Time to re-form the Whig Party?

The American Whig Party emerged in the 1830s in response to the nascent "executive tyranny" of President Andrew Jackson. While the Whigs disappeared two decades later as the United States traveled down the road to Civil War, what hasn't disappeared is the tension between those who would use the Republic to uphold the liberties enshrined in our Constitution and those who would use that same Republic to to shred those same liberties for their own special interests.

While today's Democratic Party claims the mantle of democracy and today's Republican Party claims the mantle of republicanism, both parties have given us a government that has power over the lives of ordinary Americans that King George III and his Parliament couldn't even begin to imagine, betraying their proud roots in the ideals of the Founding Fathers. Now in the 21st Century, executive tyranny -- enthusiastically endorsed by both "the Peoples House" and the representatives of the states and perpetuated by the judicial usurpation of democracy -- has indeed supplanted republican self-government.

Ultimately, American Whiggery failed as a political movement. But its voice still cries out, even when the people are seduced by the "bread and circuses" that our political candidates hand out to buy their re-elections with our tax dollars paid today and in the generations to come.

This is the blog of a modern Whig. I won't comment very often, but every once in a while, I won't be able to resist shouting about yet one more sell-out of liberty.