Cyberspace Report #25 - October 29th Edition

Bill Weber

FREEDOM AND YOUR VOTE

This coming Tuesday November 3 1998, is General Election Day in the USA. As we face this day do we wonder: "Should I vote before going to work or after"? Or, "Why is Columbus Day a holiday and Election Day a workday"? Does it really pay to take the time and energy to go vote? There is the Congress looking into impeachment of the President, all this negative campaigning, the buying of candidates by 'big money' . To hell with it, we are inclined to say, and head off to work.

The day wears on, radio and TV continually reminds us: VOTE YOUR CHOICE BUT BE SURE TO VOTE. We think of the many people through out the world that wished they had the FREEDOMS that come with the privilege to vote. We realize that "big money" and corrupt politicians will become more powerful if we do not vote and support those who share our ideas and beliefs, even if at times they do not do as well as we had hoped, we realize the alternative could be worse.

It was just a little over 200 years ago that George Washington was elected the first President of the United States of America. In no state was any other name considered. The electors chosen in the first days of 1789 cast a unanimous vote for him, and reluctantly he accepted. Since then we have had many politicians, a few Statesmen but over all the system has worked these many years. It has worked because most people realize that the right to vote is a privilege that gives us the ability to retain the freedoms that our ancestors bestowed upon us back in the days of the Revolutionary war and the formation of the Constitution of the United States. It is by no means perfect but it does beat a Dictatorship or a Monarchy.

Listed below are the WEB pages of most political parties in Wisconsin.

Every vote cast on November 3rd 1998 is a reaffirmation to our forebearers that we cherish this Freedom to choose those who govern.

The following articles are taken from the online WEB pages of Encyclopedia Britannica. Access by memebership only. The First
REPUBLICAN PARTY

byname JEFFERSONIAN REPUBLICANS, first opposition political party in the United States. Its members held power nationally between 1801 and 1825. Organized in the early 1790s, it became the direct antecedent of the present Democratic Party.

Ironically, the first three Republican presidents were all wealthy,aristocratic Southern planters--Jefferson (served 1801-09), James Madison (1809-17), and James Monroe (1817-25)--but all three sharedthe same liberal political philosophy. During the 1820s the Republicans divided into two factions. One took the name National Republicans and was led by such expansionists as John Quincy Adams and Henry Clay as well as a number of former Federalists such as Daniel Webster. That faction became the nucleus of the Whig Party in the next decade. The opposition, organized by Martin Van Buren, called itself the Democratic-Republicans and was composed of diverse elements that emphasized local and humanitarian concerns, states' rights, agrarian interests, and democratic procedures. In keeping with the egalitarian spirit of the times, that faction adopted the name Democratic Party in the presidency of Andrew Jackson (1829-37).

To cite this page:
"Republican Party" Britannica Online.
http://www.eb.com:180/cgi-bin/g?DocF=micro/500/5.html
Copyright © 1994-1998 Encyclopędia Britannica, Inc.

GEORGE WASHINGTON PRESIDENCY

Postrevolutionary politics.

Viewing the chaotic political condition of the United States after 1783 with frank pessimism and declaring (May 18, 1786) that "something must be done, or the fabric must fall, for it is certainly tottering," Washington repeatedly wrote his friends urging steps toward "an indissoluble union." At first he believed that the Articles of Confederation might be amended. Later, especially after the shock of Shays's rebellion, he took the view that a more radical reform was necessary but doubted as late as the end of 1786 that the time was ripe. His progress toward adoption of the idea of a federal convention was, in fact, puzzlingly slow. Though John Jay assured him in March 1786 that breakup of the nation seemed near and opinion for the convention was crystallizing, Washington remained noncommittal. But despite long hesitations, he earnestly supported the proposal for a federal impost, warning the states that their policy mustdecide "whether the Revolution must ultimately be considered a blessing or a curse." And his numerous letters to the leading men of the country assisted greatly to form a sentiment favourable to a more perfect union.

