The Sam Spade Memorial Good Post Gallery (user search)

Quote from: Stone Cold Conservative on March 24, 2015, 04:59:21 AM

Quote from: National Progressive on March 24, 2015, 01:03:27 AM

Very good poster certainly, although I don't completely agree with some of his interpretations of history and sometimes his "New England Irishphobic Puritan Republican Federalists" type posts get a bit repetitive.

Granted.

I do admit on the subject I do have a bit of a chip my shoulder. This might not seem the way to others but all too often I feel like a lot of people act like the only reason our ancestors were strongly Democratic was because they hated blacks (see blatant example here: https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=204846.msg4444968#msg4444968 which as far as I am concerned is barely masked bigotry under the guise and excuse of historical facts ) and not because they lived in areas populated by people who literally viewed them as vermin (and further, as has been noted by me several times earlier, the Irish were voting heavily Democratic (and extra emphasis on the word "heavily") since the times of Jefferson, it was not some thing that happened because of the Civil War draft). It is almost as if the several hundred years of anti-Celtic prejudice, both in the Great Britain and in the largely Anglo and protestant parts of the colonies, suddenly vanished overnight when America became a country. Given how often the former is stressed by ill educated people I find it necessary to bring this up whenever it is applicable.

The point is largely that the point of history is to learn from it, not to defend it. The guys who "freed the slaves" were no saints just like many of the anti-Chinese Irish railroad workers in the west were no saints. I guess I just feel that when actually examining the past and considering the issues many perceive New England Federalists, Whigs, and Republicans to somehow be faultless and good moral people just because they opposed slavery (so did the British Empire. . . . . ). They tend to leave out things like the repeatedly mentioned anti-Irish bigotry, the anti-Jewish bigotry (of which even I don't cover as much as I should), the anti-Italian bigotry, the anti-Polish bigotry, hell most anti-ethnic white bigotry, the classism, support for what basically amounted to protestant supremacy in the form of moralistic legislation, the support for regressive tax and tariff policies with the main intent to fatten the pocketbooks of robber barons, as well as the indifference and cruelty of the Protestant Work Ethic ^TM to actually address issues like wage slavery and living conditions in the poor neighborhoods of urban areas.

The goal of modern liberalism should be to learn from those past mistakes and use those lessons to advance a more egalitarian and equal society. We should no longer have to choose between racists and elitists. We should no longer have to choose between moralists and corrupt urban bosses. We should no longer have to choose between slavers and bankers. The people of the past need no defense, they were extremely flawed people. Which is why you often hear such clichés as "judge them in the context of their times!" even by far left people like myself (though I generally believe that the more accurate saying would be "judge them in the context of where you would be in the times"). People often act like when talking about the past one side has to be completely right. Well, especially in the case of American History, this is wrong. Winning the Civil War didn't prevent the GOP from being blamed for the Great Depression. Being on the side of the "common man" didn't prevent the Democrats from being on the wrong side of the Civil War. And etcetera etcetera.

And further, the lesson from the bigotry of the New England elites, which is largely whitewashed to protect the agenda of financial elitists and others, is that racism goes far beyond skin color and is more about the dominance and privilege of elite groups (this is also very true of the Southern planters and their slaves). In other words, knowledge of such history is knowledge of exactly why elitism (which is openly embraced by many Democrats nowadays without any knowledge or care of the roots of cultural elitism in the country) is horrible and the party needs to embrace more economic populism (note, I mean that as in being advocates of the poor, not "muh fiscally liberal and socially conservative") to advance a liberal agenda.

I make no apologies, just like a Jew makes no apologies for bashing Hitler.

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