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from the when-times-are-forced-to-change dept.
When trying to understand the two bad choices we have now, it can help to look into the past at where they came from. In this article, Matt Stoller at The Atlantic provides a deep dive into a transformation the Democratic party underwent in the late 1960s onward. In it we see how the Democrats morphed the anti-big-business politics that had powered it for over a century into the big-government politics that define the political conversation today.
Modern liberals tend to confuse a broad social-welfare state and redistribution of resources in the form of tax-and-spend policies with the New Deal. In fact, the central tenet of New Deal competition policy was not big or small government; it was distrust of concentrations of power and conflicts of interest in the economy. The New Deal divided power, pitting faction against other faction, a classic Jefferson-Madison approach to controlling power (think Federalist Paper No. 10). Competition policy meant preserving democracy within the commercial sphere, by keeping markets open. Again, for New Deal populists like Brandeis and Patman [ed: links mine], it was democracy or concentrated wealth—but not both.
[...] The story of why the Watergate Babies spurned populism is its own intellectual journey. It started with a generation of politicians who cut their teeth on college-campus politics. In their youth, they saw, up close, not the perils of robber barons, but the failure of the New Deal state, most profoundly through the war in Vietnam. "We were the '60s generation that didn't drop out," Bob Edgar, a U.S. representative from the class of 1975, told me. The war in Vietnam shaped their generation in two profound ways. First, it disillusioned them toward the New Deal. It was, after all, many New Dealers, including union insiders, who nominated Hubert Humphrey in 1968 and who supported a war that killed millions, including 50,000 Americans their age. And second, higher education—the province of the affluent—exempted one from military service, which was an explicit distinction among classes.
[...] By quietly cutting back the influence of unions, [Democratic strategist Fred] Dutton sought to eject the white working class from the Democratic Party, which he saw as "a major redoubt of traditional Americanism and of the antinegro, antiyouth vote." The future, he argued, lay in a coalition of African Americans, feminists, and affluent, young, college-educated whites.
[...] By 2008, the ideas that took hold in the 1970s had been Democratic orthodoxy for two generations. "Left-wing" meant opposing war, supporting social tolerance, advocating environmentalism, and accepting corporatism and big finance while also seeking redistribution via taxes.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Thursday November 03 2016, @04:06PM
You and art guerilla are right that they'll never happen under the current "Empire." That doesn't mean we shouldn't compose them into the American Constitution 2.0, to be adopted after the avatars of Empire are torn to bloody shreds. It helps to have a plan, lest everything devolve to strong-man rule.
I would second what you both have listed, especially on scrapping the artificial personhood of corporations. I'd also add that we need measures to exclude psychopaths/sociopaths from public office, and to short-circuit oligarchy. For the latter, we need to absolutely shut down the revolving door between industry and the federal government. We cannot allow industries to write their own regulations.
Lastly, and this is personal preference, we should scrap Washington, DC, and move the capital West, perhaps to Denver. The cultural mindset of the Northeast is toxic to democracy. I say, if we're gonna make a clean break, let's make a clean break.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by ikanreed on Thursday November 03 2016, @04:19PM
The northeast US is fucking fine.
The physical infrastructure of the national government is fine.
The current constitution is pretty(but not perfectly) well equipped to prevent strong-men, and that was one of the most important design elements to how it was originally written. It just needs some updating to address the tribalism that maybe the founding fathers weren't perfectly aware of.
(Score: 2) by art guerrilla on Thursday November 03 2016, @04:32PM
yeah, but...
the superficial form is still there, but it has been hollowed out to the point it is NOT functioning as intended, AND the checks and balances supposedly to keep the ship of state from listing are not functioning (which is precisely as the puppetmasters like it)...
for example, anyone recall any dusty old, musty old -i don't know- 'tradition' of kongress 'declaring war' ? ? ?
um, just how many undeclared non-war wars are we in right now ?
minor shit like that, murdering hundreds of thousands for Empire on the say-so of one Emperor...
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Thursday November 03 2016, @04:50PM
Sadly, congress has "approved" of the use of force without using the word "war" in each of these cases: Libya, Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, and "The war on terror".
What we have are a bunch of losers afraid to use sincere words to describe what they're doing. And, sadly, I have to blame Harry Truman for starting that tend with renaming our department of war to department of defense, when there has been zero defensive activities since that renaming.
(Score: 1, Redundant) by Phoenix666 on Thursday November 03 2016, @05:17PM
It's not, though. And it's mainly the tribalism you cite that I'm thinking of. People here go 'down the shore' and 'summer in the hamptons' and 'out to the cape.' They think it's normal to have supper clubs. Endlessly dividing themselves by ethnicity. There's a little bit of that in a couple other places outside the northeast, like Chicago, but it's completely pegged to one end of the spectrum here. The culture of entitlement, the very thing we're talking about that drives the elites, is so deeply rooted here.
I do like other things about the northeast, but the northeast super-elites are very closely responsible for what's wrong with America and you can see that very plainly if you live in New York. I grew up in the West, went to college and grad school in Chicago, and spent a lot of summers in Texas and the South, and the northeast is an anachronism. It can't host the capital of a new America.
Again, that's my personal perspective, and may seem outlandish to some. But there it is.
I agree that the first Constitution is pretty strong. When I said it's good to have a plan for what happens after a historic dislocation, I meant that without an alternative the breakdown of established orders so often means rule-by-warlords. I don't think it's going too far out on a limb to assert that nobody wants that.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Thursday November 03 2016, @07:25PM
Let's remember that the Kennedy clan are from New England. They turned out a couple decent people, and they turned out some real scuzzy sons of bitches as well. And, New Englanders kept reelecting one of the Kennedy clan's worst scuzzbags, Chappaquidick Ted.
Yes, Northeasterners love their elites.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Thursday November 03 2016, @07:22PM
There is so very much about US Code that is simply WRONG today. I believe it started with re-interpretations of the Interstate Commerce Act. Between ever-growing power put in place by the feds, and the fed's ability to tighten purse strings to coerce compliance, they bully the states into anything and everything. The states are beginning to grow some balls, in regards to the "war on drugs" - they need to find their spine and stand up to other issues as well.
The senate - supposed to be composed of two people from each state, appointed by the state's governor/government? When that was changed, the states were screwed again.
Basically, the feds have been doing end runs around the constitution ever since the Civil War, gutting state's rights. And, that has a major affect on our lives today.
More on topic - the same people who have engineered the fed's ability to bully the states are the people who have reworked federal funding for parties, and prevented any serious challenge from third parties.
I really don't like where we are today, and I really despise our "leadership". What's worse, I'm afraid of any constitutional convention, because things CAN get much worse, if the wrong people attend that convention!!
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Friday November 04 2016, @02:48AM
Direct election of senators was instituted because the appointment of senators was turning into a government office available for sale to the highest bidder. There was also a problem with some state governments being more dysfunctional than the feds are now. Also, it wouldn't have gone through had the state governments and the (appointed) senate not approved the constitutional amendment that made it a reality. So I'm not seeing the signs of federal overreach on this one - yes, it diminished the power of state governments, but not without the state governments' approval.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.