Mehdi Hasan: The Seeds Of The Republican Party’s Hard-Right Turn

Mehdi Hasan, the Turd Worlder MSNBC host who became a naturalized citizen last year, is obviously unfamiliar with American history. He sees “fascism” and “semi-fascism” in what is essentially a revival of Confederate ideology all the way up to calls for a new secession and civil war.

Here is the Preamble of the Confederate Constitution:

“We, the people of the Confederate States, each State acting in its sovereign and independent character, in order to form a permanent federal government, establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity invoking the favor and guidance of Almighty God do ordain and establish this Constitution for the Confederate States of America. …”

The Confederate Constitution explicitly invoked “the favor and guidance of Almighty God.” Is this not White Christian Nationalism? Where do you think that comes from? Mussolini’s Italy?

Contrast this with the U.S. Constitution:

“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America …”

This is a change.

White evangelical Protestants invoked the favor of blessing of God when setting up the Confederacy. The Founding Fathers of the Confederacy thought the American Founders were too secular and infatuated with fashionable Enlightenment ideology.

From the Texas Declaration of Causes of Secession:

“The Federal Government, while but partially under the control of these our unnatural and sectional enemies, has for years almost entirely failed to protect the lives and property of the people of Texas against the Indian savages on our border, and more recently against the murderous forays of banditti from the neighboring territory of Mexico; and when our State government has expended large amounts for such purpose, the Federal Government has refused reimbursement therefor, thus rendering our condition more insecure and harrassing than it was during the existence of the Republic of Texas. …”

Sound familiar?

Even then, the Union was failing to secure our borders from the Comanches and Mexican bandits, which was one of the reasons Texas seceded from the United States in 1861.

Where does this peculiar tradition of illiberal White Christian Nationalist republicanism come from?

“In all the non-slave-holding States, in violation of that good faith and comity which should exist between entirely distinct nations, the people have formed themselves into a great sectional party, now strong enough in numbers to control the affairs of each of those States, based upon the unnatural feeling of hostility to these Southern States and their beneficent and patriarchal system of African slavery, proclaiming the debasing doctrine of the equality of all men, irrespective of race or color–a doctrine at war with nature, in opposition to the experience of mankind, and in violation of the plainest revelations of the Divine Law. They demand the abolition of negro slavery throughout the confederacy, the recognition of political equality between the white and the negro races, and avow their determination to press on their crusade against us, so long as a negro slave remains in these States. …

We hold as undeniable truths that the governments of the various States, and of the confederacy itself, were established exclusively by the white race, for themselves and their posterity; that the African race had no agency in their establishment; that they were rightfully held and regarded as an inferior and dependent race, and in that condition only could their existence in this country be rendered beneficial or tolerable.

That in this free government all white men are and of right ought to be entitled to equal civil and political rights; that the servitude of the African race, as existing in these States, is mutually beneficial to both bond and free, and is abundantly authorized and justified by the experience of mankind, and the revealed will of the Almighty Creator, as recognized by all Christian nations; while the destruction of the existing relations between the two races, as advocated by our sectional enemies, would bring inevitable calamities upon both and desolation upon the fifteen slave-holding States. …

For these and other reasons, solemnly asserting that the federal constitution has been violated and virtually abrogated by the several States named, seeing that the federal government is now passing under the control of our enemies to be diverted from the exalted objects of its creation to those of oppression and wrong, and realizing that our own State can no longer look for protection, but to God and her own sons–We the delegates of the people of Texas, in Convention assembled, have passed an ordinance dissolving all political connection with the government of the United States of America and the people thereof and confidently appeal to the intelligence and patriotism of the freemen of Texas to ratify the same at the ballot box, on the 23rd day of the present month.”

Isn’t it Texas that is threatening to secede again?

Stephen Fowler Hale, a native of Kentucky, was Alabama’s secession commissioner to Kentucky. After moving to Alabama, he served in the Alabama state legislature, fought in the Mexican War and was later appointed Alabama’s secession commissioner to Kentucky. He was one of many secession commissioners who argued on behalf of their state for other Southern states to leave the Union. Hale served as the lieutenant colonel of the 11th Alabama and died leading a charge at the Battle of Gaines’s Mill. He signed the Confederate Constitution. Hale County, AL is named in his honor.

