Our country has always had "swings" between liberal and conservative power struggles. The morality of the land is the driving factor. From the temperance movement in 1869 to the present the Prohibition party has sought to change the values of America. From 1925 to the present the "traditionalists" have fought the "modernists" beginning with the Scopes Trial. All of these movements found a leader in Ronald Reagan, thus beginning the modern conservative "takeover" of America and its values.
Just a glance at The Prohibition Party's website is enough to scare any modern free thinker in our society.
http://www.prohibition.org/The values they want in America would cause a major re-write of the US Constitution. A few of their wants include: *Against the Homosexual Agenda, *For the Right to Prayer and Bible Reading in the Public Schools, and *Ballot Law Reform, which some have said includes literacy tests and poll taxes. Their own agenda shows a dichotomy. The Prohibitionists call for a constitutional amendment allowing prayer in school while at the same time asking for a restoration of states rights and local control of schools. This shows the hypocrisy of their own agenda. Wanting more constitutional government while asking for less. A list of these and other "values" the Prohibitionists call for can be seen here,
http://www.prohibition.org/values.html. The preamble of the party's platform reads like a sermon on the mount. "We the delegates to the Prohibition National Convention, assembled in Avada, Colorado, June 12, 2003 recognize Almighty God as the source of all just Government and declare our faith in the teachings of Jesus Christ. If elected we will serve the needs and preserve the constitutionally guaranteed freedoms of the citizens of the United States of America." Let that sink in for a second. Now email them and ask them will "their" constitution guarantee the rights of Muslims? Will it guarantee prayer in school for Buddhists? Will atheist children be exempt from their "mandatory" prayer? In asking these questions how can their preamble be true? How can they serve ALL the citizens of the United States with such a limited view of our "melting pot" society? In one simple answer, they can't, and don't intend to. This is the reason our founding fathers fought for a separation of church and state.
The "traditionalists" fought their major battle in the summer of 1925. It was a time when traditionalists and modernists looked for a showdown. They found it in a small town in Tennessee called Dayton. The Victorians worried that the values they held true we're being threatened. Younger modernists no longer asked whether society would approve of their behavior, only whether their behavior met the approval of their intellect. In this battle Williams Jennings Bryant led his conservative cause, banning the teaching of evolution, against Clarence Darrow. This was one of the first cases for the ACLU. The trial was a platform to advance our new rights being defined by these new "modernists" In fact, Darrow himself, the attorney for Scopes, asked the jury to find his client guilty and fine him 100 dollars in order to be able to take the case to the Tenn Supreme court and deny Bryant his closing speech, which he worked weeks on.
We now come to these modern times. The birth of Reagan conservatives. "Conservatives should also remember Reagan's willingness to repeat his message-over and over again. Active minds find it difficult to repeat, in speech after speech, the conservative goals of lower taxes, less regulation, and smaller government. But when you give the speech for the 100th time, there will be someone in the audience who is hearing it for the first time. Younger voters are always being introduced to the conservative message." We see this tactic with Bush right now, this over and over message. "Conservatives want Reagan to replace FDR on U.S. dimes" (USA Today, 12/05/03) The idea of Reagan era politics outweighing the administrations of FDR is ludicrous. Without going into the fights FDR was up against, depression, and WWII, one cannot compare the two men. FDR dug us out of a great depression created by politicians and financiers who brought us economical ruin. He defended America first against the European pressure to enter the war, to the attack on Pearl Harbor. Reagan's legacy, in a nutshell, is summed up in one catch phrase, "Mr Gorbachev, tear down these walls!". Bringing a country to ruin by outspending them by trillions to build a military is not a great legacy. Denying countries the right to free trade is not an honorable thing. Fighting an economic war, bringing a country to poverty is not the proudest moment in our history. Diplomacy, fair trade, and bridging relationships would have been the honorable thing. Those we're not the things that get you on a dime, or Mt Rushmore. "In a study that ponders the similarities between former President Ronald Reagan, Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini and Rush Limbaugh, four American university researchers say they now have a better understanding of what makes political conservatives tick." (
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=33714)
"Underlying psychological motivations that mark conservatives are "fear and aggression, dogmatism and intolerance of ambiguity; uncertainty avoidance; need for cognitive closure; and terror management". Yes fear, the same fear the Bush administration uses on us today. With every code orange alert they spread the specter of fear. Fear gets them votes. We also see dogmatism and intolerance in the make-up of the conservative. This is the same dogmatism and intolerance the Prohibitionists show, the same dogmatism and intolerance the "traditionalists" showed during the Scopes trial. All we are seeing is the "swing" of the moral pendulum. The question is, will we lay down and take it, or will we fight like the "modernists" before us?
Michael Harris
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