“Women And Children Last”: Was The Republican Party Always This Greedy?
I have a keen interest in military strategy and tactics. Probably because I’m a political strategist and tactician. Wednesday night, I watched a documentary on the Military History Channel about the Battle of Leyte Gulf in World War II. The unselfish actions of U.S. sailors there prevented a military disaster and demonstrated what was great about the Greatest Generation.
General Douglas MacArthur had just landed his invasion force in the Philippines in October of 1944. A large Japanese naval fleet, including the biggest battleship in the world, the Yamato, was bearing down on Leyte Gulf to destroy our invasion forces on the beach. The only American naval force available to stop the attack was a small task force of destroyers and escort carriers called Taffy 3 (Task Force 3).
The large Japanese force dwarfed and outgunned Taffy 3 but the Americans blunted the attack by sending three destroyers up against big Japanese battleships. The small destroyer force was able to slow down the larger Japanese fleet long enough for the main American fleet to ride to the rescue and save the day. In the process, the Japanese sunk all three of the destroyers and hundreds of brave, young American sailors went down with their ships. But the selfless dedication of the men in Taffy 3 saved MacArthur’s invasion force from total destruction.
There’s a world of difference between the selfless sacrifice of Taffy 3 and the Republican Party. A recent survey by the Pew Research Center shows that only four of 10 Republicans believe that government has a responsibility to help people who can’t help themselves. In contrast, six out of every 10 independents and three out of every four Democrats believe that government should step up to help down-on-their-luck Americans. Republicans weren’t always this selfish. In 1987, six in 10 Republicans wanted government to work for the common good.
The GOP slogan for campaign 2012 should be “Every man for himself” or “Women and children last.” Republicans of course, make exceptions for their sugar daddies. If you’re a banker or a billionaire you can count on a lot of help from Republicans in power. If you’re an unwed mother in need of prenatal medical care or a poor hungry kid in need of a school lunch, you can forget about any help from the GOP Mean Machine.
The Mitt Romney/Paul Ryan budget clearly illustrates the party’s fiscal philosophy. The GOP budget cuts aid for prenatal care, school lunches, and child healthcare. The Republican proposal is careful, however, to protect tax breaks for the 1 percent. The best example of the cruelty in the GOP budget is that it cuts federal aid to help seniors pay for home heating oil while it maintains $4 billion dollars a year in federal tax freebies for the oil companies. If you have filled your tank recently you know big oil doesn’t really need the money.
My political philosophy comes from Hubert Humphrey, who said, “The moral test of government is how that government treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the elderly; and those in the shadow of life, the needy and the handicapped.”
If my belief in these words makes me a bleeding heart liberal, let me bleed.
By: Brad Bannon, Washington Whispers, U. S. News and World Report, June 7, 2012
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I am 26 and I have thought of this same question for many years since the first year Bush Jr. was in office. My impression of the Republican Party in the intervening years has grounded this impression into a belief: the Republican Party is mostly made of social conservatives and fiscal conservatives where many ideas characteristic to both camps are taken to the extreme (not to say the Democratic Party does not have their fair share of extremism). But looking further I may have seen glimpses into the philosophical foundation of both Republican camps.
Social conservatives, no matter how rapid they are against LGBT rights or secular narratives (among others), women and children are not last. Yes, there may be Republican-led policies that are not positive to the reproductive health of women or educating the youth but there are also so much religious involvement in alleviating poverty and sheltering abused women and children. I have heard over the years from Republican religionists and traditionalists that it is the function of the churches to provide for the welfare of women and children and not the State. I have just unsuccessfully spent some time trying to google evidence but I can only spend so much time on this topic.
This idea does seem to comport with fiscal conservatism for two reasons. It would not only contribute to a 1. smaller government but perhaps just as importantly, 2. leaves the choice to help women and children to individual (charity via church or other non-governmental organization) instead of State hands.
For both camps, the freedom to be greedy or altruistic, so to speak, is conducive to being a Christian, a fiscal conservative, a rugged individual, a skeptic of big-government, etc. To be clear, I do not consider myself a conservative or a Republican, although there are some ideas I do support. To be crystal, I think the freedom to be that greedy or altruistic is logical, but its premises are naive for some reasons and for some other reasons are even harmful to a competitive society. Let me be short on one reason. It’s naive to think an ethical society can even flourish with that level of freedom; take a look at Victorian England where social services were null and women and children littered the streets hungry and prostituted themselves just to survive. Where they suppose to wait patiently for charity?
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