Re: US right wing
Can someone help me please?
The American right wing is so confusing to a simple European.
Oooh, this looks like fun. I'll play too.
1) The Republican party is one of our two dominant political parties. It was founded in 1854 as a Northern anti-slavery party. It originally favored national interests over state's rights. It had little support in the South. President Lincoln was the first Republican president.
After the Civil War, the Republican party dominated the political system. It remained an almost exclusively Northern party, and was supported by Eastern industrialists, Midwestern farm interests, and most immigrants. The Republican party's main issue was to keep high tariffs to benefit Northern industry.
During the Progressive era of the early 20th century, a split developed within the Republican party. In 1912, former Republican president Theodore Roosevelt ran against his successor President Taft. Even though Roosevelt won the primaries, party bosses gave the nomination to Taft. Roosevelt left the party and created the more progressive "Bull Moose" party. Roosevelt and Taft ended up splitting the Republican vote, and President Wilson (of WWI fame) won the election.
The Republicans retook control of national politics following WWI, and held power during the "Roaring Twenties". President Hoover was in office when the "Great Depression" struck, was blamed for its severity, and lost to Democrat Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1932. The party regained power under President Dwight D. Eisenhower in the 1950's.
The modern Republican party developed primarily in reaction to the Democratic party's mid-twentieth century support for the civil rights movement. By supporting civil rights for African-Americans, presidents Kennedy and Johnson alienated traditionally Democratic white southerners. The Republican party from Nixon onward pursued a "Southern Strategy" that played to the concerns that conservative Americans had about all forms of social change.
The modern Republican party is an alliance of:
1) Business interests (who oppose unions, minimum wage laws, taxation, and government regulation)
2) Fundamentalist Christians (who are concerned about sexual issues and are opposed to secularism)
3) Nationalistic militarists (who think the US should be militarily dominant, unilateral, aggressive, and intolerant of internal dissent)
4) Conservative libertarians (who don't want to be taxed or interfered with by the government in general)
These are often the same people. As a group, they tend to consider themselves "conservatives". There are, of course, other unifying issues. In contrast to the Republican party of the 19th and early 20th centuries, the party's power base is now primarily in the South and Plains states. It has been rapidly losing its moderate wing to what would have previously been considered extreme right candidates.
2) Neo-Cons. The Neocons are a policy faction within the US government and intelligencia. They are an odd little group whose members were referred to as "the crazies" during the first Bush White House. The Neocons have become identified with the notion that American power should be used unilaterally and aggressively to forestall the development of any challenges to US global rule. The Neocons are primarily Jewish and also strongly identify with the state of Israel and its strategic interests. Many of the Neocons were previously Trotskyists and followers of a "philosopher" by the name of Leo Strauss who taught that history's "wise men" have a duty to lie to the people to protect themselves and pursue their agenda.
3) The alternative conservative foreign policy faction is often referred to as the "Realists". Henry Kissinger, Brent Scowcroft, and the first President Bush fell into this category. "Realists" believe that the US needs to use its power only where its interests are directly threatened, and should pursue a short-term strategy of supporting tyrants in order to establish the stability needed for long-term democratic change.
4) The Religious Right is a term used to describe the Christian religious movement that supports the Republican party. The Religious Right contains right wing Catholics, but is primarily dominated by "evangelical" or "fundamentalist" Protestant Christianity. Many of the religious right sects are uniquely American religious movements with a peculiar emphasis on: apocalyptic imagery from Revelations, a fear of and opposition to secular education and the teaching of evolution, an exaggerated view of the importance of sexual issues in Christian teaching, and a nationalist identification of flag, capitalism, the US military, and Christianity as one. Their biggest rallying cause is the belief that abortion is murder.
5) Lobbyists are people who work in Washington to further the interests of a client. Some lobbyists do so on behalf of corporations, others work for non-profits or interest groups (like the NRA, or the environmental movement). Lobbyists provide access to outsiders, and campaign contributions to insiders.
Currently indicted Republican Uber-Lobbyist Jack Abramoff is a particularly sleazy example of the lobbyist trade. LINK
6) The Ku Klux Klan. A "White Supremacist" organization that arose in the South following the Civil War. Originally, much of its membership was former Confederate soldiers who met covertly, and terrorized and murdered Southern blacks and "carpetbaggers" through night-time raids. The Klan reached its zenith in the 1920s when the organization expanded to many parts of the country. In addition to keeping blacks "in their place", the Klan opposed Jews, immigrants, communists, socialists, and anyone they saw as a threat to the social order. The Klan is still an active organization, but no longer has the numbers that it did at the height of its power. However, there is still enough sympathy for the views of the Klan that former Grand Dragon David Duke was able to run for elected office in Louisiana with some success during the late 1980's-1990's.
Originally Posted by Aurelian
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