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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsThe Republican Party is anti-American
by Timothy Egan from today's NY Times
In numerous surveys of a party that has adopted the worst pathologies of President Trump, Republicans have shown themselves to be explicitly anti-American. The Founders would gag. So would Abraham Lincoln.
Consider the Republicans view of the First Amendment, the most sacred of the freedoms embedded in this countrys governing blueprint. Just under half of Republicans now believe government should be able to shut down biased or inaccurate media. And close to half of Republicans have adopted Trumps authoritarian view that the news media is the enemy of the people.
I dont expect Republicans to know Thomas Jeffersons words by heart that if he were forced to choose between a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter. This from a man who was subject to a lifetime of biased and inaccurate press.
But what part of Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, do these citizens not understand?
Regarding the other foundational liberty in the First Amendment, restricting an establishment of religion by the state, the cult of Trump would throw that under a steamroller of bigotry as well.
A majority of Republicans think Christianity should be the established national religion. And half of all Southerners the deepest, most anti-American part of Trumps base, with the DNA of Civil War traitors still coursing through the region believe the United States was founded as an explicitly Christian nation.
George Washington made clear it was otherwise in a letter to a Jewish congregation in 1790 celebrating religious tolerance and diversity. The citizens of the United States have a right to applaud themselves for having given to mankind examples of an enlarged and liberal policy, he wrote.
Jefferson expressed a similar feeling, touting a homeland for the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and the Mahometan, the Hindoo, and infidel of every denomination.
So, quick summary: Republicans of today would not approve of the First Amendment as written. They would give Big Government free rein to quash dissenting voices in the press, and would prefer a merging of church and state.
Another founder, the immigrant Alexander Hamilton, would get the boot from Trumps Republicans. He distrusted populists who disdain the rule of law, so theres no place for him, a due process enthusiast, among the lock her up crowd. And he believed that immigrants were a source of greatness and renewal a sentiment still shared by a majority of Americans.
But as they have picked up Trumps hatreds as their own, Republicans have turned a cold shoulder to the wretched masses yearning to breathe free. Less than 40 percent of Republicans, in three recent polls, now believe immigrants are a benefit to the country. This could be because of ignorance: Even though the vast majority, 77 percent, of immigrants in this country are legal, a plurality of Republicans believe they are not.
Trump has compared himself to Abraham Lincoln, which is like comparing a noxious weed to a redwood tree. When the anti-immigrant Know Nothing party was at its height in the 1850s, Lincoln had this to say: I am not a Know-Nothing. That is certain. How could I be? He continued, As a nation, we began by declaring that all men are created equal. We now practically read it, all men are created equal, except negroes. When the Know Nothings get control, it will read all men are created equal except negroes, and foreigners, and catholics.
The modern-day Know-Nothings are the pink-faced mobs calling for a wall at Trump rallies. They are the architects of a government policy that puts children in filthy cages and forces them to drink fetid water, that sees helpless and newly orphaned babies as subhuman all while laughing at the cruelty.
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https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/05/opinion/trump-july-4.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage
Mc Mike
(9,114 posts)Cyrano
(15,041 posts)Mc Mike
(9,114 posts)mopinko
(70,121 posts)hugging little clumps of cells above all.
watoos
(7,142 posts)Trump has shown that 40% of the country is either racist, misogynist, bigoted White Supremacists, or they are Talibangelicals who believe that Trump is god's chosen one.
Is America a majority of good people? Trump has given me pause to wonder.
2naSalit
(86,646 posts)I have decided that the constant 35-40 something % in polls is BS. I think it's more like there is some kind of tweak that keeps it there regardless of actually sentiment. Polls are surveys and they can be conducted in ways to allegedly confirm a non-actuality. You can make a survey say anything you want it to say.
I think the numbers on his approval rating and support is false, don;t kow how to prove it but I think that this consistency is a tell.
Cyrano
(15,041 posts)seem to believe in and love the beast. Doesn't seem possible.
Yet, ignorance has no boundaries. Perhaps there really are that many Americans who adore the orange creature.
And if there are, we may be on the edge of humanity returning to the dark ages and perhaps even the caves.
And it's possible it will take hundreds or thousands of years to get back to sanity. After all, humanity may have been an evolutionary mistake.
Then again, given global weather change, perhaps our planet is over as we know it. Maybe, in a million years or more, we'll be replaced by a far more intelligent species. And if so, it will hopefully be a species that is not infected with corruption or horrors like Trump, Republicans, cruelty, and insanity.