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This letter by Karl Marx suggests Lincoln should be not be placed on the right, at least of the right of the political spectrum of the 1860s. This does NOT mean Lincoln agreed with Marxism.
We congratulate the American people upon your re-election by a large majority. If resistance to the Slave Power was the reserved watchword of your first election, the triumphant war cry of your re-election is Death to Slavery...The contest for the territories which opened the dire epopee, was it not to decide whether the virgin soil of immense tracts should be wedded to the labor of the emigrant or prostituted by the tramp of the slave driver? ... an oligarchy of 300,000 slaveholders dared to inscribe, for the first time in the annals of the world, "slavery" on the banner of Armed Revolt, when on the very spots where hardly a century ago the idea of one great Democratic Republic had first sprung up, whence the first Declaration of the Rights of Man was issued, and the first impulse given to the European revolution of the eighteenth century...They consider it an earnest of the epoch to come that it fell to the lot of Abraham Lincoln, the single-minded son of the working class, to lead his country through the matchless struggle for the rescue of an enchained race and the reconstruction of a social world.
Oh this topic drives me nuts. To make any connection to the modern day parties, you have to look at the core beliefs, something which so many people seem to overlook. The Democrats of old wanted to restrict rights. They tried to argue that 'science' gave them the ability to restrict people's rights (e.g. black people shouldn't be protected as 'real' people because they had 'science' saying they shouldn't). They also used to say that science showed them women were 'hysterical' and shouldn't have the vote. Using this junk 'science', they felt comfortable with restricting the rights of all black people and women. They were not Constitutionalists and thought the Constitution should be flexible to the current times and in their opinion, that included saying black people and women were not worthy.
The Republicans have always been about preserving rights. They believed that all people were created equal - including blacks and women. The things they fought for back in those days were of greater magnitude than anything either of our parties fight for today. They literally fought to make sure the neither women nor blacks were considered sub-human. That they, like every other human, deserved the same rights afforded to them, as defined in the Constitution. They truly believed in the concept of 'inalienable rights'. Oh and they were the pro-business group too. Sound familiar?
I think this post gives the history well and helps people understand that the Republicans are and always have been the party who wants to protect rights....
Two things:
1) That is some serious revisionist history there.
2) As stated before, parties change. The modern Republican Party has as much in common with the party of Lincoln, or even the party of Teddy Roosevelt as the modern Democratic Party has to do with the party of Andrew Jackson. Heck, modern Democrats are to the right of FDR.
No, the radical Republicans were far left liberals from the north and Democrats were conservatives from the south.
Pretty typical liberal reaction: When the truth doesn't suit your agenda, lie about it instead.
Quote:
Republicans supported ending slavery and giving blacks equal rights
Yep, a normal conservative reaction. The idea of one human being controlling another against his consent, is anathema to conservatives, but fits right in to liberal/socialist schemes.
Quote:
Because the parties switched left-right sides
I see the liberals are still pushing this fantasy of a "Grand Swap", to explain away their lie that Democrats were conservative, either then or now.
Democrats were all for massive control and government oppression back in the antebellum days, as long as the right people (or "property", as they called blacks in yet another racist lie) were oppressed. It's a sentiment that they maintain today. Not much has changed, except that real conservatives beat the daylights out of the liberal Democrats until they grudgingly took the physical chains off the black people they had enslaved.
The Democrats still kept their Jim Crow laws in place for nearly a hundred years afterward, though, forcing blacks to use separate drinking fountains, ride in the backs of public buses, jump through ridiculous hoops to vote etc. The Democrats grew, staffed, and ran the Ku Klux Klan for pretty much all that time, for the express purpose of punishing and terrifying blacks who dared act like "real people".
That, plus the Democrats standing in schoolhouse doors to keep black children from attending the Democrats' all-white schools, blasting the protesting and peacefully marching blacks with fire hoses and unleashing dogs on them, etc. Even when the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed, larger percentages of Republicans voted for it, than Democrats, in both the House and the Senate.
There was never any "Grand Realignment". Democrats were racist in the 1800s and remain racist today in the 2000's, passing legislation based on the idea that blacks can't make it in life while whites don't need help. They were proponents of big government cracking down on people who didn't see things their way back then, and remain so today.
Last edited by Little-Acorn; 05-28-2014 at 01:25 PM..
No, the radical Republicans were far left liberals from the north and Democrats were conservatives from the south. Republicans supported ending slavery and giving blacks equal rights while conservative/reactionary Democrats where from the south were against it. As many here have said, most Americans are stupid people who don't even know their own history or how the two parties ended up switching places in the "Great Realignment".
Because the parties switched left-right sides the proper way to view history in America is that Conservatives were for slavery and against equal rights while liberals were against slavery and for equal rights. Most of our RWNJs here ignore those facts.
The racist, white supremacists who created the KKK, were right-wing democrats, all of those senate democrats who filibstered anti-linching laws, and the civil rights act, only one of them left the democratic party. There was no great realignment concerning racial bigots, becuse those Democratic Party racists stayed right where they were.
I read civil war history and they say the "Radical Republicans" of the post-civil war period I immediately think Bush/Cheney Halliburton big oil and taxcuts for the rich and religious fundamentalism
And then when the deep South went solid Democrat I think is this real life? The south actually supporting the Pelosis and Barney franks ? But that wasn't quite the southern dems
The Dems back then, up into the '60s were racists and did not want civil rights for the blacks or other minorities.
Pretty typical liberal reaction: When the truth doesn't suit your agenda, lie about it instead.
Yep, a normal conservative reaction. The idea of one human being controlling another against his consent, is anathema to conservatives, but fits right in to liberal/socialist schemes.
I see the liberals are still pushing this fantasy of a "Grand Swap", to explain away their lie that Democrats were conservative, either then or now.
No, the radical Republicans were far left liberals from the north and Democrats were conservatives from the south. Republicans supported ending slavery and giving blacks equal rights while conservative/reactionary Democrats where from the south were against it. As many here have said, most Americans are stupid people who don't even know their own history or how the two parties ended up switching places in the "Great Realignment".
Because the parties switched left-right sides the proper way to view history in America is that Conservatives were for slavery and against equal rights while liberals were against slavery and for equal rights. Most of our RWNJs here ignore those facts.
The "Great Realignment," as you call it, was the result of the Democratic Party slowly turning into what it has become today, an anti-federalist, pro-abortion, anti-religion, anti-military, socialist, progressive, authoritarian, central government party. That is why the parties realigned, not because of anything to do with where politicians thought they could practice racial bigotry.
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