Participants: Lincoln Steed (Host), Greg Hamilton
Series Code: LI
Program Code: LI000362B
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00:04 Welcome back to the Liberty Insider,
00:06 before the break we were discussing 00:08 the sequatious history and the incredible tos-and-fros 00:14 on how the parties got where they are today 00:17 and, of course, along the way, 00:18 their religious sensibility, or their religious agenda. 00:22 And I think you've done a pretty good job to track it, 00:25 as recently as the Tea Party. 00:27 Yeah, and there's two shifts here, 00:29 tracks, we're going to cover the Democratic Party, 00:31 and how Kennedy eventually took the party, 00:33 and how the Democratic Party has gone. 00:35 But I first want to talk about how the values 00:39 of the Confederate south emerged 00:42 into the Republican Party, 00:44 starting with Ronald Reagan 00:45 and even Edwin Meese, attorney general, 00:48 into this idea that we're a Christian nation, 00:51 it should be a Christian nation by law, 00:54 mentality that started to emerge 00:57 with the presidency of Ronald Reagan, 00:59 where did that come from? 01:00 That came from the moral majority, 01:03 it came from Jerry Falwell, it came from the south, 01:05 it came from a southern-based evangelical 01:10 Protestant Christian riot. 01:12 It used to just be a wish, 01:14 now it's become a compulsion, I think. 01:17 Yes, and so you have 01:19 the emergence of something else, 01:21 the confederate values of the idea 01:23 and its economic values, they go clear back 01:25 to Thomas Jefferson's economic arguments, 01:27 this idea that agrarianism is the way to go, 01:31 whereas Hamilton, Alexander Hamilton, 01:33 the father of our economy, the father of capitalism said, 01:36 "We must be an industrial giant. 01:38 We must have a strong central government, 01:40 a strong central bank, a speculative market, 01:43 we must have a strong standing army, 01:45 we must have a strong navy, and the only way we can do that 01:48 is have a Federal Convention 01:49 and call for a federal government." 01:50 Thus, the Constitution Convention emerged in 1787. 01:54 Jefferson believed that the farmer was king, 01:58 they could do whatever they want. 01:59 They were a law unto themselves, 02:01 essentially they could be self-supporting, 02:02 they weren't answerable to any township government, 02:05 they weren't answerable to any city government, 02:07 they weren't answerable to any county government, 02:10 they weren't answerable to a state government, 02:12 and lo and behold, 02:14 why should we be answerable to a federal government. 02:16 And so Jefferson's philosophy, which by the way, 02:19 if you study out Lincoln, 02:20 Abraham Lincoln in his upbringing, 02:22 his father who was this homesteader, 02:27 he went from place to place 02:28 from West Virginia to Kentucky to Illinois... 02:31 I'd forgotten the West Virginia... 02:32 Try to be self-supporting 02:35 and, you know, to plow his own farm, 02:38 cut his own trees, to plow his own... 02:40 to plant his own crops, to be self-sustaining 02:44 and to be king, he failed and failed economically, 02:47 time and time again, and so Lincoln grew up 02:50 really not respecting his father's views 02:54 regarding economy or even politics. 02:57 And so he turned to study 02:59 both Jefferson and Hamilton's perspectives. 03:02 Now Jefferson's point of view, led to an economics 03:06 that believes in austerity without raising revenue, 03:09 this idea that we just pour ourselves up 03:11 by the bootstraps. 03:13 We don't need to rely on any federal government, 03:15 no taxation, no nothing, 03:18 which has always kept the south pretty poor. 03:20 So how did Jefferson raised the money 03:22 for the Louisiana Purchase? 03:24 Well, that's the point. 03:25 When he became president, 03:27 he totally contradicted everything, 03:28 he's the one that raised a standing army, 03:31 he's the one that built our navy, okay. 03:34 So everything he was opposed to, 03:35 he ended up doing as president. 03:37 And I don't think the original founding fathers intended 03:40 that to be a standing army. 03:41 But there was a second component 03:42 that's very significant, 03:44 that still stays with us in the south, 03:45 in fact, it's still, you see parts of it, 03:48 you'll see parts of it in other states right now. 03:51 This idea of the nullification doctrine, 03:53 this idea that states are ultimately sovereign 03:56 over the federal government. 