Historical continuity of Democrats and Republicans
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darklordoftech
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« Reply #275 on: March 13, 2021, 01:29:10 AM »

connecting the Puritans to the Second Great Awakening is bad history.
People think that the Puritans planted the seeds of alcohol prohibition and the Hays Code, but I’m not sure if there’s any truth to that. Perhaps “puritanism”, when used to refer to things like that, is just a metaphorical term coming from the actual Puritans?
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Unconditional Surrender Truman
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« Reply #276 on: March 13, 2021, 07:04:15 PM »
« Edited: March 13, 2021, 07:23:26 PM by Unconditional Surrender Truman »

The title of this old blog post by historian Eric Rauchway sends up all sorts of red flags, but the content actually reinforces the point Yankee and I (among others) have been making here: that while the policy prescriptions of the major parties changed dramatically between 1876 and 1936, their core ideologies did not.

"In the West were voters disillusioned with the Republican Party’s Second American System, which turned out awfully favorable to banks, railroads, and manufacturing interests, and less favorable to small-time farmers such as those who had gone West and gone bust."

"Now, one can get cleverer and point out that although the rhetoric and to a degree the policies of the parties do switch places, their core supporters don’t—which is to say, the Republicans remain, throughout, the party of bigger businesses; it’s just that in the earlier era bigger businesses want bigger government and in the later era they don’t."
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Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee
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« Reply #277 on: March 13, 2021, 07:15:53 PM »

The title of this old blog post by historian Eric Rauchway sends up all sorts of red flags, but the content actually reinforces the point Yankee and I (among others) have been making here: that while the policy prescriptions of the major parties changed dramatically between 1876 and 1936, their core ideologies did not.

"In the West were voters disillusioned with the Republican Party’s Second American System, which turned out awfully favorable to banks, railroads, and manufacturing interests, and less favorable to small-time farmers such as those who had gone West and gone bust."

"Now, one can get cleverer and point out that although the rhetoric and to a degree the policies of the parties do switch places, their core supporters don’t—which is to say, the Republicans remain, throughout, the party of bigger businesses; it’s just that in the earlier era bigger businesses want bigger government and in the later era they don’t."

I have linked to Rauchway before including earlier in this thread: https://www.livescience.com/34241-democratic-republican-parties-switch-platforms.html
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Unconditional Surrender Truman
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« Reply #278 on: March 13, 2021, 07:19:55 PM »

The title of this old blog post by historian Eric Rauchway sends up all sorts of red flags, but the content actually reinforces the point Yankee and I (among others) have been making here: that while the policy prescriptions of the major parties changed dramatically between 1876 and 1936, their core ideologies did not.

"In the West were voters disillusioned with the Republican Party’s Second American System, which turned out awfully favorable to banks, railroads, and manufacturing interests, and less favorable to small-time farmers such as those who had gone West and gone bust."

"Now, one can get cleverer and point out that although the rhetoric and to a degree the policies of the parties do switch places, their core supporters don’t—which is to say, the Republicans remain, throughout, the party of bigger businesses; it’s just that in the earlier era bigger businesses want bigger government and in the later era they don’t."

I have linked to Rauchway before including earlier in this thread: https://www.livescience.com/34241-democratic-republican-parties-switch-platforms.html

Ha! I am starting to forget everything that has been said in this thread after 12 pages. Tongue
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Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee
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« Reply #279 on: March 13, 2021, 07:21:51 PM »

There is a rather obvious reason why business would shift towards a small government footing, because once they had achieved international dominance as they had by 1900 to a large extent, many American firms slowly began to see government more as an obstacle then as a positive. This is why by 1930 you actually had a number of business types opposing Smoot-Hawley and it was mere political inertia behind the policy and perceived benefits politically that pushed it along, only to fail miserably. The economy is dynamic, but the politics backing a policy only change once it is proven to be a complete disaster as such.

When in an earlier period, American firms were competing against dominant British ones and also competing against established plantation owners for political power in the south, using the government for trade protection, subsidies and the like as a policy of developmental capitalism was desirable instead.

Rauchway's argument thus makes perfect sense when you consider it from a primarily economic and business basis, as well as the relative dynamics of money and power in a given time period.
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Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee
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« Reply #280 on: March 13, 2021, 07:22:26 PM »

The title of this old blog post by historian Eric Rauchway sends up all sorts of red flags, but the content actually reinforces the point Yankee and I (among others) have been making here: that while the policy prescriptions of the major parties changed dramatically between 1876 and 1936, their core ideologies did not.

"In the West were voters disillusioned with the Republican Party’s Second American System, which turned out awfully favorable to banks, railroads, and manufacturing interests, and less favorable to small-time farmers such as those who had gone West and gone bust."

"Now, one can get cleverer and point out that although the rhetoric and to a degree the policies of the parties do switch places, their core supporters don’t—which is to say, the Republicans remain, throughout, the party of bigger businesses; it’s just that in the earlier era bigger businesses want bigger government and in the later era they don’t."

I have linked to Rauchway before including earlier in this thread: https://www.livescience.com/34241-democratic-republican-parties-switch-platforms.html

Ha! I am starting to forget everything that has been said in this thread after 12 pages. Tongue

Well I am not even 100% sure it was this thread, but I have linked to it a couple of times. Tongue
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Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee
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« Reply #281 on: March 13, 2021, 07:24:49 PM »

Now, I could point out to you that the North held on to Established Churches for longer than the South did

It doesn't make any sense to me how there could be an "established" state Congregational church in the North, when the whole point of Congregationalism is that local congregations control their own affairs. Case in point: when the Independents came to power in Britain, they abolished the Church of England and granted freedom of religion to Protestant dissenters.
Okay, but there was. The Congregationalist Church remained the state church of Connecticut until 1818, when it was finally disestablished by a coalition of Republicans and moderate Federalists who ran under the banner of the "Toleration party"; New Hampshire had disestablished its state Congregationalist Church only the previous year, while neighboring Massachusetts kept its established church for another decade and a half, only formally disestablishing the Church in 1833. I should think this should not be too surprising to anyone familiar with the history of Puritanism in New England.

I just don't understand it on a conceptual level. How can a denomination that definitionally gives congregations local control have a state church?

I wonder what you imagine a state church to be, and how it is incompatible with Congregationalism? In New England, the established Congregational Church had the support of the state, meaning it was able to collect tithes and enforce church attendance. As I say, this continued well into the nineteenth century, long after the rest of the country disestablished their state churches in the late eighteenth century.

It is rather forgotten aspect of our history.

It is also a case of "it isn't a problem if it is our people doing it". Same with the religious discrimination discussion that occurred earlier in this thread.
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Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee
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« Reply #282 on: March 13, 2021, 08:01:11 PM »

I do feel like we're reaching a consensus of sorts, as I have little to argue with in response to Truman or most of Yankee's points, but there's one thing Yankee said which is still bugging me. That is, his insistence that the Democratic party of the 1850s and 60s was still a liberal party, despite all evidence to the contrary.

