[pjc50]

The right-wing violence runs a lot further than that, all the way back to the Civil War and the people who went to war to defend their "right" to violence against black people. There is a continuous line between that and today. The Charlottesville protests were centered on a statue: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/13/us/charlottesville-rally-...

[lliamander]

> The Charlottesville protests were centered on a statue

You know, in Seattle there is a rather grand looking statue of Lenin. He was a rather evil guy. Who gets to decide which statue stays and which goes?

[dragonwriter]

> You know, in Seattle there is a rather grand looking statue of Lenin. He was a rather evil guy.

The Seattle Lenin is privately owned, so not parallel to the Lee statue in Charlottesville.

> Who gets to decide which statue stays and which goes?

The owners of the statues?

[lliamander]

A fair point. I see how the two situations are different.

[pjc50]

Did the Americans ask the Iraqi zoning board before pulling down all those statues of Saddam Hussein?

Less controversially, there is actually a political process here, and in the normal manner the city had decided to remove the statue. The white supremacists decided to demonstrate against this, sparking the violence.

The statue recently pulled down in Durham NC is a different Confederate statue.

[talmand]

Left-wing violence goes back just as much.

Those people defending their "rights" in the Civil War were Democrats.

[freehunter]

Democrats today are not Democrats of yesteryear. The ideology of the two parties switched during the Civil Rights movement. The Civil War was not “left wing violence”.

[mi100hael]

That's a pretty gross simplification. Around the time of the Civil War, there were more than two significant parties (including Whigs, Progressives, etc) and they were much less clearly left/right polarized in today's terms. Over the next 100+ years, there was a lot of shifting of policy priorities (from war, to slavery, to business, to civil rights, etc) followed by consolidation culminating with LBJ that left us with the two modern parties.

[freehunter]

The point is that the people who used to be known as Democrats did not share the same belief that modern Democrats share, so comparing them to each other is ridiculous. It’s like saying “Roman Republicans owned white slaves so all Republicans hate white people”. It’s the same word, yes, but not the same beliefs.

[talmand]

That's the only reason I post such a statement. To see how the myth of the switching parties is still being pushed.

[freehunter]

I don’t understand that. Democrats today fight for civil rights for minorities. Surely you can’t argue against that. It’s part of the core platform. Democrats of the 1860s fought to keep black people enslaved. You yourself said this.

So with those two statements, how can you then argue that the positions have not flipped? How does that even reconcile in your mind?

[talmand]

Just because the Democrats altered their message doesn't mean that the Republicans had to have changed in response.

[freehunter]

You're right, it doesn't mean they had to. But they did. The Civil War was fought to abolish slavery, basically a civil rights argument. It was fought and won by the Republicans. Where do the Republicans stand on civil rights issues today? Would Republicans fight a war to protect gay marriage? Would they fight a war to keep businesses from hiring illegal immigrants and paying them pennies on the dollar while working them in horrible conditions? Once upon a time they fought a war to protect the rights of workers and humans who were being taken advantage of, would they do the same today?

Even more recently, Ronald Reagan supported strong gun control. He's the reason California has such strict gun laws. How about Nixon, a Republican who created the EPA that modern Republicans hate so much? Lincoln was also strongly pro-immigration, saying at one point "Foreign immigration... should be fostered and encouraged by a liberal and just policy". By 1920, they said "the practical exclusion of Asiatic immigrants is sound and should be maintained". Seems like a pretty big shift to me!

The Republicans of today, even moderate Republicans, are not the Republicans of yesterday, or yesteryear. It would be political suicide to run on some of the most successful Republican platforms from even 30 years ago.

So again I ask, how can you reconcile in your mind the idea that ye olde Democrats are pro-slavery and ye olde Republicans are the party that fought against the South in the Civil War with your claim that they have in no way changed positions over the years?

[lliamander]

How about the French Revolution?

[freehunter]

If we're bringing European politics into a US discussion, then we should arrest everyone displaying Nazi symbols or using the Nazi salute, and we should probably also ban displays of the Confederate flag as well. Also now the Democratic party is far-right extremism, and the Republicans are banned by law.

I'm loving my new single-payer healthcare and free college tuition, though.

[usefulcat]

There are some times when "technically correct" is most definitely not the best kind of correct. This is one of those times.