The left and the right are often used to distinguish between two political forces in the political arena and their political views. The number of times it appears in history books and political discourse is in stark contrast to the fact that everyone knows very little about the concept. Today we will continue to extend the development of the two parties in the United States in the last period, the origin of the Democratic Party and the Republican Party, what the left and right factions in the US political arena really represent, how the left and right factions of the two parties in the United States have developed, what are their ideas, and what impact has it had on the entire American society.
In September 1789, at the beginning of the French Revolution, at the meeting of the French Constituent Assembly, the members of the French Constituent Assembly vigorously discussed the future development of the country and the political system.
To the right of the Speaker sat the higher-ranking members of the first and second ranks, who opposed radical revolution and advocated the establishment of a constitutional monarchy similar to that of Britain, commonly known as the Constitutionalists, also known as the Royalists; opposite them, to the left of the Speaker, were lower-ranking deputies who advocated the complete limitation of monarchical power and the establishment of a unicameral parliament.
This division did not disappear with the end of the French Revolution and the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly, and the division of political ideas represented by the seating position was still preserved:
We summarize it by saying that conservatives who advocate the retention of limited monarchy, or perhaps the preservation of the old social system, sit on the right side of parliament, and the radicals who seek radical change sit on the left side of parliament, they are left. Moderates sit in the middle of parliament and are for centrists.
The situation in each country is different, and this division of left and right will represent different meanings. Moreover, the reality is extremely complex, and when some people want to divide the political parties of the world through the division of left and right, there will be different situations, even difficult to divide.
Here we introduce two left-right division models, or left-right wing division models.
The first is the one-dimensional political spectrum. The one-dimensional political spectrum ranks various political systems in terms of certain indicators.
Anarchism, communism, socialism, Democratic, Republican, feudalism, Nazism, fascism, their place on the one-dimensional political spectrum, is uncertain.
It is obviously inappropriate and untrue that communism and fascism are on the same side when the criterion of dictatorship-freedom is used as the criterion.
When we take democracy-totalitarianism as the criterion for dividing power, communism and socialism occupy the left, and fascism and feudalism occupy the right, which is more in line with our cognition.
Therefore, the one-dimensional political spectrum is very limited.
We cross the one-dimensional political spectrum of different standards vertically, and we make a double coordinate system, his horizontal coordinate is the democratic-totalitarian dimension, and his ordinate coordinate is the dictatorship-freedom dimension. In this coordinate system, communism, anarchism, capitalism, and fascism each occupy a quadrant.
Similar to this division is the Nolan chart, which introduces two dimensions: individual freedom (also known as social freedom) and economic freedom, as a measure of a person's acceptance of government restrictions on personal freedom and economic activity.
Below Nolantu are economic regulation and individual regulation, above is the absolute freedom of the economy and the individual, representing anarchism, on the left is economic regulation, that is, strengthening government intervention in the economy, and on the right is reducing government intervention in the economy, forming a form of small government.
Speaking of which, we finally came to the main text, that is, which direction of the US Democratic Party and the Republican Party are distributed in this political chart?
Let's start with the Republican Party. At the beginning of its founding in 1855, the Republican Party won the 1860 presidential election, ushering in the era of Republican supremacy until President Roosevelt came to power
From 1860 to 1912, for half a century, the President of the United States was basically Republican, during which time the Democratic Party was basically isolated from the American regime, during which the two sides almost broke out several times in the United States The second civil war.
The Republican Party of this period was a typical leftist party, advocating racial equality, equality between men and women, and the principle of nationality and place of birth, that is, the acquisition of American citizenship by birth in the United States, this extremely open constitutional principle was established in the 14th Amendment of 1868.
The Right-Wing Conservative Democrats, who were opposition parties, remained southern states during this period, representative of slave owners, and a gathering place for nationalists.
By the beginning of the 20th century, the Republican Party was still firmly in control of the U.S. government. The Republican Party has been running wild on the path of liberalism.
The social issues of the time were no longer racism, but rather the elevation of the nation to an unprecedented standard of living. During his tenure from 1901 to 1909, U.S. Republican President Theodore Roosevelt, the uncle of Roosevelt Jr., vigorously promoted the "square deal" in domestic affairs, cracked down on trust monopolies, paid attention to the basic rights and interests of middle and lower-class workers, protected the safety and rights of public consumers, and for the first time made environmental protection the foundation of the country's long-term interests.
And democrats continue their racial policies. These policies are known as jim Crowe law. Whites and blacks cannot travel in the same car.
Whites and blacks cannot attend the same school and get an education. In restaurants, blacks and whites had to eat separately. Blacks and whites had to live in different apartment buildings, prohibited intermarriage and cohabitation between whites and blacks, and so on. These apartheid policies were not completely abolished until 100 years after the end of the American Civil War. It was only the Passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that any form of apartheid and discrimination was legally rejected.
The Democratic Party is under the hostage of racism and reckless on the road to conservatism. Unsurprisingly, democrats may even disappear into history as the U.S. economy becomes more open and diversified in industry.
But everything took a turn for the better, and the Democratic opportunity came right away.
By the 19th century, at the turn of the 20th century, the wave of immigration in the United States continued unabated, and the Democratic Party seized the opportunity to quickly win over immigrants, and the descendants of slave owners who were once extremely xenophobic became "liberals" who embraced the wave of globalization.
