Why Conservatives Should Cheer for Harriet Tubman on the $20 Bill [Republican who shot Democrats]

YouTube ^ | April 21, 2016 | AaronClarey

[ek_hornbeck]

As for the democrats, yes their populist agrarian nonsense of the early to mid 19th century was the ideological antecedent of modern socialism.

Some proto-socialist agrarians did gravitate towards the Democratic Party, but this was more the case in the late 19th and early 20th centuries with Bryan, etc. Creating a welfare state wasn't part of Jackson's agenda any more than it was part of Cleveland's agenda. Furthermore, if you're going to blame 19th Century Democrats for fellow party members with socialist sympathies, I could equally well point out that at the time of its birth, the Republican party attracted radical socialists as well because the American and European Left were on the side of the abolitionists.

[Impy]

I don’t “blame them” per se, what I’m saying is in my opinion the agrarian populist ideology that the democrats had since the beginning was the precursor to socialism, it evolved from that.

Perhaps that’s counter-intuitive because they focused a lot on liberty and the Federalist/Whigs had some notions that could categorized as “big government” but I believe it to be accurate that both parties today are the logical evolution of their predecessors and that the Federalist/Whig/GOP side was always the better side. The dems were far from pure evil, nothing like today, but in my view they were always the inferior choice. I know a lot of people don’t agree, they think there was some kind of “switch” at some point.

Jackson would be disgusted with today’s democrats, we can all agree there. Everybody back then would probably be disgusted with both parties.

And yes you’re right there were socialist scum in the GOP as well. A lot of them out west, historically. This persisted into the 20th Century with people like William Borah (R-ID) and the North Dakota “Non-Partisan League”, a socialist faction of the state GOP that eventually merged with the democrats.

It’s funny to realize that the northeast was the bulwark of conservatism for most of our history, in both parties.