1mo ago

What a long strange trips it's been

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Party realignment.
Wonder what the Democrats had at the time
- Further left, but with a racist bent in the south. The civil rights movement of the 60s, which was supported by LBJ, pushed many southern democrats to the republican party.
  
  An outcome which Johnson himself accurately predicted.
- No need to wonder!
  The full Republican platform: https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/republican-party-platform-1956
  The full Democratic platform: https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/1956-democratic-party-platform
  
  The preamble to the Democratic platform is as follows. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
  In the brief space of three and one-haft years, the people of the United States have come to realize, with tragic consequences, that our National Government cannot be trusted to the hands of political amateurs, dominated by representatives of special privilege.
  Four years ago they were beguiled, by empty promises and pledges, to elect as President a recent convert to Republicanism. Our people have now learned that the party of Lincoln has been made captive to big businessmen with small minds. They have found that they are now ruled by a Government which they did not elect, and to which they have not given their consent.
  
  I'm lazy so I used ChatGPT to summarize and compare both articles since they was a metric fuckton of information and I have shit to do.
  ----CHATGPT Contrast and Summary----
  The 1956 Democratic and Republican Party Platforms reveal several key differences in their approaches to governance and policy priorities:
  1. Foreign Policy and National Defense:
  Democratic Party: Criticized the Republican administration's foreign policy since 1953, accusing it of confusing timidity with courage and blindness with enlightenment.
  Republican Party: Praised President Dwight D. Eisenhower's leadership in securing peace and fostering prosperity, emphasizing a limited role of government in foreign affairs.
  2. Civil Rights:
  Democratic Party: Advocated for voting rights, equal employment opportunities, and the desegregation of public schools.
  Republican Party: Committed to ensuring that all citizens, regardless of race, creed, or color, may know the blessings of freedom, focusing on equal opportunity and protection of individual freedoms.
  3. Social Programs and Economic Policies:
  Democratic Party: Proposed increased spending on social welfare and agricultural programs, emphasizing comprehensive development and conservation of natural resources.
  Republican Party: Praised advancements in social programs such as expanded Social Security, broadened unemployment insurance, improved housing, and better health protection, celebrating economic prosperity achieved under their policies.
  4. Atomic Energy:
  Democratic Party: Supported the peaceful use of atomic energy, highlighting its potential benefits for the nation.
  Republican Party: Did not explicitly address atomic energy, focusing more on the peaceful use of atomic energy.
  5. Government Integrity:
  Democratic Party: Emphasized restoring American leadership and criticized the Republican administration's performance.
  Republican Party: Stressed the importance of unimpeachable ethical standards and irreproachable personal conduct by government officials, pledging to root out corruption whenever and wherever it appears.
  In summary, the Democratic Party's platform in 1956 focused on critiquing the Republican administration's foreign policy and advocating for increased government intervention in social and economic matters. In contrast, the Republican Party's platform praised existing advancements, emphasized limited government intervention, and focused on individual freedoms and ethical governance.
  
  Holy shit, I want this presidential debate. I want to decide between these two parties.
  
  A better way to contribute to the discussion would be to add your thoughts after "I used chat gpt to summarize the articles" instead of copying the LLM output.
  
  I'm going to very lightly disagree here and say that I found this informative and it saved me from having to read the entire platforms and then summarize them for myself.
  We are all responsible for educating ourselves and llms are error prone but that does not remove all the value from this post. Today, this post helped me better understand the history of our parties in a way that wouldn't have happened otherwise.
  Would it have been better if a domain expert had stepped in and summarized, absolutely. But we can't all be domain experts, we don't all have all the time to read all the things. Sometimes it's nice that we have an algorithm that can do a "good enough" job at summarizing things.
  
  You're right. Their "this is an LLM summary" contributed to the discussion regardless of any additional commentary.
  
  Or they could have just not said they used an LLM to summarize but the output has a very LLM AI feel to it.
  
  I wanted to support more people understanding the information without having to read through 326 pages (exaggeration, of course) as some of us are time bound. Others won't take the time of say to click either link at all. This provides the opportunity to read a quick summary without the need of deep diving. I was transparent about it as to not be misleading in any way.
  Often there are times when I wish someone would do this on posts because the amount of and mixture of relevant and non relevant information can be overwhelming and/or time consuming.
  My goal was to show the relevant information in an easy to read format. I thought it would be more important to spread the information than to share my own thoughts on the matter.

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