Anti Slavery Movement

The Republican Party And Race, Repudiation Of Founding Of The Party 170 Years Ago!

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With the new year 2024 coming tomorrow, it will mark 170 years since the Founding of the Republican Party in 1854, dedicated to opposition to the expansion of slavery, and including abolitionists in its midst, who committed themselves to the total end of slavery.

For many decades after the end of slavery, Southern Democrats promoted discrimination against African Americans, including lynchings, Jim Crow segregation, and denial of voting rights, and also a nativist attitude toward Catholic and Jewish immigration.

Sixty years ago, the Democratic Party under Lyndon B. Johnson finally liberated the party from this racism and nativism, only to have these Southern Democrats rush en masse to the Republican Party.

There was still a great deal of resistance by many Republicans, until the rise of Donald Trump, but now, the Republican Party has become an openly racist and nativist party without shame, and has also worked against women’s rights and voting rights.

The Republicans of the founding era would be shocked at how the Republican Party has repudiated its basic principles.

The Presidential and Congressional Elections of 2024 give decent Americans the opportunity to repudiate the disgraceful Republican Party, which puts Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Dwight D. Eisenhower, and decent Congressional Republicans who contributed to American history on a totally different level than the modern disaster the party has become!

Nikki Haley Self Destructs On The Issue Of Slavery And The Civil War!

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Republican Presidential candidate Nikki Haley has just destroyed her candidacy by refusing to state that slavery was the major cause of the American Civil War!

Asked at a New Hampshire campaign event, Haley seemed uncomfortable with the question, and avoided mentioning slavery, an outrageous blunder on her part.

Instead of showing leadership, Haley acted just like Ron DeSantis and Donald Trump, as they attack the issue of race as a major factor, instead promoting white supremacy, and demonstrate their ignorance of not only the Civil War, but American history in general.

This situation reminds us of the reality that the party of Abraham Lincoln, the party formed to fight against expansion of slavery, and having many abolitionists within its midst, in the 1850s through the 1870s, has now totally repudiated the basic principles of the founding of the Republican Party!

Any “edge” Haley might have been gaining is now lost, as she has demonstrated lack of commitment to the truth, and cowardice on a grand scale!

159th Anniversary Of Founding Of Republican Party: Not A Celebration!

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The Republican Party, which gave us Abraham Lincoln, Thaddeus Stevens, Charles Sumner, William Seward in the years of the 1850s and 1860s; which gave us Theodore Roosevelt, Robert La Follette, Sr, George Norris, William Borah, Hiram Johnson in the 1900s-1940s; which gave us Dwight D. Eisenhower, Nelson Rockefeller, William Scranton, Henry Cabot Lodge Jr,, George Romney in the 1950s-1960s; and which gave us Mark Hatfield, Charles Mathias, Charles Percy, Howard Baker, Bob Dole, Gerald Ford in the 1970s–1990s, reached its 159th birthday today.

The Republican Party began as an anti slavery expansion party, with elements of abolitionism also present when the party began on this day in Ripon, Wisconsin in 1854.

It became the party of civil rights legislation, three civil rights constitutional amendments, progressive legislation, and supportive of much bipartisan legislation with Democrats in the New Deal and Great Society eras.

Of course, they had their evil elements, including McCarthyism, nativism, and tying themselves to organized religious influences that wished to take America backward, but until the past few years, they always had redeeming values in many ways, and would often denounce the extremists in their midst.

But now the Republican Party has become a party dominated by Tea Party radicals, who promote racism, misogyny, nativism, concern only to promote the welfare of the wealthy, and willingness to engage in foreign wars that have cost us dearly in treasure and loss of life and limb!

The Republican Party is no longer, in any way, reflective of its past, and in fact, insults its honorable, respectable history, sullying the names of its heroes and champions over a century and a half!

This is a tragedy of massive proportions, and the name “Republican” should be co-opted by the true moderates who are sitting by, watching the destruction going on, and holding their heads in their hands, ashamed that the name has been so damaged by reckless, anarchistic haters of the federal government! The party which fought the Civil War to uphold the Union is now more like the secessionist Democrats of that era!

Kansas: Historic Center Of Massive Battles And Turmoil Does It Again!

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The state of Kansas, center of the Great Plains, is one often overlooked or ridiculed, but it has been a center of massive battles, turmoil, and struggles throughout its history.

Blessed and cursed by its location in the Wheat Belt, Kansas has seen tornadoes, blizzards, drought, hail, floods, and grasshoppers, and was the center of the Dust Bowl of the 1930s, forcing many farmers to leave the state and go west to California for salvation!

It is the territory and state where the Civil War began over slavery in the 1850s, before that war erupted nationally, and it was the center of struggles between Indians and whites from 1860-1890.

It was also the original home of the prohibition movement against liquor, and a center of the Populist movement of the 1890s and the Progressive movement of the early 20th century.

Kansas also became the rare example of a non Southern state which adopted racial segregation legally, and it was a case brought by a young black girl, Linda Brown, in Topeka, Kansas, which led to the famous Brown V. Board of Education Supreme Court decision in May, 1954.

And abortion has become a major controversy in Kansas, with Dr. George Tiller, an abortion doctor, murdered in Wichita a few years ago by an anti abortion fanatic.

Now the state government, under right wing conservative Republican Sam Brownback, former Senator, has passed restrictions on abortion, which has led to only ONE abortion center being available in the entire state, a major victory by the so called Pro Life movement, and a major blow to the Roe V. Wade decision of the Supreme Court in 1973.

So the abortion debate rages on in many states, with Kansas again being the center of controversy, as it often has been in its history over the past 160 years!

The Long Range Significance Of Wisconsin! Survival Of The Middle Class, Public Education, And Democracy!

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The Wisconsin labor struggle is a battle against corporate interests who wish to destroy the working middle class’s right to collective bargaining and labor representation. It is a calculated attempt of conservatives, Tea Party Movement, and Republicans (who have always hated and opposed labor rights) to diminish the middle class and destroy public education, the only way for upward social mobility in this society!

The labor movement helped to create the middle class, but it had to face entrenched business and conservative interests in the 19th century and in the 20th century. Now, in the 21st century, it faces new attempts to take away the hard earned rights and benefits that generations of workers struggled for, earned by the sweat of their brow, and deserve respect and dignity for their commitment to their work.

Every social movement in this country has required marches, demonstrations, lawsuits, and civil disobedience to win support–including the anti slavery movement, the women suffrage struggle, the recognition of labor rights, the civil rights movement, the women’s rights movement, and the gay rights battle!

It is appropriate that Wisconsin, the birthplace of the Republican Party in 1854 at Ripon, and which had a platform of opposition to the expansion of slavery and included abolitionists in its midst; and also the birthplace of the progressive movement in Madison with the election of Governor Robert LaFollette, Sr in 1900–is the “ground zero” location of the new fight for labor rights and the survival of the middle class and public education!

Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin might be intransigent, but those opposed to his use of fear and hysteria–just as the GOP has always been good at utilizing, as in the Red Scare led by Senator Joseph McCarthy, and the manipulation of September 11 to promote the Iraq War–must not give in, and must continue the struggle, and it must be fought in Florida, Ohio, New Jersey and elsewhere with no surrender, as it will determine the future of the American middle class and the survival of a society that can still be termed a democracy!