Democrats are the new Republicans
Many people don’t realize how similar today’s Democratic party is to the Republican party in Lincoln’s time. During the birth of the Republican party the terms “liberalism” and “republicanism” were practically synonyms, they meant nearly the same thing (someone who supports liberty against tyranny, and a positive role for the government in protecting individual rights). The party happens to be named the Republican party, but it could just as easily have been named the Liberal party and it would have represented just as accurately what the party stood for. But sadly, by 2017, the policies of the Republican party have changed so much that they are now practically the exact opposite of liberal.
The word liberal tends to have somewhat different connotations today (at least in the US), but it has remained much more fixed in its core meaning than either of the 2 major parties has. Most of the change happened gradually, and had to do with a combination of factors. It’s fairly ironic that today the parties have ended up reversing so completely. I think it’s mostly a coincidence that we happen to live in a time where that’s true. I’m sure the parties will continue to change and evolve in new directions, as they have throughout all of American history.
During my childhood in the 1980’s, some of the change had already happened — during this period, they were operating somewhat sideways from how the parties started out. But a big part of the remaining change, bringing them into polar opposite orientations from where they started, didn’t happen until more recently. As a consequence, a lot of people who used to be Republicans (like me) have switched to the Democratic party, and a lot of people who used to be Democrats (like David Duke and Donald Trump) have switched to the Republican party. Anyone trying to decide who to vote for today by looking at party affiliation must take this into account.
Regarding people switching parties, it’s not just that the ideologies have changed, and it’s not just a case of a handful of people here and there jumping ship. The actual parties are now made up primarily of descendants from families who used to vote in the opposite party during the 19th century. Roughly the same group of people we used to refer to as Republicans are literally now referred to as Democrats. The names of the parties have swapped, but the general attitudes and cultural ideas associated with these groups of people have remained about the same.
For a long time after the Civil War, southern states tended to vote Democratic while northern states tended to vote Republican. Throughout this period, new states gradually joined the US and sided with one side or the other. By 1900, most of the current 50 states existed, and the map looked like this (Republican = Red, Democratic = Blue):
Look familiar? It looks roughly like a map of Red States and Blue States from the 21st century, just with the Red and Blue colors reversed. Just to show that this wasn’t an anomaly of that particular election, take a look at the 1928 election map after Arizona, New Mexico, and Oklahoma had joined the nation:
States like California and New York were filled with very consistent Republican voters. States like Texas, North Carolina, Alabama, and Missouri were filled with very consistent Democratic voters.
After the long journey all the way from Lincoln to Trump as the standard bearer for the Republican party, here is what the same map looks like in 2016:
What happened to all of those Republicans in California and New York? Did they all just decide to get up and move en masse to Alabama or Texas? Did all of the Democrats in North Carolina and Tennessee move up to Illinois and start voting there? Maybe a handful. But the much more obvious explanation is that the parties gradually swapped positions on most issues, and the people living there noticed and changed their party affiliation.
So what issues divided Republicans and Democrats originally in Lincoln’s time? The main division was actually remarkably similar to what we have today. The industrial revolution was taking off in the North, while agriculture still dominated the South. This gave rise to two different cultures. There was an urban culture surrounding the big cities in the North, where some people worked in factories and lived fast paced lives, some reading books and chatting in cafes about quirky liberal ideas like how all men were supposedly created equal (not women yet of course, that came later). And then there was a rural culture in the South, a more simple life based on traditional values and white supremacism, where white plantation owners ran an economy supported primarily by the kind of slave labor portrayed as natural and normal in the Bible. The Republicans wanted to modernize the economy, and envisioned industrial production as the future of the country. They acknowledged the importance of agriculture, but had a more forward-looking vision for the nation, where factories would play a larger role and agriculture a smaller one.
If you were to ask a white person in the South at that time why they didn’t like the liberal Republicans who lived in the north, what would they have said? They would have said that they support states rights, and don’t like the idea that controversial issues (such as whether a person should be allowed to own a slave) should be decided in a top-down way by the federal government. This should be left up to the states to decide, in their opinion. They would have further explained that Republicans like to put too many taxes on imported goods, which helps the industrial economy in big cities (where such goods are produced), but hurts rural farmers because it makes everything more expensive to buy.
