Democrats et al.

[John Cowan]

I never realized until today that the U.S. Democratic Party is the oldest
continuous political party in the world, dating from 1792. Its particular
positions (insofar as it has any) have changed a great deal since then,
but organizationally it is the direct descendant of Thomas Jefferson's
Democratic-Republican Party.

The second oldest is probably the modern U.K. Conservative Party, which
split off from the Whig party around 1800; it is not continuous with the
older Tory party, despite the common nickname. (There was also briefly
an American Whig Party, which split off from the Democrats around 1830
and died around 1855; Northern Whigs were involved in the founding of
the modern Republican Party in 1854.)

--
Andrew Watt on Microsoft: John Cowan
Never in the field of human computing co...@ccil.org
has so much been paid by so many http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
to so few! (pace Winston Churchill)