History and Principles of the Republican Party - Charles Kesler

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  • čas přidán 28. 07. 2024
  • Political parties, neither mentioned in the Constitution nor foreseen by the Founders, arose almost immediately and have, generally speaking, served the nation well. The two-party system as we know it today dates to the 1850s. This first CCA of the 2016-2017 academic year will consider the origin and development of the party system, as well as the history, principles, and current state of the Democratic and Republican parties.
    Charles R. Kesler is a senior fellow of the Claremont Institute, editor of the Claremont Review of Books, and professor of government at Claremont McKenna College.
    Watch all of the presentations from CCA I: Democrats and Republicans here: www.hillsdale.edu/live/cca-de...
    Hillsdale College's website: hillsdale.edu`

Komentáře • 92

  • @christopherscaletta
    @christopherscaletta Před 6 lety +14

    John Brown's death brought the Republican party together. The soldiers weren't singing about Lincoln during the Civil War, they sang "John Brown's Body" because he embodied how a Republican should act against tyranny from the Democratic party.

    • @damnedyankee946
      @damnedyankee946 Před 5 lety +1

      @Christopher Scaletta ~ Southern Democrats wouldn't reason with the Northern ones and the party split. ( Union and Confederate )

    • @owlnyc666
      @owlnyc666 Před 2 lety

      @@damnedyankee946 I disagree. Lincoln remained a moderate throughout his presidency. I would agree that the death of John Brown united Conseritive Christian slaveholders he firmly believed that the Southern states had the Constitutional Right to run their economies and social structure as they saw fit and shouldn't be bullied by the Union. You have Anti-Choice Republicans.. Lowlight the Jefferson Republican. Republicans build walls and Democrats build bridges..I think that since the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the "southern strategy " the Republican party has lost-sold its "original ". I will concede that Demorats support Human Rights and Natural Rights. They are not as strong as Republicans supporting "supernatural " rights derived from the JUDEO-christian Bible. I think that most contemporary Republicans consider Trump a far greater president and far more patriotic than Reagan. I do not think that "Unambiguvolent " patriotism is a good thing. I think it is ironic that a rightwing Reagan would embrace a notoriously left wing Paine.

