As someone who now characterizes himself as a new "liberal/progressive" REPUBLICAN, I believe that the national party must change in fundamental ways if it is to be at all competitive with the national Democratic Party in the years 2042-2044 and after when over 50% of the USA will be "non-white." Here are my recommendations:
The Party needs to appeal more to groups that it has little appeal to now. We need to fight for the national Republican Party to do more to help the lower and middle classes, the poor, the near-poor, and senior citizens.
Our Party needs to stop being in favor of making cuts to federal government social programs such as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Food Stamps, College Student Loans, and Unemployment Insurance Benefits.
We need NOT to have so many Republican members of Congress who want to abolish these programs and who can accurately be described as advocating for a cold-hearted survival-of-the-fittest Social Darwinism. Recent research indicates that most Americans who are Republicans are much less conservative on these bread-and-butter issues than are the Republican members of Congress.
We need to stand strongly against white-nationalism and sexism.
We need to stand strongly in favor of the total equality of women including being in favor of equal pay for equal work for women, as well as being in favor of heavily-fining people (mostly men) who commit sexual harassment as well as all other forms of sexual abuse and assault, and we need to be in favor of imprisoning these evil perpetrators. I am still the same man who I was in the 1970s when I was the first male Sociology Ph.D. student in all of Canada to take and pass the Ph.D. comprehensive area specialization examination in "Women's Studies." I am still certified and qualified to teach college courses in "Women's Studies."
Even though I was required to submit over 200 typed pages of exam responses, this was and is apparently not good enough for some women in the national Democratic Party as they were never able to accept me and respect me as a genuine ally. They come across to me as disliking men and as not believing that "men's lives matter too."
Lastly, the national Republican Party should fight for the passage of a federal government national health insurance plan/program that is the same as that of Ontario, Canada, but not "Medicare-For-All."
I look forward to trying to make the national Republican Party more HUMANE, CARING, and COMPASSIONATE.
STEWART B. EPSTEIN, Rochester, N.Y.
For most of history power was assumed, and then taken and maintained using force and intimidation. An exception to this rose in ancient Greece with the idea of democracy. That moment soon passed and authoritative power was again the norm for over a thousand years. The idea of power having a link to principals or the needs and wishes of the governed was rekindled in the new thinking of the renaissance. Slowly from incremental concession as in England or through revolution as in France Power was earned and then administered through negotiated laws to form democratic governmental structures. The crowning point of this idealism was the governing contracts and traditions of the United States.
This movement has never completed a worldwide sweep or gone without reversals, such as in the ’30s when demagogues found opportunity in Europe. Democracy can only function when there is a tradition of law that applies to the ruler as much as it regulates the ruled. Once this covenant is broken reversals occur. We are at a such a moment here and now. We have a leader in absolute defiance of constitutional constraints and the majority party in the Senate is cheering rather than realizing that they are the last remaining force to prevent democracy from collapsing under their tenure.
This is real and we are witnesses in a pivotable historical moment. The struggles, sacrifices and lives spent earning the political freedom and established legal protections that we have assume to be fixed should not be wasted. Honored rules are the only separation between the lives of free men and the life of a totalitarian subject. In an Orwellian twist, the loudest advocates for giving limitless power to the president refer to themselves as the Freedom Caucus.
These thoughts would be a paranoid exaggeration if we were not also witnessing the careful preparation for an attempt to run the table. The choices of Matthew Whitaker and then William Barr as attorney generals look like efforts to put law enforcement under executive control. The attacks on the press are attempts to convert news into a compliant part of a reality show. The conception of a deep state gives rationale for purges. Trump now introduces the despots of the world as his new allies. He has normalized the idea of concentration camps on our soil. The mass rallies are a frightening reincarnation of something not seen since pre-war Germany. This has happened before and the enablers got much more than trains that ran on time.
PAUL BENSON, Hawarden, Iowa
I enjoyed Eric Boehlert’s article about convicted felon Roger Stone in the 12/15/19 TPP [“Roger Stone and the Media's Shame of 2016”]. However, he did not go far enough in the description of Stone’s disgraceful character.