Here is the letter sent by Hale to Gov. Beriah McGoffin of Kentucky in which he attempts to persuade Kentucky to leave the Union:

“To His Excellency B. McGoffin, Governor of the Commonwealth of Kentucky:

I have the honor of placing in your hands herewith, a Commission from the Governor of the State of Alabama, accrediting me as a Commissioner from that State to the sovereign State of Kentucky, to consult in reference to the momentous issues now pending between the Northern and Southern States of this Confederacy. Although each State, as a sovereign political community, must finally determine these grave issues for itself, yet the identity of interest, sympathy, and institutions, prevailing alike in all the slaveholding States, in the opinion of Alabama, renders it proper that there should be a frank and friendly consultation, by each one, with her sister Southern States, touching their common grievances, and the measures necessary to be adopted to protect the interest, honor, and safety of their citizens.

I come, then, in a spirit of fraternity, as the Commissioner on the part of the State of Alabama, to confer with the authorities of this Commonwealth, in reference to the infraction of our Constitutional rights, wrongs done and threatened to be done, as well as the mode and measure of redress proper to be adopted by the sovereign States aggrieved, to preserve their sovereignty, vindicate their rights and protect their citizens. In order to a clear understanding of the appropriate remedy, it may be proper to consider the rights and duties, both of the State and citizen, under the Federal Compact, as well as the wrongs done and threatened.

I therefor submit, for the consideration of your Excellency, the following propositions, which I hope will command your assent and approval …

“What, then are the circumstances under which, and the issues upon which he was elected? His own declarations, and the current history of the times, but too plainly indicate he was elected by a Northern sectional vote, against the most solemn warnings and protestations of the whole South. He stands forth as the representative of the fanaticism of the North, which, for the last quarter of a century, has been making war upon the South, her property, her civilization, her institutions, and her interests; as the representative of that party which overrides all Constitutional barriers, ignores the obligations of official oaths, and acknowledges allegiance to a higher law than the Constitution, striking down the sovereignty and equality of the States, and resting its claims to popular favor upon the one dogma, the Equality of the Races, white and black. . . .

Upon the principles then announced by Mr. Lincoln and his leading friends, we are bound to expect his administration to be conducted. Hence it is, that in high places, among the Republican party, the election of Mr. Lincoln is hailed, not simply as a change of Administration, but as the inauguration of new principles, and a new theory of Government, and even as the downfall of slavery. Therefore it is that the election of Mr. Lincoln cannot be regarded otherwise than a solemn declaration, on the part of a great majority of the Northern people, of hostility to the South, her property and her institutions — nothing less than an open declaration of war — for the triumph of this new theory of Government destroys the property of the South, lays waste her fields, and inaugurates all the horrors of a San Domingo servile insurrection, consigning her citizens to assassinations, and her wives and daughters to pollution and violation, to gratify the lust of half-civilized Africans. Especially is this true in the cotton-growing States, where, in many localities, the slave outnumbers the white population ten to one.

If the policy of the Republicans is carried out, according to the programme indicated by the leaders of the party, and the South submits, degradation and ruin must overwhelm alike all classes of citizens in the Southern States. The slave-holder and non-slave-holder must ultimately share the same fate — all be degraded to a position of equality with free negroes, stand side by side with them at the polls, and fraternize in all the social relations of life; or else there will be an eternal war of races, desolating the land with blood, and utterly wasting and destroying all the resources of the country.

Who can look upon such a picture without a shudder? What Southern man, be he slave-holder or non-slave-holder, can without indignation and horror contemplate the triumph of negro equality, and see his own sons and daughters, in the not distant future, associating with free negroes upon terms of political and social equality, and the white man stripped, by the Heaven-daring hand of fanaticism of that title to superiority over the black race which God himself has bestowed? In the Northern States, where free negroes are so few as to form no appreciable part of the community, in spite of all the legislation for their protection, they still remain a degraded caste, excluded by the ban of society from social association with all but the lowest and most degraded of the white race. But in the South, where in many places the African race largely predominates, and, as a consequence, the two races would be continually pressing together, amalgamation, or the extermination of the one or the other, would be inevitable. Can Southern men submit to such degradation and ruin? God forbid that they should.

