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casualty- someone injured or killed in an accident

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casualty- someone injured or killed in an accident

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May-03-2014 17:48 Follow @OregonNews

We're not made by God to mass kill one another, and that's backed up by the Gospels. Lying and war are always associated. Pay attention to the war-makers when they try to defend their current war. If they're moving their lips they're lying." - ex-priest and antiwar activist, the late Philip Berrigan

(DULUTH, MN) - Not too long ago I watched Johnny Got His Gun, the film adaptation of Dalton Trumbo's famous antiwar novel with the same title about a young American soldier who came home from the trenches of World War One France, having miraculously survived an artillery explosion that blew away his face, as well as both legs and both arms - not to mention his dog tags. The helpless victim was being kept alive in the back wards of a military hospital by his "caregivers", probably out of scientific curiosity. The doctors and nurses treated him as a vegetable that was unable to communicate. Moreover, the staff believed that he was unable to perceive pain or have feelings.

Because the military didn't want the public to be aware of this horrific example of the gruesomeness of war, he was segregated (as is still done to this very day in veterans' hospitals and nursing homes) to a locked room where nobody would be able to give witness to his plight. A series of flashbacks provided sympathetic evidence of the victim's innocent pre-war civilian life and total lack of appreciation about the ghastly reality of organized mass slaughter that is modern war.

What was most moving about Johnny Got His Gun was the fact that the victim, kept alive by stomach and tracheotomy tubes, was actually quite aware of his surroundings and what was being done to him without his consent. Finally finding a way to communicate with his caregivers, the story ends with no certain resolution, forcing the viewer to think about end of life ethics, militarism and the lies, half-truths and cover-ups of the consequences of war.

Several years ago I read portions of a book by Phillip Knightley entitled The First Casualty: From the Crimea to Vietnam: The War Correspondent as Hero, Propagandist and Myth Maker.

Knightley convincingly tells us that in order to start or perpetuate a war, a nation has to lie, and the lies start with the approved war correspondent or "embedded" journalist who obediently only tells pre-approved versions of what is really happening in the war zone.

It is a historical truth that if an aggressive nation-state can't get its intended victim to start a war, it can always cunningly provoke him into drawing "first blood". That, of course, goes for most bullies, even the playground ones.

In the case of wars, aggressor nations can distort the truth by claiming self-defense as the motivation. Invasion and occupation can easily be obfuscated by the nation's propaganda machine by calling it "liberation" or "protective custody" rather than the criminal acts of theft and murder. Sadly, whistleblowing truth-seekers who try to expose the truths about the dirty underbelly of war usually are silenced and accused of being unpatriotic or subversive or, in the case of capitalist or fascist nations - "soft on communism".

Promoting lies and half-truths about a nation's wars has certainly been true of most kingdoms, empires and other totalitarian states, and that includes the Greek and Roman Empires, the British Empire and the various Fascist imperialist powers like Hirohito's Japan, Mussolini's Italy and Hitler's Germany, and it has also been true of almost every American war in recent memory.

Part of the propaganda campaign to falsely glorify American war-making via propaganda was the change in the name of the pre-World War II Department of War to what is now benignly, and falsely, called the Department of Defense. Tellingly, the DOD has been behind many overt wars and hundreds of covert acts of lethal violence, many of which have met the definition of international war crimes and/or crimes against humanity - none of which have met the Christian Just War Theory precepts.

Lies for Which Men Kill and Die (in Vain)

Examples of the "Lies that Men Kill and Die For" would include the following short list of just the last two American wars. In the first Gulf War, President George Herbert Walker Bush lied when he claimed that US satellite photos showed Iraqi troops massed on the border of Kuwait. Then he promoted the false testimony of a Kuwaiti girl (actually the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the US) who tearfully told a false story about Kuwaiti babies being thrown out of their incubators by cruel Iraqi troops. Both these and a number of other propaganda stories were soon shown to be lies, but most of us gullible Americans had already bought into the stories and enthusiastically endorsed the illegal invasion, led, of course by paid war correspondents and uber-patriotic retired generals on CNN and all the other major media outlets.

In President George W. Bush's illegal Operation Iraqi Liberation, lies were aggressively spread about 1) Saddam Hussein's Weapons of Mass Destruction (no WMDs were ever found), 2) Hussein's intention (or capability) to build a nuclear weapon (no yellow cake or aluminum centrifuge tubes existed), 3) Hussein's alliance with Osama bin Laden (they hated each other's guts); and 4) Hussein's military threat to the US (none whatsoever). And that was the short list. Bush the Younger also lied about his intention to 'liberate' Iraq and form a truly democratic government.

Then for the rest of the late, lamented Cheney/Bush presidency, that cabal lied about the progress of the war. They lied about torture, rendition and the real economic costs of the war, not to mention minimizing the reality of the psychological and physical costs to the returning soldiers. It seemed like that there were more lies told than truths.

Gallipoli and the ANZAC Spirit Myth

Several years ago I saw a Mel Gibson movie titled Gallipoli. The film superficially told the story about the ill-conceived plan to invade World War I Turkey in 1915. The plan was hatched by the First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill, who, after realizing that the war had turned into a stalemate in Europe, assigned the British Navy to open a second front against Germany in the East.

The plan was to open sea lanes to the Black Sea (in order to supply Russia with armaments) by invading and conquering Istanbul, one of the choke points in gaining access to the Black Sea. The necessary first step was to occupy the narrow sea lane to the Black Sea, called the Dardenelles strait, which was bordered on each side by land that was held by Turkey, an ally of Germany.

The Gallipoli peninsula, on the Adriatic side of the Dardenelles, was the initial target of Churchill's invasion plan, and on April 25, 1915, a massive invasion force of mainly British Empire soldiers, including green Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (aka, ANZAC) troops. It was the first time Australian and New Zealand conscripts had fought a major battle, and they found themselves, on day one, trapped on the beach below machine gun nests of the Turkish army that inflicted massive casualties. 35,000 Anzac troops died in the 10 month campaign, with the troops mostly immobilized and pinned down from the well-protected cliffs above them. The Gallipoli invasion was a ill-advised logistical nightmare that should have been, but wasn't, seen by the military strategists beforehand.

To really appreciate the truth about the Gallipoli disaster, interested readers should go beyond watching the movie. The real story of the 250,000 total casualties suffered by both sides can be found by googling "Gallipoli Disaster Documentary" and watching the 5 part series. Gallipoli is just another example of yet another shameful episode in the history of warfare that was lied about and/or unreported at the time by the few war correspondents, military leaders and politicians who were either witnesses or accomplices of the disaster but who refused to tell the embarrassing truth. The documentary evidence uncovered by unbiased historians tells a vastly different story than what was told during the war. And yet, almost a century later, Australia is still in denial about the reality of Gallipoli, and somehow, proudly celebrates the covered-up reality every April 25th, the anniversary of the Gallipoli invasion that led to such senseless death and dying. Down Under, April 25 is called Australia Day, and the national anthem, "Waltzing Matilda", is played reverentially on that day - and often during the rest of the year as well. Most non-Aussies don't understand the meaning of the lyrics, but they like the catchy tune. The song lyrics tell a strange tale about a loveless, solitary outback vagabond (whose knapsack he calls "Matilda") who inadvertently poaches a sheep from some One Percenter absentee landowner and then drowns himself in a deep pool when the police are about to arrest him for his "crime". Odd theme for a national anthem that seems more like a drinking song, but it is far easier to sing than the "Star-spangled Banner". An internet site says this about "Waltzing Matilda". The explanation may help to explain what patriotic Aussies call the "Anzac Spirit" (see below for more):

"To non-Australians it must seem strange that this much-loved Australian song does not refer to the land itself, but rather mourns the suicide of a thieving vagabond. Nevertheless, "Waltzing Matilda" somehow speaks to the strong anti-authoritarian and independence streak in the Australian psyche, as it represents the battler struggling against the wealthy and being one with the Australian bush."

Most Australians have been led to believe in, through repeated propaganda lies that have obscured the truth over the last century, what they like to call the "Anzac Spirit". As this American understands the concept of the Anzac Spirit, it represents the courage and loyalty to the Crown that the first Anzac infantrymen exhibited in their baptism of fire in 1915, obediently (and blindly) following the suicidal orders of their commanding officers to go "over the top" over and over again into the deadly machine gun fire.

Certainly their misbegotten, almost congenital sense of patriotism to their oppressors back in London was facilitated by the patriotic history book version of WWI, fabricated by nationalist pseudo-historians in order to avert attention from the sad fact that the whole fiasco at Gallipoli was totally senseless. Not only that but it was bungled and then misrepresented to avoid the fact that the deaths of the 35,000 Anzac troops were totally in vain.

In the following antiwar song, "The Band Played Waltzing Matilda", singer-song-writer Eric Brogle tells the poignant truth about the futility of war and the cognitive dissonance that keeps Australians focused on the song rather than on the many unwelcome truths about war. It was written in 1971 and provides a dose of reality to a world awash in war and militarism. It should be listened to with the story of Johnny Got His Gun in mind. We Americans could learn a few lessons by searching for similar inconvenient truths about any of our recent military misadventures. They are so numerous as to be uncountable

In the following antiwar song, " The Band Played Waltzing Matilda", singer-song-writer Eric Brogle tells the poignant truth about the futility of war and the cognitive dissonance that keeps Australians focused on the song rather than on the many unwelcome truths about war. It was written in 1971 and provides a dose of reality to a world awash in war and militarism. It should be listened to with the story of Johnny Got His Gun in mind. We Americans could learn a few lessons by searching for similar inconvenient truths about any of our recent military misadventures. They are so numerous as to be uncountable.
The Band Played Waltzing Matilda By Eric Bogle 1971 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WG48Ftsr3OI

Johnny Turk, he was ready, he primed himself well
He rained us with bullets, and he showered us with shell
And in five minutes flat, we were all blown to hell
He nearly blew us back home to Australia

And the band played Waltzing Matilda
When we stopped to bury our slain
Well we buried ours and the Turks buried theirs
Then it started all over again

Oh those that were living just tried to survive
In that mad world of blood, death and fire
And for ten weary weeks I kept myself alive
While around me the corpses piled higher

Then a big Turkish shell knocked me arse over head
And when I awoke in me hospital bed
And saw what it had done, I wished I was dead
I never knew there was worse things than dying

Oh no more I'll go Waltzing Matilda
All around the green bush far and near
For to hump tent and pegs, a man needs both legs
No more waltzing Matilda for me

They collected the wounded, the crippled, the maimed
And they shipped us back home to Australia
The armless, the legless, the blind, the insane
Those proud wounded heroes of Suvla

When I was a young man I carried me pack
And I lived the free life of the rover
From the Murray's green basin to the dusty outback
I waltzed my Matilda all over

Then in 1915 my country said: "Son,
It's time to stop rambling, there's work to be done"
So they gave me a tin hat and they gave me a gun
And they sent me away to the war

And the band played Waltzing Matilda
When the ship pulled away from the quay
And amid all the tears, flag waving and cheers
We sailed off for Gallipoli

Well I remember that terrible day
When our blood stained the sand and the water
And how in that hell they call Suvla Bay
We were butchered like lambs at the slaughter

And when the ship pulled into Circular Quay
I looked at the place where me legs used to be
And thank Christ there was no one there waiting for me
To grieve and to mourn and to pity

And the Band played Waltzing Matilda
As they carried us down the gangway
Oh nobody cheered, they just stood and stared
Then they turned all their faces away

And so now every April I sit on my porch
And I watch the parade pass before me
I see my old comrades, how proudly they march
Reviving their dreams of past glories

I see the old men all tired, stiff and worn
Those weary old heroes of a forgotten war
And the young people ask "What are they marching for?"
And I ask myself the same question

And the band plays Waltzing Matilda
And the old men still answer the call
But as year follows year, their numbers disappear
Someday, no one will march there at all

Waltzing Matilda, Waltzing Matilda
Who'll come a-Waltzing Matilda with me?
And their ghosts may be heard as they march by the billabong
Who'll come a-Waltzing Matilda with me?

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The First Casualty of War is Truth; Gallipoli, the ANZAC Spirit Myth and Waltzing Matilda

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Not too long ago I watched Johnny Got His Gun, the film adaptation of Dalton Trumbo's famous antiwar novel. It is about a young American soldier who came home from the trenches of World War One France, having miraculously survived an artiller.....

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discrimination- unfair treatment of a person or group based on prejudice

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discrimination- unfair treatment of a person or group based on prejudice

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Find and save ideas about Racial discrimination definition on Pinterest, the world's catalog of ideas.

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Ironclad- a wooden warship of the 19th century plated with armor

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Ironclad- a wooden warship of the 19th century plated with armor

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Ironclad warships were another innovation of the American Civil War. Like submarines and balloons, the ironclad war ship wasn't invented during the Civil War, but the Civil War was the first time ironclads saw widespread, effective use.

In 1592, the Korean Royal Navy launched what some believe to be the first ironclad warship. It was what is known as a "turtle ship," because of its rounded "shell" decking which protected the crew. While it is known that the deck was covered with iron spikes to repel boarders, it is still argued whether there was iron plating on the deck or not.

Other ships sometimes referred to as the "first ironclad" include the Dutch Finis Bellis (1585, meaning: End of War) and the Santa Anna (1522) of the Knights Hospitaller. These claims have problems as well. The Finis Bellis was a complete failure which just ran aground, and it is not certain whether it even had iron plating or not. The Santa Anna on the other hand was a very successful ship, but it had lead plating not iron plating. Therefore it cannot really be called an ironclad warship. Also, it is not clear if the lead was intended as armor or if it was simply a means of ensuring water-tightness.

(Click any photo on this page to enlarge .)

While these ship's status as ironclads is in dispute, there is no doubt that there were ironclad warships built and in use before the American Civil War. In 1859, the French Navy launched the first true ironclad warship, the La Gloire. The British Royal Navy responded by launching the ironclad HMS Warrior in 1860. Both nations had at least 16 ironclads either in service or under construction by 1862.

The first actual use of an ironclad warship in battle was not seen until October 12, 1861, when the CSS Manassas (left) participated in the Battle of the Head of Passes on the Mississippi River delta.

The success of ironclads during the American Civil War showed that the age of the wooden battleship had passed. For the final nail in the coffin of the world's wooden navies we can look to the first battle between two ironclads at the Battle of Hampton Roads in 1862. Wooden warships were now obsolete.

At the outbreak of the war, the US Navy did not have any ironclad warships, but most of the US Navy remained loyal to the Union. To overcome this disadvantage, the Confederacy decide to pursue the construction and purchase of ironclads as a way to gain some sort of naval advantage.

In response to this effort, the Union began building their own ironclads. This included two main styles, the ocean-going Monitor class ironclads and City class ironclads used for river warfare.

The Confederacy made a number of ironclads by armoring wooden ships. A couple of the most famous were the CSS Manassas and the CSS Virginia. The Manassas was converted from the old ice-breaking steamer Enoch Train, and was the first ironclad to engage an enemy in battle on October 12, 1861. She went on to face Union ships on their way to New Orleans. In this fight, she inflicted damage on a couple of ships, but ran aground and was sunk in April 1862. The Virginia was converted from the old USS Merrimack at Norfolk, Virginia. She wreaked havoc on the Union's wooden warships in the Battle of Hampton Roads, sinking both the USS Cumberland and the USS Congress. The arrival of the USS Monitor led to the first meeting of two ironclads on March 9, 1862, which resulted in a draw. In May 1862, the Virginia was stranded alone in the James river due to her deep draft and was scuttled to prevent her from falling into Union hands.

The Confederacy also built a number of ironclads from the keel up. My favorite among these was the CSS Albemarle (right). The Albemarle was built in North Carolina on the Roanoke River by nineteen-year-old Gilbert Elliott. Her first action was in April 1864. The Albemarle was moving down the Roanoke when she was attacked by two Union steamers. She rammed and sank the first one. The second steamer retired after her first shot rebounded off the Albemarle's armour and killed the Union commander. In May the Albemarle bolstered her image of being unsinkable...

On this occasion, she withstood the attack of four Union ships mounting more than sixty guns total. She disabled one Union ship and absorbed more than 500 shots before steaming back home. She was finally sunk in October by a steamer with a spar torpedo during a Union night raid made for that purpose.

Confederates also tried to buy ironclads from the European powers, but it never worked very well. Most were seized before they could ever be delivered. In a secret deal one ironclad, the CSS Stonewall, was purchased without the knowledge of the French government, but this ship was not purchased until January 1865 and did not arrive before the end of the war.

The Union's first ironclad warship was of the City class built by James B. Eads for operation on the rivers of the western front of the Civil War. One of those first ships was the USS Cairo (left) launched January 25,1862. Not only was the Cairo one of the first Union ironclads, she was also the first armored warship to be destroyed by a naval mine. The Cairo was sunk on the Yazoo River while clearing mines in preparation for the attack on Haines Bluff, Mississippi. Eads' City class ironclads participated in almost every naval engagement in the west from February 1862 until the end of the war.

After Union spies revealed the fact that the Confederacy was working on the CSS Virginia in Norfolk, the Union Navy flew into action. Union Navy leaders knew that if they did not have a counter for the , it would be able to travel with impunity. Therefore, an ironclad was built according to the design of Mr. John Ericsson. This ship was called the USS Monitor and was launched on January 30,1862.

The Monitor's duty was to race to Hampton Roads and prevent the Virginia from destroying the Union blockade there. When she arrived she participated in the first battle between two ironclad warships; although the battle was a draw, she was successful in saving the remainder of the blockade.

The was so successful, that the Union built a fleet of fifty Monitor class ironclads. These ships served a major role in the Union Navy for the remainder of the war.

While the first ironclad warships may predate the American Civil War, the Union and Confederate navies pioneered both the use and design of these powerful ships.

The exploits of ironclad warships, on both sides, proved without a doubt that the age of the wooden ship-of-war was over. The Battle of Mobile Bay (right) really drives that point home. Despite having 11 wooden ships, the Union needed its Monitor class ironclads to take a large confederate ironclad, the CSS Tennessee. Even though they weren't invented during the war, Civil War ironclad warships ushered in a new era in naval warfare.

By the end of the Civil War, the rest of the world had taken notice. Everyone was tying to bring their navies up to date as the old wooden ships became obsolete, and 1864 marked the last major naval engagement between squadrons of wooden ships.
American Civil War Story-Home Civil War Inventions

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Ironclad warships were another innovation of the American Civil War. Like submarines and balloons, the ironclad war ship wasn't invented during the Civil War, but the Civil War was the first time ironclads saw widespread, effective use. In 1592, the Korean Royal Navy launched what some believe to be the first ironclad warship.

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telegraph- apparatus used to communicate at a distance over a wire

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telegraph- apparatus used to communicate at a distance over a wire

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urbanization- the social process whereby cities grow

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urbanization- the social process whereby cities grow

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Urbanization | United Nations Population Division

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famine -a severe shortage of food resulting in starvation and death

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famine -a severe shortage of food resulting in starvation and death

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martial law -the body of law imposed by the military over civilian affairs (usually in time of war or civil crisis); overrides civil law

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martial law -the body of law imposed by the military over civilian affairs (usually in time of war or civil crisis); overrides civil law

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inflation- a general and progressive increase in prices

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inflation- a general and progressive increase in prices

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emancipate- free from slavery or servitude

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emancipate- free from slavery or servitude

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siege -an action of an armed force that surrounds a fortified place

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siege -an action of an armed force that surrounds a fortified place

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A siege is a military blockade of a city or fortress with the intent of conquering by attrition or assault. This derives from sedere, Latin for "to sit". Siege warfare is a form of constant, low-intensity conflict characterized by one party holding a strong, static defensive position.

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capitalist -of an economic system based on private ownership

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capitalist -of an economic system based on private ownership

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Capitalism is an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and their operation for profit. Central characteristics of capitalism include capital accumulation, competitive markets, price systems, private property, property rights recognition, voluntary exchange, and wage labor. In a market economy, decision-making and investments are determined by owners of wealth, property, or ability to maneuver capital or production ability in capital and financial markets -whereas prices and the distribution of goods and services are mainly determined by competition in goods and services markets.

