In the flurry of reaction to Senate majority leader Harry Reid’s comparison of conservative resistance to passing health care reform to historical instances of conservative resistance to change, one is taken back a bit. It’s true that Reid’s argument was stiff and awkward, but the substance of his point is not really a historical controversy whatsoever: political conservatives have resisted change throughout the history of these United States.

We would do well not to confuse or conflate the conservative political philosophy with the Republican party- especially in historical terns. Contemporary conservative Republicans – especially in the South- have often (if deceptively) pointed out that it was the Democratic Party that resisted Civil Rights in much of the South from the 1890s to the 1960s. What this rhetorical slight of hand ignores is that those Southern Democrats were unambiguously philosophically conservative. Every major advance toward a more just society in the history of these United States has been opposed by conservatives. The record is clear. Below is but a sample of the changes and advances that were opposed political conservatives (whatever their party)  at the time of of the change (whether through legislation, legal precedent, or general practice).

• Extension of the franchise to landless (poor) White men.
• Publicly funded education for all male citizens.
• Abolition of the Slave trade and limitation to its practice in established zones.
• Abolition of the practice of slavery.
• Extension of the franchise to all non-whites and women.
• An end to child labor.
• The 8-hour work day & worker’s compensation.
• Establishment of Social Security and a basic Social Safety Net.
• Glass-Stegall Act- establishment of the FDIC and regulation of the financial sector.
• Passage of the GI Bill and the Fair Housing Act
• Creation of the FDA, EPA, Department of Labor, and other Worker and Consumer Protections
• Brown vs. Board of Education- desegregation.
• Voting Rights and Civil Rights Acts.
• Passage of Minimum Wage Laws.
• Loving vs. Virginia (an end to bans on interracial marriage)
• Higher Education Act- creation of the Pell Grant and Loan Programs
• Establishment of National Parks and land set-aside for non-commercial use.
• The Equal Rights Amendment (not passed)
• Clayton Act – Trustbusting and other regulation of commercial interests
• Establishment of Miranda Rights
• Establishment of Medicare & Medicaid

Very, very few folks who identify themselves as conservatives in the modern political environment would argue agains the existence of any of these rights and institutions. One wonders- on the one hand, why do so many conservatives ignore their own ideological genealogy- and on the other, how many issues currently debated will be as shocking to the conscience of future generations as the idea of debate over the moral imperative of the above issues is to our own.