Ok I need a history lesson... wasnt there a time when the left were the

[southernleftylady]

conservitives and the right were the libs? When did the "swtich" happen? TIA

[WoodrowFan]

1. no

Historical origin of the terms

The terms Left and Right to refer to political affiliation originated early in the French Revolutionary era, and referred originally to the seating arrangements in the various legislative bodies of France.

The term originated in the French Legislative Assembly of 1791, when the moderate royalist Feuillants sat on the right side of the chamber, while the radical Montagnards sat on the left.

Originally, the defining point on the ideological spectrum was the ancien régime ("old order"). "The Right" thus implied support for aristocratic or royal interests, while "The Left" implied opposition to the same. Because the political franchise at the start of the revolution was relatively narrow, the original "Left" represented mainly the interests of the bourgeoisie, the rising capitalist class. At that time, support for laissez-faire capitalism and Free markets were counted as being on the left; today in most Western countries these views would be characterized as being on the Right. But even during the French Revolution an extreme left wing called for government intervention in the economy on behalf of the poor.

http://www.wordiq.com/definition/Left-Right_politics

[Toucano]

2. Thank you for sharing that.

It is quite helpful.

[WoodrowFan]

8. you're welcome (NT)

[ashling]

3. you beat me to it

I just finished rereading one of my old college history books on that period.
:bounce:

[Jackpine Radical]

4. There was maybe a time when

the Dems were conservative (States Rights, pro-slavery, etc.) & the Republicans were launched as a reform party (anti-slavery, etc.), but things just didn't break down the same. For example, the Dems were southern/agrarian & anti-tariff, while the Pugs were advocates of northern industry & pro-tariff.

The terms "left" and "right" referred originally to (IIRC) the French parliament, in which the liberals sat on the left side of the aisle & the conservatives on the right.

Check out this site for more information:
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAdemocratic.htm

The Democratic Party emerged under Thomas Jefferson in the 1790s in opposition to the Federalist Party. It initially drew most of its support from Southern planters and Northern farmers. Its good organization and popular appeal kept it in power for most of the time between 1825 and 1860. This included John Quincy Adams (1825-1829), Andrew Jackson (1829-37), Martin Van Buren (1837-41), James Polk (1845-49) and Franklin Pierce (1853-47). and James Buchanan (1857-61).

The Republican Party was established at Ripon, Wisconsin in 1854 by a group of former members of the Whig Party and the Free-Soil Party. Its original founders were opposed to slavery and called for the repeal of the Kansas-Nebraska and the Fugitive Slave Law. Early members thought it was important to place the national interest above sectional interest and the rights of individual States.

Over the next few years the Republican Party emerged as the main opposition party to the Democratic Party in the North. However, it had little support in the South. The party's first presidential candidate was John C. Fremont in 1856 who won 1,335,264 votes but was defeated by the Democrat, James Buchanan.

[wishlist]

5. Republicans and Democrats have changed since the Civil War era

when the Republicans were the anti-slavery party advocating federal control while the Democrats supported states rights and slavery.

During FDR's presidency during the 1930's and 1940's, the Democrats became clearly established as the party championing civil rights and a strong role of the federal government to provide benefits and regulate for the public good whereas the Republicans became the party advocating less federal regulation and states rights at the expense of civil rights and integration.

I am just a casual observer not a political scholar but that is my impression of the switches in the parties.

[CaTeacher]

6. The republicans were the more "liberal" of the two parties

from Abraham Lincoln through Teddy Roosevelt.

(Teddy did some VERY liberal things--like trust busting and pushing for environmental reform). It was right after Teddy that the Repugs took a hard right-and he was VERY upset about the fact that his party changed so drastically.

I probably would have supported the Republicans until the turn of the century when they moved to the right. (yes--they were imperialistic and had problems--but so did the old style Democrats). The old school Republicans really did fight for some good issues--but they have changed. It is a completely different party now!