Economists, historians, political economists, and sociologists have adopted different perspectives in their analyses of capitalism and have recognized various forms of it in practice. These include laissez-faire or free-market capitalism, anarcho-capitalism, state capitalism, and welfare capitalism. Different forms of capitalism feature varying degrees of free markets, public ownership, obstacles to free competition, and state-sanctioned social policies. The degree of competition in markets and the role of intervention and regulation, as well as the scope of state ownership, vary across different models of capitalism. The extent to which different markets are free and the rules defining private property are matters of politics and policy. Most of the existing capitalist economies are mixed economies that combine elements of free markets with state intervention and in some cases economic planning.

Capitalism in its modern form emerged out of agrarianism in 16th century England and mercantilist practices by European countries in the 16th to 18th centuries. The Industrial Revolution of the 18th century established capitalism as a dominant mode of production, characterized by factory work and a complex division of labor. Through the process of globalization, capitalism spread across the world in the 19th and 20th centuries, especially before World War I and after the end of the Cold War. During the 19th century, capitalism was largely unregulated by the state, but became more regulated in the post- World War II period through Keynesianism, followed by a return of more unregulated capitalism starting in the 1980s through neoliberalism.

Market economies have existed under many forms of government and in many different times, places and cultures. Modern industrial capitalist societies developed in Western Europe in a process that led to the Industrial Revolution. Economic growth is a characteristic tendency of capitalist economies.

The term "capitalist", meaning an owner of capital, appears earlier than the term "capitalism" and dates to the mid-17th century. "Capitalism" is derived from capital, which evolved from capitale, a late Latin word based on caput, meaning "head"-which is also the origin of " chattel" and " cattle" in the sense of movable property (only much later to refer only to livestock). Capitale emerged in the 12th to 13th centuries to refer to funds, stock of merchandise, sum of money or money carrying interest. By 1283, it was used in the sense of the capital assets of a trading firm and was often interchanged with other words-wealth, money, funds, goods, assets, property and so on.

The Hollantse (German: holländische) Mercurius uses "capitalists" in 1633 and 1654 to refer to owners of capital. In French, Étienne Clavier referred to capitalistes in 1788, four years before its first recorded English usage by Arthur Young in his work Travels in France (1792). In his Principles of Political Economy and Taxation (1817), David Ricardo referred to "the capitalist" many times. English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge used "capitalist" in his work Table Talk (1823). Pierre-Joseph Proudhon used the term in his first work, What is Property? (1840), to refer to the owners of capital. Benjamin Disraeli used the term in his 1845 work .

The initial use of the term "capitalism" in its modern sense is attributed to Louis Blanc in 1850 ("What I call 'capitalism' that is to say the appropriation of capital by some to the exclusion of others") and Pierre-Joseph Proudhon in 1861 ("Economic and social regime in which capital, the source of income, does not generally belong to those who make it work through their labor"). Karl Marx frequently referred to the " capital" and to the "capitalist mode of production" in Das Kapital (1867). Marx did not use the form capitalism but instead used capital, capitalist and capitalist mode of production, which appear frequently. Due to the word being coined by socialist critics of capitalism, economist and historian Robert Hessen stated that the term "capitalism" itself is a term of disparagement and a misnomer for economic individualism. Bernard Harcourt agrees with the statement that the term is a misnomer, adding that it misleadingly suggests that there is such as a thing as " capital" that inherently functions in certain ways and is governed by stable economic laws of its own.

In the English language, the term "capitalism" first appears, according to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), in 1854, in the novel The Newcomes by novelist William Makepeace Thackeray, where the word meant "having ownership of capital". Also according to the OED, Carl Adolph Douai, a German American socialist and abolitionist, used the term "private capitalism" in 1863.

Cosimo de' Medici, who managed to build an international financial empire and was one of the first Medici bankers

Capitalism, in its modern form, can be traced to the emergence of agrarian capitalism and mercantilism in the early Renaissance, in city-states like Florence. Capital has existed incipiently on a small scale for centuries in the form of merchant, renting and lending activities and occasionally as small-scale industry with some wage labor. Simple commodity exchange and consequently simple commodity production, which is the initial basis for the growth of capital from trade, have a very long history. During the Islamic Golden Age, Arabs promulgated capitalist economic policies such as free trade and banking. Their use of Indo-Arabic numerals facilitated bookkeeping. These innovations migrated to Europe through trade partners in cities such as Venice and Pisa. Italian mathematicians traveled the Mediterranean talking to Arab traders and returned to popularize the use of Indo-Arabic numerals in Europe.

The economic foundations of the feudal agricultural system began to shift substantially in 16th-century England as the manorial system had broken down and land began to become concentrated in the hands of fewer landlords with increasingly large estates. Instead of a serf-based system of labor, workers were increasingly employed as part of a broader and expanding money-based economy. The system put pressure on both landlords and tenants to increase the productivity of agriculture to make profit; the weakened coercive power of the aristocracy to extract peasant surpluses encouraged them to try better methods, and the tenants also had incentive to improve their methods in order to flourish in a competitive labor market. Terms of rent for land were becoming subject to economic market forces rather than to the previous stagnant system of custom and feudal obligation.

A painting of a French seaport from 1638 at the height of mercantilism

The economic doctrine prevailing from the 16th to the 18th centuries is commonly called mercantilism. This period, the Age of Discovery, was associated with the geographic exploration of foreign lands by merchant traders, especially from England and the Low Countries. Mercantilism was a system of trade for profit, although commodities were still largely produced by non-capitalist methods. Most scholars consider the era of merchant capitalism and mercantilism as the origin of modern capitalism, although Karl Polanyi argued that the hallmark of capitalism is the establishment of generalized markets for what he called the "fictitious commodities", i.e. land, labor and money. Accordingly, he argued that "not until 1834 was a competitive labor market established in England, hence industrial capitalism as a social system cannot be said to have existed before that date".

Robert Clive with the Nawabs of Bengal after the Battle of Plassey which began the British rule in India

England began a large-scale and integrative approach to mercantilism during the Elizabethan Era (1558-1603). A systematic and coherent explanation of balance of trade was made public through Thomas Mun's argument England's Treasure by Forraign Trade, or the Balance of our Forraign Trade is The Rule of Our Treasure. It was written in the 1620s and published in 1664.

European merchants, backed by state controls, subsidies and monopolies, made most of their profits by buying and selling goods. In the words of Francis Bacon, the purpose of mercantilism was "the opening and well-balancing of trade; the cherishing of manufacturers; the banishing of idleness; the repressing of waste and excess by sumptuary laws; the improvement and husbanding of the soil; the regulation of prices...".

After the period of the proto-industrialization, the British East India Company and the Dutch East India Company, after massive contributions from the Mughal Bengal, inaugurated an expansive era of commerce and trade. These companies were characterized by their colonial and expansionary powers given to them by nation-states. During this era, merchants, who had traded under the previous stage of mercantilism, invested capital in the East India Companies and other colonies, seeking a return on investment.

The Watt steam engine, a steam engine fuelled primarily by coal propelled the Industrial Revolution in Great Britain[48]

In the mid-18th century a group of economic theorists, led by David Hume (1711-1776) and Adam Smith (1723-1790), challenged fundamental mercantilist doctrines-such as the belief that the world's wealth remained constant and that a state could only increase its wealth at the expense of another state.

During the Industrial Revolution, industrialists replaced merchants as a dominant factor in the capitalist system and effected the decline of the traditional handicraft skills of artisans, guilds and journeymen. Industrial capitalism marked the development of the factory system of manufacturing, characterized by a complex division of labor between and within work process and the routine of work tasks; and eventually established the domination of the capitalist mode of production.

Industrial Britain eventually abandoned the protectionist policy formerly prescribed by mercantilism. In the 19th century, Richard Cobden (1804-1865) and John Bright (1811-1889), who based their beliefs on the Manchester School, initiated a movement to lower tariffs. In the 1840s Britain adopted a less protectionist policy, with the 1846 repeal of the Corn Laws and the 1849 repeal of the Navigation Acts. Britain reduced tariffs and quotas, in line with David Ricardo's advocacy of free trade.

The gold standard formed the financial basis of the international economy from 1870 to 1914.

Broader processes of globalization carried capitalism across the world. By the beginning of the nineteenth century, a series of loosely connected market systems had come together as a relatively integrated global system, in turn intensifying processes of economic and other globalization. Late in the 20th century, capitalism overcame a challenge by centrally-planned economies and is now the encompassing system worldwide, with the mixed economy as its dominant form in the industrialized Western world.

Industrialization allowed cheap production of household items using economies of scale, while rapid population growth created sustained demand for commodities. The imperialism of the 18th-century decisively shaped globalization in this period.

After the First and Second Opium Wars (1839-1860) and the completion of the British conquest of India, vast populations of Asia became ready consumers of European exports. Also in this period, Europeans colonized areas of sub-Saharan Africa and the Pacific islands. The conquest of new parts of the globe, notably sub-Saharan Africa, by Europeans yielded valuable natural resources such as rubber, diamonds and coal and helped fuel trade and investment between the European imperial powers, their colonies and the United States:

The inhabitant of London could order by telephone, sipping his morning tea, the various products of the whole earth, and reasonably expect their early delivery upon his doorstep. Militarism and imperialism of racial and cultural rivalries were little more than the amusements of his daily newspaper. What an extraordinary episode in the economic progress of man was that age which came to an end in August 1914.[non sequitur ]

From the 1870s to the early 1920s, the global financial system was mainly tied to the gold standard. The United Kingdom first formally adopted this standard in 1821. Soon to follow were Canada in 1853, Newfoundland in 1865, the United States and Germany () in 1873. New technologies, such as the telegraph, the transatlantic cable, the radiotelephone, the steamship and railways allowed goods and information to move around the world to an unprecedented degree.

The New York stock exchange traders' floor (1963)

Contemporary capitalist societies developed in the West from 1950 to the present and this type of system continues to expand throughout different regions of the world-relevant examples started in the United States after the 1950s, France after the 1960s, Spain after the 1970s, Poland after 2015, and others. At this stage capitalist markets are considered developed and are characterized by developed private and public markets for equity and debt, a high standard of living (as characterized by the World Bank and the IMF), large institutional investors and a well-funded banking system. A significant managerial class has emerged and decides on a significant proportion of investments and other decisions. A different future than that envisioned by Marx has started to emerge-explored and described by Anthony Crosland in the United Kingdom in his 1956 book The Future of Socialism and by John Kenneth Galbraith in North America in his 1958 book The Affluent Society, 90 years after Marx's research on the state of capitalism in 1867.

The postwar boom ended in the late 1960s and early 1970s and the economic situation grew worse with the rise of stagflation. Monetarism, a modification of Keynesianism that is more compatible with laissez-faire analyses, gained increasing prominence in the capitalist world, especially under the years in office of Ronald Reagan in the United States (1981-1989) and of Margaret Thatcher in the United Kingdom (1979-1990). Public and political interest began shifting away from the so-called collectivist concerns of Keynes's managed capitalism to a focus on individual choice, called "remarketized capitalism".

The end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union allowed for capitalism to become a truly global system in a way not seen since before World War I. The development of the neoliberal global economy would have been impossible without the fall of communism.

Harvard Kennedy School economist Dani Rodrik distinguishes between three historical variants of capitalism:

Capitalism 1.0 during the 19th century entailed largely unregulated markets with a minimal role for the state (aside from national defense, and protecting property rights)

Capitalism 2.0 during the post-World War II years entailed Keynesianism, a substantial role for the state in regulating markets, and strong welfare states

Capitalism 2.1 entailed a combination of unregulated markets, globalization, and various national obligations by states

Relationship to democracy

The relationship between democracy and capitalism is a contentious area in theory and in popular political movements. The extension of adult-male suffrage in 19th-century Britain occurred along with the development of industrial capitalism and representative democracy became widespread at the same time as capitalism, leading capitalists to posit a causal or mutual relationship between them. However, according to some authors in the 20th-century, capitalism also accompanied a variety of political formations quite distinct from liberal democracies, including fascist regimes, absolute monarchies and single-party states. Democratic peace theory asserts that democracies seldom fight other democracies, but critics of that theory suggest that this may be because of political similarity or stability rather than because they are "democratic" or "capitalist". Moderate critics argue that though economic growth under capitalism has led to democracy in the past, it may not do so in the future as authoritarian régimes have been able to manage economic growth using some of capitalism's competitive principles without making concessions to greater political freedom.

Political scientists Torben Iversen and David Soskice see democracy and capitalism as mutually supportive. Robert Dahl argued in On Democracy that capitalism was beneficial for democracy because economic growth and a large middle class were good for democracy. He also argued that a market economy provided a substitute for government control of the economy, which reduces the risks of tyranny and authoritarianism.

In his book The Road to Serfdom (1944), Friedrich Hayek (1899-1992) asserted that the free-market understanding of economic freedom as present in capitalism is a requisite of political freedom. He argued that the market mechanism is the only way of deciding what to produce and how to distribute the items without using coercion. Milton Friedman and Ronald Reagan also promoted this view. Friedman claimed that centralized economic operations are always accompanied by political repression. In his view, transactions in a market economy are voluntary and that the wide diversity that voluntary activity permits is a fundamental threat to repressive political leaders and greatly diminishes their power to coerce. Some of Friedman's views were shared by John Maynard Keynes, who believed that capitalism was vital for freedom to survive and thrive. Freedom House, an American think-tank that conducts international research on, and advocates for, democracy, political freedom and human rights, has argued that "there is a high and statistically significant correlation between the level of political freedom as measured by Freedom House and economic freedom as measured by the Wall Street Journal/Heritage Foundation survey".

In Capital in the Twenty-First Century (2013), Thomas Piketty of the Paris School of Economics asserted that inequality is the inevitable consequence of economic growth in a capitalist economy and the resulting concentration of wealth can destabilize democratic societies and undermine the ideals of social justice upon which they are built.

States with capitalistic economic systems have thrived under political regimes deemed to be authoritarian or oppressive. Singapore has a successful open market economy as a result of its competitive, business-friendly climate and robust rule of law. Nonetheless, it often comes under fire for its style of government which, though democratic and consistently one of the least corrupt, operates largely under a one-party rule. Furthermore, it does not vigorously defend freedom of expression as evidenced by its government-regulated press, and its penchant for upholding laws protecting ethnic and religious harmony, judicial dignity and personal reputation. The private (capitalist) sector in the People's Republic of China has grown exponentially and thrived since its inception, despite having an authoritarian government. Augusto Pinochet's rule in Chile led to economic growth and high levels of inequality by using authoritarian means to create a safe environment for investment and capitalism. Similarly, Suharto's authoritarian reign and extirpation of the Communist Party of Indonesia allowed for the expansion of capitalism in Indonesia.

The term "capitalism" in its modern sense is often attributed to Karl Marx. In his Das Kapital, Marx analyzed the " capitalist mode of production" using a method of understanding today known as Marxism. However, Marx himself rarely used the term "capitalism" while it was used twice in the more political interpretations of his work, primarily authored by his collaborator Friedrich Engels. In the 20th century, defenders of the capitalist system often replaced the term "capitalism" with phrases such as free enterprise and private enterprise and replaced "capitalist" with rentier and investor in reaction to the negative connotations associated with capitalism.

In general, capitalism as an economic system and mode of production can be summarized by the following:

In free market and laissez-faire forms of capitalism, markets are used most extensively with minimal or no regulation over the pricing mechanism. In mixed economies, which are almost universal today, markets continue to play a dominant role, but they are regulated to some extent by the state in order to correct market failures, promote social welfare, conserve natural resources, fund defense and public safety or other rationale. In state capitalist systems, markets are relied upon the least, with the state relying heavily on state-owned enterprises or indirect economic planning to accumulate capital.

Competition arises when more than one producer is trying to sell the same or similar products to the same buyers. Adherents of the capitalist theory believe that competition leads to innovation and more affordable prices. Monopolies or cartels can develop, especially if there is no competition. A monopoly occurs when a firm has exclusivity over a market. Hence, the firm can engage in rent seeking behaviors such as limiting output and raising prices because it has no fear of competition.

Wage labor, usually referred to as paid work, paid employment, or paid labor, refers to the socioeconomic relationship between a worker and an employer in which the worker sells their labor power under a formal or informal employment contract. These transactions usually occur in a labor market where wages or salaries are market-determined.

The profit motive, in the theory of capitalism, is the desire to earn income in the form of profit. Stated differently, the reason for a business's existence is to turn a profit. The profit motive functions according to rational choice theory, or the theory that individuals tend to pursue what is in their own best interests. Accordingly, businesses seek to benefit themselves and/or their shareholders by maximizing profit.

In capitalist theoretics, the profit motive is said to ensure that resources are being allocated efficiently. For instance, Austrian economist Henry Hazlitt explains: "If there is no profit in making an article, it is a sign that the labor and capital devoted to its production are misdirected: the value of the resources that must be used up in making the article is greater than the value of the article itself".

The relationship between the state, its formal mechanisms, and capitalist societies has been debated in many fields of social and political theory, with active discussion since the 19th century. Hernando de Soto is a contemporary Peruvian economist who has argued that an important characteristic of capitalism is the functioning state protection of property rights in a formal property system where ownership and transactions are clearly recorded.

According to de Soto, this is the process by which physical assets are transformed into capital, which in turn may be used in many more ways and much more efficiently in the market economy. A number of Marxian economists have argued that the Enclosure Acts in England and similar legislation elsewhere were an integral part of capitalist primitive accumulation and that specific legal frameworks of private land ownership have been integral to the development of capitalism.

Private property rights are not absolute, as in many countries the state has the power to seize private property, typically for public use, under the powers of eminent domain.

In capitalist economics, market competition is the rivalry among sellers trying to achieve such goals as increasing profits, market share and sales volume by varying the elements of the marketing mix: price, product, distribution and promotion. Merriam-Webster defines competition in business as "the effort of two or more parties acting independently to secure the business of a third party by offering the most favourable terms". It was described by Adam Smith in The Wealth of Nations (1776) and later economists as allocating productive resources to their most highly valued uses and encouraging efficiency. Smith and other classical economists before Antoine Augustine Cournot were referring to price and non-price rivalry among producers to sell their goods on best terms by bidding of buyers, not necessarily to a large number of sellers nor to a market in final equilibrium. Competition is widespread throughout the market process. It is a condition where "buyers tend to compete with other buyers, and sellers tend to compete with other sellers". In offering goods for exchange, buyers competitively bid to purchase specific quantities of specific goods which are available, or might be available if sellers were to choose to offer such goods. Similarly, sellers bid against other sellers in offering goods on the market, competing for the attention and exchange resources of buyers. Competition results from scarcity, as it is not possible to satisfy all conceivable human wants, and occurs as people try to meet the criteria being used to determine allocation.

In the works of Adam Smith, the idea of capitalism is made possible through competition which creates growth. Although capitalism has not entered mainstream economics at the time of Smith, it is vital to the construction of his ideal society. One of the foundational blocks of capitalism is competition. Smith believed that a prosperous society is one where "everyone should be free to enter and leave the market and change trades as often as he pleases." He believed that the freedom to act in one's self-interest is essential for the success of a capitalist society. The fear arises that if all participants focus on their own goals, society's well-being will be water under the bridge. Smith maintains that despite the concerns of intellectuals, "global trends will hardly be altered if they refrain from pursuing their personal ends." He insisted that the actions of a few participants cannot alter the course of society. Instead, Smith maintained that they should focus on personal progress instead and that this will result in overall growth to the whole.

Competition between participants, "who are all endeavoring to justle one another out of employment, obliges every man to endeavor to execute his work" through competition towards growth.

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The capitalist mode of production refers to the systems of organising production and distribution within capitalist societies. Private money-making in various forms (renting, banking, merchant trade, production for profit and so on) preceded the development of the capitalist mode of production as such.

The term capitalist mode of production is defined by private ownership of the means of production, extraction of surplus value by the owning class for the purpose of capital accumulation, wage-based labor and, at least as far as commodities are concerned, being market-based.

