LOL, you sound intelligent until you try and pass off the current democrats as the same party as the democrats of the civil war, shame on you for playing tricks on the uneducated.
During the 1860s, Republicans, who dominated northern states, orchestrated an ambitious expansion of federal power, helping to fund the transcontinental railroad, the state university system and the settlement of the West by homesteaders, and instating a national currency and protective tariff. Democrats, who dominated the South, opposed these measures. After the Civil War, Republicans passed laws that granted protections for African Americans and advanced social justice; again, Democrats largely opposed these expansions of power.
Sound like an alternate universe? Fast forward to 1936. Democratic president Franklin Roosevelt won reelection that year on the strength of the New Deal, a set of Depression-remedying reforms including regulation of financial institutions, founding of welfare and pension programs, infrastructure development and more. Roosevelt won in a landslide against Republican Alf Landon, who opposed these exercises of federal power.
So, sometime between the 1860s and 1936, the (Democratic) party of small government became the party of big government, and the (Republican) party of big government became rhetorically committed to curbing federal power. How did this switch happen?
Eric Rauchway, professor of American history at the University of California, Davis, pins the transition to the turn of the 20th century, when a highly influential Democrat named William Jennings Bryan blurred party lines by emphasizing the government's role in ensuring social justice through expansions of federal power
Originally Posted by bf0082
Damn,
That was very good, and very correct. Thank you for the correction. Indeed things have changed, and I should have brought the two thoughts together in a better way about the Democratic Party.
Although both the Republican and Democratic parties have changed over the years, it was not too long ago when the Democratic Party was mainly in the South.
I had the opportunity to hear a speech by James (Strom) Thurmond Sr. in about 1962 who served for 48 years as a United States Senator from South Carolina.
He ran for president in 1948 as the Dixiecrat candidate on a States Rights platform supporting racial segregation. He received 2.4% of the popular vote and 39 electoral votes but failed to defeat Harry Truman."
I had to look this up, so it is in quotes. The rest is mine.
Anyway, the current insanity about race and the Democratic Party ignores people like Senator Thurmond. My professor in political science was so angry at Senator Thurmond that she refused to attend his speech: the next day in class she started to tell us what he said and how much of a racist he was. Wrong! during his speech he said nothing about race: she just assumed that he had because of the Dixiecrat party he represented.
I raised my hand in class and told her that I had looked for her presence at the speech and concluded that she had not attended. She had to admit that was correct.
The point: Listen to others, and think about what is really happening.
We have come a long way since 1948, and we have a long way further to travel. My point about the Democratic Party today is valid because of the problems they fail to address in the larger cities. e.g, The political control of the City of Kansas City Missouri (where I live) by the Democratic Party has resulted in a school district in the inner city that everyone should be ashamed of. It is not an accredited school district. Every child who attends that school district, mostly black and poor whites, is cheated out of a proper education. Kansas City sits on the state line. Just over the state line, the Kansas Schools, (with the exception of Kansas City, Kansas - another mostly black community) offer a much better education, indeed some of the best in the country. Why? Because in Kansas City the white people had the opportunity to cross the state line and find a place to properly educate their children. No one can blame them: family always comes first. The point is: Why did they have to run across the state border? At the same time inner KCMO fell apart. KCMO could have improved their schools: they didn't; and you can blame that directly on the Democratic Party. The same problem exists in all cities controlled by the Democratic Party: they have cheated the negro out of the opportunities they deserve as an American citizen.
In the larger cities, I blame the education problem, and other problems, on the Democratic Party's desire of to limit the progress of the black person. If you doubt this, just look at the lack of progress in the American cities since WWII. During the last 75 years, Europe has rebuilt and poor countries have grown and passed the US in public education in our larger cities.