5) Indeed, but I'm reminded of something Yankee once said in another thread (or perhaps earlier in this one). It was about how sometimes in history there have been ideological alignments which pitted conservatives and leftists/labor together against liberals.

Yep, here we go

His claim was that the Republican Party at its founding included both conservative businessmen and socialists drawn together against Democratic liberals

Yes I did

but I'm increasingly getting the sense that the opposite was true, if you replace "businessmen" with "slave owners" and "socialists" with "labor".


Yes you would naturally.

Even if socialist thinkers like Marx who understood the importance of the slavery battle supported the Republicans, most workingmen in the 1850s continued to vote Democratic based on the old economic issues and racist demagogic appeals.


Old economic issues drawn heavily from a classical liberal policy base, combined with an opposition to monopolies, yes.

Even so, working voters were divided as I have repeatedly said since 1) Slavery was beginning to be seen as a threat to working people in the north as opposed to a salvation, post Dred Scott. 2) Republican Economic Nationalism was more befitting their economic interest then the Democrats agrarian+period liberal economic policy (which threatened deindustrialization in the eyes of many workers).

They were joined in the party by slave owners, of course, desperate to preserve their favored economic and political position from abolitionism.

Glad you finally acknowledge they were joining an egalitarian party out of mutual interest.

I just don't see how you can continue to insist this. The Democratic party of the 1850s was a reactionary mess that no longer stood for anything or anyone, least of all the unfortunate, besides the slave power and Southern interests. Truman himself has stated that by 1850, all genuine liberals bolted the party. Is it not obvious that in a political arena in which slavery was the defining issue, perhaps the one true issue of the 1850s which underlaid all else, that the defenders of such an institution are nothing but the most blatant of conservatives? I'm curious how you would respond to these two passages I posted a couple pages back from the Louisville paper, which make quite clear to me that in the 1850s-60s the Republicans were a liberal party and the Democrats a conservative one:

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Not only did Church officials perceive the Republicans to be anti-Catholic and associate them with the nativist riots that occurred during the prewar period, but prelates and priests also argued that the party of Lincoln represented the ill-effects of Protestantism in American society. Clergy considered the Republican antislavery platform and the party’s association with abolitionism to be examples of Protestant fanaticism. Although by 1860 nearly all Protestant sects contained an antislavery faction, almost all members of the Church—in both the United States and Europe—denounced abolitionism as a radical movement that opposed Catholic teachings. Catholic leaders considered abolitionism to be a product of Protestant liberalism which threatened to upend the social and legal status quo in the country. As abolitionists demanded an immediate end to slavery, despite American laws that protected the institution, Catholic leaders sought to preserve order by upholding the sanctity of the Constitution. Thus, prelates and priests believed that the Republican Party—the party of northern Protestants—endangered the stability of the country by advancing its antislavery platform. In particular, ultramontane clergy—like Francis Patrick Kenrick and Spalding—adhered to the belief that slavery remained a legitimate human relation that fit within a structured social hierarchy. Clergy referenced Catholic theology, doctrine, and dogma to offer an alternative course of action than the one pursued by abolitionists and antislavery Republicans. According to members of the American hierarchy, Catholicism defended national laws, protected the social order, and prevented political factionalism because it provided a central authority—the Church—to settle internal disputes. On the other hand, prelates and priests contended that Protestantism allowed for lawlessness, fomented social disorder, and led to political disunion because, without the acceptance of a central moral authority, Protestantism allowed each man (or woman) to become a law unto himself (or herself). Thus, not only did clergy oppose the Republican Party because of its perceived anti-Catholic stance, but prelates and priests also disparaged the party of Lincoln because it represented the interests of northern Protestants, a group that Catholics considered uninformed religious fanatics that fomented disunion.
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Although the clergy in Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri did not publicly endorse or campaign for a candidate in the presidential election of 1860, the majority of prelates and priests privately supported Stephen Douglas, the northern Democratic candidate from Illinois. The clergy’s antebellum experiences with nativism and anti-Catholicism forged a strong bond between members of the Church and Democrats. However, by the summer of 1860, the Democratic Party had divided into northern and southern wings, forcing Border State Catholics to decide between Douglas and John C. Breckinridge of the southern Democratic Party. Although some Catholics backed Breckinridge—particularly fellow Kentuckians from the western portion of the state—most members of the Church in the region supported Douglas. The northern Democratic candidate promoted unionism and vowed to uphold the status quo, which, to Catholic clergy, meant an adherence to the law and the preservation of social order. As Catholic historian William B. Kurtz explained, “Catholics’ faith and religious worldview, which emphasized stability over reform, also made them predisposed to favor a conservative and national party.” Douglas gained the support of Catholics because he advocated the policy of popular sovereignty to decide the fate of slavery in the West, opposed abolitionism, promised to protect the rights of immigrants, and promoted the sanctity of the Union by running a national campaign. For example, regarding the dispute over slavery in the western territories, the Douglas Democratic platform pledged to “abide by the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States [the Dred Scott decision] upon these questions of Constitutional law.” Thus, clergy from the Border States viewed Douglas as the candidate least influenced by Protestant liberalism and most committed to the interests of the Church and the nation.

On the other side, in the Republican Party, we see Northern liberals and the bourgeois middle class, determined to liberate the oppressed slaves of the South.

And Northern Socialists, Northern Aristocrats, Northern Capitalists, Northern Speculators and Northern Landed Elites and everyone else who for a multitude of reasons listed below came to regard slave power as a threat to their situation or values.

1. Genuine moral outrage
2. Corruption of the Constitution and the courts
3. Violation of Northern State's with Fugitive Slave law
4. Fear of Slavery being spread north by the courts and out competing paid labor (Dred Scott and Bleeding KS before that)
5. Hindrance to the economic development of the country, getting in the way of desired policy outcomes (economic nationalism).
6. Hindrance to the spreading of the gospel to the unwashed

The problem with emphasizing the nature of "The Northern Middle Class" here is that it fails to account for the economic dynamic by which this middle class existed and the resulting altered policy orientation to which they existed towards the establishment. This is the same problem with failing to account for the relative dominance of more calvinistic sects in America and expecting the political relationship of dissenters in Britain and Calvinists/Pius Sects in the US  to be exactly the same. Power dynamics matter.

The Northern Middle Class, or at least that portion of which that was connected to and depended upon the Industrial Revolution, would be thus depended on a set of economically nationalist policies that would put it in contrast to say the middle class in Britain that depended on a trading empire and a free trade policy for its wealth. The effect of this in reality means this portion of the middle class is going to adhere to and behave similarly to the elites, in the US, more so then elsewhere and especially in Britain.

