Well, I learned something today. You can't do a strike in the post title. Democrat. Republican. Tomaytoe, tomahtoe.
Now, name one program since Eisenhower, initiated by conservatives in
Congress, that the nation looks back on and breathes a collective sigh,
on the order of: “Whew, we dodged a bullet when we reversed that
progressive misstep.” The left reflects proudly on the strongest part of
its history: Where would we be without Social Security and Medicare? It
was the Truman administration that integrated the armed forces, and it
was Lyndon Johnson who openly embraced the civil rights movement and
helped advance the cause of social justice. Conservatives were wary of
these initiatives at the time they were publicly debated. Do gays make
good parents? Would gay marriage do irreparable harm to the American
family tradition? Would the Affordable Care Act create death panels? It
takes less and less time these days for conservatives to be proven
wrong, to have panicked.
Some would almost say there's a difference between Democrats and Republicans.
Ideology is corrupting. On the major issues of the day we need
citizen education to encourage the kind of independence of thought that
fortifies common sense, that balances the just fears of conservatives
against programs that (a) insure social progress in the United States
and (b) preserve the natural world that sustains the ever-increasing
billions on the planet. And we need historical perspective, too. Badly.
Because conservatives are generally wrong when they claim, “the past was
better when….”
Here’s where the conservatives are right: when
they hold up the “great books” of times gone by that need to be a part
of a citizen’s education, worried lest today’s faddism replace proven
standards of social value.
I had a long conversation with Matthew Sheffield about the failure of
Democratic institutions. We went pretty far-ranging in this long
conversation. If y...
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