Historical continuity of Democrats and Republicans
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darklordoftech
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« Reply #125 on: June 17, 2020, 12:12:35 AM »

If slavery never existed, would Southern plantation owners have still been Democratic because of tariffs?
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Unconditional Surrender Truman
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« Reply #126 on: June 17, 2020, 01:24:02 AM »

If slavery never existed, would Southern plantation owners have still been Democratic because of tariffs?
That's a huge counterfactual. If slavery had never existed, the South would be unrecognizable from IOTL socially, culturally, politically, and economically —and by extension the rest of North America (not to mention the wider world) would be as well. It's highly unlikely the United States still finds itself divided between Federalists and Republicans or Whigs and Democrats in such a world, if it even exists at all.

Somewhat more manageable is if the South somehow abolished slavery after the Revolution, the most likely scenario being via a gradual system of emancipation like what Jefferson proposed in Virginia —but even then we're talking about social changes so massive it's difficult to speculate with any degree of accuracy. Do free blacks stay in the South, or do they resettle elsewhere? (Ohio? the North? Liberia?) What replaces the plantation system? Does the South industrialize, or do they remain a primarily agricultural society? Without slavery's appetite for land as a driver of westward expansion, do Texas and the Southwest ever become part of the Union? How are other social causes effected by the absence of the abolitionist movement?
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Battista Minola 1616
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« Reply #127 on: June 18, 2020, 12:52:42 PM »

Hi!
I am a newcomer to this forum and this is my first post.

I see that people were having a fiery discussion mostly about what "liberal" and "conservative" mean.
I think that being from Italy (so Western democracy, but not the USA), I can add some context - although some have already tried.

Basically, from my imperfect understanding of United States history, I agree that Democrats have always been more "liberal" and Republicans more "conservative".

I think that a lot of confusion stems from the fact that current parties are really polarized and discernible from each other, one of them stems from a liberal philosophy and the other from a conservative philosophy.
Because of this, the framework under which people, parties, ideas etc. are categorized is "liberal - moderate - conservative", which is intended to mean "left - centre - right"; this is problematic.
Right-wing is not inherently conservative, left-wing (even more so) is not inherently liberal, and who the heck are "moderates"*?

If you go outside of North America**, you can find a lot of things like "liberal conservatism", "conservative liberalism", places like Australia where the main party ON THE RIGHT is called Liberal Party, places like France where there was nothing you could call liberal before Emmanuel Macron founded his party, but in general I believe liberalism is thought of being somewhere in between conservatives or nationalists and labourites and socialists, so usually towards the centre.

I would also argue that I think some Democrats are not really liberals (especially near the Warren/Bernie zone) and are better described as social democrats or in some cases democratic socialists; I'm more fine with calling Republicans conservatives.

So, my advice should be to think heavily about the context before deciding to use "liberal" or "conservative" vs "left" or "right" vs "progressive" and other labels.

*There are places including Italy where moderate is usually a euphemism for centre-right, but this is for another post.

**I didn't say "United States" because I suspect that Canada has to a degree the same problem, given that its two main parties are the Liberal Party and the Conservative Party.
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Don Vito Corleone
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« Reply #128 on: June 20, 2020, 05:43:33 AM »
« Edited: June 20, 2020, 07:04:04 AM by Don Vito Corleone »

With regards to that discussion about Progressivism, I found this section in the 1916 Republican Platform that I think is relevant:
Quote
The Republican party has long believed in the rigid supervision and strict regulation of the transportation and of the great corporations of the country. It has put its creed into its deeds, and all really effective laws regulating the railroads and the great industrial corporations are the work of Republican Congresses and Presidents. For this policy of regulation and supervision the Democrats, in a stumbling and piecemeal way, are within the sphere of private enterprise and in direct competition with its own citizens, a policy which is sure to result in waste, great expense to the taxpayer and in an inferior product.

