David Sacks and Spencer Segal are law students at Stanford, and they also happen to be conservatives. That puts them in the minority on campus. In this excerpt from my longer conversation with them, we talk about the recent controversy involving the conservative Federal Judge Kyle Duncan and why diversity of thought is important on university campuses.
I am frightened that the graduates of what are supposed to be the leading schools of law in our nation have so little understanding of the underpinnings of Wester Liberal Law Codes.
No place benefits from an ideological monopoly. Not Stanford, not the state it's in, not the state I'm in which is quite red. Life requires balance to prevent the excesses of a one-party rule. I doubt this happens at Stanford any time soon, or at the other institutions plagued by group think and forced conformity. Law firms and judges read news accounts, too. It's hard to imagine the ones who are not similarly captured wanting to introduce people like the ones who protested into their ranks.
The pendulum is eventually going to swing in the other direction and it has already begun doing so. The thing with pendulums is that the rebound never stops in the middle; it typically goes to about the same point on the other side, not that I think Stanford is in any danger of becoming a bastion of right-wing thought. Still, some course correction is inevitable, particularly if enrollment numbers start to drop. Already, the utility of college itself is coming into question. A host of fields in the skilled trades pay well, are always in demand, and offer career opportunities without crushing debt. Others are turning to the community colleges for basic-level courses and sparing themselves from some of the antics of indoctrination camps.
The law schools need to hire conservative professors so as to achieve a proper intellectual balance. Every university receives government funds and they should be forced to do so under the penalty of forefeiting government support. The law mandates that both sides in a case be heard before a decision is made. Both sides need to be heard at law schools too.
"I don't think classrooms should be balanced. I believe in positive indoctrination."
That quote could be taken directly from BLM, Antifa or the protestors at Stanford. What would be the main thrust of the indoctrination if you were in charge? And would it extend from grade school through college? In regards to school children, I am ok with teaching a positive view of our country (on balance) and of capitalism (vs socialism/communism). I am not onboard with indoctrination if it means you teach that certain things are never to be questioned.
The whole idea of a decent education is to keep nothing from being debated; that's the essence of intelligent, thoughtful people. There are, of course some things that are not up for debate such as the earth is round, that all of us are imperfect beings, and that all of us will eventually leave this world but these facts are not in dispute. Whether the left is truly willing to embrace intellectual and political diversity is very much up for debate and I doubt whether are willing do so. It is up to us conservatives to keep the flame of debate burning brightly and fight any attempt to deny any speaker the right to speak regardless of his views and to question the speaker afterword.
Columbia University hosted the Iranian president about 10 years ago. He runs a dictatorial regime. He was treated very respectfully; he was also asked about the treatment of gays in his country. He said that there are no gay people because he eliminated them. There was no outrage and President Bollinger defended his right to speak. Pedophilia is illegal and should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. William Buckley once hosted a white suprememecist on Firing LIne. Both men are public intellectuals. Where do we draw the line? Incitement is wrong and is not protected and should not be. But the ACLU defended the right of Nazis to march in Skokie in 1978 and they did. Again where do we draw the line?
I think this mostly comes down to the difference in our understanding of the term "indoctrination". I see indoctrination and brainwashing as almost synonymous. They both describe a method of manipulating people into uncritical acceptance of certain ideas. They are tools to gain compliance and avoid the responsibility of having to continually defend your beliefs. With this definition, I believe indoctrination is always dangerous and I am suspicious of anyone promoting it.
When it comes to teaching children I do understand that there is no such thing as an unbiased lesson plan. There will be a theme simply based on how time is allocated or what context is provided or omitted. I would say that on balance it should be positive. Teach the worts, but not as the primary message. This seems pretty straightforward when it comes to capitalism vs Communism. You would have to work real hard to teach history in a way that puts Communism in a positive light. Teach about the atrocities of American slavery, but in the context of the entirety of human civilization.
I guess I believe that if the story you are telling is true, then you shouldn't have to indoctrinate. You should be able to continually win out in the marketplace of ideas.
I believe in an open marketplace of ideas. Even bad ideas should be debated because so many of them have become law. People must learn from the past in order to avoid the same mistakes in the present. Socialism has brought tragedy and suffering to people wherever it has been voted into power.