Also before we go further, there was strong middle class support from the Jacksonian era for the Democratic Party. Of course in your view every Catholic is a right wing reactionary Monarchist, but that would be one group of middle class support. Aside from them there would be middle class and likewise even elements of he Wall Street Class that supported Democratic policies precisely because they were engaged in industries that were harmed or at least not benefited directly by the economic policies of the Republican Protective System. Also anti-monopoly politics had a strong middle class appeal in an era where large portions of the middle class were getting screwed by monopolists, just like anti-speculation politics had a strong appeal to the small and poor farmers getting screwed by the speculators.

When you dig into this, you find a clear cleavage on an economic nationalist vs. "liberal" (mostly classical but also with some compromises in terms of opposing speculators/monopolists and trying to regulate that). This would cleave a minority of the Northern Wealthy into opposing the Republicans and an even larger group (though likely not a majority or even close) of the middle class and a significant group, perhaps even a majority of working class voters (variably by era), that would be supporting the Democrats.

Now I know you have repeatedly said you don't give a crap about economic and class dynamics, but just because you don't like it, doesn't mean that these dynamics don't exist.

Yes, the Republicans combined all sorts of Northerners into one party, but what they all had in common was their Protestant liberalism. Read the passages I posted above. Despite the multitude of reasons that led people to oppose slavery, I maintain that the Republicans were at their founding fundamentally a classical liberal party, committed to eradicating slavery for ideological reasons first and foremost before any economic concerns. The party's opposition to slavery came from its ideological commitment to classical liberalism - that is to say, its founding belief in the equality of man under the law and determination to "make men free". This is borne out by everything the party said and did, who founded it, the candidates it ran, how it was perceived and reacted to by contemporaries, etc. Orwell is right; the Republicans were not just a continuation of the Whigs, and it is dishonest to pretend as if they were.

Also, I'm tired of hearing your "economic nationalist = conservative" claim, which you seem to have accepted as a predetermined truth that requires no backing evidence whatsoever. I've already explained how Listian economic nationalism was very much in line with 19th century American liberal capitalism, not "free trade". As you like to say, motivations and interest groups are more important ideological determiners than the policies themselves, or in this case how strictly those policies adhere to classical economic orthodoxy.

Are you seriously arguing that Smithian/Ricardian Economics is not liberal in the mid to early 19th century?

I never said that nationalism was always a liberal or conservative economic policy. I did say that Northern workers felt threatened by Democrats "Classical Liberal" economic platforms, which was primarily defined as being that of Adam Smith and David Ricardo "as it was extolled" in being for lassiez faire and free trade. Listian nationalism having appeal among certain sects of liberalism in Europe doesn't alter what is primarily seen as Liberal economic policy for the time. Democrats did combine this stance with opposition to banks and monopolies in multiple different eras as well, including this one in question.

What I have repeatedly said, particularly with regards to Protectionism is that whether it is a Conservative or Liberal policy is down to who backs it and why. Surely no one in their right mind is going to call 1970s pro-Union Democrats Conservatives, or Donald Trump a Liberal. Economic interest is dynamic because the economy is always evolving, therefore the specific economic policies themselves are not indicative on their own absent who is pushing them and for what benefit. In the mid 19th century, the people promoting economic nationalism were the business owners in the North and they were able to sway their workers to embrace it out of fear the other side's proposals would nuke their jobs. This is not a liberal party, embracing a niche liberal economic policy from a sect of European thinkers. This is a set of owners (yes capitalists) who want to gain/preserve political dominance internally and economic dominance globally through the use of economic nationalism and developmental capitalism. Over the course of a decade they would come to dominate the Republican Party and turn it into a tool largely for their own enrichment, a dynamic that would only strengthen over the decades.

These people and their trusts would be our "Monarchy" and Bourbon Democrats were derisively labeled "Bourbons" because their seen by their own base as too cozy with said Monarchy and their politics no longer serving to benefit said base, but instead serving to likewise enrich the trusts and monopolists.

Writers, thinkers and such leaving a party is one thing. But the base of the Democratic Party doesn't just magically change save for the loss of places like NH, ME, MI and WI. Aside from the loss of more Jacksonian Yankees, the Democrats are still a party of immigrants, small farmers and poor Southern/Westerners, along with urban artisans. The broadest categories here do not change be it 1830s, 1860s or 1890s. Its the same people, supporting largely the same things, for largely the same reasons (though the latter would diverge leading to the populists and eventually WJB, that was a return to normalcy, not a radical divergence of historical alignment).

Here is what I will say to you, is that just like the Federalists in 1814, the Democrats got sucked down the rabbit hole of special/base interest hell to preserve the power and status of the planter class, because the rest of their base flowed naturally into a footing aligned with that mindset.





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Paul Weller
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« Reply #283 on: March 14, 2021, 12:39:15 AM »
« Edited: March 14, 2021, 12:23:50 PM by HenryWallaceVP »

I'm afraid I must disagree with virtually everything you said. You call economic nationalism conservative because it benefited Northern capitalists, who were the "monarchy" of 19th century America. I contend, however, that the advancement of capitalism was not a conservative goal, those capitalists themselves were not conservatives, and they most certainly did not constitute the "monarchy" of their day.

As you say, whether it is a conservative or liberal policy is down to who backs it and why. In the case of economic nationalism, its supporters believed it was necessary to modernize and develop the industry of the country. Certainly the industry owners could expect to make a profit, but that wasn't the main purpose. Those who advocated an industrial policy were in fact radical modernizers. As an aside, things were very different in Britain, and I don't think the Liberals' support of free trade can be compared to the Democrats' policy. Their positions were for completely different reasons and represented different interests, and crucially the infant industries that required development in America were already well established in Britain. The Corn Laws were just about making landowners richer and had nothing to do with modernization. But to continue with the main argument: the drive to go from an agrarian society to an industrial one is not a conservative one. Classical conservatives in the 19th century were not at all fond of capitalism, as it was a central aspect of modernity and the move away from traditional modes of society. I'm sure you're well aware of 19th century conservatives' idealization of country life and distaste for the Industrial Revolution. But where does that leave the Jeffersonian and Jacksonian agrarians? Well, these "democrats", representing the common people, found themselves in common cause with America's only real conservatives, the planter class, against the Northern liberal elite, if you will. As you once noted, 19th century conservatives and laborers often jointly opposed bourgeois liberals.

And these Northern capitalists were bourgeois liberals indeed. They were not traditionalist conservatives in any sense. They were the nouveau rich, the embodiment of the new economy, and believers in a form of Protestant liberalism passed down by their Puritan forefathers. This included a set of "Yankee values" like freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and the dignity of work. The North was a progressive, relatively secular part of the country, full of religious wanderers - "Infidels, Skeptics, Millerites," and Mormons, to name just a few of the "thousand other superstitious and infidel isms at the North" and "the moral, religious, and social heresies of the North", not to mention the "Women's Right's men, and strong-minded women". I'm quoting Fitzhugh, as you could probably tell, but don't just take his word for it. There's tons of scholarship that has been done on the independent spiritual movements of the antebellum North, movements which exerted a major social influence and were not just at the fringes of society. Transcendentalism is probably the most well-known of them today, but far from the only one. The mere existence of such movements may be surprising to those unfamiliar with Protestant liberalism accustomed to imagining the North as a place of rigid Puritan orthodoxy, but as George McKenna (author of The Puritan Origins of American Patriotism) writes about the secularist National Liberal League, "a closer look would show that the Liberals were really located at the far end of a Protestant continuum."

