silvrleaf asked: Are conservatives against progress? or are some against b*g d*ddy initiatives? T-Roosevelt was a progressive, yet also a republican- There are demographic differences of opinion on both sides- The media likes to generalize both sides in a narrow scope of representation- If the system lacked conservative opinion we could potentially move into a government that denies sovereignty, and potentially bring the dark ages all over again- Your blog on change effects -- I have re-blogged (Follow me)-
Your questions is a little confusingly phrased, but I’ll take a stab at it. First let me begin by saying I don’t follow simply because someone reblogs or follows me — if I did, I’d literally have to follow thousands of people, which would be pointless. Most of the very few people I follow I know personally.
Now, with the example of Teddy Roosevelt being a progressive (as indeed he was), you’re missing a huge shift in American political history. Roosevelt was in office around the turn of the century, but it wasn’t until at least two decades later that the GOP began to become (if only rhetorically) the small government party we know today.
You see, the Republican Party rose to prominence in the decade leading up to the Civil War, first taking the White House under Abraham Lincoln. The Democratic Party was also around at the time — in fact, it’s America’s oldest political party and can trace its roots to Thomas Jefferson’s Democratic-Republicans. The Democrats were traditionally the party of localized, small government. Jefferson himself had strong reservations about the Constitution on the grounds that it gave the federal government too much central control, and many in his party felt the same way.
There were several other parties opposing the Democrats — the Federalists and the Whigs, for instance — before the GOP became the second major party, and all of them were the big government party of the day, to put it in simplest terms. The original Republican Party was no exception; it was not at all what we’d now call “conservative,” for it was the Democrats who supported keeping the power of Washington to a minimum. Unfortunately, at that time, their support of states rights made a nasty alliance with approval of slavery, a serious blow from which the push for small, localized government has never really recovered.
Through Lincoln, the Republican Party was responsible for ending true federalism — not to mention other (illegal and just plain wrong) stuff like getting rid of the most basic right of habeas corpus without any real interest in freeing the slaves or ensuring equal rights for African-Americans. After the war was over, the reunited government, led by a group of “Radical Republicans” in Congress, imposed harsh Reconstruction policies on the defeated South. Some things, like the creation of biracial legislatures, were good. Others, like hiking taxes way up to pay for giant government projects the likes of which the South had never seen, were not. Also dealing with disenfranchisement and the economic havoc the war had wreaked, many in the South became incredibly bitter against Republicans and the North. This led to the establishment of the “Solid South.”
The Solid South is the term used for the fierce loyalty to the Democratic party found among White Southerners for about a century following the Civil War. Especially toward the beginning of that timeline, the Democrats were the party of low taxes and tariffs and opposition to overseas imperialism and adventures. The Republicans supported protectionist trade policies, prohibition, and foreign interventionism on the national level and were responsible for many public works projects on a local level. In fact, the Republicans were often so “pro-business” — corrupt and corporatist, more likely — that they sometimes found themselves getting into trouble.
So, to summarize and generalize, up until the 1920s to 1940s, the Democrats were (comparatively, given their interest in using the government to legally oppress black people) the small government party supported by Southern whites; and Republicans were the large government party supported by blacks and Northern whites. Click through to a couple of presidential election results between 1872 (the clear beginning of the Solid South) and 1928 to see just how stark the polarization tended to be.
With Warren G. Harding and, more significantly, Calvin Coolidge, however, the Republican Party began to change. Coolidge was known for not being a corrupt patsy of big business, and he was much influenced by the philosophy of Thomas Jefferson and other founders of the country. A few years later, Franklin Roosevelt greatly expand Woodrow Wilson’s prior leading of the Democratic Party toward statism.
So prior to Coolidge, yes, there were progressive Republicans — but the fact that they were Republicans does not mean that they were conservative. As I’ve shown, it was quite the opposite in those days. Moreover, it’s important to recall that when I use the term “progressive” I don’t mean “things which create progress,” I mean a specific political philosophy with a specific history. Sure, many conservatives are undoubtedly for things which create progress, but that doesn’t make them progressives.
The rest of your question I honestly just don’t understand. You can resubmit it, I guess, if it’s phrased in a more coherent manner and includes punctuation other than hyphens.
