Chapman is a third-year English and history student.
By Corey Chapman
In last Tuesday’s Daily Bruin, Scott Latchem tries to
portray the Republican party as having been morally pure and
unadulterated throughout its existence (“Liberal
dogma corrupts many principles of GOP,“ Viewpoint, Feb.
19). I am sorry to burst Latchem’s bubble, but the Republican
Party is not and never was any virgin flower.
First of all, he claims that Republicans have always worked
toward “a government which governs least.” If they were
truly interested in keeping the national government at bay from our
personal lives, not a single one would have voted for the USA
PATRIOT Act or the new anti-privacy legislation pushed by John
Ashcroft (yes, the Democrats voted for these bills as well, but
I’m not trying to defend them either).
And if you actually wanted to be like Latchem and claim that the
Republican party of the past is the same as the party of today, you
could trace its roots back to the Federalists of the late 18th and
the early 19th centuries, who wholeheartedly advocated a large
national government.
While Latchem asserts that Republicans are dedicated to lowering
taxes, one can look at Reagan’s administration to see that
the opposite is true. Although Reagan came into office advocating a
slim national budget and did enact some tax cuts, his unrivaled
deficit spending forced the senior Bush to raise taxes during his
term. While the current Bush has pushed wealthy-biased tax cuts
through Congress, his call for the largest military spending
increase since Reagan and renewed deficit spending makes it clear
that taxes are going to have to be raised again in the future to
avoid economic solvency. If Republicans truly wanted to cut
spending, America wouldn’t be pouring billions upon billions
into military technologies meant to destroy a Soviet army on a
definite battlefield. Nor would they be giving billions in free
money to companies like United and Boeing to help pay for executive
bonuses and severance packages.
Latchem goes even further in claiming that the Republicans were
solely “responsible for continuing the longest economic
expansion in history.” Where’s the evidence for this?
He even has the gall to cite Reagan’s administration as a
main source for this prosperity, somehow forgetting that
Reagan’s banking deregulation and huge deficits were main
factors behind the early ’90s recession.
Holding capitalism as the pinnacle of “fairness,”
Latchem confidently declares that “the strengths” of
this nation are based on the rich entrepreneurs and the Republicans
who support them. But are they the ones driving the buses or
working at our nation’s docks and airports? Are they the ones
building the microchips that power our computers, or running the
plants that power our nation? True fairness would be giving money
back to those who actually sweat and bleed to provide for their
families and their nation, not to those who use daddy’s money
to win fraudulent presidential elections. I guess Latchem just
never thought about that.
Then again, forgetfulness seems prevalent in his article.
Attacking Clinton and the Democrats for letting Osama bin Laden
slip through their fingers, Latchem seems to forget that 10 years
prior bin Laden was on the CIA payroll ““ under Reagan’s
presidency when Reagan funded rebel groups bin Laden was a member
of in our fight against the Soviet Union. While he proudly claims
that tax cuts help the economy, he disregards the fact that the
Nixon, Reagan and already the new Bush administrations paint this
as a blatant lie.
Finally, he implies that because Republicans allegedly
“freed” the slaves, they have always been a
“Friend of the Negro.” With this Latchem instantly
overlooks all the times in the 20th century that Republicans tried
to strike down legislation that would have helped to alleviate the
unofficial social, economic and political enslavement of many
blacks.
If Latchem were truly endowed with so much more
“sophistication” and “intelligence” than
the “common masses,” as he claims, maybe he would have
tried thinking and researching before he spoke out, instead of
basing his arguments solely on his own assumptions and beliefs. Oh
wait, my bad. Anyone who belongs to the immaculate “Party of
Lincoln” can’t be wrong.