Day 821 Sunday April 7, 2019
575 Days to the 2020 election and 653 Days to Inauguration Day
Sundays are a good day to review things because hopefully the awful news has slowed down and we can contemplate our navels a bit.
I’ve had several old thoughts running around in my head and this got me to thinking about the fundamental difference between a progressive and a conservative, or Democrat and Republican.
I think there’s a difference in core values and beliefs.
Let me tell you the things running around in my head then I’d like to extrapolate to the real world and today.
One was a clip from the Daily Show with Jon Stewart.
I think the clip was of Glenn Beck giving one of those “pull yourself up by the bootstraps” type speeches. In it he said you can go to the library where books are free.
Immediately, the clip was cut short and there was Jon Stewart looking into the camera say, “No they’re not.” He pointed out that someone had to pay for those books. Maybe not you the person going to the library, but someone had to buy those books, and the building, and pay the staff, etc. etc. etc.
The other was an example from Michael Lewis’ book “The Fifth Risk.” In it Lewis recounts how a Fox News commentator who was a big proponent of doing it all yourself was out in a rural region where he had a farm or business of some kind. He hated the Federal government, always interfering in our lives, blah, blah blah. He had a big new project he was kicking off with a public announcement and there was a woman standing near the stage where he was about to go on and tell the audience how he had done it all himself. How the local bank had made him a loan, etc. etc. etc. He asked the woman who she was. She told him. He asked why she was here. She said she was from the USDA. Why was she here? He asked. “I’m the woman who made you the loan from the USDA via your local bank,” she told him. He was speechless. He had no idea that the big bad Federal government was the one that had made his project possible.
The last example is FDR and Frances Perkins, FDR’s Secretary of Labor. Roosevelt was always worried about people “being on the dole.” Perkins was worried about the poor and the aged. She saw the attempts by volunteer organizations to help out in limited ways. They got money together and created a home for a limited number of poor or aged. Why, asked Perkins, can’t we do that on a national scale? The attitude was not one of something for nothing or being on the dole but rather one of helping out those in need – notably the old and the poor. From that simple idea came the idea of Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security.
From FDR’s efforts to electrify rural America and the low interest bank loans the USDA makes to farmers via their local banks rural America has been transformed. In Lewis’ book one person says if it wasn’t for such programs rural America would look like rural China.
So what’s the point? I think that a progressive is different from a conservative because a progressive wants to improve people’s lives. Conservatives subscribe to a do it yourself, rugged individualism philosophy. They seem to believe its all up to them and they can do it all themselves. They seem to worry about someone getting something for nothing, of others being on the dole, of banding together to help everyone (which they call socialism.)
The truth of the matter is that no one does it on their own. They have help. Be it in the form of roads to drive on, or mail to be sent and delivered, to being able to apply for a 30 year mortgage. Or having clean water, safe medicine, safe food, they had help.
I find the basic tenet of conservatism flawed. Not only is it flawed at a fundamental level but in practice it is hypocritical. It’s the idea that “I don’t want you to get something for free, but it’s okay if I do,” that most conservatives subscribe to. It might be dressed up in fancy words and phrases so they don’t have to look it in the face and admit it. Or maybe they do know but don’t mind screwing over some group they feel doesn’t desrve what they have or are in some way inferior to them, but it’s there.
Some may want to argue this point and I’m happy to hear what you have to say, but please provide an example or a case where conservatism has actually done some good, and by that I mean more good than harm. I don’t know of any.
575 Days to the 2020 election and 653 Days to Inauguration Day
PS EDWARD HOPPER “Ground Swell” 1939
dean jordan says
My challenge to conservatives, has always been, please cite one example of right wing thinking doing something positive in the world. Just one example.