Capitalism in the form of money-making activity has existed in the shape of merchants and money-lenders who acted as intermediaries between consumers and producers engaging in simple commodity production (hence the reference to " merchant capitalism") since the beginnings of civilisation. What is specific about the "capitalist mode of production" is that most of the inputs and outputs of production are supplied through the market (i.e. they are commodities) and essentially all production is in this mode. By contrast, in flourishing feudalism most or all of the factors of production, including labor, are owned by the feudal ruling class outright and the products may also be consumed without a market of any kind, it is production for use within the feudal social unit and for limited trade. This has the important consequence that, under capitalism, the whole organisation of the production process is reshaped and re-organised to conform with economic rationality as bounded by capitalism, which is expressed in price relationships between inputs and outputs (wages, non-labor factor costs, sales and profits) rather than the larger rational context faced by society overall-that is, the whole process is organised and re-shaped in order to conform to "commercial logic". Essentially, capital accumulation comes to define economic rationality in capitalist production.

Government agencies regulate the standards of service in many industries, such as airlines and broadcasting, as well as financing a wide range of programs. In addition, the government regulates the flow of capital and uses financial tools such as the interest rate to control such factors as inflation and unemployment.

The economic model of supply and demand states that the price P of a product is determined by a balance between production at each price (supply S) and the desires of those with purchasing power at each price (demand D): the diagram shows a positive shift in demand from D₁ to D₂, resulting in an increase in price (P) and quantity sold (Q) of the product.

In capitalist economic structures, supply and demand is an economic model of price determination in a market. It postulates that in a perfectly competitive market, the unit price for a particular good will vary until it settles at a point where the quantity demanded by consumers (at the current price) will equal the quantity supplied by producers (at the current price), resulting in an economic equilibrium for price and quantity.

The "basic laws" of supply and demand, as described by David Besanko and Ronald Braeutigam, are the following four:

1. If demand increases (demand curve shifts to the right) and supply remains unchanged, then a shortage occurs, leading to a higher equilibrium price.

2. If demand decreases (demand curve shifts to the left) and supply remains unchanged, then a surplus occurs, leading to a lower equilibrium price.

3. If demand remains unchanged and supply increases (supply curve shifts to the right), then a surplus occurs, leading to a lower equilibrium price.

4. If demand remains unchanged and supply decreases (supply curve shifts to the left), then a shortage occurs, leading to a higher equilibrium price.

A supply schedule is a table that shows the relationship between the price of a good and the quantity supplied.

A demand schedule, depicted graphically as the demand curve, represents the amount of some goods that buyers are willing and able to purchase at various prices, assuming all determinants of demand other than the price of the good in question, such as income, tastes and preferences, the price of substitute goods and the price of complementary goods, remain the same. According to the law of demand, the demand curve is almost always represented as downward sloping, meaning that as price decreases, consumers will buy more of the good.

Just like the supply curves reflect marginal cost curves, demand curves are determined by marginal utility curves.

In the context of supply and demand, economic equilibrium refers to a state where economic forces such as supply and demand are balanced and in the absence of external influences the ( equilibrium) values of economic variables will not change. For example, in the standard text-book model of perfect competition equilibrium occurs at the point at which quantity demanded and quantity supplied are equal. Market equilibrium, in this case, refers to a condition where a market price is established through competition such that the amount of goods or services sought by buyers is equal to the amount of goods or services produced by sellers. This price is often called the competitive price or market clearing price and will tend not to change unless demand or supply changes.

According to Hamid S. Hosseini, the "power of supply and demand" was discussed to some extent by several early Muslim scholars, such as fourteenth century Mamluk scholar Ibn Taymiyyah, who wrote: "If desire for goods increases while its availability decreases, its price rises. On the other hand, if availability of the good increases and the desire for it decreases, the price comes down".

Adam Smith

John Locke's 1691 work Some Considerations on the Consequences of the Lowering of Interest and the Raising of the Value of Money includes an early and clear description of supply and demand and their relationship. In this description, demand is rent: "The price of any commodity rises or falls by the proportion of the number of buyer and sellers" and "that which regulates the price... [of goods] is nothing else but their quantity in proportion to their rent".

David Ricardo titled one chapter of his 1817 work Principles of Political Economy and Taxation "On the Influence of Demand and Supply on Price". In Principles of Political Economy and Taxation, Ricardo more rigorously laid down the idea of the assumptions that were used to build his ideas of supply and demand.

In his 1870 essay "On the Graphical Representation of Supply and Demand", Fleeming Jenkin in the course of "introduc[ing] the diagrammatic method into the English economic literature" published the first drawing of supply and demand curves therein, including comparative statics from a shift of supply or demand and application to the labor market. The model was further developed and popularized by Alfred Marshall in the 1890 textbook Principles of Economics.

There are many variants of capitalism in existence that differ according to country and region. They vary in their institutional makeup and by their economic policies. The common features among all the different forms of capitalism are that they are predominantly based on the private ownership of the means of production and the production of goods and services for profit; the market-based allocation of resources; and the accumulation of capital.

They include advanced capitalism, corporate capitalism, finance capitalism, free-market capitalism, mercantilism, social capitalism, state capitalism and welfare capitalism. Other theoretical variants of capitalism include anarcho-capitalism, community capitalism, humanistic capitalism, neo-capitalism, state monopoly capitalism, and technocapitalism.

Advanced capitalism is the situation that pertains to a society in which the capitalist model has been integrated and developed deeply and extensively for a prolonged period. Various writers identify Antonio Gramsci as an influential early theorist of advanced capitalism, even if he did not use the term himself. In his writings, Gramsci sought to explain how capitalism had adapted to avoid the revolutionary overthrow that had seemed inevitable in the 19th century. At the heart of his explanation was the decline of raw coercion as a tool of class power, replaced by use of civil society institutions to manipulate public ideology in the capitalists' favour.

Jürgen Habermas has been a major contributor to the analysis of advanced-capitalistic societies. Habermas observed four general features that characterise advanced capitalism:

1. Concentration of industrial activity in a few large firms.

2. Constant reliance on the state to stabilise the economic system.

3. A formally democratic government that legitimises the activities of the state and dissipates opposition to the system.

4. The use of nominal wage increases to pacify the most restless segments of the work force.

Corporate capitalism is a free or mixed-market capitalist economy characterized by the dominance of hierarchical, bureaucratic corporations.

Finance capitalism is the subordination of processes of production to the accumulation of money profits in a financial system. In their critique of capitalism, Marxism and Leninism both emphasise the role of finance capital as the determining and ruling-class interest in capitalist society, particularly in the latter stages.

Rudolf Hilferding is credited with first bringing the term finance capitalism into prominence through Finance Capital, his 1910 study of the links between German trusts, banks and monopolies-a study subsumed by Vladimir Lenin into Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism (1917), his analysis of the imperialist relations of the great world powers. Lenin concluded that the banks at that time operated as "the chief nerve centres of the whole capitalist system of national economy". For the Comintern (founded in 1919), the phrase "dictatorship of finance capitalism" became a regular one.

Fernand Braudel would later point to two earlier periods when finance capitalism had emerged in human history-with the Genoese in the 16th century and with the Dutch in the 17th and 18th centuries-although at those points it developed from commercial capitalism. Giovanni Arrighi extended Braudel's analysis to suggest that a predominance of finance capitalism is a recurring, long-term phenomenon, whenever a previous phase of commercial/industrial capitalist expansion reaches a plateau.

A capitalist free-market economy is an economic system where prices for goods and services are set entirely by the forces of supply and demand and are expected, by its adherents, to reach their point of equilibrium without intervention by government policy. It typically entails support for highly competitive markets and private ownership of the means of production. Laissez-faire capitalism is a more extensive form of this free-market economy, but one in which the role of the state is limited to protecting property rights. In anarcho-capitalist theory, property rights are protected by private firms and market-generated law. According to anarcho-capitalists, this entails property rights without statutory law through market-generated tort, contract and property law, and self-sustaining private industry.

Fernand Braudel argued that free market exchange and capitalism are to some degree opposed; free market exchange involves transparent public transactions and a large number of equal competitors, while capitalism involves a small number of participants using their capital to control the market via private transactions, control of information, and limitation of competition.

The subscription room at Lloyd's of London in the early 19th century

Mercantilism is a nationalist form of early capitalism that came into existence approximately in the late 16th century. It is characterized by the intertwining of national business interests with state-interest and imperialism. Consequently, the state apparatus is used to advance national business interests abroad. An example of this is colonists living in America who were only allowed to trade with and purchase goods from their respective mother countries (e.g., Britain, France and Portugal). Mercantilism was driven by the belief that the wealth of a nation is increased through a positive balance of trade with other nations-it corresponds to the phase of capitalist development sometimes called the primitive accumulation of capital.

A social market economy is a free-market or mixed-market capitalist system, sometimes classified as a coordinated market economy, where government intervention in price formation is kept to a minimum, but the state provides significant services in areas such as social security, health care, unemployment benefits and the recognition of labor rights through national collective bargaining arrangements.

This model is prominent in Western and Northern European countries as well as Japan, albeit in slightly different configurations. The vast majority of enterprises are privately owned in this economic model.

Rhine capitalism is the contemporary model of capitalism and adaptation of the social market model that exists in continental Western Europe today.

State capitalism is a capitalist market economy dominated by state-owned enterprises, where the state enterprises are organized as commercial, profit-seeking businesses. The designation has been used broadly throughout the 20th century to designate a number of different economic forms, ranging from state-ownership in market economies to the command economies of the former Eastern Bloc. According to Aldo Musacchio, a professor at Harvard Business School, state capitalism is a system in which governments, whether democratic or autocratic, exercise a widespread influence on the economy either through direct ownership or various subsidies. Musacchio notes a number of differences between today's state capitalism and its predecessors. In his opinion, gone are the days when governments appointed bureaucrats to run companies: the world's largest state-owned enterprises are now traded on the public markets and kept in good health by large institutional investors. Contemporary state capitalism is associated with the East Asian model of capitalism, dirigisme and the economy of Norway. Alternatively, Merriam-Webster defines state capitalism as "an economic system in which private capitalism is modified by a varying degree of government ownership and control".

In Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, Friedrich Engels argued that state-owned enterprises would characterize the final stage of capitalism, consisting of ownership and management of large-scale production and communication by the bourgeois state. In his writings, Vladimir Lenin characterized the economy of Soviet Russia as state capitalist, believing state capitalism to be an early step toward the development of socialism.

Some economists and left-wing academics including Richard D. Wolff and Noam Chomsky, as well as many Marxist philosophers and revolutionaries such as Raya Dunayevskaya and C.L.R. James, argue that the economies of the former Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc represented a form of state capitalism because their internal organization within enterprises and the system of wage labor remained intact.

The term is not used by Austrian School economists to describe state ownership of the means of production. The economist Ludwig von Mises argued that the designation of state capitalism was a new label for the old labels of state socialism and planned economy and differed only in non-essentials from these earlier designations.

Welfare capitalism is capitalism that includes social welfare policies. Today, welfare capitalism is most often associated with the models of capitalism found in Central Mainland and Northern Europe such as the Nordic model, social market economy and Rhine capitalism. In some cases, welfare capitalism exists within a mixed economy, but welfare states can and do exist independently of policies common to mixed economies such as state interventionism and extensive regulation.

A mixed economy is a largely market-based capitalist economy consisting of both private and public ownership of the means of production and economic interventionism through macroeconomic policies intended to correct market failures, reduce unemployment and keep inflation low. The degree of intervention in markets varies among different countries. Some mixed economies such as France under dirigisme also featured a degree of indirect economic planning over a largely capitalist-based economy.

Most modern capitalist economies are defined as mixed economies to some degree, however French economist Thomas Piketty state that capitalist economies might shift to a much more laissez-faire approach in the near future.

Eco-capitalism, also known as "environmental capitalism" or (sometimes) "green capitalism", is the view that capital exists in nature as " natural capital" ( ecosystems that have ecological yield) on which all wealth depends. Therefore, governments should use market-based policy-instruments (such as a carbon tax) to resolve environmental problems.

The term "Blue Greens" is often applied to those who espouse eco-capitalism. Eco-capitalism can be thought of as the right-wing equivalent to Red Greens.

Sustainable capitalism is a conceptual form of capitalism based upon sustainable practices that seek to preserve humanity and the planet, while reducing externalities and bearing a resemblance of capitalist economic policy. A capitalistic economy must expand to survive and find new markets to support this expansion. Capitalist systems are often destructive to the environment as well as certain individuals without access to proper representation. However, sustainability provides quite the opposite; it implies not only a continuation, but a replenishing of resources. Sustainability is often thought of to be related to environmentalism, and sustainable capitalism applies sustainable principles to economic governance and social aspects of capitalism as well.

The importance of sustainable capitalism has been more recently recognized, but the concept is not new. Changes to the current economic model would have heavy social environmental and economic implications and require the efforts of individuals, as well as compliance of local, state and federal governments. Controversy surrounds the concept as it requires an increase in sustainable practices and a marked decrease in current consumptive behaviors.

This is a concept of capitalism described in Al Gore and David Blood's manifesto for the Generation Investment Management to describe a long-term political, economic and social structure which would mitigate current threats to the planet and society. According to their manifesto, sustainable capitalism would integrate the environmental, social and governance ( ESG) aspects into risk assessment in attempt to limit externalities. Most of the ideas they list are related to economic changes, and social aspects, but strikingly few are explicitly related to any environmental policy change.

The accumulation of capital is the process of "making money" or growing an initial sum of money through investment in production. Capitalism is based on the accumulation of capital, whereby financial capital is invested in order to make a profit and then reinvested into further production in a continuous process of accumulation. In Marxian economic theory, this dynamic is called the law of value. Capital accumulation forms the basis of capitalism, where economic activity is structured around the accumulation of capital, defined as investment in order to realize a financial profit. In this context, "capital" is defined as money or a financial asset invested for the purpose of making more money (whether in the form of profit, rent, interest, royalties, capital gain or some other kind of return).

In mainstream economics, accounting and Marxian economics, capital accumulation is often equated with investment of profit income or savings, especially in real capital goods. The concentration and centralisation of capital are two of the results of such accumulation. In modern macroeconomics and econometrics, the phrase " capital formation" is often used in preference to "accumulation", though the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) refers nowadays to "accumulation". The term "accumulation" is occasionally used in national accounts.

An industrial worker among heavy steel machine parts (Kinex Bearings, Bytča, Slovakia, c. 1995-2000)

Wage labor refers to the sale of labor under a formal or informal employment contract to an employer. These transactions usually occur in a labor market where wages are market determined. In Marxist economics, these owners of the means of production and suppliers of capital are generally called capitalists. The description of the role of the capitalist has shifted, first referring to a useless intermediary between producers, then to an employer of producers, and finally to the owners of the means of production. Labor includes all physical and mental human resources, including entrepreneurial capacity and management skills, which are required to produce products and services. Production is the act of making goods or services by applying labor power.

The Industrial Workers of the World poster "Pyramid of Capitalist System" (1911)

Criticism of capitalism comes from various political and philosophical approaches, including anarchist, socialist, religious and nationalist viewpoints. Of those who oppose it or want to modify it, some believe that capitalism should be removed through revolution while others believe that it should be changed slowly through political reforms.

Other critics argue that such inequities are not due to the ethic-neutral construct of the economic system commonly known as capitalism, but to the ethics of those who shape and execute the system. For example, some contend that Milton Friedman's (human) ethic of 'maximizing shareholder value' creates a harmful form of capitalism, while a Millard Fuller or John Bogle (human) ethic of 'enough' creates a sustainable form. Equitable ethics and unified ethical decision-making is theorized to create a less damaging form of capitalism.

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Capitalism is an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and their operation for profit. Central characteristics of capitalism include capital accumulation, competitive markets, price systems, private property, property rights recognition, voluntary exchange, and wage labor.

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Beginning in the 1890s, Georgia and other southern states passed a wide variety of Jim Crow laws that mandated racial segregation or separation in public facilities and effectively codified the region's tradition of white supremacy. The name "Jim Crow" refers to a minstrel character popular in the 1820s and 1830s, but it is unknown how the term came to describe the form of racial segregation and discrimination that prevailed in the American South during the first half of the twentieth century.

Under Jim Crow, Black Georgians suffered from a system of discrimination that pervaded nearly every aspect of life; they were denied their constitutional right to vote, encountered discrimination in housing and employment, and were refused access to public spaces and facilities. The body of law that supported the region's system of segregation remained in place until the middle of the twentieth century, when a series of civil rights reforms, beginning with the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision and culminating with the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the 1965 Voting Rights Act, ended legal segregation in the American South.

Before a raft of Jim Crow laws were passed at the end of the nineteenth century, a combination of habit, custom, and a handful of laws effectively separated the races in a wide variety of public forums. In some cases, as with the establishment of separate Black churches, Black Georgians moved to create their own local institutions in the wake of the Civil War (1861-65). More often, however, segregation occurred as a result of efforts made by white citizens to protect their racial privilege and to further limit the freedoms African Americans gained as a result of emancipation and the Fourteenth and Fifteenth amendments. State legislators passed laws segregating schools in 1872, and many cities required the creation of segregated cemeteries. Local custom often further limited Black access to public spaces, and interracial marriage was strictly forbidden by state law.

Despite such prohibitions, Blacks did enjoy a measure of freedom in the 1870s and 1880s that would be lost only in the 1890s and not be restored until the second half of the twentieth century. White and Black passengers routinely sat next to one another on streetcars and trains, shopped in integrated business districts, sometimes lived in the same neighborhoods, and visited the same parks and recreational facilities.

Beginning in the 1890s, however, a number of conditions contributed to the development of a more pervasive system of racial segregation. Both the widespread belief in "scientific racism" and the subjugation of nonwhite peoples in the Philippines, Hawaii, and Cuba as a result of the Spanish-American War (1898) reinforced existing notions of white supremacy. Moreover, as some historians have observed, efforts undertaken by Black petitioners in the late nineteenth century sometimes hastened Jim Crow's rise. When confronted with Black demands for an expansion of civil rights, whites often responded by calling for a more comprehensive legal code to bar racial interaction altogether. These factors alone, however, cannot adequately explain the timing and scope of legislation passed by state governments across the South.

A more satisfactory explanation must consider the political, economic, and demographic developments that were then transforming the region's landscape. The Populist Revolt, for one, contributed in no small part to Jim Crow's rise. In the 1880s and 1890s, Populist leaders such as Georgia's Thomas E. Watson attempted to fashion from the shared frustrations of poor white and Black farmers a powerful political challenge to Democratic control. Democrats, however, skillfully parried the Populist advance by appealing to the racial anxieties of whites and warning against the dangers of "negro rule"-a tactic known as "race baiting." Thereafter, the Democratic state legislature passed a variety of disenfranchisement measures, or measures designed to limit citizens' right to vote, including cumulative poll taxes (1877), the white primary (1900), and literacy tests (1908). Ostensibly this legislation was intended to reform the region's corrupt politics by marginalizing Black voters, but in practice, poor whites were often stripped of the vote as well, thereby ridding the region of even the vestiges of radicalism and making southern states more attractive to northern investors.

Perhaps even more instrumental than Populism in contributing to Jim Crow's rise were the twin forces of economic modernization and urbanization. In the final decades of the nineteenth century, Georgians of both races flooded the state's cities, where the region's incipient industrial base provided an employment alternative to sharecropping and tenancy. Boomtowns in the Piedmont region profited most from industrialization, none more so than Atlanta. By the turn of the century, the metropolitan area of the "Gate City of the South" boasted more than 200 manufacturing firms, eleven railroads, and a population exceeding 100,000 people. Many observers worried, however, that the city's rapid expansion might contribute to social dislocation, thereby weakening constraints on individual behavior and empowering Blacks to threaten white supremacy. For this reason, segregationist ordinances first appeared in Atlanta and other upstart cities throughout the region, where Jim Crow soon reached maturity as a uniquely southern expression of the Progressive desire for order and social control.

