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Moonhead -> RE: What is a Whig? (3/23/2011 10:11:27 AM)
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Whigs are a now defunct UK century political party (probably best known for being the opposition party to Pitt the younger's Tories under Charles Jame Fox*), whose role has since been taken over by by other parties. They originally had a Scots Presbyterian agenda (unlike the Tories who, then as now, were basically the Church of England in parliament), and were noted for their opposition to slavery and monarchical power. I think the latter led to them spreading over the Atlantic to the 'States after that big tea party in Boston proved so successful.
A related note is the notorious "Whig Interpretation of History" which was used to castigate an approach to writing histories that Butterfield found reductive and useless: the dismissal of all the past as a slow ascent from savagery to the perfection of the current system, in which the poor savages of past history are only to be seen of any worth insofar as they resemble us. Butterfield gave this approach a good and well deserved kicking, but unfortunately it's still widely used by a lot of Historians, few of whom are whigs.
*(Not him out Performance.)
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