this post was submitted on 12 Oct 2026
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That was when republicans were the progressives and democrats were the conservatives, though.
Before the party flip, it makes little sense to refer to ‘republicans’ and ‘democrats’. Those labels changed, not only in their values, but what the ‘conservative’ and ‘progressive’ platforms even were at that time, since there were different crossover issues than in today’s society.
Yep. Conservatives came to be called that because they were interested in conservation of nature, before it came to describe fiscal policy or religious extremism. the conservatives of today are nothing like them.
to my understanding, that is very much not true.
the terminology of being a "conservative" did not come from supporting conservation of nature. that might be one aspect, and indeed, still today, there are conservatives that are very much interested in the conservation of nature, but this is not where it came from. it came from schools of thought in the american and french revolution concerning conservation of aspects of tradition, aristocracy, royalty, and religion.
afaik, this has also been the case tbroughout american history as well. perhaps you are referring to people like teddy roosevelt, who identified as a conservative to the public and had conservationist views and policies.
You say it's not true, but then you describe a time during which the word was used in a different way, as more of an adjective or categorization than to name a party defined by that category. I stand by what I said.
Many "conservatives" of today shouldn't be called that imho, it's more like they are progressive but in a different direction
Regressives?
They’re just reactionaries
Mmm it was mid flip. Don't forget that Republicans railed against Social Security that FDR was proposing.
Before the major flip during the Southern Strategy of the 60s/70s, though.
That’s sort of what I meant by crossover issues early on making even ‘conservative’ and ‘progressive’ muddy, even beyond ‘Republican’ and ‘Democratic’ being basically meaningless to our modern ears.