The Young Republicans Of 1956

[kpete]

[hobbit709]

1. How times have changed.

[FourScore]

34. When Republicans say they want America back to how it used to be...

We can all agree and show them this.

[madaboutharry]

2. The republican party was taken over by The John Birch Society.

They just don't call themselves "Birchers" anymore.

[B Calm]

3. Attend your union meetings! LOL

[napkinz]

4. a long time ago ...

[Martin Eden]

31. Teabagger heads would explode if the GOP adopted that platform today!

And that's a sight I'd love to see.

[napkinz]

32. I bet if you hid the subject line -- "1956 Republican Platform"

... any Republican today looking at that platform would be screaming, "Those damn hippie communist liberals!"

[napkinz]

33. I love the sound of Teabagger heads exploding in the morning ...

[tecelote]

5. I was a republican once.

A long time ago, someone I respected told me what a Republican was, and I was sold. It sounded great.

I can't remember everything, actually very little. But, here are a few things I do remember him telling me.

Republicans want...

- A government that is as fiscally responsible as it expects it's citizens to be.

- A government that supports a living wage for people that work.

- A government that respects the privacy and individuality of it's citizens.

- A government that supports the ability of individuals to create and run a business.

- A government that actively works towards supporting a healthy and prosperous middle class.

That's all I remember, there was more.

But, I would add some social support and a friendlier world view.

My right wing friend would be considered a left wing liberal today. That would have knocked his socks off.

I'm proud to say that I'm left of that.

I like America. I like Americans.

I wish our government did.

[CFLDem]

7. Doesn't this just say everything?

"I like America. I like Americans.

I wish our government did."

[kracer20]

12. I'm too young to know...

1956 is well before my time on this earth. If the republicans positions were these back then, I'm curious what the democrats positions were.

Can anyone enlighten me?

[progressoid]

16. The Democratic Party Platform of 1956

http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=29601

[okaawhatever]

20. This paragraph shows how some things never change:

In the brief space of three and one-haft years, the people of the United States have come to realize, with tragic consequences, that our National Government cannot be trusted to the hands of political amateurs, dominated by representatives of special privilege.

Four years ago they were beguiled, by empty promises and pledges, to elect as President a recent convert to Republicanism. Our people have now learned that the party of Lincoln has been made captive to big businessmen with small minds. They have found that they are now ruled by a Government which they did not elect, and to which they have not given their consent. Their awareness of this fact was demonstrated in 1954 when they returned control of the legislative machinery of the Federal Government to the 84th Democratic Congress

[jwirr]

29. Very liberal and for the workers. I was one of four Democrats in that time and remember getting

beat by Ike in our high school election. My father was one of the small farmers who was going broke and Ike was doing nothing about it. A lot of things got bigger in his term.

[warrant46]

6. High Jacked by Fundamentalist Nut Job Christians and the Evil 1%

[siligut]

14. It is the evil 1% that promotes and finances the nut job religious folk

Superstition is useful to maintain control and manipulate. People who believe they are acting through the grace of god will do it with dedication and strength. After WWII, the escaped Nazi's associated their meeting houses with churches.

[warrant46]

18. +1

[awoke_in_2003]

30. Religion has long been used by kings...

to keep the peasants in check.

[SHRED]

8. My birth year

[calikid]

28. My birth year too. n/t

[sulphurdunn]

9. The Republican Party has always been the enemy

of working people. In 1956 the Cold War necessitated a strong industrial base and a middle class. Unions were strong then. The republicans had to pander to them. When the Cold War ended, a strong union movement, a domestic manufacturing sector and a large middle class were no longer required to fight the Soviets. The history of the past 30 years has been about the liquidation of working class America, aided and abetted by both parties, but with ideological zeal on the part of the republicans.

[LeftyMom]

11. Only if you have a decades-long definition of "always"

There were these working people in the South who were known as "slaves" that might have had a different view and Republicans continued to be their advocates during reconstruction. And in the Progressive Era both parties advocated for labor but they tended to pit their constituencies (rural, protestant democratic farmers versus republican immigrants and urbanites who were more friendly to Catholics) against each other. The reallignment really wasn't complete until well into the Civil Rights era and the anti-labor policies of the right really didn't fully gel until unions desegregated and the right decided to import Thatcherism.

I swear, hardly anybody on this forum knows shit about history and it breaks my heart.

Your town still has a library. Go use it.