03:57 Okay, which is problematic for the future of this country, 04:01 especially with emergence of Donald Trump, 04:03 Jacksonian populism, 04:05 this idea that the working class, 04:08 we need to make America great again, 04:10 make America first, all right. 04:13 All right, it lends itself to this isolationism 04:16 and decentralization type philosophy, 04:19 which means that we're not reliant on the world, 04:22 we should rely on the world or international law 04:24 or anything like that, which I can understand. 04:27 I can understand that fear and paranoia about that, okay, 04:30 but at the same time 04:31 it basically says the same thing 04:33 to the federal government. 04:34 Basically, what we're going to do 04:36 is dismantle the federal government 04:38 to such a point that we can remake America, 04:43 it's not making America great again. 04:45 What they want to do is remake America. 04:47 And if you study their philosophy... 04:49 Well, it's a mythology. 04:51 Well, but if you study the playbook of Steve Bannon 04:53 and Donald Trump, it's a confederacy. 04:56 It is a throwback to the southern mindset 04:59 of the confederacy. 05:01 So this is problematic to Lincoln and Lincoln's party, 05:05 okay, but on the other hand, you have the Democratic Party. 05:08 Where has it gone? 05:10 It's secularism run amok, is what's happened. 05:13 You've got the, I mean, you know, 05:15 we talk about same sex marriage 05:17 and how that you're not going to win 05:18 a constitutional argument against it, 05:19 because of the equal protection clause 05:21 in the 14th Amendment. 05:22 But at the same time, where do you go from there, 05:26 I mean, you know, the pendulum has swung so far 05:30 to the left with secularism that it was bound to happen 05:33 that the right was going to come back 05:35 like a big mountain and crush it. 05:38 I've always said that, 05:40 the whole gay movement is tempting the, 05:43 you know, the country people to come back, 05:46 just like in Germany. 05:47 The forces there that preceded the rise of... 05:50 Or even African-American, 05:51 the African-American community took great insult to the idea 05:55 that somehow same sex people 05:58 or homosexuals were identical to them. 06:01 Well, of course. 06:02 You know... 06:04 That the civil rights movement is analogy 06:05 to the gay rights movement. 06:06 That we can't change who we are 06:08 and, of course, African-Americans, 06:09 they're black, and they're a different race, 06:12 and so therefore, we can't change who we are. 06:14 So they got upset with that analogy 06:16 because most blacks are Christian 06:18 and they said, "No, we don't accept that, 06:21 we don't buy that you were born that way." 06:23 Which is fascinating, 06:25 that's a debate in and of itself, 06:26 and I think there are legitimate arguments 06:28 on both sides on that but nevertheless, 06:31 and I'm not here to debate that, 06:32 but the point is just that, that created a chasm. 06:37 Well, that seems to me the Democratic Party 06:40 which were involved with social justice 06:42 got confused with social issues... 06:45 Yes. 06:47 Leftward leaning morality issues. 06:50 And they're in no man's land 06:52 because they're heading out of the mainstream. 06:55 I mean, they might think they've got a lot, 06:57 oh, they have a lot of following, 06:58 but it's not where America, 06:59 when crisis comes America reverts to a very jingoistic, 07:03 basic, protectionist, viewpoint, 07:06 and so they've been rejected at the moment. 07:08 I think they'll reinvent themselves 07:11 as has been done before, that's what's about to happen. 07:14 I attended a big event at the Muslim cultural center 07:18 in Portland, Oregon. 07:20 In Tigard, Oregon, to be exact, to the west part of Portland. 07:24 And there was about 2000 people there 07:27 and I was sitting near the front 07:29 at the table with Senator, 07:30 Oregon Senator Susan Bonamici. 07:33 And there was a couple of doctors 07:34 and their wives at the table 07:36 and some other civil rights activists, 07:38 it was about ten of us around this one round table. 