Originally Posted by Senator Hatrack
To have a good discussion an apology for even thinking that my conservatism is in any way similar to the southern Democrat conservatives who wanted to bring back slavery or supported segregation. I have a website 272-words.com. The name of the website comes from Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, which is 272 words long. Someone who is a Lincoln fan like I am would not be a southern Democrat Conservative or a supporter of segregation. Those southern Democrat conservatives were very helpful in getting FDR's New Deal programs passed by Congress. That leaves the very odious stain of segregation on the New Deal.
Okay, that's a start. Please explain how your conservatism is different.

I am a huge Lincoln fan, too. He was the first good Republican, but not the last. But they have become awfully rare...

Go back, again, and read the sentences you are responding to critically. I didn't say you were an unreformed segregationist, or anything like that. What I said was
Quote
Much of what you are espousing follows, faithfully, the tenets of "Lost Cause" mythology. I don't know if that is deliberate, or just a consequence of being rabidly "conservative" in your viewpoint, but it is not realistic or consistent with where the country is, now, or has been for over a century.
The paths are parallel. I explicitly did not say they were the same thing.

My point, really, is that the United States before, and after, the Civil War was and is a very different country than at the time of its founding. The "Lost Cause" mythology pretends that the war was about "states' rights", rather than slavery, to give it a "noble" feel. Adherents spend a good deal of time selectively quoting (anti-federalist) founders about how the central government is "limited" and real power remains with the individual States - when that has not been the case since 1790, or 1800 (consider the Louisiana purchase), or 1812, or 1846, or 1860... but that reality was made explicit with the 13th-15th Amendments. So, the desire to "go back" to the "good old days" is based upon something that never really existed.

It is that yearning for a past that doesn't exist that creates what I consider the parallels between the "lost cause" and "libertarian"/"conservative" arguments. The labels are particularly instructive - preferring "constitutional republic" to "representative democracy", as if they were different things; identifying as "classical liberal" instead of "conservative". As is the argumentation - pretending that "the founders" were not motivated to create a strong central government, while ignoring the Supremacy clause and its implications (and all of the federalists among the founders); arguing that a "small government" was their goal, but ignoring the growth of the government from its inception. Federal Government Growth Before the New Deal (Foundation for Economic Education). The nation's population is 100 times what it was in 1790 and the land mass has more than tripled. How small a government can regulate such a situation?