Pulic Affairs & Politics

Public Affairs & Politics

I have chosen the Republican ideological position, commonly referred to as the Grand Old Party (G.O.P). The Republican Party absorbs Libertarianism, fiscal Conservatism, and concepts of Progressivism. I believe in the voice of capitalism, competition, and that the overall welfare of the people comes first before all else.

Since the creation of the Republican Party in the mid nineteenth century, the G.O.P has grown to represent social conservatism. Despite misplaced stigma that Republicans do not support the interests of the common people, history has shown that their view directs more to being responsible with government expenditures and justifying government activities with more than just goodwill for all citizens.

The Republican Party first gained popularity through the election of Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln, as well as the Republicans of that time, was a strong anti-slavery activist. Lincoln led the way towards the end of slavery. Republican ideology brought equality to slaves. Republican ideology has also supported the people's rights to bear arms, which has been an issue of heavy debate that finally found victory in the McDonalds v. Chicago case.

The plaintiffs in the case argued that the state of Chicago had infringed on their Second Amendment rights. The Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Second Amendment and its enforcement in all states. Former Republican President George Bush was a strong supporter of the NRA and Second Amendment rights, so was Charleston Heston, a popular actor and Republican. The Republican ideology represents empowerment of the people.

The Republican ideology also represents responsibility in government spending and justifiability in government actions. I have studied the history of laws and acts, and have seen that social and economical responses can cause them to be amended or repealed, showing the importance of careful deliberation when dealing with government affairs. For this reason, I feel that the Republican ideology best represents my point of view.

One major issue in today's news is the government expenditures being issued to revitalize the economy. I believe that these government activities and expenditures are very much in the line of socialism. The current President, Barack Obama and the Democratic Party, have spent billions of dollars in rescuing companies that they felt were too big to fail, and they plan to spend more of the tax payers money to rescue more companies.

These expenditures present a social problem, because we are in a recession, with high unemployment. Social morale is down and there is concern that the government expenditures are not having the anticipated effect. Further concerns are that the government activities are not serving the people's best interests and that these hundreds of billions will eventually be recuperated through higher taxes.

This is not the first time that the US economy has faced a recession or worse. During the Great depression that began in 1929, the government had also participated in a form of bailout that was of concern for the Republican Party. Anti-Republican ideology would say that the inaction of the Republican President Hoover who was in office during the stock market crash of Black Thursday that preceded the depression, allowed the incident to become as dire as it was.

This line of thought would also lead one to believe that Laissez-Faire and the Invisible Hand of the Economy concepts are both to blame for the troubles that have faced the U.S people. The following President, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, was a Democrat and he felt that without some government intervention, the U.S economy would not pull out of the depression. He enacted the New Deal and its subsequent programs.

Despite the necessity for government intervention, to stimulate the economy, I feel that Roosevelt's New Deal was a covert form of socialism. Its programs provided relief by giving the government ownership of the means of production and by giving the government control of the issuing of necessary and essential services. The Public Works Administration, The Civilian Works Administration, and the Civilian Conservation Corps, are examples of socialism under the guise of revitalization. The Social Security Administration (SSA) is another program created by Roosevelt's New Deal. This program takes a pool of social income and distributes it to the retired, disabled, and unemployed (Leuchtenberg, 1963).

The SSA, as well as several other New Deal programs, has had to have several amendments to it just to keep it under the light of being constitutional. If not for the intervention of the NAACP (Katznelson, 2005), African Americans and many of the 'common people' would not have been included in the unemployment benefits offered because the SSA regulations excluded their occupations at the time.

In similar fashion, I feel that the bailouts given by the current Democratic Party as creative socialism. When the current President signed into law his Healthcare Reform Bill, several states filed lawsuits against it for being unconstitutional (Pierog, 2010). Going back a couple of years, in 2008 with the Housing and Recovery Act, the Democratic Party, took over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac which were originally created to be privately owned Government Sponsored Enterprises (GSE). Fannie Mae was also created as part of the Roosevelt's New Deal, giving way to my view of their ideology as Socialism under the guise of government intervention.

I totally disagree with the ideology that a business is too big to fail. If that is true then that business is too big to exist. If a business is allowed to grow to the extent that its downfall could impact society in such a drastic way then that monopoly should not have been allowed to gain so much influence and amendments need to be made to the Sherman Antitrust Act.

With hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars being spent to rescue financial giants like AIG, Citigroup, Bank of America, and the auto industry (ProPublica, 2009), are we really looking out for the interests of the common people or the big corporations? During the turn of the twentieth century, a line of journalists known as the Muckrakers rose to reveal the injustices against the common people being perpetrated by big corporations