"The more fundamental difference between the Obama era and its New Deal and Great Society predecessors is this: Back then, progressives did not define the left end of the political spectrum. In the 1930s and 1960s, America featured honest-to-goodness alternatives to capitalism, home-grown radical movements that scared the crap out of the American establishment and sent some of its denizens scurrying into arms of reformers like FDR and LBJ. Because our entire ideological spectrum has shifted right since communism’s collapse, reforms that once looked like centrist compromises now look like the brainchild of Chairman Mao." -Peter Beinart, The Daily Beast.
And so through historical ignorance and naked partisanship a conservative moderate is now referred to with a straight face by the political right as the most liberal president in our history. And I suppose some people always just need someone to hate.
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Tuesday, July 13, 2010
Something Someone Else Said
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5 comments:
Good comment. I may just have to quote you sometime.
Thanks, Leslie. I was using my "sage political pundit" voice.
They went with FDR only so far.
The later New Deal legislation after 1935 was attacked as being Marxist, and led to the formation of the American Liberty League by Right-wing Democrats.
Their rhetoric included calling it "a trend toward Fascist control" and the "end of Democracy" (sound familiar?) - though they stopped short of wholesale attack on the National Regulatory Authority because child labor was just a tad too hard to defend publicly.
The League got nowhere and actually helped FDR by being too over the top. Unions sided with him and their strength in the post war years was arguably largely responsible for the sharing of American prosperity during that time
... until Reagan came along of course.
With the unions nobbled the shithead Right moved political leverage decisively their way.
Is that Pappy O'Daniel in the image?
Pappy's gonna get himself some of that good "reform", one L.
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