So basically, the argument against the Republicans at the time was that they support big government and high taxes, and don’t respect states rights. And they might have also added that the people in the North are big city folk who have lost touch with traditional rural life in America. Things were changing all too fast. Does this sound at all familiar? Republicans today, especially Trump supporters, say all of the same things about Democrats.
What response would a Republican have had to this? How can one justify the federal government imposing laws that apply to all states? Isn’t it better to just let each state decide separately? Usually yes, I think we can all agree on that. But the Republicans at the time would have pointed out that the spirit of the American constitution was based on important universal values articulated by scholars like John Locke (known as the “Father of Liberalism”). Locke (and other liberals like Thomas Jefferson who took Locke’s ideas and enshrined them into the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution) argued that there were certain inalienable rights that were natural and universal. So if a particular state wants to violate those rights, they are going against the spirt in which the nation was founded —it’s up to the federal government to step in and make sure those rights are respected. The states can decide on less important issues that are more a matter of arbitrary taste or local culture, but they shouldn’t be able to make or uphold laws that disrespect universal human rights that should apply to all individuals equally, like life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Confronted with this, the rural southerner, arguing on behalf of states rights, would seem to be backed into a corner. You might think that he would have to admit he’d lost the argument. But he still had a pretty good trump card: the Bible. Yes, the country was founded in part on the liberal principles of academics, but it was also founded on much older religious principles, and the vast majority of people living in the colonies were Christian. Slavery was a long respected tradition and part of southern culture. Liberal academic scholars may have strange ideas about all men being created equal, but that goes directly against the more hierarchical system portrayed by the Bible. And surely the founders did not imagine the concept of a “man” would one day be extended to slaves — this seemed like a sinister attempt by activist liberals to redefine an old word to mean something any ordinary southerner knew it had never meant.
The Bible clearly states that certain things, like eating shellfish, are forbidden by God and should never be done. The ten most important of these commandments were of course collected together and written on stone tablets. But nowhere does it ever suggest there is anything illegitimate or unethical about slavery. In fact, the Bible provides guidelines on how hard a master should beat a slave, and the proper procedure for a father to sell his daughter into slavery if he so desires.
“Anyone who beats their male or female slave with a rod must be punished if the slave dies as a direct result, but they are not to be punished if the slave recovers after a day or two, since the slave is their property.” — Exodus 21:21
“And if a man sells his daughter to be a female slave, she shall not go out as the male slaves do. If she does not please her master…” — Exodus 21:7
Why should the slave owners at the time have believed that John Locke knows better than God what should be seen as a universal right? If there is anything sinful about slavery, it must not be as bad as shellfish — and many good Christians eat shellfish without feeling too guilty. Besides, practically every society since the dawn of civilization has had some form of slavery. Who were these liberals to say that we have to give up time honored traditions and change all of society, just because some “enlightened” academic says it’s better that way?
There has been a lot of debate about whether Abraham Lincoln would have been comfortable calling himself a Christian. He never publicly admitted to being one, and never officially joined any church. But he did drop in on local church services occasionally. Some friends of his reported that they were pretty sure he was Christian, while others reported they were pretty sure he wasn’t. In 1834 he wrote a manuscript, based on the liberal scholar Thomas Paine’s The Age of Reason, challenging orthodox Christianity. He never published it, and legend has it that a friend of his burned it in a fire to protect Lincoln from criticism (whether the burning actually happened in this way is still a matter of debate). Despite that, he was frequently accused of not being a Christian by many of his critics, and once it almost cost him a bid for Congress — so he learned to be silent on the issue.
Most likely, his views were similar to other liberals such as Thomas Jefferson, who wrote:
“the day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter.” — Thomas Jefferson
Jefferson saw Christ as a great teacher, but viewed most of the Bible as mythology rather than the inerrant word of God.
I mentioned in the introduction to this blog that I see Barack Obama as the modern incarnation of Abraham Lincoln. And one similarity is that Obama is also often accused by his critics of not being a Christian, or even of being a Muslim. However, a big difference is that while nobody knows for sure whether Lincoln was a Christian, we do know for sure that Obama is a Christian. If I had to guess (about Lincoln) I’d bet they actually had very similar views on religion. But unlike Lincoln, Obama is very open about being Christian, and has been an official member of a Christian church for a very long time. (And of course, he has never been a member of any Muslim mosque or other religious organization.) He has written eloquently about his faith and how it has impacted his life.
