Happy Monday everyone!!! As always, thank you Stephen for our Monday post! Have a great week everyone!!
(Picture courtesy of: https://66.media.tumblr.com/e55a31ea3b7d3ff11408af7d8358d6db/tumblr_inline_ptus4bjo7Q1u8pdul_1280.png)
An interesting question keeps rising up periodically concerning the political philosophies of the political parties regarding how that party philosophy has changed over time, whether a political party has moved right or left or towards the center, in a rather silly melodrama of linear thinking as if philosophy were limited to moving only in one dimension.
Naturally, when we discuss the political philosophy of an organization or collection of large numbers of individuals like a political party we are really discussing more of a weighted probability distribution and trying to gauge the average by selectively comparing policy ideas advocated by the candidates or leadership of the group assessing the collective support of the membership to those expressed ideas.
Complicating this assessment is the necessity that situations change and alter over time, so an accurate measure of the collective sentiments of large numbers of people can be moved by circumstances and events and not merely an accurate reflection of the philosophy of the people as a collective body.
Additionally, independent issues may appear to be related superficially but the arguments can be founded upon entirely different ideals and philosophies which can, either accidentally or intentionally, appear to place parties on apparently different sides of an issue simply because it is actually a different issue.
We can look at some different issues as examples to illustrate the general idea, particularly immigration and intoxicants.
In the early stages of American history the nation was largely unpopulated, undeveloped, savage, untamed wilderness. People were needed to provide the labor to build the nation, and the majority of that labor came from a population dense Europe, particularly the northwestern region of Europe from the English, German, Dutch, and French, with some sprinklings of neighboring Scandinavians and Irish.
As the nation expanded, built railroads, farms, towns, cities, factories and so forth, the demand for more workers meant a traditionally fairly open immigration policy, but that was also partially resulting from a relatively weak and small central government until the mid twentieth century.
Back then the primary concern of our immigration policy was to keep out disease and contagion, and those who would be a burden upon society because they were incapable of taking care of themselves. However, there being no welfare state, and the state of the economy being a high demand for physical labor, more people meant more prosperity all around.
Politically, both parties were for immigration, and their differences revolved around from where they wanted to allow immigration in terms of assimilation which mostly revolved around congruent or incongruent religious ideas, particularly a strong anti-Catholic sentiment.
However, as the nation became developed, the need for workers diminished as competition increased. Industrialists still wanted to import cheap labor to drive down wages, but workers started feeling the competition, the political division became less religious and cultural and more economic in nature.
Across this same time the reformist movements sought to spend this newly forged wealth and try to change society itself. Those Catholic and Eastern European immigrants were seen as bringing with them habits of drunkenness and debauchery, ignoring that their own ancestors used to drink quite heartily as well, but their elitist and puritanical ideas would cleans this nation of it’s vices, not merely drink, but all the other vices which went with them.
We often like to look at these events separately, but the changing views of immigration was not independent of the “progressive” views of reforming society into some fabled utopian vision of a future without vices and corruptions.
You could favor the industrial progress of the modern era and the traditional WASP (white Anglo-Saxon Protestant) nature of our nation, or defend and protect the drunken, swarthy newcomers from the oppressive robber barons paying low wages for long hours. And both parties exploited these divisions within society to rally their troops, and get and hold office.
People of both parties were quick to label themselves “progressives” and “reformers”, as well as people in both parties striving to preserve traditional values and culture from the hedonistic modern times. It was a period of much division along issues, but without much division among actual people despite much of the rancor in the papers.
It seems increasingly strange to us that people could disagree on so much about so many issues, but still be in general agreement about the foundational principles while disagreeing about their application.
This was still a time when people would go on the national radio and speak to “my fellow Americans” in a friendly “fireside chat”. It was a time when people pulled together to fight the enemies of the nation, be they fascists or communists, because our nation was opposed to both, and in agreement in that opposition.
Of course, progressives in both parties kept pushing for more socialism in America, mixed with traditionalists or conservative wings of both parties, and starting in the middle of the Great Depression moved the nation unfortunately a fair distance in that socialist direction.
In counter, or rather continuing the counter, there arose a modern conservative movement founded not merely on a piecemeal approach to single issues, but rather a consistent philosophy reiterating the principles, and this time they would unite under one party rather than divided efforts within both parties.
It was the beginnings of a philosophical realignment of the political parties brought about by the successes the leftist had achieved by infiltrating the leadership of both the Republicans and the Democrats. The conservatives would have an uphill battle to bring back traditional American ideals to first a party, and then the nation with the existing political structure.
Which brings us more to the modern divisions, more recognizable to most readers of a “progressive” Democrat party and a “conservative” Republican party, and explains why many of the people still in the Democrat party are not fully “progressive”, nor many in the Republican party being fully “conservative”.
Having divided up lines ideologically, rather than along regions or classes, we are beginning to see a time of increasing political division, even though we often have fewer issues over which to be divided than anytime before, those divisions run deeper. It has gotten to the point where people call each other names rather than discuss issues, stop listening to opposing viewpoints, and never discuss the principles involved.
The graphic at the head of this article illustrates the main point of the article, that while the metrics used are flawed, the “right” in this country has not moved very much to the right, their position really has not changed; the “left” has drastically changed their political positions in recent years to be not mere disagreements but fundamental changes in political philosophy.
President Obama came into office saying he believed marriage was between a man and a woman, the traditional view, and left office embracing homosexual marriage. The left has gone in a few short years from saying we should strive to lower healthcare costs to poor citizens to the government should provide free healthcare to illegal aliens, and free college to everyone as well.
What we are seeing is not the typical, “both sides sow division”, but a dramatic shift of one side in a very short span of time to where many people even on their side of the political aisle are having trouble recognizing their own political party.
The left has become radicalized and disconnected from the rest of the country is a way that has not been seen before in the history of the nation.
A lot of people like to compare this division to the regional divisions of the Civil War, but even during the Civil War nearly all people on both sides of the conflict were still ideologically close. Neither the south nor the north were saying to abandon their whole economic system, were willing to abandon the very concepts of Constitutional rights, or even the value of a constitution itself though they wanted their own version.
As people have labeled their opponents as political enemies, how can they compromise, how can people become “fellow Americans” with their enemies?
Unfortunately, I do not see the outcome in the hands of conservatives, but in the hands of the left. You cannot convince someone who has stopped listening to you. Either they continue this radical leftist movement and run into a brick wall, or the mass of Democrats stop following them leftwards realizing their insanity.
