One thing that has truly amazed me in studying the history of ideological battles and skirmishes throughout the course of time has been the repeated pattern of one side (usually the minority) co-opting the name of their opposition and savagely waging a war to achieve a dominant rank before the people, later rewriting the history to obscure these facts. A colleague has suggested this phenomena be described as “political identity theft.” One example LRC readers are especially aware of relates to the struggle over the ratification of the U.S. Constitution which carried over into the first decade of the Early … Continue reading →
One thing that has truly amazed me in studying the history of ideological battles and skirmishes throughout the course of time has been the repeated pattern of one side (usually the minority) co-opting the name of their opposition and savagely waging a war to achieve a dominant rank before the people, later rewriting the history to obscure these facts. A colleague has suggested this phenomena be described as “political identity theft.” One example LRC readers are especially aware of relates to the struggle over the ratification of the U.S. Constitution which carried over into the first decade of the Early National Period. This was the battle between the “Federalists” and the “Anti-Federalists,” later characterized during the Washington and Adams administrations as that between the “Federalists” and “Democratic-Republicans.”