4 ms·

Not sure where you were going at the end there, but for what it's worth: modern day conservatives are not equivalent to the confederacy in the civil war. Abraha

• aaronem 13y ago
  What polarizes Americans today is exactly what polarized Americans then. Any given "issue", for example gun control, means precisely as much, in the context of that conflict, as Afghanistan meant in the context of the Cold War. But you will note that at no point, in the comment to which you replied, did I give a name to either faction of which I spoke. This was quite deliberate. I have names for those factions. So do you. So does anyone who might take part in a discussion like this one. But those names aren't all that often the same, and even when they are, it usually turns out that each party has his own idea of precisely what they mean. Throwing names around, in my experience, tends very strongly to confuse the matter, rather than to clarify it. That said, I'll grant I did not expect a comment like yours. Where did you happen upon the remarkable idea that "Republican", a century and a half ago, meant anything remotely similar to what it means today?