THE CIVIC REPUBLICAN TRADITION VERSUS THE MODERN REPUBLICAN PARTY
The only true Red cap we recognize is the Red Bonnet Phrygian cap of Liberty in the revolutionary and emancipatory cause of REPUBLICANISM. Citizens among you willing, must claim a right to the re-construction of republicanism as a political and spiritual regenerative and prime force for national unification and progress, and to give birth to association and solidarity of republican thinkers, as it does not exist in our time. Perhaps, this inspiring vision may bloom into a real force for national unification and progress, but at this time in history, there are in the U.S. only a very small few students and scholars of the republican tradition. We do not refer in any sense to the Republican Party in the United States or the many inspired variants; and we cannot define the parties as truly embodying the republican and democratic spirit. Using little or capital R provides no greater difference, in that the U.S. American psychologically associates this term “republican” with the political party and its self-enriching members, which has changed drastically since its origins, and continues to use that name. The word does not provide them cover for their actions. Those negative associations with the word, republican as representing a party of racism, religious dominionists and oligarchic greed describes something explicitly anti-republican.
The ‘Republican Party’ chooses to model itself upon and represent a political lineage and blend of old Right worldviews, which defines itself historically as being in a sacred civilizational battle with REPUBLICAN tradition (James J. Sack on Right-Wing Hatred of Dissenters in the 18th century). Using the term, they are able to deceptively maintain the illusion in the public consciousness, that their political side represents an originalist American political position against their subverted “Communist” opponents “on the Left” to distract from this fact.
In The Loose Tradition of Republican Writers, according to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, REPUBLICANISM can be understood in two senses. In one sense, Frank Lovett states that Republicanism refers to a loose tradition or family of writers in the history of western political thought: “Machiavelli and his fifteenth-century Italian predecessors; the English republicans Milton, Harrington, Sidney, and others; Montesquieu and Blackstone; the eighteenth-century English commonwealthmen; and many Americans of the founding era such as Jefferson, Madison, and Adams. The writers in this tradition emphasize many common ideas and concerns, such as the importance of civic virtue and political participation, the dangers of corruption, the benefits of a mixed constitution and the rule of law, etc.; and it is characteristic of their rhetorical style to draw heavily on classical examples—from Cicero and the Latin historians especially—in presenting their arguments.”
“Ever to Excel” (an Ancient Greek motto from Homer’s Iliad)
I ask you to imagine a Republic, which cultivates and nurtures the citizen and the sovereign people. Imagine a people ready to mature, knowing this maturity comes through knowledge of the highly developed republican ideology at our roots, or alignment with the principles of a wise republic. Visualize a wiser Republic for an invigorated, unified people that actually advances its root principles and morals. Very few may listen now. But the advance of the ideal is of dire necessity against various emerging competing sides throughout the century filling the gap of this clearly lost tradition.