Historical continuity of Democrats and Republicans
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Cathcon
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« Reply #300 on: March 27, 2021, 06:23:09 PM »

Wtf even happened here, and God bless.
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Paul Weller
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« Reply #301 on: March 27, 2021, 09:20:33 PM »

Wtf even happened here, and God bless.

To be honest, I think what happened was mostly me being autistic, and I mean that in a literal sense as someone with autism. I have a tendency to go on and on about my obsessions to the point that I begin to annoy other people, and not just online but in real-life conversations too (not as much currently since I'm pretty socially isolated). Hence why you see me repeating a lot of quotes, making the same points over and over, steering the discussion to what I'm more interested in, and constantly wanting to talk about the most recent book I read. This is a real problem of mine, as it is for many people with autism, and it is something I have to work on. But this thread is about neither the Glorious Revolution nor my social issues. I'm sorry for ruining it for everyone else; maybe it should just get locked at this point.

In the unlikely event that anyone thinks this thread is worth salvaging, I found a couple of interesting new sources maybe worth discussing:

https://archive.org/details/acrossbusyyearsr01butl/mode/2up
https://archive.org/details/acrossbusyyearsr02butl/mode/2up

These are the memoirs of one Nicholas Murray Butler, the Republican Vice Presidential nominee in 1912 and author of a book entitled The Faith of a Liberal (sadly, I couldn't find that one anywhere, but I'm sure it would have made for some great quote dropping). I spent a lot of time one day flipping through the memoirs and they are an absolute treasure trove of contemporary views on Gilded Age and Progressive Era politics.
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darklordoftech
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« Reply #302 on: March 31, 2021, 09:29:09 PM »

It should be kept in mind that the failure of Smoot-Hawley depolarized tariffs, and that that allowed the GOP start making inroads into the South once the Great Depression ended.
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darklordoftech
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« Reply #303 on: April 07, 2021, 06:05:46 PM »
« Edited: April 07, 2021, 06:09:03 PM by darklordoftech »

Wrong thread, perhaps, and I can't say I really have the patience or the knowledge for these wall-o-text threads anymore, but... As long as we are proposing that a "party switch" did occur, when did it happen, how, and why?
1788-1896: Democrat(ic-Republican)s wanted “classicly liberal” economics, Federalists/Whigs/Republicans wanted “mercantilist” economics.

1896-1916: Democrats were now “modern liberals” economically but still for free trade, Republicans still mercantilist

1920-1932: Republicans were still protectionists, but otherwise for “small government”

1933-1978: Trade depolarized

1936:  The Democratic nominee for President won the black vote for the first time.

1948, Truman desegregated the military.

1952: Barry Goldwater first elected Senator.

1955: The National Review founded.

1960: TV coverage of the Republican National Convention mentions that Goldwater and his supporters are “skeptical” of Civil Rights.

1964: Barry Goldwater nominated for President on an anti-Civil Rights Act platform.
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Paul Weller
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« Reply #304 on: April 07, 2021, 10:39:17 PM »

Quoting this post from the other thread, since it pertains more to the topic of this one:

Wrong thread, perhaps, and I can't say I really have the patience or the knowledge for these wall-o-text threads anymore, but... As long as we are proposing that a "party switch" did occur, when did it happen, how, and why?

There is another thread perhaps more suited for these questions (I think you know the one Tongue), but I'll give a short answer here to at least the "when" part. My view is that from 1856-1876, the Republicans were well to the left of the Democrats. The Republicans were founded as a classically liberal party committed to the eradication of slavery for ideological reasons, while the Democrats had gone from the party of the "common man" during the Jacksonian era to an assortment of reactionaries and slavery apologists. After 1876, when the Republicans abandoned Reconstruction and the Democrats largely repudiated their Civil War era politics, both parties were less ideologically coherent and more identity-based, with only a couple signature policies like the tariff and free trade distinguishing them. The establishments of both parties were conservative in the Gilded Age and depended on corrupt political machines. After 1896, strong progressive wings emerged in each party, wings which challenged and sometimes succeeded in winning the Presidential nomination and even the White House, but the party would often reverse course in the next election cycle if defeated. This continued until the end of the Progressive Era with the beginning of the New Deal, at which point the 1920s conservative Republican Presidencies had confirmed the progressive Republicans to be a minority and the rise of FDR affirmed the ascendance of the Democratic progressives. The line dividing the parties was now a much firmer one, and has continued to this day.

Additionally, I found a rather interesting quote from Nicholas Murray Butler's (1912 Republican VP nominee and author of The Faith of a Liberal) Volume I of his memoirs, published in 1939, describing the current state of the Republican party:

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Surely, it is a little less than grotesque to continue to describe as liberal those public men who are definitely and vigorously opposed to almost every constructive policy which is offered at the moment, simply because they gained for themselves that adjective under the conditions which prevailed a quarter-century ago.

