Everybody living in the United States knows about the partisan divide. There's the big break between the left and the right - liberals and conservatives, in office and out of office, are always at each others' throats. And then the partisan groups are divided into their own partisan group. The left is a loosely-allied coalition of moderate Democrats, socialists, social liberals, and fiscal liberals. The right is split into factions, the three biggest ones being the moderate Republicans, the far-right Tea Party, and the libertarians, who are all over the spectrum. And, of course, everybody knows that America is split into red states and blue states. The Northeast, the contiguous Pacific coast and Hawaii tend to be blue, whereas the South, Midwest and the Last Frontier are red.
And, in recent history, this was almost exactly the opposite.
Before I go on, it's important to note that, for the most part, this post will be referring to the Deep South and the Northeast and the Pacific States, as these regions saw the most stark changes in ideology.
Take the election of 1864. The Union's election, that is. The only states that voted democratic were Kentucky, New Jersey, and Delaware. In the aftermath of the war, when Radical Republicans made life extremely difficult for Southern Democrats (as briefly mentioned in last week's post), the South became deeply democratic. This didn't manifest for several elections, since the Radical Republicans made it extremely difficult for ex-Confederates to do things like vote, but it eventually did. During the early part of the 20th Century, things became more unified. With the fragmentation of the Republicans into Republicans and Progressives in 1912, it's no surprise that the Democrats won most of the electoral votes that year. And in the years of the Depression, the Democrats won big throughout. Even Eisenhower managed to win most of the electoral votes - though the Solid South remained staunchly Democratic. In each of the aforementioned situations where the democrats won big, the only states that cast their votes for Republicans were in the Northeast or on the West Coast. Things start to change with Kennedy. The Irish-Catholic from Massachusetts won a decent chunk of the Northeast while maintaining the Democrats' grip on the south.
Then we get to Johnson in '64, where the situation from Eisenhower's day flips entirely. In '64, only six states voted Republican, and only one of them had done so in '60, that one being New Mexico. The other five were the states of the Solid South: Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and South Carolina. And, with the exception of Louisiana casting its vote for Eisenhower in '56, none of those states had voted for a Republican since '76. 1876, that is.
The issue at hand in this matter was race. This is where the "racist republican" stereotype comes in. Because, to their credit, Republican ideology is not in itself racist. The Republican Party, after all, was founded to combat slavery. After that goal was achieved, Republicans (in general) didn't put much effort into racial equality. But the Democrats (in general) of that period from the Civil War to Kennedy were much, much worse. The KKK was founded, among other sinister reasons, to intimidate minorities in the south so they wouldn't for Republicans. FDR himself refused to pass anti-lynching legislation. Jim Crow was, more or less, the Civil Wark-Kennedy Democrats. In 1957, the Democratic governor of Arkansas, Orval Faubus, sent state troops to block efforts to integrate public schools there. In response, the president sent federal paratroopers to enforce the integration efforts. That president, of course, was Ike Eisenhower, a Republican.
This is what went down: the democrats of the five southern states felt so betrayed by Johnson's support of the Civil Rights Act, they voted against him out of spite. The republicans in those states - ironically enough, the liberals - kept voting for their own party. Even though nothing in history or current events (roughly four-fifths of Congressional republicans favored the act, compared with about two-thirds of the democrats) supported the notion that the Republicans were suddenly the party of racism, the South still switched its voting platform. Most of those southerners who'd voted Republican in the past (the liberals of the south, ironically enough), it seems, saw little reason to change their stance. And so the south became thoroughly Republican, with the north beginning to favor the Democrats. The cultural revolution that took place in the '60's also played a role in the partisan divide - the deeply conservative southern states were in no rush to accept counterculture. Since hippies were often associated with democrats (though this was rarely by the democrats' choosing) and had more of a presence in the states that became our modern blue states, many conservative Americans were put-off from voting democratic. And likewise, the liberal culture that was generated in the '60's began to view the Republicans as the figures of the establishment. And all this isn't to say that there weren't exceptions to the rule, and plenty of them. In '72, almost every state voted for Nixon. In '76, almost every state voted for Carter. And in the '80's, with Reagan...do I even have to say it? Clinton received a mixed-bag of votes, mainly due to his southern heritage. But when things finally settled in and around 2000, it was tied to these factors, and still more.
