Deep Party Politics

A Short History of Political Identity

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“The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders and miseries, which result, gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of Public Liberty.” —George Washington, Farewell Address, 1796

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When the Beatles played in Dallas, Texas, on September 18, 1964, a reporter asked John Lennon about his political identity. She cited a review of Lennon’s new book, In His Own Write, in which the critic characterized Lennon as an anarchist. “Would you say you are an anarchist?” she asked. Lennon shot back, “I don’t even know what it means!”¹ That is the wisest answer to questions about political labels.

Political identity is one of the oldest wedges dividing U.S. citizens against each other. It is used to confuse and control. It is used to keep voters distracted from and ignorant about deep politics. Each new deep political event is a result of Americans not realizing they were lied to about previous events, all the way back to the American Revolution, itself a war conspiracy by the French against the British.²

Political parties are not mentioned in the U.S. Constitution. Candidates are not required to be members of a party to run for office. U.S. political parties began as factions. Parties formed, lived, and died as their factions, fortunes, and voting blocks changed with historical events. Their overriding pursuit is power. 

Take Texas political history for example. If you look only at parties, the state was Democratic and became Republican. But the state’s majority voters were always reactionary. As Democrats sought power nationally by pursuing labor and civil rights after the Civil War and the Progressive Era, they alienated their traditional southern reactionary faction. Those alienated voters switched to a Republican Party that had lost blacks and other progressives permanently during the Great Depression.³

It was the right-wingers of both parties who gave us presidential term limits to avoid another domestically progressive president like Franklin D. Roosevelt. The Kennedy brothers became a real threat to term limits, so they were removed in other ways. The most extreme right-wing crimes against democracy were used to stop them.

By November 1963, the progressive faction of the Texas Democratic Party, led by Senator Ralph Yarborough, was riding a wave of popularity on President Kennedy’s coat tails. Vice President Lyndon Johnson, Yarborough’s nemesis-in-chief, was about to be dumped from the ticket. Johnson and his longtime partner in crime, Texas Governor John Connally, were on their way to political ruin and likely prison due to the imminent exposure of their corrupt dealings with conman Billy Sol Estes and others. Kennedy was on his way to an easy victory over likely 1964 Republican candidate, Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater.⁴

When Kennedy was murdered, the true Democratic Party of Texas was murdered too. The forces that killed the Kennedys figured out that term limits do not matter when you control the elections. Right-wing Texas politicians figured that out long ago. Even if a leftist accidentally wins, like Governor Ann Richards did, they just cheat them out of a second term. That’s how Governor George W. Bush won.

Halfway into Bush’s second presidential term, Texas columnist Molly Ivins figured out that the state’s right-wing political crimes had become its chief export. “Naturally, in Texas, National Laboratory for Bad Government, we do it all first and worst,” she wrote.

A single pair of two-year terms had been the voluntary limit for Texas governors for generations — until right-wing Democrat incumbent Allan Shivers ran again in 1954 and became the first to serve three consecutive terms. In my book, I wrote about the suspicious way by which Shivers became the only lieutenant governor in Texas history to attain the governor’s office by the death of his predecessor, Governor Beauford Jester.

In 1975, the state constitution was amended, changing the number of years per term to four. Then ultra right-winger Bill Clements, the first openly Republican governor since Reconstruction, became the longest-serving governor with two terms (1978-1982, then 1986-1990). Republican Governor Rick Perry was the first with a third term after two consecutive four-year terms (2002-2006 and 2006-2010). Decades of underhanded, right-wing election control stuck Texas with Perry for almost 14 years.

Politics is about power, as George Orwell wrote in his essay, “Second Thoughts on James Burnham.”

