It has been an interesting experience seeing how personalities such as Michele Bachmann and Sarah Palin have made short work of American history with their missteps in quoting some basic tenants of it. Backmann has noted that major battles of the American revolution took place in states that they did not take place in, while, Palin has told us that Paul Revere warned the British about the intentions of the colonists on the night of his famous midnight ride. Deep thinking students of history might be able to state that the whole period leading up to the first battles of the American revolution were a warning to King George the third that his subjects in his prize colonies of the America’s were serious about their dislike of “no taxation without representation� and had fire in their bellies about the whole situation. However, as one late night comic has stated of Palin: “It is not the fire in the belly but the air in the head that gives him the most concern and the most fodder for his late night routines. To put it another way, we wonder just how much these two prime candidates for the Republican nomination for the presidency of the United States have given to the supposed thoughts that race out of their mouths. A recent survey found that only nine percent of fourth graders could identify a very famous picture of Abraham Lincoln. And we wonder if Palin or Bachmann could do much better.

The title of this piece reflects the fact that the Republican party began with a meeting in Ripon, Wisconsin around 1855. The Republican party has always, or an least much of the time anyway, reflected out of mainstream thinking since its roots among the abolitionist movement led to the great tragedy that was the American Civil War. The party gained respectability out of the great bloodletting of that tragic war that culminated in the first assassination of an American president--Abraham Lincoln. And, out of the radical thinking of the very radical republicans who ruled the congress in the wake of Lincoln, dark times in the southern states that had seceded were made even more dark and tragic because Lincoln was not there to guide the process of reconciliation along. We wonder what the Bachmann/Palin interpretation of all of these proceedings might be if they know much of them at all. Do they even have any idea that the party that they seek to represent had its roots in Ripon all those years ago?

We were born a Republican. Our parents were Republicans. Our grandparents and great grandparents all the way back to when our great grandfather was a common soldier in the trenches of Vicksburg in 1863 were Republicans. Our great uncle led the Union troops at Vicksburg just a mile or two up the road from the position that my great grandfather held. It is interesting to note that my great uncle often wore the tunic of a common private, such an association he had with the common soldiers who did his bidding at the cost of so many of their lives.. Do Palin or Bachmann know that much about their own families heritage? Do they even really care? It is said that those who do not learn from history are destined to repeat it. And, some of the history that we might be destined to repeat is not all that long ago down humanities long and winding road. The greatest generation that experienced the Great Depression and World War Two is just now passing in great numbers from the scene. That Great Depression was caused by the laissez-faire
free market economics that ruled this land from the end of the Civil War up until that fateful day in October of 1929 when the world as we had known it came crashing down around our heads. Do Bachmann or Palin know much about any of that? Do they know that if Barack Obama had not taken the oath of office when he did on January twentieth of 2009, we might be in a depression right now that would rival anything that took place back in 1929? We sat under Republican presidential rule from 1929 through early 1933 before Franklin D. Roosevelt came to power and began to enact the reforms that would guide us not only through the rest of that depression but, also down until the time that other radical republicans began to dismantle things like the Glass Seagell Act in the late 1980’s under the tutelage of the Ronald Reagan and George H.W Bush presidencies. If there was ever a visible leader to the cult of Ripon, it was Reagan. However, his deeply held principles came closer in retrospect, to that of a cult than they did that of a great leader such as Abraham Lincoln had been.

Cults begin in a vacuum comprised of the absence of strong leadership or the occurrence of a great catastrophe such as that which happened to Germany at the end of the First World War. It was conservative-isolationistic Republicans in the Senate who voted down the ratification of the League of Nations treaty that a Democrat president, Woodrow Wilson gave his health and eventually his life in the quest of. Cults usually are either comprised of cults of personality or the cult centered around an idea. In Germany between the two wars, it was the cult surrounding Adolf Hitler that gave rise to the great war that was to eclipse the “War that ended all wars�. There may be those who do not buy into the idea that Hitler and the Nazi’s were a cult. But, from our view they were not only a cult, but, Hitler’s charismatic personality led an entire very well educated nation down the road to what usually happened when a cult takes over. The traditional view of a cult is an entity that is physically isolated and ruled by a messianic type who broaches no dissent such as Jim Jones at Jonestown of the 1970’s. However, there is always the isolation that grows in nations when certain parts of it become detached from the mainstream. Things such as the prayer in schools decision by the Supreme Court have had a big part in the creation of the current cult that is the Republican Party today. The withdrawal of so many into home or religious or private schooling from the public schools that have always made this nation so strong combined with certain liberal policies that have resulted in so many schools not being able to any longer provide a quality education to the masses have created a climate of physical and intellectual isolation out of which have emerged groups that no longer wish to communicate with one another in any meaningful way. The left has its set of ideas while the right has taken to such things as a wholesale rewriting of American history that we have seen coming out of places such as the state of Texas that has created a climate of disagreement that seems almost unbridgeable. To read some history texts today and compare them to a history text of my your fifty years ago is to see something almost unrelated. We would like to say that this is some great accident but we feel that it is not. History is being rewritten to suit the needs of a small cultish elite, and, this is a very frightening thing indeed.