But, it is said, there are many Constitutional, conservative men at the North, who sympathize with and battle for us. That is true; but they are utterly powerless, as the late Presidential election unequivocally shows, to breast the tide of fanaticism that threatens to roll over and crush us. With them it is a question of principle, and we award to them all honor for their loyalty to the Constitution of our Fathers. But their defeat is not their ruin. With us it is a question of self-preservation — our lives, our property, the safety of our homes and our hearthstones — all that men hold dear on earth, is involved in the issue. If we triumph, vindicate our rights and maintain our institutions, a bright and joyous future lies before us. We can clothe the world with our staple, give wings to her commerce, and supply with bread the starving operative in other lands, and at the same time preserve an institution that has done more to civilize and Christianize the heathen than all human agencies beside — an institution alike beneficial to both races, ameliorating the moral, physical and intellectual condition of the one, and giving wealth and happiness to the other. If we fail, the light of our civilization goes down in blood, our wives and our little ones will be driven from their homes by the light of our own dwellings. The dark pall of barbarism must soon gather over our sunny land, and the scenes of West India emancipation, with its attendant horrors and crimes (that monument of British fanaticism and folly), be re-enacted in our own land upon a more gigantic scale.”

There it is.

Fear of the Great Replacement inspired the dissolution of the Union and the creation of the Confederacy. The alternative was to become an Africanized Third World shithole like Haiti.“

George Fitzhugh on the Southern Revolution of 1861:

“We now come to the Southern Revolution of 1861, which we maintain was reactionary and conservative – a rolling back of the excesses of the Reformation – of Reformation run mad – a solemn protest against the doctrines of natural liberty, human equality and the social contract, as taught by Locke and the American sages of 1776, and an equally solemn protest against the doctrines of Adam Smith, Franklin, Say, Tom Paine, and the rest of the infidel political economists, who maintain that the world is too much governed, “Pas trop gouvernor,” and should not be governed at all, but “Let Alone,” “Laissez nous faire.” …

The organism of society is more complex and inscrutable than that of the individuals who compose it, for it includes the peculiar organization and idiosyncrasies of all such individuals, and to live and work healthfully, must adapt itself to the wants, failings and peculiarities of all its members. It is more “fearfully and wonderfully formed” than man himself. It is the grandest, noblest work of God, for what a miserable, helpless wretch would man be, without society and government.

This doctrine of the natural growth and origin of society is the distinctive Tory doctrine of England, the very opposite to the theories of Locke and the Fathers of our late Republic. In adopting it, we begin a great conservative reaction. We attempt to rollback the Reformation in its political phases; for we saw everywhere in Europe and America reformation running to excess, a universal spirit of destructiveness, a profane attempt to pull down what God and Nature had built up, and to erect ephemeral Utopias in its place. Liberty was degenerating into licentiousness, and “anarchy, plus the street constable” stared us in the face. We lead off in a new reactionary Reformation, and Christendom must follow our lead, or soon be involved in social chaos and confusion.

Viewed in this aspect, and it is only true in one, which to view it, the Revolution of ’61 is the grandest, most momentous event since the days of Luther and of Calvin. The grandest in conception, and the grandest in action; for never did a people of the same numbers display such heroic courage and giant strength as the people of the South in this revolutionary struggle. “Deo duce vincemus.” For we fight “to vindicate the ways of God” against the profane doctrines and schemes of charlatanic man.”

George Fitzhugh, The Revolutions of 1776 and 1861 Contrasted, December 1863

George Fitzhugh had a few things to say about White Christian Nationalism:

“It was the misfortune of our ancestors in the Revolution of ’76 to believe, and to teach, that religion had nothing to do with government. The French Revolution, following close on its heels, shewed that it had all to do with it; and that government without religion was impracticable. Religion, as the word imports, is the tie that binds man to man, and gives vitality and stability to society. In its absence, men become demons, as in the Reign of Terror in France, and instead of loving and aiding one another go to murdering each other. Besides, he who believes not, or respects not, the government of God, will never believe in, respect or obey the government of man. The feeling of reverence for parents, and for men in authority above us, whether those holding authority be, as individuals, good or bad, is an emanation of the religious sentiment – part and parcel of religion itself.

The healthy mind rises in its feeling of reverence from parents to officials, from common officials to presidents and kings. But it cannot stop here; it seeks a cause for and author of this earthly series of subordinations, which secures to us all the blessings of life, and without which the world would be a pandemonium, and finds it only in the God of Heaven.

