The Whigs
Predecessors to the Modern Republicans
“The Whigs”
I just want to highlight a little bit about the history of the Republican party so people can better understand where their origins lie, the Whig party.
Excerpts taken from Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whig_Party_%28United_States%29
This name was chosen to echo the American Whigs of 1776, who fought for independence, and because “Whig” was then a widely recognized label of choice for people who saw themselves as opposing autocratic rule.
If you go by their name it seems from the start the party had chosen an image that was contrary to their implied opposition to Aristocratic rule. As better explained by the paragraph that follows.
The Whigs, also known as the “white heads”, won votes in every socio-economic category, but appealed more to the professional and business classes: doctors, lawyers, merchants, ministers, bankers, storekeepers, factory owners, commercially-oriented farmers and large-scale planters. In general, commercial and manufacturing towns and cities voted Whig, save for strongly Democratic precincts in Irish Catholic and German immigrant communities; the Democrats often sharpened their appeal to the poor by ridiculing the Whigs’ aristocratic pretensions.
We now go to a bit of their beliefs about how the country should be governed:
The Whigs came to unite around economic policy, celebrating Clay’s vision of the “American System” which favored government support for a more modern, industrial economy in which education and commerce would equal physical labor or land ownership as a means of productive wealth.
I would like to add that modernization is not a bad thing. Many of their ideas in moderation are perfectly acceptable.
By contrast, the Democrats hearkened to the Jeffersonian political philosophy ideal of an egalitarian agricultural society, advising that traditional farm life bred republican simplicity, while modernization threatened to create a politically powerful caste of rich aristocrats who threatened to subvert democracy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whig_Party_%28United_States%29
I’ve included some quotes from Thomas Jefferson I found on website that detailed the “Jeffersonian Philosophy” that the Whigs opposed. Seems to me that a lot of the problems that have arisen today would not exist if we could have heeded many of the ideas of Thomas Jefferson. History gives us the ability to look at things on a much larger prospective than the analyzing the present. In retrospect you can see the parts as a whole rather than in small pieces.
I suppose my overall point is to examine the basic ideologies and attitudes of the Whig party in comparison with the Republican party we know today. A party ruled by deception and philosophies that benefit no one but their own. (my opinion) This has lead to a dramatic contrast between the wealthy and the impoverished that we see today, as displayed by the link posted below. Allowing for the wealthy to control almost every aspect of the common man’s life. In one of my opinions, one of the very reasons this country was formed, to break away from the monarchy and aristocratic rule.
The Wealth Distribution
In the United States, wealth is highly concentrated in a relatively few hands. As of 2007, the top 1% of households (the upper class) owned 34.6% of all privately held wealth, and the next 19% (the managerial, professional, and small business stratum) had 50.5%, which means that just 20% of the people owned a remarkable 85%, leaving only 15% of the wealth for the bottom 80% (wage and salary workers). In terms of financial wealth (total net worth minus the value of one’s home), the top 1% of households had an even greater share: 42.7%.
Thomas Jefferson Quotes
Banks I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. Already they have raised up a moneyed aristocracy that has set the Government at defiance. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people to whom it properly belongs.
If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their money, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them (around the banks), will deprive the people of their property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.
The system of banking [is] a blot left in all our Constitutions, which, if not covered, will end in their destruction… I sincerely believe that banking institutions are more dangerous than standing armies; and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity … is but swindling futurity on a large scale. Thomas Jefferson
“I consider the foundation of the Constitution as laid on this ground that ‘all powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are preserved to the states or to the people.’ … To take a single step beyond the boundaries thus specially drawn around the powers of Congress is to take possession of a boundless field of power, no longer susceptible of any definition. The incorporation of a bank, and the powers assumed by this bill (chartering the first Bank of the United States), have not, been delegated to the United States by the Constitution.”