Northern capitalists were in no sense the "monarchy" of 19th century America. Perhaps the most signifying tenet of Yankee liberalism is a deep commitment to individualism and meritocracy, an utter hatred of the hereditary principle. The only group with any passable claim to royalty were Southern slaveholders, and they were certainly the only group that ever openly aspired to it. In culture, politics, tradition, society, and even ancestry, the Southern ruling class were far more akin to the nobility of Europe than their Northern countrymen. This was well understood by contemporaries, among them Henry Adams, who wrote about how "the Slave power took the place of Stuart kings and Roman popes". Also recognizing the similarities were the Confederates themselves, and their confrere aristocrats in Europe. If you asked them, Northerners were heretical, radical, materialistic Yankee liberals who embodied everything wrong with the modern world, while Southerners were godly upholders of tradition and order:

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By midcentury many leading American Catholics held that Catholicism melded more easily with the hierarchical and illiberal culture of the slaveholding South than with the ultra-democratic and commercial values of the Yankee North. This notion of the South as a kind of “quasi-Catholic society,” flawed and superficial as it was, would soon spread beyond American shores and exert a powerful hold over the Catholic elite of Europe. As the United States descended into Civil War, many of the Catholic monarchists, nobles, and reactionaries of the Old World came to regard the struggle between an abolitionist North and slaveholding South as a mirror image of the longstanding struggle between liberal democracy and reactionary monarchism that had roiled Catholic Europe since 1789. The Confederacy, on this view, was a traditional, aristocratic society besieged by the modern forces of democracy and industrialism embodied in the “Yankee Leviathan” of the North. Eager to witness the dissolution of the American Republic, the Catholic elite of France, Spain, Germany, Austria and Italy, including many of the leading representatives of the Holy See itself, would prove among the most stalwart allies of the Confederacy.

[...]

Moreover, the view of the Confederacy as a traditional, aristocratic society besieged by a revolutionary and ultra-democratic North was itself a key article of Confederate propaganda during the Civil War. Eager to enlist foreign allies and shape public opinion overseas, the Confederacy between 1862 and 1864 funded an extensive agitprop campaign in Europe aimed at reinforcing the perception of the American South as a conservative, traditional society at war with the radical and materialistic “Yankees” and “Puritans” of the industrial North. Particularly in France, Ireland, Spain, and Italy, a central pillar of this propaganda campaign was the argument that the aristocratic South was, in terms of culture, religion, politics, and national origins, a kind of colonial outpost of the Catholic Old World. To help disseminate this message, the Confederate government enlisted a number of American Catholic churchmen, including Rev. John Bannon of St. Louis and Bishop Patrick Lynch of Charleston, to travel to Europe as diplomatic agents. But this propaganda campaign also benefited from the more informal support of a wide array of pro-Confederate American Catholic clergymen, including Martin John Spalding, the intellectual luminary of the American hierarchy, who sought to leverage their Old World influence into stronger diplomatic ties between Richmond and Rome

Finally, I must address a couple of your other repeated points. First, your claim that the base of the Democratic party was much the same in the 1830s as in the 1860s. Whether this is true or not, I really don't care, because the priorities of the party had clearly changed from advocacy for the common man to slavery apologism, and if you don't recognize that then you're just naive about who was in the driver's seat of the Democratic party at midcentury. Second, your assertion that Northern Protestants and businessmen were in a dominant position relative to the rest of the country, and thus conservative. Even if true, which it may not be considering the wealth and political sway of the slave power, I say it makes little difference. The Whig Oligarchy in the first half of the 18th century were also in a dominant position, but I doubt you would consider them more conservative than the Tories. Beliefs and principles, not social standing, is the basis of ideology. Toleration of Dissenters and limits on Kingly power is a liberal position, no matter if it is supported by the dominant party or the one in opposition. Similarly, in the political arena of the 1850s and 60s - when slavery was by far the most important issue of the day - the Republican party argued the liberal position on slavery and was thus the more liberal party, regardless of whether they represented the "dominant" class at the national level. This is clear to me, and I hope it is to you as well.
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« Reply #284 on: March 14, 2021, 01:11:15 AM »

Round and round and round we go, where this will ever end, god only knows.

Henry, from the time of Daniel Shays onward, right-left or conservative-liberal cleavage formed between two factions that had supported the American Revolution and it definitively had cut along class lines with the merchants and cosmopolitan faction forming the Conservative one to protect their precious money from the Plebs I am quoted as referencing in Truman's signature. "OMG the plebs are coming to kill us". 

This is precisely because America did not have an aristocracy or a monarchy. The closest thing to that was the New England Merchants (later industrialists), and of course the Southern Planters.

It is hard to demonstrate this in written words, but America's political development was a divide between two "liberal Pro-Revolution groups" with the small holder agrarian one taking the more radical side, favoring egalitarianism and justifying the French Revolution. The more cosmopolitan, urban and commercially oriented group took the more "conservative side" reacting in horror to the radicalism, mob rule and other examples of chaos in their day. The latter group mirrors closely the political evolution of Edmund Burke who likewise had been a "Whiggish" politician but ended up staking out a "New 1790s" Conservatism that embraced some aspects of Whig cause while rejecting the more radical elements.

Where we keep losing you Henry is that you keep trying to:
1. Foist this 17th Century dynamic into a later time period
2. Failure to account for how foreign examples would end up translating into a country whose political culture is to the left of that of the mother country and how a new divide would break down along class lines.

You insist in one breath that the Republicans are the heirs of the Whigs when it is convenient then reject that when it is not, for example. If Republicans are the heirs of the Whigs, then they are the heirs also of this conservative reaction manifested first through the Federalist Party and then through the Whigs in horror to the "radicalism" manifested via Jefferson and then via Jackson.

You also fail to acknowledge that their can be any kind of "conservatism" other than that extolled by Charles I and some extremist writers, or that you can have a "conservatism" built around preserving the gains of the previous generations "liberalism" from the current  generation of liberalism's "extremism". William McKinley has to be a liberal because he doesn't support divine right Kingship and all the other same old horsesh@%t.  This means that wealthy New England blue bloods and merchants, who through the Federalist Party showed just how "committed" (sarcasm) to cause of egalitarianism they were through all the means Truman and I discussed do not exist because they are 1. Yankee, 2. Northern and 3. Just disappear from the face of the earth once 1850 hits or they all move South.

When you have a cultural ethos, that completely rejects a previous dynamic, a new dynamic and divide will replace it and no amount of No True Scotsmen from writers lamenting their irrelevance while clinging to the old dynamic will change this fact.

