Maybe U.S. is reverting to its true, conservative self - Strib oped

[question everything]

Published June 6, 2004

"We want our country back" is a common utterance these days from liberals and moderates upset over what they see as a sharp rightward turn in the nation's foreign and domestic policies since George W. Bush assumed the presidency in 2001. I admit to feeling sour myself about our president, apparently in much the way some of my friends felt about Bill Clinton back in the distant mists of the 1990s.

The problem with the left-center lament about Bush, however, is that our country won't be coming back. Rather, after a brief 50-year flirtation with liberalism (1932-1980), America is in the process of returning to its true conservative self.

That's the thesis, at least, of a splendid new book by two American-based journalists for the Economist. No publication has a keener sense for the American scene than this generally conservative British magazine, a fact that should give extra weight to the book that John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge have titled "The Right Nation: Conservative Power in America."

(snip)

If "Right Nation" is too bitter a pill, I'd suggest a chaser that might leave the moderate-to-liberal reader in a more hopeful mood. In "Reason: Why Liberals Will Win the Battle for America," Robert Reich sees Bush and friends as recklessly overplaying their hand. These are radicals, Reich suggests, not true conservatives who, by definition, are cautious, skeptical of big ideas and risky moves. The Brandeis University economist undresses the conservative movement by exposing its ironies: its selective morality (sex is more sinful than corporate fraud), its failure to bash the growth of government and red ink under Bush, its demonizing of a liberal establishment that no longer exists -- if it ever really did.

(snip)

Steve Berg is at [e-mail]

http://www.startribune.com/stories/1519/4812568.html

[Jade Fox]

1. Things evolve forward, not backwards....

This country's 50 year (brief?) flirtation with liberalism has changed
not only us but the rest of the world permenantly. Trying to force
us to devolve simply won't work. That's why Conservatives have to
resort to corrupt tactics to accomplish their goals. But its like they are
trying to push a rock up hill--difficult and temporary at best.

We need fresh thinking to solve our current problems, not the same
old crap from either the right or left.

[Voltaire99]

2. The window for 20th century US liberalism is even smaller than 50 years

The New Deal represented a high point in liberalism, but alongside it rose conservative institutions fueled by Cold War paranoia: the vast American military machine deployed ruthlessly abroad and the quasi-permanent House Committee on Un-American Activities deployed ruthlessly at home (it outlived its star, McCarthy, lasting into the 60s).

Socially and culturally, conservative institutions struck back at liberalism's every gain. They unleashed massive, murderous violence against the Civil Rights struggle. They purged Hollywood and TV of "enemy" creators, from brilliant socialist writers like Clifford Odets to funnymen like the Smothers Brothers (their crime: mocking Nixon). US newspapers regurgitated what they were told, making events like the publication of the Pentagon Papers or Watergate coverage bright exceptions to the rule of customary obedience.

Arguably the legal high point and the last gasp of US liberalism comes in the 60s and 70s with the Warren Court paving the way for rights and liberties while curtailing the police powers that conservatism had long used to control dissent: here at last was the Bill of Rights made practical. The reaction against these rulings, from speech to reproductive freedoms to privacy to assembly, has been relentless ever since, fueling the candidacies of right wing monsters such as Reagan and his heir, Bush. (Arguably, conservative America conceives liberty as merely the unfettered right of the rich to forcibly enjoin everyone else in making them money.)

So while liberalism is in its ascent briefly on some fronts in the 20th century, conservatism is active on many fronts equally as important as, and sometimes more important than, government social programs or theoretical (but seldom fully enjoyed) rights and liberties. The light has always been obscured by the darkness in America. It's just that for many years, there has been almost no light.