Tales Of Our Times
By JOHN BARTLIT
New Mexico Citizens
for Clean Air & Water
Big political campaigns highlight the good that would come if we got rid of the harmful party, i.e., the other party. Each party relishes the thought of negotiating only with party mates. But we forget human nature. A longer look to the past finds the quirks that come with party structures.
These quirks can be related to what we see today. Today one party is called “conservative” and the other one is called “liberal”. We hear that “conservatives” are racist and favor the rich. Or perhaps, “liberals” prefer “justice” for the “common folk”. The meanings of “conservative” and “liberal” are not at all clear or consistent. Not to current parties nor in America’s history.
Charges of being “racist” and “in league with the rich” have been featured in elections since parties first took root in our nation. The fortunes of parties rise and fall on the tides of these villainies. The parties duck and dodge as to whether the worst follies result from “local and states’ rights” or from a “strong central government.” Examples shift around.
Even these “principles” switch between parties for “timely” reasons. For the duration of the pandemic, the issue of mask wearing in the “conservative” party will align with its core support for local and states’ rights. The “liberal” party will align itself with federal control on the issue of mask wearing.
Parties age in strange ways. What each party stands for and the positions it takes are a chancy brew of principles, current events, personalities, and the other party. Let’s go back a ways to the mighty struggle that parties could not manage. In times before the Civil War, the nation’s two major parties were the Whigs and their antagonists, the Democratic-Republican Party. From the first, the new nation was fraught with the embattlements of slavery. Many leaders opposed it; some were for.
As troubles over slavery grew, impulses moved towards civil war. In the process, the pro-business Whigs had a lack of able leaders and dropped from sight. Somehow the Democratic-Republican Party resolved into two, Democrats and Republicans. Since none of us walked the scene in those days, we can only imagine the logic for changing. How would it all compare with today?
As the war wound to an end, the Republicans, “the party of Lincoln,” pushed the 13th amendment to the U.S. Constitution abolishing slavery. Those on the other side, for any reason, took up with the Democrats. As Will Shakespeare first observed, “Misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows” (in The Tempest), which fits in with today’s “Politics makes strange bedfellows.”
For a sum of reasons, nearly all the support for abolition was from Republicans. All the support for slavery was from Democrats, in the name of “states’ rights.” Think how far those stands differ from talk between today’s parties. How could perceptions change so completely?
Fifty years later, a similar big switch occurred in the issue of women’s right to vote. The Women’s Christian Temperance Union favored women’s right to vote, which brought more support, while bringing more opposition too. People vary. Some who tended to support women’s voting were opposed to Prohibition. Women’s voting rights were tangled in worse knots over state restrictions on blacks’ voting. The final obstacles to women’s right to vote were the Democrats, led by President Woodrow Wilson.
People do not simply favor or oppose an idea. People have very different reasons, even conflicted reasons, for where they stand. In our system, a dozen competing reasons behind any stand are shoehorned into two pre-formed parties. Voters get to choose one. Democracy requires working on issues from many aspects. Yet, party-line votes omit most aspects.
When omitted, the diverse reasons pop up in strange places, whether old or new. Party mates may take different views. It has happened before.
