Hartmann on the Bush/Adams Connection
Here’s a really interesting article by Thom Hartmann on the history of President John Adams and the Alien and Sedition Acts, including comparisons with what is going on these days: An earlier “Patriot” law brought down a president.
June 18th, 2003 at 12:11 pm
While there may be some similarities between Bush and Adams, the authors description of our earliest political parties is incorrect.
While the democrats and republicans of today don’t exactly match up one for one with the democratic republicans and federalists of 1800, Adam’s federalist’s were much closer to modern democrats than republicans. Democratic Republicans were the party of small federal government and high emphasis on state’s rights. Federalists were the opposite.
June 18th, 2003 at 1:05 pm
Well, saying the Federalists are closer to Democrats than Republicans ignores class distinctions. Federalists were the party of big-money elites, while Democrat-Republicans were more the party of the common man, which I think is at least as significant, if not moreso.
One could argue that it was just the particular circumstances of the time that caused the common-man party to support states’ rights against the monied interests running the federal government.
These sorts of alignments swing back and forth over time. Note the Republican Lincoln’s attitude towards states’ rights and a strong federal government, for example.
I realize it’s handing right-wingers a big stick to beat me with, but I’ll point it out anyway: Marx had a point when he focused on class struggle as a good way to keep track of who was doing what to whom in these sorts of analyses.
But on another level, yeah, Hartmann is playing fast and loose with the facts when he talks about “Vice President Thomas Jefferson’s Democratic-Republican Party (today called the Democratic Party)” and John Adams’ “conservative Federalists (who today would be philosophically identical to GOP Republicans).” It’s obviously not that simple.