We know, just from how they talk and what policies they support, that the Republican Party is the party of the Southern Strategy, the party of theocracy, and the party of old, rich, white men.
They think white Christians are the most persecuted and oppressed group in America today. In fact, today’s GOP looks an awful lot like neo-Confederacy, which has (officially) been around since the Civil Rights Movement. Here are three issues that conclusively demonstrate that.
Small
federal government and states’ rights
An essay from the Southern Poverty
Law Center (SPLC)
says that neo-Confederates typically look at the Civil War as the start of
America’s decline. The “War of Northern Aggression,” as many in the South call
it (neo-Confederate or otherwise), was unconstitutional in their eyes, as was
Lincoln’s freeing the slaves. Neo-Confederates see any assertion of federal
authority as an infringement of states’ rights; a blatant violation of the 10th Amendment.
This
type of thinking is present in all the nullification ideas flitting about, and
in the ongoing fight against Obamacare. Nullification isn’t a new idea (it is,
in fact, a very old idea in U.S. history), but its roots are Southern.
Nullification dates back to the events leading up to the nullification crisis
of 1832, when South Carolina decided that federal tariffs didn’t exist,
prompting President Andrew Jackson to send Union troops in to enforce federal
law.
Today, we have states trying to pass legislation that would allow them to suspend any federal law within their borders that they deemed an infringement on their sovereignty. They’re trying to preemptively pass laws that nullify whatever huge gun grab they think Obama’s working on. They’ve tried passing laws that nullify Obamacare.
Whether they call themselves neo-Confederates and actually subscribe to that way of thinking or not, this is neo-Confederate thinking.
Christian
theocracy
For
all their trumpeting of Constitutional values, the GOP is increasingly
dominated by theocrats. These are the people who think that marriage equality
will be the downfall of the U.S. They’re the ones who think that abortion is
murder under biblical law, and they try to pass anti-abortion measures, or they
slip them into unrelated bills in order to pass them.
They cry about the moral decay of America, and love to whine about unconstitutional executive overreach, when they themselves would scuttle the First Amendment.
They cry about the moral decay of America, and love to whine about unconstitutional executive overreach, when they themselves would scuttle the First Amendment.
More
than half of Republicans today favor making the U.S. a Christian
nation, despite Constitutional law forbidding it. Tennessee tried making the Bible its
official book. But more than all that, the SPLC essay talks about how
neo-Confederates see current American culture—which promotes equality for
women, ethnic minorities, the LGBT community, and non-Christian religions—as
incompatible with traditional American values.
You
hear shades of this when Mike Huckabee talks about marriage equality leading to the criminalization of
Christianity. You hear it when people like Louisiana Governor Bobby
Jindal tell lies about a Muslim invasion.
You hear it when they whine and cry about fights against racism and sexism
being nothing more than political correctness. And you hear it when people like Rick Santorumsay
that civil law must agree with, or take a backseat to, biblical law.
Neo-Confederates,
according to the SPLC’s essay, believe that the Civil War was a struggle over
the future of the orthodoxy. The noble South was fighting against the heretics
from the north. Slave owners are held up as adhering to biblical law, which
could be where some of these Republican idiots get the idea that it’s okay to
say, “Slavery wasn’t all that bad.” There’s plenty of
neo-Confederate thought behind the GOP’s insistence that we’re a Christian nation.
Racism
and racist policies
They’ve
succeeded in gutting the Voting Rights Act, and in pushing through voter ID
laws that disproportionately harm minorities. Neo-confederates, according to
the SLPC’s essay, believe that multiculturalism will doom the U.S. To prevent
this from happening, they actively work to keep minorities in their place.
In
the South, whites overwhelmingly blame blacks for their low economic status – a position that hasn’t changed in
40 years. Outside of the South, there has been some movement on
that, although there is certainly plenty more than needs to be done.
Congressmen and Senators from the South are almost entirely Republican, they tend to push ending the social safety net, and they tend to believe that black people “play the race card” far more than people outside their region of the U.S.
Congressmen and Senators from the South are almost entirely Republican, they tend to push ending the social safety net, and they tend to believe that black people “play the race card” far more than people outside their region of the U.S.
A 2013 article in Salon talks
about how the South, and the neo-Confederates, increasingly see U.S. politics
through the lens of race. In the 2012 presidential election, a whopping 92
percent of the GOP vote came from whites. They see welfare as programs that
wrongfully take money from hardworking white people, and give it to
undeserving, lazy black people.
That’s a huge part of why they’re so vocal about gutting the social safety net. Reagan didn’t need to mention the race of his mythical “welfare queen,” says Salon. Southern, evangelical whites had already decided she must be black.
That’s a huge part of why they’re so vocal about gutting the social safety net. Reagan didn’t need to mention the race of his mythical “welfare queen,” says Salon. Southern, evangelical whites had already decided she must be black.
Republican
redistricting policies in states like Virginia are cleverly designed to pack
minorities, especially blacks, into small districts, and give white Republicans
a safe majority for years to come.
According to Newsweek, they pulled a very dirty trick in order to try to accomplish this in Virginia after Obama won re-election in 2012. They failed, but the fact that they even tried shows the depths to which the GOP will sink to suppress the minority vote, and preserve white supremacy as the “natural order.”
According to Newsweek, they pulled a very dirty trick in order to try to accomplish this in Virginia after Obama won re-election in 2012. They failed, but the fact that they even tried shows the depths to which the GOP will sink to suppress the minority vote, and preserve white supremacy as the “natural order.”
But
don’t call them racist! Some of their best friends are black, you see.
The
neo-Confederate thinking will eventually fail
While
many of them won’t call themselves neo-Confederates, and, if asked, they might
even decry neo-Confederate thinking, they’ve taken over the GOP. Their entire
platform, the legislation they support, and even their talking points, speak
loudly of neo-Confederate thinking.
Eventually, progressivism will stamp some of this out, too. But look for it to come back, again and again, until we finally achieve a cultural shift that wipes all of this out once and for all.
Eventually, progressivism will stamp some of this out, too. But look for it to come back, again and again, until we finally achieve a cultural shift that wipes all of this out once and for all.
Author Rika Christensen is an experienced writer and loves debating
politics. Engage with her and see more of her work by following her on Facebook and Twitter.