The Republican party firmly believes that all who violate the laws in regulation of business, should be individually punished. But prosecution is very different from persecution, and business success, no matter how honestly attained, is apparently regarded by the Democratic party as in itself a crime. Such doctrines and beliefs choke enterprise and stifle prosperity. The Republican party believes in encouraging American business as it believes in and will seek to advance all American interests.
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Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee
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« Reply #129 on: June 20, 2020, 06:23:35 AM »

With regards to that discussion about Progressivism, I found this section in the 1916 Republican that I think is relevant:
Quote
The Republican party has long believed in the rigid supervision and strict regulation of the transportation and of the great corporations of the country. It has put its creed into its deeds, and all really effective laws regulating the railroads and the great industrial corporations are the work of Republican Congresses and Presidents. For this policy of regulation and supervision the Democrats, in a stumbling and piecemeal way, are within the sphere of private enterprise and in direct competition with its own citizens, a policy which is sure to result in waste, great expense to the taxpayer and in an inferior product.

The Republican party firmly believes that all who violate the laws in regulation of business, should be individually punished. But prosecution is very different from persecution, and business success, no matter how honestly attained, is apparently regarded by the Democratic party as in itself a crime. Such doctrines and beliefs choke enterprise and stifle prosperity. The Republican party believes in encouraging American business as it believes in and will seek to advance all American interests.

You gotta love how the two paragraphs together make for some serious double talk.

Its like the first one is written to appeal to the Bullmoose types and the second to the conservatives.
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Battista Minola 1616
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« Reply #130 on: June 20, 2020, 06:39:36 AM »

With regards to that discussion about Progressivism, I found this section in the 1916 Republican that I think is relevant:
Quote
The Republican party has long believed in the rigid supervision and strict regulation of the transportation and of the great corporations of the country. It has put its creed into its deeds, and all really effective laws regulating the railroads and the great industrial corporations are the work of Republican Congresses and Presidents. For this policy of regulation and supervision the Democrats, in a stumbling and piecemeal way, are within the sphere of private enterprise and in direct competition with its own citizens, a policy which is sure to result in waste, great expense to the taxpayer and in an inferior product.

The Republican party firmly believes that all who violate the laws in regulation of business, should be individually punished. But prosecution is very different from persecution, and business success, no matter how honestly attained, is apparently regarded by the Democratic party as in itself a crime. Such doctrines and beliefs choke enterprise and stifle prosperity. The Republican party believes in encouraging American business as it believes in and will seek to advance all American interests.


"business success is apparently regarded by Democrats as in itself a crime"; "they choke enterprise and stifle prosperity"; "encouraging American business"; it's so fascinating that Republicans still say these same things after 104 years
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All Along The Watchtower
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« Reply #131 on: June 24, 2020, 02:16:26 PM »

^You've made some good points in this thread Yankee, and have somewhat convinced me of your "continuously conservative Republicans and liberal Democrats" theory. However, I think that once you start calling plantation owners "liberals", the term basically loses all meaning.

TIL Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Patrick Henry, Andrew Jackson, and investor in the slave trade who helped draft the (obviously pro-slavery) colonial Constitution of the Carolinas John Locke weren't liberals (or rather, Liberals, to be crystal clear).

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All Along The Watchtower
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« Reply #132 on: June 24, 2020, 02:31:48 PM »
« Edited: June 24, 2020, 02:35:04 PM by PR »

Anyway, I'd note that the Republicans were explicitly organized as a (loosely) unified ideological party (Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men) in direct opposition to the Slave Power/Southern Democracy (ie. the radical, expansionist - territoriality and slavery-wise - Democratic Party as exemplified by what became the CSA) , while the Democrats (who didn't initially call themselves that, unlike the Republicans - indeed, "Democrat" was an epithet deployed by opponents of Jackson) not only predated the Republicans, but were organized as a confederation of state and local political machines and factions that were loyal to Andrew Jackson and were the first to take advantage of the expanded franchise (universal white male suffrage). The best-organized Democratic machine was in New York (thanks, Martin Van Buren, and Aaron Burr before him!).

Remember, America was a one-party, Jeffersonian Republican country by the time Jackson came along as a political figure (RIP Federalists), that's important context. This was not the case for the newly formed Republican Party of the 1850s.