Many whites in attendance were noticeably anxious when Black educator and spokesman Booker T. Washington began his address at the 1895 Cotton States and International Exposition in Atlanta. Part debutante ball and part advertisement, the event was intended to attract northern investment and distinguish Atlanta as the capital of the New South. Although the exposition was strictly segregated, many local whites objected to the decision to invite Washington and expressed concern that the speaker might condemn the pieces of Jim Crow legislation recently passed in Georgia and other southern states.

They need not have worried. Rather than challenge Jim Crow, Washington expressed the willingness of Blacks to submit to segregation in exchange for white assistance in expanding the educational and economic opportunities available to African Americans. "In all things that are purely social, we can be as separate as the fingers," suggested the educator, "yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress." Known thereafter as the " Atlanta Compromise," Washington's speech legitimated Jim Crow policies and encouraged white legislators to pursue a more comprehensive body of laws capable of severely limiting social contact between the races.

Only one year after Washington's historic speech, the U.S. Supreme Court granted federal sanction to the principle of "separate but equal" when it ruled in Plessy v. Ferguson​ against a Black man who had been arrested for riding a whites-only streetcar in New Orleans, Louisiana. The ruling also supported a Louisiana statute requiring segregated streetcars. The decision emboldened state governments across the region to expand the scope of Jim Crow legislation and step up enforcement of existing laws. "Separate but equal" restaurants, theaters, neighborhoods, and schools multiplied across the South in the wake of the Plessy ​ decision. These facilities were usually "equal" in name only-in all the states with Jim Crow laws, the facilities that served Blacks were almost always inferior to the facilities that served whites.

Despite their limited resources, Black communities throughout the state protested efforts to expand Jim Crow's reach. Between 1900 and 1906, Blacks in Atlanta, Augusta, Rome, and Savannah mounted boycotts of local streetcars to protest the enforcement of segregation ordinances that had previously gone unobserved. Though initially successful, whites throughout the state remained committed to Jim Crow's defense, and protests in each city ultimately failed. When coupled with federal acquiescence, mounting regional pressure to enforce segregation overwhelmed the forces of Black resistance, and Black Georgians had little choice but to accommodate Jim Crow's presence. Although it appeared later and developed more slowly in such older cities as Savannah, where established patricians adopted a paternalistic approach to government, segregation became a common and pervasive feature of life in all Georgia's cities by 1910.

Although Jim Crow's supporters prescribed segregation as an antidote to the social upheaval wrought by rapid industrialization and urbanization, the system initially produced more conflict than consensus. As whites across the South moved to restrict Black freedom of movement, episodes of interracial violence increased in number, and an atmosphere of racial hysteria gripped the region.

White-owned newspapers frequently inflamed racial tensions by publishing incendiary accounts of crimes allegedly committed by Blacks, often with dire consequences. Atlanta erupted in a firestorm of mob violence, for example, in September 1906, when three of the city's evening newspapers featured stories

of alleged rapes by Black men. When the dust settled after several days of violence and bloodshed, later known as the Atlanta Race Riot, twenty-five Blacks and one white were confirmed dead. Scores more were injured, and some sources suggest that the actual number of casualties was much higher.

Elsewhere in the state, whites resorted to lynching to maintain the region's racial caste system. Between 1882 and 1930, Georgia's toll of 458 lynch victims was exceeded only by Mississippi's 538. The majority of that number occurred in the cotton belt, where Blacks predominated and anxious planters expressed concern over both their Black labor supply and personal safety. In Georgia and throughout the rural South, lynching assumed enormous significance, not only because it functioned as a form of vigilantism but also because it provided a visible and ritualistic reaffirmation of white supremacy.

Passions simmered over time, however, and the racial hysteria that dominated the state at the turn of the century gave way to a rigid system of segregation that pervaded every aspect of southern urban life. Blacks and whites attended separate schools, drank from separate water fountains, worshipped at separate churches, rode in separate railroad cars, and visited separate parks and recreational facilities. When separate facilities were unavailable or prohibitively expensive, as with movie theaters or public buses, Blacks were confined to separate sections, usually at the rear.

In other circumstances, such as at hotels and restaurants, or in professional societies, Blacks were often refused admission altogether. Black Georgians were also denied their rights of citizenship; most were unable to vote, and precious few ever sat in a jury box. Limiting Black representation in juries was an especially effective means of upholding white supremacy. Many Black victims of violence couldn't count on all-white juries to fairly judge their cases. Should they ever be summoned to court for another purpose, however, Blacks were sworn in with separate Bibles. While they may have always been separate, public facilities, expenditures, and spaces were rarely, if ever, equal. Here, state education spending may be most illustrative. Despite spending about $43 per white student in 1930, Georgia spent only about $10 on each Black student in the state's public school system.

While they provided a critical legal framework for white supremacy, segregatory statutes were actually relatively few. Perhaps more significant than the body of law upholding Jim Crow was the complex system of racial etiquette that governed all interaction between the races. According to the region's racial protocol, all Blacks were required to pay obeisance to all whites, even those whites of low social standing. And although they were required to address whites by the title "sir," Blacks rarely received the same courtesy themselves. They were usually called "boy" or "old man," regardless of their age. Because even minor breaches of racial etiquette often resulted in violent reprisals, the region's codes of deference transformed daily life into a theater of racial rituals, where every encounter, exchange, and gesture reinforced Black inferiority. Black men, for example, were expected to remove their hats when they talked to white men, and most restaurants did not serve Black customers in the dining room-Blacks were expected to order at the counter, and then wait for their food outside. Occasionally Black customers might be allowed to eat in the restaurant's kitchen. As Georgia author Lillian Smith notes in her 1949 memoir, Killers of the Dream, Jim Crow's racial etiquette amounted to a "crippling dance" that white and Black southerners learned at an early age:

From the time little southern children take their first step they learn their ritual, for Southern Tradition leads them through its intricate movements. And some, if their faces are dark, learn to bend, hat in hand; and some, if their faces are white, learn to hold their heads up high. Some step off the sidewalk while others pass by in arrogance. Bending, shoving, genuflecting, ignoring, stepping off, demanding, giving in, avoiding. . . . So we learned the dance that cripples the human spirit, step by step by step, we who were white and we who were colored, day by day, hour by hour, year by year until the movements were reflexes and made for the rest of our lives without thinking.

While the experience of Jim Crow was no less harsh in rural areas, and in fact may have been more so, it did lack the rigidity that characterized urban segregation. In Georgia's cities, segregation developed as a solution to the problems posed by modernization and urbanization. However, rural Georgia remained a largely premodern society, making many features of segregation unnecessary or even problematic. As historian Mark Schultz demonstrates, rural race relations were typically marked by personal intimacy and a "culture of localism." Similar patterns of deference prevailed in rural race relations, but local governments in rural Georgia were more likely to depend on custom, rather than law, to maintain white supremacy.

Although Black Georgians experienced little political progress under Jim Crow, many did achieve an impressive measure of economic success. While some Black farmers made the jump from tenant to landowner in rural Georgia, the majority of Black economic development occurred in urban areas, where a small but significant class of Black professionals emerged.

Throughout the first half of the twentieth century, large numbers of Blacks moved to the state's burgeoning urban locales, creating a captive market for enterprising Black businessmen. Black-owned groceries, restaurants, funeral parlors, and clothing stores then emerged to meet increased consumer demand. Most were small, owner-operated outfits, but collectively they formed a commercial bedrock in developing Black business districts, such as Augusta's Golden Blocks neighborhood and Atlanta's Auburn Avenue. Of these, Atlanta's Auburn Avenue was most significant. Many of the South's most successful Black professionals called "Sweet Auburn" home, and in 1956 Fortune magazine memorably called it "the richest Negro street in the world."

Still, the success experienced by a handful of Black businessmen under Jim Crow should not obscure the discrimination and lack of opportunity that stifled the efforts of most Black workers. The majority of the state's Black population still resided in rural areas, where the crop lien system ensured that poor farmers of both races would endure cycles of debt and dependency. In urban areas, Black men were excluded from all but the most undesirable manufacturing positions and usually had little choice but to accept employment as unskilled laborers, while Black women most often worked as domestic servants in white households. During periods of economic distress, such as the arrival of the boll weevil and the Great Depression, Black workers were the first to lose their jobs and usually suffered disproportionate hardship. New Deal programs and wartime employment increased pay scales throughout the region, but despite assuming a larger presence in Georgia and other southern states, the federal government did little to alter discriminatory employment practices.

Throughout the first half of the twentieth century, Black Georgians continued to mount isolated protests against Jim Crow by petitioning local governments, organizing public demonstrations, and undertaking other, more subtle forms of resistance. A handful of prominent white Georgians supported their efforts as well. Author Lillian Smith and Atlanta Constitution editor Ralph McGill advocated racial moderation in their writings, while Clark Foreman and Will Alexander encouraged interracial cooperation and democratic reform through their efforts with the Southern Conference for Human Welfare. Without widespread support or political power, though, most efforts remained ineffective and personally perilous for Blacks. At the end of World War II (1941-45), however, a series of national and regional developments began that ultimately brought an end to Jim Crow's "strange career."

In 1946 the white primary in Georgia was invalidated by a federal court ruling in favor of Primus E. King, a Black citizen denied the chance to vote in Columbus. The decision opened the doors to greater Black political participation in the state. Within a matter of months, more than 116,000 Blacks registered to vote, signaling a major shift in the state's political landscape. Black political participation was initially greatest in Georgia's urban areas, where the organization of influential voting blocs positioned Black communities to win concessions from municipal governments by forcing white candidates to compete for Black votes. However, because whites maintained a tight grip on the electoral process in Georgia's rural sections, and because the county unit system caused state Democratic primaries to favor rural votes, statewide reform would have to await federal intervention in the 1960s.

At the same time, an increasing number of national observers agreed that ending segregation was both a moral and diplomatic imperative. In An American Dilemma (1944), Swedish economist Gunnar Myrdal explores the internal conflict that allowed ordinary Americans to support the promotion of democracy and freedom abroad, while condoning segregation at home. The book's publication began a national conversation regarding the desirability of race reform, the contradiction between segregation and cold war policies, and the proper role of the federal government in ensuring equality under the law. Thereafter, U.S. president Harry Truman moved to desegregate the nation's armed forces, and the U.S. Supreme Court issued decisions in Sweatt v. Painter (1950) and McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents (1950) that whittled away at the precedent established by Plessy a half century earlier. By 1954, when the Court repudiated altogether the dubious logic of "separate but equal" in Brown v. Board of Education, a national consensus existed to end segregation in the South.

Despite the slow pace of integration, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People continued its campaign to dismantle Georgia's Jim Crow legal system, bringing suit to desegregate Atlanta's public golf courses, schools, and buses during the 1950s, as well as representing Black plaintiffs ( Hamilton Holmes and Charlayne Hunter) denied admission to the University of Georgia in 1961. Blacks throughout Georgia and the region meanwhile organized on an unprecedented scale to lobby for an end to legal segregation. Albany residents, for example, with the assistance of Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, launched an ambitious, though ultimately unsuccessful, desegregation campaign, which came to be known as the Albany Movement. Meanwhile, Black college students in Atlanta staged sit-ins to force the desegregation of area lunch counters. As a result of these and similar efforts throughout the state and region, the U.S. Congress passed the Civil Rights Act in 1964 and the Voting Rights Act in 1965, bringing an end to legal segregation in the United States.

Despite the passage of federal civil rights legislation, public facilities in Georgia and throughout the region remained segregated in many areas well into the 1970s. Even as recalcitrant communities succumbed to federal pressure, de facto residential segregation remained a common feature in many locales throughout the state. Atlanta's indices of residential segregation actually increased between 1940 and 1980, as middle-class whites abandoned urban residential areas for new developments on the suburban periphery. Similar developments occurred in other cities throughout the region, and today the persistence of segregated residential patterns in contemporary southern communities attests to Jim Crow's enduring legacy.

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Beginning in the 1890s, Georgia and other southern states passed a wide variety of Jim Crow laws that mandated racial segregation or separation in public facilities and effectively codified the region's tradition of white supremacy.

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poll tax- a tax of a fixed amount per person and payable as a requirement for the right to vote

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poll tax- a tax of a fixed amount per person and payable as a requirement for the right to vote

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Ku Klux Klan- a secret society of white Southerners in the United States

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Ku Klux Klan- a secret society of white Southerners in the United States

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impeachment -a formal document charging a public official with misconduct

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impeachment -a formal document charging a public official with misconduct

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Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich is being impeached. How does the impeachment process work?On January 9, 2009, the Illinois House of Representatives impeached Governor Rod Blagojevich in a 114-1 vote. The decision was reaffirmed by the incoming legislature on January 14 in a 117-1 vote for impeachment.

Impeachment is uncommon in the US and the process can be confusing. Does Governor Blagojevich's impeachment have you wondering exactly how the impeachment process works and what happens next?

The Impeachment Process

A common misconception is that impeachment of an official means his or her removal from office. In fact, impeachment functions as an indictment of a public official; it allows the legislature to bring formal charges against a civil officer of government. After an official has been impeached, or formally charged, a trial is held to determine whether or not the official will be removed from office.

In the US Federal Government, the House of Representatives impeaches government officials and the trial takes place before the Senate. The House votes on the articles of impeachment, requiring a simple majority to pass them. Upon passage of the articles, an individual has been impeached.

Blagojevich is a state official and must be impeached by the Illinois State Legislature. The Illinois impeachment process is similar to the federal impeachment process, but not all states follow the same model. State impeachment proceedings take place according to each state's constitution and can vary widely.

Impeachable Offenses

According to the US Constitution, "Treason, Bribery, or other High Crimes and Misdemeanors" justify impeachment, although the exact definition of "High Crimes and Misdemeanors" is often the subject of debate. Usually, impeachment is reserved for serious offenses and abuses of power, and it is up to the impeaching body to determine whether or not an offense is impeachable. Offenses do not have to violate criminal law in order to be impeachable.

Blagojevich is the sixteenth governor to be impeached in the US; most, like Blagojevich, under charges of corruption. The most famous accusation against Governor Blagojevich is that he attempted to sell President-elect Barack Obama's vacant US Senate seat to the highest bidder, but other charges against him include conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud, solicitation of bribery, and trading official acts for campaign contributions. These accusations also led to Blagojevich's arrest on federal corruption charges in December 2008.

The Trial

After the House of Representatives impeaches, the Senate tries the accused. Senators are sworn in as jurors and rules for the proceedings are established. When a US President is impeached, the Chief Justice of the United States presides; in Blagojevich's case, the Chief Justice of the Illinois Supreme Court will preside over the hearing. A two-thirds majority is required to convict; otherwise, the accused is acquitted. Blagojevich's trial before the Illinois State Senate is scheduled to begin January 26, 2009; 40 of the 59 member votes are needed to convict him.

The Consequences

A conviction by the Senate brings immediate removal from office. If an official is convicted, the Senate may take a second vote to determine whether or not to bar the official from holding any public office in the future. The Senate trial does not constitute a criminal trial and the Senate decision does not have power beyond removal from office and barring of future public office. The impeached official is still subject to criminal prosecution for any criminal offenses that were included in the articles of impeachment.

Whether Blagojevich is convicted in his impeachment trial will have no bearing on the criminal charges levied against him by the US Department of Justice. Even though many of the same accusations were levied against him in both the impeachment and the federal corruption charges, Blagojevich will have to stand trial separately on the criminal charges.

In Blagojevich's case, the impending criminal trial is actually complicating the Senate impeachment trial. To avoid affecting the criminal investigation, the US Attorney's Office has asked that witnesses and evidence involved in the criminal investigation not be used in the Senate trial. Because many of the charges are the same for both trials, much of the evidence is applicable to both.

For more information:

Illinois State Senate Impeachment Documents

Constitution of the United States

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Finish your . Continue Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich is being impeached. How does the impeachment process work?On January 9, 2009, the Illinois House of Representatives impeached Governor Rod Blagojevich in a 114-1 vote. The decision was reaffirmed by the incoming legislature on January 14 in a 117-1 vote for impeachment.

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Republican Party- the younger of two major political parties in the United States; GOP is an acronym for grand old party

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Republican Party- the younger of two major political parties in the United States; GOP is an acronym for grand old party

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The Republican Party, also known as the GOP (" Grand Old Party"), is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States. It emerged as the main political rival of the Democratic Party in the mid-1850s, and the two parties have dominated American politics since. The GOP was founded in 1854 by anti-slavery activists who opposed the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which allowed for the potential expansion of chattel slavery into the western territories. The Republican Party today comprises diverse ideologies and factions, including centrist and right-libertarian factions, but conservatism is the party's majority ideology.

The Republican Party's ideological and historical predecessor is considered to be Northern members of the conservative Whig Party, with Republican presidents Abraham Lincoln, Rutherford B. Hayes, Chester A. Arthur, and Benjamin Harrison all being Whigs before switching to the party, from which they were elected. The collapse of the Whigs, which had previously been one of the two major parties in the country, strengthened the party's electoral success. Upon its founding, it supported classical liberalism and economic reform while opposing the expansion of slavery. The Republican Party initially consisted of Northern Protestants, factory workers, professionals, businessmen, prosperous farmers, and from 1866, former Black slaves. It had almost no presence in the Southern United States at its inception, but was very successful in the Northern United States where, by 1858, it had enlisted former Whigs and former Free Soil Democrats to form majorities in nearly every state in New England. While both parties adopted pro-business policies in the 19th century, the early GOP was distinguished by its support for the national banking system, the gold standard, railroads, and high tariffs. It did not openly oppose slavery in the Southern states before the start of the American Civil War-stating that it only opposed the spread of slavery into the territories or into the Northern states-but was widely seen as sympathetic to the abolitionist cause.

Seeing a future threat to the practice of slavery with the election of Abraham Lincoln, the first Republican president, many states in the South declared secession and joined the Confederacy. Under the leadership of Lincoln and a Republican Congress, it led the fight to destroy the Confederacy during the American Civil War, preserving the Union and abolishing slavery. The aftermath saw the party largely dominate the national political scene until 1932. The GOP lost its congressional majorities during the Great Depression when the Democrats' New Deal programs proved popular. Dwight D. Eisenhower presided over a period of economic prosperity after the Second World War. Following the successes of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s, the party's core base shifted, with the Southern states became increasingly Republican and the Northeastern states increasingly Democratic. After the Supreme Court's 1973 decision in , the Republican Party opposed abortion in its party platform. Richard Nixon carried 49 states in 1972 with his silent majority, even as the Watergate scandal dogged his campaign leading to his resignation. After Gerald Ford pardoned Nixon, he lost election to a full term and the Republicans would not regain power and realign the political landscape once more until 1980 with the election of Ronald Reagan, who brought together advocates of free-market economics, social conservatives, and Soviet Union hawks. George W. Bush oversaw the response to the September 11 attacks and the Iraq War.

As of the 2020s, the party does best among voters without a postgraduate degree; and those who live in rural, ex-urban, or small town areas; are married, men, or White; or who are evangelical Christians or Latter Day Saints. While it does not receive the majority of the votes of most racial and sexual minorities, it does among Cuban and Vietnamese voters. Since the 1980s, the party has gained support among members of the White working class while it has lost support among affluent and college-educated Whites. Since 2012, it has gained support among minorities, particularly working-class Asians and Hispanic/Latino Americans. The party currently supports deregulation, lower taxes, gun rights, restrictions on abortion, restrictions on labor unions, and increased military spending. It has taken widely variant positions on abortion, immigration, trade and foreign policy in its history. The Republican Party is a member of the International Democrat Union, an international alliance of centre-right political parties. It has several prominent political wings, including a student wing, the College Republicans; a women's wing, the National Federation of Republican Women; and an LGBT wing, the Log Cabin Republicans.

As of 2023, the GOP holds a majority in the U.S. House of Representatives, 26 state governorships, 28 state legislatures, and 22 state government trifectas. Six of the nine current U.S. Supreme Court justices were appointed by Republican presidents. Its most recent presidential nominee was Donald Trump, who was the 45th U.S. president from 2017 to 2021. There have been 19 Republican presidents, the most from any one political party. The Republican Party has won 24 presidential elections, one more than its main political rival, the Democratic Party.