Here is the simple fact and it is the one born out from history record

the Northeastern Business establishment represented a conservative force in American Politics from 1787 onward and through the 1840s and again from the 1930s onward were in an alliance with the Southern right. Yes, they stuck with the Northern Whigs and yes they rejected the Abolitionists, radicals and early Republicans, but they folded into the Republican Party under Abraham Lincoln and slowly came to take it over during the 1870s, turning it into the very thing you firmly declared a few posts before (The successor to the Whigs). But not the Whigs that existed in the fanciful delusions of naive writers and propagandists but the Whigs that existed in reality to service the interest of class consideration and opposition to radical and egalitarian politics.
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Unconditional Surrender Truman
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« Reply #285 on: March 14, 2021, 01:57:34 PM »

It seems Henry is just determined to believe that the wealthy business interests who used their considerable political capital to increase their riches at the expense of the working classes were actually liberals, and actually it was the poor immigrants, farmers, and workers who were the real reactionaries. No matter how much evidence is marshaled against these arguments, he always comes back with the same three quotes and his bizarre transposition of seventeenth century England onto nineteenth century America, and an equally-unfounded paranoia towards a marginalized religious minority.

If your idea of liberalism includes wealthy industrialists, bankers, and speculators and excludes poor and working class people, then liberalism is not remotely a left-wing ideology. There is a reason the Jacksonians absorbed the Working Men's Party in the early 1830s. There is a reason those abolitionist radicals Henry loves to quote spoke of a corrupt alliance of the "lords of the loom" and the "lords of the lash." There is a reason why the Dorr rebels in Rhode Island or the Tolerationists in Connecticut sided with the Democrats against the Whigs. Outside of the period from 1850-1874, the politics of the United States in the nineteenth century were characterized by a bitter class war. Racism, xenophobia, and religious bigotry were all invoked by the various elites to divide the working classes as they always are, and often successfully: white supremacism was used against the Readjusters and the Populist movement in the post-war South, nativism was used against the labor movement in the North. So it goes.

The North was indeed a tapestry of religions, philosophies, and ideologies in the nineteenth century —and it is a mistake of Biblical proportions to assume all of these formed one, cohesive, liberal Yankee protestant identity. You mention Transcendentalism —but probably the most famous Transcendentalist was Henry David Thoreau, who was an anarchist and a Democrat! Put simply, this evidence does not mean what you think it means, and taking people like Henry Adams and George Fitzhugh at their word (which is what you are doing when you accept their characterization of nineteenth century politics at face value) is the worst kind of analysis.
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Don Vito Corleone
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« Reply #286 on: March 14, 2021, 07:27:35 PM »

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As you say, whether it is a conservative or liberal policy is down to who backs it and why. In the case of economic nationalism, its supporters believed it was necessary to modernize and develop the industry of the country. Certainly the industry owners could expect to make a profit, but that wasn't the main purpose.

I would not conflate Modernization with an opposition to Conservatism. There are countless examples in history of Conservative Modernizers. For a recent example, Thatcher without question modernized Britain's economy, with all that entails, good and bad. I doubt you would say she was not a Conservative due to this. Even in America, you don't mean to tell me you think Alexander Hamilton and his Federalist Party weren't right-wing forces?

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Northern capitalists were in no sense the "monarchy" of 19th century America. Perhaps the most signifying tenet of Yankee liberalism is a deep commitment to individualism and meritocracy, an utter hatred of the hereditary principle.

Firstly, if you mean in the strictest sense of "opposing a literal landed aristocracy", then yes, I suppose part of the "Yankee values" in the 19th century included "an utter hatred of the hereditary principle". But of course, that was hardly unique to Northerners. Basically no one after the revolution supported a landed aristocracy; even Hamilton, who is often derided (rightly, I think) as an aristocrat and pseudo-monarchist did not support a landed aristocracy. This is because, as has been stated countless times by NC Yankee in this thread, American society took on a certain inherent liberal character after the revolution, in terms of its position on a landed aristocracy and a monarchy. That Northern Protestants opposed this was not remotely unique, nor was it remotely indicative of liberalism outside that inherent liberalism common to America after the Revolution.

Secondly, the claim that because the Northern Business Elite did not support a literal landed aristocracy that they then were believers in "meritocracy" is laughable. Or, if they were believers in meritocracy, they certainly had an odd way of showing it, with what their support of political parties that worked to increase the wealth and power of said Elite and which worked against the ability of the working class to move up in society. Unless you again mean "did not believe in a literal landed aristocracy" as your definition for meritocracy, the Northern Business Elite very much did not believe in a meritocracy; I mean really, these are the same Elite who oftentimes did not even want people without property to be able to vote. I think Yankee's comparison of them to a European Aristocracy is very good, because these Elites did very much want to keep their wealth in their family and class, and did think they were simply better than everyone else.
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KaiserDave
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« Reply #287 on: March 22, 2021, 02:11:42 PM »

So we've gone from "bad history" to "actually, religious bigotry isn’t that bad"
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WD
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« Reply #288 on: March 22, 2021, 02:20:02 PM »

I wonder what will happen first, the cure to cancer is found, or this thread ends?
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Unconditional Surrender Truman
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« Reply #289 on: March 22, 2021, 04:02:33 PM »

So we've gone from "bad history" to "actually, religious bigotry isn’t that bad"
If the proof that "nativism wasn't totally irrational" is a list of atrocities committed three hundred years before the time in question and what's more, on another continent, then I think it's safe to say we have passed out of the realm of historianship and into the realm of personal vendetta. I'm not even going to bother to list the many atrocities committed by Protestant governments against Catholics in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, because—guess what?—that stuff isn't actually part of nineteenth century American politics. Understanding the violence of the Reformation can help us to understand religious attitudes of the early nineteenth century in a larger historical context, but to go so far as to say anti-Catholic sentiment was actually a rational response to the conditions of the time is simply baseless. Catholicism did not pose a credible threat to American democracy in the nineteenth century. That some Protestants believed it did is evidence that, yes, they were ignorant bigots. You can just as easily use a similar argument as Henry has made to allege that Japanese internment was justified, or Southern slave codes strengthened in response to the Haitian Revolution were justified. A good historian tries to understand the past on its own terms, and that means considering the reasons why some people have held ignorant or bigoted views. To assert that these were good reasons is a bridge too far, and in this case suggests a partiality toward the nativist Protestant position that is something more than healthy admiration.

Honestly, I am not sure why Henry continues to post in this thread. It is clear he doesn't really want to discuss American political history, because he keeps trying to make this conversation about events in another country that happened two hundred years before the period in question. If you want to understand American history, you need to look at what was happening in America at the time of study. Drawing parallels to other historical events is not in itself sufficient to be considered valid analysis.
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Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee
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« Reply #290 on: March 22, 2021, 06:11:32 PM »

So we've gone from "bad history" to "actually, religious bigotry isn’t that bad"

Ever notice how identitarian revisionism always invokes the " actually x isn't that bad", trope?

