In regards to addictinginfo.org/2013/06/08/20-historical-facts-that-republicans-distort-or-just-get-plain-wrong/: 1. Palin didnt say warn the British--she said warn the British that they would have a fight on their hands if they tried to seize the caches of arms and ammunition that the colonists had hidden at places like Lexington and Concord -- which is supported by Reveres journals of the night of his ride (usnews/opinion/blogs/peter-roff/2011/06/06/sarah-palin-was-right-about-paul-revere) 2. Bachmann got it wrong about the shot heard round the world. Big deal. She isnt THE voice of the Republican party. Hardly proves the entire party gets history wrong or is trying to rewrite history. 3. While Bachmann says a lot of stupid things, she is technically right about John Quincy Adams. If we narrowly define Founder as signer of the Declaration, then no, JQA isnt a Founder. But historically, the Founding Era historically is recognized through the election of 1800, and thus JQA would qualify as a Founder. redstate/diary/A_Texan/2011/06/29/john-quincy-adams-was-a-founding-father/ 4. Besides the fact that again Bachmann is NOT the entire Republican party, she is technically not wrong that the Founding Fathers ended slavery. If one narrowly defines ending slavery as well, when they signed the Constitution, slavery ended, then no, they didnt end slavery. But as Frederick Douglass noted, the Constitution is a Glorious Liberty Document because it was not a pro-slavery document but an anti-slavery one. Thus, the Founding Fathers paved the way for the 14th Amendment and technically did end slavery. reason/archives/2006/10/01/a-glorious-liberty-document 5. Again, this is a word game. Christian state does not mean a state religion defined as Christianity. Separation of church and state is nowhere in the Declaration of Independence nor the Constitution. It is in the Jan 1, 1802 Jefferson letter to the Danbury Baptists (loc.gov/loc/lcib/9806/danpre.html). As noted by the Heritage Foundation (heritage.org/initiatives/first-principles/primary-sources/jefferson-s-letter-to-the-danbury-baptists) President Jefferson sympathized with the Connecticut Baptists in their opposition to the state’s established religion, while expressing his reverence for the First Amendment’s “wall of separation between Church & State” at the federal level. Jefferson was not advancing the modern view that religion must be excluded from the public square. After all, he concludes his letter, written in his official capacity as President, with a brief prayer. Conservatives believe in a separation of church and state as defined by Jefferson--that a state cannot dictate what church an individual must belong to. With that said, the First Amendment leaves it up to the individual to choose freely what religion they wish to practice. Christian nation, as noted by Barton, is not referring to a state church but that the founders intended a free people to be a Christian people. As noted by Noah Webster in the 1828 First American Dictionary preface: the Christian religion is the most important and one of the first things in which all children, under a free government ought to be instructed... No truth is more evident to my mind than that the Christian religion must be the basis of any government intended to secure the rights and privileges of a free people. 6. First off, Darwin wasnt the first to present a theory of evolution, Jean-Baptiste Lamarck did in a lecture on May 11, 1800, only ten years after Franklins death, which suggests that concepts of evolution and transmutation were around in Franklins time. In fact, loose theories of evolution can be traced as far back as Aristotle. So, the person who wrote this article clearly didnt do homework. Especially since while Franklin rejected the dogmas of organized Christianity, he said this (portal.state.pa.us/portal/server.pt/community/history/20018/benjamin_franklin_and_his_religious_beliefs/1014592): Here is my Creed: I believe in one God, Creator of the Universe. That He governs it by His Providence. That he ought to be worshipped. That the most acceptable Service we render to him, is doing Good to his other Children. That the Soul of Man is immortal, and will be treated with Justice in another Life respecting its Conduct in this ... As for Jesus of Nazareth ... I think the system of Morals and Religion as he left them to us, the best the World ever saw ... but I have ... some Doubts to his Divinity; though it is a Question I do not dogmatism upon, having never studied it, and think it is needless to busy myself with it now, where I expect soon an Opportunity of knowing the Truth with less Trouble. This is not to say that Franklin did not believe in aspects of evolutionary theory, but conveniently the writer of the article did not name one Republican who has ever made this claim, and a quick Google search provides nothing. 7. A play on words again. Barton didnt say that the Revolutionary War ended slavery but that it was fought to end slavery, which is different. To Bartons credit, tyranny is a form of slavery, so the Revolutionary War is therefore a war to end slavery. And as noted above, many of the Founding Fathers did see the hypocrisy of establishing a free state while having slaves. So this is the writer playing with words. 8. Slavery was a states rights issue in the eyes of the Confederacy because from the point of view of 18th and 19th century slaveowners, which we must consider in understanding this argument, slavery was a form of commerce and thus with the election of Lincoln, the South saw the potential of the Federal government dictating how they were to run their economics in the South. The idea of Federal regulation in commerce doesnt come about until Wickard v. Filburn (1942). Also, all the Southern slaveowners were Democrats. There was no flipping of the parties in the 20th century. Nixons Southern Strategy wasnt to make the Republican party more racist in order to gain control of the South. Why would they? From the establishment of the Republican party under Lincoln through Nixon, out of the 21 US Presidents, 14 were Republicans--66%. Republicans had a natural advantage in national elections. They controlled most of the North and the cities. The Southern Democracy was cracking since the 1930s due to economic reasons, and thus the Southern Strategy was predominantly based on economics and not race. Republicans lost control of the cities, especially in the North, due to the efforts of community organizers like Saul Alinsky, who under the guise of charity work, went into church and secular communities and actively indoctrinated young people and minority church communities toward liberalism and even radicalism. This so-called flip was actually Republicans gaining the south through economical fronts while losing the North from an intricate and well-organized efforts of community organizers. Also, with the passing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (with no thanks from the Democratic Party, who still stands as the longest filibuster in the history of Congress), history credited JFK with the law, which converted a majority of the African American community (followed by the efforts of community organizers like Alinsky) to the Democratic Party. 