As many people know Abraham Lincoln was the first Republican President. President Lincoln freed the slaves. But what all else do you know about the Republican History? Back in 2005 I attended the Mackinac Island Republican Leadership Conference. It is a bi-annual conference for elected officials, candidates and grassrooters in the state to get together and hear Republican speakers. It is held on Mackinac Island in Michigan and takes place on Friday through Sunday during the third weekend of September. This is also where Somewhere in Time was filmed. That was the movie starring Christopher Reed and Jane Seymour.
About a week or two before the conference started I got a flyer in the mail stating what the events would be. One of those events was a workshop about the Republican Party not forgetting our roots. The speaker was Micheal Zak. He is an historian, speaker and author.
I will be as quick as possible in explaining what his speech was about. Basically he said that for a hundred years the Republicans in Senate and Congress had been the ones trying to push through the "Civil Rights Bill" that Democrat President Lyndon Johnson signed in 1963. It was the Democrats who kept it from going through. He also stated that Women's Suffrage for women's voting rights was a Republican issue.
According to Mr. Zac, the Republican Party has allowed the Democrats to take over the Civil Rights issues. Lyndon Johnson's New Society is basically a new version of the plantation system.
Read his book, it is called "Back to Basics: For the Republican Party. Please check out his website Republican Basics. He also has a daily blog where he honors a person in Republican Civil Rights history. Go to Grand Old Partisan.
Until I heard him speak I thought civil rights was strictly a Democrat issue. I thought it was all about making a big deal of some one's race, ethnicity or gender. That is not the Republican view of Civil Rights. It is not what Abraham Lincoln, Dwight "Ike" Eisenhower or Martin Luther King (I realize MLK was not a Democrat or Republican) would want to see. They all believed in equality of everyone and no special rights for anyone. Unfortunately many young Republicans don't know this history and think that it is funny to have "Ghetto Parties", "Immigrant Parties" or "White Trash Parties." This is gross and disgusting. As a Republican I ask myself, WWALDO, meaning What Would Abraham Lincoln Do? Personally I don't think he would think such parties were funny.
Thursday, May 31, 2007
History of our Republican Roots
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
I read the book. It's interesting if you're really into the topic. You can tell it's geared to trying to bring back the "black vote" to the Republican Party.
Quite frankly, this message doesn't need to get out to the office-holders, candidates, activists, and others he speaks to. The message needs to get to the inner city where mostly minorities are suffering in a struggling education system and living in the middle of high crime rates that too many in the suburbs consider "just another statistic."
If you want to get the message out to that target audience, you're going to need more than just a book with four white guys on the cover.
Don't get me wrong, hardcore conservatives like us should know the information in this book. But it's rather trivial at the same time. We need to be educating, not preaching.
www.ktracy.com
Thank you, Kevin for your comment. I agree with you to an extent. The message does need to get out to those in the inner city. Who will be willing to send the message out?
The reason I find this important for all Republicans is when I was in high school my History teacher told me that "history is important to know our past to know where we are going in the future." How many people know that rich Southern Democrats wanted to take the land of poor southerners and make them white slaves? Yes, that part is rather trivial.
If Republicans don't know the Civil Rights history they will think of Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson as civil rights leaders and think civil rights is bad. Plus the more they know about it the more they can counter opportunes like Sharpton and Jackson. The Democrats are trying to make it look like Republicans don't care about those in the projects and that's what get's me upset. The Republican Civil Rights view was that everyone has the right to not rely on government. Democrats send the message that the poor should rely on government.
Post a Comment