07:41 And they asked us to discuss what we thought was the reason 07:46 why Hillary Clinton lost. 07:48 And I was the first one to speak at the table, 07:50 and I said, "Personally, I believe 07:52 its Hillary Clinton failed to reach 07:56 the working class people, the Joe plumbers, 07:59 and the people that are out of work at factories 08:01 and how factories have been shipped overseas 08:04 with NAFTA and free trade, and so on." 08:06 And I said, "She failed to go after them, 08:10 she failed to at least try, 08:12 instead she relied on the assumption 08:14 that the inner cities would take over the top 08:16 and she didn't need to reach 08:18 this important group of people." 08:21 Donald Trump cashed in on that, 08:23 that's what got him over the top. 08:24 But this is simple matter of history too 08:27 other than Franklin Roosevelt, 08:31 who was the reason for the term limit 08:33 for the presidency. 08:34 After you've had two terms of one president one party, 08:38 the mathematical probability that someone else can run 08:41 and when saying 08:42 that I'll give you more of the same... 08:44 Right. It's minimal. 08:48 I listened to what she said, and she said good things, 08:50 but basically the message was, 08:52 I'm going to continue what you've had. 08:55 And that was doomed to failure. 08:57 Not only that but she treated religious people as kind of, 09:00 you know, extreme cuckoo and everything else 09:02 and paranoid and fear based, 09:04 instead of just making that assumption. 09:07 I mean, she shot herself in the foot by doing that 09:10 and that's what really hurt her. 09:12 But it was... 09:13 there's no question that it was a very seminal election 09:17 that in my view didn't so much create new realities 09:21 that revealed where America has come, 09:25 distrustful of government... 09:26 Yes, where it's been boiling up for a long time. 09:31 While Obama and the others did a good job 09:32 of distancing those terrorist actions from a religious group 09:37 and set the economies good. 09:39 It showed that there are people 09:41 that feel they are being chased out of the jobs by immigrants, 09:44 others feel that religion is in the guise, 09:47 in this case, Islamic fanaticism. 09:49 And they were right to feel left out. 09:51 The distrust of the government is the deepest problem, 09:54 because while you and I might not like some aspects about it, 09:57 no government can continue if people don't trust it, 10:01 it's basically I use the term again 10:02 social contract. 10:03 We all have to buy into this, 10:05 this fabrication or it won't work. 10:08 Yeah. 10:09 And I think America is very close to ungovernable 10:12 at the moment. 10:13 It's not quite, but if something goes wrong 10:15 or if it's mishandled from here on out, 10:18 it could degenerate into something 10:20 roughly analogist to the outbreak 10:23 of the last Civil War. 10:24 Well, the Lincoln party is no longer the party of Lincoln, 10:27 we can see that very clearly. 10:29 And with the emergence of the working class 10:32 and populism in this country, we have the potential 10:37 for demagoguery in this country, 10:39 our beloved country, 10:40 and the party of Lincoln has shifted 10:44 to being the party of the confederacy, 10:46 which is sad to me as an establishment Republican. 10:51 The Old Testament in the Bible tells an interesting tale 10:55 of succession in regard to King David. 10:59 When he got word 11:00 that his predecessor King Saul had been slain, 11:03 he was actually with the Philistines, 11:06 with the enemy, having discussions 11:09 with the arch-enemy of his nation. 11:12 But it turned out well and he turned out to be a man 11:14 after God's own heart. 11:17 It's an interesting thing 11:18 when you study the US party system 11:21 and some of the political loyalties 11:22 that have set long 11:23 characterized their political life. 11:26 Those things are not fixed, they're fluid 11:28 as they should be, because issues change, 11:33 opinions change, and as Ellen White speaking 11:37 to the Seventh-day Adventist Church members 11:39 at one point said 11:40 that, "We should not follow party, 11:42 we should follow principle." 11:45 And we would hope that today, 11:47 the great political parties continue to pursue principle. 11:51 For Liberty Insider, this is Lincoln Steed. |
Revised 2017-05-01