The infidel, whose diseased mind does not thus rise “from nature up to Nature’s God,” turns back upon society, asserts that all men are equal, disputes all human authority, and invokes anarchy and moral chaos. This is no fancy sketch – every page of history attests to its truth. Greece turned infidel in her higher ranks, became anarchical and feeble, and fell an easy prey to Alexander; Rome spurned and contemned her God, became demoralized, and found a race of cruel Caesars to avenge the cause of her slighted divinities. Bonaparte did for infidel, anarchical France what the Caesars had done for Rome.

Look at the North, where infidelity is talked in the streets, is daily diffused from a hundred presses, is heard in the lecture room and from the rostrum, and, worst of all, is preached on every Sabbath from her pulpits, and see how demoralized and feeble and poverty-stricken she has become! Not one human right is secure. The brutal mob reigns supreme; and for want of a Caesar or a Bonaparte good men, considerate men, religious men, men of property, would invest a monkey with the purple to escape the rule of the mob. Aye! and make a good bargain, too, for any form of despotism is preferable to anarchy. We respect, then, that they who believe not in God, will not believe in, respect of obey human authority. If our theory be not sufficiently sustained by our reasoning, the historical instances which we have cited will ever stand as stubborn and unanswerable facts.

Religion is the cornerstone of government; its whole fabric rests upon it. It needs not governmental aid, for it is stronger than government itself. Dynasties may pass away, republics and monarchies perish, all other human institutions be destroyed – but religion will last as long as man.

There is no infidelity in our Confederacy. Religion is universal. It binds us together, and makes us one patriotic and moral people. If the pockets of our soldiers slain in battle were searched, prayer books and hymn books would often be found; in none free-love epistles.”

George Fitzhugh believed that government must be based on religion:

“We have not a solitary example in all of history to countenance the theories of our ancestors, that a people may be moral, or that government can exist where religion is not in some form or degree recognized by law. What latitude shall be allowed to men in the exercise and practice of religion, is a question for the people to determine when the occasion requires it. It is best not to lay down abstract principles to guide us in advance. Of all the applications of philosophy none have failed so signally as when it has been tried in matters of government. Philosophy will blow up any government that is founded on it. Religion, on the other hand, will sustain the governments that rest upon it. The French build governments on a priori doctrines of philosophy which explode as fast as built. The English gradually and experimentally form institutions, watch their operation, and deduce general laws from those operations.

That kind of philosophy, which neither attempts to create nor account for, is admissible and useful. An extensive knowledge of the history of the various moral philosophies that have succeeded each other in the world, is useful, but only useful because it warns us to avoid all philosophy in the practical affairs of life. If we would have our people moral, and our institutions permanent, we should gradually repudiate our political abstractions and adopt religious truths in their stead.

It is an unpopular theme to deny human progress and human improvement. We flatter ourselves that we are more enlightened as well as more moral than the ancients, yet we imitate them in all save the mechanic arts. …

Divest us of our Christian morality, and leave us to our moral philosophy, and we might dread the comparison with any era of the past. We have but one moral code, and that a selfish one; the ancients always had two, one of which was elevated, self-denying and unselfish. …

Now explore all the secrets of human hearts, all the recesses of history, and it will be found that religion is as much a matter of consciousness and involuntary belief as free agency or self existence. It is a stubborn fact in human nature. Statesmen cannot ignore its existence, and must provide for its exercise and enjoyment, else their institutions will vanish like chaff before the wind.”

John C. Calhoun on multiracial liberal democracy:

“Very different would be the circumstances under which emancipation would take place with us. If it should ever be effected, it will be through the agency of the Federal Government, controlled by the dominant power of the Northern States of the Confederacy, against the resistance and struggle of the Southern.

It can then only be effected by the prostration of the white race; and that would necessarily engender the bitterest feelings of hostility between them and the North. But the reverse would be the case between the blacks of the South and the people of the North. Owing their emancipation to them, they would regard them as friends, guardians, and patrons, and centre, accordingly, all their sympathy in them. The people of the North would not fail to reciprocate and to favor them, instead of the whites.

