Last week I was watching the new Bill Maher show, and someone mentioned an interesting point. He pointed out that during WWII, it was the conservatives of the time that opposed entering war, while the liberals were generally for jumping in and ridding the world of evil dictators.
A couple questions pop up in my mind…
Is this accurate?
Is our recent situation fundamentally different, or have the two parties flipped opinions about this issue?
What are some other issues that have seen ideology swaps within political parties?
In the US, after 12/7/41, everybody was pro-war. But before that, conservatives (which includes members of both parties) were strongly anti-intervention. This is in fact one of my favorite example as to how labels like “conservative” have no real meaning regarding stance on issues.
So a conservative was:
isolationist in 1940, 1954, 1976 and 1996.
interventionist in 1941, 1948, 1964, 1980 and 2002.
So Truman got tarred over not “saving China” while Clinton offended people by trying to participate in peace-keeping in the Balkans.
The positions of all politicians on any issue is for current political gain. Actual morals and such have nothing to do with politics.