Civil service system

Many countries have some kind of civil service system in place. People become employed by their government to do the many jobs of the government. An example is the administrative system giving stability to Chinese empires by using competitive exams to fill government offices.

U.S. civil service

The Civil War was not just a war between North and The South, it was a war between Democrat and Republican.

The Republican party was founded in 1854 by single-issue voters called Abolitionists. Barely a dozen years later, after the 1863 Emancipation Proclamation, it had only two things to fight for: full civil rights for Blacks and the spoils of victory, that is, government jobs for party members.

While the Democratic party may have lost the Civil War, it has won the battle to control the United States Civil Service bureaucracy. Since the end of Reconstruction in 1876 and passage of the 1882 Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act, the Democratic party is no longer dependent on the spoils system and winning elections to maintain its power.

This control of unelected government positions is the source of the Democratic party's power. An unelected army of Democrat civil servants doing behind the scenes favors and handing out government goodies is the key to success for elected Democrats. This is why Democrats spare no expense in the budget, none of them pay for anything and there are always votes to be bought. Their sweeping power is so encompassing they unabashedly call themselves, "the party of government."

Spoils system

Main article: Spoils system

From the mid-1830s to the Civil War, the Democrats were the nation’s majority party, controlling Congress, the presidency and many state offices. Prior to the election of the notorious racist and founder of the Democratic party, Andrew Jackson, the federal government was dominated by the aristocratic upper class, 1% and bourgeois plantation owners. With the election of Jackson, for the first time backwoods hillbillies and common folk had access to opportunities to fill government jobs, from the U.S. Post Office on up, through the spoils system.

Reconstruction

See also: Reconstruction

With the defeat of the Democrats and the South, to the victors went the spoils. The Republican party was founded a little more than a decade earlier, and lacked for issues other than dividing the spoils of victory, i.e. government jobs once the slaves were free. Republicans immediately stripped white males who engaged in rebellion against the United States of the vote, and gave it to Blacks. The white males who were deprived of the vote were universally Democrats.

Reconstruction earned Republicans the undying hatred of Democrats, which has been passed down generation to generation until the modern day. This hatred is so intense, the very mention of the word "Republican" is often enough of a trigger word whose mere utterance can send a fourth or fifth generation Democrat into paroxyms of rage.

Republican carpetbaggers flooded the South after the war to buy up tax-delinquent plantations and run for political office. Newly freed Blacks also held local, state and federal elected and non-elected positions. Many whites were barred from holding office and voting. This disenfranchisement created enormous resentment among Democrats. They formed the Ku Klux Klan to engage in voter intimidation and suppression.

By 1876, the situation had become ungovernable for Republicans, who were ideological and inexperienced in party politics and the spoils system. The Republicans had been able to pass the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments which guaranteed Blacks basic equality and civil rights, but at the same time an amnesty was declared for whites who engaged in rebellion. Reconstruction ended, and Republicans withdrew from social engineering which had divided the country so deeply and stirred up such bitterness and hatred among Democrats toward their fellow citizens - Blacks and Republicans.

The intra-generational hatred Democrats have toward Republicans, which persists into the 21st century, was born of the fact that Republicans stripped Democrats of the vote and gave it to Blacks.

Civil Service Act

Main article: Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act

The experience of Reconstruction among Democrats, and the inexperience of a party at the crossroads among Republicans led to a general consensus throughout the nation to reform the spoils system. Democrats leaped at the prospect of controlling government offices without winning elections through a so-called "professional career bureaucracy." It seemed like a logical, "progressive" reform.

The immediate impetus for ending patronage and introducing civil service reform was the assassination of President James Garfield by a disgruntled low level campaign worker who was by-passed and felt Garfield owed him a job. The spoils system was rife with corruption and cronyism. Under the spoils system, when voters rebelled and elected the opposition, everyone in an incumbent political machine lost their government job. The see-saw wholesale turnover of government workers created instability in the institutions of government.

The Era of Big Government

Teddy Roosevelt's rise to national prominence as a "progressive" reformer began with implementing civil service reform and ending the patronage system in the New York City Police Department, and later as governor by implementing a state level civil service system.

Prior to creation of a professional career police force, like mail carriers, police forces were filled with campaign get-out-the-vote volunteers and precinct poll watchers who stuffed the ballot box for their candidate. In the case of police, their job for the new mayor was often to beat up and harass volunteers for the loosing side.

The Civil Service Reform Act restored the power that the Democratic party had prior to the Civil War, only this time with no accountability to the voters.

The Era of Big Government

See also: Great Society and Clinton Administration

The generation that fought World War II were convinced Keynesians - that government debt and spending was the key to prosperity. And the more of it, the better. President Lyndon Johnson and the Democratic Congress that rubber stamped his projects fully believed they could mount a major war effort by drafting the nation's teenage unemployed, pursue massive social programs in the War on Poverty, and fund ambitious scientific research in the space race to land a man-on-the-moon, all simultaneously. There were no shortages of government jobs, or civil servants to hand out money during the 1960s.

By the 1970s, the drunken spending boom resulted in a massive hangover. Nixon's attempt to reform the Civil Service system resulted in him being railroaded out of town. Jimmy Carter's efforts to revive big government spending funneled at and through the civil service resulted in stagflation. President Ronald Reagan's efforts to curb the rate of growth of government spending, his hiring freeze and firing of civil service air traffic controllers resulted in the usual Democratic attacks of calling him Hitler or a Nazi; however Nazi's were not known for controlling the proliferation of civil service jobs, as Bible thumpers, encouraging private enterprise, the profit motive, individual initiative or accomplishment.

The Sixties

See also: Great Society and Clinton Administration

The generation that fought World War II were convinced Keynesians - that government debt and spending was the key to prosperity. And the more of it, the better. President Lyndon Johnson and the Democratic Congress that rubber stamped his projects fully believed they could mount a major war effort by drafting the nation's teenage unemployed, pursue massive social programs in the War on Poverty, and fund ambitious scientific research in the space race to land a man-on-the-moon, all simultaneously. There were no shortages of government jobs, or civil servants to hand out money during the 1960s.

By the 1970s, the drunken spending boom resulted in a massive hangover. Nixon's attempt to reform the Civil Service system resulted in him being railroaded out of town. Jimmy Carter's efforts to revive big government spending funneled at and through the civil service resulted in stagflation.

Statism and the totalitarian police state

See also: Patriot Act, Obama Administration, and FISA abuse

See also

• Social Services