9. Texas v. White, while containing discussions over secession, was about who owned bond money, Texas or the US Government. It was not a case about a states right to secede or not. What was absolutely null was Texas claim over the bond money being theirs because by returning to the Union, the bonds went to original jurisdiction, aka the Federal Government. While I dont believe in secession, those in the secession movement in Texas do have some interesting, rational arguments (texassecede/faq.htm#txconst). 10. Out of context, Santorum sounds like a wackjob (and I know Alan you would say that even in context, hed sound like a wackjob too). But if we go to the original D-Day speech that Santorum made (https://youtube/watch?v=sIPMzqkCR7o) June 6, 2011, when Obamacare was a hot button issue and he was vying for the Republican nomination for the 2012 election, his point was that those that stormed Normandy fought for freedom in all of its forms, which includes being able to decide ones health care decisions for themselves. He wasnt saying, D-Day vets stormed Normandy against Obamacare. To even suggest that that was his point is intellectually dishonest. 11. Again, the article is being intellectually dishonest and misleading about Reagan (dailycaller/2012/06/06/ronald-reagan-raised-taxes-11-times-the-real-story/) 12. Again singular voices do not constitute THE Republican party, and while I wouldnt go as far as saying McCarthy was a hero, he actually wasnt wrong. His assertion of Communists in many levels of American entertainment, government, etc., was and still is true. The problem was McCarthys strategy. His witch hunt tactics severely discredited his honest observations. Just like Karl Marx (yes, Ill quote Big Daddy Commie himself) noted that marriages were broken in society, but where he was off was saying how society didnt need the institution of marriage anymore. 13. So quoting one speech by MLK determines his entire political philosophy? Talk about quote roulette. MLK. MLK had no official party registration, but if you were to take his entire body of writings, speeches, etc., his overall philosophies lean more conservative than liberal. Questioning capitalism doesnt make you a liberal, and suggesting that MAYBE America must move toward Democratic Socialism doesnt mean hes suggesting outright that America MUST be a democratic socialist nation. 14. Again with the obsession with Bachmann as THE voice of the Republican party...she isnt. But FDR didnt get us out of the Depression with the New Deal. The New Deal actually failed due in part by the Dust Bowl and the fact that the policies didnt help much. WWII ultimately bolstered the economy out of the Depression. 15. Last time I checked, Eric Bolling and Dana Perino are news personality not political members of the Republican party (as much as you liberals want to equate Fox News to the status of the terrorist arm of the GOP like the KKK was with the Democratic Party). As far as Giuliani goes, if this is his most drastic gaffe, then we can start listing Democrats who constantly gaffe, starting with Biden, Obama, Pelosi, Reid, and Hillary. 16. Conveniently here, he disregards the history of corporate personhood, which started in 1819 (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_personhood). The last founding father Monroe died in 1836. So clearly, if the founders were SO up in arms over corporate personhood, I think they would have made it known when it started. Regardless, the writer also conveniently doesnt name any names here. 17. This is an out and out misrepresentation of history. The 1798 had nothing to do with the General Welfare Clause (which Obamacare claims to be), but the 1798 law was considered a constitutional regulation of foreign commerce precisely because it targeted directly workers involved in navigation (tomwoods/blog/does-that-1798-act-make-obamacare-constitutional/). 18. Talk about deflecting on what is at the heart of the argument. When Social Security first came out under FDR, the senior citizens that first year received Social Security. HOW??? They didnt work 30yrs and pay into a system. That is because you do not receive the money you put into it. The senior citizens that first year were being funded by those who were already working. When you retire Alan (if you havent done so already), I would be funding your Social Security benefits. When I retire, my childrens generation will fund me. Social Security is off by one generation. If you paid your own Social Security, then there would be no Social Security crisis. All of the baby boomers that contributed for 30yrs would pay for their own. Problem is you dont pay for your own social security. The latter generation pays for the former. Thats why it is a Ponzi scheme. What I put into social security via my taxes, I will not see a majority of it when I retire. 19. This is utter nonsense. The name of our country implies that the Founders never intended on a STRONG centralized government. We are not the Federation. We are the United States--states held together by a union of Contract--the Constitution. Some of the framers were nervous with the language of the Constitution because they felt it gave the federal government too much power and thus wrote the Bill of Rights to protect the individual and the states from a potentially tyrannical government. To suggest that the Constitution guarantees the federal government to create things expressively not in the Constitution like universal health care goes against Jeffersons own words, “Congress has not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare but only those specifically enumerated.” 20. Conveniently here, the writer does not name names of who has said the founders were right-wingers or conservative. And the writer also assumes a definition of conservative which is not supported by history. Specifically about civil rights, if we look at Republicans in Congress under Lincoln that supported the 14th Amendment, they expressively called themselves conservative Republicans. And since I debunked most if not all of his other 19 points, his 20th point is rather moot.
Posted on: Sat, 06 Dec 2014 04:08:19 +0000