The History of American Politics, Part 1

Living in the US during this day and age, I'm often amazed at some of the arguments that people come up with regarding their political beliefs. l've lived in Florida, Texas, Washington, Hawaii, Rhode Island and Massachusetts, where I currently live. I'll state that "lived in" means I have spent at least a year there. I've visited a many of the states, and have probably spent at anywhere from a week to a few months in a dozen or so states. I've also spent some time ine Europe, Mexico, and the Carribbean. My formative years, grades 7-12 were in Florida, as was my collegiate and about have of my professional life. I'm currently in my mid-fifties, and I work in Information Technology as a Network Engineer.

Why do I bring this all up? I'm a firm believer that travel broadens one's mind. As Mark Twain wrote:

“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.”

As one travels, you cannot help but learn of new ways of doing things, or of thinking. These things become different, but not necessarily wrong.

History is interesting to me, but I can't say I'm at all scholarly about it. I took the bare minimums in school, but I read a bit on my own as a child. Living in Massachusetts, you can't really help but get sucked into the American Revolution, as there are reminders of it everywhere.

The current situation which has come up recently because of the rally in Charlottesville, VA has certainly brought up a number of conflicting views, such as:

• Origins of Civil War
• What Republicans believe vs Democrats

Depending where you are in the US, if you ask about what started the Civil War, you will get one of two definite responses, along with a more nuanced third anwser. These answers are obvious to most, again depending upon where the question is asked.

If you ask in the North, you'll be told the reason was slavery. If you ask in the South, they'll tell you "States Rights". If you ask in the History department of a local college, you might get the more nuanced answer. Now, I haven't asked anybody in the Hostory Department, so maybe I'm just guessing at straws there. I also have no idea what people say, in Arizona or Wyoming , places that weren't even states yet in 1861.

** NOTE: I am not a member of either major US political party. ** I've always been an Independent, or Unaffiliated voter, depending upon which state I lived. I've been registered to vote in three states, and have voted in every election from 1980 on.

In regards to the Replublicans vs Democrats item, one of the things you hear at every election cycle is what this party believes vs what that party believes, and how these different planks are absolute, and eternal. A prime example of this regards civil rights. At present, most even semi-intelligent Americans would agree that the current Democratic party is probably more inclusive than the current Republican party. Democrats attempt to appeal to minorities, and to immigrants; and have concerns about things like health care. Present day Republicans, well, it's hard to figure out what they believe, as there are at least two diametrically opposed factions in the current Republican party.

So, as a means of trying to address both of these points, we actually need to go back to the Founding Fathers.

At the end of the American Revolution, in the 1780s, a document called the US Constitution was written up and eventually ratified in 1788. During this period, there were two major ways of thinking about what the US was to become. The first team, were the Federalists, who wanted a strong central government. George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, John Adams wre all Federalists. James Madison was also a Federalist initially, having worked with Hamilton, and John Jay to produce The Federalist Papers, which was a series of 85 essays which promoted various points of the proposed US Constitution. Madison is considered by most to be the "father" of the US Constitution, while the bulk of The Federalists Papers were written by Hamilton.

The second major way of thinking about the future of the US was by the Anti-Federalists, a group that eventually called themselves "Democratic Republicans" in 1791, when the Bill of Rights was ratified.

The primary leader of the Anti-Federalists was Thomas Jefferson. Most of the Anti-Federalists were southerners, plantation owners, and owners of slaves. Jefferson, Madison, and Washington were all Virginians, and all owned slaves, but Washingoton and the Federalists also belived in the abolition of slavery. The Anti-Federalists believed in a loosely affiliated collection of states, each with their own strengths, weaknesses, laws, and governance.

While I'm not going to try to simplfy the matter here, the major take-away is that abolitionof slavery was an item of concern even before the Declaration of Independence was written, by Jefferson, in 1776.

If we take this as a starting point, it is easy to see that both of the answers I mentioned previously could conceivably be correct, so I can't solve that one yet.

If we progress forward to 1861, President Abraham Lincoln, an anti-slavery Republican (in that time) was elected President, and it is easy to consider that the states that disagreed with the election were no longer affiliated with the Republican party, in that a number of states seceeded from the Union. It is also not a strech of the imagination, that newly freed slaves would feel some gratitude, or at least an affinity with the Replublcan party as a result of this turn of events.

From 1865, when the Cival War ended, and 1964, when the Civil Rights Act was signed into law by Lyndon Johnson (a Democrat, in office only because John F. Kennedy was assassinated eight months prior, is not a long period of time. It is also of note that the bulk of the legislation for the Civil Rights Act has been forwarded by Kennedy in 1963 and had made it through the House Judiciary committee, but was held up by the House Rules committee chairman, a segregationalist Democrat from Virginia.