Bill Nye the Zombie said:
First off, there were no Republicans during the Era of Good Feelings. There were only Democrats. Republicans only came around in the 1850s, unless you count the Know-Nothings who came in around the 1840s.
No, the party I'm talking about is mostly called "Democratic-Republicans" but I just call them Republicans because that's what they called themselves. The Democrats are not that party. By 1828 the Republican party had split into the Democrats led by Andrew Jackson and the National Republicans led by John Quincy Adams and Henry Clay.
As for the Know Nothings, those were mostly local mainly in Maryland IIRC, but when the Whig party disintegrated it split into the American Party and the Republican party the American party being the new Know Nothing party, that party then transitioned into the Constitutional Union party before finally going to the Republicans.
Bill Nye the Zombie said:
Second, we, a ragtag nation, managed to best the British Navy to the point where their newspapers were moaning about the fact they couldn't win,
Um they constantly won at the very least on the East Coast (hence why they burned down the White House), the Great Lakes got better towards the end but not anything conclusive.
Bill Nye the Zombie said:
Had the British government court- marshaling everyone and anyone who lost a battle, and stopped veteran armies from the Peninsula and other Napoleonic campaigns at Chippawa, Lundy's Lane, Baltimore, and at New Orleans, with an army of pirates, creoles, Kentuckian and Tennessean milita, and a handful of regular soldiers, we crushed the best the British had to offer with only a handful of casualties.
In a couple of battles, otherwise the British just steamrolled a bunch of untrained militia hence again WHY THEY BURNED THE WHITE HOUSE DOWN.
Bill Nye the Zombie said:
That by itself is something to be proud of, but at the same time, our country of 18 independent states became a nation, all because of "Mr. Madison's War".
Not sure it was called that, but the goal of the war was to capture Canada, not survive British onslaught, and in that objective Mr. Madison failed. Sure the Americans got lucky and repelled the British because the weather really hated them. Yah overall it did have positive effects on America, but that doesn't mean it was because the war was such a success.
Bill Nye the Zombie said:
And finally, they didn't "forget" to bring the ladders, the British general who was in charge of it ran, was court-martialed afterwords, and was dismissed from the service.
Doesn't seem like you negated what I said.
Joseph Harrison said:
1. Wait, there are people who actually think that Calvin "Oh-don't-mind-me-I'm-just-gonna-cause-the-Great-Depression" Coolidge is one of the Greatest Presidents?
Yup [http://iusbvision.wordpress.com/2010/05/17/in-honor-of-calvin-coolidge-a-great-president-few-remember/]. I would link to the GOP wall of their heroes, but apparently they took that content out.
Joseph Harrison said:
2. Polk was a war-mongering asshole who invaded Mexico and stole half their country so that slavery could expand. The Mexican Cession caused the Fugitive Slave act and Bleeding Kansas so no, I do not think he is the Best President.
The thing though was that he had a goal at the beginning of his office i.e. to expand the territory of the United States and deal with all of its foreign policy issues and he succeeded. He dealt with the SouthWest and he got Oregon all like he promised.
Joseph Harrison said:
6. George Washington is considered to be one of the Best Presidents because he really established what it meant to be president, he created the Cabinet and set up the two term system for Presidents which went unbroken til FDR. He also managed to stay independent along party lines while not being out of the loop. Personally, I don't find him all that great, the only thing he actually did was put down the Whiskey Rebellion but people still worship him.
Yah he did roughly nothing while the nation wasn't well booming. It just seems outside the Whiskey Rebellion and Jay's Treaty nothing happened during his term.
Joseph Harrison said:
Also The Federalists collapsed because they were against the War of 1812, which was immensely popular and because they wanted to secede from the US to form the Essex Junto.
The thing though was that their support was already falling apart, this was just the death blow.
Joseph Harrison said:
8. How do you define Liberal and Conservative? For me its:
Liberal= Big gov't, high taxes, high spending, change
Conseravtive= Small gov't, low taxes, low spending, keep things the same
I believe that Lincoln and Teddy both fall rather firmly in the Liberal category.
Lincoln again was sort of in the middle if not leaning towards Conservative, I mean he started out openly not even wanting to ban slavery just keep it from expanding into the territories. Yet he made a couple of steps to ban it (by then the border states had also banned slavery so there wasn't as much opposition to a national ban). His Reconstruction plan was well really lenient, only 10% of people pledging loyalty to the Union and they get to get re-admitted? He was more leaning on the Conservative Republicans so the Radical Republicans often threatened to leave the party (they temporarily ran against him in 1864 with John C. Fremont but Fremont dropped the campaign as election day approached).
Theodore Roosevelt called his Domestic Policy the "Square Deal" where he becomes the in between the Conservative and the Progressive. So I wouldn't exactly call him a liberal nor would I automatically associate Progressivism with Liberals because Progressivism is many different things that can go on all ends of the spectrum. For example Eugenics was a Progressive movement and Theodore Roosevelt was a pretty big racist when it came to foreign affairs, and that certainly was a pretty Conservative movement. Another example would be the Temperance movement which would evolve into the Prohibition movement, that was also considered a pretty Conservative movement but it was also Progressive. But like I said he was a compromise candidate like Woodrow Wilson, a guy in between. In 1912 he was pretty Liberal, but at that point he was probably just pretending to believe in that stuff because the whole point of his campaign was to get Taft to adopt a more Progressive platform.
But I generally think Liberal and Conservative are terms that are defined by time period and area, obviously a Conservative from Lincoln's time would all be irrelevant now. I mean even better when going back the 1790's, many of the issues there would be hard to place on our modern spectrum mainly because everything was so different. It's more interesting when going to other countries like say those in Eastern Europe, are Socialists left wingers or are they right wingers there? If Conservatism is trying to conserve what you had before then shouldn't Socialists there be right wingers? Things like that make me distrust the whole spectrum as simplifying such a complex thing as ideologies.
if someone picked up on it you got eliminated.
