Right now, I'm reading several books, including "Moral Man and Immoral Society: A Study in Ethics and Politics" by Reinhold Niebuhr, the great Christian (Protestant) theologian. Although written in 1932, one paragraph jumped out at me as completely relevant to today. Simply substitute the word "Republican Party" for "Tories" and there you have it (bolding added):
Even before the American Revolution class interest expressed itself in American politics, and the privileged class resisted revolutionary sentiment by appeals to law and order. Speaking of the American Tories, Parrington declares: "Compressed in a sentence it (Tory philosophy) was the expression of the will to power. Its motive was economic class interest and its object the exploitation of society through the instrumentality of the state. Stated thus, the philosophy does not appear to advantage; it lays itself open to unpleasant criticism by those who are not its beneficiaries. In consequence much ingenuity in tailoring was necessary to provide it with garments to cover its nakedness. Embroidered with patriotism, loyalty, law and order, it made a very respectable appearance and when it put on the stately robes of the British constitution it was enormously impressive.
Does any of this sound vaguely familiar when you think of George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Tom DeLay, and Jerry Kilgore? Yeah, that's what I thought too.