Republican Party and its Supporters: Immoral, Backwards and Ruining the United States
A Brief Overlook at the History of the Two Very Different Societies in the United States:
The current Republican Party is a reflection of an old divide in the United States. So old in fact that it predates the United States itself. The South had a different economy than that of the North, one primarily based on slavery. The nature of the economy of a society largely determines the nature of the society itself. The Old South was paranoid (afraid of slave revolts, of being killed in their sleep by slaves), racist (of course), very socially conservative, educational laggards, backwards, characterized by a feeling of being looked down on by the North, feeling abused, and conservatively religious. The deep divisions between the North and the South almost made it impossible for the United States to be formed. They could only form the government by giving in to the fact of the two nations in one with an emphasis on the power of the states as opposed to the power of the federal government. This division is the source of the great weakness of the federal government that continues to this date.
The divisions between the North and South led to the Civil War which killed more than 600,000 men. As Mary Chestnut wrote in her diary from the South, the war was inevitable because "we hated each other so." The differences between the two societies (including their cultures, government and economies) were just too great. It had to come to war.
The South lost the war but won the peace. They were left alone to re-create another racist society that was a form of what later became known in South Africa as "apartheid" (but was labeled with the innocuous term "Jim Crow").
The South was allowed to remain a very racist society and culture until the world started becoming smaller. This really began with a bang in World War II. The world war virtually affected every nation in the world. The Great Depression and World War II led to an increase in a desire for racial justice in the United States. This in turn led to the civil rights movement followed by civil rights legislation of the early 1960s. This civil rights movement in turn spread throughout the world with many disadvantaged minorities worldwide calling for their own civil rights.
In a sense, the second civil war with its accompanying reconstruction led to a counter-revolution by the South. They went from largely a Democratic Party region to one solidly represented by the Republic Party. The South, however, remained solidly racist. They are still a racist society with a racist culture, government and economy. (The Republican culture is summarized nicely by the tern "Red Neck Culture". Hey, it's certainly more descriptive and honest than "Jim Crow".) The basic division in the United States between two societies continued and still continues to the present society of 2008.
The rural areas of the United States have very similar attitudes to the South. They are largely white and don't want minorities in their states. Their attitudes and cultures are in sync with the South. Whenever you get to really rural areas the country music stations predominate. Rural states and states of the South are soul mates.
The South and rural areas have another partner: a large segment of the wealthy class. After all, it is the South and the rural areas who largely have given the wealthy their great economic advantage. Split by race, the southern workers primarily (with some northern workers also) kept the working class split and the wealthy in great power and advantage. The United States, as a result, is the most unequal of all the major advanced industrial societies. Despite this fact, the South-rural-wealthy trio still pushes their non-egalitarian goals.
Where in the advanced industrial societies are there political parties as conservative as the US Republican Party? Nowhere, except perhaps for Australia (which has similar but less intense racial problems than the US). The other countries don't have Redneck political party dominating their politics.
Since we have two very different societies and ways of life in the United States, it is not surprising that the two party system we have represents the two different societies. The Republican Party represents the South-rural-wealthy and the Democratic Party represents the others.
Their Claimed Virtues are Really Sins:
The Republican Party represents primarily the interests of the states of the old Confederacy (including the border states), the more rural states of the West and Mid-West, backed up by the great wealth of the privileged class in the country. And as a representative of those groups that are immoral, backward and ruining the United States, the party itself shares the same faults.
So lets analyze the self-proclaimed virtues of the Republicans and show how they are covers for their faults:
1) We are more virtuous than the Democrats. Sorry, but Rednecks are not more virtuous than others. Redneck values are racist, anti-intellectual, hostile, paranoid, unfair and a hundred other unflattering adjectives. If it is true that America's heartland is the mid-west then the United States really is in trouble. Redneck ideas dominate in the rural areas of many of these states and often dominate the states themselves. Rednecks are actually less virtuous than Democrats.
2) We are more religious than the Democrats. Millions of Southerners and ruralities have become born again Christians. This born again religion is a front for racism. It is not an accident that the born again movement grew as the reaction against the civil rights movement grew in the South. How many separate white Christian schools have been established by these born agains? How much support do they give to their conservative, racist Republican Party? And how much do they push their Redneck ideas? The answer is "a great deal". Racist, conservative, backward people are not morally superior. They believe in a sort of primitive, emotional religion that does not even obey the higher moral values: thou shall not be prejudiced and discriminate against others on the basis of race, religion, ethnicity, class, sex or sexual preference. Instead of honoring these higher moral values, Rednecks denigrate them.