    • @trentbundy2296
      @trentbundy2296 Před rokem

      If your takeaway from John Brown is "Democrat Bad!" then you are a tool

  • @johnweber4577
    @johnweber4577 Před 2 lety +5

    There is an instinct to trace political evolution backward from now rather than to start at the beginning. That’s how notions like Conservatism being innately about small government and Liberalism a big one arise. The associations were reversed in fact at the Founding. The Hamiltonian Federalists represented a kind of Classical Conservatism which saw a strong national government as essential to preserving order. The Jeffersonian Republicans espoused a rigorous Classical Liberalism which perceived it to be an oppressive tool of the elite. As liberal teachings had informed the American Revolution, both camps were influenced by them. They reached consensus on recognizing natural rights, constraining government power, abandoning hereditary titles of nobility as well as the separation of church and state.
    The Hamiltonians, however, maintained conservative attitudes on central banking, protectionism, restricting immigration and property requirements for the vote. The Jeffersonians championed the liberal ideals of laissez-faire, free trade, open immigration and extending political suffrage to the common man. A nationalist versus internationalist divide emerged which shaped a lot of their disagreements. Perhaps the fiercest ensued when looming conflict around England and France aggravated tensions. Contrary to conventional wisdom, the federal over state position was used for conservative purposes when Federalists passed the Alien and Sedition Acts. Efforts to thwart radicalism that involved putting foreigners under scrutiny. And the anti-federalist stance, albeit complicated by later battles, was applied for liberal ends when Republicans retaliated with the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions. Decrying them as violations of civil liberties, they asserted that the states could declare federal laws that they deemed unconstitutional void. A big deal in an age of centralized empires.
    Though the sectional question of slavery shook up the political landscape in a variety of ways, those concepts carried on in essence as the guiding orthodoxies for the modern Republican and Democratic leaderships. But the distinction has been obscured in memory. Take two icons for limited government types who embodied the competing intellectual traditions. Hamiltonianism in the Republican Calvin Coolidge and Jeffersonianism in the Democrat Grover Cleveland. Cleveland vetoed an immigration bill which featured a literacy test as a barrier in 1897 while Coolidge signed into law such a proposal in 1924. Cleveland ran on reducing tariffs while Coolidge kept tariff rates high. Cleveland opposed national banks while Coolidge let the Federal Reserve be. Cleveland set in motion the landmark antitrust lawsuit known as the Sugar Trust Case while Coolidge ended a string of administrations that had launched many of them.
    Cleveland put into place the Interstate Commerce Commission to protect consumers by overseeing trade while Coolidge appointed to it and the subsequent Federal Trade Commission hands-off commissioners to facilitate economic growth. It is their shared commitment to individualism, low taxes, sound money, balanced budgets and fiscal restraint that attracts the overlapping fans. Increasing demand for government intervention ignited during the Progressive Era blurred the line between the old-fashioned conservatives and liberals weary of it. Their ideas, regardless of the historical rivalry, now tend to get lumped together in the conservative category and pit against Progressivism. It also treated as one thing, usually under the name Liberalism, despite the initial disharmony there as well.
    The Republican Theodore Roosevelt and Democrat Woodrow Wilson were the first progressive presidents from their parties. Though it was their successors who coined the terms Progressive Conservatism and Progressive Liberalism for their ideologies, each described himself with the pair of labels. Both differed from their classical counterparts with respect to the scope of government, but there are parallels in how they contrasted each other. Comparing Roosevelt and Wilson helps in differentiating between them. Roosevelt akin to Coolidge signed off on measures to curb immigration which included a literacy test in 1903 while Wilson like Cleveland before him rejected legislation of that sort in 1917. As expressed in his 1902 State of the Union Address, Roosevelt advocated protectionism. Wilson, on the other hand, favored free trade. A goal propounded in his Fourteen Points.
    Both pursued economic regulation. But though dubbed the Trustbuster, Roosevelt was not hostile to monopolies on principle. Approving of what he called good trusts like U.S. Steel. Wilson pushed for the Clayton Antitrust Act in a bid to level the playing field by breaking them all up. The argument between nationalism and internationalism gained a new dimension with their foreign policy opinions. TR believed in the superiority of Anglo-Saxon societies and, as affirmed by his Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, their duty to police the world. Conversely, Wilson claimed that no nation was fit to sit in judgement of another. His ultimate aim was global governance through the League of Nations. Much like Classical Liberalism, Progressive Conservatism is largely overlooked in these discussions. Observing them can illuminate trends which go back to the First Party System.
    Conditions created by the Second Industrial Revolution prompted the re-examination of accepted conservative and liberal precepts. Elements of both parties became convinced that government action was needed to remedy escalating unrest. Especially after the rise of the Populist Movement which fought for agrarian and industrial labor interests. The Populists coalesced into the People’s Party until rallying to the Democrat William Jennings Bryan to defy the rich and aid the poor. Republicans such as Roosevelt concluded that reform was necessary to prevent the country from descending into chaos. The key difference was that Bryan’s party selected him as its presidential candidate three times while Roosevelt’s gave him the vice presidency because it was thought that he couldn’t rock the boat there. Only taking office by chance after the assassination of William McKinley. And a greater number of delegates lent their support to the moderate William Howard Taft instead when he attempted to go for a third term.
    Admirers of Cleveland left to form the National Democratic Party when Bryan came out on top in 1896. Likewise, Roosevelt and his followers walked out to organize the original Progressive Party after Taft received the nomination in 1912. Each split benefited the other major party and they quickly declined. Internal debates persisted, but precedents were set. Though Bryan never won, Wilson acted on several of his causes. And Franklin Roosevelt actually endorsed Wilson, not Teddy, in 1912. He built on his prototypical administrative state with the New Deal. An agenda of then unmatched government activism. In keeping with Warren G. Harding and Coolidge’s Post-Wilson Return to Normalcy, Republicans led by Robert Taft worked at rolling it back. The election of Dwight Eisenhower marked a truce. His philosophy of Dynamic Conservatism made peace with the New Deal zeitgeist, but he sought to rein in any excesses.
    The further turns within the Democratic and Republican parties are clear-cut. The New Left and New Right adopted by George McGovern and Ronald Reagan both challenged the popular assumptions of their day. Focusing on social issues and government control. The Third Way and Compassionate Conservatism advanced by Bill Clinton and George W. Bush both moved toward the center. Reflecting upon the free market and social justice. Each establishment now confronts a populist wave. Democratic Socialism and National Conservatism are embraced by those that Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump have emboldened. Fed up with the ruling class, both aspire to tilt the balance of power.
    Granted, each from early on housed factions that spanned the political spectrum. Of note are those epitomized by the Democrat John C. Calhoun and Republican Horace Greeley. Calhoun defended the status quo for Southern planters while Greeley promoted Utopian Socialism. The two served as prominent party figures up until they, alongside other dissidents, were faced with critical disputes which drove them apart. Calhoun set up the Nullifier Party after a bitter falling-out with Andrew Jackson due to him standing by the federal government in a mounting crisis with South Carolina over the Tariff of 1828. Greeley ran as the Liberal Republican Party nominee against Ulysses S. Grant in the election of 1872 in protest of scandals in his administration tied to big business. But not even allying with their partisan adversaries, the Nullifiers with the Whigs and the Liberal Republicans with the Democrats, was enough to defeat Jackson or Grant. Most of their members soon dispersed among them both.
    Friction lingered between right-leaning Republican and left-leaning Democratic national parties and the left-wing Republicans and right-wing Democrats holding considerable sway at the state level with whom they compromised. The La Follette Wisconsin Republican and Talmadge Georgia Democratic machines were examples which came to blows with the Coolidge Campaign and FDR Administration. More infrastructure development coupled with gradual modernization led to the regions converging economically and culturally. That resulted in Republicans and Democrats amassing vast majorities of conservatives and liberals. Broadly speaking, along small town and big city lines. Both have indeed changed with time, quibbled over details and contained shifting coalitions. But their values remain fundamentally rooted in Hamiltonian pro-business conservative nationalism and Jeffersonian anti-elitist liberal internationalism.

