Quote:
Originally Posted by Not Bob
I think that we can safely put the Democrats down as the party that caused the Civil War. The Mexican War was viewed at the time as driven by a desire to add slave states to the Union to strengthen and spread slavery. Who pushed it? Democrats like Stephen Douglas. Who opposed it? Whigs like Abraham Lincoln (and Winfield Scott, who nonetheless followed orders from his civilian bosses as a good general does, and kicked the ass of the Napoleon of the Americas).
The party allowed itself to become the vessel of slaveholders and pushed pro-slavery policies even when non-southern Democrats like Pierce and Buchanan were President. It is the shame that stains the party that it was the party of -anti-black racism until, maybe (if you are a generous soul), FDR. And was more realistically the party of anti-black racism until LBJ.
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People who talk about the Democratic party as the party of racism and the Republican Party as the party of Lincoln (like these legacies are connected to the current parties somehow) are the same as those guys at the gym who, after a series of shirts v. skins pickup games, insist that skins won every game, even though by the time 5 or 6 runs are over, all of the guys who started off as "shirts" finished as "skins."*
TM
*I have a few of these people in my facebook feed. It's like interacting with our favorite brick.