The persecution of Trump and the incident at Stanford remind me of this “...Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.” because no one at Stanford immediately stood up to the Woke Nazis. With regard to Trump, he has been and continues to be unambiguously persecuted by Neoconservatives of the state run Communist/Socialist Uniparty (mostly RINO GOP and nearly all Woke Dems).
I’m Catholic and a military vet and it seems to me that, indeed, Jewish people are at the top of the list for Woke, BLM and the radical Democrats to hate. And they neither hide it nor fear the consequences. Thank-you for speaking up and I hope I don’t falter when put to the test.
I don't believe the liberal-conservative distinction holds anymore. IMO the divide is between intolerant authoritarians and people who value the freedoms enshrined in the Constitution.
On the national stage, are there any conservatives left who haven't gone around the bend? Ever since Barry Goldwater, they all seem to have drunk from the poisoned cup that addles their brains, poor devils. To them the Constitution is a mere inconvenience.
If they were to rise to the top they might very well form a circular firing squad, trying to be the last person standing, emperor of the carnage left behind, worse than the Mad King George of England.
Hello, expediency, goodbye democracy. Even Trunp admirer Netanyahu has guzzled from that cup. Pray the Israelis in the streets defeat his aim to scuttle their judiciary. Do the Rockefellers even recognize the party they once supported? Would Bob Dole? Chuck Percy?
As history shows, pre-Gingrich, Republicans were the party of (a) low taxes (the rich always hate to pay taxes, even though they have benefited the most from U.S. economic opportunities).
(b) Small government meaning that the fewer governmental employees, the less it costs to run it; never mind that no governmement can be automated.
(c) Isolationism disguised as minding our own business (because when America gets involved beyond our borders, it always ends up costing tax dollars). But they tried pretending Hitler was not the tyrant he was, bent on world conquest. They declined to authorize money to aid England, which was being savaged by Hitler's U-Boats, as if we could stay above the fray forever. So Democrat FDR had to make an end run and send Churchill maybe a dozen destroyers classified as "Lend Lease" to pacify our isolationists while saving England from Hitler's U-Boats.
Then came Pearl Harbor, teaching us we have no choice but to be engaged in the world, for our own good. So now we've gone overboard in the opposite direction: Too much involvement, some will say, in too many places. Since WWII the planet has enjoyed a Pax Americanus, which has conferred benefits, quashing many anti-democratic impulses, but somemtimes going too far, as in stopping Saddam's invasion of Kuwait, but by invading Iraq & Afghanistan: 20 years of war, costing 3 trilliion, solving nothing, disrupting societies we do not understand, costing lives, making enemies. Which is why you hear nothing anymore from W. Bush or Rumsfeld, advocates of shock & awe, wise or not.
Meanwhile, the above Republican characteristics have since come to naught because they have NOT made America the darling of the Third World; nor have they made life better for Americans here at home.
Flower petals were NOT thrown at our GI's feet upon invading Iraq as Rumsfeld promised. Libya is a mess because we upset its fragile balance, getting rid of Ghadafi. We also disrupted the Middle East by replacing fairly democratic Mossadegh with the Shah of Iran; you saw how that has worked out. We also got rid of Allende in Chile, replacing him with the murderous dictator, Pinochet, Chile's monster. It took a generation for Chileans to recover from that. Other societies cannot be transformed into miniature Americas no matter how we treasure the notion. Each has its own way of being.
Whatever disasters came, from south of our border, rest assured we had a hand in creating them, to please and protect United Fruit Company (since renamed) or for some other questionable reason, making enemies, and creating openings for semi-Marxists we deplore, yet have a knack for creating.
Vietnam was the brainchild of the Dulles brothers, Alan running the CIA and the other one running the State Dept. who saw a commie behind every palm tree in Indochina. Every president since Ike therefore had to continue that travesty or be called a coward. Cost us thousands of American lives. And for what? After their defeat at Dien Bien Phu, France tried to warn us. It cost us dearly. We left Vietnam with our tails between our legs.