  • @RedArmyMedic
    @RedArmyMedic Před 3 lety

    This was awesome

  • @matt1616azable
    @matt1616azable Před 7 lety +7

    some discussion about Coolidge would of been nice.

  • @bradspitt3896
    @bradspitt3896 Před 4 lety +4

    I'm 26 and wish I'd meet someone my age that talks like the lady at 57:00. Maybe it takes a while.

  • @damnedyankee946
    @damnedyankee946 Před 5 lety +1

    Democratic Republicans is a good name and descriptive of our USA ~

  • @owlnyc666
    @owlnyc666 Před 2 lety +1

    By the way, the "original" Constitution was the "Articles of Confederation " approved in 1783. Just as the "original " Bible was the Tankah. Jesus opposed the Conservative Jewish status quo. I remember the good old days when there were Conservative Democrats and Liberal Republicans..

    • @johnweber4577
      @johnweber4577 Před 4 měsíci

      That part about the Constitution is true as far as it goes. But the Constitutional Convention arguably represented for the American Revolution what the Thermidorian Reaction would for the French Revolution as a move to restore order over the perceived radicalism of the Articles of Confederation which was believed to have allowed for Shays’ Rebellion to happen just as the latter event was seen as a necessary corrective to the violent excesses of the Committee of Public Safety during the Reign of Terror. That is why the influential Progressive Era thought leader Herbert Croly lamented that, to his mind, the document itself established a “monarchy of law” which put up barriers to his vision for the country.

  • @matthewatowe2009
    @matthewatowe2009 Před 2 lety

    Watching this is 2022

  • @Bornabastard
    @Bornabastard Před 3 lety

    He made America great for the very reason he went by the constitution

    • @howisitgoin4267
      @howisitgoin4267 Před 2 lety +1

      America is great because of the people who died for it in wars, politicians make it suck.

  • @skylarhillman1455
    @skylarhillman1455 Před rokem

    Very little talk about the Ron Paul revolution

  • @GAB8407
    @GAB8407 Před 8 měsíci

    3:40

  • @viking6834
    @viking6834 Před 5 měsíci

    On why the Republican Party lost so much support among black Americans he neglects to mention the opposition to the 1964 Civil Rights Act by Goldwater, Reagan and other conservative Republicans. Support for this landmark legislation came from moderates and liberals within the party, but that faction of the party no longer exists.

  • @trentbundy2296
    @trentbundy2296 Před rokem

    Just curious, has anyone here figured out that Liberals aren't on the Left, yet?

  • @GAB8407
    @GAB8407 Před 6 měsíci

    1) Why do Republicans forget that Teddy Roosevelt and Eisenhower MAGA WAY BEFORE Raegan???? Don't they deserve all the fanfare first and foremost, even though this generation (Gens X, Y, and Z) only remembers Raegan, Bush H, Bush W, and Trump???
    2) He has ABSOLUTELY NO CLUE why black people existed the party. See Thomas Sowell, please. Thank you.

