|
WB: The Way of the Whigs
Billmon:
The Republicans may lose this election. They’re certainly trying hard. They may even lose the next one. But it’s going to take more than one or two scandal-boosted victories to persuade me the Dems have a future that doesn’t involve being the ornamental decoration on a functionally one-party state.
But of course, if the Dems lose next month, despite the GOP’s best efforts to hand them the House and quite possibly the Senate, then I guess we’ll know that’s where they’re heading. And unlike the Whigs, I don’t think they’ll be coming back.
The Way of the Whigs
I am not sure that Billmon is spot on in this one. While I believe one party is going to go over the cliff, and right now it looks like the dems, if might end up being the Republicans – read on if you can, and bear with me and my poor spelling/grammer (because of time just threw this together so its not the best writing, but the idea is provocative).
In general, this country was founded by White Dissenting protestants, who were either protestant for economic reasons, or for religious reasons.
The people that got here first pretty much took a controling interest in the ownership of this society.
The problem was, in the 18th century, these folks had the resources of a continent at their disposal, the question was how to exploit it – you need labor, effort, capital, efficiency etc…. Much of that had to be imported, but idealy, without losing a controling interest.
The political and economic system that they developed, when you think of it, was an ingenious system that allowed them to exploit the continent without losing control – it allowed for the maximum amount of plurality but still allows the same core to maintain the controlling interest of the political and economic system.
If you look at the Repulican party it is basically made up of the same people who founded this country with some add ons.
It is still the party of dissenters – Southern dissenters to the civil rights and Civil war, Religious dissenters to the social libertarian movement, and Economic dissenters to the New Deal/Fair Deal. But they are still basically the founding and controling dissenters that started this country.
Its like a corporation, the guys that founded google maintain a controling interest, though they allow others to invest in it, makes some gains, but not gain control. The dissenters were here first, so it’s primarily their country, they allow minority participation, just like a corporation, but maintain the controling interest.
That means the Democrats by default are everyone else. That means the Democrats are the party of pluralism. That means there will always be less cohesion in the Democratic party. That means the Democrats are by default the party of the loyal opposition. That means that the Democrats are the party of minorities and immigrants. And that means, while the Republicans from time to time can fashion an ideology, the ideology of the Democrats has to be, and always will be, pragmatism.
But guess what, Pragmatism and plurality is what this country is really based upon. Before their was liberty, there was English Common law. As Churchill said of Architecture, the same can be said of law: we shape it, and it, in turn, shapes us (paraphrased) – which is why the Repugs want to control the judiciary. English common law is really a system based upon pragmatism, as famously articulated by Oliver Wendall Holmes.
The law’s first job was to render justice. But within Justice, it developed a bias for, over time, liberty in rendering decisions. Why? because liberty was cost effective (pragmatism)- there’s little price tag on enforcing it.
Over several centuries that bias towards liberty grew. Then the Churchill effect caused the culture to change and eventually liberty made the jump from jurisprudence to political theory and ideology = just in time for the American Revolution, and every revolution needs a revolutionary ideology.
Pragmatism is the ideology of our legal system, and plurality is the ideology of our constitution. The Dems have that going for them.
So the republicans have cohesion and they have money, but they always have had that, but they only have a 1.5% majorty.
The fascist revolution taking place right now is only with a 1.5 majority.
I would agree that one party is falling apart, but it might not be the Democratic party.
I think the problem with Bill Mon’s analysis is to compare repubicans and democrats as apples and apples, when they are really apples and oranges.
The real problem with the Democratic party is that it lost its core strength with the decline of labor and the worker’s movement in general. The other constituencies, are those seaking civil rights: Gays, Black, Minorities, feminist – but that’s just enough to guarantee a minority and it doesn’t bring forth leaders that can attract large majorities. But the real problem is Gays, Blacks, Minorities and feminist constituency (and many if not most prominent feminist are lesbians, Jewish, or other minorities) comes off as an party allien to America – the loss of labor took from the dems their claim to nativism.
