Quickies: Some Political Irony

     The video I embedded in the post below is now circulating widely. One response I found particularly poignant appears below. Have a look at it:

     Now read this:

     The Jeffersonian drive toward virtually no government foundered after Jefferson took office, first with concessions to the Federalists...and then with the unconstitutional purchase of the Louisiana Territory. But most particularly it foundered with the imperialist drive toward war with Great Britain in Jefferson’s second term, a drive which led to war and to a one-party system which established virtually the entire statist Federalist program.... Horrified at the results, a retired Jefferson brooded at Monticello, and inspired young visiting politicians Martin Van Buren and Thomas Hart Benton to found a new party–the Democratic Party – to take back America from the Federalists and to recapture the spirit of the old Jeffersonian program. When the two young leaders latched onto Andrew Jackson as their savior, the new Democratic Party was born.

     The Jacksonian libertarians had a plan: it was to be eight years of Andrew Jackson as president, to be followed by eight years of Van Buren, then eight years of Benton. After twenty-four years of a triumphant Jacksonian Democracy, the Menckenian virtually-no-government ideal was to have been achieved. It was by no means an impossible dream, since it was clear that the Democratic Party had quickly become the normal majority part in the country. The mass of the people were enlisted in the libertarian cause....But then a fateful event occurred: the Democratic Party was sundered on the critical issue of slavery....

     [Murray Rothbard, For a New Liberty. Emphases added by FWP.]

     How infinitely far the Democratic Party has fled from its freedom-and-limited-government roots! But the damage is irreversible. There’s no course left but to make the Republican Party the Party of Freedom, and to make sure it stays that way.