19th century

Political parties derivation. Dotted line means unofficially.

The Republican Party was founded in the northern states in 1854 by forces opposed to the expansion of slavery, ex- Whigs and ex- Free Soilers. The Republican Party quickly became the principal opposition to the dominant Democratic Party and the briefly popular Know Nothing Party. The party grew out of opposition to the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which repealed the Missouri Compromise and opened Kansas Territory and Nebraska Territory to slavery and future admission as slave states. They denounced the expansion of slavery as a great evil, but did not call for ending it in the southern states. While opposition to the expansion of slavery was the most consequential founding principal of the party, like the Whig party it replaced, Republicans also called for economic and social modernization.

The first public meeting of the general anti-Nebraska movement, at which the name Republican was proposed, was held on March 20, 1854, at the Little White Schoolhouse in Ripon, Wisconsin. The name was partly chosen to pay homage to Thomas Jefferson's Democratic-Republican Party. The first official party convention was held on July 6, 1854, in Jackson, Michigan.

The party emerged from the great political realignment of the mid-1850s. Historian William Gienapp argues that the great realignment of the 1850s began before the Whigs' collapse, and was caused not by politicians but by voters at the local level. The central forces were ethno-cultural, involving tensions between pietistic Protestants versus liturgical Catholics, Lutherans and Episcopalians regarding Catholicism, prohibition and nativism. The Know Nothing Party embodied the social forces at work, but its weak leadership was unable to solidify its organization, and the Republicans picked it apart. Nativism was so powerful that the Republicans could not avoid it, but they did minimize it and turn voter wrath against the threat that slave owners would buy up the good farm lands wherever slavery was allowed. The realignment was powerful because it forced voters to switch parties, as typified by the rise and fall of the Know Nothings, the rise of the Republican Party and the splits in the Democratic Party.

At the 1856 Republican National Convention, the party adopted a national platform emphasizing opposition to the expansion of slavery into the territories. While Republican nominee John C. Frémont lost the 1856 United States presidential election to Democrat James Buchanan, Buchanan managed to win only four of the fourteen northern states and won his home state of Pennsylvania only narrowly. Republicans fared better in congressional and local elections, but Know Nothing candidates took a significant number of seats, creating an awkward three-party arrangement. Despite the loss of the presidency and the lack of a majority in Congress, Republicans were able to orchestrate a Republican Speaker of the House, which went to Nathaniel P. Banks. Historian James M. McPherson writes regarding Banks' speakership that "if any one moment marked the birth of the Republican party, this was it."

The Republicans were eager for the elections of 1860. Former Illinois Representative Abraham Lincoln spent several years building support within the party, campaigning heavily for Frémont in 1856 and making a bid for the Senate in 1858, losing to Democrat Stephen A. Douglas but gaining national attention from the Lincoln-Douglas debates it produced. At the 1860 Republican National Convention, Lincoln consolidated support among opponents of New York Senator William H. Seward, a fierce abolitionist who some Republicans feared would be too radical for crucial states such as Pennsylvania and Indiana, as well as those who disapproved of his support for Irish immigrants. Lincoln won on the third ballot and was ultimately elected president in the general election in a rematch against Douglas. Lincoln had not been on the ballot in a single southern state, and even if the vote for Democrats had not been split between Douglas, John C. Breckinridge and John Bell, the Republicans would have still won but without the popular vote. This election result helped kickstart the American Civil War, which lasted from 1861 until 1865.

The election of 1864 united War Democrats with the GOP in support of Lincoln and Tennessee Democratic Senator Andrew Johnson, who ran for president and vice president on the National Union Party ticket; Lincoln was re-elected. By June 1865, slavery was dead in the ex-Confederate states but remained legal in some border states. Under Republican congressional leadership, the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution -which banned slavery, except as punishment for a crime, in the United States-passed the Senate on April 8, 1864, the House of Representatives on January 31, 1865, and was ratified by the required 27 of the then 36 states on December 6, 1865.

Reconstruction, the gold standard, and the Gilded Age

Radical Republicans during Lincoln's presidency felt he was too moderate in his eradication of slavery and opposed his ten percent plan. Radical Republicans passed the Wade-Davis Bill in 1864, which sought to enforce the taking of the Ironclad Oath for all former Confederates. Lincoln vetoed the bill, believing it would jeopardize the peaceful reintegration of the ex-Confederate states.

Following the assassination of Lincoln, Johnson ascended to the presidency and was deplored by Radical Republicans. Johnson was vitriolic in his criticisms of the Radical Republicans during a national tour ahead of the 1866 midterm elections. Anti-Johnson Republicans won a two-thirds majority in both chambers of Congress following the elections, which helped lead the way toward his impeachment and near ouster from office in 1868. That same year, former Union Army General Ulysses S. Grant was elected as the next Republican president.

Grant was a Radical Republican which created some division within the party, some such as Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner and Illinois Senator Lyman Trumbull opposed most of his Reconstructionist policies. Others found contempt with the large-scale corruption present in Grant's administration, with the emerging Stalwart faction defending Grant and the spoils system, whereas the Half-Breeds pushed for reform of the civil service. Republicans who opposed Grant branched off to form the Liberal Republican Party, nominating Horace Greeley in 1872. The Democratic Party attempted to capitalize on this divide in the GOP by co-nominating Greeley under their party banner. Greeley's positions proved inconsistent with the Liberal Republican Party that nominated him, with Greeley supporting high tariffs despite the party's opposition. Grant was easily re-elected.

The 1876 general election saw a contentious conclusion as both parties claimed victory despite three southern states still not officially declaring a winner at the end of election day. Voter suppression had occurred in the south to depress the Black and White Republican vote, which gave Republican-controlled returning officers enough of a reason to declare that fraud, intimidation and violence had soiled the states' results. They proceeded to throw out enough Democratic votes for Republican Rutherford B. Hayes to be declared the winner. Still, Democrats refused to accept the results and an Electoral Commission made up of members of Congress was established to decide who would be awarded the states' electors. After the Commission voted along party lines in Hayes' favor, Democrats threatened to delay the counting of electoral votes indefinitely so no president would be inaugurated on March 4. This resulted in the Compromise of 1877 and Hayes finally became president.

Hayes doubled down on the gold standard, which had been signed into law by Grant with the Coinage Act of 1873, as a solution to the depressed American economy in the aftermath of the Panic of 1873. He also believed greenbacks posed a threat; greenbacks being money printed during the Civil War that was not backed by specie, which Hayes objected to as a proponent of hard money. Hayes sought to restock the country's gold supply, which by January 1879 succeeded as gold was more frequently exchanged for greenbacks compared to greenbacks being exchanged for gold. Ahead of the 1880 general election, Republican James G. Blaine ran for the party nomination supporting Hayes' gold standard push and supporting his civil reforms. Both falling short of the nomination, Blaine and opponent John Sherman backed Republican James A. Garfield, who agreed with Hayes' move in favor of the gold standard, but opposed his civil reform efforts.

Garfield was elected but assassinated early into his term, however his death helped create support for the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act, which was passed in 1883; the bill was signed into law by Republican President Chester A. Arthur, who succeeded Garfield.

Blaine once again ran for the presidency, winning the nomination but losing to Democrat Grover Cleveland in 1884, the first Democrat to be elected president since Buchanan. Dissident Republicans, known as Mugwumps, had defected Blaine due to corruption which had plagued his political career. Cleveland stuck to the gold standard policy, which eased most Republicans, but he came into conflict with the party regarding budding American imperialism. Republican Benjamin Harrison was able to reclaim the presidency from Cleveland in 1888. During his presidency, Harrison signed the Dependent and Disability Pension Act, which established pensions for all veterans of the Union who had served for more than 90 days and were unable to perform manual labor.

A majority of Republicans supported the annexation of Hawaii, under the new governance of Republican Sanford B. Dole, and Harrison, following his loss in 1892 to Cleveland, attempted to pass a treaty annexing Hawaii before Cleveland was to be inaugurated again. Cleveland opposed annexation, though Democrats were split geographically on the issue, with most northeastern Democrats proving to be the strongest voices of opposition.

In 1896, Republican William McKinley's platform supported the gold standard and high tariffs, having been the creator and namesake for the McKinley Tariff of 1890. Though having been divided on the issue prior to the 1896 Republican National Convention, McKinley decided to heavily favor the gold standard over free silver in his campaign messaging, but promised to continue bimetallism to ward off continued skepticism over the gold standard, which had lingered since the Panic of 1893. Democrat William Jennings Bryan proved to be a devoted adherent to the free silver movement, which cost Bryan the support of Democrat institutions such as Tammany Hall, the New York World and a large majority of the Democratic Party's upper and middle-class support. McKinley defeated Bryan and returned the White House to Republican control until 1912.

First half of the 20th century

Progressives vs. Standpatters

The 1896 realignment cemented the Republicans as the party of big businesses while Theodore Roosevelt added more small business support by his embrace of trust busting. He handpicked his successor William Howard Taft in 1908, but they became enemies as the party split down the middle. Taft defeated Roosevelt for the 1912 nomination so Roosevelt stormed out of the convention and started a new party. Roosevelt ran on the ticket of his new Progressive ("Bull Moose") Party. He called for social reforms, many of which were later championed by New Deal Democrats in the 1930s. He lost and when most of his supporters returned to the GOP they found they did not agree with the new conservative economic thinking, leading to an ideological shift to the right in the Republican Party.

Warren G. Harding, Calvin Coolidge and Herbert Hoover were resoundingly elected in 1920, 1924 and 1928, respectively. The Teapot Dome scandal threatened to hurt the party, but Harding died and the opposition splintered in 1924. The pro-business policies of the decade seemed to produce an unprecedented prosperity until the Wall Street Crash of 1929 heralded the Great Depression.

Roosevelt and the New Deal era

The New Deal coalition forged by Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt controlled American politics for most of the next three decades, excluding the two-term presidency of Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower. After Roosevelt took office in 1933, New Deal legislation sailed through Congress and the economy moved sharply upward from its nadir in early 1933. However, long-term unemployment remained a drag until 1940. In the 1934 midterm elections, 10 Republican senators went down to defeat, leaving the GOP with only 25 senators against 71 Democrats. The House of Representatives likewise had overwhelming Democratic majorities.

The Republican Party factionalized into a majority "Old Right" (based in the midwest) and a liberal wing based in the northeast that supported much of the New Deal. The Old Right sharply attacked the "Second New Deal" and said it represented class warfare and socialism. Roosevelt was re-elected in a landslide in 1936; however, as his second term began, the economy declined, strikes soared, and he failed to take control of the Supreme Court and purge the southern conservatives from the Democratic Party. Republicans made a major comeback in the 1938 elections and had new rising stars such as Robert A. Taft of Ohio on the right and Thomas E. Dewey of New York on the left. Southern conservatives joined with most Republicans to form the conservative coalition, which dominated domestic issues in Congress until 1964. Both parties split on foreign policy issues, with the anti-war isolationists dominant in the Republican Party and the interventionists who wanted to stop Adolf Hitler dominant in the Democratic Party. Roosevelt won a third and fourth term in 1940 and 1944, respectively. Conservatives abolished most of the New Deal during the war, but they did not attempt to do away with Social Security or the agencies that regulated business.

Historian George H. Nash argues:

Unlike the "moderate", internationalist, largely eastern bloc of Republicans who accepted (or at least acquiesced in) some of the "Roosevelt Revolution" and the essential premises of President Harry S. Truman's foreign policy, the Republican Right at heart was counterrevolutionary. Anti-collectivist, anti-Communist, anti-New Deal, passionately committed to limited government, free market economics, and congressional (as opposed to executive) prerogatives, the G.O.P. conservatives were obliged from the start to wage a constant two-front war: against liberal Democrats from without and "me-too" Republicans from within.

After 1945, the internationalist wing of the GOP cooperated with Truman's Cold War foreign policy, funded the Marshall Plan and supported NATO, despite the continued isolationism of the Old Right.

Second half of the 20th century

Post-Roosevelt era (1945-1964)

The second half of the 20th century saw the election or succession of Republican presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush. Eisenhower had defeated conservative leader Senator Robert A. Taft for the 1952 nomination, but conservatives dominated the domestic policies of the Eisenhower administration. Voters liked Eisenhower much more than they liked the GOP and he proved unable to shift the party to a more moderate position. Since 1976, liberalism has virtually faded out of the Republican Party, apart from a few northeastern holdouts.

From Goldwater to Reagan (1964-1980)

Historians cite the 1964 United States presidential election and its respective 1964 Republican National Convention as a significant shift, which saw the conservative wing, helmed by Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona, battle the liberal New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller and his eponymous Rockefeller Republican faction for the party presidential nomination. With Goldwater poised to win, Rockefeller, urged to mobilize his liberal faction, relented, "You're looking at it, buddy. I'm all that's left." Though Goldwater lost in a landslide, Reagan would make himself known as a prominent supporter of his throughout the campaign, delivering the " A Time for Choosing" speech for him. He'd go on to become governor of California two years later, and in 1980, win the presidency.

Reagan era (1980-1994)

The presidency of Reagan, lasting from 1981 to 1989, constituted what is known as the " Reagan Revolution'. It was seen as a fundamental shift from the stagflation of the 1970s preceding it, with the introduction of Reaganomics intended to cut taxes, prioritize government deregulation and shift funding from the domestic sphere into the military to check the Soviet Union by utilizing deterrence theory. During a visit to then- West Berlin in June 1987, he addressed Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev during a speech at the Berlin Wall, demanding that he "tear down this wall". The remark was ignored at the time but after the fall of the wall in 1989, was retroactively recast as a soaring achievement over the years.

After he left office in 1989, Reagan became an iconic conservative Republican. Republican presidential candidates would frequently claim to share his views and aim to establish themselves and their policies as the more appropriate heir to his legacy.

Vice President Bush scored a landslide in the 1988 general election. However his term would see a divide form within the Republican Party. Bush's vision of economic liberalization and international cooperation with foreign nations saw the negotiation and signing of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the conceptual beginnings of the World Trade Organization. Independent politician and businessman Ross Perot decried NAFTA and prophesied it would lead to outsourcing American jobs to Mexico, while Democrat Bill Clinton found agreement in Bush's policies. Bush lost reelection in 1992 with 37 percent of the popular vote, with Clinton garnering a plurality of 43 percent and Perot in third with 19 percent. While debatable if Perot's candidacy cost Bush reelection, Charlie Cook of The Cook Political Report attests Perot's messaging held more weight with Republican and conservative voters at-large. Perot formed the Reform Party and those who had been or would become prominent Republicans saw brief membership, such as former White House Communications Director Pat Buchanan and later President Donald Trump.

Gingrich Revolution (1994-2000)

Official portrait of Speaker Gingrich

In the Republican Revolution of 1994, the party-led by House Minority Whip Newt Gingrich, who campaigned on the " Contract with America"-won majorities in both chambers of Congress, gained 12 governorships and regained control of 20 state legislatures. However, most voters had not heard of the Contract and the Republican victory was attributed to traditional mid-term anti-incumbent voting and Republicans becoming the majority party in Dixie for the first time since Reconstruction. It was the first time the Republican Party had achieved a majority in the House since 1952. Gingrich was made Speaker of the House, and within the first 100 days of the Republican majority every proposition featured in the Contract with America was passed, with the exception of term limits for members of Congress, which did not pass in the Senate. One key to Gingrich's success in 1994 was nationalizing the election, which in turn led to Gingrich's becoming a national figure during the 1996 House elections, with many Democratic leaders proclaiming Gingrich was a zealous radical. The Republicans maintained their majority for the first time since 1928 despite the presidential ticket of Bob Dole- Jack Kemp losing handily to President Clinton in the general election. However, Gingrich's national profile proved a detriment to the Republican Congress, which enjoyed majority approval among voters in spite of Gingrich's relative unpopularity.

After Gingrich and the Republicans struck a deal with Clinton on the Balanced Budget Act of 1997 with added tax cuts included, the Republican House majority had difficulty convening on a new agenda ahead of the 1998 midterm elections. During the ongoing impeachment of Bill Clinton in 1998, Gingrich decided to make Clinton's misconduct the party message heading into the midterms, believing it would add to their majority. The strategy proved mistaken and the Republicans lost five seats, though whether it was due to poor messaging or Clinton's popularity providing a coattail effect is debated. Gingrich was ousted from party power due to the performance, ultimately deciding to resign from Congress altogether. For a short time afterward, it appeared Louisiana Representative Bob Livingston would become his successor; Livingston, however, stepped down from consideration and resigned from Congress after damaging reports of affairs threatened the Republican House's legislative agenda if he were to serve as Speaker. Illinois Representative Dennis Hastert was promoted to Speaker in Livingston's place, and served in that position until 2007.

21st century

George W. Bush (2001-2009)

A Republican ticket of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney won the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections. Bush campaigned as a " compassionate conservative" in 2000, wanting to better appeal to immigrants and minority voters. The goal was to prioritize drug rehabilitation programs and aid for prisoner reentry into society, a move intended to capitalize on President Bill Clinton's tougher crime initiatives such as his administration's 1994 crime bill. The platform failed to gain much traction among members of the party during his presidency.

With the inauguration of Bush as president, the Republican Party remained fairly cohesive for much of the 2000s, as both strong economic libertarians and social conservatives opposed the Democrats, whom they saw as the party of bloated, secular, and liberal government. This period saw the rise of "pro-government conservatives"-a core part of the Bush's base-a considerable group of the Republicans who advocated for increased government spending and greater regulations covering both the economy and people's personal lives, as well as for an activist and interventionist foreign policy. Survey groups such as the Pew Research Center found that social conservatives and free market advocates remained the other two main groups within the party's coalition of support, with all three being roughly equal in number. However, libertarians and libertarian-leaning conservatives increasingly found fault with what they saw as Republicans' restricting of vital civil liberties while corporate welfare and the national debt hiked considerably under Bush's tenure. In contrast, some social conservatives expressed dissatisfaction with the party's support for economic policies that conflicted with their moral values.

The Republican Party lost its Senate majority in 2001 when the Senate became split evenly; nevertheless, the Republicans maintained control of the Senate due to the tie-breaking vote of Vice President Cheney. Democrats gained control of the Senate on June 6, 2001, when Republican Senator Jim Jeffords of Vermont switched his party affiliation to Democrat. The Republicans regained the Senate majority in the 2002 elections, helped by Bush's surge in popularity following the September 11 attacks, and Republican majorities in the House and Senate were held until the Democrats regained control of both chambers in the mid-term elections of 2006, largely due to increasing opposition to the Iraq War.

In 2008, Republican Senator John McCain of Arizona and Governor Sarah Palin of Alaska were defeated by Democratic Senators Barack Obama and Joe Biden of Illinois and Delaware, respectively.

Recent (2010-present)

Tea Party movement (2010-2015)

Official portrait of Speaker Boehner

The Republicans experienced electoral success in the wave election of 2010, which coincided with the ascendancy of the Tea Party movement, an anti-Obama protest movement of fiscal conservatives. Members of the movement called for lower taxes, and for a reduction of the national debt of the United States and federal budget deficit through decreased government spending. It was also described as a popular constitutional movement composed of a mixture of libertarian, right-wing populist, and conservative activism. That success began with the upset win of Scott Brown in the Massachusetts special Senate election for a seat that had been held for decades by the Democratic Kennedy brothers. In the November elections, Republicans recaptured control of the House, increased their number of seats in the Senate and gained a majority of governorships. The Tea Party would go on to strongly influence the Republican Party, in part due to the replacement of establishment Republicans with Tea Party-style Republicans.