Butler is saying that the Republicans in 1939 can no longer be called liberal, even though 25 years earlier they had "gained for themselves that adjective". This suggests that, at least according to Butler, the decisive break with liberalism for the Republican party did indeed occur sometime in the 1920s or 30s, with the end of the Progressive Era and beginning of the New Deal. I'd like to think therefore that Butler would've been pleasantly surprised a year later when Willkie, the ultimate liberal Republican, won the party nomination.

Wrong thread, perhaps, and I can't say I really have the patience or the knowledge for these wall-o-text threads anymore, but... As long as we are proposing that a "party switch" did occur, when did it happen, how, and why?

I would just like this subforum to discuss literally anything else: Mesoamerican agriculture, homosexuality in ancient Greeece, the Xinhai Revolution...literally anything other than whether the US parties switched or not -- or navel-gazing on the origin of US liberalism/conservatism or whatever, though that's probably an unfair ask on a US politics forum, I suppose...

I totally get that, considering how long this has gone on. I've tried making threads about early modern Europe a few times, which is after all my main focus, but those haven't spurred the same level of discussion - probably because, like you said...it's a US politics forum.
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Paul Weller
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« Reply #305 on: April 08, 2021, 03:14:37 PM »

Wtf even happened here, and God bless.

To be honest, I think what happened was mostly me being autistic, and I mean that in a literal sense as someone with autism. I have a tendency to go on and on about my obsessions to the point that I begin to annoy other people, and not just online but in real-life conversations too (not as much currently since I'm pretty socially isolated). Hence why you see me repeating a lot of quotes, making the same points over and over, steering the discussion to what I'm more interested in, and constantly wanting to talk about the most recent book I read. This is a real problem of mine, as it is for many people with autism, and it is something I have to work on. But this thread is about neither the Glorious Revolution nor my social issues. I'm sorry for ruining it for everyone else; maybe it should just get locked at this point.

In the unlikely event that anyone thinks this thread is worth salvaging, I found a couple of interesting new sources maybe worth discussing:

https://archive.org/details/acrossbusyyearsr01butl/mode/2up
https://archive.org/details/acrossbusyyearsr02butl/mode/2up

These are the memoirs of one Nicholas Murray Butler, the Republican Vice Presidential nominee in 1912 and author of a book entitled The Faith of a Liberal (sadly, I couldn't find that one anywhere, but I'm sure it would have made for some great quote dropping). I spent a lot of time one day flipping through the memoirs and they are an absolute treasure trove of contemporary views on Gilded Age and Progressive Era politics.

Actually, I was wrong - The Faith of a Liberal is available for free on Google Books!
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darklordoftech
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« Reply #306 on: April 08, 2021, 05:08:32 PM »

I think people tend to think that politics in between Reconstruction and Civil Rights was purely economic, and that social conservatism and social liberalism were invented in the 1960s.
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Paul Weller
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« Reply #307 on: April 09, 2021, 11:03:16 PM »
« Edited: April 19, 2021, 08:58:13 PM by HenryWallaceVP »

I am now reading The Faith of a Liberal, which as promised has many a good quotation, but for this post I want to clarify a couple of previous points. First of all, if you think that even in the 1850s-70s the Democrats were liberals and the Republicans conservatives, go read something, anything, about US politics of the time. It is an utterly absurd thing to believe.

Now, something which I haven't adequately addressed is the claim, made by RINO Tom and others, that it was quite possible to oppose slavery for conservative reasons. I have said that the Republican party opposed it on liberal grounds, which is true, but does that mean it was impossible to oppose slavery for conservative reasons? I wouldn't say so. Businessmen who opposed slavery for self-interested reasons, and even some traditionalists who viewed slavery as capitalistic - which is and was a real interpretation, though I personally think it was more feudalistic - are examples of people who opposed slavery for conservative reasons.

So there were people who supported abolitionism for conservative reasons. Fine. But while RINO Tom and others have expounded on this, they have remained silent on another truth - the fact that many who supported nativism did so for liberal reasons. Tom seems to assume that all nativists were led on by conservatism, but that is not so. Many supporters of nativist or otherwise anti-Catholic policies did so out of genuine liberal convictions. Rightly or wrongly, they perceived Catholics and Irish immigrants as holding "illiberal pro-slavery and anti-reformist views". It is worth remembering that most nativists enthusiastically supported the liberal Revolutions of 1848, whereas Irish-Americans generally did not. The existence of those who supported nativism for liberal reasons is proven by the progressive and liberal legislation they enacted when in power. This article about the Massachusetts Know-Nothings gives numerous examples; I was going to copy some quotes here but the formatting was really messy, so I'd recommend you go read it if you want to know the specifics. Suffice it to say, the Mass. Know-Nothings implemented liberal policies on slavery, civil liberties, women's rights, and poor relief. This might seem surprising on the face of it, but it isn't when one comprehends the powerful influence of Protestant liberalism on the Yankee descendants of the Puritans. These were essential Yankee values.

