“If I could conceive that the general government might ever be so administered as to render the liberty of conscience insecure, I beg you will be persuaded, that no one would be more zealous than myself to establish effectual barriers against the horrors of spiritual tyranny, and every species of religious persecution.”
Those people were against immigration. They saw German and Irish Catholics as threat to not only the country but the world itself. They felt the Pope was trying to take over the world. The religion, they insisted, was full of violence and was evil. The hated black people simply because of the color of their skin. They resolved to deport Germans, Irish, Catholics and blacks in masses. They promised to keep Catholics from settling on American soil.
Abraham Lincoln wrote of them, "I am not a Know-Nothing — that is certain. How could I be? How can any one who abhors the oppression of negroes, be in favor of degrading classes of white people? Our progress in degeneracy appears to me to be pretty rapid. As a nation, we began by declaring that 'all men are created equal.' We now practically read it 'all men are created equal, except negroes.' When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read 'all men are created equal, except negroes and foreigners and Catholics.' When it comes to that I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretense of loving liberty — to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocrisy."
The party failed and eventually some of its members joined the Democratic party while the majority joined the Republicans. But it would take years, in fact, it would take John F. Kennedy to calm Americans fears about the Catholicism. His choice of faith was a focal point and it was a battle he addressed often to quail bigotry.
“For while this year it may be a Catholic against whom the finger of suspicion is pointed, in other years it has been, and may someday be again, a Jew— or a Quaker or a Unitarian or a Baptist. It was Virginia’s harassment of Baptist preachers, for example, that helped lead to Jefferson’s statute of religious freedom. Today I may be the victim, but tomorrow it may be you — until the whole fabric of our harmonious society is ripped at a time of great national peril.”
So we too must now stand with Washington, Lincoln, Kennedy, Reagan and all of our past Presidents to fight fear, hatred and oppression. Today, the Republican party has fully resurrected the Know Nothings. They speak again of stopping immigration, of mass deportations and targeting a religion. They rehash the same speeches they used long ago. They now want a wall. It should in reality encompass the whole country. A wall that will stand between us and the Statue of Liberty. That wall will preserve her belief and save her from the plague that Republicans have created to destroy our Constitution. It may be argued that it is one person who is inciting this and not the whole party. That's not true. The party itself has not stood against it and by allowing it, they are guilty of endorsing it.
They are dividing this country into those believe in the founding fathers who created our Constitution and those who wish to form a new nation, conceived in racism and bigotry. The world watches as America enters a modern civil war being played out in our streets, homes, workplaces, schools and social media.
Our past Presidents spoke not only to those of their day but to us. One has to wonder if they were really warning us as to what the biggest threat to the United States is.
"We in the United States, above all, must remember that lesson, for we were founded as a nation of openness to people of all beliefs. And so we must remain. Our very unity has been strengthened by our pluralism. We establish no religion in this country, we command no worship, we mandate no belief, nor will we ever. Church and state are, and must remain, separate." - Ronald Reagan, 1984.
No comments:
Post a Comment