? Or better yet, which one would you be? So if you would indulge me, I have a one question quiz. I am going to give you important planks from a political platform of an American party and you are to identify the political party and the year in which it marched behind these ideas.
The ______(name)________ Party of _____year_______.
1. Committed to creating a road to the middle class for all Americans whether native born or recently emigrated to the US.
2. Dedicated to making higher education available to everyone no matter the locality or condition of poverty into which one was born.
3. Committed to people being able to acquire a home with nothing but sweat equity.
4. Supports a strong federal government and denounces office holders who call for undermining United States government.
5. Dedicated to the Declaration of Independence which declares that government exists to assure the every American has an equal right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
6. Opposed to any economic arrangement that denies working people a chance to lift themselves by dint of their own labor.
If you got this, good going because most Americans would be surprised to know these ideas are the core of the Republican Platform of 1860. This is the Platform Lincoln’s people created and which made the Republican Party a national party.
I grew up in a rock ribbed Republican town and I was interested in history from a very young age. Consequently, I went to a lot of meetings where Republicans spoke. One of my favorites was Everett Dirksen, the Republican Floor leader in the US Senate. He came to Portland Maine to celebrate Lincoln’s birthday. He had a dry humor, spoke in a deep bass voice and approached poetry when he spoke of his fellow son of Illinois, Abraham Lincoln. It should be noted that by the 1950’s the Republicans had often drifted far from the founder they gave such loud lip service. But the memory of Lincoln and his efforts to end slavery were the reason much of the South still voted Democrat, many Blacks voted Republican and on average the Republicans in Congress were more supportive of civil rights legislation than Democrats.
Then in 1960s the Democrats, with the help of Sen. Dirksen, passed the Civil Rights act of 1964. The Republicans faced a moment of truth, support the new law and welcome Democrats to the cause or switch and seek to ride the backlash. That year Barry Goldwater, an opponent of the new law defeated Nelson Rockefeller a supporter, for the Republican Presidential election. Then Nixon ran on the southern strategy which used code words to ride the backlash. By 1980, Reagan he kicked off his campaign on the very ground where the Civil War on the United States had been proclaimed. Talking about “the great emancipator” was no longer in vogue.
An honest assessment of history would say the Party of Lincoln was killed off about 100 years after the man himself was assassinated. Then in 2008, the Democrat, Barack Obama, ran on Lincoln’s legacy, declaring his candidacy where Lincoln had thrown his hat in the ring and running as Lincoln did to give new life to the words of the Declaration of Independence. Then this year a Republican President argued explicitly against the Lincoln legacy and diminished the sacrifices of the men and women who died winning the Civil War. The ignoramus who is the current resident of the White House argued that if Andrew Jackson had been President in 1861 he would have smoothed the whole thing over. Maybe Trump got this idea listening to Attorney General Sessions, maybe it bubbled out of the ooze of the New Right. But you don’t have to know much to recognize pure nonsense when you hear it. In January 1, 1861 the value of the America’s slaves exceeded all other wealth, it was more than all the northern corporations and factories and all the real estate. These slaves were owned in large number almost exclusively by rich southern planters and slave breeders. This kind of wealth and power would never be given away.
Against this backdrop was a fast growing population of working people in the north and the west who didn’t want the value of their free labor depreciated by slaves working on the farm next door. Conversely, the slave owners realized if slavery didn’t march west with the nation, then the south would soon be out voted in the Senate. The last straw for free labor advocates came with the Dred Scott decision in which the Supreme Court severely circumscribed the ability of the people to use democratic institutions to protect free labor. How would Lincoln’s foe, Jackson, a major slave owner and renowned Indian killer have brought these factions together without a terrible conflict?
If we forget what Lincoln and his followers did we are diminished as a nation. Part of our history is the awful sin of slavery which risked making our commitment to equality a cruel joke, but another part is the people who gave their lives to keep that dream alive. At the top of list is Lincoln himself.
I have been a Democrat all my life. I guess I walked through the same door that Jeff Sessions was exiting: the Civil Rights Act. So here is my call to all my fellow Dems,. Let’s stop with the Jefferson-Jackson Days already. From now on let us be the party of Jefferson and Lincoln, the man who wrote the Declaration and the man who preserved its promise. If the Republicans complain we can challenge them to run on the platform of 1860 or failing that we can give them Jackson as a consolation prize. Meanwhile today’s party of equal opportunity can go forth under the flag of the great emancipator. I think he would be proud, after all he won the argument with Democrats when we passed civil rights in 1964.
