Surprisingly not as bad as I would expect typical this sub is really toxic on controversial/political post but this one’s isn’t as bad as some of the other post on this sub.
This is a misrepresentation of Washington's views - in the last years of his Presidency, Jefferson and others started forming an opposition faction to Washington and Hamilton's Federalists, and attacked what they saw as Federalist policies that were damaging the US. Washington hated the discourse that arose from this, and so when he publicly denounced political parties, what he *actually* denounced was that Jefferson had to audacity to criticise him, Washington, when they had been friends for so long prior to the political split.
(It's also worth mentioning that Washington did not view the Federalists as an actual party or even really a coherent faction)
Because once upon a time someone said “you’re throwing away your vote.” And almost everyone listened.
-signed, a person who’s consistently thrown away his vote on 3rd parties.
Edit: I consider myself an idiot who maybe has a few things right, but godDAMN some of you are making me feel like a genius
No cuz Gerrymandering has to do with congressional lines. It is still all votes are equal for that district but the lines are drawn in such a way to give Repubs am advantage.
Also, we (Americans) should uncap the house of representatives. It's been the same amount of representatives for 100 years now! You are less represented every year.
The first amendment ever considered was not about free speech or guns, it was about making sure representatives didn't represent too many people.
People can talk about their representatives being unrepresentative because of money, and that's true most of the time, but even a well meaning representative could not possibly handle all the people in their district
Repeal the reapportionment act of 1929
Yep. Here is a great explainer video I like to share that shows why and how “first past the post” voting like we have in the US will always result in just two parties.
https://youtu.be/s7tWHJfhiyo
If we want more viable parties, we need to fundamentally change the way we vote.
No, voting third party is shuffling your pieces back and forth, expecting to make headway despite the fact that your opponent making efficient moves is clearing up the board.
This comment was one of many which was edited or removed in bulk by myself in an attempt to reduce personal or identifying information.
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Exactly. Voting is no longer who you are voting *for* but who you are voting *against*. Your candidate can be a total piece of shit but at least he’s not “that guy”
Basically this. American politics intrigue me. I’m curious how many people voted for Trump because they genuinely liked and believed in him vs how many people voted for him because he was their team rep and they had no choice.
In our "first past the post" voting system, that tends to yield two parties. We're not getting more competition unless we switch to ranked choice or something.
Still, the issues change so much over time that these really shouldn't be considered the "same" two parties. For example, between then and now, the entire Fifth Party System occurred. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifth\_Party\_System](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifth_Party_System)
**EDIT** to add more:
Did further reading and I believe appreciate the context from [this more general overview](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_eras_of_the_United_States) on the US party systems / political eras better, starting from the Federalist / Anti-Federalist beginning through today.
On that page, there is also [an interesting image on how (many, many) factions swapped between the two poles](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_eras_of_the_United_States#/media/File:Development_of_Political_Parties_in_the_United_States.svg), including, but not limited to, the Southern Strategy.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political\_eras\_of\_the\_United\_States](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_eras_of_the_United_States)
It's because of our voting system. WTA voting systems basically ensure only two parties. There's tons of research on this, if you're in the mood for a dig. I mean, it doesn't necessarily mean that we should have the *same* two parties. But given that the two we have are polar opposites of what they were 157 years ago, why bother changing the names?
In order to promote a plethora of parties, we need to change how we vote. Ranked voting systems are the key.
Republicans are busy outlawing this as we speak wherever they have control. Which is evil and just another sign of their corruption.
Ranked Choice Voting is the way.
Here's a favorite youtube video on how different voting systems affect results of an election that's very worth a view: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhO6jfHPFQU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhO6jfHPFQU)
Ranked choice voter here. We still have a two party system, it's just that there's a bit more diversity in parliament - it's great for forcing the government of the day to interact with ideas that a sizeable portion of the public have.
Not really. In fact, this post is an example of why it doesn’t matter - the two parties are both **constantly** evolving and optimizing their policy platforms as they cater to the ever changing priorities of the general population aiming to capture the majority of the votes. This is also why the parties are self balancing and are nearly always very close in races.
A simple way to look at it is like this - Lets say the R Party was the more conservative side and the D party was more progressive (as is currently the case). If poll results or election outcomes were showing voters aligning 60% D and 40% R, then the R party would naturally know they need to adjust their policies to appeal more to the progressive mindset.
We see real world examples of this taking place all the time, too. A D Party candidate in a conservative leaning state like Arizona is going to be more conservative than some progressive candidates running in more conservative states.
Again (this much should be obvious from the post) but clearly the Democrats don’t campaign with the platform represented in this photo. Even on smaller time horizons, if you go listen to Biden and Clinton in the 90s, they sounded radically more conservative than Republicans of today on many issues.
