See other Editorial Articles
Title: The Rise of the Regressive Right and the Reawakening of America
Source:
[None]
URL Source: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article29427.htm
Published: Oct 16, 2011
Author: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info
Post Date: 2011-10-16 16:34:43 by tom007
Keywords: None
Views: 132
Comments: 6
The Rise of the Regressive Right and the Reawakening of America By Robert Reich October 16, 2011 "Information Clearing House" -- A fundamental war has been waged in this nation since its founding, between progressive forces pushing us forward and regressive forces pulling us backward. We are going to battle once again. Progressives believe in openness, equal opportunity, and tolerance. Progressives assume we’re all in it together: We all benefit from public investments in schools and health care and infrastructure. And we all do better with strong safety nets, reasonable constraints on Wall Street and big business, and a truly progressive tax system. Progressives worry when the rich and privileged become powerful enough to undermine democracy. Regressives take the opposite positions. Eric Cantor, Paul Ryan, Rick Perry, Michele Bachmann and the other tribunes of today’s Republican right aren’t really conservatives. Their goal isn’t to conserve what we have. It’s to take us backwards. They’d like to return to the 1920s — before Social Security, unemployment insurance, labor laws, the minimum wage, Medicare and Medicaid, worker safety laws, the Environmental Protection Act, the Glass-Steagall Act, the Securities and Exchange Act, and the Voting Rights Act. In the 1920s Wall Street was unfettered, the rich grew far richer and everyone else went deep into debt, and the nation closed its doors to immigrants. Rather than conserve the economy, these regressives want to resurrect the classical economics of the 1920s — the view that economic downturns are best addressed by doing nothing until the “rot” is purged out of the system (as Andrew Mellon, Herbert Hoover’s Treasury Secretary, so decorously put it). In truth, if they had their way we’d be back in the late nineteenth century — before the federal income tax, antitrust laws, the pure food and drug act, and the Federal Reserve. A time when robber barons — railroad, financial, and oil titans — ran the country. A time of wrenching squalor for the many and mind-numbing wealth for the few. Listen carefully to today’s Republican right and you hear the same Social Darwinism Americans were fed more than a century ago to justify the brazen inequality of the Gilded Age: Survival of the fittest. Don’t help the poor or unemployed or anyone who’s fallen on bad times, they say, because this only encourages laziness. America will be strong only if we reward the rich and punish the needy. The regressive right has slowly consolidated power over the last three decades as income and wealth have concentrated at the top. In the late 1970s the richest 1 percent of Americans received 9 percent of total income and held 18 percent of the nation’s wealth; by 2007, they had more than 23 percent of total income and 35 percent of America’s wealth. CEOs of the 1970s were paid 40 times the average worker’s wage; now CEOs receive 300 times the typical workers’ wage. This concentration of income and wealth has generated the political heft to deregulate Wall Street and halve top tax rates. It has bankrolled the so-called Tea Party movement, and captured the House of Representatives and many state governments. Through a sequence of presidential appointments it has also overtaken the Supreme Court. Scalia, Alito, Thomas, and Roberts (and, all too often, Kennedy) claim they’re conservative jurists. But they’re judicial activists bent on overturning seventy-five years of jurisprudence by resurrecting states’ rights, treating the 2nd Amendment as if America still relied on local militias, narrowing the Commerce Clause, and calling money speech and corporations people. Yet the great arc of American history reveals an unmistakable pattern. Whenever privilege and power conspire to pull us backward, the nation eventually rallies and moves forward. Sometimes it takes an economic shock like the bursting of a giant speculative bubble; sometimes we just reach a tipping point where the frustrations of average Americans turn into action. Look at the Progressive reforms between 1900 and 1916; the New Deal of the 1930s; the Civil Rights struggle of the 1950s and 1960s; the widening opportunities for women, minorities, people with disabilities, and gays; and the environmental reforms of the 1970s. In each of these eras, regressive forces reignited the progressive ideals on which America is built. The result was fundamental reform. Perhaps this is what’s beginning to happen again across America. Robert Reich is Professor of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley. He has served in three national administrations, most recently as secretary of labor under President Bill Clinton. robertreich.org/ © 2011 Robert Reich
Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread
Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest
#1. To: tom007 (#0)
Clueless.
Break the Conventions - Keep the Commandments - G.K.Chesterson There is nothing progressive about a cradle to grave all powerful state. Eric Hoffer summed up the reality quite nicely and simply: The reality is that the overarching and tyrannical state we now have is largely operating off of "Progressive" programs. No, the real inheritors of the mantle of defenders of liberty are those who follow Jefferson, the Constitution, and Ron Paul. While I do not agree with everything Ron Paul has to say I would take him in a nanosecond over a Robert Reich or Webster Griffin Tarpley. Milton Friedman summed up the argument succinctly in "Capitalism and Freedom" i.e., that economic liberty is a prerequisite for political liberty. If you, the individual, are not free of economic duress then you are not free. The kind of system promoted by Robert Reich and his ilk is one of perpetual economic serfdom and political slavery.
That little turd is a communist,and doesn't have the guts to admit it. There is NOTHING "progressive" about communism. It has failed everywhere it has been tried,and the result of communist governments has been over 100 million murders.
There is NOTHING "progressive" about communism. It has failed everywhere it has been tried,and the result of communist governments has been over 100 million murders. Instructive to compare your screed with OI's response above.
I see nothing in Original Intent's post that I disagree with.
I see nothing in Original Intent's post that I disagree with. Damn, you're good.
#2. To: tom007 (#0)
Progressives believe in openness, equal opportunity, and tolerance. Progressives assume we’re all in it together: We all benefit from public investments in schools and health care and infrastructure. And we all do better with strong safety nets, reasonable constraints on Wall Street and big business, and a truly progressive tax system. Progressives worry when the rich and privileged become powerful enough to undermine democracy.
"Any State powerful enough to give you everything you want is powerful enough to take it all away."
#3. To: tom007 (#0)
#4. To: sneakypete (#3)
That little turd is a communist,and doesn't have the guts to admit it.
"Satan / Cheney in "08" 
#5. To: tom007, Original_Intent (#4)
Instructive to compare your screed with OI's response above.
#6. To: sneakypete (#5)
Instructive to compare your screed with OI's response above.
"Satan / Cheney in "08"
Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest