klhrevolutionist
Hopkinsville
Question: Hoptown...... — 2 years ago
We Err Because We Don’t Know History by: Al Benson Jr.
Over the years I have run across many good and sincere people who have all the right inclinations but often come down on the wrong side of critical questions because they do not know or have not been taught real history. It's not entirely their fault, for how many of us that were unfortunate enough to have to attend government schools for our "education" were really taught accurate history (or much of anything else for that matter)?We labor under so many misconceptions and half-truths (and that is not accidental) that often our efforts at improving our culture are short circuited by our lack of knowledge and we end up giving people about half of what they need to make informed decisions.
One of the gross misconceptions I have heard over the years is that the Republican Party is the party of small and limited government. I used to believe this myself until I did the homework and discovered that the opposite was closer to the truth.
I recently read an article in a magazine published by a Reformed denomination in this country. It was a good article and the man that wrote it was pointing to the fact that the Republican Party, which was supposed to limit the size and scope of government, when it came to power, had actually done otherwise and the corruption and corporate fascism was just as rampant among the Republicans as it had been among the Democrats. No argument there. The author of the article was lamenting that fact, and justifiably so. I had no disagreement with him on that point whatever. However, in the body of his article he asked the question: “Has a fundamental rottenness crept into the Republican Party, with a threat to unravel the original vision of less government?” As good as his intentions are, the author’s comment about the Republican Party reveals an ignorance as to its real foundation. He seems to have no idea about the real foundations of the Republican Party and those involved. He is where many of us have been in the past until we did the homework. And now he needs to do the homework also.
In 1856, when the Republican Party ran its first presidential candidate, John C. Fremont, the so-called “pathfinder” that worthy gentleman had the backing of several men who had been socialist and communist revolutionaries in the failed 1848 socialist revolts in Europe. Fremont, who was a radical abolitionist, seems to have had no problem whatever with socialist support. In fact, when the War of Northern Aggression broke out in 1861, General Fremont ended up with a goodly number of these socialist and communist “Forty-Eighters” on his military staff while the war was in progress. It seems that the Forty-Eighters flocked to Fremont, and you can’t help but wonder why. What did they know about him that our “history” books have not revealed to us?
Fremont lost the presidential race in 56, but the socialists and communists that supported him were nothing if not patient. By 1860 they had found yet another candidate that they could and did support—Abraham Lincoln. Several well-known Forty-Eighter revolutionaries were involved in the presidential campaign of 1860 in support of Mr. Lincoln. Carl Wittke, auther of Refugees of Revolution has noted that Lincoln was fully aware of the socialist presence in his 1860 campaign and it seems to have caused him no discomfort. The Forty-Eighters had quite a bit of influence in the Republican convention in 1860, even helping to write parts of the party’s platform. You might almost be tempted to label this as “the Red roots of the Republican Party.”
Thanks to “historian” James McPherson we have been informed that Lincoln, in 1848, had championed the cause and leadership in those socialist revolutions in Europe, so why should the revolutionaries not return the favor in 1860—in order to help promote their version of socialist United States through the Republican Party? These same socialists and communists again supported Lincoln in his re-election in 1864 and Karl Marx, via the Workingman’s Association in England even sent Lincoln a letter congratulating him on his re-election. Lincoln responded warmly.
With origins like this, can we in all honesty say that the Republican Party had an “original vision” of less government? Hardly, lest people be misled. If anything, the original vision of the Republican Party was one of increasing and centralized government, with perks for their friends in the business world, and Mr. Lincoln was more than willing to preside over that vision. So the Republican Party is really more socialsit in its origins than it is conservative and this is a fact that patriotic and conservative voters and activists need to be aware of, lest they continue to promote the fable that the Republicans are in favor of less government. Recent history should have taught them the fallacy of such thinking and with that in mind, they should go back and do enough homework to confirm their suspicions. We cannot have a correct worldview if we do not accurately know the history so that we can discern between convenient half-truths, outright lies, and accurate information