So now this raises an interesting question. Even though some of the nativists may have been motivated by liberalism, surely their position must still be considered the conservative one, right? After all, as NC Yankee said, "the end result is a conservative outcome in favor of the established demographic." Well, perhaps. But if you are to take that view, then by that very same logic you must also believe that those who opposed slavery for conservative reasons were liberals on the issue of slavery, even if their reasoning for it was conservative. Since the abolition of slavery is objectively a liberal result, then it must be so. The question at stake is whether one's ideological motivation for holding a position changes the ideology of the position itself. Evidently, Yankee thinks it does not. You may have noticed that I've made a point of saying "supported/opposed for x reasons" rather than describing the position itself as liberal or conservative; this is why.
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Chunk Yogurt for President!
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« Reply #308 on: April 10, 2021, 01:09:08 AM »

https://www.alternatehistory.com/forum/threads/ahc-democrats-and-republicans-switch.498637/

This is an interesting thread on the subject.
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darklordoftech
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« Reply #309 on: April 10, 2021, 01:18:28 AM »

All of the following can be true at the same time:

- The parties didn’t switch ideologies.
- Vermont and Mississipi didn’t switch cultures.
- Vermont and Mississipi switched parties.
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Chunk Yogurt for President!
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« Reply #310 on: April 10, 2021, 01:30:05 AM »

Here's my take:

All of the following can be true at the same time:

- The parties didn’t switch ideologies.

I'd say that they didn't switch ideologies, though they haven't remained static either.

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- Vermont and Mississipi didn’t switch cultures.

They didn't switch cultures, but their cultures are a lot different than they were in 1860 or even 1960.

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- Vermont and Mississipi switched parties.

And this is the part that no one can disagree with of course.
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Paul Weller
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« Reply #311 on: April 10, 2021, 12:49:03 PM »
« Edited: April 10, 2021, 05:17:13 PM by HenryWallaceVP »


Meh, it's mostly just people making the same points I've seen here. I would not be surprised if some of the people in that thread have also posted in this one.

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I'd say that they didn't switch ideologies, though they haven't remained static either.

Well, to a certain extent they unquestionably did, considering that the Republican party was founded as a liberal party and is today nothing of the sort, while the opposite is true for the Democrats. FREE SOIL, FREE SPEECH, FREE MEN, FREMONT isn't exactly a 19th century conservative rallying cry. I actually own a PDF of a book called To Make Men Free about the history of the Republican party, but I'm somewhat afraid to start reading it because I know it would make this thread go on 10 times longer. Here is just the first paragraph of the book's blurb:

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When Abraham Lincoln helped create the Republican Party on the eve of the Civil War, his goal was to promote economic opportunity for all Americans, not just the slaveholding Southern planters who steered national politics. Yet, despite the egalitarian dream at the heart of its founding, the Republican Party quickly became mired in a fundamental identity crisis. Would it be the party of democratic ideals? Or would it be the party of moneyed interests? In the century and a half since, Republicans have vacillated between these two poles, with dire economic, political, and moral repercussions for the entire nation.

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They didn't switch cultures, but their cultures are a lot different than they were in 1860 or even 1960.

Well yes, but the culture of every place is a lot different than it was 60 or 160 years ago. That doesn't change the fact that in both 1860 and 1960, the culture of Vermont was infinitely more liberal than that of Mississippi.
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Paul Weller
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« Reply #312 on: April 20, 2021, 12:09:15 AM »
« Edited: April 21, 2021, 03:28:41 PM by HenryWallaceVP »

I've finished reading The Faith of a Liberal by Nicholas M. Butler. It is not really a book as such, but a collection of speeches made by Butler. Many if not most of the speeches are about the evils of socialism and various international affairs, while the last speech of the book is a most fascinating recollection of Butler's time spent as a student in Berlin and Paris in the 1880s. Still, I found a number of passages worth sharing here which pertain closely to this discussion:

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The American spirit has been liberal from the outset. It was not tories but liberals who crowded the deck of the Mayflower and who made their home upon the stern and rockbound coast. It was not tories but liberals who pushed westward along the watercourses and over the mountain ranges to the rich lands and prairies of the Mississippi valley to make it one of the gardens and granaries of the world. It was not tories but liberals who met in the Continental Congress, in the Covention at Philadelphia, and on the floor of those earlier congresses when our nation's policies were in the making. It was not tories but liberals who rallied about Abraham Lincoln, and who at every sacrifice saved the Union and made all its people free. It was not tories but liberals who heard the call of anguished liberty from beyond the seas when the well-trained hosts of the most militaristic of empires had their swords at her throat.

