Fischer Lies About History

Are there any great conservative achievements in our counrty’s history? Ignore Republican/Democrat, but instead looking at progressive/conservative, what would one point to as a beneficial “conservative victory”?

It seems to me that the purpose of conservatism is to moderate the pace at which change occurs, and so an argument could be made that because we didn’t drastically change into a communistic soviet member during the “red scare”, the conservatives can take credit for that. But the changes that were implemented during the mid-20th century (social security, the rise of unions, etc) were progressive in nature.

Unfortunately, modern conservatives (in the form of Tea Party Republicans) have decided that moderating the pace of change is no longer acceptable. Instead, their stated policies are to stop all progress and actually regress.

It would be interesting to see how the Republicans went from being the party of radical progress to being the party of radical regress. It would be easy to blame the “Reagan Revolution” but I know that even in the 1950s, the GOP was the party of the wealthy elite. When and how did things change?

How did the Republicans go bad?

Their most progressive leader took a bullet in the head; his successor was impeached as part of a messy post-war power struggle; the next guy up (Grant) was an alcoholic ex-general who let his corrupt buddies run wild.

Rutherford B. Hayes completed the destruction by making a deal to settle a 2000-style presidential election fiasco in 1876, gaining the votes of southern states by aborting all civil rights for blacks and allowing a free hand to the Klan and other terrorists, thereby setting back both the nation and his party for almost 150 years (and counting).

@ Gregory in Seattle: I had conversation on this topic with a friend of a friend on Facebook. His position was that espoused by Fischer. I was completely gobsmacked that anyone could believe something so stupid and transparently dishonest (of course he was a Fundigelical, so that explains a lot about his cognitive capabilities). During the course of that discussion, I looked into the history. There’s not that much online. The Republicans were the radical, anti-slavery party up until Hayes, when they became the party of corruption. The Democrats were pretty explicitly racist until the Franklin Roosevelt administration, when that party gradually became more Northern. As near as I can tell, the Kennedy administration was the tipping point, and Johnson finally drove the Dixiecrats out of the party by ramming the Civil Rights Act through Congress. Nixon put the nail in the coffin with the Southern Strategy.

@ Pierce R. Butler: Andrew Johnson was a Democrat. He was on Lincoln’s ticket in the 1864 election as an appeasement to Northern Democrats, so that Lincoln could say that he was interested only in preserving the Union and not in giving black people equal rights or anything, which was what the Democrats were against back then.

Wait, weren’t the Republicans responsible for the “War of Northern Aggression”?

Anyway, I thought that Southern slavery wasn’t supposed to be all that big a deal?

Fischer Lies About History

and in other news – water discovered to be wet. Film at eleven.

Dingo

With the Southern Strategy, the Republican Party became the party of Jefferson Davis. Senator Trent Lott stated essentially that when he stated “The spirit of Jefferson Davis lives in the 1984 Republican platform.”

CYCLES OF AMERICAN HISTORY – Arthur Schlesingers I and II proposed a cyclic theory of US history, a history of alternations between liberal and conservative phases.

L: adoption of Constitution, C: Hamiltonian federalism

L: Jeffersonianism, C: Retreat after War of 1812

L: Jacksonian populism, C: Slaveowner dominance

L: Civil War, Reconstruction, C: The Gilded Age

L: Progressive Era, C: The Roaring Twenties

L: The New Deal, C: The Eisenhower Era

L: Sixties Radicalism, C: Gilded Age II

We are now in Gilded Age II, with the Clinton presidency an abortive liberal era. We are overdue for another liberal era, but so far, Obama has been too cautious if not cowardly, and the Occupy movement seems to have gone into eclipse.

Jordan Genso writes:

Are there any great conservative achievements in our counrty’s history?

I conclude the score is incredibly lopsided, favoring progressives (e.g., the 1st Administration, LBJ’s) – including liberals (FDR’s Administration). However I do think there are some accomplishments, such as:

1) Developing and utilizing monetary policy at the Fed. However we only get optimal results as an economy if a complementary fiscal policy by the federal government and states is based on Keynesian principles, which has recently become antathema to conservatives (and therefore Republicans).

2) The recession that the Reagan Administration and attendant congresses inherited required some incredibly complex, seemingly paradoxical, fiscal and monetary policies. They worked like a charm. However I have complete confidence that the proper prescription required tax hikes rather than cuts, Reagan would not have promoted such, in spite of signing off on hikes later in his tenure.

3) Reagan’s handling of the Cold War, however once again we find a paradox, which is that his prescriptions were incredibly liberal; in particular his rejection of MAD (“mutually assured destruction”).

4) Eisenhower’s Burkean approach to sending the troops into Little Rock to integrate their public schools. However it should also be noted modern-day conservatives reject Burkeanism where are best modern-day example of someone who practices Burkean policies is Barack Obama.