Many conservatives seem to think that the biggest problem the US has had with terrorism is Islamic terrorism, terrorism committed by Muslims. But this is false. Most acts of terrorism in the US have been Christian terrorism. The largest terrorist organization in all of US history was the Ku Klux Klan, a group of fundamentalist Christians who were outraged that the traditional culture they had known and loved in the South was destroyed by liberals who wanted to upend society with their progressive egalitarian principles.
Historically, the KKK were known for rounding up and lynching black people, burning down black churches, and terrorizing the black population through other acts of intimidation such as burning crosses in people’s yards. Usually they were the yards of black Americans, but other times they were the yards of white people or politicians who stood up for black rights.
The KKK believed that their white supremacist principles were supported by the Bible, and claimed to be the true Christians. Most mainstream Christians disagreed, at least with their tactics, saying that these extremists were by no means representative of the Christian faith as a whole. This is the same thing most Muslims say today about groups like ISIS, and yet often people confuse the views of the extremists with the entire Muslim faith. In both cases, it even seems a bit misleading to call them extremists, as their interpretation of the Bible or the Koran is very different (not just more extreme) than most people who adhere to those religions.
Donald Trump has often criticized Obama sharply for avoiding the term “Islamic terrorism” when referring to specific terrorist groups responsible for acts of terror, because Trump believes that it’s important to remind people which religion the terrorists claim to be representing. He says that not reminding people of this is being “politically correct”. Personally I have no problem with the term Islamic terrorism as a description; but if we’re going to use that then we should at least be consistent and refer to any Christian terrorist groups by the name of their religion as well instead of by the more specific acronyms they use.
For example, when the KKK had a parade to celebrate Donald Trump’s victory, applying Trump’s logic consistently should have required the media to refer to it as a “Christian terrorist parade” rather than as a KKK parade as most outlets referred to it.
There is a bigger problem with the use of the term Islamic terrorism though. Whether or not it’s accurate or consistent, the effect it has on the Muslim community is undeniable. Most Muslims strongly disagree with groups like ISIS; in fact most victims of ISIS and other Islamic terrorist groups are Muslim. But recruitment depends crucially on convincing Muslims that the United States is hostile to them, and engaged in a crusade against Islam as a whole rather than just terrorism. Not only did Trump use terms like Islamic terrorism to provoke Muslims, he publicly stated he thinks the US should start killing the families and children of suspected terrorists, bring back torture as an interrogation technique, temporarily shut down all Muslim immigration, and increase surveillance on Mosques. He even said he’d consider creating a national computer database to register and track all Muslims living in the US.
Unsurprisingly, after these kinds of statements from a Presidential nominee, it’s now become common for ISIS to use footage of Trump in their recruitment videos to prove how hostile the US is to Islam, and how little respect for human life we have. This trend will no doubt continue if Trump continues the same rhetoric while in office. More and more of the moderate Muslim community will turn against us, in one way or another. During the 2016 election process, a leading expert on National Security and editor of Foreign Policy magazine, David RothKopf, warned that Trump has been emerging as the No 1. threat to U. S. National Security. In his words, “Donald Trump could not do more to aid the terrorists of the Islamic State were he to put on a suicide vest and detonate himself in the lobby of one of his apartment buildings.” (This was before it looked likely he would actually be President; obviously the threat now is even greater.)
During Trump’s campaign, an ISIS spokesperson said:
“I ask Allah to deliver America to Trump.” — ISIS spokesperson, Aug 2016
Other ISIS supporters were even more fanatical about him:
“The facilitation of Trump’s arrival in the White House must be a priority for jihadists at any cost!!!” — ISIS supporter
Military historian (and one of the most important Republican intellectuals of the late 20th century) Max Boot referred to Trump as the Islamic State’s dream candidate. While most moderate law abiding Muslims are terrified of Donald Trump, to ISIS Trump is a godsend.
