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Ask
Auntie Pinko
July
5, 2001
Dear Auntie Pinko,
I consider myself a liberal, and maybe even a radical,
since I've gone to my fair share of demonstrations, being
tear gassed and arrested six times. I'm quite proud of that
fact, actually. Anyway, I would like to have this idea confirmed.
I think the Democratic Party turned liberal (I heard that
it used to be anti-communist and anti-civil rights) after
the antiwar protests. Please tell me if I'm correct. Thanks,
Alexandra,
San Francisco
Dear Alexandra,
Kudos to you for your willingness to risk your own comfort
and convenience in the causes you care about. But do take
care of yourself, please-we need our people of passion! And
remember that nonviolence always carries greater moral power
than violence (I know that's not much comfort when you're
suffering from a tear-gassing, but nevertheless, it's an important
principle to remember.)
Auntie Pinko always enjoys chatting about the fascinating
history of the Democratic Party. Throughout the 20th Century
it has represented, in a general sense, the "leftward" or
"liberal" side of American political ideology. But, as with
most political parties, it is subject to the influence of
its members' changing perceptions and goals. In other words,
what constituted "liberal" in 1920 differed from what was
considered acceptably "liberal" in 1950, and again from what
might be called "liberal" today.
Politics, it has been observed, is the Art of the Possible,
and that has also combined with the Party membership's beliefs
to shape the realities of Democratic policy. Auntie Pinko
well remembers the Party's struggle with "boll weevil Democrats"
in the 1950s and 1960s. It represented a definite "rightward
shift" in a Party that had already seen at least three positions
on the political spectrum between 1900 and 1950.
At the turn of the 20th Century, the Democratic Party learned
a critical lesson from the about-to-vanish Progressive wing
of the GOP. Mr. Theodore Roosevelt's popular success and support
in going after "trusts" and other abuses of unchecked capitalist
greed, while it alienated him from the powerful within his
own party, showed that there was a future for a Party willing
to carry on that fight.
In consequence, the Democratic Party shifted leftward from
its post Civil-War economic positions, and scooped up a vast
new membership in the rapidly urbanizing, industrializing
East. Throughout the early years of the century, issues of
"trust-busting," and regulating business practices to preserve
the public good (food safety laws, child labor laws, etc.
formed the heart of the Party's policies. There were plenty
of protests in the streets then, too.
When the pendulum swung back, in the post WW I era, pro-labor
Democratic policies such as trade protectionism proved to
be a liability, and a more rightward-leaning stance was adopted
in attempt to compete with the runaway success of the Republicans.
After the consequences of unregulated capital driving the
economy became gruesomely clear in 1929, again the Democratic
Party shifted leftward for the New Deal and the great labor
reforms-perhaps the most vigorous period of grassroots protest
in the 20th Century, certainly the bloodiest.
The combination of nearly universal anti-communist paranoia
and huge economic surges that followed WW II swung the Party
leadership rightward again-but it should be noted that it
was Democrats who worked hardest to bring a halt to the shameful
era of McCarthyism, and that even though many southern Democrats
actively opposed their Party's stance, it was the Democratic
Party that carried the Civil Rights reforms of the 1950s and
early 1960s, even before the era of anti-Vietnamese War protest.
And those Democratic-supported Civil Rights protests provided
the "training ground" for the later antiwar protests.
In short, Alexandra, we Democrats have been "taking to the
streets" throughout the 20th Century, and the Party's leadership
has shifted leftward, rightward, leftward again, many times
in Auntie Pinko's lifetime!
Thank you for writing to Auntie Pinko!
View Auntie's Archive
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