{"id":7426,"date":"2011-01-14T10:39:12","date_gmt":"2011-01-14T17:39:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/?p=7426"},"modified":"2011-01-14T10:39:12","modified_gmt":"2011-01-14T17:39:12","slug":"no-party-for-you","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/2011\/01\/14\/no-party-for-you\/","title":{"rendered":"No Party for You."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Sure.\u00c2\u00a0 Tennessee.\u00c2\u00a0 And one dreary line in the &#8220;Culture War&#8221; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.commercialappeal.com\/news\/2011\/jan\/13\/tea-parties-cite-legislative-demands\/#global_site_login\">that pierces the educational system<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><em>Regarding education, the material they distributed said, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Neglect and  outright ill will have distorted the teaching of the history and  character of the United States. We seek to compel the teaching of  students in Tennessee the truth regarding the history of our nation and  the nature of its government.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>That would include, the documents say, that \u00e2\u20ac\u0153the Constitution created  a Republic, not a Democracy.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>The material calls for lawmakers to amend state laws governing school  curriculums, and for textbook selection criteria to say that \u00e2\u20ac\u0153No  portrayal of minority experience in the history which actually occurred  shall obscure the experience or contributions of the Founding Fathers,  or the majority of citizens, including those who reached positions of  leadership.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Fayette County attorney Hal Rounds, the group\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s lead spokesman during  the news conference, said the group wants to address \u00e2\u20ac\u0153an awful lot of  made-up criticism about, for instance, the founders intruding on the  Indians or having slaves or being hypocrites in one way or another.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153The thing we need to focus on about the founders is that, given the  social  structure of their time, they were revolutionaries who brought  liberty into a world where it hadn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t existed, to everybody \u00e2\u20ac\u201d not all  equally instantly \u00e2\u20ac\u201d and it was their progress that we need to look at,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d  said Rounds, whose website identifies him as a Vietnam War veteran of  the Air Force and FedEx retiree who became a lawyer in 1995.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Curiously there is surely a good contingency within this group who won&#8217;t keep this &#8220;Hero Worship&#8221; sentiment up with Abraham Lincoln.\u00c2\u00a0 They also likely will be bristling against Woodrow Wilson &#8212; oddly making issue with some of the same racial problems that float about the Founders, but mostly just to prop up a supposed government &#8220;Eugenics&#8221; plot, and for base partisan attack in Republicans versus Democrats.\u00c2\u00a0 As the case shows in Texas, they seriously would want to reconstruct the figure of Thomas Jefferson, or if they can&#8217;t manage him, would settle on emphasizing more religious founders &#8212; I guess leaving the &#8220;Tree of Liberty&#8221; quote to be taken up at the Age of Majority.<\/p>\n<p>It is hereabouts that we find a serious fault line for <a href=\"http:\/\/www.politicsdaily.com\/2011\/01\/13\/colorados-mark-udall-wants-democrats-gop-to-sit-together-at-st\/\">this proposal<\/a>:<br \/>\n<em>Sen. Mark Udall, a Colorado Democrat, thinks members of his party and  Republicans should sit together &#8212; not on opposite sides of the aisle &#8212;  when President Obama delivers his State of the Union message to a joint  session of Congress on Jan. 25.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>In a &#8220;Dear Colleague&#8221; letter reported by <\/em> <em>NPR and Politico,  Udall said, &#8220;There is no rule or reason that on this night we should  emphasize divided government, separated by party, instead of being seen  united as a country. The choreographed standing and clapping on one side  of the room &#8212; while the other side sits &#8212; is unbecoming of a serious  institution.&#8221;<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Customarily, Republicans sit to the right in the House of  Representatives chamber &#8212; as viewed from the Speaker&#8217;s rostrum &#8212; and  Democrats to the left. On the night of the State of the Union it gets  crowded as senators, cabinet members, the diplomatic corps and some  Supreme Court justices also squeeze in.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>I guess this would keep Representative Joseph Wilson from shouting &#8220;You Lie!&#8221;\u00c2\u00a0 (Code Pink had been barred as a guest of a Congress-woman during the Bush Administration for fear they would do what a Congress man did.)\u00c2\u00a0 But&#8230; is this a proposal to dissolve the two parties and show that the bitter arguments of governance are, at the elite level, a facade?\u00c2\u00a0 Or is this supposed to launch a new Era of Good Feeling, the kind of which we have not seen since the Federalists threw in the towel and co-opted the James Monroe Administration?<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">There wasn&#8217;t a State of the Union speech delivered until Wilson&#8217;s time &#8212; Jefferson had deigned toward obsequious displays of humbleness and this clashed with that.\u00c2\u00a0 But, you can imagine the partisanship that would televise through the years in rolling down <a href=\"http:\/\/www.senate.gov\/pagelayout\/history\/one_item_and_teasers\/partydiv.htm\">the Senate division chart<\/a> (and surely one exists for the House Chamber).\u00c2\u00a0 Funny thing here, though: note the 1855 session breakdown.\u00c2\u00a0 Interesting.\u00c2\u00a0 One Republican.\u00c2\u00a0 While he pretty well sat alongside the breaking-apart the party Whig and unsettled Northern contingency that was the &#8220;Opposition&#8221; party (amalgam of Whiggery, Republicanism, and American Know-Nothing), it is&#8230; you see&#8230; the case that at one point, there was a one member Republican Senate contingency.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">So, congratulations.\u00c2\u00a0 <a href=\"http:\/\/bioguide.congress.gov\/scripts\/biodisplay.pl?index=N000162\">Amos Nourse<\/a>.\u00c2\u00a0 I understand he yelled at President Pierce &#8220;You Lie&#8221;, and was thus reprimanded, which strings together the eras of the Republican Party from its 1850s holding to its twenty-first century state.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sure.\u00c2\u00a0 Tennessee.\u00c2\u00a0 And one dreary line in the &#8220;Culture War&#8221; that pierces the educational system. Regarding education, the material they distributed said, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Neglect and outright ill will have distorted the teaching of the history and character of the United States. We seek to compel the teaching of students in Tennessee the truth regarding the history [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7426","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7426","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7426"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7426\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7427,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7426\/revisions\/7427"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7426"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7426"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7426"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}