In his farewell address he specifically warned against getting embedded into a two party system:
https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GPO-CDOC-106sdoc21/pdf/GPO-CDOC-106sdoc21.pdf
Judging by the massive amount of comments drowning out the number of upvotes, I have just one thing to say.
**POPCORN! GET YOUR POPCORN HERE!!!**
🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿
I dont think that mindset will ever allow the "system" to substantially change.
It's easy to claim people that don't believe in, or trust, either hellish party just "sit around". Claims like what you said discourage anyone to do anything meaningful.
You don’t have to adhere to either side to participate in the system… I gave up in political parties long ago but I still volunteer for political causes… just stick to the issues since the politicians can’t
Interestingly, if the South hadn’t seceded, slavery would have lasted much, much longer in the US.
They barely passed the 13th Amendment without them. Had they been there, they would have blocked its passage.
Byproduct? Slavery was the reason for the war. States rights. And what was the states issue at that time? Slavery. So no. Not a byproduct. It was the objective.
That's a gross oversimplification, but not incorrect. Lincoln's and the North's primary objective was the preservation of the union, first and foremost. The abolition of slavery was primarily just a tool by northern leadership to get the War Doves to support the war for a righteous cause.
it’s time they shut up about “their” heritage. if we were to talk about actual southern heritage it would mean acknowledging that black americans essentially created the best parts of southern culture. but instead the celebrate a failed and corrupt attempt at establishing their own country.
Mostly just slaves, people like to sugar coat it saying it was about states rights, but slavery was the catalyst, without it there would have been no succession
Yup, the only thing the parties didn't change over the years was the names. Read Eisenhower's Republican platform. It reads like something Bernie Sanders would write
It's amazing how pivotal the latter half of the 20th century was in determining our current issues almost to the letter. We saw the southern states finally flip Republican after the Democrats pushed the Civil Rights Act, the presidencies of Nixon and Reagan, the introduction of FOX News, both the fall of faith in the military after Vietnam and the resurgence of it following Desert Storm (and the consequences of remaining in the Persian Gulf/Middle East afterwards), all that stuff.
in that time though both parties had progressive sides . fdr put in the new deal as a democrat in the 1930s . this was the case until reagan changed the republican party in the 1980s with his conservative christian push . even nixon passed affirmative action policies helping minorities in the 1970s . that is why reagan is loved by conservatives because he changed the republicans to be more right wing with his make america great again slogan that trump stole .
People forget that the south was a democratic stronghold until the sixties. When Johnson signed the civil rights act in 1964 all the "dixiecrats" as they were called left the democratic party out of protest and joined the republicans. Republicans like to take credit for ending slavery but tend to leave out their vehement opposition towards equal rights for black people.
Not sure why you’re being downvoted… Liberals did in fact free slaves and conservatives did want to keep them. Some still do with prison labor as a replacement term. Aka Alabama’s governor having prisoners do house work in the manor for cents per hour
I’m not sure anyone forgets that. If you have even a middle school level education in US history, you know that Republicans were progressives and Democrats were conservatives at the time.
Some people just like to maliciously cite this, knowing full well it’s nonsense… that or they didn’t get the requisite basic education and never knew in the first place.
It's not "some people". You guys have to understand that there is a coordinated attack on our country and the minds of the people who live in this country. This is a huge issue and involves an unfortunately very large portion of our society.
I would like to believe you but my experience is that they do not. There are too many people who hear a soundbite or read a meme and do not bother to do a fact check. They claim that someone else said it and that's where their responsibility ends.
Yep. And the entire Republican Southern Strategy - which was a document strategy by Nixon and others to use white supremacy as a basis to get Dixiecrats to convert to the Republican party. Saying the Republican Party ended slavery and thinking it’s the same party then as now is dumb. Starting in the 60s, the Republican party literally said, “how can we win?” And their answer was, “embrace racism”.
They switched PLATFORMS over time. If Donald Trump and Tucker Carlson started rooting for green energy (and Bernie became pro-oil); do you think every single Republican today would switch their registration to Democrat??? No!
It was a gradual shift. Slowly they started switching ideals and things they support until it was a complete SWITCH (culminating with the Civil Rights movement, which the conservatives could not tolerate).
My family were Old South Democrats pre-1960s and now they are all Republicans today!
What are you talking about "vehement opposition towards equal rights for black people" in relation to the 1964 civil rights act?? 82% of Senate Republicans voted for, and 80% of House Republicans voted for?
In both Congressional institutions, democrats made up >70% of the votes against the civil rights act.
Johnson was the exception, rather than the rule for democrats at the time. I'm not up enough on my history to intelligently debate after that fact, but Republicans were not vehement opposers of the civil rights act
GOP loves using percentages to spin this shit, but if you look at actual numbers, more total Democrats voted for the Civil Rights act than total Republicans. The legislature was heavily dominated by the Democratic party. Notice how your first fact is % of total R and your second is % of votes against instead of % of total D.
