By Michael
Mixes traditionalist rhetoric with flawed understanding of history
THE POSITIVES
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| H/T Sonoran News |
There are renewed calls for what [the Republican elites] view as a more “broad-based and compassionate” Party. They appear more determined than ever to embrace amnesty for illegal aliens in an attempt to erode Hispanics support for Democrats. They are increasingly more favorable to the spending programs designed to show they care about blacks.Massie is exactly right on these points. Republican elites are determined to ram amnesty down the throats of their voters even though this is a deeply unpopular position with them. Republicans such as Lindsey Graham, Haley Barbour, Rand Paul, Newt Gingrich, Marco Rubio, John McCain, etc. embrace the demographic replacement of their constituency. Massie also is correct that:
We do not need another Democrat Party. The one that exists has done nothing but set us on the path to the fiscal and social abyss.It is easy to find positive things in Massie’s article and many Southern nationalists would undoubtedly applaud his call to stand up to Republican elites and resist calls for amnesty and more pandering (by offering increased spending on social programs) to demographic groups which overwhelmingly reject the GOP anyhow.
THE NEGATIVES
Unfortunately, Massie’s piece is littered with a deeply flawed historical analysis. This is extremely problematic because it sets one up for ideological inconsistencies, which can lead to poor policy decisions and dire social consequences. All we have to do is take a look at his opening paragraph to find evidence of Massie’s misunderstanding of history:
The Republican Party, from its inception in 1856, has stood for conservative pro-family and pro-Constitutional values.Those values are what first drew me to the Republican Party and they are what have led me to be engaged in my unwavering support of same.This is simply inaccurate. The Republican Party was founded in opposition to the conservative party of its time, the Democrats. The people who founded it were a mix of Left-wing social activists, ex-Whigs (who favoured massive government intervention in the economy), anti-Catholic radicals and Northeastern industrial and financial interest groups.
Meanwhile, the conservatives of that era (in both the North and South) belonged, by an large, to the Democratic Party – the party of Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Andrew Jackson and John C Calhoun. That party favoured the traditional social order, decentralisation, free trade and less government intervention in the economy.
The Republicans stood for essentially everything the conservatives opposed: centralisation, upturning the social order, tax increases, trade restrictions and money printing. Lincoln, a Republican, was willing to use violence (ultimately resulting in over half a million deaths) to deny Southern conservatives their right of self-determination. He upturned the social order of the South and his war led to the destruction of countless families.
If one reads the speeches given by Lincoln’s political enemies they are full of examples of how Lincoln was radically altering the government of the US through his program of centralisation as well as destroying traditional liberties and the social order. These are certainly not the actions of a conservative or traditionalist, who would strive to maintain continuity, tradition and stability. Sadly, with his Enlightenment-sounding reference to ‘noble experiment called the United States of America,’ Massie seems to at least on some level buy into the anti-traditionalist agenda of the early (and later) Republican leaders.