Butler unequivocally proclaims the Pilgrims who boarded the Mayflower to be liberals. Apparently, he does not feel the need to add the prefix "proto-", as if 1620 were too early an age to have its own liberals and tories. Butler then proclaims the American revolutionaries and the supporters of Abraham Lincoln to be not tories, but liberals. Modern Republicans could learn a thing or two from this guy when they try to claim Lincoln as their own. Remember that this is not a Democrat talking, but a partisan Republican who served as a delegate at every convention from 1888 to 1936. This is exactly the sort of elite, upper crust WASP Republican that RINO Tom and NC Yankee love to describe as "conservative"; and here he is publishing a collection of his speeches in defense of liberalism. How interesting.

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The liberal treasures the historic associations of his faith. He finds them in John Milton and John Hampden. He finds them in Benjamin Franklin and in Samuel Adams. He finds them in Thomas Jefferson and in Abraham Lincoln. He finds them in William Ewart Gladstone and in John Morley. He prefers those associations and their promise for the world to the glittering baubles of quickly passing place and power, when these gained by denying liberalism. He maintains his serenity and his confidence amid all discouragement, and feels able calmly to say to his opponents, as Gladstone said to the House of Commons when a hostile majority was about to throw out his first measure of Irish home rule: "The ebbing tide is with you and the flowing tide is with us."

Here, Butler lists John Milton and John Hampden, two Puritan radicals of the 17th century, as the first among a group of historic liberals. It seems Butler would agree with me that the Puritans were the founders of Anglo-American liberalism. He then once again describes Lincoln as a liberal, and ends by quoting Gladstone. Clearly, Butler does not view his beloved Republican party as the American counterpart to the British Conservatives.

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The last fifteen or twenty years have seen the ending by the mere lapse of time and the nation's development of those controversies which were once fundamental. The paramount power of the nation has been effectively established and is now everywhere supported. Human slavery has been abolished. Authority to make internal public improvements and to administer in the interest of the whole people the public domain and its forest and mineral wealth, is conceded. The one remaining ground of party difference, the tariff, has completely changed its character with the growth in the Democrat Party of a large body of believers in a tariff for protection to home industries, and with the altered position of the United States as a creditor nation demanding for its own prosperity, for its wage-workers, and for its agriculture a steadily expanding international trade. One cannot maintain with a straight face a party division based upon the question whether a given rate of duty on imports shall be 20 per cent or 35 percent. If one will take pains to read formal party declarations recently made, say, in the States of New York, of Ohio, of Indiana, of Wisconsin, and of California, he will be speedily be cured of the notion that one and the same party name means one and the same thing in those different communities. In each of the two great historic parties there are millions of upright men and women who have no substantial differences with each other on grounds of principle, but who are continuing a mock battle with wooden guns after all cause for conflict has passed away and when a very different and bitter struggle is organizing on another part of the battlefield.

Here, Butler observes that since the abolition of slavery and the end of Reconstruction, the two parties no longer disagree on anything besides the tariff, and even on that issue are barely different. I hate to toot my own horn here, but I have observed basically the same thing:

After 1876, when the Republicans abandoned Reconstruction and the Democrats largely repudiated their Civil War era politics, both parties were less ideologically coherent and more identity-based, with only a couple signature policies like the tariff and free trade distinguishing them.

Butler's solution to this ideological incoherence, which I didn't include in the quoted passage, is a new party system in which "the overwhelming majority of Republicans and the overwhelming majority of Democrats [...] form a Democrat-Republican Party (to revive a name that was in use in this country a century ago) which would represent the predominant liberalism of our people. Over against such a progressive liberal party would be a distinctly radical party, to which should go all those who now call themselves Democrats or Republicans, but are in reality neither."

But to return to the quoted passage, I love Butler's line about how "one cannot maintain with a straight face a party division" based upon slight tariff differences - one can only wonder if NC Yankee is in fact unable to keep a straight face when he makes such arguments. Once again, I have expressed a similar sentiment before:

If I have been charged with minimizing the importance of trade and the other economic issues, would you not accuse Douglass of the same thing? I happen to agree with him, and if I lived back then I would like to think that I, too, would consider equal treatment under the law more important than the tariff rates or the price of imports.

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The two-party system is what makes it possible for the American Constitution to work. That is why we always have two parties, although in the history of a hundred years the issues between them, the principles they profess, have often so sharply changed.

Very short quote, but nice to see Butler acknowledge, as many still refuse to, that the principles of the two major parties sharply changed over time.

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No attempt can be made in this brief time to explain the present situation as regards our political parties: It is not to be wondered at that foreign observers find it difficult to follow our party divisions, but there is this key: All parties in Europe find their basic division between the conservatives and the liberals or radicals. There are those, decreasing in number, perhaps, but still powerful, who would have things as they were [and] there are those woho would change them in various directions called liberal or radical. What I should like to make clear is that in the European sense there is no conservative party in the United States; they are all divisions of liberal parties of one kind or another. There is no party, and never has been any party, in the United States that would have supported the programme, for example, of Disraeli in England a generation ago, because that programme, whether good or bad makes no difference, was the outgrowth of conditions with which American experience and American opinion were quite unfamiliar, and American parties begin where European traditional conservatism leaves off. Unless one understands that, he cannot use European terms understandingly in discussing American political developments and party conduct.