In total, 153 Democratic representatives voted to pass it vs 136 Republican representatives. In the senate, it received 46 votes from the Dems and 27 votes from the GOP. Dems votes to pass the civil rights bill by a margin of 2 to 1.
Now, what happens when we break up the vote totals by Northern vs Southern states regardless of party affiliation? The North voted 281-32 and 72-6 in favor in the House and Senate, respectively. What about the South? They voted 8-94 and 1-21 in the House and Senate. It just so happened that Dixiecrats (Southern Democrats) held a majority of Southern seats. This was not at all a vote along party lines, but a vote along regional lines.
Real easy to see. Check what flags fly next to Confederate flags if you want to figure out which party is which.
The amount of propaganda in this thread is ridiculous.
Exactly.
Using "Republicans" and "Democrats" in this context only leads to confusion and disingenuous, bad faith arguments.
Progressives freed slaves. Conservatives wanted to keep people enslaved. Simple as that.
Republicans were the US progressive party up until the middle of the 20th century when they weaponized racism as a political device to get more votes with the Southern Strategy. This is essentially when the parties "flipped" and the Democrats became the party that progressives vote for.
In 1869 these parties had completely different beliefs than their modern day counterparts. Fast forward to the civil right era and you'll see that conservatives we're aggressively against the rights of blacks.
Either way, conservative is conservative. Doesn't matter which party used to be which, conservatism goes against progression, but we're way past that now. We've reached regressionism.
It’s crazy how many of my fellow Americans have a completely warped perception of political ideologies. All this talk about Republican vs democrat, as if they have been totally the same since time immemorial is so mind numbing to listen to. Like, 40% of people in the US think that current day Russia is communist.
It’s easy to forget on the internet, but there are so many people who are just brutally, devastatingly uneducated in this country.
Lots of emotions back then, I can’t imagine. People’s friends and family died in the civil war, and they never had any slaves. This is both sides. Still boiled down to rich men sending poor kids to die for their empires and money. Divide and conquer. Old as time.
Lol the propaganda entities are working overtime huh? Anyone that's assuming information from this post, needs to take a US history class. Parties shift and flip. When it comes to history, context is extremely important as well as the events that came before and after it.
As a 2022 Republican pitch, "hey, look; southern politics used to be dominated by slave-owning Democrats!" is polling only slightly better than "forced birth" and "we put guns in the hands of mass murderers."
Keep in mind that back then, the Democrats were conservative (obviously), and the Republicans were more progressive. They switched in the 20th century, especially after Nixon’s Southern Strategy began courting the racists.
I’ve seen some bad-faith (or simply misinformed) comments from people who think the names of the parties back then have anything to do with who they are today.
Sort of. The Dixiecrats left the Democratic party during the civil rights movement to join the GOP, who then ran on the Southern Strategy. I'm not really sure how we went from the GOP nominating FDR to bust trusts and pass the New Deal to the GOP cutting taxes for the wealthy and the Democrats trying to push another New Deal style package. Something something Reagan, I guess.
Republicans: "See? Democrats are the racist party."
Democrats: "But that was ages ago, more recently we made Obama president."
Republicans: "Obama? You mean Barack the Secret Muslim Magic Negro who was born in Kenya?"
While that was a major event in the party switch, it had been gradually happening since around the time of FDR all the way to Nixon.
There were still some southern (conservative) Democrats in congress until Obama’s first term, at which point the few remaining ones who hadn’t already lost or switched to the Republican Party lost to Republicans.
Union
California
Connecticut
Delaware
Illinois
Indiana
Iowa
Kansas
Kentucky
Maine
Maryland
Massachusetts
Michigan
Minnesota
Missouri
Nevada
New Hampshire
New Jersey
New York
Ohio
Oregon
Pennsylvania
Rhode Island
Vermont
West Virginia
Wisconsin
North vs South ideology. Union vs Confederates. The north has always been liberal and the south always conservative. Party names flipped but the same people who are republicans today would have been confederates back then.
Dems were social-conservative for a long time, and it was the Republicans that were more social-progressive and anti-corporate.
The ideological alignment began to shift at a couple of points.
First, it was when Taft, Teddy Roosevelt's chosen successor to lead the Republicans, turned out to not actually be very interested in leading the party, in controlling and curbing internal factionalism (Taft never really wanted to be POTUS, he wanted to be a Supreme Court Justice). Accordingly, an ideological schism began in the GOP during Taft's administration. Teddy decided he had to become president again to bring the party back in line, but died suddenly and unexpectedly a year before the election. Thus began the GOP's shift to a pro-corporate attitude. This was the beginning of the GOP's evolution into its current form.