So there it is: a simplified version of how our country reversed its politics and became more partisan than it has been since the days of the Civil War. This is why America is a mess. I miss the days when politicians stood up for what they believed in and actually worked to get things done. I miss the days when we did what was right and compromised with those whose views were different from our own. I miss the days when America and her people came first. And to be quite honest with you, I'd vote for Harry Truman or Dwight David Eisenhower over just about any candidate running in 2016. I don't care that one was a Democrat and one was a Republican, and that their political ideologies contrasted in more ways than they compared. I care that they were honest men who worked their asses off to do right by their nation. And that was most of the American people cared about in days gone by.
The good news is, the last time the nation was as partisan as it is today, it eventually went through a healing process and the partisan divide shrank down to the point that states who voted Republican in one election voted Democrat in the next, and vice versa. The bad news is, it took a civil war for that to happen. But we can hope that our elected officials, as much as we sometimes doubt it, remember the past, and will do anything they can to avoid repeating the horrors of civil war. Because if the worst should happen...well, that's a story for next week. Stay tuned.
Saturday, April 25, 2015
Saturday, April 18, 2015
History This Week: Lincoln
150 years ago this week, Abraham Lincoln was assassinated. Our sixteenth president, the man who oversaw the Union's victory and oversaw the beginning of the end of slavery. Abe Lincoln is widely regarded, and I don't think anyone can argue otherwise, as one of the greatest presidents in American history. But one title we give him is arguable at best: Honest Abe. Because Abraham Lincoln was one of the cunning, calculating individuals ever to walk the stage of American politics.
Let's start from the very beginning. Abraham Lincoln was born in Kentucky - but you all know that story. Eventually, Lincoln made his way to the House of Representatives, a Whig representing Illinois. His opposition to the popular Mexican-American war and the territorial acquisitions that ensued cost him his seat in congress, and he went back to his law firm in Springfield. Not long after that, he joined a new political movement that was gathering steam. The Republican Party (yes, that Republican Party), so-named for its focus on the republican ideals emphasized by the founding fathers, opposed the expansion of slavery. The Radical Republicans of the day, as they were known, vehemently opposed the practice due to its inhumanity. The conservative Republicans of the time stood against it because it blocked economic progress and opportunity. And the moderates, the group most would count Lincoln in, opposed it because it stood against the founders' principles. Because this one fact is often lost to history: Lincoln wasn't entirely opposed to the practice of slavery. On a personal level, it seems that he found it unsettling, but he wasn't about to put an end to it. Many of his speeches from his early days in office display this notion. Lincoln spent his first few weeks trying to convince the southern states that he wasn't trying to take slavery from them. We all know how well that worked out. The slave states that stayed in the union - Kentucky, Missouri, Maryland and Delaware - did so more because they feared they would be caught in the middle of a north-south conflict, and figured the Union, with its greater population and industrial potential, would win the day. Abe didn't view the Confederacy as its own nation - he viewed it as a rebellion, as did most Northerners. A rebellion to be quelled by any means necessary. Many of the actions Lincoln took while in office were unheard of in the days before - or since - the Civil War. Lincoln did more to expand executive powers than did any other president in our history. The president commanded the Navy to blockade key Confederate ports, distributed funds without Congress's approval, and imposed martial law. He suspended the writ of habeas corpus - essentially, the right to escape unlawful imprisonment. Thousands of suspected Confederate sympathizers were arrested on Lincoln's watch. The only thing to come close to this in the entirety of American history is another dark spot on an otherwise fantastic president's reputation: the internment of Japanese-Americans on FDR's watch.
And the biggest kicker of them all? The Emancipation Proclamation, which made the war about freeing the slaves, was a political play. Many European nations watching the sidelines of the American Civil War favored the South, very much in the same way the US would go onto favor them in the World Wars. As hinted, Britain and France were among those nations that were willing to cast their lots with the south. Lincoln feared that European involvement would turn the tide of the war against the Union. But as I said before, Lincoln was one of the smartest men we've ever had. He read the diplomatic battlefield with a sort of strategic genius, and played the hand he'd been given to the maximum. Through the Proclamation, he turned the Civil War from a war about the rights of a country's subdivisions into a war over the practice of slavery. Therefore, if Britain was to enter the war on the South's side, they would have been entering the war on the side of slavery. Britain couldn't very well do that, given the fact that they'd been one of the first nations to abolish slavery outright on moral grounds. Any question of a European entry into the war was eliminated on January 1st, 1863. And the South lost its best chance for victory. Lincoln approved of Sherman's March and other such tactics to destroy Confederate morale and hasten the end of the war.