Can anyone define the Republoican platform now? All has become "Gotcha!" politics since the alleged Whitewater shenanigans during the Clinton era, which came to naught. They held 7 hearings trying to pillor Hillary for what happened at Benghazi; nothing stuck.
What do they stand for? Where is it leading them, or the nation? They are petty QAnon reactionaries, not statesmen, choosing to go backward instead of forward. They are America's millstone. While Biden strives for progress, they strive to hold us back. Pathetic. Hard to say what might come next.
Partisanship has never been more intense, yet hollow on the Republican side. They don't talk about what China is up to in Asia; rather, they speculate what's on Hunter Biden's laptop. They suspect him of finagling a fortune overseas; hoping no one again mentions what Trump's son-in-law profited off the Saudis. Hard to believe there once were Republican statesmen such as John Chaffee, Charles Percy, Wm. Cohen, Bob Packwood, Nancy Kassebaum, Richard Lugar or Warren Rudman or Dwight Eisenhower, worthy of respect. Not a Matt Gaetz or Marjorie Taylor Greene among them.
The party was ripe for Trump when he came along, and played them all for fools. Ask yourself: What do they stand for? Reactionaryism? Why should I follow them when they are going backward, not forward? What are their real ideals? Why don't they respect America's institutions? Why do they try so hard to set one group of us against the other groups, when we're all in this tiogether? Why did our most senior military officers do all they could behind the scenes to foil Trump's madness and amateurism, even though technically, he was their boss? They simply knew better, and were dedicated to the preservation of our nation.
Watch. Listen. Evaluate. Weigh. Decide. Defend what's right, denounce what's wrong, using our Constitutin and Bill of Rights as your guide. As Ben Franklin said around 1790, once the Declaration of Independence was signed "Gentlemen, you have a republic. If you can keep it."
He foresaw the pitfalls. What has become of us today bears him out. At mid-point, the Civil War was supposed to resolve our internal differences. Did it? There is work yet to do.
Our nation's ideals would carry us through, if only we would guard and respect them. It's not too late.
Dear Bobby Babylon: Alas, I belatedly realized that I omitted an important aspect in regard to your question as to how the Republican Party became what it is today. Key to understanding is delving deeper into the Nixon years:
Seeing the GOP slip in popuilarity following Barry Goldwater's scorched earth declarations (e.g., "Exrtemism in defense of liberty is no vice!" which helped elect Lyndon Johnson president), few observers note the negative effect of Nixon's decision to make bedfellows of the Republican Party & Strom Thurmoind's "Dixiecrat Party," which outside the South, and outside segregation's small circle of sympathizers, was a non-starter. It failed to boost hoped-for national support for the GOP, although it did convert former Southern Democraat segregationists to Republican segregationists. This destroyed all that was left of Rockefeller-style liberalism in the Republican Party, converting it to the party of sub rosa racial hate; not verbalized as such except using dog whistle code words, but infused with the same sort of sentiment: "Us on top, them on the bottom."
Since the nation had moved on from that sort of schism, the ploy made little difference except it united former southern die-hards with the GOP, diluting further any appeal the GOP might have had on strictly political philosophical grounds, separate from racial hatreds.
America was conceived as a refuge for ALL people, not just Western European refugees. Along the way, there were bumps in the road making this an everyday reality. At one point, there were immigration quotas limiting the number of so-called undesirables from countries such as Italy, Greece, the Balkans and Eastern Europe. That changed around the turn of the last century.
But quotas remained against Asians: Chinese and Japanese were specifically quota'd, even though America, as it was at the time, eagerly recruited laborers from China in the mid-1800's to help build the transcontinental railroad from San Francisco eastward, while low-wage European workers built it westward. They eventually met at Promontory Point, Utah, connecting east with west.
Afterwards, the Chinese workers aggregated mostly into a "colony" in San Francisco, becoming today's Chinatown there. Ironically, in recent times, San Francisco has had a Chinese mayor, demonstrating how far we have come as a nation, living up to our declared creed.