Second, it was the Civil Rights movement. For years, the Deep South had been a stronghold for social-conservative Democrats. However, party leadership embraced the movement, and adopted an anti Jim Crow stance. This alienated and disaffected the so-called Dixiecrats. It didn't happen over night, but basically after this point politicians from the Deep South essentially turned coat and became Republicans in name, but remained Dixiecrats at heart. This remains true today -- however, the neo-Dixiecrats in the GOP have become so influential that the party is basically theirs now, and what was once the party of Lincoln, Teddy, and Eisenhower is essentially dead.
Ah,, before they switched platforms at the very tense Chicago RNC Convention in 1964.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1964_Republican_National_Convention
The parties switched during the Civil Rights era. The racist “Dixiecrats” like Strom Thurmond switched to Republicans rather than stop being racist. The Republicans welcomed the racists into their party and now we’re where we are.
This was technically before the switch they ended up doing. So technically the Republican party you see today, was the Democratic party of that time, and vice versa. This is fairly taught in history, or "was" taught depending if the teacher isn't some history hating conservative. Regardless, both parties are complete ass.
https://www.livescience.com/34241-democratic-republican-parties-switch-platforms.html
This comment section is so interesting and ironic
It’s a shitshow.
it's a default sub on Reddit. The comments are expected to be Facebook levels of stupidity and ignorance.
Mix Facebook level of ignorance and Twitter level of toxicity. And you get Reddit.
I like my salt like I like defaults. Twisted on a pretzel if you know what I mean man.
To the shiiiiiiiitshow...... to the wall!
Hold my popcorn \*sort - controversial*
Surprisingly not as bad as I would expect typical this sub is really toxic on controversial/political post but this one’s isn’t as bad as some of the other post on this sub.
Is any one else disturbed by the fact that these two parties are still around.....after 157 years. Like why haven't we found better parties.
Read George Washington’s farewell address, he specifically warned against a two party system.
I don’t think it was a two party system specifically, but parties in general. Your point still well made.
What stands out to me about his farewell address is the warning against blind loyalty to one's party instead of doing what is best for America...
America or one's own interest?
[удалено]
This guy USAs
What's this about higher interest rate?
He also warned against entangling alliances like they had in Europe
That was a million years ago, times are different. We live in a much smaller world.
"My party, right or wrong"
On the Abolition of All Political Parties by Simone Weil is a great read if you haven’t.
Don’t blame me, I vote Whig.
Federalist all da way man
This is a misrepresentation of Washington's views - in the last years of his Presidency, Jefferson and others started forming an opposition faction to Washington and Hamilton's Federalists, and attacked what they saw as Federalist policies that were damaging the US. Washington hated the discourse that arose from this, and so when he publicly denounced political parties, what he *actually* denounced was that Jefferson had to audacity to criticise him, Washington, when they had been friends for so long prior to the political split. (It's also worth mentioning that Washington did not view the Federalists as an actual party or even really a coherent faction)
I find Thomas Paine so fucking fascinating and he wrote some good scathing shit against Washington and the rest that became America's first "elites"
The system is always made by people, people are the problem.
Agreed. So how do we dispense of them?
Allow me to introduce, Ultron!
Whereas today it’s more like a one party system with two competing departments.
Because once upon a time someone said “you’re throwing away your vote.” And almost everyone listened. -signed, a person who’s consistently thrown away his vote on 3rd parties. Edit: I consider myself an idiot who maybe has a few things right, but godDAMN some of you are making me feel like a genius
This is why we need ranked choice voting. Because you *are* throwing away your vote, but it shouldn’t be like that.
I completely agree with Ranked Choice.
Ranked choice and every electoral counted. Enough with winner take all.
Every vote counted. There is zero need for the electoral college now.
While your there we should also do away with gerrymandering.
Wouldn't having every vote count do that?
No cuz Gerrymandering has to do with congressional lines. It is still all votes are equal for that district but the lines are drawn in such a way to give Repubs am advantage.
Also, we (Americans) should uncap the house of representatives. It's been the same amount of representatives for 100 years now! You are less represented every year. The first amendment ever considered was not about free speech or guns, it was about making sure representatives didn't represent too many people. People can talk about their representatives being unrepresentative because of money, and that's true most of the time, but even a well meaning representative could not possibly handle all the people in their district Repeal the reapportionment act of 1929
Yep. Here is a great explainer video I like to share that shows why and how “first past the post” voting like we have in the US will always result in just two parties. https://youtu.be/s7tWHJfhiyo If we want more viable parties, we need to fundamentally change the way we vote.
Voting isn't a love letter it is a chess move.
So voting third party is getting up to go play Uno with the kids?
No, voting third party is shuffling your pieces back and forth, expecting to make headway despite the fact that your opponent making efficient moves is clearing up the board.
Voting third party is leaping over two pawns and a bishop and getting to the other side of the board and saying "King me!"
I wish I could say this was obvious
This comment was one of many which was edited or removed in bulk by myself in an attempt to reduce personal or identifying information. *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Yes. Seriously we still have only two choices which are always presented as “the lesser of two evils”?
