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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, Interesting) by purple_cobra on Thursday November 03 2016, @06:15PM
Absolutely and while I'm sure I've written here previously that I'd like to see Murdoch swing for treason, it was also the Daily Fail and, to a lesser extent, the Torygraph which were also responsible for parroting the utter bullshit the Leave campaign came out with and adding some fresh bullshit of their own. It's a shame that bloody bus didn't slip its handbrake and squash Farage flat, along with that buffoon Johnson and Michael "tired of hearing from experts" Gove.
Whether today's High Court ruling on Article 50 does any good or not is anyone's guess but it's thrown an already flummoxed government into further disarray. As has been stated by other people, the original Tory plan (for a referendum, amongst other stupid ideas) was predicated on them being on-top in a coalition, but as they won a slim majority they then had to follow-through on their stupid ideas because "they were in the manifesto" and of course, no party can just up and say "actually, now we look at it with fresh eyes, it's a stupid idea and we're not going to do it" because we've been continually fed the idea that changing your mind on anything, especially for government, is weakness and must be avoided at all costs, regardless of the evidence for doing so. With that in mind, I don't foresee any kind of meaningful recovery for this country inside of at least 20 years as we're completely enmeshed in what I've heard called post-truth politics. The echo chambers of social media have only helped people become more partisan and less willing/able to apply critical thinking to the words and pictures in front of their eyes.
A recent personal tragedy has left me with a some serious questions to answer, including whether I want to stay in the UK or not. Given the above, the answer may be more obvious than I thought.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 03 2016, @07:13PM
We need decentralized social media, like NOW!