So why do we forgive Lincoln? Well, we forgive him because of his motivation. Lincoln wasn't taking upon huge amounts of power to rule the nation as a dictator or to crush the Confederacy into oblivion. He was trying to repair the Union. It's a key feature shared by many of the men we consider to be among the greatest presidents we've ever had - take Washington. Take FDR. And, of course, take Lincoln. All these men had the opportunity, at some point, to seize power for themselves. And each of these men turned their backs on that opportunity. Lincoln did all that he did to preserve the Union. That was his goal throughout the Civil War. He wasn't trying to achieve a political end, or conniving to become the most powerful man in the western hemisphere. He was trying to save the United States from utter ruin. And he did. Lincoln wasn't a vengeful man. Whereas many radical Republicans wanted to punish the south, Lincoln wanted to welcome them back into the American nation and rebuild their economy, preparing them for a post-slavery world. Then, 150 years ago this past Wednesday, he was assassinated. His Vice President, Andrew Johnson, couldn't stand up to the radical Republicans in Congress, and things didn't go well for the southern states. That's the biggest reason why there's so much animosity between the north and south to this day, to say nothing of the partisan divide.
This brings me to an interesting point. The current blue states and red states were flipped before the sixties. The Northeast and the West Coast were Republican strongholds, while the Democrats commanded the South and much of the midwest. And then the whole thing turned on its head. But that's for next week's discussion.
Let's start from the very beginning. Abraham Lincoln was born in Kentucky - but you all know that story. Eventually, Lincoln made his way to the House of Representatives, a Whig representing Illinois. His opposition to the popular Mexican-American war and the territorial acquisitions that ensued cost him his seat in congress, and he went back to his law firm in Springfield. Not long after that, he joined a new political movement that was gathering steam. The Republican Party (yes, that Republican Party), so-named for its focus on the republican ideals emphasized by the founding fathers, opposed the expansion of slavery. The Radical Republicans of the day, as they were known, vehemently opposed the practice due to its inhumanity. The conservative Republicans of the time stood against it because it blocked economic progress and opportunity. And the moderates, the group most would count Lincoln in, opposed it because it stood against the founders' principles. Because this one fact is often lost to history: Lincoln wasn't entirely opposed to the practice of slavery. On a personal level, it seems that he found it unsettling, but he wasn't about to put an end to it. Many of his speeches from his early days in office display this notion. Lincoln spent his first few weeks trying to convince the southern states that he wasn't trying to take slavery from them. We all know how well that worked out. The slave states that stayed in the union - Kentucky, Missouri, Maryland and Delaware - did so more because they feared they would be caught in the middle of a north-south conflict, and figured the Union, with its greater population and industrial potential, would win the day. Abe didn't view the Confederacy as its own nation - he viewed it as a rebellion, as did most Northerners. A rebellion to be quelled by any means necessary. Many of the actions Lincoln took while in office were unheard of in the days before - or since - the Civil War. Lincoln did more to expand executive powers than did any other president in our history. The president commanded the Navy to blockade key Confederate ports, distributed funds without Congress's approval, and imposed martial law. He suspended the writ of habeas corpus - essentially, the right to escape unlawful imprisonment. Thousands of suspected Confederate sympathizers were arrested on Lincoln's watch. The only thing to come close to this in the entirety of American history is another dark spot on an otherwise fantastic president's reputation: the internment of Japanese-Americans on FDR's watch.
And the biggest kicker of them all? The Emancipation Proclamation, which made the war about freeing the slaves, was a political play. Many European nations watching the sidelines of the American Civil War favored the South, very much in the same way the US would go onto favor them in the World Wars. As hinted, Britain and France were among those nations that were willing to cast their lots with the south. Lincoln feared that European involvement would turn the tide of the war against the Union. But as I said before, Lincoln was one of the smartest men we've ever had. He read the diplomatic battlefield with a sort of strategic genius, and played the hand he'd been given to the maximum. Through the Proclamation, he turned the Civil War from a war about the rights of a country's subdivisions into a war over the practice of slavery. Therefore, if Britain was to enter the war on the South's side, they would have been entering the war on the side of slavery. Britain couldn't very well do that, given the fact that they'd been one of the first nations to abolish slavery outright on moral grounds. Any question of a European entry into the war was eliminated on January 1st, 1863. And the South lost its best chance for victory. Lincoln approved of Sherman's March and other such tactics to destroy Confederate morale and hasten the end of the war.
