Michael Zak.
Back to Basics for the Republican Party, Thrid Edition.
Gaithersburg, Maryland: Signature Book Printing, Inc., 2003.
The author gives an excellent sense of the evolution of American politics over the course of the nation's history, how political parties rise and fall, and how contending issues or political philosophies are propounded and embodied by individuals and parties. For this alone the book deserves consideration as a primer in American political history.
The current Republican Party was formed in 1854 as the anti-slavery party. The party inherited its progressive economic stance of limited government-sponsored economic development, free enterprise and opportunity from the Whigs and thus may be considered the successor of Alexander Hamilton and the Federalists. Perhaps the majority of the text, however, emphasizes the Republicans' legacy as
the Party of Lincoln. It was the Republicans who fought the Civil War on behalf of the Union, ended slavery, and attempted the "Radical Reconstruction" of the South in the aftermath of the Civil War in order to extend the full protections of the Constitution to all Americans.
The author summarizes his argument in the book's last four pages, 226-229, reproduced below. For ease of reading I have not used italics or quotes below.
All text that follows is by Michael Zak. (I have added two clarifying items indicated below by bold text within square brackets thus:
[bold].)
To keep us on the right path and reach 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, aquiring land of his own was a "sine qua non," meaning "without which, nothing." If Stevens had succeeded in implementing his proposal to provide each
[emancipated] slave family with "40 acres and a mule," countless economic problems would 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 degredation 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 accutely aware that to preserve the free market society, the drift toward socialism had 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 central government was unable to tighten 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.
And now consider the United States - for Reagan a "shining city on a hill" - at its most vibrant in areas least controlled by government. No one planned one of our country's greatest contributions to the world, the Internet, or anticipated that it would be responsible for the most magnificient outpouring of prosperity in history. By no accident did the Internet arise here, where government is strong enough to safeguard constitutional rights and foster economic infrastructure yet still weak enough to permit a free people to freely create such an enterprise so spontaneously. As Bill Gates once testified to Congress: "The incredible success of [the high-tech industry] in the United States owes a lot to the light hand of government in the technology area, the fact that people can take incredible risks and if they're successful they can have incredible rewards.... Overall, I'd say the light hand is working very well."
A century ago, economic transformation produced monopolies and other market failures for which the Progressive movement sought to compensate. Government action, particularly during the Theodore Roosevelt and Taft presidencies, was intended to promore the free market society, and so was progressive. But now, a century later, as the economy undergoes another transformation, decentralizing power and increasing the leverage of consumers at the expense of producers, regulation and other government intervention tend to impede the free market. Now, for government to get out of the way of this progress is truely progressive.
What is not progressive at all is the modern-day drive to extend the reach of government power over the individual. There is nothing democratic or progressive about socialism. Socialists chafe at restrictions imposed by the rule of law lest their planning be disrupted by predetermined rules which apply to everyone. Socialism is an attempt to fend off the future.
Innovation, by definition unforseen, is a threat to the plans of the self-proclaimed enlightened, and so is to be suppressed. Based on what Friedrich Hayek called "a naive and childlike ... view of the world," central planning is "a fraud doomed to failure because no planner can possess all the knowledge needed to run a modern economy." Centralization of power in a bureaucracy led by those who profess to know more and care more than anyone else is in fact the old, lamentably commonplace way nations have been governed since civilization began. It is government for the sake of the individual which is new.
We Republicans place ourselves at another disadvantage in the battle of ideas by ripping from socialists a label which describes them so well. Opponents of progress are those who want to conserve the age-old rule of the few over the many and the cultural stagnation this entails. Socialists are the true conservatives. Republicans try without success to affix this conservative label
[im]properly to our Party, using as adhesive such adjectives as "dynamic" or "compassionate" or "progressive." Trouble is, though our Republican Party is definitely dynamic and compassionate and progressive, conservative it is not.
Ironically, the socialists ripped from our Party a label which suits us so well and them not at all. As the term is understood everywhere in the world except where the Democrats appropriated it as their own, liberals have struggled for liberty by opposing government oppression and championing the free market. To quote Hayek once more: "The liberal position is based on courage and confidence, on a preparedness to let change run its course even if we cannot predict where it will lead.... Conservatives are inclined to use the powers of government to prevent change or to limit its rate to whatever appeals to the more timid mind. In looking forward, they lack the faith in the spontaneous forces of adjustment which makes the liberal accept changes without apprehension, even though he does not know how the necessary adaptations will be brought about."
As political terms, "right" and "right wing" and "left" and "left wing," originated in 18th century France, where parlimentary allies of the king sat on the right of the speaker and his enemies on the left. The relevance of this arrangement to us today? None. Can there then be any real meaning to the terms "hard right" or perhaps "soft left"? No. In his essay "Politics and the English Language," George Orwell warned that "the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts ... to think clearly is a necessary first step towards political regeneration."
In his speach accepting his second presidential nomination, Ronald Reagan explained the difference between Democrats and Republicans in a way that cannot be improved upon: "Two visions of the future, two fundamentally different ways of governing - their government of pessimism, fear and limits, or ours of hope, confidence, and growth. Their government sees people only as members of groups. Ours serves all the people of America as individuals. Theirs lives in the past, seeking to apply the old failed policies to an era that has passed them by. Ours learns from the past and strives to change by boldly charting a new course for the future."
They are socialists, we are liberals. They are conservatives, we are progressives. They are Democrats, we are Republicans. Ours is the Party of Thaddeus Stevens and Charles Sumner and Ronald Reagan. And yes, the Republican Party is
the Party of Lincoln.
Some Links:
Thaddeus Stevens (1792-1868)
Charles Sumner (1811-1874)