Reply #13: salon.com had a great article: Relax, liberals. You've already won [View All]

[Douglas Carpenter]

By Michael Lind

link:
http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2008/06/10/liberals/index.html

No matter who prevails at the ballot box in November, John McCain or Barack Obama, the four-decade-long conservative counterrevolution is over.

"For 40 years, the radical right tried to destroy the domestic and international order that American liberals created in the central decades of the 20th century. The people who are known today as "conservatives" are better described as "counterrevolutionaries." The goal of Barry Goldwater and the intellectuals clustered around William F. Buckley Jr.'s National Review was not a slightly more conservative version of the New Deal or the U.N. system. They were reactionary radicals who dreamed of a counterrevolution. They didn't just want to stop the clock. They wanted to turn it back. "

snip:"Three great accomplishments defined midcentury American liberalism: liberal internationalism, middle-class entitlements like Social Security and Medicare, and liberal individualism in civil rights and the culture at large. For four decades, from 1968 to 2008, the counterrevolutionaries of the right waged war against the New Deal, liberal internationalism, and moral and cultural liberalism. They sought to abolish middle-class entitlements like Social Security and Medicare, to replace treaties and collective security with scorn for international law and U.S. global hegemony, and to reverse the trends toward individualism, secularism and pluralism in American culture.


And they failed. On every front conservatives have failed, completely, undeniably and irreversibly. The failure of the right has left the structure of 20th-century American liberalism standing, battered and cratered but still intact.

The counterrevolutionary right failed first in the "culture war." From the '60s onward, conservatives lost every major battle. Conservative Republicans paid lip service to opposition to abortion and appointed strict constructionists to the federal bench. But the Supreme Court has not repealed Roe v. Wade and, because of its allergy to repudiating precedent, is not likely to do so. (Yes, even if John McCain appoints the next justice or two.) Nor has it restored prayer in public schools. What is more, in 2003 the Supreme Court struck down anti-gay sodomy laws nationwide. Conservatives responded by successfully supporting many state laws or state constitutional amendments to ban gay marriage, in addition to the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) enacted in the Clinton years. The recent state Supreme Court decision legalizing gay marriage in California may yet be overturned by a popular initiative. But many of the goals of the gay rights movement have been achieved far sooner than anyone could have imagined as recently as the 1990s. Meanwhile, conservative campaigns to censor movies and TV and music were doomed first by cable TV and then by the Internet."

"Their number is negligible and they are stupid"

snip:"The counterrevolution is over. For 40 years the radical right has sought to uproot and overturn the American domestic and global order created by centrist liberals of both parties between the 1930s and the 1970s. Liberalism has survived, while the right is not only defeated but also demoralized, dispersed and diminishing. "

http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2008/06/10/liberals/index.html

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Allan J. Lichtman, Professor of History: the conservative era is coming to an end

the conservative era that began in 1980 is coming to an end


Conservative Disarray - Jun 6, 2008

link: http://news.google.com/news?btcid=70e35d3942b671

"One reason why the Keys to the White House, which have correctly predicted the popular-vote results of every presidential election since 1984, so strongly point to a Democratic victory this year is that the conservative era that began in 1980 is coming to an end. This is explained in my new book, White Protestant Nation: The Rise of the American Conservative Movement. As illustrated by the debate over immigration policies the movement is divided between pro-business and social conservatives. As illustrated by the persistent appeal of the once unknown Ron Paul conservatives are divided between conservatives with a libertarian bent and big government conservatives who have contradicted the ideals of limited government, fiscal responsibility, individual freedom, and states’ rights. During the Bush years, conservatives have built the biggest, most expensive, and most intrusive national government in the history of the Republic. Despite their disdain for social engineering by government, the Bush administration has undertaken in Iraq the most daunting and expensive social engineering project since the Reconstruction of the South. According to the Keys to the White House, conservative disarray is reflected in Republican midterm election losses, a lack of positive domestic accomplishments, setbacks abroad, and the failure to find an inspirational nominee."

link: http://news.google.com/news?btcid=70e35d3942b671

Professor Lichtman’s books include Prejudice and Old Politics: The Presidential Election of 1928; Your Family History; Ecological Inference; and The Keys to the White House. He was named the 1992-1993 Scholar-Teacher of the Year, the university’s highest faculty honor, and has provided commentary for all major U.S. broadcasting networks and cable companies, the Voice of America, and many foreign broadcast companies, including BBC and CBC. He worked with Dan Rather as a CBS consultant during the impeachment of President Clinton, served as the 2004 election-night analyst for BBC Worldwide, and is now political analyst for CNN Headline News. His more than 100 scholarly and popular articles have appeared in such journals and newspapers as the American Historical Review, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the New York Times, and the Washington Post. He is also a columnist for the Montgomery Gazette and has served as an expert witness in more than 70 voting rights and redistricting cases.

http://www.american.edu/cas/hist/faculty/lichtman.htm