"How the GOP stopped caring about you"

[applegrove]

How the GOP stopped caring about you

By Heather Cox Richardson, Opinion, the Washington Post

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/how-the-gop-stopped-caring-about-you-how-the-republicans-became-selfish/2014/09/17/7fe87a70-3dc5-11e4-9587-5dafd96295f0_story.html

"SNIP...........................



In 1862 , in the midst of the Civil War, Republican Justin Smith Morrill stood in Congress to defend his party’s invention: an income tax . The government had the right to demand 99 percent of a man’s property, the Vermont representative thundered. If the nation needs it, “the property of the people .?.?. belongs to the government .” The Republican Congress passed the income tax — as well as a spate of other taxes — and went on to create a strong national government. By the time the war ended, the GOP had invented national banking , currency and taxation ; had provided schools and homes for poor Americans; and had freed the country’s 4 million slaves.

A half-century later, when corporations dominated the economy and their owners threw their weight into political contests, Theodore Roosevelt fulminated against that “small class of enormously wealthy and economically powerful men, whose chief object is to hold and increase their power.” Insisting that America must return to “an economic system under which each man shall be guaranteed the opportunity to show the best that there is in him,” the Republican president called for government to regulate business, prohibit corporate funding of political campaigns, and impose income and inheritance taxes.

In the mid-20th century, Republican President Dwight Eisenhower recoiled from using American resources to build weapons alone, warning, “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.” He called for government funding for schools, power plants, roads and hospitals.

At these crucial moments, Republican leaders argued that economic opportunity is central to the American ideal and that government must enable all to rise. But each time the party has taken this stand, it has sparked a backlash from within, prompting the GOP to throw its support behind America’s wealthiest people and to blame those who fall behind for their own poverty.



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[GoCubsGo]

1. A well-written piece.

Too bad the people who need to read it (non-wealthy republicans) likely won't.

[CBHagman]

2. Heather Cox Richardson has articles in Salon and The Washington Post...

...plus a book, To Make Men Free: A History of the Republican Party. Definitely a means to a national conversation.

[MiniMe]

3. Read that in the paper this morning. Good article!

[ReRe]

4. K&R to the nth

Well written and easy enough for ANYONE to understand, Heather Cox Richardson, professor of history at Boston College, author of the upcoming book To Make Men Free: A History of the Republican Party, has released the proverbial cat from the bag.

Just like the old adage "...if you don't vote, then you don't have a right to complain," if you don't read this op-ed from the WashPO, then consider yourself uninformed or at least confused about what has been occurring over and over and over again in this country since the 1850s.
Thanks, applegrove, for catching it and leading us to it.

[applegrove]

5. You‘re most welcome rere. Yes I‘m all about

the easy to read articles. I like things that paint a clear picture.

[ReRe]

6. Seriously...

You know how people don't like history. I basically knew all the things she said, but they were all jumbled up in my mind. She just de-scrambled them and laid them out in chronological order. I am going to post this thread to some of my other postings hoping to bring more readers. It really is an easy/fast read and makes so much sense out of the mass chaos that is now the USA.

[grahamhgreen]

7. Libertarian Selfishness is now one of their tenets.

[IDemo]

8. Also one of their tenets

[grahamhgreen]

9. Oops!

[snagglepuss]

10. to read later