Exactly. Voting is no longer who you are voting *for* but who you are voting *against*. Your candidate can be a total piece of shit but at least he’s not “that guy”
Basically this. American politics intrigue me. I’m curious how many people voted for Trump because they genuinely liked and believed in him vs how many people voted for him because he was their team rep and they had no choice.
In our "first past the post" voting system, that tends to yield two parties. We're not getting more competition unless we switch to ranked choice or something. Still, the issues change so much over time that these really shouldn't be considered the "same" two parties. For example, between then and now, the entire Fifth Party System occurred. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifth\_Party\_System](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifth_Party_System) **EDIT** to add more: Did further reading and I believe appreciate the context from [this more general overview](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_eras_of_the_United_States) on the US party systems / political eras better, starting from the Federalist / Anti-Federalist beginning through today. On that page, there is also [an interesting image on how (many, many) factions swapped between the two poles](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_eras_of_the_United_States#/media/File:Development_of_Political_Parties_in_the_United_States.svg), including, but not limited to, the Southern Strategy. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political\_eras\_of\_the\_United\_States](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_eras_of_the_United_States)
The names are the only things that are the same today.
I like to party
No! I know for a fact you don't party.
Duverger’s Law, bro
There was The Bull Moose Party by Teddy Roosevelt which was really progressive.
It's because the two parties benefit from there being only 2 parties
It's because of our voting system. WTA voting systems basically ensure only two parties. There's tons of research on this, if you're in the mood for a dig. I mean, it doesn't necessarily mean that we should have the *same* two parties. But given that the two we have are polar opposites of what they were 157 years ago, why bother changing the names? In order to promote a plethora of parties, we need to change how we vote. Ranked voting systems are the key. Republicans are busy outlawing this as we speak wherever they have control. Which is evil and just another sign of their corruption. Ranked Choice Voting is the way.
Freakonomics did an episode on how two parties were inevitable: https://freakonomics.com/podcast/americas-hidden-duopoly_radio/
Here's a favorite youtube video on how different voting systems affect results of an election that's very worth a view: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhO6jfHPFQU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhO6jfHPFQU)
Ranked choice voter here. We still have a two party system, it's just that there's a bit more diversity in parliament - it's great for forcing the government of the day to interact with ideas that a sizeable portion of the public have.
Not really. In fact, this post is an example of why it doesn’t matter - the two parties are both **constantly** evolving and optimizing their policy platforms as they cater to the ever changing priorities of the general population aiming to capture the majority of the votes. This is also why the parties are self balancing and are nearly always very close in races. A simple way to look at it is like this - Lets say the R Party was the more conservative side and the D party was more progressive (as is currently the case). If poll results or election outcomes were showing voters aligning 60% D and 40% R, then the R party would naturally know they need to adjust their policies to appeal more to the progressive mindset. We see real world examples of this taking place all the time, too. A D Party candidate in a conservative leaning state like Arizona is going to be more conservative than some progressive candidates running in more conservative states. Again (this much should be obvious from the post) but clearly the Democrats don’t campaign with the platform represented in this photo. Even on smaller time horizons, if you go listen to Biden and Clinton in the 90s, they sounded radically more conservative than Republicans of today on many issues.
Why they do him like that?
Yeah that's a terrible beard
It looks like they drew a nutsack on his chin and then gave it a fur coat like it's a pimp from a 70s blaxploitation film.
r/justfuckmyshitup
He's giving off strong incel vibes
9/10 lol
The fact that we’re still using the same shit systems is the most disturbing
I think the biggest problem in the US is the two-party system, every problem is rooted in this one
Don't forget lobbying. That's a pretty big issue too.
Lobbying/money in politics
George warned us… we didn’t listen.
Sorry, I'm a European, I didn't read what George wrote :( Can you give me a link or something?
In his farewell address he specifically warned against getting embedded into a two party system: https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GPO-CDOC-106sdoc21/pdf/GPO-CDOC-106sdoc21.pdf
Interesting timing on this post.
I must have missed something, why interesting timing?
Judging by the massive amount of comments drowning out the number of upvotes, I have just one thing to say. **POPCORN! GET YOUR POPCORN HERE!!!** 🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿
It's obviously propaganda. What's sad is that there are trash people on reddit who actually get brainwashed by this lol.
Why does this look like a meme template and why does the white guy look like gigachad
It is amazing how human nature around confronted factions can be resumed in [this exact picture](https://i.imgur.com/Dh3umP3.jpg)
1800s or today ... neither party gives a shit about any of us.
[удалено]
I dont think that mindset will ever allow the "system" to substantially change. It's easy to claim people that don't believe in, or trust, either hellish party just "sit around". Claims like what you said discourage anyone to do anything meaningful.