Most Americans, I assume conservatives included, saw on the news about the KKK victory parade in North Carolina and the neo-nazis in Washington celebrating Trump’s victory after he won the election. This makes sense to most Americans, since they know Trump leans in that direction — but we all understand that these people are a bit more extreme than Trump is, and he hasn’t explicitly endorsed either of these groups, so many conservatives brush it off as irrelevant. But for some reason, what didn’t make as big headlines was the fact that the Islamic State also held celebrations of Trump’s victory. Like Putin, he was the candidate they were rooting for all along, and they were ecstatic to find out he actually won. I saw this from the beginning, even during the Republican primary, and repeatedly warned about it on Facebook. But I don’t know how many others knew or listened.
Personally, I will be surprised if we don’t have another 9/11 type event (or worse) under Trump’s administration — he has practically begged them to come here and do it. I felt safe under Obama; we never had a repeat of what happened under Bush. I do not feel safe any more knowing we will soon have a thin-skinned mean-spirited maniac in office. This is for a number of reasons — including the elevated threat of a large-scale terrorist attack as well as wondering what Trump’s undoubtedly authoritarian reaction to it will be.
Returning to the main theme of this post, the swapping of liberal and conservative ideologies between the parties and the corresponding swapping of red and blue states: when did this reversal actually occur and why?
In terms of red and blue states, most of the maps looked relatively similar from the Civil War up through the 1960’s or so. With the exception of a few landslides, such as Franklin Roosevelt’s 1936 victory where he won every single US state except Maine and Vermont (the only 2 states who voted Republican that year), the blue states were mostly in the South and the strongest red states were in the Northeast and along the Western coast.
Looking at the actual maps and their colors, if you had to pick a single year where the map shifted from that to its opposite, you would probably pick somewhere around 1992. For example, California was one of the most consistent Republican states. California voted Republican in every election between 1950 and 1990 except for 1964 where Lyndon Johnson won a landslide victory over Barry Goldwater which temporarily turned most red states blue. After at least 40 years of being a solid Republican state, California switched to a Democratic state in 1992 and has never voted Republican since. It was around the same time (early 90’s) that most southern states switched from Democratic to Republican.
This gives the impression that something about the ideologies of the parties changed around 1992. However, I think the ideological changes started much earlier, it just took time for them to sink in and for the word to spread in communities that the parties they had been used to voting for were no longer serving their interests.
The beginnings of the ideological shift were with Lyndon Johnson, a Democrat from Texas. Like most southern Democrats in his time (and since a century before that), he was a racist. There’s no doubt about that. But he was a bit more moderate in some ways and willing to reach across the aisle. And during the 30 year period following the Great Depression, the Democrats had come to be associated more with helping the working class stay out of poverty than specifically with the interests of white supremacism. Many northern Democrats had since accepted that black people were going to be a part of American society and that eventually they needed to have equal rights. So in 1964, he signed a landmark Civil Rights Act which made it illegal for businesses to give preferential hiring to whites over minorities — a common business practice, especially back then. Immediately after signing it, Johnson knew what he’d done and had mixed feelings about it. Allegedly, he turned to his aide after signing and remarked:
“We have lost the South for a generation”. — Lyndon Johnson
He was right, most southern Democrats felt horribly betrayed by Johnson. They had elected someone they had assumed was one of them, and then they saw him make an unforgivable concession to the enemy. Signing the bill went directly against the principles of white supremacism their party had been the champion of for so long. They were angry, and ready to try something new.
To win the 1968 election, Richard Nixon hired a political strategist, Kevin Phillips. Phillips analyzed what Nixon’s best chances for winning the election would be, and he came up with an overall strategy he called the Southern strategy. The strategy was to appeal to the disaffected white Democrats in the south who felt betrayed by Johnson for standing up for civil rights. It worked like a charm.
Nixon was the closest President in style to Trump the US has had so far. He ran a “law and order” campaign during a period of intense racial tensions, clearly taking the side of whites over minorities. Strongly pro-Israel, but with hints of anti-semitism. (Of course, he had far more experience than Trump, and far less of a tendency for bullshitting his way through interviews and debates — so there were significant differences as well.)
I assume everyone knows this part of the story, but for completeness I’ll say it anyway: Nixon’s Presidency ended in one of the worst corruption scandals in American history. His team of political operatives were caught red-handed breaking into and burglarizing the Watergate hotel in Washington, in order to spy on the Democratic National Convention so that Nixon could gain the upper hand in his re-election campaign. Nixon himself was caught trying to cover up for the team and avoid them going to jail, ending in his resignation from office.