In the 1912 presidential election, the Democratic Party elected The reformist intellectual Woodrow Wilson as president.
On the Republican side, there was a serious split, with former president Theodore Roosevelt, President Roosevelt's uncle, parting ways with the Republican Party and running for president on behalf of the Progressive Party.
In the 1912 presidential election, Roosevelt won 27 percent of the ordinary vote, Republican candidate Taft 23 percent, and Democrat Woodrow Wilson was elected with 42 percent of the vote.
After Wilson came to power, he formed an alliance with the Republican progressive forces that controlled Congress, and during his eight-year tenure, he vigorously pursued many new progressive policies, including the systematization of antitrust laws, income taxes on individuals, new policies for peasants, and an 8-hour rule for railroad workers. And in 1919, the 19th Amendment was passed, and women finally gained the right to vote after 143 years of American independence!
The Democratic Party has finally become a big government, the liberal representative party of the small market.
The Democratic Party and the Republican Party began to shuffle their cards at the beginning of the new century, and liberals in the Republican Party ran to the Democratic Party, and the conservatives in the Democratic Party gradually turned to the embrace of the Republican Party.
That is, the Democratic Party became the left wing, and the Republican Party became the right. Gradually began a left and right swap.
Warren Harding
After President Wilson left office, the Republican Party made a comeback, with Republican Warren Harding as president in 1921-1923, John Coolidge as president from 1923-1929, and Herbert Hoover as president in 1929-1933. Ushered in the era of the Great Depression,
During this period, Republicans pursued the governing philosophy of "small government, big market". Although it once made the United States the most economically prosperous country in the world, it also made the United States taste the bitter fruit of a free economy.
Government inaction, absolute freedom of the market, no checks and balances, soaring profits by large corporations and large conglomerates by annexing monopolies and suppressing the wages of the working class, irrational credit and repeated bombing of stock speculation eventually led to the stock market crash on October 29, 1929. The Hoover cabinet continued to do nothing, eventually leading to the Great Depression in the United States.
At this moment, one of the greatest presidents in American history, Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR), is in the White House
When Roosevelt was elected president, the political philosophy of the two parties in the United States was basically fixed. Conservatives and liberals in both the Democratic and Republican parties are in position in all camps.
During Roosevelt's tenure, the liberal policies he pursued also completely transformed the Democratic Party into a liberal party, thus absorbing a large number of liberals within the Republican Party.
After World War II, the Democratic Party, like the Republican Party, firmly controlled the White House in the United States after a war. Democratic President Truman's just policy "fair deal," Democratic President Kennedy's new frontier "new frontier," to Democratic President Johnson's great society "the great society,"
From Roosevelt to Johnson, for a full 36 years, the Democratic Party carried out a comprehensive reform of American society for the left. Its political philosophy was to pursue the ideal of equality of all men established by the Declaration of Independence, and president Lincoln's principle of "ruling the people and serving the people" was absorbed by the Democratic Party. In the Democratic Party's political blueprint, the United States should be a multicultural, equal opportunity, and socially just nation.
After half a day of talking about the Democratic Party, let's talk about what Lincoln's party experienced after World War II. How did he become what he is now?
In 1964, Democrat President Kennedy signed the Civil Rights Act, which could be considered a "second constitution" that outlawed discriminatory behavior on the basis of race, color, religion, gender, or country of origin, which ultimately led to the division of Americans into two different and incompatible constitutional cultures.
The Democrats finally lost the Southern states because of this bill.
George Wallace
The Democratic Party has also been seriously divided because of the Civil Rights Act. Vice President Humphrey, who supported racial equality, went it off against George Wallace, a segregationist who was popular among white blue-collar workers, leading to a split in the Democratic votes.
And the economic absolute free-marketists, religious conservatives, and southern white supremacists within the Republican Party began to forge political alliances.
Republican Nixon
During the election, Republican Nixon adopted a "southern strategy" to take the initiative to curry favor with white racists, making the southern states the basic board of the Republican Party. And eventually won the position of president of the United States.
And we need to be clear that after the 1960s, the American South was no longer an agrarian society, with factories and white workers as the dominant social class, the so-called emerging middle class. In terms of economic policy, Republican policies such as reducing government intervention and lowering taxes are more popular with these people.
By 1980, Democrats had lost the support of the majority of the socio-economic class, and the Reagan Coalition of Republicans controlled the entire 1980s. In 1984, Reagan won nearly 60 percent of the vote in the general election and took the electoral college votes of 49 states, setting a record of 525 electoral votes (all 538), and even in Minnesota, the Democratic candidate surpassed Reagan by only 3,761 votes, meaning that the Republican Party was close to winning all fifty states.
Republican Reagan
Reagan revolutionized American politics. He lowered income taxes by 25 percent, reduced many of the harsher taxes, and addressed the economic stagnation that had been spreading since the 1970s, curbing severe inflation and recession.
In this way, the Democratic Party, which had vigorously defended slavery and segregation, gradually became a fellow traveler in the civil rights movement; the Republican Party turned its back on the ideas of Lincoln and other martyrs and was abandoned by minority voters, including blacks.
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