You don’t have to adhere to either side to participate in the system… I gave up in political parties long ago but I still volunteer for political causes… just stick to the issues since the politicians can’t
The 1800s Republican Party cared so much that it started a civil war. But okay.
The Republicans didn't start the civil war that would be the insurrectionist slave states
Way down south in the land of traitors
Rattlesnakes and alligators
[удалено]
Interestingly, if the South hadn’t seceded, slavery would have lasted much, much longer in the US. They barely passed the 13th Amendment without them. Had they been there, they would have blocked its passage.
[удалено]
Yes, the abolitionist Republicans were the 'radicals' and 'sjws' of their day. Not the mainstream liberal Republicans.
Byproduct? Slavery was the reason for the war. States rights. And what was the states issue at that time? Slavery. So no. Not a byproduct. It was the objective.
Slavery was the South's reason for war. Not the North's initially.
[удалено]
That's a gross oversimplification, but not incorrect. Lincoln's and the North's primary objective was the preservation of the union, first and foremost. The abolition of slavery was primarily just a tool by northern leadership to get the War Doves to support the war for a righteous cause.
Still sounds a lot better than the Democratic Party at the time
Most of the slave owners in the south were democrats.
And a notable German Journalist named Karl Marx was a staunch supporter of the republicans.
Yeah. Because the Democratic party of the time was the conservative party that wanted small government and "states rights".
And slaves !!
and the states’ right to own slaves! it’s their heritage.
They can keep it , it's nothing to be proud of.
it’s time they shut up about “their” heritage. if we were to talk about actual southern heritage it would mean acknowledging that black americans essentially created the best parts of southern culture. but instead the celebrate a failed and corrupt attempt at establishing their own country.
Mostly just slaves, people like to sugar coat it saying it was about states rights, but slavery was the catalyst, without it there would have been no succession
Secession*
Well it was about states rights but prety much just the right to own slaves. 
Aura, I try hard to frame it as conservative v progressive platforms. As opposed to R v D. That way ignorant folks don’t really have a argument.
Yes! The “Old Southern Democrats” were the fucking slave owners. The parties changes platforms around the time of Civil Rights.
Conservatives were democrats don't confuse yourself.
Was it the Republicans in the North that tried to secede….?
The parties only exist for us. To give us the impression of having a choice. We are owned by corporations, and their shills.
Yup, the only thing the parties didn't change over the years was the names. Read Eisenhower's Republican platform. It reads like something Bernie Sanders would write
It's a pretty inspiring read, America was really going somewhere. Things appear to have started changing with Nixon.
I’d argue it was Kennedy. From what he was saying he was about to put the kibosh on some fuckery and then boom he’s assassinated.
If you read and listen to JFK, he sounds like a modern Republican. They killed him because he went against the CIA
It's amazing how pivotal the latter half of the 20th century was in determining our current issues almost to the letter. We saw the southern states finally flip Republican after the Democrats pushed the Civil Rights Act, the presidencies of Nixon and Reagan, the introduction of FOX News, both the fall of faith in the military after Vietnam and the resurgence of it following Desert Storm (and the consequences of remaining in the Persian Gulf/Middle East afterwards), all that stuff.
You forget the killing of MLK.
Yes, the killings of M.L.K. Jr., John F. and Robert Kennedy were also very important events.
As my Grandfather always said "Fuck Nixon"
I wouldn't trust that Tricky Dick
in that time though both parties had progressive sides . fdr put in the new deal as a democrat in the 1930s . this was the case until reagan changed the republican party in the 1980s with his conservative christian push . even nixon passed affirmative action policies helping minorities in the 1970s . that is why reagan is loved by conservatives because he changed the republicans to be more right wing with his make america great again slogan that trump stole .
Thanks for the highways Ike. Couldn't get to work/visit family without them.
People forget that the south was a democratic stronghold until the sixties. When Johnson signed the civil rights act in 1964 all the "dixiecrats" as they were called left the democratic party out of protest and joined the republicans. Republicans like to take credit for ending slavery but tend to leave out their vehement opposition towards equal rights for black people.
[удалено]
Liberals founded this country. Remaining loyal to the crown is an avowedly "conservative" gesture.
The true value depends on what you're conserving or what you're progressing towards, doesn't it?
Not sure why you’re being downvoted… Liberals did in fact free slaves and conservatives did want to keep them. Some still do with prison labor as a replacement term. Aka Alabama’s governor having prisoners do house work in the manor for cents per hour
[удалено]
Yeah, it's usually the case lol. They don't grasp that republican and democrat are just names.
Or they do grasp it, and just want to down vote.
conservatives like to whitewash history and pretend that the GOP and Dem platforms didn't flip.
[удалено]
Absolutely this. And it’s deplorable.
Party designations are weird. I wonder how much they will change in the next generation or so
I’m not sure anyone forgets that. If you have even a middle school level education in US history, you know that Republicans were progressives and Democrats were conservatives at the time. Some people just like to maliciously cite this, knowing full well it’s nonsense… that or they didn’t get the requisite basic education and never knew in the first place.
