# In the US, has a socially conservative view ever "won" in the long run? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [April 3, 2009, 11:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-the-us-has-a-socially-conservative-view-ever-won-in-the-long-run/491921 "2009-04-03T23:27:58Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2009, 8:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-the-us-has-a-socially-conservative-view-ever-won-in-the-long-run/491921/21 "2009-04-04T08:57:31Z")
> [@Captain\_Carrot](#): > > None of those are socially conservative, unless you’re actually trying to claim liberals are pro-murder, pro-theft, and pro-rape. They’re all socially conservative in the way that the OP is defining "socially conservative, that is to say, the “keep the status quo” sense. Murder was illegal 200 years ago, 100 years ago, 50 years ago, and yesterday, so keeping murder illegal is definately maintaining the status quo. ---
**Author:** ![sailor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a587f6/32.png) [@sailor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sailor)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2009, 9:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-the-us-has-a-socially-conservative-view-ever-won-in-the-long-run/491921/22 "2009-04-04T09:33:12Z")
> [@Captain\_Amazing](#): > > They’re all socially conservative in the way that the OP is defining "socially conservative, that is to say, the “keep the status quo” sense. Murder was illegal 200 years ago, 100 years ago, 50 years ago, and yesterday, so keeping murder illegal is definately maintaining the status quo. When the question asked in the OP is **“In the US, has a socially conservative view ever “won” in the long run?”** I think intelligent people understand it is implied that it means won over those who wanted to change it because otherwise it is meaningless. Yes, we continue to sleep at night, work during the day, eat food and pee urine. Are all those conservative victories? I cannot see hou you can “win” if it is not against someone who “lost”. But hey, YMMV. ---
**Author:** ![sailor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a587f6/32.png) [@sailor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sailor)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2009, 9:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-the-us-has-a-socially-conservative-view-ever-won-in-the-long-run/491921/23 "2009-04-04T09:35:27Z")
> [@Starving\_Artist](#): > > Oh, the Democrats were conservatives then. How convenient. You really need to read some history books if you are not aware that it was the democrats in the south who were against equality for blacks. I suppose an alternative to informing yourself would be to not post showing your ignorance. ---
**Author:** ![FriarTed](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/friarted/32/1052_2.png) [@FriarTed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FriarTed)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2009, 12:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-the-us-has-a-socially-conservative-view-ever-won-in-the-long-run/491921/24 "2009-04-04T12:33:11Z")
> [@astorian](#): > > Less than 100 years ago, eugenics was the pet cause of almost all progressives. People like Margaret Sanger took it for granted that eugenics was the future. > > Planned Parenthood HATES it when you bring that up! They also hate when you bring up that Margaret Sanger was anti-abortion, as was PP. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2009, 1:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-the-us-has-a-socially-conservative-view-ever-won-in-the-long-run/491921/25 "2009-04-04T13:10:18Z")
The liberal victory won’t be complete until we see explicit homosexual acts in Saturday-morning cartoons. ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2009, 1:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-the-us-has-a-socially-conservative-view-ever-won-in-the-long-run/491921/26 "2009-04-04T13:39:27Z")
> [@Starving\_Artist](#): > > Oh, the Democrats were conservatives then. How convenient. So I guess it was liberal Republicans who ushered in the New Deal and Great Society programs of that time. > . Dude, you do know that the Democrats controlled the south since the Civil War? Republicans? Party of Lincoln? Lincoln freed the slaves? Reconstruction? Carpetbaggers? Jim Crow? Any of this ringing a bell? For generations, there was no Republican party in the south. It didn’t exist. In the north, the Republican party was a “liberal” party, but in those days liberalism meant low tarriffs. And agricultural areas–such as the south–were in favor of high tarriffs. And so the Republican party stronghold was in the industrial trading north. Origionally an abolitionist party, the Republicans became increasingly associated as the party of business and free trade. The Democratic party was represented by two wings–the northern wing where they competed with Republicans and the southern wing which had no party opposition. Then along came Franklin Roosevelt, who upended things a bit. And then along came the civil rights movement and Lyndon Johnson. And the two wings of the Democratic party found themselves at odds. The southern wing was defeated, and over the next 40 years conservative southerners left the Democratic party to join the Republican party, until now the Republican party has morphed from a liberal northern party to a conservative southern party. Remember any of this? ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2009, 1:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-the-us-has-a-socially-conservative-view-ever-won-in-the-long-run/491921/27 "2009-04-04T13:45:55Z")
At the very least, I’d recommend reading the wiki pages for “Dixiecrats” and “Southern strategy” for a primer on the mid-20th-century flip in party alignment. ---
