The Founders Would Gag at Today’s Republicans
 

He got it pretty much spot on. Republicans are a disgrace to this country...


https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/05/o...mp-july-4.html


The Founders Would Gag at Today’s Republicans


The cult of Trump has embraced values and beliefs that Jefferson, Washington and Lincoln abhorred.


Kids in cages and tanks for the tyrant. After that dictator-friendly Fourth of July, it’s time for all true patriots to conduct a political gut check.

Like many people, I’m worried about the Democrats. A majority of Americans are desperate for someone to dislodge the despot from the White House. And yet some Democrats are pushing policy positions — such as taking away private health insurance from more than 150 million people — that are deeply unpopular.

The smarter candidates will rethink this, and soon, or otherwise ensure that an awful American aberration is more than a one-off.

But as troubled as I am by the Democrats, I’m terrified of the Republicans. 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 country’s 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 Trump’s authoritarian view that the news media is “the enemy of the people.”

I don’t expect Republicans to know Thomas Jefferson’s 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 Trump’s 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 Trump’s Republicans. He distrusted populists who disdain the rule of law, so there’s 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 Trump’s 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.

You can see why Republicans with a sense of history and fealty to the great sweep of their party’s finer principles describe themselves as politically homeless in 2019.

And when Trump rolls out weapons of war to celebrate the birth of a nation that never even had much of a standing army until the 20th century, you can see why passionate pride in this country is at its lowest point since Gallup started measuring this sentiment in the modern era.

Democracy is not mentioned in the Constitution nor in the Declaration of Independence, as the historian Virginia Anderson recently noted. It’s a human construct, more fragile than any of us believed until now. But when it’s gone, no one should be surprised.

I'm sure they would be thrilled with the all the illegals here, open borders, 97 genders, trannies showering with 12 yr old girls, all the welfare and gibs that are being handed out, sanctuary cities, removal of 1A & 2A, etc..you know, all the shit your party promotes.

Gaslight much?

Weren't Republicans the libs back then?

Almost all of the founding fathers were the children or grand children of immigrants.

Aren't you supposed to be a big history buff?

https://i.imgur.com/ABMALEV.png

You honestly think they would want 40% of our country non-white?

^unfortunately for yall, yall couldn't help yourselves from raping people and creating the new race that's taking the land back for our indigenous side.

And we're bringing real equality. Real #MAGA. See sig.

But see, whitey will always be the ruling class no matter what the percentage is.

Not all white people are inbreds.

Obviously, the problem ones (inbreds) are becoming less of a problem. That's the reason for yall whole "MAGA" shenanigans.

Normal people dont care what color the "ruling class" (lmao) is, we just want you racist inbreds gone. And its happening. And yall mad, yet we happy as America becomes brown and safe again.

See sig.

7 of the signers of the Constitution weren't born in America, they were immigrants.

3 justices of the first supreme Court were not born in America, they were immigrants: James Wilson of Scotland, James Iredell of England, and William Patterson from Ireland

if you get the dicks real wet you won't gag, or so I'm told by brinco66 :thumbsup

You guys make me fucking sick.

.
nope. that would be the islamic brothers :thumbsup

Says the guy with fingernail polish on his nails in every pic of his he posts to GFY :2 cents:

You idiots had to get the Brits in because you couldn't look after yourselves.