The Nasty Truth

How often have you heard people say politics is just so nasty, it turns me off and that's why I don't get involved. If only we could be nicer and return to a better time when we respected each other and behaved in a good manner.

That time never existed, it is a myth.

Watching the Republican Debate last night with all the barbs flying back and forth I was reminded of this erroneous belief that nasty politics is unique to our modern times. Donald Trump repeatedly called Ted Cruz a liar. I would call Cruz a denier of fact for political gain, a distorter of reality to create a fog of confusion, a deceptive manipulator of people's fears for the sole purpose of gaining power for his own petty propensities. In the common tongue, a liar.

In the early days of our Republic, newspapers frequently made up horrible things about politicians they wanted to destroy and fact checking was non-existent. The politicians themselves were no better, they bashed one another with vigor, including actually fist fighting or dueling.

All of this is fresh in my mind because I'm currently reading the multi volume "History of the United States" by E. Benjamin Andrews, who was a former President of Brown University and Chancellor of the University of Nebraska. The books were originally published in 1894 and my set was reprinted in 1926. There are two reasons you should seek out these kinds of books, one is for an accurate historical account and the second is for the sheer joy of how different the language of the day was, right down to the structure of a sentence.

Here is the independent analysis of Andrew Jackson from that period, "he was without any education worthy the name." This historical statement certainly says to you and I that he was without a formal education or accomplishment, yet he studied law in North Carolina, then moved to Nashville, Tennessee and began a legal practice. He was one of the framers of the Tennessee Constitution in 1796. In 1797 he was a Senator from that State and subsequently was a Justice on it's Supreme Court. With all of that he was considered uneducated and I  quote," illiterate he certainly was." That's rough stuff, now comes the hardcore politics, John Quincy Adams called him " a barbarian who could not write a sentence of grammar and could hardly spell his own name."

Our contemporary politicians ability to sling an insult is positively anemic compared to our founding fathers.

Remember that the next time you get upset by our political dialogue and start pining for the good old days. By the way, when did you stop sleeping with sheep?