Butler makes it quite clear that the divisions between the two parties are anything but clear, least of all to foreigners more suited to ideologically coherent party politics. He then explains that both parties in the United States are varying shades of liberal and neither conservative in a European sense, but he stops after this paragraph. I would have liked to see how he contrasted Republican and Democratic liberalism, but based on what he said earlier I doubt he would have thought there was much of a difference at this point in time.

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Beginning nearly three hundred years ago in England, a movement of opinion was started which, growing broader and deeper as it swept onward, found expression in the English, the American, and the French Revolutions, in the breaking down of absolutism in other lands, and in holding up the ideal of political democracy as the goal toward which liberal and progressive thought should move in order to advance civilization and to improve the condition and increase the satisfactions of individual men. As democracy grew in power and in influence, as as the teachings of its great exponents, particularly those who wrote and spoke the English tongue, gained a steadily widening hearing, men came to accept the notion, first, that democracy was inevitable, and, second, that it was beneficent.

Again, Butler recognizes the English Civil War as the birthplace of modern liberalism, not as some premodern "origins" point. I get the sense that this used to be understood intuitively, back when American men of letters knew the history of England quite well, but today it has to be argued about.

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There is no progress in abandoning liberty. The only hope of progress is to make manking more worthy of liberty, more understanding of liberty, more competent for liberty. That way progress lies, and not in a great series of compulsions, limitations, prohibitions of one sort and another, that put the life of the individual and society in a strait-jacket at the behest of opinion. Liberty has its dangers. Liberty is not a path of roses; but tell me what path known to history so surely leads to human satisfaction and to human happiness as liberty with all its troubles, with all its temptations, and with all its dangers? There is none.

I included this passage because it is indicative of the tenor of many of Butler's speeches. Again and again he preaches on the subject of liberty and decries the intrusions of the federal government into state and local matters. This gives the lie to NC Yankee's claim that the Republicans were a "big govt conservative party"; or else why would a "small govt liberal" like Butler have felt so at home there? Butler clearly viewed the Republicans as the party of his form of liberalism since their founding, as exemplified by Abraham Lincoln. If one is to call Grover Cleveland a "classical liberal" instead of a conservative, one must do the same for Calvin Coolidge.

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There is a close parallel between slavery and prohibition. Slavery was not long ago proclaimed as the principal cause of civilization, indeed as the sole cause. It was defended and extolled as a divine institution by precisely the same type of clerical mind that defends and extols prohibition. It ate out the vitals of our nation for over a half-century, just as prohibition is doing now. It was incorporated in our constitutional system, and even as late as 1861 the attempt was made so to amend the Constitution that it could never be abolished. Even after Lincoln had been inaugurated and the Civil War had begun, this proposal was ratified by the States of Ohio, Maryland, and Illinois Men and women of the highest intelligence and noble character who hated slavery were called upon to accept it and to obey the laws based upon it because they were the alw. Precisely the same arguments are urged in support of the Eighteenth Amendment and the Volstead Act, and precisely the same attitude is taken toward them. My own feeling toward prohibition is exactly the feeling which my parents and my grandparents had toward slavery. I look upon the Volstead Act precisely as they looked upon the Fugitive Slave Law. Like Abraham Lincoln, I shall obey these laws so long as they remain upon the statue book; but, like Abraham Lincoln, I shall not rest until they are repealed. The issue is one of plain simple, unadorned morality.

Butler compares slavery to prohibition, making the point that the liberal convictions which led past generations to oppose the one institution also necessitate opposition to the other.

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The American mind and temper were sternly, almost savagely, individualistic. The conditions of pioneer life both invited and rewarded this mentnal attitude and method. The Stuart monarchy, the Tory doctrine of government, and the activitie of George III and Lord North had combined to make Americans resentful of any government at a distance and antagonistic to it.

Again, starting with the Stuarts. The 17th century matters!

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Those who would clearly understand the genesis of the Fifteenth Amendment and the way in which it fitted into the scheme of political thought following the Civil War, will find the facts set out succinctly and with accuracy by Mr. Blaine in his Twelve Years of Congress. The ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment, accomplished in 1870, was hailed as putting the capstone upon the National Government as rebuilt after the Civil War. Male suffrage was now to be universal. The full power of the nation declared that neither race, nor color, nor previous condition of servitude should be cause for the denial or abridgment, whether by the United States or by any State, of the right of any citizen to vote. No declaration could be more definite, none more specific, and none could deal with a matter more fundamental in democratic government.