When Obama and Biden won re-election in 2012, defeating a Mitt Romney- Paul Ryan ticket, the Republicans lost seven seats in the House in the November congressional elections, but still retained control of that chamber. However, Republicans were not able to gain control of the Senate, continuing their minority status with a net loss of two seats. In the aftermath of the loss, some prominent Republicans spoke out against their own party. A 2012 election post-mortem by the Republican Party concluded that the party needed to do more on the national level to attract votes from minorities and young voters. In March 2013, National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus gave a stinging report on the party's electoral failures in 2012, calling on Republicans to reinvent themselves and officially endorse immigration reform. He said: "There's no one reason we lost. Our message was weak; our ground game was insufficient; we weren't inclusive; we were behind in both data and digital, and our primary and debate process needed improvement." He proposed 219 reforms, including a $10 million marketing campaign to reach women, minority demographics, and gay people, the setting of a shorter, more controlled primary season, and creating better data collection facilities.

Following the 2014 midterm elections, the Republican Party took control of the Senate by gaining nine seats. With a final total of 247 seats (57%) in the House and 54 seats in the Senate, the Republicans ultimately achieved their largest majority in the Congress since the 71st Congress in 1929.

Trump Era (2016-present)

The election of Republican Donald Trump to the presidency in 2016 marked a populist shift in the Republican Party. Trump's defeat of Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton was unexpected, as polls had shown Clinton leading the race.

Trump's victory was fueled by narrow victories in three states- Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin-that had traditionally been part of the Democratic blue wall for decades. According to NBC News, "Trump's power famously came from his 'silent majority'-working-class White voters who felt mocked and ignored by an establishment, loosely defined by special interests in Washington, news outlets in New York and tastemakers in Hollywood. He built trust within that base by abandoning Republican establishment orthodoxy on issues like trade and government spending in favor of a broader nationalist message".

After the 2016 elections, Republicans maintained a majority in the Senate, House, and state governorships, and wielded newly acquired executive power with Trump's election as president. The Republican Party controlled 69 of 99 state legislative chambers in 2017, the most it had held in history; and at least 33 governorships, the most it had held since 1922. The party had total control of government (legislative chambers and governorship) in 25 states, the most since 1952; the opposing Democratic Party had full control in only five states.

Over the course of his term, Trump appointed three justices to the Supreme Court: Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett - the most appointments of any president in a single term since fellow Republican Richard Nixon. He appointed 260 judges in total, creating overall Republican-appointed majorities on every branch of the federal judiciary except for the Court of International Trade by the time he left office, shifting the judiciary to the right. Other notable achievements during his presidency included the passing of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act in 2017, the creation of the United States Space Force - the first new independent military service since 1947 - and the brokering of the Abraham Accords, a series of normalization agreements between Israel and various Arab states.

Trump was impeached by the House of Representatives on December 18, 2019, on the charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. He was acquitted by Republicans in the Senate on February 5, 2020.

Trump lost reelection to Joe Biden in 2020 but refused to concede, claiming widespread electoral fraud and attempting to overturn the results, to which many attributed the U.S. Capitol being attacked by his supporters on January 6, 2021. Following the attack, the House impeached Trump for a second time on the charge of incitement of insurrection, making him the only federal officeholder in the history of the United States to be impeached twice. He left office on January 20, 2021, but the impeachment trial continued into the early weeks of the Biden administration, with Trump ultimately being acquitted a second time by Republicans in the Senate on February 13, 2021.

The political party alignment of each of the 50 United States, indicating which party dominates their legislature and governorship, as of July 2023. Sources: [172][173][174][175][176]

In 2022 and 2023, Supreme Court justices appointed by Trump proved decisive in landmark decisions on gun rights, abortion, and affirmative action.

Republicans went into the 2022 midterm elections confident, and with most election analysts predicting a red wave, but the party under-performed heavily, with voters in swing states and competitive districts joining Democrats in rejecting candidates who had been endorsed by Trump, or who denied the results of the 2020 election.

The party won the U.S. House, but with a narrow majority, when a large one had been expected for most of the cycle, and lost the U.S. Senate -- along with several state legislative majorities and governors -- leading to many Republicans and conservative thought leaders questioning whether Trump should continue as the party's main figurehead and leader. Florida governor Ron DeSantis, who won reelection in a historic landslide and was considered by many analysts as the midterms' biggest winner, was a frequently discussed name as the future party leader. Throughout 2023, DeSantis remained significantly behind Trump in polls regarding the 2024 Republican presidential candidate.

Name and symbols

The party's founding members chose the name Republican Party in the mid-1850s as homage to the values of republicanism promoted by Thomas Jefferson's Democratic-Republican Party, which Jefferson called the "Republican Party". The idea for the name came from an editorial by the party's leading publicist, Horace Greeley, who called for "some simple name like 'Republican' [that] would more fitly designate those who had united to restore the Union to its true mission of champion and promulgator of Liberty rather than propagandist of slavery". The name reflects the 1776 republican values of civic virtue and opposition to aristocracy and corruption. It is important to note that "republican" has a variety of meanings around the world, and the Republican Party has evolved such that the meanings no longer always align.

The term "Grand Old Party" is a traditional nickname for the Republican Party, and the abbreviation "GOP" is a commonly used designation. The term originated in 1875 in the Congressional Record, referring to the party associated with the successful military defense of the Union as "this gallant old party". The following year in an article in the Cincinnati Commercial, the term was modified to "grand old party". The first use of the abbreviation is dated 1884.

The traditional mascot of the party is the elephant. A political cartoon by Thomas Nast, published in Harper's Weekly on November 7, 1874, is considered the first important use of the symbol. An alternate symbol of the Republican Party in states such as Indiana, New York and Ohio is the bald eagle as opposed to the Democratic rooster or the Democratic five-pointed star. In Kentucky, the log cabin is a symbol of the Republican Party.

Traditionally the party had no consistent color identity. After the 2000 election, the color red became associated with Republicans. During and after the election, the major broadcast networks used the same color scheme for the electoral map: states won by Republican nominee George W. Bush were colored red and states won by Democratic nominee Al Gore were colored blue. Due to the weeks-long dispute over the election results, these color associations became firmly ingrained, persisting in subsequent years. Although the assignment of colors to political parties is unofficial and informal, the media has come to represent the respective political parties using these colors. The party and its candidates have also come to embrace the color red.

The Republican Party includes several factions. In the 21st century, Republican factions include conservatives, centrists, right-libertarians, and populists. There are significant divisions within the party on the issues of abortion, same-sex marriage, and free trade.

Conservatives

Since Ronald Reagan's presidential election in 1980, American conservatism has been the dominant faction of the Republican Party. Most modern conservatives combine support for free-market economic policies with social conservatism and a hawkish approach to foreign policy. They generally support policies that favor limited government, individualism, traditionalism, republicanism, and limited federal governmental power in relation to the states.

Right-libertarians

The Republican Party has a significant right-libertarian faction. Barry Goldwater had a substantial impact on the conservative-libertarian movement of the 1960s. Compared to other Republicans, they are more likely to favor the legalization of marijuana, LGBT rights such as same-sex marriage, gun rights, oppose mass surveillance, and support reforms to current laws surrounding civil asset forfeiture. Right-wing libertarians are strongly divided on the subject of abortion.

Prominent libertarian conservatives within the Republican Party include Kentucky senator Rand Paul, Kentucky's 4th congressional district congressman Thomas Massie, Utah senator Mike Lee and Wyoming senator Cynthia Lummis.

Religious right

Since the rise of the Christian right in the 1970s, the Republican Party has drawn significant support from traditionalist Roman Catholics and evangelicals partly due to opposition to abortion after . Compared to other Republicans, the religious right faction of the party is more likely to oppose LGBT rights and marijuana legalization.

Since the 1967 Six Day War, the Christian right has generally supported close ties between the United States and Israel, although this has changed since the mid-2010s to some extent. Support for Israel is significantly less among younger evangelicals. Between 2018 and 2021, support for Israel among evangelicals aged 18-29 dropped from 75% to 34%. A growing minority of evangelicals have identified as anti-Zionist.

Right-wing populists

Jerry Falwell Jr. with former President Donald Trump. Both have been identified by commentators as figures of the Christian right[219] and right-wing populism,[220] respectively.

Since the election of Donald Trump, factions of the Republican Party can be characterized as right-wing populist. The role of the Tea Party in paving the way for the faction is a subject of debate. Compared to other Republicans, the right-wing populist faction is more likely to oppose legal immigration, free trade, neoconservatism, and environmental protection laws. Prominent examples include Donald Trump, Lauren Boebert, and Marjorie Taylor Greene.

Lilliana Mason, associate professor of political science at Johns Hopkins University, states that Donald Trump solidified the trend among Southern White conservative Democrats since the 1960s of leaving the Democratic Party and joining the Republican Party: "Trump basically worked as a lightning rod to finalize that process of creating the Republican Party as a single entity for defending the high status of White, Christian, rural Americans. It's not a huge percentage of Americans that holds these beliefs, and it's not even the entire Republican Party; it's just about half of it. But the party itself is controlled by this intolerant, very strongly pro-Trump faction."

Moderate Republicans

Notable moderate Republicans include Utah governor Spencer Cox, Vermont governor Phil Scott, former Massachusetts governor Charlie Baker, and former Maryland governor Larry Hogan.

Historical

Civil War and Reconstruction era (1861-1876)

U.S. Representative Thaddeus Stevens, considered a leader of the Radical Republicans, was a fierce opponent of slavery and discrimination against African Americans.

During the 19th century, Republican factions included the Radical Republicans. They were a major factor of the party from its inception in 1854 until the end of the Reconstruction Era in 1877. They strongly opposed slavery, were hard-line abolitionists, and later advocated equal rights for the freedmen and women. Predominately, they were heavily influenced by religious ideals and evangelical Christianity; many were Christian reformers who saw slavery as evil and the Civil War as God's punishment for it. Radical Republicans pressed for abolition as a major war aim and they opposed the moderate Reconstruction plans of Abraham Lincoln as both too lenient on the Confederates and not going far enough to help former slaves who had been freed during or after the Civil War by the Emancipation Proclamation and the Thirteenth Amendment. After the war's end and Lincoln's assassination, the Radicals clashed with Andrew Johnson over Reconstruction policy. Radicals led efforts after the war to establish civil rights for former slaves and fully implement emancipation. After unsuccessful measures in 1866 resulted in violence against former slaves in the rebel states, Radicals pushed the Fourteenth Amendment for statutory protections through Congress. They opposed allowing ex- Confederate officers to retake political power in the Southern U.S., and emphasized liberty, equality, and the Fifteenth Amendment which provided voting rights for the freedmen. Many later became Stalwarts, who supported machine politics.

Moderate Republicans were known for their loyal support of President Abraham Lincoln's war policies and expressed antipathy towards the more militant stances advocated by the Radical Republicans. According to historian Eric Foner, congressional leaders of the faction were James G. Blaine, John A. Bingham, William P. Fessenden, Lyman Trumbull, and John Sherman. In contrast to Radicals, Moderate Republicans were less enthusiastic on the issue of Black suffrage even while embracing civil equality and the expansive federal authority observed throughout the American Civil War. They were also skeptical of the lenient, conciliatory Reconstruction policies of President Andrew Johnson. Members of the Moderate Republicans comprised in part of previous Radical Republicans who became disenchanted with the alleged corruption of the latter faction. Charles Sumner, a Massachusetts senator who led Radical Republicans in the 1860s, later joined reform-minded moderates as he later opposed the corruption associated with the Grant administration. They generally opposed efforts by Radical Republicans to rebuild the Southern U.S. under an economically mobile, free-market system.

20th century

In the 20th century, Republican factions included the Progressive Republicans, the Reagan coalition, and the liberal Rockefeller Republicans.

Political positions

Economic policies

Republicans believe that free markets and individual achievement are the primary factors behind economic prosperity. Republicans frequently advocate in favor of fiscal conservatism during Democratic administrations; however, they have shown themselves willing to increase federal debt when they are in charge of the government (the implementation of the Bush tax cuts, Medicare Part D and the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 are examples of this willingness). Despite pledges to roll back government spending, Republican administrations have, since the late 1960s, sustained or increased previous levels of government spending.

The modern Republican Party's economic policy positions, as measured by votes in Congress, tend to align with business interests and the affluent. Modern Republicans advocate the theory of supply-side economics, which holds that lower tax rates increase economic growth. Many Republicans oppose higher tax rates for higher earners, which they believe are unfairly targeted at those who create jobs and wealth. They believe private spending is more efficient than government spending. Republican lawmakers have also sought to limit funding for tax enforcement and tax collection. At the national level and state level, Republicans tend to pursue policies of tax cuts and deregulation.

Republicans believe individuals should take responsibility for their own circumstances. They also believe the private sector is more effective in helping the poor through charity than the government is through welfare programs and that social assistance programs often cause government dependency. As of November 2022, all eleven States that have not expanded Medicaid have Republican-controlled state legislatures.

Labor unions and the minimum wage

Republicans believe corporations should be able to establish their own employment practices, including benefits and wages, with the free market deciding the price of work. Since the 1920s, Republicans have generally been opposed by labor union organizations and members. At the national level, Republicans supported the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947, which gives workers the right not to participate in unions. Modern Republicans at the state level generally support various right-to-work laws, which prohibit union security agreements requiring all workers in a unionized workplace to pay dues or a fair-share fee, regardless of whether they are members of the union or not.

The Republican Party has taken widely varying views on international trade throughout its history. At its inception, the Republican Party supported protective tariffs. In the 1896 presidential election, Republican presidential William McKinley campaigned heavily on high tariffs, having been the creator and namesake for the McKinley Tariff of 1890.

In the early 20th century the Republican Party began splitting on tariffs, with the great battle over the high Payne-Aldrich Tariff Act in 1910 splitting the party and causing a realignment. Democratic president Woodrow Wilson cut rates with the 1913 Underwood Tariff and the coming of World War I in 1914 radically revised trade patterns due to reduced trade. Also, the new revenues generated by the federal income tax due to the 16th amendment made tariffs less important in terms of economic impact and political rhetoric. When the Republicans returned to power in 1921 they again imposed a protective tariff. They raised it again with the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930 to meet the Great Depression in the United States, but the depression only worsened and Democratic President Franklin D. Roosevelt became President from 1932 to 1945.

The Reciprocal Tariff Act of 1934 marked a sharp departure from the era of protectionism in the United States. American duties on foreign products declined from an average of 46% in 1934 to 12% by 1962, which included the presidency of Republican president Dwight D. Eisenhower. After World War II, the U.S. promoted the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) established in 1947, to minimize tariffs and other restrictions, and to liberalize trade among all capitalist countries.

During the Reagan and George H. W. Bush administrations Republicans abandoned protectionist policies, and came out against quotas and in favor of the GATT and the World Trade Organization policy of minimal economic barriers to global trade. Free trade with Canada came about as a result of the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement of 1987, which led in 1994 to the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) based on Reagan's plan to enlarge the scope of the market for American firms to include Canada and Mexico. President Bill Clinton, with strong Republican support in 1993, pushed NAFTA through Congress over the vehement objection of labor unions.

In the 21st century, opinions on trade and protectionism have fluctuated, more recently splitting roughly on partisan lines. In 2017, only 36% of Republicans agreed that free trade agreements are good for the United States, compared to 67% of Democrats. When asked if free trade has helped respondents specifically, the approval numbers for Democrats drop to 54%, however approval ratings among Republicans remain relatively unchanged at 34%. The 2016 election marked the beginning of the trend of returning to protectionism, an ideology incorporated into Republican president Donald Trump's platform.

Environmental policies

Historically, progressive leaders in the Republican Party supported environmental protection. Republican President Theodore Roosevelt was a prominent conservationist whose policies eventually led to the creation of the National Park Service. While Republican President Richard Nixon was not an environmentalist, he signed legislation to create the Environmental Protection Agency in 1970 and had a comprehensive environmental program. However, this position has changed since the 1980s and the administration of President Ronald Reagan, who labeled environmental regulations a burden on the economy. Since then, Republicans have increasingly taken positions against environmental regulation, with many Republicans rejecting the scientific consensus on climate change.

In 2006, then- California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger broke from Republican orthodoxy to sign several bills imposing caps on carbon emissions in California. Then-President George W. Bush opposed mandatory caps at a national level. Bush's decision not to regulate carbon dioxide as a pollutant was challenged in the Supreme Court by 12 states, with the court ruling against the Bush administration in 2007. Bush also publicly opposed ratification of the Kyoto Protocols which sought to limit greenhouse gas emissions and thereby combat climate change; his position was heavily criticized by climate scientists.

The Republican Party rejects cap-and-trade policy to limit carbon emissions. In the 2000s, Senator John McCain proposed bills (such as the McCain-Lieberman Climate Stewardship Act) that would have regulated carbon emissions, but his position on climate change was unusual among high-ranking party members. Some Republican candidates have supported the development of alternative fuels in order to achieve energy independence for the United States. Some Republicans support increased oil drilling in protected areas such as the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, a position that has drawn criticism from activists.

Many Republicans during the presidency of Barack Obama opposed his administration's new environmental regulations, such as those on carbon emissions from coal. In particular, many Republicans supported building the Keystone Pipeline; this position was supported by businesses, but opposed by indigenous peoples' groups and environmental activists.

According to the Center for American Progress, a non-profit liberal advocacy group, more than 55% of congressional Republicans were climate change deniers in 2014. PolitiFact in May 2014 found "relatively few Republican members of Congress ... accept the prevailing scientific conclusion that global warming is both real and man-made." The group found eight members who acknowledged it, although the group acknowledged there could be more and that not all members of Congress have taken a stance on the issue.

From 2008 to 2017, the Republican Party went from "debating how to combat human-caused climate change to arguing that it does not exist", according to The New York Times. In January 2015, the Republican-led U.S. Senate voted 98-1 to pass a resolution acknowledging that "climate change is real and is not a hoax"; however, an amendment stating that "human activity significantly contributes to climate change" was supported by only five Republican senators.

Health care

The party opposes a single-payer health care system, describing it as socialized medicine. The Republican Party has a mixed record of supporting the historically popular Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid programs, and opposing the Affordable Care Act and expansions of Medicaid. Historically, there have been diverse and overlapping views within both the Republican Party and the Democratic Party on the role of government in health care, but the two parties became highly polarized on the topic during 2008-2009 and onwards.

Both Republicans and Democrats made various proposals to establish federally funded aged health insurance prior to the bipartisan effort to establish Medicare and Medicaid in 1965. The Republican Party opposes the Affordable Care Act, with no Republican member of Congress voting for it in 2009 and frequent subsequent attempts by Republicans to repeal the legislation. At the state level, the party has tended to adopt a position against Medicaid expansion.

According to a 2023 poll, Republicans are slightly more likely to oppose intersex medical alterations than Democrats.

Foreign policy

The Republican Party has a persistent history of skepticism and opposition to multilateralism in American foreign policy. Neoconservatism, which supports unilateralism and emphasizes the use of force and hawkishness in American foreign policy, has been a prominent strand of foreign policy thinking in all Republican presidential administration since Ronald Reagan's presidency. Some, including paleoconservatives, call for non-interventionism and an America First foreign policy. This faction gained strength starting in 2016 with the rise of Donald Trump, demanding that the United States reset its previous interventionist foreign policy and encourage allies and partners to take greater responsibility.

War on terror

Since the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, many[who? ] in the party have supported neoconservative policies with regard to the War on Terror, including the War in Afghanistan and the Iraq War. The George W. Bush administration took the position that the Geneva Conventions do not apply to unlawful combatants, while other prominent Republicans, such as Ted Cruz, strongly oppose the use of enhanced interrogation techniques, which they view as torture.

Foreign aid

Republicans have frequently advocated for restricting foreign aid as a means of asserting the national security and immigration interests of the United States.

Foreign relations

The Republican Party generally supports a strong alliance with Israel and efforts to secure peace in the Middle East between Israel and its Arab neighbors. In recent years, Republicans have begun to move away from the two-state solution approach to resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In a 2014 poll, 59% of Republicans favored doing less abroad and focusing on the country's own problems instead.

According to the 2016 platform, the party's stance on the status of Taiwan is: "We oppose any unilateral steps by either side to alter the status quo in the Taiwan Straits on the principle that all issues regarding the island's future must be resolved peacefully, through dialogue, and be agreeable to the people of Taiwan." In addition, if "China were to violate those principles, the United States, in accord with the Taiwan Relations Act, will help Taiwan defend itself".