But I digress. The southernization of the GOP failed as a tactic to energize the party, thanks to the influence of the Civil Rights legislation of the '60's. Nixon's personal failings did not help them either. He was so paranoid that he secretly recorded what was said in the Oval Office (which helped doom him after the Watergate Scandal broke). He brought Watergate on himself by sending his infamouis "Plumbers" there to break into Democrat offices. They were discovered (ironically by a black security guaard who noticed a door unlocked that should have been locked), and the rest, as they say, became history, with Nixon's downfall and resignation.
Back then, embarrassed Republicans on Capitol Hill joined forces with Democrats to dethrone Nixon and purge his White House operatives (Haldeman, Dean and others; consult Google). Thus did Republicans and Republicanism fall farther into disrepute. Nixon resigned to avoid prosecution.
All olf which revealed Republicanism to be in many ways antithetical to the principles of democracy and fair dealing. This trait returned to view during the Trump presidency. Hard to find a Republican without a streak of it deep inside; a tendency to prefer swapping democracy for tyranny, as Trump tried.
I hope this chapter of our history (which took place long ago, perhaps before your time) helps you connect the dots and brings you up to speed. Such Republican mischief has been problematic all along, but wiser Republican heads kept it at bay since VJ Day. But as if it is a chronic deficiency in the Republican Party personality, it surges to the forefront now & then, disrupting normality, and convulsing us in gratuitous political conflict. Fortunately, our political system has enough safeguards and elasticity to survive periodic attempts at takeovers.
All this can be found in history sources if you want to seek it out. Yesterday informs today.
Well-said, Bobby Babylon. Indeed we do now have not one but three Republican Parties: 1. The Liz Cheney-Adam Kinzinger Wing and the QAanon Wing. 2. The QAnon Wing, led by Marjorie Taylor Greene, that favors forming a rump state. 3. What passes for the regular Republican Party, led by Senator MdCarthy from California. No coherence or rationality in sight. No party platform, either. We talk of some foreign nations as being "rogue states." Maybe two of their three should be referred to as "rogue parties"? John McCain and Barry Goldwater would both be mystified.
Once they had a political identity and sanity. Not currently. Their main thrust is playing "Gotcha!" politics and playing spoilers. They have not introduced a unifying, improved idea of where our nation should go since the Whitewater Investigation that lasted more than a year and came up empty, keeping Ken Starr in more than a million dollars spending moiney.
Then came the "Pillory Hillary" misadventure, complete with 7 (count them) Benghazi hearings that came up empty.
Currenly they are fixated on young Biden's laptop. What could it possibly contain that would change the course of history, or its revelations make America a better place in the world? Nor have they offered a better vision of our future.
Critics claim Joe Biden's age disqualifies him, yet his steady hand and wise judgment is what is keeping America focused these days, and moving forward. Quite a contrast to Donnie Trump playing kissy face with Vladimir Putin, N. Korea's Kim, and other tyrants or wannabee tyrants, while jeopardizing America's security by strewing "Secret" documents hither and yon. while grubbing moiney wherever he can find suckers willing to donate it to him.
Besides the Stormy Daniels matter, New York State, New York City & Atlanta all have legal bones to pick with him; not to mention two or three women who have civil suits pending against him. His lawyers are prospering off him. Will the Justice Dept. go after him for mishandling secret documents? He faces trouble from many directions; yet his fan base thinks he can do no wrong, sticking by him as they do.
What's his "secret sauce"? Is it his flamboyance? His embarrassing celebrity poses? The one thing he seems to be promising but has no way to deliver is notions of white supremacy, which has no place under our Constitution, and is repubnant & illegal to assert. Wishful thinking no end. He's the Pied Piper of group hate; a false prophet no nation needs.
I am frightened that the graduates of what are supposed to be the leading schools of law in our nation have so little understanding of the underpinnings of Wester Liberal Law Codes.
Although Martinez REALLY stepped up to the plate and respected Free Speech 🎤
Michael Mohr
‘Sincere American Writing’
https://michaelmohr.substack.com/
No place benefits from an ideological monopoly. Not Stanford, not the state it's in, not the state I'm in which is quite red. Life requires balance to prevent the excesses of a one-party rule. I doubt this happens at Stanford any time soon, or at the other institutions plagued by group think and forced conformity. Law firms and judges read news accounts, too. It's hard to imagine the ones who are not similarly captured wanting to introduce people like the ones who protested into their ranks.
