I think it’s impossible to apply the terms “liberal” and “conservative” to political parties in the U.S. before the 1930’s. Until FDR became President, there was no sense in which the Democrats were more economically liberal than the Republicans. Until the 1960’s, they weren’t generally thought of as being more socially liberal either. The period in which the Republicans were leaders of abolitionism and anti-segregationism was actually fairly short - from about 1850 to about 1890, and nobody used the words “liberal” or “conservative” about those things. The problem is that not only does the position of political parties change over time, so does the meaning of words.
And factual too.
Strom “there’s not enough troops in the Army to force the Southern people to break down segregation and admit the nigger race into our theatres, into our swimming pools, into our homes and into our churches” Thurmond was a Democrat too. When the majority of Democrats supported Civil Rights, he became a Republican. As he put it, on issues like desegregation, the Republicans “stood with the South”.
Come to think of it, isn’t eugenics the very epitome of “planned parenthood” (small “P’s”) taken to the extreme?
Must be a coinki-dink.
For that matter, the anti-slavery forces were led by people that SDMB liberals would regard as religious fanatics, while the biggest slave owners were good men of the Enlightenment, men who were deists at best and, more often, religious skeptics.
I wonder, if an anti-slavery religious firebrand like Henry Ward Beecher or John Brown were squaring off against an rational, articulate pro-slavery Unitarian like John C. Calhoun, which side would Revtim or Diogenes regard as “his” side?
This. And actually, I have the impression that these laws are actually more conservative than they once were, given the depiction of rampant brotheling in old west movies lol. Plus drinking age laws have become steadily more repressive. And most drugs used to be legal.
The side that was against slavery, of course. What possible relevance would their religious beliefs have? Do you think people like me hold MLK or Gandhi or Malcolm X in any less regard for being overtly religious?
The part of your post that I bolded is false, by the way. The vast majority of slave owners were not only religious, but used the Bible to justify. The likes of Thomas Jefferson were the exception, not the rule.
Even your characterizations of abolitionists as “religious fanatics” is wildly inaccurate. There a few true zealots like John Brown, but most were within sane religious parameters.
My kind of abolitionist was Mark Twain, incidentally. Abolitionist AND religious skeptic. Best of both worlds.
For the record, the one time in my life I’ve had the opportunity to choose between a Christian and an atheist for a major political office, I voted for the Christian. I don’t give a rat’s ass what someone’s religious beliefs are as long as they’re not stepping on anyone else’s rights.
Heck, try making a cliff-falling-coyote cartoon nowadays.
To be fair, not really. If you look at the voting for the Civil Rights Act, it passed in the House with, outside of the South, 94% of Democrats voting for it and 85% of Republicans, and in the Senate, outside of the South, with 98% of the Democrats and 84% of the Republicans in favor. The Voting Rights Act was also passed by overwhelming majorities in both parties. So when it came to desegregation, the South stood alone. It wasn’t until 1968 that the Republicans decided to get cinical about it and start courting Southern Democrats.
Well they do hand out the Margaret Sanger award. It would seem as though her life does have some interest to them these days though they certainly don’t advocate eugenics these days.
Odesio
The University of Virginia gives out a Thomas Jefferson Award. I guess they must be pro-slavery.
Margaret Sanger founded Planned Parenthood. Of course her life has significance to them, but it’s fallacious to infer from that that they must embrace everything she believed or that eugenics has any relevance to PP now,any more than slave ownership has any relevance to the celebration of George Washington’s birthday…
Well, you figured me out, I choose the side of argument solely by taking the opposite side of the religious. Take same-sex marriage for example. I may have in the past said I supported it because of my sense of fairness, or my empathy towards others, or even the fact that since it wouldn’t affect me at all why not let consenting people do what they want?
In reality, I was like “fuck those faggots” until I heard the pope was against SSM as well. Good work detective.
The anti-union, “right-to-work” movement won decades ago in much of the United States.
The anti-abortion movement, while not winning universal support, expanded mightily in the 1980’s.
The country generally regards military service as honorable & civil service as somehow not.
I know you’re not equating 1960’s Republicans with modern Reaganite Conservatismbecause everybody should have learned in high school history that in the 1960’s the GOP was a largely liberal party with a conservative wing, the Democrats were a largely conservative party with a liberal wing, & the polarization of the parties into a Left party & a Right party only happened with mass defections of conservative Democrats to the GOP, because of LBJ pushing through the Civil Rights Act& surely you’re neither that ignorant nor that disingenuous.
So you obviously mean something else entirely, which I will need a crystal ball & some peyote to parse.
Look, (checking the forums,) I hit the South in 1961. My dad’s boss still made JFK’s Ambassador to the Court of St James. Despite the obvious non-racist nature of that, he maintained the status quo. My father was not Southern, and served the penalty. In 1961 one was an Old Style Democrat or you paid the penalty.
foolsguinea writes:
> The anti-abortion movement, while not winning universal support, expanded
> mightily in the 1980’s.
Cite? My impression is that there has been very little change in the proportion of people (in the U.S.) who are in favor of legal abortion since the Supreme Court decision permitting it everywhere in the 1970’s. My impression is that this is one case where no one is changing their mind and no one has been able to persuade anyone else. Things remain as they have been since the 1970’s, with enough people in favor of legal abortion that there’s no chance that the Constitution could be amended to outlaw abortion.
> . . . in the 1960’s the GOP was a largely liberal party with a conservative wing,
> the Democrats were a largely conservative party with a liberal wing . . .
No, although perhaps in the 1920’s this was true. In the 1930’s, liberals began moving from the Republican party to the Democratic party, while conservatives began moving the other way. By the 1960’s, the Democratic party tended to be more liberal and the Republican party tended to be more conservative. This tendency increased over the past forty years, so now it’s much more obvious that the Democrats are mostly liberals and the Republicans are mostly conservatives.
Loud vulgar sarcasm? Check.
Missing the point completely? Check.
The point was and is that it’s not always obvious what the “socially conservative” side is, or what it stands for. Hence, it’s often dumb to look at successful reform movements of the past and say “See, the liberal side always wins, so why don’t the social conservatives just roll over and play dead, seeing as how they always lose in the end?”
Slavery is one of those institutions that everybod now agrees was evil and that modern secular liberals ASSUME they’d have opposed vigorously.
I’m saying, "Really? Seems to me that the abolitionists were largely the kind of religious yahoos you’d despise, while the biggest slaveowners in the U.S. were the kind of progressive, freethinking intellectuals you’d embrace.
Slavery WAS eventually abolished. Well, doesn’t that mean the social conservatives won, and the freethinking, rationalists progressives lost?
Other socially conservative that ‘won’ in the long run: The adversarial court system, common law, property rights. Constitutional authority. American exceptionalism, capitalism. Crisitianity Individual responsibility. The american dream, rags to riches, minority rights, etc
Just to elaborate a bit, but minority rights, (fetus rights, gay rights, civil rights, etc) are all conservative social values, not liberal values, despite what the parties currently espouse.
Protection of the minority is in the very fabric of our Constitution. Our government was specifically structured to avoid governance by populism and the issue of rights always boils down to populism.
WTF is a “fetus right?”
Sorry, but civil liberty and social justice are liberal lynchpins. That includes reproductive rights (there is no such thinbg as a “fetus right.” Opposition to reproductive rights is about contracting[/] rights not expanding them).
Social CHANGE is liberal, by definition. Resisting change is conservative, by definition. It’s typical right wing revisionist history for the righties to try to pretend like they were the ones fighting for civil rights all along. What a load of crap.
And since when have conservatives ever supported gay rights?