  • @suze6of6
    @suze6of6 Před 4 lety

    Speed speak...~> °~>

  • @cleatusb.loveall3199
    @cleatusb.loveall3199 Před 2 lety +1

    It appears to me the Conservative Christian Republicans who knows their Bible and says that we should emulate the Lord least no man boast...
    The Lord has multitude of celestial beings watching over the world...
    Our country is what somewhere between 320 to 350 million citizens...
    To take care of all people's properly should be our first concern ...
    Being 6 ft 3 a country boy who worked on the farms I was as strong as a mule
    Could you imagine me in a food Line take all the food you can carry,
    if I did such a thing how many people would go hungry because of my selfishness...
    I now have 50 like me a lot of people are going to go without food because of gluttony and greed...
    Just because you have the tools and the ability together large amounts of money does not mean you should hang on to large amounts of money....
    If you made your money service the community better and stop getting loopholes so you don't have to pay your fair share of taxes maybe all of us could be living a little larger than we are now...
    Maybe just maybe we could bring back the middle class who supported the Syracuse orchestra, culture loss connected to our routes
    Destroyed by deregulation...
    But I do know when you are having a debate in one side only chooses to lie to their teeth then start calling people names like little children...
    These people should be punished like little children and should should not be allowed back in the Capitol building for 6 months..
    And take away their right to vote for 6 months...
    This needs to be the punishment for just outright lies at this information they do nothing but cause the uneducated and the uninformed to lose their minds...
    On anything for 6 months

    • @owlnyc666
      @owlnyc666 Před 2 lety

      "God is a Republican. Santa Claus is a Democrat!" IDBC

  • @ryanbruh752
    @ryanbruh752 Před 2 lety

    Covid mandates will be that strong reason to vote for rights again. Instead of the democrat extended money printing welfare state

  • @bluehairkim1
    @bluehairkim1 Před 2 lety

    🇺🇸🙉🙈🙏

  • @terrybarnes3348
    @terrybarnes3348 Před 5 lety

    Why do some people ramble. Get to the point.

  • @SueFerreira75
    @SueFerreira75 Před 5 měsíci

    Principles - Republican Party - Oxymoron

  • @nicklash4201
    @nicklash4201 Před 12 dny

    Do you have Trumps ear! That didn't age well. Lol 56:19

  • @IbrahimJoel-555
    @IbrahimJoel-555 Před 9 dny

    Trump and Abraham Lincoln are two opposing forces .

  • @ejwms
    @ejwms Před 2 lety +3

    I'll give you my short short synopsis of Republican Party history. The party started out as the free soil, free labor party -- the party that stood up to the Southern oligarchs, pushed back against the slave power. The idea was that democracy dies and society suffers when too much wealth is concentrated at the top. Therefore, the Federal government should provide opportunity for the common man -- the small farmers and tradesmen. After the Civil War, the Republican Party abandoned that vision. The Republican Party then became the party committed to protecting big business and property rights --- the new oligarchy, the Robber barons. It became the party for people like the Rockefellers and Carnegies. That's how we get to the modern Republican Party's commitment to policies such as Trickle Down economics, deregulation and libertarianism -- policies that really do not benefit the common man. That's why Republicans now regard Reagan as a hero but they ignore Eisenhower, who championed the progressive policies that created the great middle class post World War 2. The Republicans are now the party of the oligarchs. And in order to dupe common people to support Republican policies that are against their own interests , Republican politicians have invented all sorts of side issues, distractions, such as race, immigration, abortion, socialism, etc. People like Buckley and Goldwater and Trump have lied to you.

    • @nancyjimeno7001
      @nancyjimeno7001 Před 2 lety

      There never actually were any trickle-down policies.
      I will take a lying Buckley, Goldwater or Trump over the current occupant of the White House who doesn't know which end is up.

    • @ejwms
      @ejwms Před 2 lety

      @@nancyjimeno7001 Biden is 100 times more coherent than the last guy. And I don't have to worry that Biden will try to overthrow the government.

  • @Bornabastard
    @Bornabastard Před 3 lety +2

    Maybe people should keep their mouth shut until they see what happens.
    Trump has been the greatest president since Washington Lincoln and Reagan

    • @howisitgoin4267
      @howisitgoin4267 Před 2 lety +1

      Reagan sucked and Trump is and always will be a nobody.

    • @ejwms
      @ejwms Před 2 lety

      Trump is a traitor. Remember January 6. TRE45ON

    • @lorraineclark2307
      @lorraineclark2307 Před 2 lety

      You mean trump was the greatest malignant narcissistic sociopath that became president.

    • @skylarhillman1455
      @skylarhillman1455 Před rokem

      He has? Lol