Alabama Gov. George Wallace ran a strong third-party presidential bid in 1968; he received 10 million popular votes and 46 electoral votes. In 1972, Wallace decided to run for president in the Democratic primaries.
While campaigning on May 15, 1972, Wallace was shot in Laurel, Md., by Arthur Bremer. When the Committee to Re-Elect Nixon discovered the name of the attempted assassin and the location of his residence, Roger Stone was dispatched with a carload of McGovern campaign material. The plan was to connect Bremer with McGovern, thus angering the Wallace supporters. Thankfully, the FBI beat Stone to Bremer’s apartment and prevented the smear.
Stone and his jailbird partner, Paul Manafort, made tens of millions of dollars lying, cheating and stealing on behalf of Republican politicians and corrupt dictators. They have been personal friends and advisers to Donald Trump for many years. Birds of a feather flock together; skunks do not change their smell!
STEPHEN LANDUYT, Quincy, Ill.
Your 1/1-15/20 edition had an excellent, eloquent editorial laying out what you — and all of us — have to contend with these days.
The written word is just too mundane to try to compete with all the flash, crash, zip and sizzle of electronic media. It’s so Olde Fashioned! Who could pay attention to it anymore?
Well, it will have the last laugh (if anyone’s left to laugh or react to anything.)
Seriously, there’s no substitute for words — especially good ones — to describe life and living it.
But it is cliche to say that the Bible has the words people everywhere need in order to live, now and forever.
OK, that sounds like a boast of Trumpian proportions.
But if anyone is brave enough to check this out, it is guaranteed to be true.
You have said so, too, just in other words.
It’s up to every individual to believe it — or not. And this is always an option. (Believe it!)
CHERYL LOVELY, Presque Isle, Maine.
After Trump was elected I took up talking with my representatives, all Democrats, about farm and rural matters. I thought they might be in a mood to listen. Dubious, I know. I got them each a short subscription to *Graze*, the magazine for graziers, and called each every month to talk about regenerative agriculture and soil health and local foods, all critical matters to any farmers that are not huge in scale.
Sen. Al Franken's office was most receptive. Both Franken and Rep. Collin Peterson seemed to have their offices primed to deal with calls as if constituents mattered. Sen. Amy Klobuchar did not. Invariably my call to her was answered by someone who wanted to know who I represented.
I tried to get Klobuchar's office to modify the bill on GMO labeling she was sponsoring with Roberts of Kansas so that it wouldn't supersede and destroy Vermont's proposed state labeling bill. Anyone doing local marketing knows this is an important issue for customers. I failed miserably and Vermont's law fell.
This left me with a strong impression of Klobuchar, especially since her first re-election campaign featured her talking about how useful she had been to various Republican Twin Cities business owners, at a time when Democrats needed help. This makes me think she would be no strong advocate for ordinary people. Let's keep our ears wide open as she campaigns in Iowa.
JIM VAN DER POL, Kerkhoven, Minn.
“This is your grandson.”
“Which one?”
“The oldest one.”
That was one of the first phone conversations with gullible grandparents many years ago. And it’s ba-a-ack! T’is the season for scams, shams and robocalls that ring daily, hourly and any moment from dusk to dawn and beyond. Don’t respond.
Saying the word “yes” is a no-no. Today’s tech tricks can be treacherous. You don’t want to find a ton of cement in your yard or 17 new magazine subscriptions. Don’t listen to that pre-recorded voice chirping, “You’re harder to reach than that olive in the bottom of the jar.”
You’re not being hacked; there’s no free cruise; and swabbing was a shameful sham.
The biggest scam of all, though, has us all suffering. It was the duped who fell for Making America Great Again, as it was already pretty much on its way.
Now we have to make America wait again.
FLORA ORMSBY SMITH, Marblehead, Mass.
Ted Rall, in his 1/1-15/20 column, "Trump Gets Away with Staff Because He Does,” mentioned that Trump bragged in January 2016 that he "could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn't lose voters, okay?” It would logically follow that if Trump bombed the Supreme Court Building, killing all nine justices, he would neither be investigated nor punished for such a heinous crime.
EDWARD L. KOVEN, Highland Park, Ill.
From The Progressive Populist, February 1, 2020
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