In case there was any doubt, this passage should make absolutely clear that the Radical Republicans were the liberals and radicals of the Reconstruction era whilst their Democratic opponents were the conservatives and reactionaries. Besides expanding the suffrage, which has always throughout history been tirelessly fought for by liberals and vehemently denounced by conservatives, the Radicals sought to uproot Southern society through massive land and wealth redistribution, with the end result being a party system based on class rather than race in which the poor would vote Republican against the rich man's Democrat party.
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All Along The Watchtower
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« Reply #313 on: May 05, 2021, 01:58:37 PM »

The Radicalism of Thaddeus Stevens

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As the extent and depth of rebellion became clear, Republicans increasingly realized the necessity of social revolution, endeavoring to dismantle slavery piece by piece and enlist black men as soldiers in that fight. While what Karl Marx described as the “revolutionary waging of war” boosted Union prospects on the battlefield, Stevens rejected Lincoln’s early Reconstruction policies as overly lenient. He even protested the less conciliatory Wade-Davis Bill, because its implication that the Confederate states had never left the Union would hinder the possibility of land seizure.

Stevens instead envisioned what he termed “perfected revolution” as an expanded emancipation. He aspired to use his party’s political momentum to free the nation “from every vestige of human oppression . . . of inequality of rights, of the recognized degradation of the poor, and the superior caste of the rich.” Postwar “Black Codes,” violence and coercion against freedpeople, and Andrew Johnson’s personal intransigence and conciliation of former rebels led moderates to adopt firmer measures and also bolstered the Radical ranks, leading to the Reconstruction Acts of 1867 and the Fourteenth Amendment.

But that leftward trajectory stopped short of Stevens’s final demand for the confiscation and redistribution of Confederate land. In fact, when Stevens died in August 1868, his influence was at low ebb. Spurious charges of corruption, black domination, and federal overreach were already beginning to turn cautious white Northerners against Radical Reconstruction and the Republican Party as a whole toward the conservative prioritization of business.

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Whereas other Radicals viewed African American voting as the culmination of Reconstruction, Stevens recognized that only a foundation of economic power could establish the legal and material conditions to make black enfranchisement meaningful and permanent. In the postwar South, that meant the ownership of arable land. As such, Stevens proposed the creation of an executive department mechanism to seize all estates over two hundred acres — which constituted roughly 2 percent of the Southern families — and to partition that land into forty-acre farmsteads. Poor and middling whites, he reassured, would not be affected.

Once divided among former slaves, the government would then sell the remaining acreage to pay down war debt and provide pensions for Union veterans. Over time, and now with the support of the Union Leagues and black convention delegates in the South, Stevens argued that land redistribution would destroy the concentrated power of the planter class, slowly transform the region into a yeoman republic, and expand the base of the Republican Party.

Stevens’s free labor ethos, which precluded the existence of a landed elite or a landless class, emboldened him to defy individual property rights. In fact, the logic of confiscation was rooted in longstanding Republican critiques of the South, and the idea that slavery and land monopoly had created a dangerously hierarchical and antidemocratic society.

Along with a handful of abolitionists and Radicals, including Wendell Phillips and George W. Julian, Stevens also viewed land as a matter of basic justice. After all, enslaved black people, not white landowners, had provided the human labor that created the plantation system and its immense profits. In other words, these “confiscation radicals” viewed land reform as a basic means of restitution — a precursor to the modern concept of reparations. When leading Senate Republican William P. Fessenden complained to Charles Sumner that Stevens’s land reform bill was “more than we do for white people,” Sumner responded that “white men have never been in slavery.”

But the notion of permanently breaking up mega plantations — even in the service of protecting freedpeople and destroying the political power of Southern elites — proved a tough sell to white Northerners. Democrats denounced Stevens’s “Reign of Terror” and insisted that land confiscation would parrot the worst excesses of the French Revolution. Meanwhile, the Republican Party free labor ideal was predicated on upward mobility and the “right to rise” through a program of public education, infrastructural improvements, and the redistribution of public land in the form of homesteads.

Private landed property was a different matter. In his brilliant 1974 essay “Thaddeus Stevens, Confiscation, and Reconstruction,” Eric Foner explained this small capitalist utopianism as it related to private land: “To a party which believed that a free laborer, once accorded equality of opportunity, would rise or fall in the social scale on the strength of his own diligence, frugality, and hard work, confiscation seemed an unwarranted interference with the rights of property.”

Confiscation was also anathema to the interests of capital. Although Beardian and some Marxist historians have depicted Stevens as an agent of the “money power,” commercial elites tended to view him not as an ally but as a mortal threat. Both Southern landholders and Northeastern textile manufacturers feared that independent black farmers would refuse to grow cotton, which they designated the “slave crop.” Moreover, industrialists recognized that the logic of workers controlling the means of production — the difference between former slaves seizing the plantations and industrial laborers seizing the factories — was only a matter of degree.

In other words, as Levine contends, the distribution of private land to freedpeople failed because it was antithetical to deeply held — and, for the few, fabulously profitable — understandings of private property. Republican losses in the state elections of 1867 effectively killed the issue and helped turn the party away from war-era idealism and toward conservatism, political expediency, and accommodation toward big business. The abandonment of confiscation signaled the larger abandonment of Reconstruction.
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Estrella
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« Reply #314 on: May 23, 2021, 03:11:59 PM »

This was originally my snarky commentary about the premise of a different thread, but I might as well post it here too. Sorry for not contributing anything useful.
 