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Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee
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« Reply #291 on: March 22, 2021, 06:14:38 PM »

I imagine I will be diving into this more either tonight or tomorrow I got to pace myself in terms of my intake of this thread.
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KaiserDave
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« Reply #292 on: March 22, 2021, 07:09:06 PM »

I'm honestly very concerned as to how openly prejudiced HenryWallaceVP's arguments are getting.
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Paul Weller
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« Reply #293 on: March 22, 2021, 11:50:34 PM »

Ok, where to start. I admit that my last post was extremely regrettable and I've deleted it. Kuumo's excellent parody should give you the general idea if you missed it. Obviously, the wars of religion in early modern Europe have nothing to do with the subject of this thread.

Now, I've reflected a bit on why I made that post and others like it, and here's what I think. You have every right to be skeptical, but I don't think I hold any actual prejudice against Roman Catholics, none at all. Zero whatsoever. Then why did I say all the things I did? I think there are a few reasons. First, my growing interest in European history, which took off tremendously in my time on the forum. Second, a feeling that people in this thread seemed to be ignoring that history, which annoyed me a lot more than it should have, considering the thread topic. And third, I felt myself becoming caught up in this "character" I was playing, and I didn't know when to quit.

So, first reason first. When I first joined the forum, I didn't really know anything about Catholics or Protestants outside of an American historical political context. I knew that the Klan had been anti-Catholic and that historically a lot of Catholics were Democrats, so clearly Catholics were good liberals and their enemies evil conservatives. You can see that in one of my first ever posts on the forum, which appears ridiculously ironic today:

I believe that the parties switched platforms in 1928, when the Democrats ran a progressive, Catholic Northeasterner. The Republicans responded by utilizing Anti-Catholicism to their advantage, which is definitely a Conservative ideology.

That summer, I played in the Atlas historical strategy game Concert of Europe. I had been interested in European history before, but I now look back at that time as the moment I became obsessed with the early modern period. I specifically remember having to look up what the Great Northern War was as part of my research for playing as Russia, which seems astonishingly ignorant in hindsight knowing all the random wars I know now. There are a couple examples that illustrate my initial attitude toward Catholicism in this learning period. Around this time I remember reading a book about the English Civil War and being appalled by how much the Parliamentarians fearmongered about "popery." I wanted to like these guys, they seemed like they were fighting for a good cause, but I was really bothered by their "conservative", intolerant views. Soon after I learned about the Glorious Revolution, which struck me as deeply bigoted and anti-Catholic in nature. You can see that in this thread. I became a great admirer of William Penn, because he seemed to reject both the Tory intolerance of Dissenters and the Whiggish intolerance of Catholics.

But that was all at first. The more I read about European history, the more I noticed that the greatest advocates of religious tolerance were almost always Protestant Englishmen, often very anti-Catholic ones. They were also the greatest champions of liberty, republicanism, and sometimes democracy, all of which I found very laudable as well. As I learned more, it soon became clear to me that their anti-Catholicism was not in spite of these liberal convictions, but because of them. The Catholic Church was itself a "bigoted", "intolerant", and "superstitious" institution, one which stood for "slavery" and "arbitrary government". I use scare quotes not because I disagree, but because these were all ways in which "popery" was commonly described by these people. In fact, I do not disagree at all; for the early modern period and arguably even later, I think these descriptions are quite accurate. Truman may disagree, but I still contend that in the early modern period Catholic governments were, as a general rule, much more likely to be religiously intolerant (in terms of severity) and fit the contemporary definition of a "tyranny" than Protestant ones, and that they were responsible for considerably more atrocities and religious repression. It is not an accident that the Calvinist Netherlands were religiously tolerant and a republic; certainly contemporaries well understood the connection between Dutch "heresy" and their rejection of standard notions of monarchy and religious uniformity. They knew that this was because Protestantism had been born out of rebellion, and its theology emphasized individualism over obedience to authority.

But the problem, of course, is that none of this has anything to do with American political history. These are all fine and interesting debates we can have elsewhere, but they don't belong here. And my attempts to apply these ideas to American history centuries later were problematic, to say the least. So why did I? I think I felt irritated that people seemed ignorant of, or at least uninterested in talking about, the history of Catholics and Protestants outside of America. All they seemed to know was that Protestants were rich "WASPs" and evangelical crazies, while Catholics were poor immigrants and Democrats. I felt like they were missing a substantial amount of context that made the picture a lot less simple. Basically, they were my old, dumb self, who made that stupid post about how Al Smith was a "progressive, Catholic Northeasterner" while anti-Catholicism is "definitely a conservative ideology", and who accordingly got mocked for it. I think that, consciously or subconsciously, my aggressive anti-Catholic posts were in part a rejection of my past self, my "ignorance", which I felt embarrassed and ashamed of. But after learning so much European history, I felt confident that I now knew all the answers and could prove it. Well, that's not quite how it turned out. As the thread went on, I got way too caught up in the "Catholic question" and fell into a trap of defending nativists where there was no reason to. That is not to say, however, that I reject the entirety of my religious arguments. I still believe that "Protestant liberalism" in America was very much a real thing, most prevalent in the Whig and Republican parties (but not the Know-Nothings), and that most American Catholics were fundamentally conservative and believed in "preserving the social order". The Louisville and Rutgers papers I quoted a few pages back say just as much. Furthermore, I still maintain that one must consider European religious history in order to understand and fully appreciate Protestant liberalism and conservative Catholicity. It is not sufficient to merely look at a 19th century American context, divorced from the rest of the world and the past which informed it. That said, one should neither oversimplify in the other direction, as I did, and pretend as if the distances of time and space make no difference in European and American history.

Finally, the character bit. As time went on, I found myself more and more attached to this role of a 17th/18th century militant Protestant, Whiggish and English in his principles, and a sworn enemy of popery and tyranny. I'm not sure how or where it started exactly, perhaps in this very thread, but it became like a part of my identity on the forum. I don't think there's anything necessarily wrong with that; it's a period of history I'm very interested in and I admire many such men, but it definitely got out of hand. If you look at my recent posts going back some time, I think you'll find that a good majority of them are attacking Catholicism in some form or another. While I do think the Catholic Church played a largely negative role in history, and I strongly dislike the early modern (and 19th century, and medieval) incarnation of the Church, there is no good reason why over half of my recent posts should be bashing that institution. It just became part of what I felt like was expected of me, that it was somehow "in-character" with my forum persona, and that I might be able to make a few people laugh by "owning the papists", as Battista would say. I admittedly had good fun with it sometimes, as in this exchange (still mad that Truman's silly 19th century Americanisms got more recommends than my Whiggery Angry), but there are other moments I'm not so proud of, like all the times I defended the Know-Nothings.

