Republicans, Then and Now

 

The mantra of today’s Republican Party, their 50 US Senators and their 6 Supreme Court Justices

(To be read in unison)

 

We recognize no right save one

The right to own and carry a gun.

A child unborn, we will protect

But after that

Efforts to help we will reject.

 

We need more kids, white ones for sure

Because we fear our nation’s lure

Will soon dilute our native stock.

To stop that threat

Our nation’s borders we must block

 

They say the world is facing doom

Hush up with all your words of gloom

The scientists are surely wrong

And anyhow

I won’t be here for all that long

 

Democracy has one big fault

Majorities can sometimes halt

The use of cash to get our way

But have no fear

The filibuster saves the day

 

 

Republicans of a bygone era (50 years or more ago)

 

The Second Amendment – Warren Burger, Republican Chief Justice of the Supreme Court

 

In 1991, retired Supreme Court Chief Justice Warren Burger stated that the Second Amendment “has been the subject of one of the greatest pieces of fraud, I repeat the word fraud, on the American public by special interest groups that I have ever seen in my lifetime.” Burger was a Republican, who was appointed Chief Justice by President Richard Nixon in 1969. “The very language of the Second Amendment” wrote Burger, “refutes any argument that it was intended to guarantee every citizen an unfettered right to any kind of weapon he or she desires. … The Framers clearly intended to secure the right to bear arms essentially for military purposes.”

 

Abortion Rights – Harry Blackmun, Republican Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, writing for the majority in Roe v Wade

 

“This right of privacy, whether it be founded in the Fourteenth Amendment's concept of personal liberty and restrictions upon state action, as we feel it is, or ... in the Ninth Amendment's reservation of rights to the people, is broad enough to encompass a woman's decision whether to terminate her pregnancy.”

 

The Court reasoned that outlawing abortions would infringe a pregnant woman's right to privacy for several reasons: having unwanted children "may force upon the woman a distressful life and future"; it may bring imminent psychological harm; caring for the child may tax the mother's physical and mental health; and because there may be "distress, for all concerned, associated with the unwanted child"

 

The Military Industrial Complex/Global Warming – General Dwight D Eisenhower, Only Republican President from 1933 until 1969, in his farewell address

 

“As we peer into society's future, we – you and I, and our government – must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering for our own ease and convenience the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without risking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow…

 

“In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes…."