(ThyBlackMan.com) Conservatives have always been known for walking around with flag pins in their lapels and spewing their “bone-spur” brand of patriotism. Going all the way back to the very founding of this nation they’ve always used false patriotism and deception as weapons to promote a self-serving agenda to undermine the interests of the average American. As a result of that attitude, they have always been the most insidious enemies of American democracy. That’s why when our founding documents speak of American enemies it uses the phrase, “Both foreign and domestic.”
.
“All communities divide themselves into the few and the many. The first are the rich and wellborn, the other the mass of the people…. The people are turbulent and changing; they seldom judge or determine right. Give therefore to the first class a distinct, permanent share in government. They will check the unsteadiness of the second, and as they cannot receive any advantage by a change, they therefore will ever maintain good government.”
.
Hamilton supported a lifetime appointment of the President (after being selected by congress, instead of the people). Can you just imagine that, Donald Trump FOR LIFE!!!? But America dodged that bullet during the Federalist Convention that took place between May 14 and September 17, 1787.
.
Since most of the founding fathers came to America to escape the aristocratic class system in Europe, Hamilton’s desire to preserve the class system was resoundingly defeated in favor of an unfettered democracy, but that didn’t mean that people of Hamilton’s point of view would quietly go away. Instead, they became the conservative coalition, and lowered their profile as blatant aristocrats, and continued to pursue their agenda by using their wealth, power, and various other strategies to divide the people to achieve their agenda, and that’s what we see today. That accounts for why conservatives tend to be specialists in obstructionism and division, and why the American people ALWAYS suffer under conservative governance.
In 1921 — eight years before the great depression — Republicans took over the helm of this nation for 12 years. During that time there were three Republican administrations, the first of which was the administration of Warren G. Harding. History remembers Harding’s administration for one thing more than any other — scandal. It was during Harding’s presidency that the Teapot Dome Scandal erupted. His administration was considered the most corrupt administration in the history of the United States — until Nixon’s (Watergate), then Reagan’s (Iran\Contra), and finally Bush’s (Iraqi War).
Next, in 1923, came Calvin Coolidge, the president that Ronald Reagan is said to have most admired. Coolidge’s policies of large tax cuts, allowing business a free-rein, and his encouragement of stock speculation contributed greatly to the impending stock market crash and the great depression that was to follow.
.
In 1929 during Republican, Herbert Hoover’s administration, the stock market crashed – much like under the Bush Administration – starting the Great Depression, but back then there was no Barack Obama to come to the rescue or mitigate the damage early on. So in spite of the fact that by 1933 the unemployment rate was at 33.3% with 16 million people out of work, the Republican, Herbert Hoover, just sat, thinking that the economy would eventually rejuvenate itself. Much like Republicans of today, Hoover and his Republican Party had absolutely no compassion for either the plight of the American people, or America’s veterans who had put their lives on the line for this country.
.
During Hoover’s administration, 15,000 WWI veterans marched on Washington demanding that they be paid what they were owed by the government. Hoover responded by calling in federal troops to throw these ex-servicemen off government property.
.
.
In addition, there was no such thing as Medicare or Medicaid, so when one of grandparents became ill the medical costs would devastate the entire family. These conditions kept lower and middle-class families in such dire need of funds that they had to accept whatever crumbs the business community chose to throw at them – and remember, at that time there was no Fair Labor Standards Act or unions to protect a worker’s rights, or a minimum wage, so businesses could treat the worker anyway they wanted, and pay them whatever they wanted.
.
They could work you 16 hours a day, 7 days a week, with no overtime, and They could work you 16 hours a day, 7 and no paid vacation. In addition, since there were no child labor laws, if your boss didn’t think you were being productive enough, he could insist that you bring your children in (as young as 9 years old) to assist you if you wanted to keep your job. Then if you protested, he could fire you on the spot, in which case, your entire family – sick grandparents and all – would be thrown out on the street, because there was no such thing as unemployment insurance. As a result, in many cases the entire family, including the children, had to work long, hard hours under sweatshop-like conditions in coal minds and the like, which in many cases led to the death and/or maiming of young children. So, in a very real sense, Great Depression era workers lived under a form of slavery – the one difference was, they had to go out and find their own housing.
.
Think back to the “Little Rascals” we use to watch as kids, ragged they were, or the cartoons we use to watch, where a landlord would come to the door (always portrayed in a black suit) and tell a begging and crying mother that she had one more day to come up with the rent or she and her family would be thrown out in the snow. That was an accurate portrayal of the way people lived in those days, and those are the conditions that the conservative Republican agenda would restore in America today. At this very moment the Republican Party is attacking Social Security, Medicare, Education and many other programs to force the poor and middle class to pay for the huge deficit created by their $1.5 trillion tax cut for the rich.
The New Deal had two components — one, to help the economy to recover from the effects of the great depression, and a second component to give relief to the American people, and to ensure that they would never be placed in a position of total destitution again. To help heal the economy Roosevelt created programs that regulated business, controlled inflation, and brought about price stabilization; to bring relief to the people he signed The National Labor Relations Act which guaranteed workers the right to collective bargaining, and he created the Social Security Administration to guarantee workers some sort of income once they became too old to work. He also signed the Fair Labor Standards Act which protected worker’s rights and set a minimum wage for workers, and all of these programs are under brutal attack by the Republican Party as we speak.
.
With his New Deal in place, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, this “bleeding heart liberal”, not only led this country out of the worst, Republican generated crisis that this country has ever faced, but went on to lead the free world in victory over Hitler in WWII. He then ushered in the most sustained era of prosperity that the world has ever known.
.
One would think that conservatives would have seen the light, but their passion to further enrich the wealthy at the expense of the lower and middle classes seems to supersede all logic. Thus, from the moment the New Deal went into place, conservatives have been determined to dismantle it. The closest they’ve come to succeeding started during the Reagan administration with Supply-Side Economics, or, “Reaganomics” — and the battle is currently raging in Washington D.C. as we speak.
.
Our grandparent’s generation, the generation that experienced the Great Depression, fought WWII, and who we refer to as “The Greatest Generation”, wouldn’t let a Republican anywhere near the White House.
During their era, Democrat, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected to office four times, and finally died in office on April 12, 1945. The Republicans had to promote the Twenty-Second Amendment to the Constitution limiting the president to two terms in office just to have even a remote chance of getting into office. But finally in 1953 they managed to elect the hero of WWII, Republican, Ike Eisenhower to office, but even he was a Republican in name only – in 1957 he sent troops into Little Rock, Arkansas to integrate a segregated school after Gov. Orval Faubus tried to prevent Black students from entering, and as his final act in office he warned America about the Military-Industrial Complex, the very people that Donald Trump and the Republican Party represent today.
Staff Writer; Eric L. Wattree
To The Author,
You don’t know history very well. Today most people black people over 50 are social and fiscal conservatives. Do you even know what that means? And if you read the rest of the truth, you will find conservatives pushed the voter rights act and anti-slavery while liberals did the opposite. There is a reason King Jr. and Frederick Douglass were both conservative Republicans. Try telling the rest of history in your articles and who created the klan? Exactly.