Anyway, Democrats = diverse but more or less (often less) organized Big Tent confederation of constituencies and interests, Republicans = more ideologically motivated and internally unified on a policy platform has been, I'd argue, a core distinction between the two parties throughout the decades/centuries - even if these respective features manifest differently depending on era.  
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Paul Weller
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« Reply #133 on: June 25, 2020, 08:22:50 PM »

^You've made some good points in this thread Yankee, and have somewhat convinced me of your "continuously conservative Republicans and liberal Democrats" theory. However, I think that once you start calling plantation owners "liberals", the term basically loses all meaning.

TIL Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Patrick Henry, Andrew Jackson, and investor in the slave trade who helped draft the (obviously pro-slavery) colonial Constitution of the Carolinas John Locke weren't liberals (or rather, Liberals, to be crystal clear).

They may have been perceived as or thought themselves to be liberals, but their actions didn't match their rhetoric. The owning of other humans as property is clearly inconsistent with core liberal principles like individual liberty and personal freedom, unless one takes an extreme propertarian stance to justify their actions (like Locke and others did).
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Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee
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« Reply #134 on: June 26, 2020, 03:06:13 AM »

^You've made some good points in this thread Yankee, and have somewhat convinced me of your "continuously conservative Republicans and liberal Democrats" theory. However, I think that once you start calling plantation owners "liberals", the term basically loses all meaning.

TIL Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Patrick Henry, Andrew Jackson, and investor in the slave trade who helped draft the (obviously pro-slavery) colonial Constitution of the Carolinas John Locke weren't liberals (or rather, Liberals, to be crystal clear).

They may have been perceived as or thought themselves to be liberals, but their actions didn't match their rhetoric. The owning of other humans as property is clearly inconsistent with core liberal principles like individual liberty and personal freedom, unless one takes an extreme propertarian stance to justify their actions (like Locke and others did).

Are you saying liberals cannot be blinded by prejudice? They are liberals because on a variety of topics they advanced or helped formulate the liberal side of thinking. They were not perfectionists and they weren't saints tough, that is what you guys need to grasp since you are used to conceiving of liberals as being perfect and thus cannot contemplate how a liberal in a previous context would be unable to apply said values to another group of people.
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FEMA Camp Administrator
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« Reply #135 on: June 26, 2020, 06:08:52 AM »

^You've made some good points in this thread Yankee, and have somewhat convinced me of your "continuously conservative Republicans and liberal Democrats" theory. However, I think that once you start calling plantation owners "liberals", the term basically loses all meaning.

TIL Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Patrick Henry, Andrew Jackson, and investor in the slave trade who helped draft the (obviously pro-slavery) colonial Constitution of the Carolinas John Locke weren't liberals (or rather, Liberals, to be crystal clear).

They may have been perceived as or thought themselves to be liberals, but their actions didn't match their rhetoric. The owning of other humans as property is clearly inconsistent with core liberal principles like individual liberty and personal freedom, unless one takes an extreme propertarian stance to justify their actions (like Locke and others did).

Are you saying liberals cannot be blinded by prejudice? They are liberals because on a variety of topics they advanced or helped formulate the liberal side of thinking. They were not perfectionists and they weren't saints tough, that is what you guys need to grasp since you are used to conceiving of liberals as being perfect and thus cannot contemplate how a liberal in a previous context would be unable to apply said values to another group of people.

Moreover, I think the importance of liberalism as a phenomenon is that it could, and did, expand its view of who ought to be liberated, and who was granted inalienable rights.
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darklordoftech
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« Reply #136 on: July 03, 2020, 07:15:23 PM »

I don’t think the parties switched, but I also hate when people on Atlas say, “If you’re a Democrat and you think Woodrow Wilson is an HP, you’re uninformed”.
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Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee
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« Reply #137 on: July 04, 2020, 03:12:43 PM »

I don’t think the parties switched, but I also hate when people on Atlas say, “If you’re a Democrat and you think Woodrow Wilson is an HP, you’re uninformed”.

