I have just finished reading Wally DuChateau’s well written weekly column in your April 6 issue. I happen to agree with much of what he had to say this week, however, I feel compelled to proffer a bourbon to beer glass restatement of his hypothesis regarding fringe elements of the political spectrum and the utilization of tears in public discourse if you will kindly permit.
The people that he calls screwballs in front of the post office are actually an acting fringe element of the Democrats made up of the various wharf rat parties like the old I.W.W., Socialist Worker, etc., that have no chance of winning an election on their own strength or merits and usually help the Democrats in elections but will occasionally jump on the bandwagon of a candidate like Ron Paul just to muck up the political process.
“Two steps forward and one step back, that’s the way the lefties attack.”
Their political ancestry is Eastern European and you’ll find such groups in or near any port city, passing out manifestos, conducting street demonstrations and riots – ranging from budget cut protests to union rallies, peace marches and the WTO meeting in Seattle several years ago. I’m sure you’ll find a few of them looking for mischief at so-called Tea Party functions.
The Republican Party has been a catchall for malcontent segments of society since its founding. It had its earliest beginnings as the Liberty Party in 1840 and drew only 17,000 votes in the presidential election. In 1844, it drew 62,300 for its candidate and shifted enough votes in key states to elect James K. Polk, a Democrat, over Sen. Henry Clay. A small splinter party calling itself the American Republican Party was launched in 1843, held a national convention in 1845 and called for reforms in naturalization laws, including a 20-year waiting period for citizenship. It disappeared during the Mexican War and reappeared in a new form in 1849, when a secret society called the Order of the Star Spangled Banner was organized in New York. It expanded rapidly and became a political party in 1854, informally called the Know Nothings because its members were sworn to secrecy abut its inner workings. It was against Jews, Catholics, blacks and foreigners, in fact very similar to the Midwest version of the Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s. It elected the governor and entire state legislature in Massachusetts in 1854.
This version shortly thereafter began to succumb to its own destructive forces. To fast forward a little bit, a coalition of Know Nothings, Free Soilers, abolitionists, anti-slavery Democrats and leading members of the Whig Party who were all opposed to the Kansas-Nebraska Act held their first convention in Michigan in July 1854 adopting the Republican Party name and running its first presidential candidate in 1856 and winning the1860 election.
Most of this used to be common knowledge to high school students before the graduating class of about 1985, 18 years after the LBJ presidency and Martin Luther King.
Finally, a Republican may have learned to use tears as a tactic when telling the collective voter “honey, suck it up a little, we can’t afford it” to counter all the news clip tears of laid off union workers, people whose unemployment runs out after two plus years, 15-year-old single mothers needing a government program to teach diaper changing, and other pitiful situations.
I agree with Mr. DuChateau that not much will change in the next 19 months, but I hope that I’ve given him and other independents something to ponder between now and the next civil war or election, whichever comes first.
I think I’d enjoy visiting with him about anything but politics sometime.
Edward Neil
Enumclaw