The pendulum is eventually going to swing in the other direction and it has already begun doing so. The thing with pendulums is that the rebound never stops in the middle; it typically goes to about the same point on the other side, not that I think Stanford is in any danger of becoming a bastion of right-wing thought. Still, some course correction is inevitable, particularly if enrollment numbers start to drop. Already, the utility of college itself is coming into question. A host of fields in the skilled trades pay well, are always in demand, and offer career opportunities without crushing debt. Others are turning to the community colleges for basic-level courses and sparing themselves from some of the antics of indoctrination camps.
It might need it. But it's not going to get it.
The law schools need to hire conservative professors so as to achieve a proper intellectual balance. Every university receives government funds and they should be forced to do so under the penalty of forefeiting government support. The law mandates that both sides in a case be heard before a decision is made. Both sides need to be heard at law schools too.
"I don't think classrooms should be balanced. I believe in positive indoctrination."
That quote could be taken directly from BLM, Antifa or the protestors at Stanford. What would be the main thrust of the indoctrination if you were in charge? And would it extend from grade school through college? In regards to school children, I am ok with teaching a positive view of our country (on balance) and of capitalism (vs socialism/communism). I am not onboard with indoctrination if it means you teach that certain things are never to be questioned.
The whole idea of a decent education is to keep nothing from being debated; that's the essence of intelligent, thoughtful people. There are, of course some things that are not up for debate such as the earth is round, that all of us are imperfect beings, and that all of us will eventually leave this world but these facts are not in dispute. Whether the left is truly willing to embrace intellectual and political diversity is very much up for debate and I doubt whether are willing do so. It is up to us conservatives to keep the flame of debate burning brightly and fight any attempt to deny any speaker the right to speak regardless of his views and to question the speaker afterword.
Columbia University hosted the Iranian president about 10 years ago. He runs a dictatorial regime. He was treated very respectfully; he was also asked about the treatment of gays in his country. He said that there are no gay people because he eliminated them. There was no outrage and President Bollinger defended his right to speak. Pedophilia is illegal and should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. William Buckley once hosted a white suprememecist on Firing LIne. Both men are public intellectuals. Where do we draw the line? Incitement is wrong and is not protected and should not be. But the ACLU defended the right of Nazis to march in Skokie in 1978 and they did. Again where do we draw the line?
I think this mostly comes down to the difference in our understanding of the term "indoctrination". I see indoctrination and brainwashing as almost synonymous. They both describe a method of manipulating people into uncritical acceptance of certain ideas. They are tools to gain compliance and avoid the responsibility of having to continually defend your beliefs. With this definition, I believe indoctrination is always dangerous and I am suspicious of anyone promoting it.
When it comes to teaching children I do understand that there is no such thing as an unbiased lesson plan. There will be a theme simply based on how time is allocated or what context is provided or omitted. I would say that on balance it should be positive. Teach the worts, but not as the primary message. This seems pretty straightforward when it comes to capitalism vs Communism. You would have to work real hard to teach history in a way that puts Communism in a positive light. Teach about the atrocities of American slavery, but in the context of the entirety of human civilization.
I guess I believe that if the story you are telling is true, then you shouldn't have to indoctrinate. You should be able to continually win out in the marketplace of ideas.
I believe in an open marketplace of ideas. Even bad ideas should be debated because so many of them have become law. People must learn from the past in order to avoid the same mistakes in the present. Socialism has brought tragedy and suffering to people wherever it has been voted into power.
The persecution of Trump and the incident at Stanford remind me of this “...Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.” because no one at Stanford immediately stood up to the Woke Nazis. With regard to Trump, he has been and continues to be unambiguously persecuted by Neoconservatives of the state run Communist/Socialist Uniparty (mostly RINO GOP and nearly all Woke Dems).
I’m Catholic and a military vet and it seems to me that, indeed, Jewish people are at the top of the list for Woke, BLM and the radical Democrats to hate. And they neither hide it nor fear the consequences. Thank-you for speaking up and I hope I don’t falter when put to the test.