5) Sandra Day O’Connor’s swing-vote abortion rulings, which again was a Burkean approach.

6) CJ John Roberts defense of the universal health insurance mandate as a tax. However once again we observe this classic conservative approach is one rejected by nearly all contemporaneous conservatives who’ve become radicals.

7) Deference to business in general as the primary economic engine. However, once again the sane conservatives have left the building where we’re left with only ideologues who deny reality when it comes to dealing with matters involving business.

8) Tying welfare to help and some responsibility to use such temporarily in most cases. However today’s conservatives have mutated to the point none of their current policy arguments have any merit. But to some degree they were right in the last-half of the 20 century. Whether they were more right than liberals is up to debate where I favor the cons on some aspects and favor the liberals are most aspects.

Probably the greatest accomplishment by a conservative in the last 112 years was Winston Churchill’s leadership in WWII. Second was Mikhail Gorbechev’s Burkean approach to reforming the USSR. However it should also be noted that American conservatives in Congress opposed our involvement in WWII until Pearl Harbor, where a one vote swing prior to that attack would have resulted in our not being prepared to enter WWII after Pearl Harbor if the cons had got their way. It’s also ironic that Churchill was a key element in socializing Great Britain’s health care sector.

So while the score isn’t zero, it is ironic how many qualifiers one has to apply when it comes to conservative successes. Progressives/liberals don’t predominately need such when justifiably bragging about their many accomplishments.

lpetrich reports the Schlesingers assert:

C[onservative]: Hamiltonian federalism

I find the Washington Administration, mostly led by Hamilton, as one of the most progressive eras in our entire history. In particular Hamilton’s commitment to leveraging federal power to create world-class finance and manufacturing sectors. Where Jeffersonian Republicans played the role of standing astride history and yelling, “stop!”. Certainly it was an elitist form of progressivism, which favored England over radically liberal France, but it was as pure a progressivism as one could imagine for the times.

In addition some historians refer to then-Republican James Madison as a conservative after the Constitution was ratified precisely because he was shocked at the lengths the Federalists were extending federal power to meet progressive ends and argued for the first conservative approach to jurisprudence, the term which bewilderingly escapes me (hopefully someone can help me out).

Michael Heath @ # 17: I find the Washington Administration, mostly led by Hamilton, as one of the most progressive eras in our entire history. In particular Hamilton’s commitment to leveraging federal power to create world-class finance and manufacturing sectors.

The net effect of boosting industrialization and financialization was to give the US a competitive advantage, thus getting a good adaptational head-start on the 19th century. Hamilton et al get points in the nationalist game, but “progressive”?

It depends on whether you define that word in the earlier 19th-century mode (“Progress marches on!”) or the later political mode of advocacy for lower-economic-strata interests (not a viewpoint from which W or H gains a lot of glory). (Yeah, historically the terms overlap, but the interests reflected can both conflict and collaborate.)

Please allow me to recommend William Hogeland’s The Whiskey Rebellion: George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, and the Frontier Rebels Who Challenged America’s Newfound Sovereignty for a colorful case study of Founding Fathers’ Fierce Federalism.

Water wet.

slc1 writes:

Reagan’s approach was totally insane as he wanted to replace the concept of MAD with SDI . . .

Ronald Reagan rejected SDI prior to even being informed by the military chiefs of SDI. Instead he viewed MAD as merely a delay to an inevitable holocaust. SDI was also not the predominant arrow in Reagan’s quiver regarding his rejection of MAD. He did perceive SDI as a vehicle to get political support to mutually disarm and also bankrupt the USSR, but it was a mere method to get to disarmanent which was the ultimate goal I was referencing, not the mere method you reference.

slc1 writes:

SDI, a technology that was far from feasible at the time . . .

True, but the chiefs he inherited from the previous administration informed President Reagan SDI was absolutely feasible. It was a few years after being informed of this project that dissenters’ voices started to resonate where by that time, the U.S. smelled blood in the water in terms of spending the USSR into oblivion. In addition and by that time, the Republican party was deeply in bed with military hardware manufacturers and while that wasn’t a cause which interested Reagan, it certainly did many of his senior people (and H.W. Bush’s who followed).

slc1 writes:

I would argue that MAD was, perhaps the most successful war prevention strategy in history.

Perhaps, but a seeming law of nature is that all successful strategies ultimately fail, simply because conditions eventually change. And that was Reagan’s argument, one I find convincing. So I would argue that MAD was successful precisely because it was a temporary containment strategy. Ultimately it would have eventually resulted in being the single worst prevention method ever. We came one election and an old man’s heartbeat away from a Sarah Palin presidency so it’s not the Soviets who concerned me when it came to acting irrationally, it’s Armageddon fantasizers.

slc1 writes:

would argue that MAD was, perhaps the most successful war prevention strategy in history. […] would argue that MAD was, perhaps the most successful war prevention strategy in history.