3) We are at the ready to always defend this country. Rednecks will always be a threat to the United States and its position in the world. They are too aggressive and too willing to start wars. Bush even invented a war to fight, a war that has lasted longer than the US involvement in World War II. They say they love the troops but they constantly cut veterans' benefits and wear them out emotionally and physically by making them fight a trumped up war with too few soldiers fighting for too long of a time, which results in excesses of post-traumatic stress disorder for the troops. PTSD then helps destroy military families, further weakening the combat readiness of the armed forces.
4) We are more patriotic than the Democrats. Since Republican culture is the reverse of their claimed virtues, they are not only not patriotic, but intensely unpatriotic. Because of its culture the South compared to the North was left backward in culture, economy, government and society. Now the world has become a global economy. The attitudes of the South and their effects on the nation as a whole will only leave the entire nation looking like the Old South: backwards in everything that's important.
5) We are better prepared to lead the United States into the future. A party that looks backwards and not forwards cannot lead the United States forward in a way that if the nation does not lead the way then at least will keep the nation abreast of modern developments in the world. Many in the Republican Party can't even admit that evolution is the key to understanding life on earth. They are looking backward as far as the times prior to the American Civil War. Now that is backward. The Republican Party and the oil companies connived to provide evidence combating the theory about the green house effect on the earth's environment, so their big oil contributors and other companies would not have to spend any money on environmental friendly improvements. Backward people like this cannot lead the United States into the future. They will always keep us behind the times and looking foolish, ignorant and anti-intellectual.
6) We won't raise your taxes like the Democrats. The Redneck coalition has done a great deal to ruin the current U.S. economy and politics. They have started an unnecessary war in Iraq and probably will start other wars in other areas such as with Iran. They have run up the deficit that has weakened the economy and our standing compared to other countries. The Republicans have spend too much money; money that they piled up in the national debt. The Republican Party is irresponsible. It spends and spends without the funds to cover the expenditures and claiming that they will never raise taxes so the debt will never be paid off as long as they are in power.
The Republican Party precisely because it is a Redneck Party representing Redneck people is a threat to the standing and health of the entire nation. What if the South had won the war? Well, they have in a sense. They have dominated the Era of Civil Rights politically and have hurt the country in multitudes of areas. If the United States as a whole is going to be Redneck, there is not much hope for the country.
And the American mass media is too scared to tell the truth about the Republicans being Rednecks ruining the USA because of their fear of retribution from the South and the other Republicans.
Patrick L. Cooney, Ph. d.
September 7, 2008
P.S. Red Neck Woman
And isn't this lionization of Sarah Palin sickening? The media should be ashamed of themselves. I realize she pleased the Red Neck crowd with her sarcastic, cynical and attacking style criticizing the Democrat Party. It may qualify you as a good Red Neck demagogue, but this hardly qualifies one for the office of the vice president of the United States.
If you take a photograph with a shotgun over your left shoulder, you might be a Red Neck.
If you eat moose burgers and moose stew, you might be a Red Neck.
If you speak in tongues, you might be a Red Neck.
If you constantly distort your record hoping you can get away with lying, you might be a Red Neck.
If you ask your constituents to pray for a pipe line and other goodies, you might be a Red Neck.
I think Sarah Palin is definitely a Red Neck and many in the Republican Party share her dastardly outlook and philosophy. That's why the red necks are all fired up. They have someone as with a neck as red as theirs, something which John McCain does not have. Her wonderful reception kind of proves the point that the Republican Party contains a whole passel of Red Necks.
John McCain as the "change" candidate? Isn't that like Bush as a "compassionate" conservative? And wasn't that a lie about Bush? It's all public relations misleading statements to hide the true nature of the Republican Party. A man who votes 90% of the time with Bush is no change agent. The Republican Party likes to "swift boat" the truth and don't seem to care how much they egregiously distort the truth. The party is too conservative to provide the necessary change that both the United States and the world needs.