"When I use an ideology," Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less."

"The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make ideologies mean so many different things."

"The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master — that’s all."

Alice was too much puzzled to say anything, so after a minute Humpty Dumpty began again. "They’ve a temper, some of them — particularly liberalism and conservatism, they’re the proudest — centrism you can do anything with, but not socialism — however, I can manage the whole of them! Fiscal conservatism! Social liberalism! That’s what I say!"
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Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee
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« Reply #315 on: May 25, 2021, 05:22:58 PM »
« Edited: May 25, 2021, 05:29:15 PM by Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee »

This is exactly the sort of elite, upper crust WASP Republican that RINO Tom and NC Yankee love to describe as "conservative"; and here he is publishing a collection of his speeches in defense of liberalism. How interesting.

Generally Speaking the upper crust does not long remain the upper crust by abandoning the principles held by the majority of the country, on the contrary realism would dictate they would seek to both "lead the charge" and "define it on their terms". But of course again, this is as we have stressed innumerable times, "one man's interpretation" and with that comes any number of necessary contexts that need to be considered.

What concerns me is that their credibility is never questioned by someone who is well a Democrat avatar, especially in those very instances where the many fights for economic and social equality of immigrants, laborers and the like pitted said upper crust on the side of the opposition to said "progressive reforms", simply because the foot soldiers in that "progressive effort" happen to be Catholic or Southern.

Likewise going back, there is nothing wrong with acknowledging the contributions of the Puritans. However, putting a group on such an august pedestle without even acknowledging their own oppression of religious dissent, not to mention treatment towards native Americans and dare I say "Papists".

Atun Shei Films did a really good video on the whole Plymouth versus Jamestown dynamic that you adore so much and I tend to agree with the point he made at the end of the video. Its over-generalized and over wrought piece of at narrative that came about largely in the Victorian Era, which was want to romanticize and idealize many unsavory things. The story and history of America is much too complex to be strained through a reductionist lens of Roundheads vs. Cavaliers.

While it is right to study, appreciate and understand sources, it is vital to put them all into context, just like we would be wrong to presume that Jefferson Davis spoke for all Americans when he mouthed off about Slavery being a civilizing force, we should regard all such figures with enough skepticism to put them into context and at least appreciate the people who suffered under their watch and not belittle their misery and pain, so one can revel in louding Puritans as the originators of "liberalism", even as they stoned and hanged people for disagreeing with them.




Here, Butler observes that since the abolition of slavery and the end of Reconstruction, the two parties no longer disagree on anything besides the tariff, and even on that issue are barely different. I hate to toot my own horn here, but I have observed basically the same thing:

After 1876, when the Republicans abandoned Reconstruction and the Democrats largely repudiated their Civil War era politics, both parties were less ideologically coherent and more identity-based, with only a couple signature policies like the tariff and free trade distinguishing them.

Butler's solution to this ideological incoherence, which I didn't include in the quoted passage, is a new party system in which "the overwhelming majority of Republicans and the overwhelming majority of Democrats [...] form a Democrat-Republican Party (to revive a name that was in use in this country a century ago) which would represent the predominant liberalism of our people. Over against such a progressive liberal party would be a distinctly radical party, to which should go all those who now call themselves Democrats or Republicans, but are in reality neither."

The problem with using this line of thinking is, we know what happens next? The New Deal realignment and we know which Party became its champion and that was precisely because of how the Democratic Party was positioned and had been positioned demographically as the party favored by the majority of small farmers, the immigrants and the laboring classes relative to the Republicans.

We have gone over numerous times, how Republicans have defaulted to a pro-business stance, as happened in the 1870s, the 1890s and then the 1910s-1920s, with its proto-Progressive (as Truman refers to Benjamin Harrison) and Progressive elements losing out, if not immediately than over the short to medium term time frame. You cannot take Butler at face value when the reality of what was happening during the Progressive era and the natural sorting that was taking place with the Democrats in the advantageous situation is all on display and plain to be seen.

As for "Democratic-Republican" as Truman has also repeatedly pointed out, this name was an anachronism misappropriated after the fact to refer to the Jeffersonian Republican Party to avoid confusion and misinterpretation. The term was actually only properly used to refer to Andrew Jackson and the early Democratic Party and to contrast with the "National" Republicans. Somehow I don't think he is trying to claim Andrew Jackson though it is hilarious to think about the implications of that term and how it has been misinterpreted and misused throughout history.

But to return to the quoted passage, I love Butler's line about how "one cannot maintain with a straight face a party division" based upon slight tariff differences - one can only wonder if NC Yankee is in fact unable to keep a straight face when he makes such arguments. Once again, I have expressed a similar sentiment before:

While I have fought back against your dismissal of the importance of economic and tariff policy in this period in favor of high minded ideological fluff that disregards the real day to day impact, I have never conceded to the point that the only division during this period was "just tariffs" either.