So why do we forgive Lincoln? Well, we forgive him because of his motivation. Lincoln wasn't taking upon huge amounts of power to rule the nation as a dictator or to crush the Confederacy into oblivion. He was trying to repair the Union. It's a key feature shared by many of the men we consider to be among the greatest presidents we've ever had - take Washington. Take FDR. And, of course, take Lincoln. All these men had the opportunity, at some point, to seize power for themselves. And each of these men turned their backs on that opportunity. Lincoln did all that he did to preserve the Union. That was his goal throughout the Civil War. He wasn't trying to achieve a political end, or conniving to become the most powerful man in the western hemisphere. He was trying to save the United States from utter ruin. And he did. Lincoln wasn't a vengeful man. Whereas many radical Republicans wanted to punish the south, Lincoln wanted to welcome them back into the American nation and rebuild their economy, preparing them for a post-slavery world. Then, 150 years ago this past Wednesday, he was assassinated. His Vice President, Andrew Johnson, couldn't stand up to the radical Republicans in Congress, and things didn't go well for the southern states. That's the biggest reason why there's so much animosity between the north and south to this day, to say nothing of the partisan divide.
This brings me to an interesting point. The current blue states and red states were flipped before the sixties. The Northeast and the West Coast were Republican strongholds, while the Democrats commanded the South and much of the midwest. And then the whole thing turned on its head. But that's for next week's discussion.
Sunday, April 5, 2015
The World This Week: ISIS and the Baathists
Now, this is something new, and something interesting. I've talked about ISIS a lot over the months, but not like this. To my understanding, it's not something that's been known for very long. This week has been fairly slow for new news, so I was getting discouraged as I surfed the web for a topic to discuss. Then I came across this article in The Independent (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/how-saddam-husseins-former-military-officers-and-spies-are-controlling-isis-10156610.html). In short, many of the high-ranking members of the Islamic State are ex-members of Iraq's Baath Party - the party of Saddam Hussein.
This is certainly interesting. Many comments have been made, and many political cartoons drawn, about the irony of the Coalition's air war against ISIS. In these cartoons, one character says something along the lines of, "We need a leader in Iraq who can control religious extremism!" to which one other figure replies, "Someone like Saddam Hussein?" And it's true - Saddam Hussein's government did a damn thorough job of curbing religious extremism. I say thorough job instead of good job because you can't really call anything the Baathists did "good." The Baathist leaders - and Saddam Hussein - took their inspiration from another all-too-familiar totalitarian regime from the 20th Century. In case it's not blatantly obvious, I'm talking about the Nazis. The secular Baathists persecuted the ethnic Kurds in the north of the country, which lead to the latter's steadfast alliance with the Coalition forces who invaded the country in 2003. Saddam's Iraq was one of the most brutal totalitarian states to survive into the 21st Century - estimates of the number of his own people his regime killed stretch into the millions. Saddam started out as the Baath Party's hired thug, which tells you a great deal about the man's character. Like the Nazis, Saddam had every intention of expanding his territorial empire for the sake of his own country - and his own government. He'd expected the international community to react to his efforts the way they'd reacted to Hitler's - Iraq's military in the early 1990's was among the largest in the world, with sophisticated Soviet-made weapons and a well-trained fighting force. Saddam wasn't counting on George H.W. Bush, a man who came across as quiet and meek, to rally the international community and create the Coalition. The Abrams tanks tore the Iraqi T-72's to shreds, while American fighters ruled the skies over Iraq. This halted Saddam's international ambitions, and he turned his attention to his own country. In short, members of the Baath Party were heavily involved in suppressing religious minorities and extremists.