(By the way, the present problem with Foley is going to have a whiplash affect on the gay community as people won’t be able to tell pedophiles from homosexuals and the Republicans, once shed of Foley, will lump them together as a threat to our children.)
While Bill Mon’s analysis may prove right, it is certainly not automatic.
In Prof of POlitical Science, Robert O. Paxton’s “the Anatomy of Fascism” there’s a small excert on the Anatomy of Swedish Socialism. Swedish socialism is the result of a long held alliance between rural interest and urban worker’s interest. Furthermore,if you look at Europe as a whole, pandering to the farmers under the CAP keeps the liberal movement strong over there – and perhaps in Japan as well, though, recently less so.
Currently the Democrats strength is in the urban states, but they’ve been losing their asses in the rural states. That’s all begining to change now and in all places in Kansas. Please read Krugmans column from monday on this.
The Democrats are showing promising penetration in rural midwestern and mountain states North of the Mason Dixon line, which west of Missouri is the Kansas/Oklahoma border.
In Kansas ‘rational’ republicans are crossing over to the Democratic party. Why? because when your ideology is pragmatism and plurality, there is room for rationality.
This demonstrates that Bill Mons’ analogy of the old whigs becoming Republicans because of the old Northwest switching to the Republicans might be happening again, except this time the role of the old north west of 1850s is being played by folks a little farther to the north and west – the Kansans, the Montanans, and so on.
To win the last two elections, the Republicans have had to sweep the entire rural belt of the south, the Mountains states, the great plains states and nearly half the midwest states.
The Southern states aren’t likely to peel off that quickly as they are culturally dissenters, but we are seeing penetration in the near north already in the senate races of tennessee and Kenturky.
But the great plains and the Moutain states are low hanging fruit, and there is fruitful work being done there by the Govenors of Kansas and Montana. Kansas is the more important one because its a geographical block from the rest of the northern Great plains and Mountain states.
As the Swedish model suggest there’s a natural alliance between rural and urban workers interests. For instance, the cities need energy, the rural localities can provide it. Schwietzer (gov of monatana) has advocated the building of liquified coal plants in rural montana (and America has more coal than the Saudi’s have oil) – they can provide fuel for are vehicles at $1 a gallon. (the problem: a liquified coal plant cost $1.5 billion – but for the cost of Iraq, we could have built 350 of them) Combine that with biodiesal fuels, and modern, safe, nuclear energy and suddenly rural America is providing urban America with all our energy needs. That means all the money we send to the Middle East goes to long suffering Rural America. The Republicans can’t do that because they are captive to the petroleum oligarchy.
So mountain and great planes states could switch over to the Democratic party and create a Swedish style liberal constituency. It will also enrich our long suffering hinterland and provide an injection of American Nativism that the Democrats haven’t seen since the decline of the labor movement.
Just as the old northwest provided leadership in Lincoln, the New Northwest is likely to provide the leadership for the New Democratic party. Why, because they reak of an American nativeness. And the genuine nativeness of those folks will give the Democratic party a more native look, feel and appeal. That’s the one thing missing since the decline of Labor.
If all this happens, it might not be the Democratic party that goes the way of the whigs, but the Republican party.
The dissenters are irrational. The policies are insane and hurting the country. They have bled the treasury dry why fighting wars for the petroleum oligarchy in the middle east with American blood and treasure, when we have all the energy we need here. Meanwhile the religious will attack the pluto crats and the plutocrats will attack the religious. If the petroleum oligopoly is busted up, the core money constituency of the Republican party will be on the receiving end of a coup de main.
If all this happens we can largely withdraw most of our presence from the middle east and give it back to the muslims and let them figure out how to reconcile themselves with modernism. If all this happens we will have our country back!
Posted by: Bubbles | Oct 4 2006 22:16 utc | 16
|