Depends on who is saying that. There are people who want to rehabilitate Wilson, but for the most part that is basically one side lobbing a distasteful figure at the other as one would lob a hand grenade.

That being said, Wilson was still by no means a Conservative though he certainly drew on some of the broader principles of traditional conservatism owing to this background and thus is no accident that Wilson is doing the same things as John Adams. The fact that he does these things does not put John Adams on the left, or Wilson on right, but what it does illustrate is that intellectual and academic influence is not siloed behind rigid walls and elements can jump from one side to the other simply because an important figure was exposed to that at one point or another.
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Unconditional Surrender Truman
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« Reply #138 on: July 04, 2020, 10:29:15 PM »

I don’t think the parties switched, but I also hate when people on Atlas say, “If you’re a Democrat and you think Woodrow Wilson is an HP, you’re uninformed”.

Depends on who is saying that. There are people who want to rehabilitate Wilson, but for the most part that is basically one side lobbing a distasteful figure at the other as one would lob a hand grenade.

That being said, Wilson was still by no means a Conservative though he certainly drew on some of the broader principles of traditional conservatism owing to this background and thus is no accident that Wilson is doing the same things as John Adams. The fact that he does these things does not put John Adams on the left, or Wilson on right, but what it does illustrate is that intellectual and academic influence is not siloed behind rigid walls and elements can jump from one side to the other simply because an important figure was exposed to that at one point or another.

Is anyone actually saying liberals can't criticize Wilson? I should think we're all capable of acknowledging that someone from our ideological heredity was not a good man or a good president, if that is your contention. Tracing my political philosophy to Jefferson doesn't mean I have to believe going to war with Britain in 1798 would have been a good idea. There's ideology, and then there's application and pragmatism. Two people can agree on the first and divide over the second and third; indeed, such has been a recurring theme throughout history (looking across the pond, the Sinn Féin split of 1922 comes to mind).
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Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee
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« Reply #139 on: July 07, 2020, 04:32:46 PM »

I don’t think the parties switched, but I also hate when people on Atlas say, “If you’re a Democrat and you think Woodrow Wilson is an HP, you’re uninformed”.

Depends on who is saying that. There are people who want to rehabilitate Wilson, but for the most part that is basically one side lobbing a distasteful figure at the other as one would lob a hand grenade.

That being said, Wilson was still by no means a Conservative though he certainly drew on some of the broader principles of traditional conservatism owing to this background and thus is no accident that Wilson is doing the same things as John Adams. The fact that he does these things does not put John Adams on the left, or Wilson on right, but what it does illustrate is that intellectual and academic influence is not siloed behind rigid walls and elements can jump from one side to the other simply because an important figure was exposed to that at one point or another.

Is anyone actually saying liberals can't criticize Wilson? I should think we're all capable of acknowledging that someone from our ideological heredity was not a good man or a good president, if that is your contention. Tracing my political philosophy to Jefferson doesn't mean I have to believe going to war with Britain in 1798 would have been a good idea. There's ideology, and then there's application and pragmatism. Two people can agree on the first and divide over the second and third; indeed, such has been a recurring theme throughout history (looking across the pond, the Sinn Féin split of 1922 comes to mind).

Not sure what you are responding to, nothing I said implied anything of the sort. What I am referring to is the desire of partisans at both sides to throw historical figures at the other side as if they were hand grenades, something we have all criticized at one time or another. It is similar to the "Hitler is a Socialist" meme but slightly different. In this case, it is taking an actual liberal and then highlighting the moral failings to damage the other side.
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Unconditional Surrender Truman
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« Reply #140 on: July 08, 2020, 09:40:40 AM »

I don’t think the parties switched, but I also hate when people on Atlas say, “If you’re a Democrat and you think Woodrow Wilson is an HP, you’re uninformed”.

Depends on who is saying that. There are people who want to rehabilitate Wilson, but for the most part that is basically one side lobbing a distasteful figure at the other as one would lob a hand grenade.