One of the most globally respected political news outlets is The Economist, which tries to analyze news and events going on around the world from the perspective of mainstream economists, who generally believe that free markets and free trade help make the world a better place and lift people out of poverty. I read it frequently myself and would highly recommend it for anyone trying to stay up to date on current events in the world. Their perspective is usually considered “center right” in global terms (or in academic terms), although because US politics is skewed so far to the right already compared to most countries, in terms of US politics they would probably be considered more like center-left. They were big fans of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher in the 1980’s. But in analyzing the 2016 election, as with just about any other serious analysis I’ve seen from either party, they endorsed Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump as the best candidate to “keep America great”. Although they cited what they see as many flaws in her policies, they also added that the choice between them was not hard. After listing all of the reasons why Trump would make a truly terrible President, including that “his ideas on revenue and spending are an affront to statistics.”, they ended with
“We would sooner have endorsed Richard Nixon — even had we known how he would later come to grief.” — The Economist
There have been many other big changes in the parties since the 1960’s. During the New Deal period following Franklin Roosevelt, the Democratic party had often associated with the working class and labor unions. Since the 60’s the “New Left” began to focus less on economic issues and instead focus more on helping to stop the oppression of marginalized communities who have been excluded by the dominant group in power in the US (white, male, straight, Christians). As standing up for civil rights, womens rights, and lgbt rights became increasingly important to the Democratic party, the party became a lot more moderate on economics compared to the New Deal era (1930’s — 1960's). Labor unions still have a lot of influence on some Democrats, like Bernie Sanders, but usually have little influence on Democrats more central to the party such as Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, or Hillary Clinton. Meanwhile, during the 1970’s and 1980’s the Republicans went through a phase of supporting far-right economic views (“trickle down economics”, or as George H W Bush called it “voodoo economics”). Most economists now see the policies initiated during Reagan’s administration (such as the deregulation of Wall Street and the over-regulation of unions) as having led in the long term to the shrinking of the middle class, and to the 2008 economic crisis. (Something I, for one, never foresaw happening at the time. To be fair, the process of deregulation started under Reagan, but it did continue under Bush and Clinton.)
In the 1980’s, Republicans Ronald Reagan and George H W Bush were both strongly pro Mexican immigration and open borders, while the labor unions (and a good bit of the Democratic base) were strongly against. Both Bill and Hillary Clinton have always been pretty moderate and level headed on immigration and trade. They have tried to carefully balance the concerns of the working class with the rights of immigrants, without pandering to special interests or lying about the economics of immigration. Donald Trump, whether he ever seriously cared about the working class or not, gives more lip service to the kind of labor union politics which unfairly demonized immigrants for “stealing jobs”, a full 180-departure from where the Republican party admirably stood on that issue during the 1980's.
The 1992 election (when I was 15, not quite old enough to vote yet) of George H W Bush was the first one I remember paying much attention to. I remember having a strong preference for either Bush or Clinton over Ross Perot (a third party populist candidate who, like Trump, had a knack for combining the worst elements of both parties, and who like Trump was strongly anti-immigration, anti-globalization, and against free trade). Overall, I supported Bush because I felt he had already proven himself in office while Clinton was just the governor of Arkansas — Clinton seemed more like a wild card. I liked that both Reagan and Bush had taken a strong stance against the Soviet Union. Under Bush’s first term, I had fond memories of watching the Berlin Wall come down and the USSR officially disband — both frightening symbols of totalitarianism which I will never forget. I passed out political stickers for Bush in my high school classes. But I respected Clinton as a bright guy and thought if Bush lost he would probably still do a decent job — I was right. In 1996, I still saw little difference between the 2 major parties, but I saw a lot of potential for improvement of the system, so I voted Libertarian in my first actual election. As opposed to the Reform party, which had combined the worst of both major parties, I was very excited about the Libertarian party which I saw (at the time) as combining the best features of both parties. (Since then I have come to view some of the economic views of libertarians as too extreme.) Most of my friends as an undergraduate in college were also libertarians, and we started subscribing to mostly libertarian news sources. (Since then I have realized the mistake of only listening to sources I agree with, which is why I read a wide variety of sources now, including many conservative sources.)