Under the influence of such feelings, and impelled by fanaticism and love of power, they would not stop at emancipation. Another step would be taken – to raise them to a political and social equality with their former owners, by giving them the right of voting and holding public offices under the Federal Government. We see the first step toward it in the bill already alluded to – to vest the free blacks and slaves with the right to vote on the question of emancipation in this District.

But when once raised to an equality, they would become the fast political associates of the North, and acting and voting with them on all questions, and by this political union between them, holding the white race at the south in complete subjection. The blacks, and the profligate whites that might unite with them, would become the principal recipients of federal offices and patronage, and would, in consequence, be raised above the whites of the South in the political and social scale. We would, in a word, change conditions with them – a degradation greater than has ever yet fallen to the lot of a free and enlightened people, and one from which we could not escape, should emancipation take place, (which it certainly will if not prevented), but by fleeing the homes of ourselves and our ancestors, and by abandoning our country to our former slaves, to become the permanent abode of disorder, anarchy, poverty, misery and wretchedness.

With such a prospect before us, the gravest and most solemn question that ever claimed the attention of a people is presented for your consideration: what is to be done to prevent it? It is a question belonging to you to decide.”

John C. Calhoun “The Southern Address,” The Works of John C. Calhoun, vol. VI, pp. 290-313.

Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens in his Cornerstone Speech:

“The constitution, it is true, secured every essential guarantee to the institution while it should last, and hence no argument can be justly urged against the constitutional guarantees thus secured, because of the common sentiment of the day. Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error. It was a sandy foundation, and the government built upon it fell when the “storm came and the wind blew.

Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner- stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth. …

This truth has been slow in the process of its development, like all other truths in the various departments of science. It has been so even amongst us. Many who hear me, perhaps, can recollect well, that this truth was not generally admitted, even within their day. The errors of the past generation still clung to many as late as twenty years ago. …

The architect, in the construction of buildings, lays the foundation with the proper material-the granite; then comes the brick or the marble. The substratum of our society is made of the material fitted by nature for it, and by experience we know that it is best, not only for the superior, but for the inferior race, that it should be so. It is, indeed, in conformity with the ordinance of the Creator. It is not for us to inquire into the wisdom of His ordinances, or to question them. For His own purposes, He has made one race to differ from another, as He has made “one star to differ from another star in glory.”

Confederate President Jefferson Davis in his farewell speech to the U.S. Senate:

“It has been a conviction of pressing necessity, it has been a belief that we are to be deprived in the Union of the rights which our fathers bequeathed to us, which has brought Mississippi to her present decision.

She has heard proclaimed the theory that all men are created free and equal, and this made the basis of an attack upon her social institutions; and the sacred Declaration of Independence has been invoked to maintain the position of the equality of the races. That Declaration of Independence is to be construed by the circumstances and purposes for which it was made. The communities were declaring their independence; the people of those communities were asserting that no man was born—to use the language of Mr. Jefferson—booted and spurred to ride over the rest of mankind; that men were created equal—meaning the men of the political community; that there was no divine right to rule; that no man inherited the right to govern; that there were no classes by which power and place descended to families, but that all stations were equally within the grasp of each member of the body politic. These were the great principles they announced; these were the purposes for which they made their declaration; these were the ends to which their enunciation was directed. They have no reference to the slave; else, how happened it that among the items of arraignment made against George III was that he endeavored to do just what the North has been endeavoring of late to do – to stir up insurrection among our slaves? Had the Declaration announced that the negroes were free and equal, how was the Prince to be arraigned for stirring up insurrection among them? And how was this to be enumerated among the high crimes which caused the colonies to sever their connection with the mother country? When our Constitution was formed, the same idea was rendered more palpable, for there we find provision made for that very class of persons as property; they were not put upon the footing of equality with white men—not even upon that of paupers and convicts; but, so far as representation was concerned, were discriminated against as a lower caste, only to be represented in the numerical proportion of three-fifths.

Then, Senators, we recur to the compact which binds us together; we recur to the principles upon which our Government was founded; and when you deny them, and when you deny us the right to withdraw from a Government which thus perverted threatens to be destructive of our rights, we but tread in the path of our fathers when we proclaim our independence, and take the hazard. This is done, not in hostility to others; not to injure any section of the country, not even for our own pecuniary benefit, but from the high and solemn motive of defending and protecting the rights we inherited, and which it is our duty to transmit unshorn to our children.”

Once again, I don’t think we are getting enough credit.