LIBERTY OR DEPENDENCY

How should one end a disastrous old year and get the new year started off right?  I think the best thing to do is to review the basics.  Thus, this seems to be a good time to review Back to Basics for the Republican Party by Michael Zak.  What exactly does Zak’s book do?  The book tells us about the history of the two major political parties and their roles in charting the course of our nation.  This history begins at our nation’s founding and ends with President William J. Clinton‘s impeachment (the book’s copyright is 2003).  In addition, the book helps us to understand the basic principles of the Republican Party.

The History

Is Back to Basics for the Republican Party biased?  Yes, of course it is, and Zak makes no effort to hide his bias.  Zak wrote the book to teach Republicans about the Republican Party’s beginnings and to urge Republicans to stand for the principles that originally brought the party into being.  The history lesson is in fact the most interesting part the book.  Here we learn something about men whose role in our history is often glossed over or presented unfavorably.

Consider the current congressional leadership listed here at Congress.org.  In a couple of hundred years, how well will our descendents understand the issues of our time if they do not learn something about  Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senator Harry Reid, Senator Mitch McConnell, or Congressman John A. Boehner?  Would we not say poorly?   Nonetheless, most of us learn little about the congressional leaders who helped to form the Republican Party and led it through the Civil War period.  

In addition to helping to end slavery in our nation, Congress’leadership during the Civil War and Reconstruction also helped to pass the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments to our Constitution.  These amendments we use in our day to guarantee the civil rights of minorities.   Zak writes about some of these men.  In particular, he writes about two men, Congressman Thaddeus Stevens and Senator Charles Sumner.   Most histories list Stevens and Sumner as the foremost leaders of the Radical Republicans.

Some members of the Republican Party were not only in favour the abolition of slavery but believed that freed slaves should have complete equality with white citizens. They also opposed the Fugitive Slave Act and the Kansas-Nebraska Act.  This group became known as Radical Republicans.  (from here)

These Republicans were radical in the sense that they wanted an immediate end to slavery and equality for the Negro, and (unlike President Abraham Lincoln) they were unwilling to compromise on the issue.  The problem with their “immoderate” position is that some feared the border states would join the rebellion.  Latter, after the Civil War ended, the Radicals worked to ensure that the freedmen would be be treated in the South as equals.    After Lincoln’s death, the Radical Republicans achieved ascendency in Congress.  However, this period of Radical Republican leadership is rarely described favorably.  Here is an example from the 1911 version of Encyclopedia Britannica. 

This revolution within the Republican party between the years 1865 and 1867 was fostered by a marked recrudescence of sectional feeling in the North, and by the character of the successor of President Lincoln and of the party leaders in Congress.  President Johnson while eminently patriotic and courageous, was tactless and imprudent to the last degree.  Mr Sumner, the leader of the Senate, was not conciliatory in manner, and while incapable of revengeful feeling seemed more considerate of the freedman than of the Southern white.   Thaddeus STEVENS’ influence over the House of Representatives was stronger than that of Sumner over the Senate, regarded the South as ” a conquered province, and his feelings towards the ruling class of the South were harshly vindictive.  (from here)

Zak notes the persecution of Blacks that followed the Civil War, and he observes President Andrew Johnson‘s bigotry against blacks.   As eminently patriotic and courageous as Johnson may have been, his plan for the readmission of the South back into the Union did not include political rights for blacks.

The question of the status of the negro proved the crux of the issue.  Johnson was opposed to general or immediate negro suffrage. A bitter contest began in Feb. 1866, between the president and the Congress, which refused to admit representatives from the South and during 1866 passed over his veto a number of important measures, such as the Freedmen’s Bureau Act and the Civil Rights Act, and submitted to the States the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution. (from here)

At the end of the Civil War there were four million exslaves, nearly all illiterate and ill prepared for freedom.   Here is what Zak says about Stevens’solution for this problem.

As usual, Thaddeus Stevens foresaw clearer than most anyone the fate of the emancipated slaves:  “To trust to the tender mercies of their former masters and to the protection of State legislation, without giving them any voice in making the laws is simply to turn them over to the torture of their enemies.  To turn them loose unaided and unprotected is wholesale murder.”  Several hundred thousand emancipated slaves are estimated to have died in the months immediately following the Civil War.  Previously, slave-holders had cared, however inadequately, for sick or elderly slaves, but once freed, southern blacks were on their own, and Democrats back of charge of southern state governments did not lift a finger to alleviate disease and malnutrition.  Before the war, whites were reluctant to kill blacks because they were valuable slaves, but again, once they were freed, any white could prey upon them.  (from Chapter 6, page 88)

It is said that history is written by the victors, and there is some truth to that.  In the war between the North and the South, the North won the military conflict, but the South largely won the cultural contest.  Although the North destroyed the institution of slavery, in practice the South continued to subjugate the black race.  Moreover, the Democratic Party remained a force in national politics, and its version of events (particularly with respect to Radical Republicans) became part of our national lore.

The Principles

Zak has woven into his history book the principles he believes form the core of the Republican Party.   Often he illustrates what he thinks these principles are by taking Republicans to task for going against them.   In particular, he laments the Republican Party’s diminished status as the defender constitutional rights.  He chastises Senator Barry Goldwater, for example, for not supporting the Civil Rights Movement during his presidential campaign.  However, there is far more to Republican principles than that.  This paragraph, from the chapter that describes President Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society Program, illustrates the general theme that runs through the book.

President Johnson saw to it that millions more people were placed, if indirectly, on the Democratic Party payroll and that still more millions came to depend on government spending for some or all of their personal income.  Increasing the American people’s dependence on government was precisely the opposite goal of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which was intended to liberate people from the unconstitutional exercise of power.  This distinction is crucial:  socialism is a policy which government officials are free to adopt or not, while protecting constitutional rights is the solemn obligation of everyone who swears loyalty to the Constitution of the United States.  (from Chapter 9, page 196)

Zak closes his book with a chapter that emphasizes that Republicans must not allow themselves to be distracted by sideshows.  Our party must focus on the protection of Constitutional rights.  Here is an excerpt which illustrates that chapter’s contents.

To keep us on the right path and reach the journey’s end, we Republicans must bear in mind the trail-blazing careers of Thaddeus Stevens and Charles Sumner.  Stevens knew that for the emancipated slave, acquiring land of his own was a “sine qua non,” meaning “without which, nothing.”  If Stevens had succeeded in implementing his proposal to provide each slave family with “40 acres and a mule,” countless economic problems would have never have arisen.  If after the war, Sumner’s agenda for rigorous protection of constitutional rights had been enacted and enforced, the Democrat’s political degradation of black Americans might have been prevented.  Not taking these crucial first steps cost our nation a century of socialism and suffering.

The free market is voluntary cooperation, with self-interest the goal and societal advancement the result.  Ronald Reagan was  acutely aware that to preserve the free market society, the drift toward socialism has to be stopped.  To seize and hold the policy initiative, we Republicans must charge right at the Democratic Party in a battle of ideas, our best weapon a clear vision of the free market society we are fighting for.

No distinction can be drawn between a free society and a free economy.  Consider the numerous civilizations of the past which flowered when the central government was unable to tightened its grip on the economy.  For evidence of how socialism impedes progress, consider the cultural decline in Communist nations or the relative cultural stagnation of many European countries today.  (from Chapter 10, page 226)

Thus, Back to Basics for the Republican Party illustrates what the Republican Party stands for by showing what it has stood for and failed to stand for.