That being said, Wilson was still by no means a Conservative though he certainly drew on some of the broader principles of traditional conservatism owing to this background and thus is no accident that Wilson is doing the same things as John Adams. The fact that he does these things does not put John Adams on the left, or Wilson on right, but what it does illustrate is that intellectual and academic influence is not siloed behind rigid walls and elements can jump from one side to the other simply because an important figure was exposed to that at one point or another.

Is anyone actually saying liberals can't criticize Wilson? I should think we're all capable of acknowledging that someone from our ideological heredity was not a good man or a good president, if that is your contention. Tracing my political philosophy to Jefferson doesn't mean I have to believe going to war with Britain in 1798 would have been a good idea. There's ideology, and then there's application and pragmatism. Two people can agree on the first and divide over the second and third; indeed, such has been a recurring theme throughout history (looking across the pond, the Sinn Féin split of 1922 comes to mind).

Not sure what you are responding to, nothing I said implied anything of the sort. What I am referring to is the desire of partisans at both sides to throw historical figures at the other side as if they were hand grenades, something we have all criticized at one time or another. It is similar to the "Hitler is a Socialist" meme but slightly different. In this case, it is taking an actual liberal and then highlighting the moral failings to damage the other side.
I was agreeing with your response to darklordoftech.
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darklordoftech
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« Reply #141 on: July 27, 2020, 11:45:33 PM »

This kind of controlling behavior social conservatism was present as recent as the 2000s and had strong support from the same group largely, married women who were highly religious.
What examples do you have in mind from the 2000s?
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Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee
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« Reply #142 on: July 28, 2020, 10:18:06 PM »

This kind of controlling behavior social conservatism was present as recent as the 2000s and had strong support from the same group largely, married women who were highly religious.
What examples do you have in mind from the 2000s?

The big ones would be LGBT issues but their is also stem cells and depending on your perspective abortion. There was also the whole Terri Schiavo case in Florida.

At the same time Democrats were going for the secular suburban Authoritarian vote by embracing Gun Control and going after things like say video games and movies, which IIRC you mention frequently. This was building off what Clinton had started with his triangulation on crime and culture in 1992 but taking it up to eleven with Gore.
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darklordoftech
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« Reply #143 on: July 29, 2020, 12:01:56 AM »
« Edited: July 29, 2020, 12:10:42 AM by darklordoftech »

At the same time Democrats were going for the secular suburban Authoritarian vote by embracing Gun Control and going after things like say video games and movies, which IIRC you mention frequently. This was building off what Clinton had started with his triangulation on crime and culture in 1992 but taking it up to eleven with Gore.
It definitely had started by 1984 with Lautenberg (who isn’t even Christian and donated enough to McGovern’s campaign to be on Nixon’s enemies list) writing the National Minimum Drinking Age Act (which Reaga, Liddy Dole, and the majority of Republicans in Congress opposed until the House passed it with a voice vote) and in 1985 Tipper Gore started the Parents Music Resource Center. I don’t think Clinton’s 1992 campaign mentioned culture at all besides abortion and gays serving in the military. Clinton’s 1996 campaign, on the other hand, pretty much declared teenagers to be the new communists (thanks to Dick Morris’s advice). Republicans learned the wrong lesson from Dole’s defeat and embraced No Child Left Behind. How ironic that in the 21st Century, Gore would become a hero to the youth (and Bush moving in an authoritarian direction after 9/11 pushed young voters away from the GOP).
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Battista Minola 1616
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« Reply #144 on: July 29, 2020, 05:17:57 AM »

This kind of controlling behavior social conservatism was present as recent as the 2000s and had strong support from the same group largely, married women who were highly religious.
What examples do you have in mind from the 2000s?

The big ones would be LGBT issues but their is also stem cells and depending on your perspective abortion. There was also the whole Terri Schiavo case in Florida.

At the same time Democrats were going for the secular suburban Authoritarian vote by embracing Gun Control and going after things like say video games and movies, which IIRC you mention frequently. This was building off what Clinton had started with his triangulation on crime and culture in 1992 but taking it up to eleven with Gore.

