I thought it might be worthwhile to add some historical perspective to Rich Moniak’s My Turn of June 14, “The King of Hubris.”
I should preface these comments by saying that I have nothing but respect for Mr. Moniak’s writing. His essays are refreshing and original. They are fact- and reality-based: so different from the empty partisan and ideological dreck one typically finds in editorial spaces.
His June 14 essay is premised on the idea that the GOP is a “conservative” party only because that is the descriptor they have self-identified with for a very long time. However, Mr. Moniak left what in the movies would be called a “plot hole.” Mr. Moniak asserts that “Sen. Lisa Murkowski is the last conservative in Congress standing.” If that’s the case, then what descriptor applies to all those other republicans? I’ll fill that hole in a moment.
There have always been liberals and conservatives in America. Two and a half centuries ago, a bunch of liberals came along with truly paradigm-shifting ideas. Before that time, there was no human freedom, liberty, or democracy. Every country was some variety of monarchical dictatorship. The concept of human beings having individual rights and freedoms that accrued to them personally was unheard of. The concept of rulers being chosen by the people they ruled was unknown.
But “Enlightenment Thinkers” (that era’s liberals) came along, and some in America embraced those ideas. They were opposed by the conservatives of the day – “Tories” – who wanted to remain under the British system of monarchical totalitarianism in which people were nothing more than the monarch’s subjects, not individuals with rights and freedoms, as the liberals postulated.
Fortunately, in 1781, the liberals won.
The GOP has made a major propaganda effort to redefine those principles invented by liberals — the rule of law, multiparty democracy, individual rights and freedoms, multi-branch government, etc. — as “conservative” principles. They rely on the typical American’s ignorance of history to achieve this deception. But the historical truth – voluminously and meticulously documented – is that conservatives fought tooth and nail against all those liberal concepts.
The most interesting bit of historical research I have done recently involved tracing America’s fascist and Nazi movement and ideology as it has migrated across America’s political landscape over the last two centuries. It began in the Antebellum South, manifested as the southern wing of the Democratic party. Following World War Two and the northern Democratic party turning away from the South’s fascist racism, America’s vital and determined fascist and Nazi movement had to find a new home. It has spent the last 70 years taking over the Republican party.
I will try to state the next two paragraphs in as unconfusing a way as possible.
If you are looking for the “conservative” principles America was founded on, then you are looking under the wrong label. Those “conservative” principles were invented, defined, promoted, and fought for by liberals. Lisa Murkowski — along with most of the democrats and independents in Congress — is standing up for America’s liberal founding principles. So, we could simply call all those other Republicans what they are: fascists and Nazis.
However, another perspective on this is that all those other Republicans in Congress are the conservatives. Why? Because they are standing up for the historically documented conservative principles of hatred for and opposition to democracy, society living under the rule of monarchs, revulsion at the concept of people having rights and personal freedoms.
I get that for Lisa Murkowski — with the “Republican” identifier baked into her since childhood leaving a Republican party that has been taken over by America’s fascist and Nazi movement is likely something beyond her ability to conceive.
Lisa, Mr. Moniak is extraordinarily generous to you because, as most parents tell their children at some point during adolescence, you are defined by the company you choose to keep.
• Donald R. Douglas has been a resident of Juneau since 1992. He is a non-partisan voter.
