HART COUNTY GEORGIA

 

Interesting Tidbits

The Republican Party was born early in the 1850s by anti-slavery activist Alvin E. Bovay, a disgruntled Wisconsin Whig.  An informal meeting was held on March 20, 1854, in Ripon, Wisconsin, a small town northwest of Milwaukee.  The first official Republican meeting took place on July 6, 1854, in Jackson, Michigan.  The name "Republican" was chosen because it alluded to equality and reminded individuals of Thomas Jefferson's Democratic-Republican        Party. 

In 1856, the Republicans became a national party when John C. Fremont was nominated for President under the slogan,:  "Free soil, free labor, free speech, free men, Fremont."   There were three parties at this time and Fremont received 33% of the votes.  Four years later, in 1860, Abraham Lincoln became the first Republican to win the white house.   Lincoln work to pass the Thirteenth Amendment (outlaw slavery), the Fourteenth (equal protection under the law), and the Fifteenth (Voting rights for African-Americans).

The Republican Party then held the White House for 24 years until 1884.  They played a major role in securing women the right to vote.  The first woman elected to Congress was a Republican - Jeanette Rankin from Montana in 1917. 

What is Conservatism?

Conservatism is more than limited government, family values, or preserving the status quo. It is, to quote Dr. Russell Kirk in his 1953 magnum opus, The Conservative Mind, the preservation of the ancient moral traditions of humanity.

 The word itself connotes the idea of conservation against forces of decay and dissolution. By contrast, the word "liberal" connotes a more relaxed approach to historic moral traditions, and in the modern sense, has come to mean an agenda publicly hostile to those traditions. Indeed, the development of liberalism (also called "radicalism"), was such that Kirk could close his first chapter with the following words:

 "If a conservative order is indeed to return, we ought to know the tradition which is attached to it, so that we may rebuild society; if it is not to be restored, still we ought to understand conservative ideas so that we may rake from the ashes what scorched fragments of civilization escape the conflagration of unchecked will and appetite."

Beneath its rhetoric of compassion, "unchecked will and appetite" are the essence of modern liberalism, and their influence has grown even more powerful in the half century since Kirk's phrase first appeared. At the same time, the forces of conservatism have decayed under persistent liberal attack to the point where Kirk's exhortation has become a ringing alarm.

 Conservatism carries with it the idea that God exists, the social order (including government) is of His making, and it must be "conserved" against the forces of human corruption and folly.  It is defensive of historic Western civilization, but is and should be offensive in its agenda of rebuilding the institutions broken down by modern liberalism in Europe over the last century, and in the United States over the last 70 years--the welfare state, central planning of economic and monetary systems, marital and family breakdown, abortion, euthanasia, cloning, erosion of individual liberty, homosexuality, pornography, confiscation of firearms, and the rest of our public malaise.

 At the same time, conservatism is alive and positive. Conservatives witness against the crimes of the modern world, but only as they witness positively to the vision of human society and government to which the world's most ancient, spiritual, and stable sources testify.

 Decay in these great institutions has been brought about by either explicit or implicit liberalism. They can only be restored by a return to a conservative order--one which honors our ancestors and their legacy to us, reverences a Creator and Supreme Lawgiver, and is willing to persevere in restoring what we have lost and preserving what has not yet decayed. Conservatives must become familiar with their intellectual, political, and spiritual patrimony, and rejoin the cultural battle raging around them.