I could tell during the 2000 election campaign that George W Bush was not as bright as his father, or as qualified, and I liked his personality less. But his views still seemed within the realm of reasonable and responsible, so I didn’t see a huge difference between him and Gore. I voted for Harry Browne (Libertarian) once again.
September 11th changed everything, and woke me up to the importance of politics— I will never look at the parties the same again since then. George W Bush took the Republican party in a direction I had never expected it to go. Under him, it became much more authoritarian and much more nationalist, abandoning much of his alleged fiscal conservatism. As I watched him make up excuses to invade the peaceful nation of Iraq in blatant violation of international law, committing war crimes, passing the Patriot act stripping ordinary US citizen of their constitutional rights, suppressing and banning scientific research, and exploding the national debt, I realized the Republican party had become far more of a threat to liberty than the Democratic party. The rest of my libertarian friends were also horrified. Although around this time I started graduate school in California and started making a lot more liberal friends — they agreed with me that Bush was dangerous, but pointed out additional problems with him which many of us libertarians had overlooked.
As I reflect back on the days of Bush now, I realize that my worst nightmare at the time was that if the Republicans continued in the direction he was leading them, then soon we might have a truly frightening President — I had in mind something very similar to what Trump ended up being. And if that happened, I knew that the America I grew up in would be over. Most people I know, including myself (and many Republican analysts I’ve read, not just Democrats) consider the policies Trump advocated during his campaign to be explicitly fascist. I heard some people call Bush a fascist while he was President, and I agreed that he seemed to lean in that direction compared to most Republicans I was familiar with; but I always thought the term applied to him was an exaggeration. More of an insult than a careful accurate categorization. I don’t think I ever used it myself against Bush. He made the Republican party a lot more nationalist and a lot less fiscally conservative, but he didn’t go all the way to full-metal-fascism like Trump has promised to. With Trump, as many scholars have pointed out, it is quite an accurate characterization — assuming he implements anything like the campaign he ran on. My only hope is that most of his campaign promises were lies — something I admit is a possibility.
Just to appreciate how far Trump has departed from the Republican party as it existed decades ago, consider this: George H W Bush (certainly the Republican President within my lifetime whom I respect the most, and the only Republican nominee I have ever supported) voted in 2016 for Hillary Clinton. Even his son George W Bush, whose policies were a lot closer to Trump’s, couldn’t stomach voting for Trump either. George W. abstained, voting for all Republicans on the rest of the ballot, but leaving the top of the ballot blank for President. Mitt Romney also refused to vote for Trump this election, saying his conscience simply wouldn’t allow him to do it. He and Bush both also boycotted the Republican convention by refusing to attend. I have to admit, when I look at Romney or any of the Bush family, even though I disagree with their politics (strongly, in the case of George W.), I have to respect that they at least seem like honest people. And I respect that they are at least smart enough to realize that if a sociopath like Donald Trump destroys the country, they do not want their own reputations, or the reputation of the Republican party, to go down the toilet with him. There is a big difference between honest, successful businessmen like Mitt Romney or the Bush’s, and phony reality TV stars like Trump who have only ever pretended to be successful, while going through bankruptcy after bankruptcy and committing one fraud after another. Even though I disagree with the rightwing politics of Romney and Bush, I respect that they were able to put partisan politics aside this election and listen to their conscience instead of empowering a dangerous demagogue. As Mitt Romney said:
“I don’t want to see trickle-down racism. I don’t want to see a president of the United States saying things which change the character of the generations of Americans that are following.” — Mitt Romney, on why he could never vote for someone like Donald Trump
Yes, the Republican party has changed a lot since Lincoln. And so has the Democratic party. But after reading all of this I imagine a conservative still might ask: but haven’t the words liberal and conservative also changed meaning? So what if Lincoln was a liberal in his time? What does that have to do with liberals in our time? I will address this in my next post, as well as the various meanings of the word “socialism”. From my perspective, I don’t think the spirit of any of these words has changed much, although the word liberal has certainly started to be used a bit differently in the US and has different connotations than it used to. (In most of the world, and in academia, liberal still carries roughly the same connotations and meanings as it always has.) This is a complex enough subject that it requires a whole different post.
