The Young Turks

Its simple :

It was a silly thread that showed a complete lack of historical understanding and tried to replace that knowedge with an uncredited graphic based on a small sample of questions with inadequate answer choices making it meaningless.  And, as has been so aptly pointed out, all the people on the graph had someone else anwering the questions for them.

I will say two things about topics that came up as a result of this.

First, the defining characteristic of the Democrat and the "second party" of the day has never been about more or less freedom or bigger or smaller government (whoever is in power wants bigger gov't, duh!).

The Democratic Party has traditionally been the party of the poor and working class, the disenfranchised and minorities.

The "second party" (Republicans since 1856) have been the party of the wealthy and corporations.

At times more or less personal or economic freedom helped one side or the other but parties are, first and foremost, utilitarian institutions and can easily adapt their ideology to meet the demands of their voting block as the realities change.

The other point I wanted to make is regarding Ken claiming the GOP used to be the party of civil rights.  This has never been true.  Ken is making the classic mistake of using a modern understanding of events to interpret an historical reality.

The Civil War had virtually NOTHING TO DO WITH CIVIL RIGHTS.  Certainly not black folk's civil rights.  The Republican opposition to slavery revolved around its impact on economic competition and the labor market.  Sure, if you were one of a very, very, very small group of white men (and therefore politically relevant) who gave two shits about black folks and their freedom or how they lived you supported the Republicans but you were considered to be a fringe lunatic by the rest of the party.  The Abolitionists were the equivalent of PETA, NAIRAL or (maybe a better example) the Michigan Militia.

Now, of course, Republicans would make reference to the suffering of blacks but it was just an easy way to pile on.

Remember, Lincoln never freed a single slave.  The Emancipation Proclamation freed only those slaves in the parts of the South that were still in rebellion and unoccupied by the Union Army.  Since those parts did not recognize Lincoln's ability to do so, it freed no one.  He could have easily applied the proclamation to states that had never left (Missouri or Maryland for ex.), states that had been recaptured (Lousiana or Tennessee) or areas the Union army controlled in states still in rebellion.  But he never did.  Nice principled stand, huh?

It was not a great moment in civil rights, it was a failed military stunt.  (They had hoped the enslaved blacks would rise up when they heard.  To our knowledge, not a single one did).

After the Civil War, the North did demand an end to slavery and rights for black folks, but this seemed to be more about killing slavery which the North hated for economic reasons, and letting black people vote since they would vote about 99.999999% Republican.

The only right the GOP (I guess the GYP at that time) made even a token attempt to protect was voting since it helped them win elections.

How committed was the GOP to civil rights?  When the party lost the election of 1876, they brokered a crooked deal agreeing, in effect, to completely abandon the blacks to the Southerners in exchange for four more years in the White House.  The Republicans never looked back from there.  By 1896, the Republicans had established at least as pathetic a record on blacks as the Dems.

And lets not forget while all that was going on the Republicans were engaging in the systematic genocide of the Native Americans (not that the Dems objected that much or anything).

If you talked about Civil Rights for minorities in this period everyone at the time would assume you meant immigrants.  And the Dems were ABSOLUTELY the party of the immigrants.  But mostly because the immigrants were poor and working class and voted for the Dems. See how it works?

Today, when we talk about the Civil War, we assume it was all framed and fought in the terms we understand today (civil rights for black folks) but the people who thought this at the time were considered nuts (Douglass, Garrison, John Brown, et. al.).

Its really a testament to the failure of the GOP to take care of black voters that by, at the latest, 1932 Dems were easily winning the black vote.  Which means that 67 years after the Republicans saved the black folks they had almost completely lost their support. 

I know you really don't give a damn about the historical side of all this and were just trying to make another stupid "blue team vs. red team" point but it is fairly staggering that after winning a war "for" blacks, freeing them and giving them the right to vote the GOP control over that voting block ended before the last two generation of slaves was passed on.

But I might could do a TJ party.

Then we could discuss why I don't love Jordan like everyone else does.  Still owe you that thread.  Will get to it, I promise.