To some extent, it shouldn't come as a surprise that many ex-Baathists now occupy the higher ranks of ISIS. One of the Islamic State's primary targets - the ethnic Kurds - was one of the Baathists' during the height of their power. It would hardly be a stretch for the Baathists to add Christians, Yazidis, and Turkmen to the list of individuals they persecuted - though Saddam's government wasn't openly hostile to these groups in the way that it was to the Kurds, there was certainly prejudice and bias against them. And ISIS could be their route back to power. As the Washington Post article reminds us, these men were accustomed to positions of power and influence within Iraq. Now that a legitimate government has been created, their only route back to power is through illegitimate means - just as ex-Confederates were banned from holding offices after the Civil War, ex-Baathists are banned from being elected in modern Iraq. It stands to reason that many of these ex-generals, officers, and officials would turn to ISIS to regain a taste of their former power. Deserters from ISIS have corroborated these notions. Saddam's lackeys are using the Islamic State as a vehicle to return themselves and their ideology to power. In short, they want to bring back Saddam's era to the whole of Iraq, extinguishing the flame of democracy that's been burning for the past decade. Frankly, this topic is extremely depressing. The Iraqi people have suffered just about as much as any group has in the 21st Century. And now, the Neo-Nazis of the Baath Party have aligned themselves with the terror group that's too brutal for Al-Qaeda to make them suffer even more. This is the jacked-up world we live in. As if we needed more cause to hate ISIS, we now know that a bunch of their highest-ranking members are directly inspired by the Nazis. What'll be next? They form an alliance with North Korea? You'd hope that their association with the Baathists would be the limit of their evil, but they've just continued to surprise me. I'm convinced there's no end to it.
On that happy note...happy Easter and/or Passover, to all those of you who celebrate!
This is certainly interesting. Many comments have been made, and many political cartoons drawn, about the irony of the Coalition's air war against ISIS. In these cartoons, one character says something along the lines of, "We need a leader in Iraq who can control religious extremism!" to which one other figure replies, "Someone like Saddam Hussein?" And it's true - Saddam Hussein's government did a damn thorough job of curbing religious extremism. I say thorough job instead of good job because you can't really call anything the Baathists did "good." The Baathist leaders - and Saddam Hussein - took their inspiration from another all-too-familiar totalitarian regime from the 20th Century. In case it's not blatantly obvious, I'm talking about the Nazis. The secular Baathists persecuted the ethnic Kurds in the north of the country, which lead to the latter's steadfast alliance with the Coalition forces who invaded the country in 2003. Saddam's Iraq was one of the most brutal totalitarian states to survive into the 21st Century - estimates of the number of his own people his regime killed stretch into the millions. Saddam started out as the Baath Party's hired thug, which tells you a great deal about the man's character. Like the Nazis, Saddam had every intention of expanding his territorial empire for the sake of his own country - and his own government. He'd expected the international community to react to his efforts the way they'd reacted to Hitler's - Iraq's military in the early 1990's was among the largest in the world, with sophisticated Soviet-made weapons and a well-trained fighting force. Saddam wasn't counting on George H.W. Bush, a man who came across as quiet and meek, to rally the international community and create the Coalition. The Abrams tanks tore the Iraqi T-72's to shreds, while American fighters ruled the skies over Iraq. This halted Saddam's international ambitions, and he turned his attention to his own country. In short, members of the Baath Party were heavily involved in suppressing religious minorities and extremists.
To some extent, it shouldn't come as a surprise that many ex-Baathists now occupy the higher ranks of ISIS. One of the Islamic State's primary targets - the ethnic Kurds - was one of the Baathists' during the height of their power. It would hardly be a stretch for the Baathists to add Christians, Yazidis, and Turkmen to the list of individuals they persecuted - though Saddam's government wasn't openly hostile to these groups in the way that it was to the Kurds, there was certainly prejudice and bias against them. And ISIS could be their route back to power. As the Washington Post article reminds us, these men were accustomed to positions of power and influence within Iraq. Now that a legitimate government has been created, their only route back to power is through illegitimate means - just as ex-Confederates were banned from holding offices after the Civil War, ex-Baathists are banned from being elected in modern Iraq. It stands to reason that many of these ex-generals, officers, and officials would turn to ISIS to regain a taste of their former power. Deserters from ISIS have corroborated these notions. Saddam's lackeys are using the Islamic State as a vehicle to return themselves and their ideology to power. In short, they want to bring back Saddam's era to the whole of Iraq, extinguishing the flame of democracy that's been burning for the past decade. Frankly, this topic is extremely depressing. The Iraqi people have suffered just about as much as any group has in the 21st Century. And now, the Neo-Nazis of the Baath Party have aligned themselves with the terror group that's too brutal for Al-Qaeda to make them suffer even more. This is the jacked-up world we live in. As if we needed more cause to hate ISIS, we now know that a bunch of their highest-ranking members are directly inspired by the Nazis. What'll be next? They form an alliance with North Korea? You'd hope that their association with the Baathists would be the limit of their evil, but they've just continued to surprise me. I'm convinced there's no end to it.
On that happy note...happy Easter and/or Passover, to all those of you who celebrate!
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