I don't believe the liberal-conservative distinction holds anymore. IMO the divide is between intolerant authoritarians and people who value the freedoms enshrined in the Constitution.
I think Lib-Con is still legit but need to realize RINOs and Neo-cons in the GOP are not at all conservative.
Stanford is one of the most demoralized DIEvy League “elite” universities: https://yuribezmenov.substack.com/p/how-to-get-into-harvard-part-3
Wanted to share:
"Ibram X. Kendi says a backlash has ‘crushed’ the nation’s racial reckoning. But there’s one reason he remains hopeful"
https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/18/us/ibram-kendi-racial-reckoning-blake-cec/index.html?utm_source=pocket_saves
Are you for real?
On the national stage, are there any conservatives left who haven't gone around the bend? Ever since Barry Goldwater, they all seem to have drunk from the poisoned cup that addles their brains, poor devils. To them the Constitution is a mere inconvenience.
If they were to rise to the top they might very well form a circular firing squad, trying to be the last person standing, emperor of the carnage left behind, worse than the Mad King George of England.
Hello, expediency, goodbye democracy. Even Trunp admirer Netanyahu has guzzled from that cup. Pray the Israelis in the streets defeat his aim to scuttle their judiciary. Do the Rockefellers even recognize the party they once supported? Would Bob Dole? Chuck Percy?
What ideological change make them go from Nelson Rockefeller to Newt Gingrich?
Dear Bobby Babylon:
As history shows, pre-Gingrich, Republicans were the party of (a) low taxes (the rich always hate to pay taxes, even though they have benefited the most from U.S. economic opportunities).
(b) Small government meaning that the fewer governmental employees, the less it costs to run it; never mind that no governmement can be automated.
(c) Isolationism disguised as minding our own business (because when America gets involved beyond our borders, it always ends up costing tax dollars). But they tried pretending Hitler was not the tyrant he was, bent on world conquest. They declined to authorize money to aid England, which was being savaged by Hitler's U-Boats, as if we could stay above the fray forever. So Democrat FDR had to make an end run and send Churchill maybe a dozen destroyers classified as "Lend Lease" to pacify our isolationists while saving England from Hitler's U-Boats.
Then came Pearl Harbor, teaching us we have no choice but to be engaged in the world, for our own good. So now we've gone overboard in the opposite direction: Too much involvement, some will say, in too many places. Since WWII the planet has enjoyed a Pax Americanus, which has conferred benefits, quashing many anti-democratic impulses, but somemtimes going too far, as in stopping Saddam's invasion of Kuwait, but by invading Iraq & Afghanistan: 20 years of war, costing 3 trilliion, solving nothing, disrupting societies we do not understand, costing lives, making enemies. Which is why you hear nothing anymore from W. Bush or Rumsfeld, advocates of shock & awe, wise or not.
Meanwhile, the above Republican characteristics have since come to naught because they have NOT made America the darling of the Third World; nor have they made life better for Americans here at home.
Flower petals were NOT thrown at our GI's feet upon invading Iraq as Rumsfeld promised. Libya is a mess because we upset its fragile balance, getting rid of Ghadafi. We also disrupted the Middle East by replacing fairly democratic Mossadegh with the Shah of Iran; you saw how that has worked out. We also got rid of Allende in Chile, replacing him with the murderous dictator, Pinochet, Chile's monster. It took a generation for Chileans to recover from that. Other societies cannot be transformed into miniature Americas no matter how we treasure the notion. Each has its own way of being.
Whatever disasters came, from south of our border, rest assured we had a hand in creating them, to please and protect United Fruit Company (since renamed) or for some other questionable reason, making enemies, and creating openings for semi-Marxists we deplore, yet have a knack for creating.
Vietnam was the brainchild of the Dulles brothers, Alan running the CIA and the other one running the State Dept. who saw a commie behind every palm tree in Indochina. Every president since Ike therefore had to continue that travesty or be called a coward. Cost us thousands of American lives. And for what? After their defeat at Dien Bien Phu, France tried to warn us. It cost us dearly. We left Vietnam with our tails between our legs.
