From the Republican Party Platform of 1956:
Can anybody imagine any of this in today’s Republican Party?
What happened since 1956? Well, there was this thing called the Civil Rights Act. Seems like more government involvement in hospitals and health care (and safety nets in general) is a good thing. That is, unless “they” also get them.
“Lack of homogeneity” is an educated, scientific sounding way of saying, “If you are not like us, you are inferior and not worthy of the same rights and privileges as we, your superiors.”
[quote=“Jackmannii, post:20, topic:917954, full:true”]Also the human condition.
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Excuse me?
This has been my experience as well. Its something they can point to to justify the myth of American Exceptionalism. A way of defending our current failing policies when its obvious that the systems of other countries are having superior results, as well as a back hand swipe at the minorities as the only thing keeping our country down.
Exactly. The only “exceptional” thing they can point to when pressed is that America is full of people who are exceptionally inferior to them, and this is easy to see by the color of those inferiors.
Indeed, it’s unimaginable in today’s Republican party. But I think it’s much more complicated than the Civil Rights Act. As late as the 1970s Richard Nixon, among other things, established the EPA, opened relations with China, and contemplated health care reform similar to the ACA and even a “Family Assistance Plan” that would have been similar to a universal basic income.
Those were the days when Republicans were mostly fairly sane conservatives. American politics since then has moved far to the right, with Democrats essentially becoming conservatives in many ways (there’s an article on the CBC News website about how Kamala Harris would likely do very well as leader of the Conservative Party in Canada). To quote Bill Maher, Democrats have moved to the right, and Republicans have moved into the lunatic asylum.
But not a lot more. That’s like saying the Civil War was more complicated than slavery. It technically was but that sort of distinction isn’t worth much.
And it was basically the same fight 100 years later with the Civil Rights Act. That’s the whole “Southern Strategy”. Johnson knew he gave up the South for at least a generation (though it’s 2 and going on 3 generations now) and Nixon took advantage. There may have been vestiges of sane conservatism after (just as there were some Confederates who personally found slavery distasteful) but much of the shift in the Republican Party has been ultimately due to race relations. If the Democrats have shifted to the right, it’s as much from picking up those the GOP left behind as anything else. Demographically, black people (and several immigrant populations) skew socially conservative but the GOP has had scant luck with many of them over the years for obvious reasons.
In the 60s, if there hadn’t been the issue of treating black people like, well people, the modern GOP would in no way or shape look the way it does today, much like the Civil War not happening had the question of slavery not been an ongoing issue 100 years earlier.
Basically, we’re fighting, in one form or another, the same battle we’ve been fighting since the establishment of the US. There’s one side, dominated culturally by the South, that’s all-in for dehumanizing a subset of the population, and every ~50-60 years or so, we’ve experienced a blowup relating to that cause.