CommentsTHE VIEW FROM HERE - The 1950 Report of the American Political Scientist Association (APSA)’s Committee on Political Parties, “Toward a More Responsible Two-Party System,” and the idea that we are a democracy where the majority rules are the two worst ideas in American political life.
(1) The APSA proclaimed that America should have two political parties with totally separate platforms. The Dem and GOP should not have overlapping ideas but rather present the voters with a choice like Door # 1 or Door #2 on the Price is Right. Either you got a new kitchen or a trip to Fiji. No, you could not have a just new refrigerator and a cheaper trip to Hawaii.
(2) America would cease to be a republic and become a democracy where whichever party received a majority could implement its policies since the will of the current majority would be the supreme law.
Saying a Blessing over a Pig Does Not Make a Porkchop Kosher
The APSA’s proposal ignored the fact that we are a republic based on individuals’ having inalienable rights, which the majority may not override. As such there was no way for whoever won an election to impose unconstitutional platforms on the minority. Because the APSA was filled with eggheads, it failed to comprehend that a nation is not a debating society, where some judges would award points and the winners took a trophy back to their dorm room.
APSP’s imbecilic idea received no great reception and would most likely have died an unnoticed death, except for the worst legal decision of the 20th Century – Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483 (1954). Prior to Brown, both political parties were creatures of local political machines. When the elected representatives arrived in Washington, many GOP were more liberal than many Dem, and likewise, Dems had tons of conservatives. Party unity and discipline did not exist so that horse trading and “political blackmail” were the major ways that legislation was passed. July 2, 2018, The New Yorker Magazine, The Rise of McPolitics, by Yascha Mounk Both parties feared extremism. Dems were so fearful of Leftist extremists, i.e. commies, that far right wing extremist GOP Senator Joe McCarthy could hold his hold his hearings to ferret out Communists in government and Hollywood. His rabid attacks on perceived communists, regular Dems and even on GOP President Eisenhower finally contributed to a GOP election loss. After an election loss in November 1954, the Senate felt secure enough to formally condemn Sen. Joe McCarthy. The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica As late as 1964, Sen. Barry Goldwater learned that extremism in pursuit of virtue was seen as a vice.
The rejection of extremism stalled the APSA foolish proposal. When any society is divided in half, the extremes dominate and they control the centrists – for a while. This fact was shown in The Stanford Prison Experiment, a college experiment where students were divided into prisoners and guards. “Mistreatment of prisoners escalated so alarmingly that principal investigator Philip G. Zimbardo terminated the experiment after only six days.” The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica, Stanford Prison Experiment The APSA in effect proposed that America’s government follow the pattern of the Stanford Experiment, where whoever won the election would become the guards and implement their policies on the prisoners, i.e., then rest of the country. In none of the follow-up studies did the prisoners and the guards jointly decide how to run the prison to benefit everyone. The APSA proposed a vicious winner-take-all system, where the voters could elect to change which party was the prisoners and which party were the guards, but cooperation on a joint agenda was verboten.
(2) But for Brown vs Bd of Education, the APSA’s proposal would have died. A country must come sort of consensus in order for the country to operate. It is literal insanity for each party to believe that its function is to undo what the other party just did. The Brown Decision, however, introduced a new dichotomy into American political life. Blacks no longer had the inalienable right of Liberty. Instead, America adopted Equality of Outcome by comparing whether the laws treated Blacks fairly. If Black outcomes were less than White outcomes, the cause was White racism. Even Plessy v. Ferguson’s [(1896) 163 U.S. 537] majority decision granted that Blacks had the inalienable right to liberty. All the 1954 Brown Court had to do was adopt Justice Harlan’s dissent that segregation violates both White people’s and Black people’s inalienable right of freedom, and hence, was unconstitutional. Brown’s Equality of Outcome was the similar to the Stanford Experiment – it divided America into two opposing factions where Blacks were prisoners and Whites were abusive guards.
When the APSA concept of two separate and distinct parties with no overlap in platforms coincided with Brown’s rule of Equality of Outcome, it was preordained that the GOP would become the party of the Whites and the Dems would become the party of the Blacks plus any other minority who wanted to claim victimization.
Pelosi Turns Division into Polarization
Pelosi’s Identity Politics weaponized this division between GOP and Dems when she declared that as soon as the minorities became the majority of voters, they would replace the Whites. This concept has zero legitimacy! It belongs in the trash bin of political treason. Our core value is that each individual has the same inalienable rights including Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of happiness; race, religion, national origin, creed, gender, sexual orientation, etc. play no role whatsoever in our political or legal life with one exception: no individual may be classified by an ascriptive group and then discriminated against or rewarded on the basis of his/her membership in that group. Martin Luther King said it much better: judge each person by character and not by skin color.
As the Stanford Experiment showed, in a polarized society the most brutal seize control. After Pelosi’s Identity Politics’ promised to replace the Whites (except wokers), the reaction on the Alt Right was inevitable. The Alt Right is composed of Nazis, KKK, White Supremacists, and anti-government militias. All share a love of violence and paranoia which is why they are anti-Semitic and anti-Gay. Law enforcement advised Pelosi to stop making existential threats against these violent extremists. Instead, she only ginned up her threats.
After Pelosi’s Identity Politics with its White Fragility, White Entitlement and New York Times’ 1619 Project, the Alt Right expressed the legitimate fears of tens of millions of every day White Americans. Pelosi and the Wokers had done what law enforcement had advised them not to do – turned a politically impotent violent fringe element into a potent political force.
Donald Trump did not select the Alt Right; they selected him. Being a mentally unstable narcissistic Histrionic with paranoid features, Trump would echo whatever lunacy made his audience cheer. Histrionics must be at the center of a cheering crowd. Everything is about the Histrionic himself, but the crowd never notices that he does not give a damn whether they live or die. All they want to hear his Trump’s shouting out their frustrations and all he wants is more cheering.
Two Surprises on November 8, 2022
(1) A Significant portion of the GOP Are Binged out on Trumpism
Millions of GOP realize that Trump is all about himself and doesn’t care about them, and his surrogates are distasteful people.
(2) Alito’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, 597 U.S. ___.(2022)
Protesting Roe v Wade is not the same thing as actually losing your right to have an abortion. As Herschel Walker and millions of GOP across America show, those who scream the loudest against abortions, often preserve that option for themselves.
Without these two occurrences, there would have been a Red Wave. No one foresaw that the anti-Trump backlash was significantly underway. The impact of Dobbs was foreseen. Yet, Dems are filled with insane hubris, thinking that they have some mandate to push more Wokeism on Americans.
(Richard Lee Abrams has been an attorney, a Realtor and community relations consultant as well as a CityWatch contributor. You may email him at [email protected]. The opinions expressed by Mr. Abrams are solely his and not necessarily those of CityWatch.)