With that caveat in place, I have also repeatedly said for YEARS how from 1900 to 1930, the realization was quickly arriving that protectionism was a hindrance not a help and I have even stated why. The US surpassed or was surpassing Britain as the largest industrial power and so it came to need markets more than protection from now inferior British manufacturing. I have also explained how the politics did not keep how, how tariffs remained a critical lynch pin as the "tax cuts of their day" acting as the "One unifying policy" and such and thus dictated its maintenance long after its utility was gone, not to mention dictated the Smoot-Hawley situation and that of course was the death knell and the destruction of this political economic mindset.

Yes it is impossible to maintain such a division, because the historical record and the economic situation on the ground tells us so with regards to the failure of Smoot-Hawley and the ascendence of the New Deal afterwards based on free trade and wealth redistribution.


I included this passage because it is indicative of the tenor of many of Butler's speeches. Again and again he preaches on the subject of liberty and decries the intrusions of the federal government into state and local matters. This gives the lie to NC Yankee's claim that the Republicans were a "big govt conservative party"; or else why would a "small govt liberal" like Butler have felt so at home there? Butler clearly viewed the Republicans as the party of his form of liberalism since their founding, as exemplified by Abraham Lincoln. If one is to call Grover Cleveland a "classical liberal" instead of a conservative, one must do the same for Calvin Coolidge.

You are jumping around again. I said they were a big government conservative party and then slowly evolved into a small government conservative party over the period between the 1890s and the Depression, mirroring the same transition that occurred in the desired policy agenda of Business over that time period in reaction the economic changing from one of American business going from emergent to globally dominant and thus desiring less help and more of "get the barriers out of the way".

As for Calvin Coolidge, you are embracing the Coolidge fawned over by teenage libertarians ten years ago as opposed to the complex figure that actually existed. The one who presided over sky high tariffs, signed one of the most restrictive immigration laws in the country's history and of course presided over the enforcement of Prohibition. A good bit of Coolidge's small government reputation is down to the fact that he accomplished little because he had a bad relationship with many people in Congress, not so much out of principle. Coolidge is right in line with where the Conservatism of the 1920s was at and especially so with regards to its influence on the Republican Party.

Now as for Butler's views on Prohibition and why you are asking me "why he would feel at home there", I cannot answer that question. Because from the 1870s to the 1920s, there is one party that was at the vanguard of Prohibition and that was the Republicans. When Democrats played Me Too on it under Wilson, it helped to demolish them politically in 1920 and hence why that ended up being a short term deviation. The reason for this situation is because the Republicans were the party of the dominant demographic group in the North, meanwhile the Democrats were the Party of the emerging Immigrant demographic, this means that demographic tribalism would dictate that Republicans favor prohibition because it overlapped with the immigration issue.

As for comparing Prohibition to slavery, that is a novel approach since support for Prohibition channeled many of the same reformist puritanical mindset that supported abolition and that is well documented, not to mention the support for prohibition among women for obvious reasons.

If anything this illustrates the point we said all along. Butler may have been influential but he is obviously not the whole of the Republican Party, otherwise the Republican Party's record in power would be different from the one that the historical record shows. Perhaps you can explain why we should place everything this man says on a high when we have such easily noticed.

There is a dividing line between, studying and appreciating the opinions of Butler while noting the areas where he was out of step of a minority of views, and going all in on Butler to ridiculous degrees and rejecting all other opinions.

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darklordoftech
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« Reply #316 on: May 31, 2021, 09:50:03 PM »

I find it interesting that the Second Party System had so little regional strength or weakness for either party in comparison to earlier and later party systems.
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darklordoftech
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« Reply #317 on: July 28, 2021, 12:03:17 AM »

Was Jefferson’s character a big issue in the 1800 election in a similar manner to Bill Clinton’s character being an issue in 1992, 1996, and 2016?
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Unconditional Surrender Truman
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« Reply #318 on: July 28, 2021, 02:21:33 PM »

Was Jefferson’s character a big issue in the 1800 election in a similar manner to Bill Clinton’s character being an issue in 1992, 1996, and 2016?

Indeed, and very similar to Clinton's scandals too. The Hemmings affair wouldn't come out until after the election, but at the time there was much made of Jefferson's supposed cowardice during the War of Independence, when he fled Monticello to evade capture by Benedict Arnold. There were also rumors, spread by the Federalist presses, that Jefferson was the "mean-spirited son of a half-breed Indian squaw and a Virginia mulatto father" —which we wouldn't consider a character flaw, but people at the time certainly did.
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Unconditional Surrender Truman
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« Reply #319 on: March 16, 2022, 07:59:34 PM »

I don't. What I say in that post is Teller was to the left of the Bourbon Democrats.
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