Describing new well-off Democrats as "the secular suburban authoritarian vote" (which I doubt is a term of endearment) is one of those things that create an unholy alliance between the far-left and "RINO's" and I find that fascinating.
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Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee
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« Reply #145 on: July 29, 2020, 11:53:34 AM »

This kind of controlling behavior social conservatism was present as recent as the 2000s and had strong support from the same group largely, married women who were highly religious.
What examples do you have in mind from the 2000s?

The big ones would be LGBT issues but their is also stem cells and depending on your perspective abortion. There was also the whole Terri Schiavo case in Florida.

At the same time Democrats were going for the secular suburban Authoritarian vote by embracing Gun Control and going after things like say video games and movies, which IIRC you mention frequently. This was building off what Clinton had started with his triangulation on crime and culture in 1992 but taking it up to eleven with Gore.

Describing new well-off Democrats as "the secular suburban authoritarian vote" (which I doubt is a term of endearment) is one of those things that create an unholy alliance between the far-left and "RINO's" and I find that fascinating.

It was mainly a quick short hand I threw out there to differentiate between secular and Evangelical suburbanites who both sought to in some way control certain behaviors. Both parties were trying to cater to this mindset at the time with the primary dividing line being religious affiliation.
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RINO Tom
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« Reply #146 on: July 30, 2020, 12:13:33 PM »

Just as a more general thought to bring this conversation back down an intellectual notch ... when looking for party continuity, you will rarely find easy evidence of this the more specific you get, as things change so much with time.  Few people are doing this, but a lot of your average Joe's perception of a "party flip" starts with very surface-level suspicions around questions like,

- "If Southern Whites went from being that Democratic to that Republican, something fundamentally must have changed in the parties, right?"

- "If Black voters abandoned the party that championed their emancipation, something fundamentally must have changed in the parties, right?"

- "If modern conservatives are campaigning on small government and state's rights, then someone who empowered the Executive Branch to the extent of Abraham Lincoln would probably be a Democrat today, right?"

These questions, while understandable and certainly worth asking, easily lead people down the wrong path, in my lowly, non-expert opinion.  One needs only look at George W. Bush's Presidency or Democratic governors' reaction to Trump's executive initiatives (from immigration to COVID-19) to see that the tradition of liberals and conservatives using big government when it suits them and federalism when it suits them is alive and well.  People describe an insidiously manipulative GOP implementing the Southern Strategy to win Southern White voters yet turn around in the same breath and speak of the GOP pre-1964 - the very GOP that would have needed to agree to GO AFTER these Southern Whites - as if it were a completely different party.  People will simultaneously champion FDR as a progressive hero and suggest that the GOP didn't become the more conservative party until the 1960s ... I honestly don't even think they stop and think about it enough as a whole, because these conversations are only ever focused on such tunnel-vision-based points.  These are obviously your run-of-the-mill Facebook commenters, not posters here, but it's easy to see how this idea gains traction ... I mean, it's a comforting narrative for both modern liberals who prioritize social issues and for some Southern conservatives who are trying to reconcile their politics with the ancestors that they over-revere.  That leaves a few of us screaming into the wind in the middle. Tongue