Well you kinda just disproved your theory since we only need one holocaust to take MAD from success to catastrophe. I.e., a far better strategy would have been to not build any nuclear WMD since MAD’s defect rate to take success to failure merely needed to be 1, whereas no nuclear capabilities provides no opportunities based on one overly hasty decision. In addition you are wrong that was the only close call. The Dead Hand, based on Soviet documents released only recently, reveals there were multiple close calls where the USSR had an itchy finger on the trigger based on their perception we were starting up to shoot ours at them.

Pierce Butler writes:

Those who currently carry the “progressive” banner would want little to do with him

I find it a impossible and a useless exercise to project past characters into present politics. Based on your approach T. Jefferson was a creationist. Making such a claim misinforms readers because the comparison is futile.

We can compare similar approaches and mindsets, but not similar conclusions given the fact the knowledge base and conditions varied so much between time periods. My point was that Hamilton was extremely progressive in favoring a strong active central government to carry out policy, the same as today. His mindset and predilection for an activist government is what makes him progressive; and again – progressivm doesn’t equal populism where the liberal form yearns for social equality outcomes.

Pierce Butler writes:

I still suspect you’re conflating different definitions of progressivism, and possibly the same for conservatism.

Of course I am on the latter, and made that vividly clear with my comments where I distinguished the varying types which are now extinct from the prevalent version which exists today. One simply can’t not conflate the various types, though the advocate should certainly frame each accordingly. When it comes to conservatism the movement has evolved, to the point some outlier conservatives who fit nicely into what was considered past conservative ideology are now making ‘no true Scotsmen’ arguments about the type of conservative which dominates the U.S., e.g. – David Frum, Bruce Bartlett, Daniel Larison, and of course Andrew Sullivan.

In terms of progressives I was clear in framing it as an activist approach to a vibrant government which is the opposite of the classic conservative pose of “Stop!”. Where conservatives desire less government whereas progressives want more.

Michael Heath “The Dead Hand, based on Soviet documents released only recently, reveals there were multiple close calls where the USSR had an itchy finger on the trigger based on their perception we were starting up to shoot ours at them.”

You forgot the twist: much like Dr Strangelove, they had a Doomday trigger (Perimeter) that we didn’t know they had.

dingojack “Does Dead Hand cover Able Archer ’83?”

Yes. It’s really quite a good book.

“(BTW one of the ramping up points of that near miss was Reagan’s foolish announcement that he was going to implement SDI. He certainly did believe in it, and spent bucket-loads on the great white elephant that was SDI).”

If memory serves, Reagan was terribly naive. He wanted so badly to remove nuclear weapons from the equation that when shown SDI he wanted to, and offered to, share it with the Soviets (which, I think we can agree, would never happen).

So Edward Teller was Dr. Strangelove? I love it when life imitates art.

Michael Heath @ # 25: I find it a impossible and a useless exercise to project past characters into present politics.

Nor is it much use to apply modern labels to historic ideologies. Otoh, unless all in the dialog specialize in the relevant historic period(s), how far can we get discussing “Federalists”, “Whigs”, etc?

Hamilton was extremely progressive in favoring a strong active central government to carry out policy, the same as today.

I think the modern progressive is much more concerned about the policies than the mechanisms enabling them: leftie localism pops up wherever conditions favor it, from Montpelier to Bolinas. The fact that, say, FDR & LBJ made good use of strong central government does not mean such government should be seen as intrinsically good.

… some outlier conservatives who fit nicely into what was considered past conservative ideology are now making ‘no true Scotsmen’ arguments about the type of conservative which dominates the U.S….

During times of flux and semantic meltdown, the “ntS” argument may be the only way to hold on to any set of core principles without having to write an essay about each one.

… conservatives desire less government whereas progressives want more.

No, each camp wants less of certain types of government and more of others. This gets very muddled at times, such as when many in the “conservative” camp depend on Medicare & Social Security, or when a liberal-supported regulatory agency becomes corrupted, but confusing means with ends never works out for long.

Re Michael Heath

I rely on Bob Park, who, unlike the biographers of Reagan and the other clowns that Heath cites, knew Edward Teller quite well and was well aware that the idea of SDI was first brought to Reagan’s attention, before he even became president, by the aforementioned Teller.

Re Heath @ #34

It’s Prof. Park, who is a professor of physics at Un. of Maryland (actually, I think he is now emeritus).

What Reagan’s biographers don’t know is the influence of Edward Teller. Teller was the instigator of the entire SDI idea and sold it to Reagan on the basis that it would render MAD obsolete. As for Lou Cannon, he’s been in the bag for Reagan since his first run for Governor of California and I consider him to be seriously unreliable.

Just as a matter of interest, do any of these alleged authorities even mention Edward Teller in their books about Reagan?