Washington approved in advance the call for a gathering of all the states to meet in Philadelphia in May 1787 to "render the Constitution of the Federal Government adequate to the exigencies of the Union." But he was again hesitant about attending, partly because hefelt tired and infirm, partly because of doubts about the outcome.
Although he hoped to the last to be excused, he was chosen one of Virginia's five delegates.

Washington arrived in Philadelphia on May 13, the day before the opening of the Convention, and as soon as a quorum was obtained he was unanimously chosen its president. For four months he presided over the Constitutional Convention, breaking his silence only once upon a minor question of congressional apportionment. Though he said little in debate, no one did more outside the hall to insist on stern measures. "My wish is," he wrote, "that the convention may adopt no temporizing expedients, but probe the defects of the Constitution to the bottom, and provide a radical cure." His weight of character did more than any other single force to bring the convention to an agreement and obtain ratification of the instrument afterward. He did not believe it perfect,though his precise criticisms of it are unknown. But his support gave it victory in Virginia, where he sent copies to Patrick Henry and other leaders with a hint that the alternative to adoption was anarchy, declaring that "it or dis-union is before us to chuse from," told powerfully in Massachusetts. He received and personally circulated copies of The Federalist. When once ratification was obtained, he wrote leaders in the various states urging that men staunchly favourable to it be elected to Congress. For a time he sincerely believed that, the new framework completed, he would be allowed to retire again to privacy. But all eyes immediately turned to him for the first president. He alone commanded the respect of both the parties engendered by the struggle over ratification, and he alone would be able to give prestige to the republic throughout Europe. In no state was any other name considered. The electors chosen in the first days of 1789 cast a unanimous vote for him,and reluctantly--for his love of peace, his distrust of his own abilities, and his fear that his motives in advocating the new government might be misconstrued all made him unwilling--he accepted.

On April 16, after receiving congressional notification of the honour, he set out from Mount Vernon, reaching New York in time to be inaugurated on April 30. The ceremony was performed in Wall Street,near the spot now marked by Ward's statue of Washington; and a great crowd broke into cheers as, standing on the balcony of Federal Hall, he took the oath administered by Chancellor Robert Livingston and retired indoors to read Congress his inaugural address.

To cite this page:"George Washington: PRESIDENCY" Britannica Online.
http://www.eb.com:180/cgi-bin/g?DocF=macro/5006/61/2.html
Copyright © 1994-1998 Encyclopędia Britannica, Inc.

FEDERALIST PARTY

Early U.S. national political party, which advocated a strong central government and held power from 1789 to 1801. The term federalist was first used in 1787 to describe the supporters of the newly written Constitution, who emphasized the federal character of the proposed Union. Parties were generally deplored as inimical to republican government, and President George Washington was able to exercise nonpartisan leadership during the first few years of the new government(begun in 1789).

Over the decade of the 1790s, the Federalists stood for the following economic policies: funding of the old Revolutionary War debt and the assumption of state debts, passage of excise laws, creation of a central bank, maintenance of a tariff system, and favourable treatment of American shipping. In foreign affairs they observed neutrality in the war that broke out between France and Great Britain in 1793; approved the Jay Treaty of 1794, which terminated the difficulties with Britain; and sponsored strong defense and internal-security legislation in the crisis of 1798-99 (see Alien and Sedition Acts), when French demands almost forced open war. These policies were strongly resisted, especially in the South; the opposition, organized by James Madison and Thomas Jefferson beginning in 1791, became the Republican Party, later known as the National Republican, and eventually as the modern Democratic Party.

The Federalists never held power again after 1801. Their failure is attributable to the Republicans' political skill and to the Federalists' own incapacity or unwillingness to organize politically, their internal divisions (especially between supporters of Adams and Hamilton), and their aversion to compromising principles for the sake of winning elections. Furthermore, New England Federalists adopted a divisive policy of sectionalism, moving dangerously near secession in 1808 and strenuously opposing the War of 1812 (see Hartford Convention). By 1817 the party was practically dead, though the opposing Republicans had adopted the Federalists' principles of nationality and had accepted many of their economic ideas.

