Have you ever had one of those moments when you felt that you and Sherman had just stepped aboard the WAYBAC machine? A connection so deliciously ripe with irony that you're forced to hold your head with both hands to keep your mind from exploding plumb out of your head?

In a chapter on religious intolerance in American politics of the 19th century, I found an item concerning the Know Nothing Party. Joel H. Silbey of Cornell University describes it as such;

"It was organized to oppose the great wave of immigrants who entered the United States after 1864. Originally, nativist party members had worked through a number of secret societies, clandestinely throwing their support on election day-with powerful effect-to sympathetic candidates. Saying they "knew nothing" about such activities..."

What lept out was the statement of their policies and how little those same policies have changed. Mr. Silbey again;

"Their state and national platforms demanded that immigration be limited, that politics be "purified" by limiting officeholding to native-born Americans, and that a 21-year wait be imposed before an immigrant could become a citizen and vote. They also sought to limit the sale of liquor, to restrict public school teaching to Protestants, and to have the Protestant version of the Bible read daily in the classroom."

Think about that for a moment, 157 years ago, Know Nothings were anti-immigration and pro-Bible in the classrooms, and today Know Nothings are advocating the same freaking things.

It's dejavu all over again.

Subsitute Catholicism for say, Islam or even Mormonism and replace Irish with Mexican and presto! Republican platform 2008!

Have we made no progress in the last century and a half? Did civil rights never happen, or Thoreau, Ghandi, Madelyn Murray O'Hair, or hell, John Lennon? Have we not learned the lessons of seperation of church and state as well as hegemony?

That the Know Nothing Party eventually morphed into the Republican Party is an irony not lost on me. I sincerely believe that the current Know Nothings could give the old dudes a serious run for the money both in secrecy and nativism.