In point of fact, it is our belief that those who say that they lead the Republican party today that are visible to us are in fact themselves lead by an almost invisible collection of personalities that do not care to be noticed but who are exerting a great sway over not only the Republicans but the nation at large. These are a collection of invisible opinion shapers who will stop at nothing to get what they want. And, what they want is a very small government with no significant powers or abilities to regulate combined with the ability to tax only what in needed to provide the very barest of services that the population might need. One thing that they do want is a very strong military. It is our feeling that they want this very strong military for no other real reason than to keep themselves and their cohorts safe if civil unrest breaks out in this nation as it surely will if their objective of eliminating the entire New Deal are carried out to fruition. These invisible opinion makers and decision makers are bent on attacking anything that the left depends on for its very survival. They are attacking unions across the nation at the state and local levels and are even trying to defund the national Public Radio that provides the opinion outlets that the left listen to in large numbers each and every day.

So, what we have today is a rising level of poorly and narrowly educated people who will believe whatever the cult leaders on the right tell them, much of which will lead to an actual vote against their own ultimate interests. These cult leaders have done a masterful job of convincing people with few resources that they need to vote for politicians whose actual aim in life is to abolish the very underpinnings that hold these economically fragile lives and families together. The cult of the right and the Republican party have been forming up for this crusade for over forty years now. When Barry Goldwater stated at the 1964 Republican National Convention that “extremism in defense of liberty is no vice� he began a long running crusade to rid a party that had both conservatives and liberals in it of all of the liberals that had long found a home there. And, this was no accident at all! There has been great planning among the conservative right to hijack the Republican party that dates at least to the time of Goldwater and it has, at this date, come to fruition. When you look at the Republicans in the House of Representatives, they all vote the exact same way on key bills that they either support or that they oppose. This is not true of the democrats, and, it is a key indicator of a massive cult like being at work. Cults hold onto either a magnetic personality or an idea and the modern days Republicans are completely sold on the idea. That is why their field of presidential candidates is so very, very weak. Cultists tend to be robotic in their nature and despite the personalities present such as Bachmann and Palin, so often otherwise they are more like Mitt Romney with that glazed over look in his eyes as he spouts the line that has been passed down to him from the leadership above. Some of that leadership has already passed away but others such as Grover Norquist are still very active in formulating the party line. Grover Norquist has so much power among the elected Republicans that any deviation from his idea of no increase in taxation usually results in their defeat in the next election. Former president Bill Clinton has called Norquist’s power over elected Republicans in the house and the senate “chilling� at best.

To be very frank about it, the line of no tax increases and small government is formulated by nothing more than individual and collective greed. The continuing idea that taxes cannot be raised, especially on the rich, reflects just where the leaders’ of this movement actually lie--among the very rich. And the basis for what the rich are thinking revolves around regulation. They do not want much of it even after seeing what happened after eight years of deregulation under George W. Bush and what doorstep that brought us upon. It is interesting to note that one of the multibillionaire Koch brothers paid over two million dollars this month for the only known tintype of the outlaw Billy the Kid. If ever there was a model for what this group is about it might be Billy the Kid who killed many during his reign and knew no rule or regulation by any form of law.

We are reminded of the story of the great ship Titanic who struck the burg on April 14th, 1912 and took 1500 souls to the bottom with her. Her makers had constructed what they considered to be an unsinkable ship and they pushed her relentlessly through dangerous waters with the idea of getting to port early to establish their claim on the Atlantic immigrant trade. After she went down after that brush with the iceberg, and her survivors reached New York City, if it had not been for a U.S. Senator from Michigan who tracked them down and compelled and forced them by law into a senate hearing, we might not have the basis for the regulations that we have on lifeboats and other things that we have today. The moral here is that it does not matter how great the crime, there is always the chance that one can get away with it. The way that the election of 2012 is shaping up, it might appear the Republicans, who created the mess that we find ourselves in after eight years of George W. Bush and the little cult that surrounded him augmented by a Republican congressional cult through most of those years, may indeed succeed in getting an increasing narrow minded populace to once again vote against their interests and send the same people back to power who almost wrecked us just less than three years ago. Lest we forget, ten trillion dollars of the deficit that confronts us was assembled under Republican presidents from Ronald Reagan down through George W. Bush. And, if we think that was any accident or was not planned, we underestimate the longevity of the planning by the cult that haunts this nation today!

Lest we forget! Or, as for so many of us, we never really knew in the first place.

Yes, we were born Republicans but we finally escaped the cult. It was people like John F. Kennedy that we came to love who helped us into the lifeboat that has become our shelter from the many storms of political life. But, then again, we would never have made a good cultist anyway. We ask too many questions!

IOVHO,

Regards,

Joe

To say that "God exists" is the greatest understatement ever made across space and time.