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New Doesn't Always Mean Improved
By David Glenn Cox
I never liked the term New Democrat since it first appeared with the rise of Bill Clinton. I didn’t like it because it implied, like so many other products that we are sold, that it was an improved Democrat. I never saw a problem with the old formula Democrats. In fact, I liked what they were saying.
“Here is my principle: Taxes shall be levied according to ability to pay. That is the only American principle.” (Franklin Deleno Roosevelt)
For some reason these New Democrats were calling themselves pro-growth Democrats. That is all well and good, but the facts speak for themselves that the greatest time of modern prosperity and growth was under the Old Democrats.
“We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals; we know now that it is bad economics. Out of the collapse of a prosperity whose builders boasted their practicality has come the conviction that in the long run economic morality pays. We are beginning to wipe out the line that divides the practical from the ideal; and in so doing we are fashioning an instrument of unimagined power for the establishment of a morally better world.” (Franklin Deleno Roosevelt)
After eight years of the Reagan richfest and four more Treasurypaloosas under Bush the elder, Republican backers and the big money boys wouldn’t support a Democrat unless they were certain that he wouldn’t dig up the bones of FDR and beat them over their skulls with them. But that is all ancient history now; hell, that’s five wars ago.
“More than an end to war, we want an end to the beginning of all wars - yes, an end to this brutal, inhuman and thoroughly impractical method of settling the differences between governments.” (Franklin Deleno Roosevelt)
“Don't forget what I discovered, that over ninety percent of all national deficits from 1921 to 1939 were caused by payments for past, present, and future wars.” (Franklin Deleno Roosevelt)
“The basic problems facing the world today are not susceptible to a military solution.” (John F. Kennedy)
Since the days of Ronald Reagan we have seen an orchestrated decline in organized labor and with it a decline in wages for both union and non-union workers alike. We have seen a decline in employer-supplied private healthcare which the current President, in his speech to Congress, said that he did not want to see changed. Yet when push comes to shove and it’s time to choose between a tax on millionaires or a tax on working people’s healthcare benefits, the President, a New Democrat, sides with the millionaires. He sides with the very position that he argued against during the campaign when John McCain first suggested it.
“You don’t get any double talk from me, I’m either for something or against it, and you know it!” (Harry S. Truman)
“Rules are not necessarily sacred, principles are.” (Franklin Deleno Roosevelt)
“The President is the people's lobbyist.” (Hubert H. Humphrey)
“I believe that, as long as there is plenty, poverty is evil.” (Robert F. Kennedy)
I find it absurd, the idea of taxing those with healthcare to pay for those who have none while leaving untouched those whose tax burden has dropped by 50% since "old" Democrats were in office.
“If I went to work in a factory the first thing I'd do is join a union.” (Franklin Deleno Roosevelt)
“My father always told me that all businessmen were sons of bitches, but I never believed it till now.” (John F. Kennedy)
“It is time that all Americans realized that the place of labor is side by side with the businessman and with the farmer, and not one degree lower.” (Harry S. Truman)
We have seen, since 9/11, our civil justice eroded and ever more preventative wars on countries who have done nothing to us. Afghanistan didn’t attack us any more than Kansas attacked Oklahoma when Timothy McVeigh bombed the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. When the telecoms agreed to allow the government to illegally wiretap telephones, the New Democrats voted to absolve them of all guilt. That bumbling boob, Bush, and his crooked hack lawyers gave us the Patriot Act and indefinite detention, but the current President, the constitutional law professor and New Democrat, has recodified them into law.
“The truth is found when men are free to pursue it.” (Franklin Deleno Roosevelt)
“When even one American - who has done nothing wrong - is forced by fear to shut his mind and close his mouth - then all Americans are in peril.” (Harry S. Truman)
“Conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth.” (John F. Kennedy)
“Whoever seeks to set one religion against another seeks to destroy all religion.” (Franklin Deleno Roosevelt)
“The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie, deliberate, contrived and dishonest, but the myth, persistent, persuasive and unrealistic.” (John F. Kennedy)
Now it appears to me, and this is just my opinion, New Democrats are like lions who haven’t been to see the wizard yet. They run for office roaring about progressive planks, but once elected they wring their tails and snivel, “Maybe we had better just go along with the Republicans. They might make us look bad; we might not be able to raise campaign money for re-election." Or even worse they brazenly stand their ground in their tin hats in the rain against programs that the public overwhelmingly favors and needs until their axe rusts in their hand. And then, of course, there are the straw men who are without a brain, but all of these New Democrats are unwilling or unable to take on the wicked witch for fear that she might be useful to them some day.
Give me the old lions because the past is our future.
“Gross National Product measures neither the health of our children, the quality of their education, nor the joy of their play. It measures neither the beauty of our poetry, nor the strength of our marriages. It is indifferent to the decency of our factories and the safety of our streets alike. It measures neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our wit nor our courage, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country. It measures everything in short, except that which makes life worth living. It can tell us everything about our country, except those things which make us proud to be a part of it.” (Robert F. Kennedy)
“I wonder how many times you have to be hit on the head before you find out who’s hitting you? These Republican gluttons of privilege are cold men. They are cunning men… They want the return of the Wall Street economic dictatorship.” (Harry S. Truman)
“We have come to a clear realization of the fact that true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. 'Necessitous men are not free men.' People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.
"In our day these economic truths have become accepted as self-evident. We have accepted, so to speak, a second Bill of Rights under which a new basis of security and prosperity can be established for all—regardless of station, race, or creed.
Among these are:
The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the nation;
The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation;
The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living;
The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad;
The right of every family to a decent home;
The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health;
The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment;
The right to a good education.”
(Franklin Deleno Roosevelt)
“The seeds of totalitarian regimes are nurtured by misery and want. They spread and grow in the evil soil of poverty and strife. They reach their full growth when the hope of a people for a better life has died. We must keep hope alive. “ (Harry S. Truman)
I wouldn’t trade a capful of the old for a whole cargo of the new!
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