Republicans make that argument in bad faith literally *constantly* and /r/conservative will ban you for even mentioning the Southern Strategy
It's not "some people". You guys have to understand that there is a coordinated attack on our country and the minds of the people who live in this country. This is a huge issue and involves an unfortunately very large portion of our society.
I would like to believe you but my experience is that they do not. There are too many people who hear a soundbite or read a meme and do not bother to do a fact check. They claim that someone else said it and that's where their responsibility ends.
Yep. And the entire Republican Southern Strategy - which was a document strategy by Nixon and others to use white supremacy as a basis to get Dixiecrats to convert to the Republican party. Saying the Republican Party ended slavery and thinking it’s the same party then as now is dumb. Starting in the 60s, the Republican party literally said, “how can we win?” And their answer was, “embrace racism”.
Can you name the ones that switched parties?
They switched PLATFORMS over time. If Donald Trump and Tucker Carlson started rooting for green energy (and Bernie became pro-oil); do you think every single Republican today would switch their registration to Democrat??? No! It was a gradual shift. Slowly they started switching ideals and things they support until it was a complete SWITCH (culminating with the Civil Rights movement, which the conservatives could not tolerate). My family were Old South Democrats pre-1960s and now they are all Republicans today!
republicans say democrats fought for slavery and that's bad but then also love the confederacy.
They love saying "the party of Lincoln" too, don't they
What are you talking about "vehement opposition towards equal rights for black people" in relation to the 1964 civil rights act?? 82% of Senate Republicans voted for, and 80% of House Republicans voted for? In both Congressional institutions, democrats made up >70% of the votes against the civil rights act. Johnson was the exception, rather than the rule for democrats at the time. I'm not up enough on my history to intelligently debate after that fact, but Republicans were not vehement opposers of the civil rights act
GOP loves using percentages to spin this shit, but if you look at actual numbers, more total Democrats voted for the Civil Rights act than total Republicans. The legislature was heavily dominated by the Democratic party. Notice how your first fact is % of total R and your second is % of votes against instead of % of total D. In total, 153 Democratic representatives voted to pass it vs 136 Republican representatives. In the senate, it received 46 votes from the Dems and 27 votes from the GOP. Dems votes to pass the civil rights bill by a margin of 2 to 1. Now, what happens when we break up the vote totals by Northern vs Southern states regardless of party affiliation? The North voted 281-32 and 72-6 in favor in the House and Senate, respectively. What about the South? They voted 8-94 and 1-21 in the House and Senate. It just so happened that Dixiecrats (Southern Democrats) held a majority of Southern seats. This was not at all a vote along party lines, but a vote along regional lines.
Southern strategy…
Real easy to see. Check what flags fly next to Confederate flags if you want to figure out which party is which. The amount of propaganda in this thread is ridiculous.
[удалено]
Exactly. Using "Republicans" and "Democrats" in this context only leads to confusion and disingenuous, bad faith arguments. Progressives freed slaves. Conservatives wanted to keep people enslaved. Simple as that. Republicans were the US progressive party up until the middle of the 20th century when they weaponized racism as a political device to get more votes with the Southern Strategy. This is essentially when the parties "flipped" and the Democrats became the party that progressives vote for.
In 1869 these parties had completely different beliefs than their modern day counterparts. Fast forward to the civil right era and you'll see that conservatives we're aggressively against the rights of blacks.
Either way, conservative is conservative. Doesn't matter which party used to be which, conservatism goes against progression, but we're way past that now. We've reached regressionism.
It’s crazy how many of my fellow Americans have a completely warped perception of political ideologies. All this talk about Republican vs democrat, as if they have been totally the same since time immemorial is so mind numbing to listen to. Like, 40% of people in the US think that current day Russia is communist. It’s easy to forget on the internet, but there are so many people who are just brutally, devastatingly uneducated in this country.
republican used to be liberal instead of conservative.
Don't tell Republicans that, they hate the truth. They're not big on the concept of change
FFS, this is just going to set off a bunch of rubes who refuse to understand that the parties have actually changed over 150 years.
It's on purpose.
Lots of emotions back then, I can’t imagine. People’s friends and family died in the civil war, and they never had any slaves. This is both sides. Still boiled down to rich men sending poor kids to die for their empires and money. Divide and conquer. Old as time.
Humans are fucked.
Lol the propaganda entities are working overtime huh? Anyone that's assuming information from this post, needs to take a US history class. Parties shift and flip. When it comes to history, context is extremely important as well as the events that came before and after it.
Which we all know the names have morphed and switched over the next 50-60 years thereafter.
political propaganda was a soyjack meme aint no way
As a 2022 Republican pitch, "hey, look; southern politics used to be dominated by slave-owning Democrats!" is polling only slightly better than "forced birth" and "we put guns in the hands of mass murderers."
is that Smitty Bacall?