It's my humble opinion that you see continuity more in broad ideas and ideals ... basic things like the GOP's worship of the self-made man and the idea that the only thing stopping anyone from achieving the American dream was a lack of hard work or overt structural barriers like slavery or legalized segregation ring through every era of Republicanism, even among many progressive Republicans.  These assertions have always been met by suspicion and a collective eye roll from Democrats, alleging that it's a fanciful myth to comfort those who have achieved success due to privileges they were born with ... that might have been being an English Protestant in the 1850s, but by the 1960s it easily included one's race and upbringing and by 2020, it includes things like sexual orientation.  Liberalism, IMO, naturally evolves in a way so as to somewhat ostracize past liberals; its standards are constantly changing, and people like Jackson and Wilson who were once heralded as progressive icons will start to look worse and worse as the scope of progressive egalitarianism broadens.  It wouldn't shock me in the least if, in 100 years, Barack Obama's venerated image has pushed Japanese-interning FDR to the Jackson/Wilson dustbin.  The fact that Democrats in the North apologized for slavery might make that action/view necessarily "not liberal" or even "right wing" to you, but it does NOT make THEM "right wing" on the whole.  A Republican who decries slavery as a gross barrier to free enterprise and the American Dream might look "liberal" for that, but I think what says more about their ideology is what they wanted to do about it after they succeeded ... many more liberal/progressive continued to champion initiatives to help Black Americans, but many other former Radicals showed their true colors and saw their jobs as done and the rest of the work to be done by hardworking Freedmen themselves.  You saw a similar phenomenon with the GOP and civil rights in the mid-Twentieth Century.  They were happy to provide massive majorities for civil rights legislation that moved legalized racist barriers, but many declared "Mission Accomplished" at that point and were ready for a colorblind society that let the free market work its magic ... all of a sudden, as the litmus test for supporting "civil rights" now included things like busing, fair housing and subsidizing poorer neighborhoods through social programs, the GOP found itself bewildered that anyone thought there was more to be done, IMO showing their fundamentally conservative outlook on supporting what many might consider a "liberal" cause.
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darklordoftech
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« Reply #147 on: August 05, 2020, 11:22:27 PM »

I find it interesting that we often hear that slavery is “America’s Original Sin” and we hear of “America’s Puritan Roots” whenever there’s a discussion about alcohol or sex, but the Puritans and the slaveowners hated each other. The slaveowners were Cavaliers, the enemies and polar opposite of the Puritans.
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RINO Tom
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« Reply #148 on: August 06, 2020, 06:17:07 PM »

I find it interesting that we often hear that slavery is “America’s Original Sin” and we hear of “America’s Puritan Roots” whenever there’s a discussion about alcohol or sex, but the Puritans and the slaveowners hated each other. The slaveowners were Cavaliers, the enemies and polar opposite of the Puritans.

It's worth noting, though, that many Republicans (including Lincoln) drew a VERY hard distinction between slaveholders of the Founders' generation and those of the 1850s and 1860s.  They effectively argued that they had bastardized the Founders' original plan of letting slavery die a natural death by implementing radical new measures to protect the dying institution under the guise of "preserving" something.  In essence, Republicans argued that they weren't trying to fundamentally change ANYTHING; they were trying to achieve the Founders' goal of ending slavery, which would have been achieved by the time of the Civil War if it hadn't been for the slavers' Constitutional gymnastics and shameless pivoting to keep the system alive.  It was only then that action was even NEEDED to halt slavery's expansion so aggressively.  I imagine an 1850s Northerner would be absolutely appalled to hear Confederate apologists of today even SUGGESTING that the slaveholders were some Constitutionally guided, small government group, haha.
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Paul Weller
HenryWallaceVP
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« Reply #149 on: August 07, 2020, 09:52:10 PM »
« Edited: August 08, 2020, 09:30:56 AM by HenryWallaceVP »

I find it interesting that we often hear that slavery is “America’s Original Sin” and we hear of “America’s Puritan Roots” whenever there’s a discussion about alcohol or sex, but the Puritans and the slaveowners hated each other. The slaveowners were Cavaliers, the enemies and polar opposite of the Puritans.

It's because the perception of the Puritans has changed so drastically in the past 100 years, from that of tolerant and liberal-minded individuals to censorious and prudish. Most Americans don't understand the Puritans as how they actually were in the context of their time, and instead project backward views and attitudes onto them they didn't hold. For most of their history, the Puritans nearly always found themselves opposed to despotism and on the side of liberty.

Slavery was sinful to the Puritans because it infringed on the equality of man under God. If that sounds like liberal rhetoric, it is no accident. Liberalism as an ideology owes its existence to radical Protestant theology, and its tenets flowed directly from it. Almost any historian would agree that the Puritans were the radicals of their day and on the "left" of the political spectrum, so I'm frankly tired of RINO Tom's revisionist attempts to prove otherwise.
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