View more of the Sun's opinion section
“I’ve got plenty of nuttin’.”
I have been singing the lyrics (in my head because out loud would be a supreme injustice to Ira Gershwin and a host of marvelous voices) to that famous song from ‘Porgy and Bess’ ever since I started thinking about our United States’ political history and, specifically, the role of the Republican Party in 2016. And the word “nothing.”
Let me explain.
I, unfortunately, belong to one of the last generations in which U.S. government, American history, civics and current events were emphasized in the public school system. We are reaping the results of that failure to teach context, curiosity and critical thinking. Those results manifest themselves in the Twitter world and the blogosphere and any number of places on the internet where facts are freely mangled and opinions are treated like facts, and where “historical context” are just two words that take up too many of the 140 characters allowed in substantive communications.
In short, there is no room for phrases like the past is prologue and admonitions about how a failure to learn from history condemns us to repeat it.
So, speaking of nothing, I am reminded about two commonly used references to the Republican Party in our history in which that word is a prominent descriptor. And I think there are lessons that should be learned and applied to what is happening today, lest we are doomed to repeat them.
One such use was in the late 1940s, when President Harry Truman referred to the Congress of the United States as a “do-nothing” Congress. Not unlike the Republican Congress of the past few years, 60-plus years ago the Republican-controlled Congress refused to do anything, allow anything or even dream of anything that had its origins in the Truman White House. Sound familiar?
In any event, a most unpopular Truman was running against a popular Republican opponent in 1948. People liked Tom Dewey and hated the idea of yet another Democratic president following the four terms of Franklin D. Roosevelt. Truman was unpopular and a decided underdog. The only thing he had going for him was a Congress that was more unpopular than the president.
Truman hung the moniker “do-nothing Congress” on the GOP, and the rest is history.
Now go back to the mid-1850s. The Whig Party of Millard Fillmore was coming apart at the seams, and in its place was the fast-rising American Party. It gathered steam and voters by appealing to nativist tendencies and, specifically, a decidedly anti-immigrant stance. In those days there was massive movement of immigrants to the Eastern United States from Ireland and Italy, and in the West the immigrants came from China and Japan. Of course, Jewish immigration came from all over the globe and was thrown in the mix of those people who were the subject of the American Party’s scorn.
Simply put, the American Party — which carried the banner of a white, Protestant nation — shunned the Roman Catholicism of the Irish and Italian immigrants who were flocking to the promise of America. On the other side of the country, the “other” were the Asians who “threatened “ the jobs of white America. If you substitute Catholic with Muslim, it is not far-fetched to think that history is repeating.
Of course, when members of the growing American Party were asked about their leaders and their views, their answer was, “I know nothing!” Hence, the popular name for the nativist party became the “know-nothings.” And it stuck. But not for long.
Not unlike the GOP of today, the Know-Nothing Party was made up of factions whose political views were opposite of one another. In the earlier case, some of the people were in favor of slavery and some were not. The Know-Nothings cleaved around the middle, and within a few short years the party disintegrated. Most of the adherents joined the newly formed Republican Party, which favored a strong federal government and was vehemently anti-slavery.
Those folks went from a party of know-nothings who were anti-immigrant, anti-religionist and anti-the other to the party of Abraham Lincoln, exalting federal government over states’ rights and the liberalism of the anti-slavery movement.
Does any of this sound familiar?
So here we are in 2016, and the party of Lincoln appears to be cleaving along lines similar to those that did the Know-Nothings in. Including a few, it is sad to say, who yearn for the good old days of slavery! Whether the party actually comes apart remains to be seen, but the GOP discounting the idea of history repeating itself is nothing to laugh about.
“I got plenty of nothing” is a song about appreciating all that we do have, and celebrating that idea even when we don’t have much. But do-nothings and know-nothings are different. Those phrases exalt ignorance and intolerance. And there should be no celebration in that!
Brian Greenspun is owner, publisher and editor of the Sun.
Join the Discussion:
Check this out for a full explanation of our conversion to the LiveFyre commenting system and instructions on how to sign up for an account.
Full comments policy