**Author:** ![Rodgers01](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/b19c9b/32.png) [@Rodgers01](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rodgers01)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2009, 1:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-the-us-has-a-socially-conservative-view-ever-won-in-the-long-run/491921/28 "2009-04-04T13:52:14Z")
I don’t know if either side has “won” the abortion debate, but the fact that it is still very much in contention means that the socially conservative view might win out. As mentioned above, the socially conservative view on bussing and affirmative action seems to be winning. Could you say that the socially conservative view on the Cold War won in the end? ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2009, 2:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-the-us-has-a-socially-conservative-view-ever-won-in-the-long-run/491921/29 "2009-04-04T14:05:56Z")
> [@Rodgers01](#): > > I don’t know if either side has “won” the abortion debate, but the fact that it is still very much in contention means that the socially conservative view might win out. > > As mentioned above, the socially conservative view on bussing and affirmative action seems to be winning. > > Could you say that the socially conservative view on the Cold War won in the end? Geez, no. 1. The Democrats were just as opposed to the Soviet Union as the Republicans, and 2. Even if they weren’t, a foreign policy issue isn’t usually something that falls under the umbrella of “social conservatism.” ---
**Author:** ![JRDelirious](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jrdelirious/32/9531_2.png) [@JRDelirious](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JRDelirious)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2009, 2:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-the-us-has-a-socially-conservative-view-ever-won-in-the-long-run/491921/30 "2009-04-04T14:19:16Z")
I fear this discussion is going to go nowhere because, from what I’ve seen, it’s already degenerating from “SocialLib v. SocialCon” into “Dem v. Rep”, or even better, to _“all causes that were [triuphs of good/evil failures] were really [insert ideology here] causes all along”._ OTOH, it however IS true that who were the liberals and who were the conservatives HAS varied, at different points in history and on different issues. Perfectly normal on any specific issue at any particular time, some people may be liberal about A and conservative about B, and twenty years later the positions be reversed because the realities of A and B have changed, yet that \*\*\*not \*\*\*make it necessarily “wrong” to have held the original position. ---
**Author:** ![Revtim](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/revtim/32/1042_2.png) [@Revtim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Revtim)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2009, 3:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-the-us-has-a-socially-conservative-view-ever-won-in-the-long-run/491921/31 "2009-04-04T15:34:46Z")
> [@Starving\_Artist](#): > > Oh, the Democrats were conservatives then. How convenient. I avoided mentioning parties in the OP specifically to avoid this type of stuff. Note that I mentioned slavery abolition as an example, clearly a Republican success. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2009, 3:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-the-us-has-a-socially-conservative-view-ever-won-in-the-long-run/491921/32 "2009-04-04T15:35:33Z")
Diogenes the Cynic writes: \> The death penalty is another one, at least in the US, and gun rights have just \> won a pretty strong victory. That’s not true for the death penalty. It’s certainly appears to be disappearing if you look at it over time: > **[Home](https://bjs.ojp.gov/)** > > The Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) is the United States' primary source for criminal justice statistics that cover a wide range of topics. The number of executions peaked in the mid-1930’s. It dropped to almost nothing by the mid-1960’s. The Supreme Court ordered all the states to completely rewrite their death penalty statutes in 1972, and it didn’t resume until 1976. It went up again (but not nearly to the level that it reached in the mid-1930’s, despite a greatly increased population) until the late 1990’s, but then it dropped again. Only 37 people were executed last year. The fact is that in about two-thirds of the U.S. the death penalty is either nonexistent or extremely rare. There’s no death penalty in fifteen states and two other states haven’t had a single execution since the resumption of it in 1976. I think there’s a good case to be made that the 1980’s and 1990’s are a blip and the death penalty is slowly disappearing in the U.S. (Please note that I am making no statement about the rightness or wrongness or the death penalty. I am only commenting about how common it is in the U.S. Please spare me your snide comments about whether it is right or wrong. I have no intention of getting into a debate about it.) ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2009, 3:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-the-us-has-a-socially-conservative-view-ever-won-in-the-long-run/491921/33 "2009-04-04T15:45:06Z")
Excuse me. I wrote: \> . . . the rightness or wrongness or the death penalty . . . I meant: \> . . . the rightness or wrongness of the death penalty . . . ---
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2009, 3:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-the-us-has-a-socially-conservative-view-ever-won-in-the-long-run/491921/34 "2009-04-04T15:45:19Z")
> [@Starving\_Artist](#): > > Oh, the Democrats were conservatives then. How convenient. Convenient to who? It’s historical fact. The Republicans were the liberal party of Lincoln and the Reconstruction. The Democrats were the conservative party of Jim Crow and segregation. Read a history book. > [@](#): > > So I guess it was liberal Republicans who ushered in the New Deal and Great Society programs of that time. Johnson changed the party. > [@](#): > > And besides, it looks like you have embraced the time-worn tactic of equating any opposition to civil rights legislation with racism. Yep. ---
