Did you notice one thing?
All those liberal policies were opposed by Conservatives
Abolition is the unique and exclusive history of Republicans.
Tawwy.
Democrats pushed for continuing slavery long after the civil war. Republicans held their line.
I am always amazed, and disgusted, when I hear this argument and we hear it a lot. It is a commentary on our political, and historic, ignorance. As always it takes a history lesson to correct it. as it is only necessary to advance a cause, or more exactly, a political agenda and not to spread the truth. The problem is that there is just enough truth in this to make some kind of point but it is not the point that any modern republican would care to make.
First, and most basically, this mixes apples and oranges. Liberalism and conservatism are not political parties, they are political philosophies and both the democrats and republicans have been both over our history.
Second, one must understand the definition of liberal and conservative at the most basic level. Conservatives are status quo kind of guys, resistant to change, liberals on the other hand have the tendency to embrace change. These are basic definitions so dont so dont get your shorts in a bind. Both can fall off the edge of the world when taken to extremes.
Lincoln was a member of the new Republican Party. That much is true. From there it gets quite murky. Lincoln himself is not as cut and dried as history displays him but that is another story.
Liberalism and conservatism must always be viewed in the context of time. What is now ultra conservative, perhaps even oppressive, was liberal at the time of the founding. It was change, not something conservatives take lightly.
So Lincoln was a member of the new Republican Party. It was anti slavery. Hardly conservative in nature, nor was Lincoln. For his time, Lincoln was a radical, flame throwing liberal, a change the entire makeup of the nation kind of liberal. Thats what liberals do although not usually as radically as when talking about abolishing slavery.
By definition neither Lincoln nor the Republican Party of 1860 were conservatives. Actually quite the opposite.
The south was defeated and defeat never sits well. In the years of reconstruction they had a lot shoved down their throat that they did not like and that would forever be associated with the Republican party. Change comes slowly, sometimes never and after reconstruction the south labored for decades to return to what it was. The Republican Party was associated their defeat and humiliation and would remain so till the Nixon administration. The democrats ruled the south but they were racist conservative democrats.
Then came the civil rights act pushed through by Johnson and the democratic administration. The south was overwhelmingly democratic, they were known as dixiecrats and the solid south. A lot of irony here, civil rights pushed through by a southern president. Worse yet it could never have passed without the support of the northern liberal Republicans. Names like Rockefeller, Percy, and Dirksen come to mind.
The south had some new people to hate. Then along came Nixon and the southern strategy. He had the novel idea of uniting all those civil rights sore losers behind the Republican party. It worked
.wonderfully!
In the years following, the southern racist democrats were gradually replaced, by attrition and party change into the southern racist Republicans, democrats in general being blamed for civil rights. This has become the base for the modern Republican party . Sad commentary that those who were responsible for the passage became a symbol for those who opposed it.
And the Northern Liberal Republicans? Gone the way of the do do bird. By the time Clinton came to power they were extinct, perhaps Bob Dole being just a last dismal representative of what once was.
Another irony? People like Allen West expounding on the Republican service to the black man. With friends like those
This is a bare outline, somewhat lacking in detail but those details are there for anyone who has the desire, and the honesty, to look into it.
Thank God for my public school education.
to suspend the work requirements in the welfare reform law.