Can anyone define the Republoican platform now? All has become "Gotcha!" politics since the alleged Whitewater shenanigans during the Clinton era, which came to naught. They held 7 hearings trying to pillor Hillary for what happened at Benghazi; nothing stuck.
What do they stand for? Where is it leading them, or the nation? They are petty QAnon reactionaries, not statesmen, choosing to go backward instead of forward. They are America's millstone. While Biden strives for progress, they strive to hold us back. Pathetic. Hard to say what might come next.
Partisanship has never been more intense, yet hollow on the Republican side. They don't talk about what China is up to in Asia; rather, they speculate what's on Hunter Biden's laptop. They suspect him of finagling a fortune overseas; hoping no one again mentions what Trump's son-in-law profited off the Saudis. Hard to believe there once were Republican statesmen such as John Chaffee, Charles Percy, Wm. Cohen, Bob Packwood, Nancy Kassebaum, Richard Lugar or Warren Rudman or Dwight Eisenhower, worthy of respect. Not a Matt Gaetz or Marjorie Taylor Greene among them.
The party was ripe for Trump when he came along, and played them all for fools. Ask yourself: What do they stand for? Reactionaryism? Why should I follow them when they are going backward, not forward? What are their real ideals? Why don't they respect America's institutions? Why do they try so hard to set one group of us against the other groups, when we're all in this tiogether? Why did our most senior military officers do all they could behind the scenes to foil Trump's madness and amateurism, even though technically, he was their boss? They simply knew better, and were dedicated to the preservation of our nation.
Watch. Listen. Evaluate. Weigh. Decide. Defend what's right, denounce what's wrong, using our Constitutin and Bill of Rights as your guide. As Ben Franklin said around 1790, once the Declaration of Independence was signed "Gentlemen, you have a republic. If you can keep it."
He foresaw the pitfalls. What has become of us today bears him out. At mid-point, the Civil War was supposed to resolve our internal differences. Did it? There is work yet to do.
Our nation's ideals would carry us through, if only we would guard and respect them. It's not too late.
A postscript to the above by Theodore:
Dear Bobby Babylon: Alas, I belatedly realized that I omitted an important aspect in regard to your question as to how the Republican Party became what it is today. Key to understanding is delving deeper into the Nixon years:
Seeing the GOP slip in popuilarity following Barry Goldwater's scorched earth declarations (e.g., "Exrtemism in defense of liberty is no vice!" which helped elect Lyndon Johnson president), few observers note the negative effect of Nixon's decision to make bedfellows of the Republican Party & Strom Thurmoind's "Dixiecrat Party," which outside the South, and outside segregation's small circle of sympathizers, was a non-starter. It failed to boost hoped-for national support for the GOP, although it did convert former Southern Democraat segregationists to Republican segregationists. This destroyed all that was left of Rockefeller-style liberalism in the Republican Party, converting it to the party of sub rosa racial hate; not verbalized as such except using dog whistle code words, but infused with the same sort of sentiment: "Us on top, them on the bottom."
Since the nation had moved on from that sort of schism, the ploy made little difference except it united former southern die-hards with the GOP, diluting further any appeal the GOP might have had on strictly political philosophical grounds, separate from racial hatreds.
America was conceived as a refuge for ALL people, not just Western European refugees. Along the way, there were bumps in the road making this an everyday reality. At one point, there were immigration quotas limiting the number of so-called undesirables from countries such as Italy, Greece, the Balkans and Eastern Europe. That changed around the turn of the last century.
But quotas remained against Asians: Chinese and Japanese were specifically quota'd, even though America, as it was at the time, eagerly recruited laborers from China in the mid-1800's to help build the transcontinental railroad from San Francisco eastward, while low-wage European workers built it westward. They eventually met at Promontory Point, Utah, connecting east with west.
Afterwards, the Chinese workers aggregated mostly into a "colony" in San Francisco, becoming today's Chinatown there. Ironically, in recent times, San Francisco has had a Chinese mayor, demonstrating how far we have come as a nation, living up to our declared creed.