[WoodrowFan]

7. William McKinley a liberal? Mark Hanna must be spinning in his grave!

You can’t force the two parties into the right-left model during the 19th Century as easily as that. Both parties were much wider coalitions than they are now. Both parties had reformers and both had reactionaries. Generally, however, the Democratic party stood for a weaker central government out of fear of dominance by power wealthy interests, while the Republicans stood for a stronger central government and were more friendly towards corporate interests. That’s why Jackson opposed the central bank, he feared it would put too much control over money into the hands of a few individuals. And that’s why the Republicans were a higher tariff party and the Democrats were to low tariff party. Broadly speaking, high tariffs favored business and low tariffs favored consumers. That’s why the Republicans were the party favored by big business even while TR was President. Tariffs were roughly equivalent to the WTO issue now.

As for being a Republican or a Democrat in the late 19th Century if you were a liberal, that would depend on where in the US you lived and if you favored a more powerful central government or state governments to in act reforms. In general, however, both parties nominated conservatives, but if a liberal were nominated, they were nominated by the Democrats. The best example of this in the late 19th Century would be William Jennings Bryan vs. McKinley in 1896 and again in 1900. Even then, you could have a candidate with both very liberal and very conservative positions. Grover Cleveland was a firm believer in the gold standard as providing “sound money” at a time when reformers in the west were calling for a mixed silver and gold standard to relieve farmer (and consumer) debt. That was very much the conservative position. But Cleveland was also opposed to US annexation of Hawaii after the US-business lead coup there, so he was also anti-imperialist.

As for Roosevelt, while more liberal than McKinley by far, his big turn to the left came in 1912, 4 years after he left office. He turned back towards the right, however, after the election was over so his 1912 race has to been seen as an aberration. Even then, his biggest campaign contributors in both 1904 and in 1912 were large businesses, most notably US Steel.

Then, of course, there is race, the only major political question in which each party dominated one side of the spectrum. The Democrats, with their base in the south, stood strongly for segregation and Jim Crow. Some northern and western Democrats disagreed but they were a minority. Republicans stood for, not full civil rights, but for a lessened Jim Crow. They were quite happy to appeal to black voters in the north, but do nothing for blacks in the south. Sadly, that little bit made the Republicans the more liberal party on race. FDR began the Democratic appeal to black voters, a move accelerated by Truman and set firmly in place by LBJ.

What about immigrants and other ethnic groups? That depended on region. In general Irish voters were Democrats. Other European groups varied by region. Let’s say I was an immigrant from Freedonia (a small country in Eastern Europe). If I moved to a city in the Midwest where the Freedonian community allied with a local urban machine that was Republican then I was a Republican. If the Freedonian community allied with the Democratic machine, then I was a Democrat.

As I noted above, you can’t force the current division onto the party politics of the 19th Century. That doesn’t mean you can’t admire TR, he was a reformer, especially compared to McKinley and his backers, but it’s too simple to say the Republicans were the liberals and the Democrats the conservatives.

[CaTeacher]

9. I used the word "liberal" in quotation marks--I certainly did not

mean it in the way that you are implying.

And I did not use the word conservative to describe either party.

I am not trying to assert that the Republicans were the liberals and the Democrats were the conservatives.

All I was stating was that for a brief period of time (approximately 40 years) the Republicans were socially progressive party (and I used Lincoln and T. Roosevelt as examples) and moreover, that being socially progressive myself--I would have supported those Republican presidents (Lincoln and Roosevelt).

At the present time, the Democrats are the social progressives, and I support them. I am not a Democrat because of my race, religion, upbring etc---I am a Democrat because they are the party of social progressiveness (at this time). But, approximately, 100 years ago, I would have voted for Teddy, at that time he was the progressive in the race. (although I hate his imperialism--but that is another matter.)

[WoodrowFan]

13. liberal or progressive

If you change "liberal" to "progressive" in my post my point stays the same. You can't force the two parties in the period 1860-1912 into the same mold we have now where one is more to the left than the other as a whole. The Republicans had social progressives in that period (you give two good examples) but they also has reactionaries and non-progressives such as McKinley, Mark Hanna, Taft, etc, etc. BOTH parties had progressives and both had conservatives and neither party can claim it was fully one or the other.

