How much have Democrats changed in 50 years?

[Little-Acorn]

 

[Gipper]

So true and so sad.

 

[dogtowner]

JFK wouldn't recognize these guys today.

 

[Cosmo]

The party has moved dramatically to the right. Sadly.

 

[Gipper]

The party has moved dramatically to the right. Sadly.

Are you Cosmo Kramer or just another troll?

 

[Cosmo]

Don't know what you mean. I just signed up for this forum today.

 

[BigRob]

The party has moved dramatically to the right. Sadly.

Can you be more specific?

 

[Little-Acorn]

The party has moved dramatically to the right. Sadly.

Just another chest-thumper trying to show people how much more leftist he is than anyone else... and framing that as a good thing.

(yawn)

 

[steveox]

FDR

Bill Clinton

Harry Truman

Jimmy Carter

 

[Cosmo]

Can you be more specific?

I suppose I could, but it's a very strange request. There are actually people out there who deny that both political parties have shifted to the right over the past thirty years? Seriously?

 

[GenSeneca]

I just signed up for this forum today.

Welcome to the forum

 

[Cosmo]

Just another chest-thumper trying to show people how much more leftist he is than anyone else... and framing that as a good thing.

(yawn)

What? What does acknowledging a political party's shift have to do with one's personal ideology?

 

[Little-Acorn]

I suppose I could, but it's a very strange request. There are actually people out there who deny that both political parties have shifted to the right over the past thirty years? Seriously?

See?

Back to the subject:
While liberalism (and conservatism) haven't changed, the people who call themselves liberals and conservatives have changed. Maybe it's a moot point. The Democrat and Republican parties have changed, a LOT, both becoming much more liberal than they were fifty years ago.

Though liberalism itself hasn't changed, the amount of liberalism people indulge in, has changed quite a lot. In Kennedy's day, people calling themselves liberals favored government doing a few things to help people with problems, but at the same time favored small to medium sized government, fairly low taxes (Kennedy inherited income taxes exceeding 90% and wanted to cut them), and strong defense. But the problem with liberalism then (as now), is that those few things they wanted govt to help people with, were still unconstitutional. Just a little unemployment compensation. Just a little help with retirement funds. Etc.

But to do even those relatively small things, required giving govt powers that were not authorized in the Constitution. And once you put even a small crack in that dam, human nature is such that it will always seek to make the crack bigger and to let more through. And that's exactly what has happened, leading us to the huge, overriding government we have today... which is constantly getting even bigger, with no bounds in sight.

OTOH, I hold that conservativism hasn't changed in the last 100+ years, not a whit. But many people have become less conservative. That is, they have let in liberalism.

Conservatism is the idea that government can't do anything well but always seeks power to do more, so therefore govt must be strictly controlled and kept within inviolable bounds: there are many things government is NOT ALLOWED to do, period. Most things are to be left to private individuals or groups, and govt's job is only to make sure people don't violate each others' rights while they are doing all those things. Govt is to do only the things private people or groups CANNOT do. National defense, foreign relations, dispassionate criminal pursuit and prosecution, coining money, etc. There happens to be a handy list in the Constitution (a quintessentially conservative document), Article 1, Section 8, plus a few other places.

Fifty years ago there were many people who voted conservatively. The Republican party was made up mostly of such people. Today there are fewer, and many liberals have joined the Republican party, moving it considerably farther left than it was.

Today many more people vote liberally, though oddly enough they still live their personal lives conservatively. Very few of them would dream of using force to keep their neighbor from draining a swamp in his private backyard, or forcing him to trade in his toilet for a low-flow one, or forcing him to let his 14-year-old daughter get all the condoms she wants, or forcing him to take money out of his wallet to give to others who did not earn it. They might think it's a good idea for people to do some (not all) of those things voluntarily, but they wouldn't dream of forcing others to do them against their will.

Nearly everyone would tell you they can't do such things to their neighbors... yet a surprising number of them will turn around and vote for politicians who DO use government to force them to do exactly those things. America is a fundamentally conservative country... but there is a growing gap between how people live and treat each other, and how they vote to treat each other.

So, liberalism is not the tendency to force people to do so many of the things I mentioned, against their will. Liberalism is the tendency to simply empower govenment to do things that private people could have done themselves. The tendency to let govt go beyond the strict bounds of doing only what private people or groups CANNOT do at all. The tendency to plant the seed of unlimited government growth.

And conservatism is the tendency to forbid ever planting that seed, and to guard against it, knowing what government will eventually, inevitably, abuse it some day... and cannot be controlled or reined in once it starts doing that.

And those basic characteristics of liberalism and conservatism, have NOT changed in the last fifty years. Or a hundred years, or even a thousand. The names people have called them, have changed of course, but those are just names. And the numbers of people who have believed in each, have also changed. But liberalism and conservatism, have not changed, not one whit.

Liberalism is the tendency to let govt grow and do things people could have done themselves; while conservatism is the tendency to strictly forbid such govt growth beyond doing only things private people CANNOT do.

 

[Cosmo]

I can respond to all that if you like, but there is one glaring problem with your post, namely that it presupposes that American politicians actually govern according to their cherished principles and ideology. They don't. They almost always govern according to political expedience and in accordance with what corporate interests tell them to do.

Surely you're aware of this fact?

 

[Gipper]

I suppose I could, but it's a very strange request. There are actually people out there who deny that both political parties have shifted to the right over the past thirty years? Seriously?

Actually there appears to be some people who do not know both parties have turned left (the Ds hard left) the past 30 years.

Our national debt and continued annual deficits should be enough to prove my point to anyone.