The accomplishments of the Federalists were great: the party organized the enduring administrative machinery of national government; fixed the practice of a liberal interpretation of the Constitution; establishedtraditions of federal fiscal integrity and credit worthiness; and initiated the important doctrine of neutrality in foreign affairs, allowing the infant nation to develop in peace for more than a century.

To cite this page:
"Federalist Party" Britannica Online.
http://www.eb.com:180/cgi-bin/g?DocF=micro/205/31.html
Copyright © 1994-1998 Encyclopędia Britannica, Inc.

REPUBLICAN PARTY

Byname GRAND OLD PARTY (GOP), one of the two major political parties of the United States. The Republican Party traditionally stands for limited government and low taxes.

The earliest meetings of people who may be identified as Republicans were held in October 1853 in Exeter, N.H., and in May 1854 in Ripon,Wis. The convention that formally launched the party was held in July 1854 at Jackson, Mich., when a group of former Whigs, Democrats, and Free-Soilers adopted the name Republican. The name appealed to those who recalled Jeffersonian "republicanism" and generally placed the national interest above sectional interest and above states' rights. The party's founders were firmly linked in common opposition to slavery, particularly to the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, which would have extended slavery into those newly created territories. The platform adopted at the party's first national convention in 1856 denied that Congress had the right to recognize slavery in a territory and held that Congress had the right to abolish slavery in the territories and ought to do so. This view was representative of widespread sentiment in the North.(see also Index: Whig Party, Democratic Party)

During its first four years the party rapidly displaced the Whigs in the North as the main opposition to the Democrats, and in 1856 the party's first candidate, John C. Frémont, carried 11 states in his unsuccessful bid for the presidency. In 1860 the electoral votes of the 18 Northern states gave the presidency to the party's second candidate, Abraham Lincoln.

The secession of the Southern states gave the Republicans absolute control of the federal government. The prolonged agony of the Civil War, however, weakened Lincoln's prospects for reelection in 1864, and to broaden his base of support he took as a vice presidential candidate the prowar Democrat Andrew Johnson. After the war's end and the death of Lincoln, Radical Republican (q.v.) members of Congress were able to assert congressional rather than presidential control of Reconstruction in the defeated South after nearly impeaching President Johnson.

The end of the Civil War began a long period of Republican domination. The party's close identification with the Union victory in the war secured it the allegiance of most Northern and Midwestern farmers, while its support of protective tariffs and its accommodating attitude toward big business eventually gained it the support of many Northern urban areas and of powerful industrial and financial circles. Of the 18 presidential elections held between 1860 and 1932, 14 were won by Republicans.

Within the party itself, however, there were protests against the rigidity of party control and against a small, self-perpetuating, oligarchic leadership. A splinter group named the Liberal Republicans left the party in 1872 in protest against the corrupt Republican administration of Pres. Ulysses S. Grant.

After a number of close electoral contests with the Democrats during the 1880s and the early '90s, the Republicans won the presidency and control of both houses of Congress in the 1896 elections. With the Democrats' adoption of economic radicalism under the sway of free-silver and Populist advocates, the Republicans emerged as the nation's majority party and managed to control both houses of Congress until 1910.

In 1901 the assassination of the Republican Pres. William McKinley gave the presidency to the vice president, Theodore Roosevelt, who became the leader of the party's progressive wing. Roosevelt launched an attack on monopolistic and exploitative business practices, adopted a more conciliatory attitude toward labour, and urged the conservation of natural resources. But Roosevelt became dissatisfied with the conservative policies of his Republican successor to the presidency, William Howard Taft, and in 1912 he bolted the Republicans and formed the Progressive Party, on whose ticket he ran for the presidency. This divided the Republican vote and gave the presidency and control of both houses of Congress to the Democrats. The Republicans regained the presidency in 1920 and rode to victory in the elections of 1924 and 1928 on the wave of economic prosperity of the 1920s. Their policies during this time were notably conservative and pro-business. The Great Depression that began in 1929 had severe consequences for the party, however.The Republicans' unwillingness to combat the effects of the Depression hrough government action led to Republican incumbent Pres. Herbert Hoover's overwhelming defeat by the Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1932 election. Roosevelt's three reelections, the succession of Harry S. Truman upon Roosevelt's death in 1945, and Truman's election in 1948 kept the Republicans out of power for 20 years. During this time they generally lacked control of either house of Congress and had in effect become the minority party in the nation. For many years most Republicans vehemently opposed Roosevelt's New Deal policies, but by the 1950s the party had largely accepted the federal government's expanded role and regulatory powers.

