
Originally Posted by
ragin cajun
the definitions of liberal and conservative are different today than they were in the 1800s. After all, Lincoln, a republican, freed the slaves.
you equate conservativism with the robber barrons, and most of them were democrats. and most of them today are democrats---Soros, Immelt, Gates, Buffet, Oprah. Robert KKK Byrd (D) was a staunch segregationalist as was Al Gore's father, both voted against the civil rights act.
So I think you need to back off a little with the labels.
This thread is about obama and why he is a losing to a businessman with a record of success.
wow. you really ARE a neophyte, aren't you. You run away from your own idiotic statements about Dodd-Frank causing the housing crisis that happened more than two years before it was passed... cowardly, but stupid, nonetheless, and now, in the space of just a few short sentences, you get yourself all tangled up with labels while trying to school someone else on labels.
"Conservative" and "Liberal" have changed very little since the start of the 20th century... what has changed, are the platforms and philosophies and core constituencies of the two major political parties. To use your example...Lincoln was a liberal AND a republican. Stephen Douglas, on the other hand, was a democrat and very conservative.
I am, first and foremost, a liberal progressive.
I happen to align myself with the democratic party because, for my lifetime, they have been the party that has more consistently championed the liberal agenda. But whether republicans or democrats were supporting it, make no mistake that the liberal progressive philosophical agenda flat out WON the 20th century and will, undoubtedly, win the 21st as well.
People can say that we are a "center-right" nation, and that is all well and good, as long as everyone realizes that what is "center-right" today was so far left of the mainstream 100 years ago, it wasn't even IN the stream... it was floundering on the left bank. The country has moved, inexorably, glacially, to the left for more than a century now and I see no reason to think it will stop. Women's suffrage: a progressive liberal idea. Child Labor laws: a progressive liberal idea. The rights of workers to organize and collectively bargain: a progressive liberal idea. Civil rights, Social Security, minimum wage, medicare, medicaid, ADA, environmental protection, and on and on the list goes... all issues that, when they were first discussed in American political discussions were considered far left wacko ultra liberal ideas... now, they're all right in the mainstream.
I remember cracking up when I saw an old geezer at a teabagger rally with a sign that read, "keep your socialist hands off my medicare!". Go back and read what Ron Reagan predicted would happen to America if we ever passed Medicare. It was anathema to the conservatives in America and now, conservatives embrace it as if it had been their idea all along.
Look at the Stonewall riots in NYC in 1969. Gays and lesbians were being thrown in jail simply for being gays and lesbians. a mere four decades later, and gay marriage is LEGAL in the state of New York.
Conservatives can only temporarily stem the tide of progressive liberalism....you have never been able to stop it or reverse it.
Sit back, relax, and enjoy the ride.
"All accumulation, therefore, of personal property, beyond what a man's own hands produce, is derived to him by living in society; and he owes on every principle of justice, of gratitude, and of civilization, a part of that accumulation back again to society from whence the whole came."
Thomas Paine
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