And given their record as a whole, you can't really make the claim that you do, "that for a brief period of time (approximately 40 years) the Republicans were (the) socially progressive party." The record on business regulation certainly doesn't support that, and it's true on race only because the Republicans were less horrid on the subject that the Democrats. Moreover, the anti-imperialists tended to be in the Democratic Party more than in the Republican but that was at least in part due to the Republican preference for business expansion.

[AP]

12. TR was an anomally. McKinnley was very conservative -- an imperialist

and a fascist. In the 1880s and '90s, the Republican Party was definitely pro-wealth concentration and anti-democratic, and TR intterrupted that arc.

Mark Hannah hated TR and very much regretted having him as VP when McKinnley was shot. Had McKinnley lived, America almost definitely would have become a fascist nation. McKnnley wanted to shift all the power in society to the very top. TR thought fascism was incompatible with American democracy and hist trust busting and income tax put a stop to Hannah's fascist fantasies. (But TR did like the imperialism a great deal.)

TR split the vote when he ran as a bull mouse, which allowed Wilson, another progressive, to win. But Wilson's term was serioulsy hampered by the interests of wealth. Wilson wanted the LoN because he knew the fascits in America wanted global chaos to make money, and the fascists in America stonewalled the LoN for that reason. When Wilson's term ended in failure, it opened the door for the Republicans to get back on the track that McKinnley established, and that took the US straight to the Depression.

Hoover was the logical progression from McKinnley. When times got tough, Hoover taxed the hell out of people who worked for a living and refused to make the wealthy take on any burden at all for making sure society worked properly. So, we got FDR as the reaction to Hoover, and the American fascists hated him because he took his job very seriously. he spread a lot of wealth down to the people. In fact, he did such a good job, the democratic arc played out all the way through Kennedy and Johnson. The Democrats were so good at what they did, that not even the red scare really could interrupt its forward progress.

Of course Kennedy got shot, and then RFK, and then power started to shift to the energy industry and huge corporations in the early 70s, because they were tired of not being super-powerful...

[AP]

10. My understanding is that Lincoln got elected not only on the slavery issue

but because he was a fan of the railroad industry.

Often, when a new industry pops up the party that services the oligopoloy doesn't like that new industry because it threatens the existing hegemony. (Republicans today like concentrated wealth, and they don't like captalism -- they don't like it when something new and good for society comes along and upsets the current order).

When that new industry becomes hegemonic, it switches from the party that brought it to the dance to the party that services the oligopoloy.

Kevin Phillips writes about how one of the reasons the Democrats were able to beat Republicans in 92 was because Bush and Reagan were so eager to service the hegemony (insurance, banking, aoil industry and defense industry) that they ignored technology and computers.

Perot ran for president because he saw Bush as hampering his info tech business from reaching its full potential. Clinton embraced (especially) the west coast high tech business. Once those tech companies become big enough (and can make money by influencing the gov't to protect them from competition they'll go Repubican -- and some already have).

Phillips also writes about how TX oil companies supported Democrats at the beginning of the 20th century because Republicans didn't support them -- Republicans were afraid that they'd shift wealth and power away from the NE. But once those oil companies got a ton of economic power, they switched to the Republicans and started asking them to fight wars for them, and use up national reserves so the gov't would have to buy more oil to fill them up at super high prices, etc..

Get it?

Well, when the rail industry started, the oligopoly didn't like it because it threatened to change the power structure in unpredictable ways, and it threatened to shift power down to people, and out to western states. The Repubicans weren't afraid of this change, and saw a lot of democratizing wealth to be made from it.

The rail industry became SO big, that the Republicans' support for it turned into something much more right wing than the sentiments that initiated their support. The became all for using tax money to buy land which would enrich people connected to the party, and those kinds of considerations soon drove policy -- which was very much a product of the immense wealth that railroads created.

[youngred]

11. No

Right and left have always refered to liberals and conservatives. However, Republicans and Democrats have not always had the same ideological swing. In the 1850s the Republicans were a radical liberal party, the major switch occured between 1910-1920 (excpet in the South which didn't see the change until the 1960s). TR was probably the last Liberal Republican President.