by Thomm Hartmann
http://www.commondreams.org/views03/1024-02.htm<snip>
The Republicans of 1872 didn't think that anybody should be appointed to high office just because he was a party hack or the son of the Secretary of State. Instead, they wrote in their platform, "Any system of civil service under which the subordinate positions of the government are considered rewards for mere party zeal is fatally demoralizing; and we, therefore, favor a reform of the system, by laws which shall abolish the evils of patronage, and make honesty, efficiency, and fidelity the essential qualifications for public positions."
They didn't think corporations - particularly big ones - should get the kinds of freebies that corporations today regularly demand for moving into a community. Instead, resources owned by We, The People should be held in trust for, or given to, human beings, as they wrote in their platform: "We are opposed to further grants of public land to corporations and monopolies, and demand that the national domain be set apart for free homes for the people."
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In the years since then, the Republican Party has been seized by Ayn Rand utopians, Pat Roberson fundamentalists, and the largest and dirtiest of America's corporate elite. They've trashed the values of Lincoln and Eisenhower, rejected Jesus' words in Matthew 25, and turned our commons into a dumping ground while using our nation's treasury as a honey pot.
At the same time, there's a growing concern that George W. Bush's projected quarter-billion-dollar campaign war chest, and demonstrated willingness to use Big Lie techniques and October Surprise wars, will be enough to induce national amnesia in 2004, destroy the last vestiges of a civil society, and permanently turn our nation into the land of the observed and the home of the worried-about-the-terror-alert.
http://www.commondreams.org/views03/1024-02.htm