In 1952 the Republican Party returned to power with the election of Dwight D. Eisenhower as president. Eisenhower's candidacy marked the dominance of the party's liberal-moderate wing, as opposed to its conservative wing led by Sen. Robert A. Taft. But the Republican platform remained a conservative one, calling for a strong anti-Communist stance in foreign affairs, a reduction of government regulation of the economy, lower taxes for the rich, and a resistant attitude toward calls for civil-rights legislation. The party retained its longtime support among both big and small business and gained new support from growing numbers of middle-class suburbanites and, perhaps most significantly, among white Southerners who were disturbed by the integrationist stance of the Democrats during the 1960s. Eisenhower was reelected in 1956, but in 1960 the moderate Republican candidate, Richard M. Nixon, lost narrowly to Democrat John F. Kennedy. Conservative Republicans gained control of the party at the 1964 convention, but their presidential candidate, Barry M. Goldwater, lost that year's election by an overwhelming landslide. By 1968 the party's moderate faction had regained control and again nominated Nixon, who narrowly won the presidency that year. Nixon was reelected by a landslide in 1972, but in congressional, state, and local elections the party made few gains, and it failed to win control of Congress.

As a result of the Watergate scandal, Nixon resigned the presidency in August 1974 and was succeeded in office by the first appointed vice president, Gerald R. Ford. In 1976 Ford was defeated by a Southern Democrat, Jimmy Carter, but in 1980 Carter was in turn defeated by Ronald W. Reagan, who had assumed the leadership of the conservative wing of the Republican Party after Goldwater's defeat in the 1964 elections. Reagan lowered taxes for the wealthy and launched massive peacetime buildup of the U.S. military stablishment. Reagan's personal popularity secured him stunning victories, even giving Republicans control of the U.S. Senate from 1981 to 1987. Reagan's vice-presidential running mate, George Bush, went on to win the presidency in 1988. Congress continued to be controlled by the Democrats, however, and Bush lost his bid for reelection in 1992 to another moderate Southern Democrat, Bill Clinton. In the 1994 elections Republicans gained control of both houses of Congress for the first time since 1954. Their program in response to the slow decline of the American standard of living sincethe 1970s remained a traditional one: lower taxes for business and the wealthy and reductions in government spending, particularly for social services.

To cite this page:
"Republican Party" Britannica Online.

Copyright © 1994-1998 Encyclopędia Britannica, Inc.

DEMOCRATIC PARTY

in the United States, one of the two major political parties. The Democratic Party has historically represented organized labour, minorities, and progressive reformers. The party's traditional symbol is the donkey, and its theme song, since the 1930s, has been "Happy Days Are Here Again."

The party can be traced to 1792, when a national group of voters began supporting Thomas Jefferson with the name Republicans, or Jeffersonian Republicans, to emphasize antimonarchical sentiments. The party, or faction, was known by various designations until, during the presidency of Andrew Jackson in the 1830s, it adopted its present name.

Jefferson had established the party on the principle of popular government, but its early presidents--Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, and John Quincy Adams--were aristocrats by birth, breeding, and education. Not until 1829 did a so-called "man of the people"--Jackson--become president.