“Burnham does not deny that ‘good’ motives may operate in private life, but he maintains that politics consists of the struggle for power, and nothing else. All historical changes finally boil down to the replacement of one ruling class by another. All talk about democracy, liberty, equality, fraternity, all revolutionary movements, all visions of Utopia, or ‘the classless society’, or ‘the Kingdom of Heaven on earth’, are humbug (not necessarily conscious humbug) covering the ambitions of some new class which is elbowing its way into power. ...Power can sometimes be won or maintained without violence, but never without fraud, because it is necessary to make use of the masses, and the masses would not co-operate if they knew that they were simply serving the purposes of a minority.”⁵

There is a long history of politically expedient, extreme right-wing twisting of the definitions of “democracy” and “republic.” The intent is to demonize the Democratic Party, and by extension liberalism and progressiveness.

The first U.S. political party was Thomas Jefferson’s liberal, pro-labor Democratic-Republican Party, founded in 1791 to counteract the elitist, monarchical, pro-central-bank Federalists. Jefferson’s party split into two factions in 1828. The liberal faction became the Democratic Party based on Jacksonian democracy. The elitist, banker faction called themselves the National Republicans, which later changed to the Whig Party, and eventually the Republican Party. 

The name “Republicans” was arguably chosen to trick voters into thinking they were voting for the other, more popular liberal party, because “Democratic-Republican” had been commonly shortened to “Republican.” It was President Jefferson’s own slang term for his party. When voters caught on and the right-wingers needed more dirty tricks to get votes, “Whig” was chosen to echo the American Whigs of 1776, who fought for independence, because “Whig” had been the label of choice for people who opposed tyranny.

Here is how the anti-slavery Republican Party of 1854 became the party of racists: https://www.theroot.com/how-the-republican-party-became-the-party-of-racism-1827779221

Here are the factual definitions:

Democracy

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/democracy

Republic

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/republic

The U.S. was founded as a democratic republic, with “republic” used in the “federal republic” sense only, as seen in this list of the world’s republics: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_republics, and this list of countries by system of government: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_system_of_government.

In making the distinction between a republic and a democracy, the latter list says, “This is a list of sovereign states by constitutionally defined de jure system of government. This list does not measure degree of democracy, political corruption, or state capacity of governments.”

The heading “Presidential republic,” notes that the, “Head of government (president) is popularly elected and independent of the legislature." The list includes democratic and non-democratic states.

Moreover, under the heading “Former one-party states,” states in which political power is by law concentrated within a single political party, eighteen countries were republics.

The United States is supposed to be a constitutional republic and a representative democracy (i.e., majority rule is tempered by minority rights protected by law). The head of state and other officials of a constitutional republic are representatives of the citizens and govern according to constitutional law that limits their power. Representative democracy, as opposed to direct democracy, is a type of democracy founded on the principle of elected people representing the citizens. 

Since U.S. citizens have no constitutional right to vote,⁶ rerepresentative democracy exists in principle only. That is unfortunate because democracy is the only idea protecting our human rights and liberties. The pervasive, wrongheaded twisting of these definitions for the purpose of marginalizing “democracy” and glorifying “republic” supports the view that the United States has become a de facto right-wing authoritarian state.

Certainly, two parties in lockstep on all matters of foreign policy, military adventurism, and black-budget madness are a de facto single-party. At best, a two-party state is the least democratic, not the most. Two-parties are only one removed from non-democratic countries like China, Cuba, and North Korea.

While more parties mean better democracy, the wisdom of George Washington is ultimately the right answer. Zero is most. Imagine a twist ending where you’re asked about a political label, and you shout, “I don’t even know what it means!”

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END NOTES

1. John Lennon, Dallas, Tx., Sept. 18, 1964, YouTube clip. https://youtube.com/clip/UgkxWoa2iTVCj5dCSkSJt1zI6yLYEqWOROM1?feature=shared

2. James Burk, Connections 3, “Life is No Picnic,” 38:15-40:30.

3. Nancy Young, “Democratic Party,” Handbook of Texas Online, accessed August 06, 2024, https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/wad01

4.

5. George Orwell: “Second Thoughts on James Burnham,” First published: Polemic. GB, London, summer 1946. https://www.orwell.ru/library/reviews/burnham/english/e_burnh

6. WhoWhatWhy, “Is the Constitutional Right to Vote a Myth?” May 13, 2017. http://whowhatwhy.org/video/constitutional-right-vote-myth/