So what's next for me, and for the thread? Well, first off I will try to shed the anti-Catholic image which I have worked so hard to develop on this forum. It won't be easy, and I may falter on occasion, but I would consider it a success if I can get back to light, historical bantering on religion rather than the anti-Catholic rants which have done nothing and helped nobody. As for my role in the thread, I think Truman is quite right when he says it is clear that I don't really want to discuss American political history. In the time since this thread began, I've become even more enveloped in early modern European and English history, and it's not for nothing that I keep trying to change the conversation to Whigs and Tories instead of Whigs and Democrats. It is simply something which I'm much more interested in at the moment, and honestly probably much more knowledgeable about at this point. We all have our different eras of history that most interest us, and that's okay; no longer will I attempt to impose my early modernism onto this thread. It's been a fun, contentious 12 pages; we certainly still have our areas of disagreement, but I've learned a hell of a lot and gained many a new perspective - and for that, if nothing else, I am thankful. I hope to see you around on the History board. Smiley
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Paul Weller
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« Reply #294 on: March 25, 2021, 09:36:41 PM »
« Edited: March 26, 2021, 10:46:30 AM by HenryWallaceVP »

Ok, I know I said I would stop imposing early modernism on this thread, but there's a really important piece I left out in my earlier discussion of the Whigs and Tories and how they compare to American parties, which is the various issues surrounding the political economy. The Whigs and Tories in the late 17th century offered completely contrasting visions for England's economic future, visions which would be echoed a century later across the sea.

One area of difference was what constituted economic value. The Whigs believed that value was derived from labor. Property values were not finite, and could be improved and developed through human toil. Therefore, the Whigs supported England becoming a manufacturing society and drew support primarily from the urban bourgeoisie. By contrast, the Tories claimed that value came from land, and only land. The best way to expand the economy was by acquiring more land, rather than by developing already held land. The vision of the Tories for England's future was an explicitly agrarian one, and their support came from the landed gentry and rural folk more generally. Starting to notice anything?

Another major economic issue of the time was the existence of a national bank. Just as it would be 100 years later in America, the prospect of a national bank was fiercely debated along party lines. Whigs supported the creation of the Bank of England because, in their view, the bank would provide an excellent source of credit and spur manufacturing. By contrast, Tories opposed the bank because it would diminish the power of the landed gentry, whom they represented, to the benefit of the Whigs' financier clientele. In fact, Tories such as the economist Josiah Child took up class-based arguments, castigating their opponents as "money-jobbers" and warning about the effects of a new class of wealth-chasers on society. Sound familiar? Admittedly, the Tories also claimed that a national bank was intrinsically republican and anti-monarchical, a belief which they failed to pass on to their ideological inheritors.

On the issue of trade, too, there were major disagreements between the parties. The Whigs supported protectionist policies in order to weaken the French economy, part of the larger Whig goal of containing French expansionism on the continent. This had the added benefit of protecting the nation's industry; the growth of manufacturing being so important to the Whigs. The Tories, on the other hand, were much less keen on fighting the French, and so opposed the Whiggish restrictions on imports. Meanwhile, Tory economists like Dudley North and the aforementioned Josiah Child worked to develop the Tory doctrine of free trade, at a time when economic nationalism was dominant at court. Ring any bells?

So, to summarize, we have two parties, one of which supported a manufacturing policy, a national bank, trade restrictions, and total war with France; while the other supported agrarianism, free trade, territorial expansion, and opposed the national bank and all-out war with France. Additionally, the former represented the urban middle class and often appealed to popular Protestant patriotism, while the latter represented slave owners the landed gentry and more provincial areas and were less obviously hostile to Catholics and Highland Scots and Irish. I wonder which was the liberal party, and which the conservative one?
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Unconditional Surrender Truman
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« Reply #295 on: March 26, 2021, 01:45:12 PM »

By contrast, the Tories claimed that value came from land, and only land. The best way to expand the economy was by acquiring more land, rather than by developing already held land. The vision of the Tories for England's future was an explicitly agrarian one, and their support came from the landed gentry and rural folk more generally. [...]

So, to summarize, we have two parties, one of which supported [...] agrarianism

That's not what agrarianism is.

Quote from: Noah Webster, ed., An American Dictionary of the English Language (1828).
AGRA'RIAN, adjective [Latin agrarius, from ager, a field.] Relating to lands. appropriately, denoting or pertaining to an equal division of lands; as, the agrarian laws of Rome, which distributed the conquered and other public lands equally among all the citizens, limiting the quantity which each might enjoy. Authors sometimes use the word as a noun; an agrarian for agrarian law.

An agrarian distribution of land or property, would make the rich, poor, but would not make the poor, rich. –Burke.

Quote from: Noah Webster and Chauncey A. Goodrich, eds., An American Dictionary of the English Language (1847).
SOCIALISM, n. A social state in which there is a community of property among all the citizens; a new term for AGRARIANISM.
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Paul Weller
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« Reply #296 on: March 26, 2021, 02:36:18 PM »

By contrast, the Tories claimed that value came from land, and only land. The best way to expand the economy was by acquiring more land, rather than by developing already held land. The vision of the Tories for England's future was an explicitly agrarian one, and their support came from the landed gentry and rural folk more generally. [...]

So, to summarize, we have two parties, one of which supported [...] agrarianism

That's not what agrarianism is.

Quote from: Noah Webster, ed., An American Dictionary of the English Language (1828).
AGRA'RIAN, adjective [Latin agrarius, from ager, a field.] Relating to lands. appropriately, denoting or pertaining to an equal division of lands; as, the agrarian laws of Rome, which distributed the conquered and other public lands equally among all the citizens, limiting the quantity which each might enjoy. Authors sometimes use the word as a noun; an agrarian for agrarian law.

An agrarian distribution of land or property, would make the rich, poor, but would not make the poor, rich. –Burke.

Quote from: Noah Webster and Chauncey A. Goodrich, eds., An American Dictionary of the English Language (1847).
SOCIALISM, n. A social state in which there is a community of property among all the citizens; a new term for AGRARIANISM.

Well, Steven Pincus would disagree with you then, because he specifically uses the word "agrarian" to describe the Tories' economic philosophy at the time of the Glorious Revolution.

Something else I forgot to mention is that at the same time that the Whigs were getting the Bank of England chartered, the Tories proposed a land bank as a sort of agrarian alternative.
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Unconditional Surrender Truman
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« Reply #297 on: March 26, 2021, 03:11:09 PM »

By contrast, the Tories claimed that value came from land, and only land. The best way to expand the economy was by acquiring more land, rather than by developing already held land. The vision of the Tories for England's future was an explicitly agrarian one, and their support came from the landed gentry and rural folk more generally. [...]

So, to summarize, we have two parties, one of which supported [...] agrarianism

That's not what agrarianism is.

Quote from: Noah Webster, ed., An American Dictionary of the English Language (1828).
AGRA'RIAN, adjective [Latin agrarius, from ager, a field.] Relating to lands. appropriately, denoting or pertaining to an equal division of lands; as, the agrarian laws of Rome, which distributed the conquered and other public lands equally among all the citizens, limiting the quantity which each might enjoy. Authors sometimes use the word as a noun; an agrarian for agrarian law.