[warrant46]

21. +1 Those who ignore history and destined to repeat it

[sulphurdunn]

22. The Republican party

was the party of high tariffs during the 1860s to protect the northern industrial base, not the wage slaves who worked there. It was primarily opposed to possible future industrial competition from slave labor and the South's free trade aspirations that opposed tariffs. You might want to read up on the People's Party, William Jennings Bryon and the "Free Silver Movement in the 1890s. The UMW union was integrated at the beginning of the 20th Century. You might also want to peruse the biography of Eugene Debbs and American socialism, during and immediately after WWI. Then there's the communist influence in the IWW and the ILWU in the early 30s. These unions and movements were full of rural protestants and urban Catholics, not to mention Jews and blacks. None of them were beholden to either major political party. The Civil Rights movement of the 60s was a radical leftist movement, unaffiliated with main stream labor or the major political parties. To hear you talk, one might conclude that the history of the American working class is a history of manipulation by the major political parties.

If your actually live in a place with a library, you should most definitely visit it. Hell, you should move in and do some serious reading, and educate yourself before getting all rude and stupid about people on this site . Bless your broken little heart.

[LeftyMom]

23. You want to explain the ILWU to me? I come from an ILWU family!

My late stepfather was a member from when he got a job after dropping out of high school until the day he died. When he was missing work due to surgery on his many injuries (not an infrequent thing for a longshoreman) my mother worked as casual labor out of his local to make ends meet, usually at the rice mill.

My grandfather hopped trains and got beat up by Pinkertons as an early Teamster organizer. He called my mother "union brother" for weeks after she got her Teamster card working at Costco and it was literally the only reason I ever saw him tear up.

If you don't admit the racism of much of the labor movement (the wobblies were the exception, but the wobblies were the exception to a lot of things) then you're really glossing over a great deal of labor history. The conflict between the AFL and CIO is one obvious example.

[sulphurdunn]

25. I grew up in Seattle.

My father was an ILWU member for 40 years. I worked as a casual myself. I have never had any illusions about the union, but it was responsible for the fact that working men could own homes, take vacations and send their kids to school. The union but glasses on my face and braces on my teeth. Group Health kept me alive and kept my folks from going bankrupt. The union saw to it that my mother received my fathers pension and medical benefits until the day she died and as a result kept her out of a nursing home. I think it was Harry Bridges who once about labor that:"We have no permanent friends or enemies, just permanent interests."

Of course I glossed over a lot of labor history. Discussing it in a forum is like skipping a rock across a pond. Anyway, I think we're closer to being in agreement about truth than fact. I apologize for becoming snappy at the end of my post.

[Doctor_J]

13. quite sulphurdrum

During the Cold War the far right corporatists needed working people and the middle class to show how much our system was better than the Commies. Once the USSR fell, the gloves came off and they adopted their true agenda

[loudsue]

10. I'm bookmarking this sucker.

There has to be some way to re-educate the wingnuts. Ok. Maybe not. But I can wish!

[Boomerproud]

17. They do not want to be educated. Period. Facts have a way of spoiling their belief system

and they have too much invested to change. I've given up wishing for them to change and admit they were/are wrong. Never, ever going to happen.

[siligut]

24. ". . . they have too much invested to change."

And I do not believe that investment is happenstance, it is required so that if they wake-up, they can't just leave or they lose everything.

[rustbeltvoice]

15. They were lying then to fool people.

Now, they still lie, but concerning labor none of the lies include supporting labor.

1956 huh?

1947 The Republicans passed the anti-labor Taft-Hartley Act over the veto of President Truman. This was the 'do nothing' Congress.

We still have the Taft-Hartley Act. This is what they do when they have power.

Before, Republicans felt they had to lie about supporting, labor, education, peace, welfare and all those things that Democrats ran on. They said, "so do we". They lied. They had no intention.

Now, they have become so vicious, stupid, and mean they actually tell the truth and say they are against such things; but the lies are the arguments (talking points) why they hate such things. They hate such things because they are mean, stupid, vicious jerks who have no interest in the vast majority of people, humanity.

I give you the point that there were, at times, 'progressive', 'liberal', 'moderate', 'conservative' Republicans; they are as extinct as the dodo. Now there are only ultra-conservative varieties of Republicans. They form sort of a multi-headed hydra of fascism.

As long as things as Taft-Hartley exist, there is no truth to the statement that there are decent Republicans.

I do surrender the caveat, that this poster says "Young Republican Labor Committee" and that the paper has a union bug (printers' mark) in the corner; but who were they? the Young Republican Labor Committee?

[spanone]

19. and i remember when hippies had long hair & construction workers didn't

the whole fucking world has done some kind of psycho flip-flop

[left is right]

26. this actually confirms an impression lingering from my childhood.

As a child in the fifties, I remembered the nation as being extremely proud of having the greatest prosperity in the history of the world. I have often wondered where that pride went

[Smarmie Doofus]

27. Grampa, what's a "union"? n/t