A House Divided Against Itself Cannot Stand

For most of us, we were taught about "the House Divided" speech from President Abraham Lincoln. Given in 1858 from Springfield, Ill. while in school.

His speech was meant to instill in the people that the government could not continue with it's divisiveness. In order for it to work we must all become one. And either we would make it work or our government would fail.

However, in Boston, 1768, John Dickinson wrote a pre-Revolutionary War song called the "The Liberty Song" in which a line of the song says, by unity we stand, by dividing we fall". John Dickinson was in his own way one of the founding fathers, he wanted independence from Great Britain, but he had property and wealth and didn't want to lose it. He wanted to work with Great Britain, not go to war with them. In the end he refused to sign the Declaration of Independence.

The phrase "A house divided against itself cannot stand" actually goes further back in time than that.

In the Gospel of Mark 3:25, the bible says from Jesus, "And if a house be divided against itself, that house cannot stand.

We as human beings have apparently always been at odds, but have managed to overcome our differences to become united again.

In the year 2019, we have come to that point again, our house is extremely divided and if we cannot unite it then will most surely fall.

We were once a country strong and true. We could agree to disagree and move forward with compromise. To say we were perfect would be a lie, but to say that we usually worked together for what was best for the country and its people, that I think is true.

It didn't matter what your party affiliation was, you could still have discussions and leave as friends with different views.

America was founded in diversity. Immigrants from all over the world came to America, to live the American dream. Each with their own skills to help make America the great country it became. We as American's worked together to abolish slavery, we worked together to give the women the right to vote, we worked together to overcome some of the hardest things that came our way. Why? Because we put our country first.

What is the Tea Party and where did it come from?

As early as 2003, the Koch Brothers helped co-found an organization called Americans for Prosperity. It was a conservative organization that worked to divide America even back then. From this organization sprang up other conservative groups, but the one that got quite a pit of notoriety was the Tea Party. These groups avoided the "traditional" conservative social issues.

When the Tea Party began, it was a group of conservatives that vowed to fight for smaller government and fiscal responsibility, individual freedoms and up hold what they referred to as a "conservative" view of the the U.S. Constitution. It quickly began to lean to the extreme right.

The problem that the Tea Party found was that they had many groups and no central leadership leaving each to their own agendas that sometime conflicted with each other.

February 2010, the Tea Party held it's first ever convention. Their guest speakers, Michelle Bachmann and Sarah Palin, to name a few were nothing more than viral agitators. They spoke to incite anger and fear, their speeches misleading and less than factual. What Donald Trump would call "fake news". At this point, the party went extremely to the right.

They called themselves the Tea Party, had their own convention and own rules; why didn't they establish their own party? The Tea Party continued to run and support members of their party against Republicans running on the ticket that were long known and established members of the Republican Party.

Yet, the Republican Party continued to let them run on their ticket. Why? As more and more Tea Party candidates were being elected over traditional Republicans, it was creating dissension among party members. Former head of the RNC, Michael Steele said they needed to support these candidates, Jim Demint was forced by party heads to pay out of his campaign coffers for Tea Party candidates support for openly supporting and pushing for their acceptance.

John Boehner let his sentiment be known to the GOP when speaking about the Tea Party. He said some GOP members wanted to co-op the parties, but John Boehner preferred to walk among them and listen to them, but not include them.

In 2008, as the country was coming to a crash as the markets were dropping and we were in a downward spiral. American's voted for the first black American President, Barack Obama.

His election, was great for the country, he pulled America out of the spiral and began to stabilize our country financially, job growth, etc. However, the racist in America began to show their true colors. A multitude of horrific memes and comments become the norm on social media, even news shows pushed the racism to an extreme.

Americans began to argue over who was more patriotic than the other. They began to question birthright citizenship and so much more. We began to lose our Christian and moral ways.

Americans even talked about secession. "We can go it alone". Only, we didn't. We endured and overcame. Until the election of 2016. When a television personality took front and center of the Republican Party. The media ate it up, and his base grew stronger and more racists came out of the woodwork.

Since 2008, when Obama was sworn in, the Republican's began wrapping themselves in the American flag, calling themselves patriots and saviors of the Constitution. While, this is all within their "constitutional" right; it lead the Republicans into a path that at most times contradicted with their party politics, even creating erratic behavior.

Why did they choose to lead by fear, rather than lead by results? Because their agenda became, WIN at any cost. They had one wedge issue after another that they have jumped on.

• First, they used all the power within their means to include distractions to fight Health Care Reform and while they fought against the reform, they didn't offer any of their own solutions or ideas. They spent the entire time looking for and pointing out, what they saw, as bad policies in the reform effort using lies and scare tactics to divide Americans.
• When those efforts failed, they went after the large Hispanic population, with the Immigration attacks. Which turned out to be unpopular among many Americans and quickly showed America and the world how racist Americans really can be.
• As this issue was hot and heavy; they were also fighting against Financial Reform, blocking the Jobs Bill. And while crying out about the deficit, they were quietly asking for Government assistance for their states.

Paul Broun of Georgia won his seat by defending the Constitution, then decided it needed changing, he wanted to get rid of birthright citizenship, federal income taxes and implement the castration of child rapists.

Republicans are not alone, but the difference is that the Democrats proposed twenty seven amendments of their own, most by Jesse Jackson of Illinois; asking for new rights to quality housing and education.

1. The Republicans proposed about 42 amendments in the current Congress of the time; such as the now famous repeal of the 14th Amendment's birthright citizenship,
2. restrict the president's ability to sign international treaties,
3. repeal Congress' power to regulate the economy,
4. repeal Congress' power to spend money,
5. repeal the equal protection of the laws,
6. repeal fundamental rights
7. repeal the 17th Amendment which requires direct election of senators.

When Broun was questioned on his contradiction, he said "it's not picking and choosing", basically that it's (THE CONSTITUTION) that just needs tweaking.

Is that not picking and choosing?

In 2016, Trump and all his glory, exaggerations and lack for telling the truth took over the Republican Party. His goal, to repeal anything that Obama signed into law during his presidency. To change the laws so that the rich, like himself could become richer and the poor and middle class could pay for it all.

However, the main objective was to divide America. Trump supports white supremacy every time he chooses not to hold them accountable for their racist acts. Trump continues to supports dictators over the American people and our values. He tweets daily, with continued name calling, divisive and unstable behavior. He is the first President in history to single out a certain group for a base and pander to them and only to them.

The person that occupies the White House and is America's spokesperson should always, unequivocally do what is right for "all" Americans. We are the United States of America.

John Boehner said it best, first about the Tea Party and now about the Republican Party. There is no more Republican Party, only the Populist Party of Trump.