A SHORT HISTORY OF RIGHT WING DESTRUCTION PART 1

When you read American history you can see an undercurrent of right wing philosophy from the beginning of the United States as a sovereign nation.

Prior to ratification of the Constitution, the law of the land was the Articles of Confederation, which epitomized the idea of "states' rights."  The federal government was weak and largely ineffectual. It was so bad it prompted political leaders to call for a constitutional convention to replace the Articles.

The members of the constitutional convention hammered out the Constitution, the document we see today.  The Constitution is a document filled with compromises and fear of a federal government that would be too strong.  We got the so-called "checks and balances" system that creates three co-equal branches of government:  the executive, legislative, and judicial branches.  Even the legislative branch is split into two houses as a form of compromise.  The House of Representatives might be considered a  democratic body because the number of members of based on the population of the individual states.  The Senate has two members from each state, regardless of population, and makes it a decidedly undemocratic body.

Even the checks and balances system didn't satisfy the conservatives of the time.  They demanded a Bill of Rights that would place even further restraints on federal government power.

Conservatives of the time got their way by making African-Americans 3/5's of a person because that increased the power of the southern slave-holding states.

Thomas Jefferson was one of the earliest and most prominent advocates of states' rights.  Jefferson was a slave-holding southerner.    The concept of states' rights is a direct assault on the idea of a strong federal government.  It says, in effect, that each state has power equal to that of the federal government.

Slavery was the hot button issue in the early days of the United States.  The southern states depended on the free labor provided by slaves to bolster their economies.  The northern states began moving toward a more manufacturing based economy, not based on slave labor.  Southerners were concerned that the federal government would move in a direction that would restrict or perhaps even eliminate slavery.  We got compromises such as the Mason-Dixon line.

Conservative doctrines such as "manifest destiny" and the "only good Indian is a dead Indian" came into play.  But the world was moving away from the use of slavery and conservatives worried that slavery would be banished.

The election of Abraham Lincoln is an interesting parallel to the election of Barack Obama.  Lincoln's election was a landmark moment. Conservatives feared that Lincoln would finally abolish slavery and that led to the firing on the United States Fort Sumter by forces of the rebel Confederacy  and the launch of the agonizing and brutal American Civil War. I think we can say the conservatives of the era were primarily responsible for the Civil War.

More to follow.