But I digress. The southernization of the GOP failed as a tactic to energize the party, thanks to the influence of the Civil Rights legislation of the '60's. Nixon's personal failings did not help them either. He was so paranoid that he secretly recorded what was said in the Oval Office (which helped doom him after the Watergate Scandal broke). He brought Watergate on himself by sending his infamouis "Plumbers" there to break into Democrat offices. They were discovered (ironically by a black security guaard who noticed a door unlocked that should have been locked), and the rest, as they say, became history, with Nixon's downfall and resignation.
Back then, embarrassed Republicans on Capitol Hill joined forces with Democrats to dethrone Nixon and purge his White House operatives (Haldeman, Dean and others; consult Google). Thus did Republicans and Republicanism fall farther into disrepute. Nixon resigned to avoid prosecution.
All olf which revealed Republicanism to be in many ways antithetical to the principles of democracy and fair dealing. This trait returned to view during the Trump presidency. Hard to find a Republican without a streak of it deep inside; a tendency to prefer swapping democracy for tyranny, as Trump tried.
I hope this chapter of our history (which took place long ago, perhaps before your time) helps you connect the dots and brings you up to speed. Such Republican mischief has been problematic all along, but wiser Republican heads kept it at bay since VJ Day. But as if it is a chronic deficiency in the Republican Party personality, it surges to the forefront now & then, disrupting normality, and convulsing us in gratuitous political conflict. Fortunately, our political system has enough safeguards and elasticity to survive periodic attempts at takeovers.
All this can be found in history sources if you want to seek it out. Yesterday informs today.
Rand Paul strikes me as a legit conservative; not neo-con, not RINO, ant-Vax, pro-peace, etc.
Well, we saw what happened to Michael Steele, John Kasich and those types. American Conservative has been dead since the Neo/Paleo split
Well-said, Bobby Babylon. Indeed we do now have not one but three Republican Parties: 1. The Liz Cheney-Adam Kinzinger Wing and the QAanon Wing. 2. The QAnon Wing, led by Marjorie Taylor Greene, that favors forming a rump state. 3. What passes for the regular Republican Party, led by Senator MdCarthy from California. No coherence or rationality in sight. No party platform, either. We talk of some foreign nations as being "rogue states." Maybe two of their three should be referred to as "rogue parties"? John McCain and Barry Goldwater would both be mystified.
Once they had a political identity and sanity. Not currently. Their main thrust is playing "Gotcha!" politics and playing spoilers. They have not introduced a unifying, improved idea of where our nation should go since the Whitewater Investigation that lasted more than a year and came up empty, keeping Ken Starr in more than a million dollars spending moiney.
Then came the "Pillory Hillary" misadventure, complete with 7 (count them) Benghazi hearings that came up empty.
Currenly they are fixated on young Biden's laptop. What could it possibly contain that would change the course of history, or its revelations make America a better place in the world? Nor have they offered a better vision of our future.
Critics claim Joe Biden's age disqualifies him, yet his steady hand and wise judgment is what is keeping America focused these days, and moving forward. Quite a contrast to Donnie Trump playing kissy face with Vladimir Putin, N. Korea's Kim, and other tyrants or wannabee tyrants, while jeopardizing America's security by strewing "Secret" documents hither and yon. while grubbing moiney wherever he can find suckers willing to donate it to him.
Besides the Stormy Daniels matter, New York State, New York City & Atlanta all have legal bones to pick with him; not to mention two or three women who have civil suits pending against him. His lawyers are prospering off him. Will the Justice Dept. go after him for mishandling secret documents? He faces trouble from many directions; yet his fan base thinks he can do no wrong, sticking by him as they do.
What's his "secret sauce"? Is it his flamboyance? His embarrassing celebrity poses? The one thing he seems to be promising but has no way to deliver is notions of white supremacy, which has no place under our Constitution, and is repubnant & illegal to assert. Wishful thinking no end. He's the Pied Piper of group hate; a false prophet no nation needs.
Stay tuned. He is due to reap what he has sown.
I loved this episode! Both David and Spencer are generous and thoughtful people. Thank you!
Absolutely. And more libertarians like me. :P
Academia is obsessed with Marxists/Postmodernists.
https://unskool.substack.com/p/academias-infatuation-with-racist