Where do these guys come from?

Yesterday I finally wrote down my ideas on politics for the world to see. I expected to get some response from my relatives and Kate. Ever since I posted same, I have been waiting for some comment on my blog. I know that a number of my relatives do read my blog (mother, brother, sister, wife, daughter), to the point where I can't call my mother up without repeating some news to her that she has already read on my blog. It does make for a short conversational universe.

However, imagine my surprise, when I finally noticed a comment on my blog and found that someone had directed me to the Modern Whig Party blogspot. Not Kate, not my brother (whose comments are usually worth reading) but some guy trying to revive a political party that disappeared when Abe Lincoln left to become a Republican in the 1850's.

So, I followed his reference to the Modern Whig Party and I must say that it was rather interesting little website. Most of it was references to people who had evinced a problem with modern political parties and/or a wish for a new party. I always thought the Whigs were interesting in American History. Alexander Stephens started out as a Whig. He was a contemporary of Lincoln. Of course, he couldn't last in Georgia as a Whig, so he ultimately became a Democrat, and finally, reluctantly, a Confederate.

Henry Clay was the most famous of the Whigs, other than William Henry Harrison and John Tyler. He came from the Jeffersonian Democrats and became a Whig later on when he was a Senator from Kentucky. The only problem with Clay was the same problem with the Whigs. He couldn't resolve his conscience with his politics. The issue of slavery was too problematic for a slave-holding lawyer from Lexington, Kentucky.

The problem with the Whigs was the same thing that gave them their allure: the ability to think and compromise. Ronald Reagan could never have been a Whig. It would have required too much thought. The polarizing parties of today would not suffer too many Whigs.

But at the same time, we all must understand and recognize that it is the middle of the roaders in this country who ultimately turn the tide toward one party or the other. Those independent thinkers in the middle, the ones who were Whigs in an earlier time, and were more recently represented by the Yellow Dog Democrats in the South and the Liberal wing of the Republican Party still carry a heavy hand of political power, even if it is a true silent majority.

At the same time, I do tire of hearing Democrats say that Republicans are fascists or hear Republicans saying that Democrats are Communists. Narrow-minded, War-Mongering Right-Wing Republicans and Bleeding-heart, Tax and Spend Left-Wing Democrats. Its no wonder that neither party seems to really represent the majority of us.