Party Hearty

All political organizations are not political parties. A political party is a group that is organized for the purpose of getting candidates elected. Other groups might be in the business of spreading political ideas or just hanging around with like minded people. Political parties tend to evolve over time because the old timers die off and the newbies might put a different spin on things. Sometimes parties split in two or just go out of business. We have had two major parties for so long now that people think it was always like that, but it wasn't. The Republican Party of Lincoln was made up of the remnants of the old Whig Party and some others, and was actually called "The New Republican Party" at first. I think the Whigs came from the split up of the old Democratic Republican Party of Jefferson. There were at least two other Whig Parties that preceded them, one was in Scotland in the 15th or 16th century, and the other was in America before and during our revolution. I looked this up on Wiki some time ago, so I might not have all the details right, but it went something like that.

I thought you said once that you tried to join the Democratic Party but they wouldn't let you. You could have done "grunt work" for the party or given them money and not been a member. Did they or did they not issue you a membership card? To get to the "higher levels" you would have had to attend meetings and get yourself nominated when they were electing officers or delegates. Seeing as it was Chicago, it would also have helped if you had friends in high places. I joined the Libertarians by mail and never went to any meetings because they were all held Down Below. If there had been two of us we could have started our own local chapter like we did with the American Independent Party back in the 70s. I suppose its more complicated than that in the big city, but there must be a way to become a member of a political party I you really want to.

The Libertarian Party that we have today was organized in the 1970s. If there were other Libertarian parties in American history, I have not heard of them. The word "libertarian" refers to a political philosophy that was inspired by the writings of John Locke, but I don't know if that was what Locke called it at the time. Our Founding Fathers were called "liberals" in their day, and now they are called "classical liberals" to distinguish them from our modern liberals. I have heard that today's liberals are starting to call themselves "progressives", which is confusing because Teddy Roosevelt was a progressive and he was a Republican. Well, he founded the Progressive Party when he couldn't get nominated by the Republicans for a second term, but I think he was called a progressive before that.

I think how we got into world War II was we declared war on Japan, and then Germany declared war on us because they were Japan's ally.

You may be right that wolves hunt small game as individuals, but again you may be confusing them with coyotes. I don't remember ever reading or hearing of how wolves hunt small game. I have read that a human can starve to death trying to live off of small game in northern climates, or at high altitudes in temperate climates. It takes more calories to keep you alive in cold weather, and hunting small game frequently burns more calories than it provides. It is believed that Ice Age humans hunted small game and gathered various plant products to provide variety in their diet but, to make it through the winter, they needed to pull down something big like a hairy elephant once in awhile. Killing a hairy elephant with spears and rocks requires teamwork, you can't do it by yourself, which may be why humans became social animals in the first place, and may also be why they started hanging around with canines.

Anything I have read or saw on TV about wolves says that the Alphas are pretty monogamous. That may be because most of the other pack members are related to them. Animals don't have moral reservations about incest, but many species seem to have evolved instinctive ways to minimize it. I suppose, if they didn't, they would eventually become weak and sickly. That may be why some species like rabbits and hares go through boom and bust population cycles. They don't travel very far from where they're born and, as the population increases, it's only a matter of time till they are all related to each other.