I’ve called myself more than a “bad republican” as reported in my last Reader Article I’ve also called myself a liberal republican or a Socially liberal republican a Jesse Jackson Republican a gypsy moth Republican and even a RINO using all together different words for the acconym.
What these all mean takes some time that readers don’t want to give up. Yet another thing I jotted down to write about yesterday was the long list of political descriptors that vast swaths of America only understand vaguely such as:
conservative
liberal
progressive
socialist
communist
nationalist
fascist
authoritarian
totalitarian
dictator
republican
democrat
Then I jotted down a similar list of theocratic words people are clueless about and since God has stuck his big nose under the Republican tent they are worth explaining tooooooooo
The books above are about the liberal republican label. Republican is first associated with the over throw by populists in Caesar’s Rome of the Republican non king government of the rich aristocracies to be given yet another king or line of kings who got in the habit of calling themselves God’s much to the Jewish world’s irritation. Purists didn’t want to spend Roman money with some so called damned God/Caesar on it.
Jefferson coopted it for his Democratic or Democratic Republican Party. It became just the Democratic Party and reemerged as a familiar name in 1856 as one of a couple new parties which were making room for themselves with Lincoln’s beloved Whig Party of internal improvements fell apart leading to a near one party state.
I’ve spent my adult life reading up on Republicans but have always associated Liberal Republicans with my youth and John D. Rockefeller (Rockefeller Republicans which I used to call myself until the veil of time made him forgotten) and Teddy Roosevelt. I’ve always been a little stuck on the first use of the term liberal republicans because it is post Civil War. The books above contain two new books I just ordered on the Era of the 1872 election when a group calling themselves liberals began fighting President Grant and his policies to keep federal troops in the South to protect the freed peoples. That just seemed contradictory to me…..but then again the Congressmen like Thaddeus Stevens who were driven to protect black Americans were called the Radicals. How different from today’s Republican Party that obsesses over nit picky ways to make it hard for black voters to cast ballots.
Nuff said. Obviously like the post before my head is swimming with sharks.
