The Radical Republicans Screwed Up America

I am going to say something that might surprise you:

The most important men in American political history were the Radical Republicans of the 1850s-1870s.

It’s not even close.

The immediate response, I am sure, will be, “But what about the Founding Fathers?”

I greatly admire the founding generation, and I consider them to be the greatest generation in American history.

But the Radical Republicans took their federal republic and threw it in the garbage.

In the process, they “recreated” America, or as I suggested in the title to this email “screwed up” America.

The Radicals preferred the term “reconstructed” America as opposed to “restored” America.

We live in the the America of the Radical Republicans.

They centralized power, emasculated the States, set the stage for cancel culture and “wokeness,” remade the American economy, crafted an imperialist foreign policy based on American “democracy,” crated the “proposition nation” and “righteous cause” myths, determined how historians would write about the War, sectional conflict, and Reconstruction, and redefined the Constitution.

In short, they did nothing less than establish a new American order.

They crafted a second American revolution and refounded the United States.

We don’t live in the founders’ federal republic because that republic died in 1861.

But we do live in Charles Sumner’s national United States and John Bingham’s “one people” Government dominated by New England ideas and New England culture.

This isn’t even questionable.

It doesn’t make it great, but it is the truth.

Even Southerners recognized this in the years after Reconstruction supposedly ended. It’s why they insisted that Americans be taught the other side of the story.

That side is now cast aside for the positions outlined in Charles Sumner’s “Crimes Against Kansas” speech.

Modern American historians simply regurgitate Radical Republican talking points and call it “history.”

The Straussians and neoconservatives echo what these radical said and call it “conservative.”

That would have been news to Henry Winter Davis who explicitly differentiated between his positions and those of the “conservatives” of his day.

And who is telling myths?

This is why I created my latest class at McClanahan Academy, Radical Republicans.

It’s a deep dive into these radical revolutionaries and their anti-conservative positions.

You get 13 hours of primary document lectures designed to help you understand how revolutionary these people were and their impact on modern society.

And from now through Labor Day, I’ve slashed $60 off the retail price.

Get Radical Republicans for only $119.

This is a steal.

And if you want more info on this outstanding addition to McClanahan Academy, I discuss the Radicals on Episode 694 of The Brion McClanahan Show