Social issues

The Republican Party is generally associated with social conservative policies, although it does have dissenting centrist and libertarian factions. The social conservatives support laws that uphold their traditional values, such as opposition to same-sex marriage, abortion, and marijuana. The Republican Party's positions on social and cultural issues are in part a reflection of the influential role that the Christian right has had in the party since the 1970s. Most conservative Republicans also oppose gun control, affirmative action, and illegal immigration.

Abortion and embryonic stem cell research

The Republican position on abortion has changed significantly over time. During the 1960s and early 1970s, opposition to abortion was concentrated among members of the political left and the Democratic Party; most liberal Catholics - which tended to vote for the Democratic Party - opposed expanding abortion access while most conservative evangelical Protestants supported it.

During this period, Republicans generally favored legalized abortion more than Democrats, although significant heterogeneity could be found within both parties. Leading Republican political figures such as Ronald Reagan, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, George H.W. Bush, took pro-choice positions until the early 1980s. However, starting at this point, both George H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan described themselves as pro-life during their presidencies. In the 21st century, both George W. Bush and Donald Trump described themselves as "pro-life" during their terms. However, Trump stated that he supported the legality and ethics of abortion before his candidacy in 2015.

...in the late 1960s and early 1970s, many Republicans were behind efforts to liberalize and even decriminalize abortion; theirs was the party of reproductive choice, while Democrats, with their large Catholic constituency, were the opposition. Republican governor Ronald Reagan signed the California Therapeutic Abortion Act, one of the most liberal abortion laws in the country, in 1967, legalizing abortion for women whose mental or physical health would be impaired by pregnancy, or whose pregnancies were the result of rape or incest. The same year, the Republican strongholds of North Carolina and Colorado made it easier for women to obtain abortions. New York, under Governor Nelson Rockefeller, a Republican, eliminated all restrictions on women seeking to terminate pregnancies up to twenty-four weeks gestation.... Richard Nixon, Barry Goldwater, Gerald Ford, and George H.W. Bush were all pro-choice, and they were not party outliers. In 1972, a Gallup poll found that 68 percent of Republicans believed abortion to be a private matter between a woman and her doctor. The government, they said, should not be involved...

Since the 1980s, opposition to abortion has become strongest in the party among traditionalist Catholics and conservative Protestant evangelicals. With the possible exception of the ordeal of the bitter water in Numbers 5:11-31, the Bible does not mention the topic of abortion or explicitly take a position on the practice, although several verses have been interpreted as supporting or opposing the ethics of abortion. Initially, evangelicals were relatively indifferent to the cause of abortion and overwhelmingly viewed it as a concern that was sectarian and Catholic. Historian Randall Balmer notes that Billy Graham's Christianity Today published in 1968 a statement by theologian Bruce Waltke that: "God does not regard the fetus as a soul, no matter how far gestation has progressed. The Law plainly exacts: "If a man kills any human life he will be put to death" (Lev. 24:17). But according to Exodus 21:22-24, the destruction of the fetus is not a capital offense. ... Clearly, then, in contrast to the mother, the fetus is not reckoned as a soul." Typical of the time, Christianity Today "refused to characterize abortion as sinful" and cited "individual health, family welfare, and social responsibility" as "justifications for ending a pregnancy." Similar beliefs were held among conservative figures in the Southern Baptist Convention, including W. A. Criswell, who is partially credited with starting the " conservative resurgence" within the organization, who stated: "I have always felt that it was only after a child was born and had a life separate from its mother that it became an individual person and it has always, therefore, seemed to me that what is best for the mother and for the future should be allowed." Balmer argues that evangelical American Christianiy being inherently tied to opposition to abortion is a relatively new occurrence. After the late 1970s, he writes, opinion against abortion among evangelicals rapidly shifted in favor of its prohibition.

Today, opinion polls show that Republican voters are heavily divided on the legality of abortion, although vast majority of the party's national and state candidates are anti-abortion and oppose elective abortion on religious or moral grounds. While many advocate exceptions in the case of incest, rape or the mother's life being at risk, in 2012 the party approved a platform advocating banning abortions without exception. There were not highly polarized differences between the Democratic Party and the Republican Party prior to the 1973 Supreme Court ruling (which made prohibitions on abortion rights unconstitutional), but after the Supreme Court ruling, opposition to abortion became an increasingly key national platform for the Republican Party. As a result, Evangelicals gravitated towards the Republican Party. Most Republicans oppose government funding for abortion providers, notably Planned Parenthood. This includes support for the Hyde Amendment.

The Republican Party has pursued policies at the national and state-level to restrict embryonic stem cell research beyond the original lines because it involves the destruction of human embryos.

After the overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022, a majority of Republican-controlled states passed near-total bans on abortion, rendering it largely illegal throughout much of the United States.

Affirmative action

Republicans are generally against affirmative action for women and some minorities, often describing it as a " quota system" and believing that it is not meritocratic and is counter-productive socially by only further promoting discrimination. The GOP's official stance supports race-neutral admissions policies in universities, but supports taking into account the socioeconomic status of the student. The 2012 Republican National Committee platform stated, "We support efforts to help low-income individuals get a fair chance based on their potential and individual merit; but we reject preferences, quotas, and set-asides, as the best or sole methods through which fairness can be achieved, whether in government, education or corporate boardrooms...Merit, ability, aptitude, and results should be the factors that determine advancement in our society."

Gun ownership

U.S. opinion on gun control issues is deeply divided along political lines, as shown in this 2021 survey.[345]

Republicans generally support gun ownership rights and oppose laws regulating guns. Party members and Republican-leaning independents are twice as likely to own a gun as Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents.

The National Rifle Association, a special interest group in support of gun ownership, has consistently aligned itself with the Republican Party. Following gun control measures under the Clinton administration, such as the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, the Republicans allied with the NRA during the Republican Revolution in 1994. Since then, the NRA has consistently backed Republican candidates and contributed financial support, such as in the 2013 Colorado recall election which resulted in the ousting of two pro-gun control Democrats for two anti-gun control Republicans.

In contrast, George H. W. Bush, formerly a lifelong NRA member, was highly critical of the organization following their response to the Oklahoma City bombing authored by CEO Wayne LaPierre, and publicly resigned in protest.

Drug legalization

Republican elected officials have historically supported the War on Drugs. They oppose legalization or decriminalization of drugs such as marijuana.

Opposition to the legalization of marijuana has softened significantly over time among Republican voters. A 2021 Quinnipiac poll found that 62% of Republicans supported the legalization of recreational marijuana use and that net support for the position was +30 points.

Immigration

The Republican Party has taken widely varying views on immigration throughout its history, including in modern times. In the period 1850-1870, the Republican Party was more opposed to immigration than Democrats, in part because the Republican Party relied on the support of anti-Catholic and anti-immigrant parties, such as the Know-Nothings, at the time. In the decades following the Civil War, the Republican Party grew more supportive of immigration, as it represented manufacturers in the northeast (who wanted additional labor) whereas the Democratic Party came to be seen as the party of labor (which wanted fewer laborers to compete with). Starting in the 1970s, the parties switched places again, as the Democrats grew more supportive of immigration than Republicans.

Republicans are divided on how to confront illegal immigration. In 2006, the White House supported and Republican-led Senate passed comprehensive immigration reform that would eventually allow millions of illegal immigrants to become citizens, but the House (also led by Republicans) did not advance the bill. After being defeated in the 2012 presidential election, particularly due to a lack of support among Latinos, several Republicans advocated a friendlier approach to immigrants that allowed for more migrant workers and a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. The Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act of 2013 passed the Senate 68-32, but was not brought up to a vote in the House and died in the 113th Congress. In a 2013 poll, 60% of Republicans supported the pathway concept.

In 2016, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump proposing building a wall along the southern border. Trump enacted several hardline immigration policies during his administration, including a travel ban from multiple Muslim-majority countries, a Remain in Mexico policy for asylum-seekers, a controversial family separation policy, and attempting to end DACA. Since the end of Trump's presidency, the Republican Party has continued to take a hardline stance against illegal immigration, though there are widely differing views on immigration within the party.

LGBT issues

Similar to the Democratic Party, the Republican position on LGBT rights has changed significantly over time, with continuously increasing support among both parties on the issue. The Log Cabin Republicans is a group within the Republican Party that represents LGBT conservatives and allies and advocates for LGBT rights and equality. As of 2023, a large majority of Republican voters support same-sex marriage.

According to FiveThirtyEight, as of 2022 this growth in support for same-sex marriage has occurred faster among Republican voters than among party elites and elected politicians. Both Republican and Democratic politicians predominately took hostile positions on LGBT rights before the 2000s. From the early-2000s to the mid-2010s, Republicans opposed same-sex marriage, while being divided on the issue of civil unions and domestic partnerships for same-sex couples. During the 2004 election, George W. Bush campaigned prominently on a constitutional amendment to prohibit same-sex marriage; many believe it helped Bush win re-election. In both 2004 and 2006, President Bush, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, and House Majority Leader John Boehner promoted the Federal Marriage Amendment, a proposed constitutional amendment which would legally restrict the definition of marriage to heterosexual couples. In both attempts, the amendment failed to secure enough votes to invoke cloture and thus ultimately was never passed. As more states legalized same-sex marriage in the 2010s, Republicans increasingly supported allowing each state to decide its own marriage policy. As of 2014, most state GOP platforms expressed opposition to same-sex marriage. The 2016 GOP Platform defined marriage as "natural marriage, the union of one man and one woman," and condemned the Supreme Court's ruling legalizing same-sex marriages. The 2020 platform retained the 2016 language against same-sex marriage.

Following his election as president in 2016, Donald Trump stated that he had no objection to same-sex marriage or to the Supreme Court decision in Obergefell v. Hodges, but had previously promised to consider appointing a Supreme Court justice to roll back the constitutional right. In office, Trump was the first sitting Republican president to recognize LGBT Pride Month. Conversely, the Trump administration banned transgender individuals from service in the United States military and rolled back other protections for transgender people which had been enacted during the previous Democratic presidency.

The Republican Party platform previously opposed the inclusion of gay people in the military and opposed adding sexual orientation to the list of protected classes since 1992. The Republican Party opposed the inclusion of sexual preference in anti-discrimination statutes from 1992 to 2004. The 2008 and 2012 Republican Party platform supported anti-discrimination statutes based on sex, race, age, religion, creed, disability, or national origin, but both platforms were silent on sexual orientation and gender identity. The 2016 platform was opposed to sex discrimination statutes that included the phrase "sexual orientation".

On November 6, 2021, RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel announced the creation of the "RNC Pride Coalition", in partnership with the Log Cabin Republicans, to promote outreach to LGBTQ voters. However, after the announcement, McDaniel apologized for not having communicated the announcement in advance and emphasized that the new outreach program does not alter the GOP Platform, last adopted in 2016.

In the early 2020s, numerous Republican-led states proposed or passed laws surrounding transgender care for minors, public performances of drag shows, and teaching schoolchildren about LGBT topics.

Voting rights

Virtually all restrictions on voting have in recent years been implemented by Republicans. Republicans, mainly at the state level, argue that the restrictions (such as the purging of voter rolls, limiting voting locations, and limiting early and mail-in voting) are vital to prevent voter fraud, saying that voter fraud is an underestimated issue in elections. Polling has found majority support for early voting, automatic voter registration and voter ID laws among the general population.

In defending their restrictions to voting rights, Republicans have made false and exaggerated claims about the extent of voter fraud in the United States; all existing research indicates that it is extremely rare, and civil and voting rights organizations often accuse Republicans of enacting restrictions to influence elections in the party's favor. Many laws or regulations restricting voting enacted by Republicans have been successfully challenged in court, with court rulings striking down such regulations and accusing Republicans of establishing them with partisan purpose.

After the Supreme Court decision in Shelby County v. Holder rolled back aspects of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, Republicans introduced cuts to early voting, purges of voter rolls and imposition of strict voter ID laws. The 2016 Republican platform advocated proof of citizenship as a prerequisite for registering to vote and photo ID as a prerequisite when voting.

After Donald Trump and his Republican allies made false claims of fraud during the 2020 presidential election, Republicans launched a nationwide effort to impose tighter election laws at the state level. Such bills are centered around limiting mail-in voting, strengthening voter ID laws, shortening early voting, eliminating automatic and same-day voter registration, curbing the use of ballot drop boxes, and allowing for increased purging of voter rolls. Republicans in at least eight states have also introduced bills that would give lawmakers greater power over election administration, after they were unsuccessful in their attempts to overturn election results in swing states won by Biden.

Supporters of the bills argue they would improve election security and reverse temporary changes enacted during the COVID-19 pandemic; they point to false claims of significant election fraud, as well as the substantial public distrust of the integrity of the 2020 election those claims have fostered, as justification. Political analysts say that the efforts amount to voter suppression, are intended to advantage Republicans by reducing the number of people who vote, and would disproportionately affect minority voters.

Composition

Annual population growth in the U.S. by county - 2010s

This map shows the vote in the 2020 presidential election by county.[A]

In the Party's early decades, its base consisted of northern White Protestants and Black Americans nationwide. Its first presidential candidate, John C. Frémont, received almost no votes in the South. This trend continued into the 20th century. Following the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965, the southern states became more reliably Republican in presidential politics, while northeastern states became more reliably Democratic. Studies show that southern Whites shifted to the Republican Party due to racial conservatism.

While scholars agree that a racial backlash played a central role in the racial realignment of the two parties, certain experts dispute the extent in which the racial realignment was a top-driven elite process or a bottom-up process. The " Southern Strategy" refers primarily to "top-down" narratives of the political realignment of the South which suggest that Republican leaders consciously appealed to many White southerners' racial grievances in order to gain their support. This top-down narrative of the Southern Strategy is generally believed to be the primary force that transformed Southern politics following the civil rights era. Scholar Matthew Lassiter argues that "demographic change played a more important role than racial demagoguery in the emergence of a two-party system in the American South". Historians such as Matthew Lassiter, Kevin M. Kruse and Joseph Crespino, have presented an alternative, "bottom-up" narrative, which Lassiter has called the "suburban strategy". This narrative recognizes the centrality of racial backlash to the political realignment of the South, but suggests that this backlash took the form of a defense of de facto segregation in the suburbs rather than overt resistance to racial integration and that the story of this backlash is a national rather than a strictly southern one.

The Party's 21st-century base consists of groups such as White voters, particularly male, but a majority of White women as well; heterosexual married couples; rural residents; and non-union workers without college degrees. Meanwhile, urban residents, union workers, most ethnic minorities, the unmarried, and sexual minorities tend to vote for the Democratic Party. The suburbs have become a major battleground. Since the 2010s, the party is strongest in the South, most of the Midwestern and Mountain States, and Alaska according to The New York Times.

According to a 2015 Gallup poll, 25% of Americans identify as Republican and 16% identify as leaning Republican. In comparison, 30% identify as Democratic and 16% identify as leaning Democratic. The Democratic Party has typically held an overall edge in party identification since Gallup began polling on the issue in 1991. In recent years, the party has made significant gains among the White working class, Hispanics, and Orthodox Jews while losing support among most upper-class and college-educated Whites.

Ideology and factions

Political scientists characterize the Republican Party as more ideologically cohesive than the Democratic Party, which is composed of a broader diversity of coalitions.

In 2018, Gallup polling found that 69% of Republicans described themselves as " conservative", while 25% opted for the term "moderate", and another 5% self-identified as " liberal". When ideology is separated into social and economic issues, a 2020 Gallup poll found that 61% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents called themselves " socially conservative", 28% chose the label " socially moderate", and 10% called themselves " socially liberal". On economic issues, the same 2020 poll revealed that 65% of Republicans (and Republican leaners) chose the label " economic conservative" to describe their views on fiscal policy, while 26% selected the label "economic moderate", and 7% opted for the "economic liberal" label.

In addition to splits over ideology, the 21st-century Republican Party can be broadly divided into establishment and anti-establishment wings. Nationwide polls of Republican voters in 2014 by the Pew Center identified a growing split in the Republican coalition, between "business conservatives" or "establishment conservatives" on one side and "steadfast conservatives" or "populist conservatives" on the other.

Political polarization

Towards the end of the 1990s and in the early 21st century, the Republican Party increasingly resorted to " constitutional hardball" practices.

A number of scholars have asserted that the House speakership of Republican Newt Gingrich played a key role in undermining democratic norms in the United States, hastening political polarization, and increasing partisan prejudice. According to Harvard University political scientists Daniel Ziblatt and Steven Levitsky, Gingrich's speakership had a profound and lasting impact on American politics and the health of American democracy. They argue that Gingrich instilled a "combative" approach in the Republican Party, where hateful language and hyper-partisanship became commonplace, and where democratic norms were abandoned. Gingrich frequently questioned the patriotism of Democrats, called them corrupt, compared them to fascists, and accused them of wanting to destroy the United States. Gingrich was also involved in several major government shutdowns.

Scholars have also characterized Mitch McConnell's tenure as Senate Minority Leader and Senate Majority Leader during the Obama presidency as one where obstructionism reached all-time highs. Political scientists have referred to McConnell's use of the filibuster as "constitutional hardball", referring to the misuse of procedural tools in a way that undermines democracy. McConnell delayed and obstructed health care reform and banking reform, which were two landmark pieces of legislation that Democrats sought to pass (and in fact did pass) early in Obama's tenure. By delaying Democratic priority legislation, McConnell stymied the output of Congress. Political scientists Eric Schickler and Gregory J. Wawro write, "by slowing action even on measures supported by many Republicans, McConnell capitalized on the scarcity of floor time, forcing Democratic leaders into difficult trade-offs concerning which measures were worth pursuing. That is, given that Democrats had just two years with sizeable majorities to enact as much of their agenda as possible, slowing the Senate's ability to process even routine measures limited the sheer volume of liberal bills that could be adopted."

McConnell's refusal to hold hearings on Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland during the final year of Obama's presidency was described by political scientists and legal scholars as "unprecedented", a "culmination of this confrontational style", a "blatant abuse of constitutional norms", and a "classic example of constitutional hardball."

After the 2020 United States presidential election was declared for Biden, President Donald Trump's refusal to concede and demands of Republican state legislatures and officials to ignore the popular vote of the states was described as "unparalleled" in American history and "profoundly antidemocratic". Some journalists and foreign officials have also referred to Trump as a fascist in the aftermath of the January 6 United States Capitol attack. Following the attack, a survey conducted by the American Enterprise Institute found that 56% of Republicans agreed with the statement, "The traditional American way of life is disappearing so fast that we may have to use force to save it", compared to 36% of respondents overall. Sixty percent of White evangelical Republicans agreed with the statement.

Talk radio and right-wing media ties

Starting in the late 20th century, conservatives on talk radio and Fox News, as well as online media outlets such as the Daily Caller and Breitbart News, became a powerful influence on shaping the information received and judgments made by rank-and-file Republicans. They include Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Larry Elder, Glenn Beck, Mark Levin, Dana Loesch, Hugh Hewitt, Mike Gallagher, Neal Boortz, Laura Ingraham, Dennis Prager, Michael Reagan, Howie Carr and Michael Savage, as well as many local commentators who support Republican causes while vocally opposing the left. Vice President Mike Pence also had an early career in conservative talk radio, hosting The Mike Pence Show in the late 1990s before successfully running for Congress in 2000.

In recent years, pundits through podcasting and YouTube like Ben Shapiro and Steven Crowder have also gained fame with a consistently younger audience through outlets such as The Daily Wire and Blaze Media.

Demographics

Percent of party identification in the United States in 2022, by generation

In 2006, Republicans won 38% of the voters aged 18-29. In a 2018 study, members of the Silent and Baby Boomer generations were more likely to express approval of Trump's presidency than those of Generation X and Millennials.