If you’re like me you enjoy the quizzes that show up daily on Facebook. Do you recognize the Presidents or can you name the villains in the Dick Tracy comics? Or better yet, which one would you be? So if you would indulge me, I have a one question quiz. I am going to give you important planks from a political platform of an American party and you are to identify the political party and the year in which it marched behind these ideas.
The ______(name)________ Party of _____year_______.
1. Committed to creating a road to the middle class for all Americans whether native born or recently emigrated to the US.
2. Dedicated to making higher education available to everyone no matter the locality or condition of poverty into which one was born.
3. Committed to people being able to acquire a home with nothing but sweat equity.
4. Supports a strong federal government and denounces office holders who call for undermining United States government.
5. Dedicated to the Declaration of Independence which declares that government exists to assure the every American has an equal right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
6. Opposed to any economic arrangement that denies working people a chance to lift themselves by dint of their own labor.
If you got this, good going because most Americans would be surprised to know these ideas are the core of the Republican Platform of 1860. This is the Platform Lincoln’s people created and which made the Republican Party a national party.
I grew up in a rock ribbed Republican town and I was interested in history from a very young age. Consequently, I went to a lot of meetings where Republicans spoke. One of my favorites was Everett Dirksen, the Republican Floor leader in the US Senate. He came to Portland Maine to celebrate Lincoln’s birthday. He had a dry humor, spoke in a deep bass voice and approached poetry when he spoke of his fellow son of Illinois, Abraham Lincoln. It should be noted that by the 1950’s the Republicans had often drifted far from the founder they gave such loud lip service. But the memory of Lincoln and his efforts to end slavery were the reason much of the South still voted Democrat, many Blacks voted Republican and on average the Republicans in Congress were more supportive of civil rights legislation than Democrats.
Then in 1960s the Democrats, with the help of Sen. Dirksen, passed the Civil Rights act of 1964. The Republicans faced a moment of truth, support the new law and welcome Democrats to the cause or switch and seek to ride the backlash. That year Barry Goldwater, an opponent of the new law defeated Nelson Rockefeller a supporter, for the Republican Presidential election. Then Nixon ran on the southern strategy which used code words to ride the backlash. By 1980, Reagan he kicked off his campaign on the very ground where the Civil War on the United States had been proclaimed. Talking about “the great emancipator” was no longer in vogue.
An honest assessment of history would say the Party of Lincoln was killed off about 100 years after the man himself was assassinated. Then in 2008, the Democrat, Barack Obama, ran on Lincoln’s legacy, declaring his candidacy where Lincoln had thrown his hat in the ring and running as Lincoln did to give new life to the words of the Declaration of Independence. Then this year a Republican President argued explicitly against the Lincoln legacy and diminished the sacrifices of the men and women who died winning the Civil War. The ignoramus who is the current resident of the White House argued that if Andrew Jackson had been President in 1861 he would have smoothed the whole thing over. Maybe Trump got this idea listening to Attorney General Sessions, maybe it bubbled out of the ooze of the New Right. But you don’t have to know much to recognize pure nonsense when you hear it. In January 1, 1861 the value of the America’s slaves exceeded all other wealth, it was more than all the northern corporations and factories and all the real estate. These slaves were owned in large number almost exclusively by rich southern planters and slave breeders. This kind of wealth and power would never be given away.
Against this backdrop was a fast growing population of working people in the north and the west who didn’t want the value of their free labor depreciated by slaves working on the farm next door. Conversely, the slave owners realized if slavery didn’t march west with the nation, then the south would soon be out voted in the Senate. The last straw for free labor advocates came with the Dred Scott decision in which the Supreme Court severely circumscribed the ability of the people to use democratic institutions to protect free labor. How would Lincoln’s foe, Jackson, a major slave owner and renowned Indian killer have brought these factions together without a terrible conflict?
If we forget what Lincoln and his followers did we are diminished as a nation. Part of our history is the awful sin of slavery which risked making our commitment to equality a cruel joke, but another part is the people who gave their lives to keep that dream alive. At the top of list is Lincoln himself.
I have been a Democrat all my life. I guess I walked through the same door that Jeff Sessions was exiting: the Civil Rights Act. So here is my call to all my fellow Dems,. Let’s stop with the Jefferson-Jackson Days already. From now on let us be the party of Jefferson and Lincoln, the man who wrote the Declaration and the man who preserved its promise. If the Republicans complain we can challenge them to run on the platform of 1860 or failing that we can give them Jackson as a consolation prize. Meanwhile today’s party of equal opportunity can go forth under the flag of the great emancipator. I think he would be proud, after all he won the argument with Democrats when we passed civil rights in 1964.