November, 2007
Reexamining the Republican Party
Lyle Kossis
A look back at traditional conservatism
In today’s parlance, a conservative or a Republican is usually aligned with someone who favors making abortion illegal, thinks the United States should actively engage other countries in pre-emptive war in the name of either “spreading democracy” or fighting the “War on Terror,” and shows a willingness to enact one’s beliefs, not only about religion, into law.
In today’s parlance, a conservative or a Republican is usually aligned with someone who favors making abortion illegal, thinks the United States should actively engage other countries in pre-emptive war in the name of either “spreading democracy” or fighting the “War on Terror,” and shows a willingness to enact one’s beliefs, not only about religion, into law. This general notion represents society’s judgments as to what would constitute conservative or Republican positions on many of the important issues facing our country today. But oddly enough, this certainly wasn’t always the case.
The 1872 platform of the Republican Party, a traditional, conservative platform, contained nineteen different articles specifying Republican stances on major issues facing the country that are analogous to some we face today. Here are some examples.
Article one: “The United States, under the previous Republican administration…ensured that immigration was protected and encouraged.”
Immigration was the movement that founded this country and it was the lifeline that helped us rise to greatness. Immigration has always been considered a vital source of economic growth and the process should not be made unnecessarily hard, nor should we even contemplate closing our borders completely.
I am not advocating that we have a free-for-all, where we kick down the fences and let the masses run over here; but it’s important to remember that the notion that Republicans or conservatives hate people from other countries or ethnicities, and want to close off our country is simply untrue. Certain people who have some warped interpretation of the history and the possible future of this country have gotten control of the Republican Party and branded it with that image.
Article three: “Complete liberty and exact equality in the enjoyment of all civil, political, and public rights should be established and effectually maintained throughout the Union, by efficient and appropriate State and Federal legislation.”
The traditional, conservative position with regards to the area of civil rights and civil liberties has always been one that has profound respect for individual rights and casts a weary eye on government acts that curtail those privileges. Republicans were known for ensuring that Democrats did not strip African-Americans of their newly acquired rights or impose harsh protectionist measures on the economy that would damage international trade and hamper industry here at home.
Article four: “The National Government should seek to maintain honorable peace with all nations, protecting its citizens everywhere, and sympathizing with all people who strive for greater liberty.”
Just take a moment and let that sink in. It was traditionally the Republicans, and conservatives, who made it a goal to maintain peace, not war, with all nations, and aimed to sympathize with those who were striving with greater liberty. There is no talk about making the world safe for democracy or invading countries that never attacked us to root out a dictator. Republicans recognized the insurmountable difficulties that come along with major foreign adventures and wisely steered clear from them.
With regards to the Iraq War, I think it is obvious from their platform that the Republicans of old, the true conservatives, would have vehemently disagreed with our current occupation of Iraq and the idea that we need to police the world. Being anti-war, wishing for world peace, or working to settle out differences through honorable and diplomatic channels is at the heart of conservative ideology.
Article five: “Any system of the civil service under which the subordinate positions of the government are considered rewards for mere party zeal is fatally demoralizing, and we therefore favor a reform of the system by laws which shall abolish the evils of patronage, and make honesty, efficiency, and fidelity the essential qualifications for public positions, without practically creating a lifetenure of office.”
To clarify, it is NOT customary for a Republican administration to fill cabinet positions, military appointments, or advisers with nothing but party tools who never step out of line. Any patronage system or appointment process that assigns people as civil servants merely because they are of the same party is “fatally demoralizing.”
Article sixteen: “The Republican Party… disapproves of the resort to unconstitutional laws for the purpose of removing evils, by interference with rights not surrendered by the people to either the State or National Government.”
This is classic Republicanism, limited government ideology that was the mainstay of the Republican Party well into the 1980’s. Government intervention is bad. It is bad when it tries to interfere in the economy, and it is bad when it tires to interfere into people’s personal lives.
All of the drug laws, drinking laws, and laws protecting morality or religious ideology would be repealed and discouraged under a truly conservative or Republican administration. Interfering with individual rights, personal liberty, individual choice, and personal privacy is a statist notion that has never had a home in the Republican Party until the New Right revolution in the 1980’s.
In closing, if you meet someone and they say they are conservative, ask them what they mean. Please do not assume that a conservative entails what you always thought it did. Most of what the Republican Party stands for today and what it represents is not conservative.
Being an antiwar civil libertarian does not disqualify one from membership in the Republican Party; actually, it does quite the opposite. There are a few conservatives left, myself included, who want to go back to a state of limited government and more freedom for everybody, but it seems today that we have no home. The Republican Party has abandoned us.