Low-income voters are more likely to identify as Democrats while high-income voters are more likely to identify as Republicans. In 2012, Obama won 60% of voters with income under $50,000 and 45% of those with incomes higher than that. Bush won 41% of the poorest 20% of voters in 2004, 55% of the richest twenty percent and 53% of those in between. In the 2006 House races, the voters with incomes over $50,000 were 49% Republican while those with incomes under that amount were 38% Republican.

Ronna McDaniel, the current chair of the RNC

Since 1980, a "gender gap" has seen stronger support for the Republican Party among men than among women. Unmarried and divorced women were far more likely to vote for Democrat John Kerry than for Republican George W. Bush in the 2004 presidential election. In 2006 House races, 43% of women voted Republican while 47% of men did so. In the 2010 midterms, the "gender gap" was reduced, with women supporting Republican and Democratic candidates equally (49%-49%). Exit polls from the 2012 elections revealed a continued weakness among unmarried women for the GOP, a large and growing portion of the electorate. Although women supported Obama over Mitt Romney by a margin of 55-44% in 2012, Romney prevailed amongst married women, 53-46%. Obama won unmarried women 67-31%.

However, according to a December 2019 study, "White women are the only group of female voters who support Republican Party candidates for president. They have done so by a majority in all but 2 of the last 18 elections".

Until 2016, affluent voters and usually more-educated voters leaned more towards Republicans in presidential elections, but after 2016 the norm reversed. Those without college educations tend to be more socially conservative on a wide array of issues.

Americans with a bachelor's degree or higher by state

In 2012, the Pew Research Center conducted a study of registered voters with a 35-28 Democrat-to-Republican gap. They found that self-described Democrats had an eight-point advantage over Republicans among college graduates and a fourteen-point advantage among all post-graduates polled. Republicans had an eleven-point advantage among White men with college degrees; Democrats had a ten-point advantage among women with degrees. Democrats accounted for 36% of all respondents with an education of high school or less; Republicans accounted for 28%. When isolating just White registered voters polled, Republicans had a six-point advantage overall and a nine-point advantage among those with a high school education or less. Following the 2016 presidential election, exit polls indicated that "Donald Trump attracted a large share of the vote from Whites without a college degree, receiving 72 percent of the White non-college male vote and 62 percent of the White non-college female vote." Overall, 52% of voters with college degrees voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016, while 52% of voters without college degrees voted for Trump.

Republicans have been winning under 15% of the African American vote in national elections since 1980. The party abolished chattel slavery under Abraham Lincoln, defeated the Slave Power, and gave Black people the legal right to vote during Reconstruction in the late 1860s. Until the New Deal of the 1930s, Black people supported the Republican Party by large margins. Black delegates were a sizable share of southern delegates to the national Republican convention from Reconstruction until the start of the 20th century when their share began to decline. Black people shifted in large margins to the Democratic Party in the 1930s, when Black politicians such as Arthur Mitchell and William Dawson supported the New Deal because it would better serve the interest of Black Americans. Black voters would become one of the core components of the New Deal coalition. In the South, after the Voting Rights Act to prohibit racial discrimination in elections was passed by a bipartisan coalition in 1965, Black people were able to vote again and ever since have formed a significant portion (20-50%) of the Democratic vote in that region.

In the 2010 elections, two African American Republicans- Tim Scott and Allen West-were elected to the House of Representatives. As of January 2023, there are four African-American Republicans in the House of Representatives and one African American Republican in the United States Senate. In recent decades, Republicans have been moderately successful in gaining support from Hispanic and Asian American voters. George W. Bush, who campaigned energetically for Hispanic votes, received 35% of their vote in 2000 and 44% in 2004. The party's strong anti-communist stance has made it popular among some minority groups from current and former Communist states, in particular Cuban Americans, Korean Americans, Chinese Americans and Vietnamese Americans. The 2007 election of Bobby Jindal as Governor of Louisiana was hailed as pathbreaking. Jindal became the first elected minority governor in Louisiana and the first state governor of Indian descent.

Marco Rubio, a Cuban American and senior U.S. Senator from Florida

Republicans have gained support among racial and ethnic minorities, particularly among those who are working class, Hispanic or Latino, or Asian American since the 2010s. According to John Avlon, in 2013, the Republican party was more ethnically diverse at the statewide elected official level than the Democratic Party was; GOP statewide elected officials included Latino Nevada Governor Brian Sandoval and African-American U.S. senator Tim Scott of South Carolina.

In the 2008 presidential election, John McCain won 55% of White votes, 35% of Asian votes, 31% of Hispanic votes and 4% of African American votes. In 2012, 88% of Romney voters were White while 56% of Obama voters were White. In the 2022 U.S. House elections, Republicans won 58% of White voters, 40% of Asian voters, 39% of Hispanic voters, and 13% of African American voters.

As of 2020, Republican candidates had lost the popular vote in seven out of the last eight presidential elections. Since 1992, the only time they won the popular vote in a presidential election is the 2004 United States presidential election. Demographers have pointed to the steady decline (as a percentage of the eligible voters) of its core base of older, rural White men. However, Donald Trump managed to increase non-White support to 26% of his total votes in the 2020 election - the highest percentage for a GOP presidential candidate since 1960.

Religious communities

Religion has always played a major role for both parties, but in the course of a century, the parties' religious compositions have changed. Religion was a major dividing line between the parties before 1960, with Catholics, Jews, and southern Protestants heavily Democratic and northeastern Protestants heavily Republican. Most of the old differences faded away after the realignment of the 1970s and 1980s that undercut the New Deal coalition. Voters who attended church weekly gave 61% of their votes to Bush in 2004; those who attended occasionally gave him only 47%; and those who never attended gave him 36%. Fifty-nine percent of Protestants voted for Bush, along with 52% of Catholics (even though John Kerry was Catholic). Since 1980, a large majority of evangelicals has voted Republican; 70-80% voted for Bush in 2000 and 2004 and 70% for Republican House candidates in 2006.

Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, who mainly live in Utah and some neighboring states, voted 75% or more for George W. Bush in 2000. Members of the Mormon faith had a mixed relationship with Donald Trump during his tenure, despite 67% of them voting for him in 2016 and 56% of them supporting his presidency in 2018, disapproving of his personal behavior such as that shown during the Access Hollywood controversy. In the 2020 United States presidential election, Trump underperformed in heavily-Mormon Utah by more than ten percentage points compared to Mitt Romney (who is Mormon) in 2012 and George W. Bush in 2004. Their opinion on Trump had not affected their party affiliation, however, as 76% of Mormons in 2018 expressed preference for generic Republican congressional candidates.

Jews continue to vote 70-80% Democratic; however, a slim majority of Orthodox Jews voted for the Republican Party in 2016, following years of growing Orthodox Jewish support for the party due to its social conservatism and increasingly pro-Israel foreign policy stance. Over 70% of Orthodox Jews identify as Republican or Republican leaning as of 2021. An exit poll conducted by the Associated Press for 2020 found 35% of Muslims voted for Donald Trump. The mainline traditional Protestants (Methodists, Lutherans, Presbyterians, Episcopalians and Disciples) have dropped to about 55% Republican (in contrast to 75% before 1968). Democrats have close links with the African American churches, especially the National Baptists, while their historic dominance among Catholic voters has eroded to 54-46 in the 2010 midterms.

Although once strongly Democratic, Roman Catholic voters have recently been politically divided, with both 52% of such voters voting for Trump in 2016 and Biden in 2020. While Catholic Republican leaders try to stay in line with the teachings of the Catholic Church on subjects such as abortion, contraception, euthanasia, and embryonic stem cell research, they tend to differ on the death penalty and same-sex marriage. Pope Francis' 2015 encyclical sparked a discussion on the positions of Catholic Republicans in relation to the positions of the Church. The Pope's encyclical on behalf of the Catholic Church officially acknowledges a man-made climate change caused by burning fossil fuels. The Pope says the warming of the planet is rooted in a throwaway culture and the developed world's indifference to the destruction of the planet in pursuit of short-term economic gains. According to The New York Times, Laudato si' put pressure on the Catholic candidates in the 2016 election: Jeb Bush, Bobby Jindal, Marco Rubio and Rick Santorum.

With leading Democrats praising the encyclical, James Bretzke, a professor of moral theology at Boston College, has said that both sides were being disingenuous: "I think it shows that both the Republicans and the Democrats ... like to use religious authority and, in this case, the Pope to support positions they have arrived at independently ... There is a certain insincerity, hypocrisy I think, on both sides". While a Pew Research poll indicates Catholics are more likely to believe the Earth is warming than non-Catholics, 51% of Catholic Republicans believe in global warming (less than the general population) and only 24% of Catholic Republicans believe global warming is caused by human activity.

Members of the business community

The Republican Party has traditionally been a pro-business party. It garners major support from a wide variety of industries from the financial sector to small businesses. Republicans are 24 percent more likely to be business owners than Democrats. Prominent business lobbying groups such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and National Association of Manufacturers have traditionally supported Republican candidates and economic policies. Although both major parties support capitalism, the Republican Party is more likely to favor private property rights (including intellectual property rights) than the Democratic Party over competing interests such as protecting the environment or lowering medication costs.

A survey cited by The Washington Post in 2012 stated that 61 percent of small business owners planned to vote for Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney. Small business became a major theme of the 2012 Republican National Convention.

Republican presidents

As of 2021, there have been a total of 19 Republican presidents.

Recent electoral history

In congressional elections: 1950-present

In presidential elections: 1856-present

References

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Republican Party (United States) - Wikipedia

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The Republican Party, also known as the GOP (" Grand Old Party"), is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States. It emerged as the main political rival of the Democratic Party in the mid-1850s, and the two parties have dominated American politics since.

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Confederate States of America -the southern states that seceded from the United States in 1861

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Confederate States of America -the southern states that seceded from the United States in 1861

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habeas corpus- a writ ordering a prisoner to be brought before a judge

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habeas corpus- a writ ordering a prisoner to be brought before a judge

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Habeas Corpus means literally "You have the body". In law it is a procedural remedy to unlawful detention which requires the entity restricting freedom of an individual to bring that detainee to court to prove their custodial authority over them. It has been called the 'great writ' because it is a legal summons with the force of a court order.

Not in New Zealand. The recent decision in Greer v Smith confirmed as much, and is now case law.

Applicant Greer was recently sentenced for sexual offences. His habeas corpus application appears to relate to his imprisonment prior to sentencing and a visiting judge's order that he be more strictly confined.

Firstly, it is important to record Greer v Smith is a Supreme Court of New Zealand judgment. It was released to the legal sheepdom on 21 September without a murmur of disquiet among them. A decision by New Zealand's highest court getting no reaction despite turning firmly-established legal procedure on its ear.

Not that many a legal head was not scratched, befuddled and uninformed regarding the contrarian legal position of New Zealand's highest court on habeas corpus. Such befuddlement is only natural. The reality is no one in the World is allowed to see Greer's application, let alone his submissions. No hearing was held. No recording was kept. Even the High Court disposal and Court of Appeal disposal were by private Minute, each made without appearance or hearing. A single Court of Appeal judge derailed the appeal in sequestered chambers.

The Supreme Court ruling, in turn, regurgitated from the vault of the $100 million palace built for five New Zealand lawyers who never faced so much as a public confirmation of their judicial appointments to any level of the New Zealand court system.

List one democracy in the world where five wink-and-nod lawyers say court procedure is not what their nation's legislature and the rest of the law-respecting world say it is?

In recent history, the Privy Council kept the law supreme in New Zealand; that is until 2004 when we booted their asses for not understanding our enlightened view of the law, subsequently leading us down a road where the law disintegrates at a slow but powerful pace.

But let us step aside from the commentary/reality which lies at Middle Earth and look at the actual words of the Supreme knighted ones whom the farmers and teachers in Parliament fear to question.

Glazebrook, Arnold and O'Regan JJ of the Supreme Court of New Zealand found and concluded: "[2] Goddard J (in the High Court) declined a further application by Mr Greer for a writ of habeas corpus. In her (private) minute, Goddard J stated that Mr Greer was 'lawfully detained by a Court of law and no writ of habeas corpus will lie'. Goddard J went on to add 'furthermore, Mr Greer's application is couched in abusive and offensive language and for that reason would not be received by the Court'. [3] Mr Greer sought to appeal to the Court of Appeal against Goddard J's refusal of his application for habeas corpus. On 10 November 2014, Harrison J issued a (private) minute refusing to accept Mr Greer's appeal stating that, given Goddard J had directed 'the application was so defective that the Court should not receive' it, 'there is no judgment against which an appeal would lie'."

Worse, the Supreme Court accepted that another High Court Judge (former Crown lawyer Mander J) could rely upon Goddard J's vague and unrecorded private minute to deny any subsequent appearance before the Court.

The Supreme Court judges' crowning pronouncement punctuated their approval. "Nothing raised by Mr Greer in his application satisfies us that there are exceptional circumstances that justify an appeal directly to this Court against Mander J's decision."

This is New Zealand's highest court confirming that judges dismissing a writ of habeas corpus without appearance and by private minute are not only not appealable but that any attempt to appeal can be dismissed by New Zealand's Court of Appeal by private minute of a sequestered single judge on the ground private disposals of applications do not amount to judgments! That "absence of judgment" can then be relied upon by another NZ judge as if it were a public judgment with legal effect.

This is but one, two and three reasons why the United States intel on New Zealand as exposed by wikileaks in 2011 is New Zealand is but a façade of justice secretly controlled by parochial interests with less regard for the law than an image orchestrated by those power brokers. We have been sold a bill of goods by the NZ Courts which ubiquitously issue blanket suppression orders and dispose of matters off the court record, publicly extolling their secrecy as essential to ensuring natural justice.

The undeniable fact is little would have been lost by following lawful court procedure in dismissing Mr Greer's habeas corpus, yet the High Court and Court of Appeal could not be bothered and the Supreme Court of New Zealand has now declared this lawless procedure is acceptable without reasons why this is so. Hence, secrecy and off-the-record disposal of court applications at every stop of the New Zealand court system is so ingrained, our judges can no longer be inconvenienced to maintain the illusion of justice being done.

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No Habeas Corpus, No Appeal, No Right Denied - Kiwisfirst

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Habeas Corpus means literally "You have the body". In law it is a procedural remedy to unlawful detention which requires the entity restricting freedom of an individual to bring that detainee to court to prove their custodial authority over them. It has been called the 'great writ' because it is a legal summons with the force of a court order.

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emancipation -freeing someone from the control of another

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emancipation -freeing someone from the control of another

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Watch my amazing website created on emaze - The stunning web site builder.

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secession- formal separation from an alliance or federation

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secession- formal separation from an alliance or federation

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reconstruction -the activity of building something again

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reconstruction -the activity of building something again

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African American Odyssey Introduction |Overview |Object List | Search Part 1: Forever Free |Black Exodus
Part 2

The Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 freed African Americans in rebel states, and after the Civil War, the Thirteenth Amendment emancipated all U.S. slaves wherever they were. As a result, the mass of Southern blacks now faced the difficulty Northern blacks had confronted--that of a free people surrounded by many hostile whites. One freedman, Houston Hartsfield Holloway, wrote, "For we colored people did not know how to be free and the white people did not know how to have a free colored person about them."

Even after the Emancipation Proclamation, two more years of war, service by African American troops, and the defeat of the Confederacy, the nation was still unprepared to deal with the question of full citizenship for its newly freed black population. The Reconstruction implemented by Congress, which lasted from 1866 to 1877, was aimed at reorganizing the Southern states after the Civil War, providing the means for readmitting them into the Union, and defining the means by which whites and blacks could live together in a nonslave society. The South, however, saw Reconstruction as a humiliating, even vengeful imposition and did not welcome it.

During the years after the war, black and white teachers from the North and South, missionary organizations, churches and schools worked tirelessly to give the emancipated population the opportunity to learn. Former slaves of every age took advantage of the opportunity to become literate. Grandfathers and their grandchildren sat together in classrooms seeking to obtain the tools of freedom.

After the Civil War, with the protection of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution and the Civil Rights Act of 1866, African Americans enjoyed a period when they were allowed to vote, actively participate in the political process, acquire the land of former owners, seek their own employment, and use public accommodations. Opponents of this progress, however, soon rallied against the former slaves' freedom and began to find means for eroding the gains for which many had shed their blood.

Celebration of Emancipation

Thomas Nast's depiction of emancipation at the end of the Civil War envisions the future of free blacks in the U.S. and contrasts it with various cruelties of the institution of slavery.

Thomas Nast.

Emancipation.
Philadelphia: S. Bott, 1865.
Wood engraving.
Prints and Photographs Division.
Reproduction Number: LC-USZ62-2573 (5-9)

Victorious Soldiers Return

Alfred R. Waud.

Mustered Out.
Little Rock, Arkansas, April 20, 1865.
Drawing. Chinese white on green paper.
Published in Harper's Weekly, May 19, 1866.
Prints and Photographs Division.
Reproduction Number: LC-USZ62-175 (5-1)

Alfred Waud's drawing captures the exuberance of the Little Rock, Arkansas, African American community as the U. S. Colored Troops returned home at the end of the Civil War. The victorious soldiers are joyously greeted by women and children.

Black Exodus to Kansas

During Reconstruction freed slaves began to leave the South. One such group, originally from Kentucky, established the community of Nicodemus in 1877 in Graham County on the high, arid plains of northwestern Kansas. However, because of several crop failures and resentment from the county's white settlers, all but a few homesteaders abandoned their claims. A rising population of 500 in 1880 had declined to less than 200 by 1910.

Standard Atlas of Graham Co. Kansas, Including a Plat Book of the Villages, Cities, and Townships.
Lithograph map.
Chicago: A. Ogle, 1906.
Geography and Map Division. (5-8a)

A page of photographs and a township map from a 1906 county land ownership atlas provide evidence that some of these black migrants still owned land in and around this small village. Their impressive determination in an area with few good natural resou rces has resulted in the only surviving all-black community in Kansas.

Standard Atlas of Graham Co. Kansas, Including a Plat Book of the Villages, Cities, and Townships.
Index of families in Nicodemus.
Chicago: A. Ogle, 1906.
Geography and Map Division. (5-8b)

Ho For Kansas!

The Nicodemus Town Company was incorporated in 1877 by six black and two white Kansans. It was the oldest of about twenty towns established predominately for blacks in the West. After the Civil War there was a general exodus of blacks from the South. These migrants became known as "Exodusters" and the migration became known as the "Exoduster" movement. Some applied to be part of colonization projects to Liberia and locations outside the United States; others were willing to move north and west. Benjamin Singleton led an exodus of African Americans from various points in the South to Kansas.

Ho for Kansas! Nashville, Tennessee, March 18, 1878.

Copyprint of broadside.
Historic American Buildings Survey, Prints and Photographs Division. (5-13)

African American Population Distribution, 1890

Statistical Atlas of the United States Based on the Results of the Eleventh Census. Plate 11.
Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1898.
Lithograph.
Geography and Map Division. (5-18)

African American population distribution and migration patterns can be traced using maps published in the statistical atlases prepared by the U. S. Census Bureau for each decennial census from 1870 to 1920. The atlas for the 1890 census includes this map showing the percentage of "colored" to the total population for each county. Although the heaviest concentrations are overwhelmingly in Maryland, Virginia, and the southeastern states, there appear to be emerging concentrations in the northern urban areas (New York City, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Toledo, and Chicago), southern Ohio, central Missouri, eastern Kansas, and scattered areas in the West (Oklahoma, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, and California), reflecting migration patterns that began during Reconstruction.

Reconstruction and Its Aftermath: Part 1 | Part 2
African American Odyssey Introduction |Overview |Object List | Search

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Reconstruction and its Aftermath, a part of the African American Odyssey exhibition, is about the difficulty free blacks faced during the reconstruction period.

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African American Odyssey Introduction |Overview |Object List | Search Part 1: Forever Free |Black Exodus Part 2 The Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 freed African Americans in rebel states, and after the Civil War, the Thirteenth Amendment emancipated all U.S. slaves wherever they were.

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sectionalism- excessive devotion to the interests of a particular region

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sectionalism- excessive devotion to the interests of a particular region

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High School American History and Economics help. Supreme Court case summaries.