The History of Amerika’s Cartoon Government (part 1) (by ContraSuggest)

I’ve spent most of my life trying to convince people that there was an ideological difference between Democrats and Republicans; that the two major parties represented fundamentally different, competing theories on the subjects of government and culture.  On paper this is still true, but in practice it is most often not true.  By the 21^st century the lines have been so blurred between the practical application of Democratic and Republican principles that, in most cases, there is no discernable difference in the way the two parties govern.  Oh, the rhetoric often differs because the parties need to act as if they’re different; for how else could they convince you to vote for one over the other?  Unfortunately politics is all about getting elected and re-elected; unholy alliances must be forged; promises made and kept to special interests, while the ones made to the general public are most often broken.  Once in office, Remocrats and Depublicans often pursue near identical, wasteful and unconstitutional policies.  In so doing, they play right into the “they’re all crooks” stereotype; convincing an already cynical and apathetic public, that attempts to achieve honest government are simply futile.  Welcome to Cartoon Government.

So how did fundamentally sound government institutions undergo the transformation into Cartoon Government?  Well, it started a long time ago and the dynamics that brought it about are really rooted in our faulty and sinful human nature.  Ultimately, all of the blame for the current sorry state of our country can be traced back to the wholesale rejection of God, and the Amerikan culture’s denial that our secular laws come from the Judeo-Christian ethos.  There has been a simultaneous abandonment of timeless constitutional principles at all levels and branches of our government.  [For an excellent exposition on this problem and practical proposals for rectifying it, read Mark Levin’s outstanding new book The Liberty Amendments.]  Here, I plan to analyze the problem from a slightly different angle.  To answer the question about the transformation of our government institutions, we need to go back to America’s stellar beginnings and see how the theoretical was ruined by bad application. 

The American Founders distilled the most effective components from the great political

systems of history and enshrined them in a written constitution.  They dynamically balanced those elements against one another in a system of checks and balances, which provided the underpinnings of a country in which the largest number of people in all of history have been able to live in conditions of freedom and prosperity.  That is a singular historical achievement that cannot be understated. But how do these facts square with the modern-day dysfunction and catastrophic failure of a political system that was specifically designed to endure with changing times?  How did the political system in America become so hopelessly corrupt and broken?  How did so-called special interests gain so much currency in the centers of political power?  How did patronage and political quid pro quos come to characterize business as usual in our political system?

Most of the answers to these questions date back to the 1820s, to a pivotal flashpoint in our history, which has been accurately described by many historians, including Paul Johnson and Larry Schweikart.  It was a time when the modern-day, state political machine system was first created, primarily in New York State by Martin Van Buren, and then extended and expanded to the federal level.  Van Buren, one of the most successful politicians in history, held nearly every elected office in New York State and multiple offices on the federal level, culminating in the presidency (he was the 8^th president of the US).  He was the grandfather of political patronage, was responsible for the creation of the modern Democratic Party, the founder of the first state political machine (the notorious Albany Regency), and many other modern political innovations.  He saw Governor Dewitt Clinton’s spoils system (under political party control) as a way to dull the passions of the slavery issue that threatened to permanently balkanize the country.  Securing votes for party candidates by offering favors and jobs in return, was seen as an effective alternative to securing votes by taking a strong position for or against the tendentious issue of slavery.  This line of thinking cynically held that greed was a stronger motivating factor for political loyalty than the burning passions of sectional differences.  We know all too well that this system was ultimately incapable of avoiding a cataclysm over slavery, yet it left us with the corrupt cartoon government we have today.

Van Buren’s Albany Regency, run by his new Democrat Party, lavished patronage on newspapers that “shared” the party’s views, and upon loyal individuals and local organizations that would guarantee voter turnout.  The party machine was composed of operatives at every level, from local communities up to the federal echelons, each one a loyal devotee, responsible for securing votes.  Election victories were then rewarded with promotions, in which all operatives advanced up the chain until all possible job holders in the party organization were appointed to paid government positions.  The sleazy backroom deals engaged in by our state politicians today were firmly established in the 1820s by the Albany Regency; the network may have expanded, but it’s still the same old dirty game.

The corrupt system that began in earnest in the 1820s has been further codified today by those who euphemistically fashion themselves “community organizers.”  In our retrograde culture, the practice of community organizing is portrayed as morally laudable, like the search for a cancer cure; in reality it is morally equivalent to the slave trade.  The race-baiting, anti-capitalist shit-stirring and demagoguery in which these cockroaches engage has rotted away nearly all that was good and decent about this once great country.  These community organizers peddle their poisons to local communities in every part of the country, begin collectivist grass roots movements, establish seemingly innocuous local organizations designed to create loyal zombie-like voters, exercise free access to press and media outlets, run election campaigns for leftist candidates, and are imbedded like ticks in all government branches and departments.  In short, community organizers possess and regularly exercise the power to shape our culture into any twisted form their radical imaginations desire.  And just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse, Amerika twice elected a community organizer to the presidency.

End of part one.