**Author:** ![Chimera](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/8e8cbc/32.png) [@Chimera](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chimera)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2009, 4:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-the-us-has-a-socially-conservative-view-ever-won-in-the-long-run/491921/35 "2009-04-04T16:31:38Z")
> [@Bryan\_Ekers](#): > > The liberal victory won’t be complete until we see explicit homosexual acts in Saturday-morning cartoons. Sorry, Saturday Morning Cartoons were abolished years ago. ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2009, 4:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-the-us-has-a-socially-conservative-view-ever-won-in-the-long-run/491921/36 "2009-04-04T16:56:02Z")
> [@Revtim](#): > > I avoided mentioning parties in the OP specifically to avoid this type of stuff. Note that I mentioned slavery abolition as an example, clearly a Republican success. I think the question is, what makes slavery a socially conservative idea and its abolition a socially liberal one? Is it simply that slavery was the status quo until it was changed? I repeat my claim for Prohibition as a socially liberal idea that failed. ---
**Author:** ![E-Sabbath](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/e19adc/32.png) [@E-Sabbath](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/E-Sabbath)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2009, 4:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-the-us-has-a-socially-conservative-view-ever-won-in-the-long-run/491921/37 "2009-04-04T16:57:05Z")
Free Love, a big movement of the mid to late 1800s, never really caught on. It had a resurgence in the 1960s, but the idea of communal childraising and annhilation of the family unit? Didn’t really go anywhere. ---
**Author:** ![crowmanyclouds](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crowmanyclouds/32/19884_2.png) [@crowmanyclouds](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/crowmanyclouds)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2009, 5:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-the-us-has-a-socially-conservative-view-ever-won-in-the-long-run/491921/38 "2009-04-04T17:16:18Z")
> [@Starving\_Artist](#): > > … So I guess it was liberal Republicans who ushered in the New Deal and Great Society programs of that time. … No, but they didn’t really oppose those programs either, > [@](#): > > … Historically [Rockefeller Republicans](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rockefeller_Republican) were moderate or liberal on domestic and social policies. They typically favored New Deal programs, welfare, and civil rights—usually promising to run them more efficiently than the Democrats. They were strong supporters of big business. In fiscal policy they favored balanced budgets and relatively high tax levels. They sought long-term economic growth through entrepreneurship, not tax cuts. In state politics, they were strong supporters of state colleges and universities, low tuition, and large research budgets. They favored infrastructure improvements, such as highway projects. … > > … The term “Rockefeller Republican” is now somewhat archaic, and Republicans with these views are now generally referred to as simply “moderate Republicans,” “liberal Republicans” or, in a more derogatory term, Republicans in Name Only (RINOs). … > [@Starving\_Artist](#): > > … Bussing is a quick and easy example. Even many blacks disliked the fact that their kids had to get up early and stand outside on cold winter mornings in order to get on a bus and attend classes at a school clear across town. But let any conservative voice opposition to bussing for the same reason and he’s immediately labelled a racist. … Is it safe for me to assume that your second sentence above acknowledges that that argument was one made far more by Whites than Blacks? If so, it’s always amused me that nobody seems to have had any problem with busing until it was used for desegregation. The racism was obvious, White kids went to White schools no matter how far away from them they lived. Even if that White kid lived across the street from a Black school they weren’t going to it. School districts weren’t determined by your address, they were determined by your race. Wasn’t that the reason for busing, to deal with the de facto segregation that de jure segregation had created and enforced? CMC fnord! ---
**Author:** ![Deeg](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/deeg/32/2955_2.png) [@Deeg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Deeg)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2009, 6:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-the-us-has-a-socially-conservative-view-ever-won-in-the-long-run/491921/39 "2009-04-04T18:47:15Z")
> [@Starving\_Artist](#): > > Oh, the Democrats were conservatives then. In some ways, yes. For example, Jesse Helms was a Democrat from 1950-72 and a Republican from then on. ---
**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2009, 7:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-the-us-has-a-socially-conservative-view-ever-won-in-the-long-run/491921/40 "2009-04-04T19:21:03Z")
> [@Bryan\_Ekers](#): > > The liberal victory won’t be complete until we see explicit homosexual acts in Saturday-morning cartoons. How about on Adult Swim on the Cartoon Network? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-the-us-has-a-socially-conservative-view-ever-won-in-the-long-run/491921.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-the-us-has-a-socially-conservative-view-ever-won-in-the-long-run/491921.md?page=3)