Burke: Are MAGAs soon joining Know Nothings as past history? [View all]
By Tom Burke / Herald columnist
The Know-Nothing Party of the mid-1850s (it is what they called themselves) was a political party fighting a “Romanist” conspiracy to usurp civil order by organizing native-born Protestants to attack the civil rights of Irish Catholic immigrants. They even burned down a church in Bath, Maine. When asked about their platform they were instructed to say, “I know nothing.”
Hmmm, shades of Sgt. Schultz on “Hogan’s Heroes”? Or Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell when he was asked about the Republican’s 2022 Congressional platform?
It was one of hundreds of American political parties that make U.S. history so rich.
Americans have always named their political parties colorfully, albeit sometimes misleadingly, and their platforms spanned every possible philosophy of governance; from pro-slavery-dissolve-the-Union; to anti-immigrant; to the Communist Party USA.
https://www.heraldnet.com/opinion/burke-are-magas-soon-joining-know-nothings-as-past-history/
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