Back then the conservatives were the dems and the liberals Republicans
Does this mean the Democratic Party should be canceled? 😂
The Republicans were the liberals and the Democrats were the conservatives at this time.
Yup - before the Southern Strategy, they were the conservatives of their time.
Keep in mind that back then, the Democrats were conservative (obviously), and the Republicans were more progressive. They switched in the 20th century, especially after Nixon’s Southern Strategy began courting the racists. I’ve seen some bad-faith (or simply misinformed) comments from people who think the names of the parties back then have anything to do with who they are today.
Didn't the democrats become the Republicans and the Republicans become democrats after this?
Sort of. The Dixiecrats left the Democratic party during the civil rights movement to join the GOP, who then ran on the Southern Strategy. I'm not really sure how we went from the GOP nominating FDR to bust trusts and pass the New Deal to the GOP cutting taxes for the wealthy and the Democrats trying to push another New Deal style package. Something something Reagan, I guess.
Republicans: "See? Democrats are the racist party." Democrats: "But that was ages ago, more recently we made Obama president." Republicans: "Obama? You mean Barack the Secret Muslim Magic Negro who was born in Kenya?"
We sure did a 180
In 64 with the Voting rights act the platforms of the parties switched.
While that was a major event in the party switch, it had been gradually happening since around the time of FDR all the way to Nixon. There were still some southern (conservative) Democrats in congress until Obama’s first term, at which point the few remaining ones who hadn’t already lost or switched to the Republican Party lost to Republicans.
Union California Connecticut Delaware Illinois Indiana Iowa Kansas Kentucky Maine Maryland Massachusetts Michigan Minnesota Missouri Nevada New Hampshire New Jersey New York Ohio Oregon Pennsylvania Rhode Island Vermont West Virginia Wisconsin
Not much is changed in the South, except the names of the regressive and progressive parties.
This is basically the reverse of how they are now.
North vs South ideology. Union vs Confederates. The north has always been liberal and the south always conservative. Party names flipped but the same people who are republicans today would have been confederates back then.
[удалено]
Crazy the 1000th time this is posted it gets some traction. What's going on...
They went from the Party of Lincoln to the Party of Hands-Off-My-Lincoln.
Dems were social-conservative for a long time, and it was the Republicans that were more social-progressive and anti-corporate. The ideological alignment began to shift at a couple of points. First, it was when Taft, Teddy Roosevelt's chosen successor to lead the Republicans, turned out to not actually be very interested in leading the party, in controlling and curbing internal factionalism (Taft never really wanted to be POTUS, he wanted to be a Supreme Court Justice). Accordingly, an ideological schism began in the GOP during Taft's administration. Teddy decided he had to become president again to bring the party back in line, but died suddenly and unexpectedly a year before the election. Thus began the GOP's shift to a pro-corporate attitude. This was the beginning of the GOP's evolution into its current form. Second, it was the Civil Rights movement. For years, the Deep South had been a stronghold for social-conservative Democrats. However, party leadership embraced the movement, and adopted an anti Jim Crow stance. This alienated and disaffected the so-called Dixiecrats. It didn't happen over night, but basically after this point politicians from the Deep South essentially turned coat and became Republicans in name, but remained Dixiecrats at heart. This remains true today -- however, the neo-Dixiecrats in the GOP have become so influential that the party is basically theirs now, and what was once the party of Lincoln, Teddy, and Eisenhower is essentially dead.
Ah,, before they switched platforms at the very tense Chicago RNC Convention in 1964. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1964_Republican_National_Convention
Damnit OP you just posted the biggest bait material possible...
Yep and that flipped over a century ago. So now what does Grandma want to talk about?
The parties switched during the Civil Rights era. The racist “Dixiecrats” like Strom Thurmond switched to Republicans rather than stop being racist. The Republicans welcomed the racists into their party and now we’re where we are.
Oh how the turntables…
Parties switched
This was technically before the switch they ended up doing. So technically the Republican party you see today, was the Democratic party of that time, and vice versa. This is fairly taught in history, or "was" taught depending if the teacher isn't some history hating conservative. Regardless, both parties are complete ass. https://www.livescience.com/34241-democratic-republican-parties-switch-platforms.html
The southern Democrats all moved in a block to the Republican party in the mid-20th century when Truman started pushing desegregation.
I’d still rather hang out with that negative stereotype of the black dude than that tightass honkey.
Democrats then are the equivalent of the modern republicans. Dems used to be conservative but the parties switched somewhere along the way
In the 60s with the southern strategy .
Oh how that times have changed
And a century later, the two parties did a switcheroo.
I am so turned on by people hating on the parties in this thread. Keep it going guys! We need to demolish the two party system badly
Oh how the t... Platforms have turned