Who where, are the true Liberals and Party of the people
I find it interesting when reading blogs and articles in the media in general portraying the Republican Party as the extreme right and the Democrates being the caring Liberal party of the left.
If we look at history the above perception is in fact very incorrect, however it does seem that the Republican party somewhere ov the last 60 to 70 years moved away from a position of overtly being the liberal party of concience for middle America and the Paternal Intellegencier, to a more conservative centre of politics. Whilist I am not stating that the Republican Party where not a bunch of raving communists parading around in red suites, they were the party that introduced many if not most of the more socially aware policies of the American Administration, take for instance Slavery.
I suppose my real question is why the shift from one party to another, after all it was during the reign of the Democrates that most of the communist witch hunt occured in the US, and yet they are the party of choice of the Left, apparently. I find it interesting that right up to the vietnam war the Democrates where still pretty much the supporters of some very racial attitudes in the US, mainly due to their strong voter support from the south.
Whilist I could honestly say that I am firmly rooted on the left side of centre in my ideology personally, that does not mean I would neccessarily align myself with any party, also as I am not a US citizen I really don't have a preferred choice of party. What I would say is that the US has experienced some periods of good governence from both sides, and some pretty horrendeous from the same, take for instance the rule of LBJ, if he is left I'll walk to TIMBUCKTU backwards and nude, this is a man who really pushed the US very much to the right of politics and certainly had no feelings for the liberal left, and interestingly when Nixon came to power while having a rather checkered time in office, to put it lightly, did do many things that if you believe the media, could only be done by a Democrate, eg; opening the door to the US for the US.
The reality is most people are essentially good, and most of us are willing to help others and are prepared to vote for a government that will do this, we have various reasons for voting intentions, from only voting for a particular party to voting for the person. However I do believe that people need to remember that the US has many good policies to remember the Republicans for, and when we talk about great US citizens such as Lincon, we need to remember taht he was a Republican.
Coming from a country where our conservative party is probably less conservative, and is actually known as the Australian Liberal party, I often find it hard to understand the politics of the US, although I do find that over the last few decades the Republican party has moved away from the centre of politics , or at least this is the perception you get when one watchs from the outside, towards the centre right, however it is often harder to say where the Democrates are, one just has to watch the current round of Democratic Primaries. I quite often think that many in your congress would better show the policies and ideologies of the two parties that the Presidential side of politics, quite possibly due to the fact that the views of the President are those refelcted by the media.
What is interesting is that politics in Australia and Britian have followed asimilar patch, in so far as who is right and who is left and who is centre.
Although I do think that the Tory Party of the UK is a lot more obviously right, and the Labour party centre Left, than say the US partiy differences.
I am not making any real conclusions here, other than that I am interested in why so many feel that conservative governments are all evil, while the left is the white knight, when we know this is not the case.