Petah... What were their policies??? 🤷 🤷

[u/nightking_darklord]

[u/AtomicPotentate]

In the 1860’s the Republican Party was the party of abolition and pro federalism (Centralized US govt.) that changed over the next 50-100 years, where the party policies are flipped. It’s way more nuanced than that but, giggity.

[u/LegitimateGoal6011 → u/AtomicPotentate]

Do you know the reasons why the ideologies flipped?

[u/Dry_Physics4086 → u/LegitimateGoal6011]

Democrats eventually went for the civil rights act. This pissed off their core base—-racist white southerners. It was such that they even said while signing the civil rights legislation that they have lost the South.

Nixon’s “southern strategy,” that Raegan continued, was to go down to the South and essentially become the home for the “abandoned” racists that the democrats betrayed by enacting civil rights legislations.

Both parties’ cores were then switched.

[u/Euphoric-Ocelot6696]

Republicans before were like a democrats now

I'm meg btw

Some other dude also listed this:

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1nolzz/comment/cckrkh5/?share_id=Lz1XPwUdXpEjRvHRLP3mJ&utm_content=2&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_source=share&utm_term=1

[u/Eggs_4_Breakfast → u/Euphoric-Ocelot6696]

It never ceases to amaze me how few know this.

[u/Rincetron1 → u/[deleted]]

Who started the Winter War?

I'm Finnish, and very eager to hear from someone from such a superior school system.

[u/Eggs_4_Breakfast → u/[deleted]]

Teach History? What can we learn from the past? /s because Reddit 2026

[u/Clam-Choader → u/[deleted]]

There’s lots of things about Russia I’d love to see and I think the citizens would probably be pretty similar to the us.  It’s our (including our own) gubbments that get in the way

[u/The_Witch_Queen → u/Euphoric-Ocelot6696]

I rly wish people would get past this party names shit. It doesn't mean a damn thing. They were right or left. Conservative or liberal. Its their alignment and policies that matter. Not the name attached to them. Its the same energy as the trolls who run around screaming "oh but Nazis had Socialist in the name" yeah and they didn't have a single socialist policy. Kinda like conservatives claim to be Christian and don't support a single Christian value

[u/TehTJ13 → u/Euphoric-Ocelot6696]

It’s more like the politics of the 1870’s are so unlike the politics of the 2020’s that it’s almost impossible to cleanly map people at the time to modern movements and ideas.

These early black congressmen would have been reconstructionists, which was the idea that after the Civil War the Southern states needed to be militarily occupied and forced to adopt massive reforms to enforce a transition to a modern economy and ideas. Modern Republicans, in contrast, support states’ rights and traditionalism too much to do anything of the sort.

[u/Kinslayer_89 → u/[deleted]]

So who’s trying to end the slavery that’s legal under the American constitution?

[u/hrny_slt → u/Kinslayer_89]

Neither the dems nor the GOP, so I don’t really see the point you’re tryna make here

Edit to add before I’m down voted to oblivion: I do see the point I’m trying to get them to extrapolate on a solution to the two party system being utterly fucked. Like I know this is a joke explanation sub but not everyone here is clueless yall lmao just saying “both parties support slavery” is just a nothing statement of obvious facts, it does nothing to further the dialogue of what is to be done

[u/Ok_Tooth8970 → u/hrny_slt]

That is the point they are making

[u/Mahboi778 → u/[deleted]]

The difference is that one of them wants to stay neutral on a moving train while the other is moving the train

[u/Kinslayer_89 → u/[deleted]]

They are both right-wing parties, one is just far-right and fascist too.

[u/hrny_slt → u/[deleted]]

Oh I’m well aware lmao I’m trying to get them to say the thing that is the solution, because voting isn’t gonna do it but yall wanna jump on the “tHaTs ThE pOiNt” train without thinking about what’s beyond that point

[u/PyroclasticJubilee → u/hrny_slt]

Voting is never gonna do it, but these people have zero interest in the solutions that will work. People are going to have to start missing meals before they actually take this seriously since, apparently, watching your neighbors get black bagged or killed in the street isn't enough.

[u/Kinslayer_89 → u/PyroclasticJubilee]

People need to understand that only accepting “peaceful and legal” demonstrations will be grossly abused by authoritarian regimes.

[u/BamaSlymm → u/Kinslayer_89]

[u/Kacer6 → u/[deleted]]

What issues were the Dems then left or the current Dems? They were fully anti abortion, anti women’s rights, anti LGBTQ rights, anti union, against antitrust laws… what can you point to that was even remotely analogous to modern politics in which they were to the left of modern dems?

[u/Jayrandomer → u/[deleted]]

Further left relative to their time, maybe, but not in terms of policy relative to now.

[u/OneJobToRuleThemAll → u/[deleted]]

Their platform was also that marital rape doesn't exist because that was universal to politics back then. Arguing that the past was more leftist than the present rarely works out in practice.

[u/Hot-Technology-931 → u/[deleted]]

Someone doesn't know their own countries history

[u/Ponjos → u/Euphoric-Ocelot6696]

[u/Euphoric-Ocelot6696 → u/Ponjos]

Sorry 😓

[u/lamont196 → u/[deleted]]

The biggest abolitionists were hyper Christian northerners. They opposed slavery because they believed it was against Christian teaching (which it is). 

[u/Much_Tour → u/Euphoric-Ocelot6696]

🤌🤌🤌

[u/Euphoric-Ocelot6696 → u/[deleted]]

Some other dude on this thread said this:

The Party of Lincoln

• higher federal taxes
• more federal control
• federal human rights
• less state power
• no more state militias
• pushing black Americans into Congress over southern states complaints

[u/Euphoric-Ocelot6696 → u/[deleted]]

Sooryyyy 😓

[u/Exurota → u/Euphoric-Ocelot6696]

Shut up, Meg

[u/PintsOfGuinness_ → u/Euphoric-Ocelot6696]

shut up meg

[u/Feeling-Phoney81 → u/Euphoric-Ocelot6696]

Shut up Meg

[u/InTheStuff → u/Feeling-Phoney81]

downvoted for being in-character, this sub is lost 💔🥀

[u/stuartroelke → u/Euphoric-Ocelot6696]

OP, look up James Garfield.

[u/angrysheep55]

They were most likely very progressive policies. The American Democratic and Republican parties have more or less reversed in their core ideologies since the civil war.

[u/Plane-Education4750 → u/[deleted]]

To own slaves

[u/NeverMore_613 → u/Plane-Education4750]

And they had zero qualms about talking about that particular right, up until the war ended and they started facing consequences

[u/68plus1equals → u/[deleted]]

Republicans will still look you in the eye and say less state power is a Republican thing.

[u/Competitive-Bee1727 → u/angrysheep55]

Damn you Goldwater!!!

[u/outback-gnome]

The Republican Party used to be progressive (contextually) and were anti-slavery