An agrarian distribution of land or property, would make the rich, poor, but would not make the poor, rich. –Burke.

Quote from: Noah Webster and Chauncey A. Goodrich, eds., An American Dictionary of the English Language (1847).
SOCIALISM, n. A social state in which there is a community of property among all the citizens; a new term for AGRARIANISM.

Well, Steven Pincus would disagree with you then, because he specifically uses the word "agrarian" to describe the Tories' economic philosophy at the time of the Glorious Revolution.

Something else I forgot to mention is that at the same time that the Whigs were getting the Bank of England chartered, the Tories proposed a land bank as a sort of agrarian alternative.

I don't care what Steve Pincus has to say. We are talking about America in the nineteenth century, not England in the seventeenth century.

Please go start a thread on the Glorious Revolution so that the rest of us can go back to discussing American history without your constantly evangelizing the one book you've read. I'm sorry if I seem short, but this has gone on long enough and it's clear you have no interest in discussing the actual scholarship on the subject of this thread.
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Paul Weller
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« Reply #298 on: March 26, 2021, 04:25:44 PM »

By contrast, the Tories claimed that value came from land, and only land. The best way to expand the economy was by acquiring more land, rather than by developing already held land. The vision of the Tories for England's future was an explicitly agrarian one, and their support came from the landed gentry and rural folk more generally. [...]

So, to summarize, we have two parties, one of which supported [...] agrarianism

That's not what agrarianism is.

Quote from: Noah Webster, ed., An American Dictionary of the English Language (1828).
AGRA'RIAN, adjective [Latin agrarius, from ager, a field.] Relating to lands. appropriately, denoting or pertaining to an equal division of lands; as, the agrarian laws of Rome, which distributed the conquered and other public lands equally among all the citizens, limiting the quantity which each might enjoy. Authors sometimes use the word as a noun; an agrarian for agrarian law.

An agrarian distribution of land or property, would make the rich, poor, but would not make the poor, rich. –Burke.

Quote from: Noah Webster and Chauncey A. Goodrich, eds., An American Dictionary of the English Language (1847).
SOCIALISM, n. A social state in which there is a community of property among all the citizens; a new term for AGRARIANISM.

Well, Steven Pincus would disagree with you then, because he specifically uses the word "agrarian" to describe the Tories' economic philosophy at the time of the Glorious Revolution.

Something else I forgot to mention is that at the same time that the Whigs were getting the Bank of England chartered, the Tories proposed a land bank as a sort of agrarian alternative.

I don't care what Steve Pincus has to say. We are talking about America in the nineteenth century, not England in the seventeenth century.

Please go start a thread on the Glorious Revolution so that the rest of us can go back to discussing American history without your constantly evangelizing the one book you've read. I'm sorry if I seem short, but this has gone on long enough and it's clear you have no interest in discussing the actual scholarship on the subject of this thread.

Actually, it's not the one book I've read, since I read another one of his books. Tongue

But I get your point. I said I would stop making these posts and I didn't, so your shortness is understandable.
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« Reply #299 on: March 27, 2021, 03:57:37 PM »

Ok, where to start. I admit that my last post was extremely regrettable and I've deleted it. Kuumo's excellent parody should give you the general idea if you missed it. Obviously, the wars of religion in early modern Europe have nothing to do with the subject of this thread.

Thank you. That post was just... offensive.

Quote
Now, I've reflected a bit on why I made that post and others like it, and here's what I think. You have every right to be skeptical, but I don't think I hold any actual prejudice against Roman Catholics, none at all. Zero whatsoever.

Speaking as a Roman Catholic who's had scores of personal conversations with you, I don't think you are actually prejudiced against us either. Well... against those of us who live in contemporary times, that is.

Quote
Then why did I say all the things I did? I think there are a few reasons. First, my growing interest in European history, which took off tremendously in my time on the forum. Second, a feeling that people in this thread seemed to be ignoring that history, which annoyed me a lot more than it should have, considering the thread topic. And third, I felt myself becoming caught up in this "character" I was playing, and I didn't know when to quit.

I would say that the third reason is the most relevant one. Not sure if you agree with me.

Quote
- SNIP -

I almost struggle to believe that you once hated the Glorious Revolution and hung the "party flip" theory on calling Hoover's anti-Catholicism conservative. Truly ironic indeed. There is much to argue with some of the points you made here about early modern Europe and not only, but that is for another thread.

Quote
Finally, the character bit. As time went on, I found myself more and more attached to this role of a 17th/18th century militant Protestant, Whiggish and English in his principles, and a sworn enemy of popery and tyranny. I'm not sure how or where it started exactly, perhaps in this very thread, but it became like a part of my identity on the forum. I don't think there's anything necessarily wrong with that; it's a period of history I'm very interested in and I admire many such men, but it definitely got out of hand. If you look at my recent posts going back some time, I think you'll find that a good majority of them are attacking Catholicism in some form or another. While I do think the Catholic Church played a largely negative role in history, and I strongly dislike the early modern (and 19th century, and medieval) incarnation of the Church, there is no good reason why over half of my recent posts should be bashing that institution. It just became part of what I felt like was expected of me, that it was somehow "in-character" with my forum persona, and that I might be able to make a few people laugh by "owning the papists", as Battista would say.

I find it quite hilarious that you have LARPed as a militant liberal Protestant so much that you have actually become one. In any case yes, you have let that persona get somewhat out of hand. You have "owned the papists" more than enough.

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I admittedly had good fun with it sometimes, as in this exchange (still mad that Truman's silly 19th century Americanisms got more recommends than my Whiggery Angry), but there are other moments I'm not so proud of, like all the times I defended the Know-Nothings.

The post in that exchange that got the most recommends was my initial one! Ironically it was mockingly anti-Catholic too, something you would not see from my current self, but after all it was written before my religious conversion.

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So what's next for me, and for the thread? Well, first off I will try to shed the anti-Catholic image which I have worked so hard to develop on this forum. It won't be easy, and I may falter on occasion, but I would consider it a success if I can get back to light, historical bantering on religion rather than the anti-Catholic rants which have done nothing and helped nobody.

Thank you.

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As for my role in the thread, I think Truman is quite right when he says it is clear that I don't really want to discuss American political history. In the time since this thread began, I've become even more enveloped in early modern European and English history, and it's not for nothing that I keep trying to change the conversation to Whigs and Tories instead of Whigs and Democrats. It is simply something which I'm much more interested in at the moment, and honestly probably much more knowledgeable about at this point. We all have our different eras of history that most interest us, and that's okay; no longer will I attempt to impose my early modernism onto this thread. It's been a fun, contentious 12 pages; we certainly still have our areas of disagreement, but I've learned a hell of a lot and gained many a new perspective - and for that, if nothing else, I am thankful. I hope to see you around on the History board. Smiley

This is all good, although I arrive late here since you basically have reneged on your promise not to impose early modernism on this thread already. And you know, God never tires of forgiving us - Truman, I am not sure.



TL;DR Apologies accepted.
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