Between 1837, when Jackson retired, and 1860, four Democratic presidents--Martin Van Buren, James K. Polk, Franklin Pierce, and James Buchanan--were elected. The Democrats won every presidential election except those of 1840 and 1848. But during the 1840s and '50s the party began to undergo serious internal strains over the issue of slavery and its extension to the Western territories. Southern Democrats,led by Jefferson Davis, insisted on the protection of slavery in all the territories, while Northern Democrats, led by Stephen A. Douglas,advocated the doctrine of popular sovereignty, under which the settlers in a territory could vote to ban slavery from their midst. The party split over the slavery issue in 1860 at its presidential convention in Charleston, S.C.

The Northern Democrats nominated Douglas as their presidential candidate, and the Southern Democrats adopted a proslavery stance and nominated John C. Breckinridge as their presidential cadidate. This North-South split proved disastrous to the Democrats; the newly formed,antislavery Republican Party won its first national victory under Abraham Lincoln in 1860, receiving a majority of votes in the electoral college because of the split.

From 1860 to 1900 the Democratic Party held the presidency for only eight years, during the two terms of Grover Cleveland (1885-89, 1893-97). In the postwar decades white asociated the Republican Party both with the prosecution of the Civil War and with Radical Reconstruction; these voters subsequently remained firmly Democratic until the mid-20th century. The Democratic Party at this time was basically conservative and agrarian-oriented; its members were opposed to big business and protective tariffs and in favour of cheap-money policies. In 1896 the party once more split disastrously over the free-silver and Populist program of its presidential candidate,William Jennings Bryan, who lost that year's election. Through their support of economic radicalism under Bryan's leadership, the Democrats once again after 1896 became a minority party.

But the need for government to regulate America's increasingly industrialized and corporatized economy resulted in the early 20th century in the party's gradual renascence. The Democrats returned to power in 1912 with Woodrow Wilson, mainly because the Republican vote was divided between William Howard Taft and the Progressive Party candidate, Theodore Roosevelt. Under the slogan of the New Freedom, Wilson obtained legislation for a broader federal regulation of banking and industry, among other reforms. Wilson was reelected in 1916, but his idealistic stance ultimately proved less attractive to the public than the Republicans' frank embrace of big business amid the spectacular prosperity of the 1920s. The Democrats lost the presidential elections of 1920, 1924, and 1928.

The Great Depression and the Republicans' evident inability or unwillingness to take governmental action against its grievous consequences swept the Democratic Party back into power in 1932 under the candidacy of Franklin D. Roosevelt. Roosevelt's vigorous New Deal policies and his inspired political skills brought small farmers into coalition with other groups that were to become firmly Democratic--Northern urban voting blocs, organized labour, blacks and other minorities, liberals, intellectuals, and reformers. This coalition enabled the Democratic Party to retain the presidency until 1952, turned it into the majority party in the country, and gave it control of at least oneand usually both houses of Congress throughout most of the rest of the 20th century. Roosevelt was reelected in 1936, 1940, and 1944 and upon his death was succeeded by Harry S. Truman, who was narrowly elected in 1948. The Democrats lost the presidency in 1952 but regained it with John F.Kennedy's election in 1960. The party's role in championing civil-rights and desegregation legislation under Kennedy and his successor, Lyndon B. Johnson, lost it the traditional allegiance of many of its former Southern supporters. Johnson was elected president by a landslide in 1964. But widespread popular support for Johnson's liberal Great Society legislative program was largely negated by bitter opposition to American participation in the Vietnam War, and the divided Democrats lost the 1968 presidential election to the Republicans. The Democrats recovered the presidency for one term under Jimmy Carter (1977-81). But Carter was defeated for reelection by the conservative Republican Ronald W. Reagan, who was succeeded in 1988 by Republican George Bush. The Democrats continued control of Congress, however, except briefly in the Senate (1981-87). They regained the presidency in 1992 with the election of Bill Clinton but lost control of both the House and Senate in 1994. Clinton's support of international trade agreements--which generally were opposed by organized labour--and his efforts to restrain the growth of government spending on social program signaled a shift toward a more conservative, business-oriented philosophy within the party. He was reelected in 1996.

To cite this page:
"Democratic Party" Britannica Online.
http://www.eb.com:180/cgi-bin/g?DocF=micro/164/99.html
Copyright © 1994-1998 Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc.