An Inventory of Hope

The other day, folks, in the wake of Tuesday’s election, I wrote jubilantly about the possible dawning of a “Morning in America” scenario. The fallout of this election has the potential about what looks like a least a partial restoration of the concept of an America with a “social-safety-net” mindset, restoring the balance between the “me” (of corrosive individualism and narcissism) vs the “we”, the we meaning that, as well as the social-safety-net, the restoration of a military draft, and a genuine commitment toward rebuilding our political, social and public infrastructure, education, healthcare, but along the lines of uplifting everyone, not just the barracudas. Replace the Walmart mentality – lowest wages, no “bennies” -- with a more reasoned, benevolent humane concern that restores, at least partially, the true meaning of the term “liberalism”

Needing to define “liberalism”, and no longer working in an academic library, a sort of intellectual “laboratory” that included 10,000 reference books that I was intimately familiar with, I had to turn to my own library for the 1977 Bullock and Stallybrass Dictionary of Modern Thought. In defining liberalism, it states that

… Liberalism in its most characteristic contemporary expression emphasizes the importance of conscience and justice in politics, advocates the rights of racial and religious minorities, and supports civil liberties and the right of the ordinary individual to be more effectively consulted in decisions which directly affect him. This idea of liberalism is shared by many modern American liberals who, characteristically, combine a belief in democratic capitalism with a strong commitment to executive and legislative action in order to alleviate social ills. During the 1960s, American liberalism was identified with social permissiveness; significantly, this development coincided with a broad questioning of American society in the wake of the Vietnam War….

While the last sentence of the above quote is note essential for anyone to understand the meaning of liberalism, with a small “l” as a concept, I left it in – the sentence that begins, “During the 1960s ...” -- as a reminder of why, perhaps, we are in our current predicament. Certainly, the so-called permissiveness of the counterculture was one of the 1960s issues that motivated conservatives at the beginning of Movement Conservativism

OK, you say, what’s the point of all this?

Well it was all sparked by reading a Paul Krugman op ed in yesterday’s NYT. (I know for some on this list, NYT is a nasty word. But let’s set that aside momentarily.)

In his piece, Krugman observes – without gloating – that among other things, Tuesday’s election signals the demise of “Movement Conservatism”.

Here, in the gray-shaded area is a portion of Krugman’s op ed, entitled telling, “The Great Revulsion”:

I'm not feeling giddy as much as greatly relieved. O.K., maybe a little giddy. Give 'em hell, Harry and Nancy!

Here's what I [Krugman] wrote more than three years ago, in the introduction to my column collection ''The Great Unraveling'': ''I have a vision -- maybe just a hope -- of a great revulsion: a moment in which the American people look at what is happening, realize how their good will and patriotism have been abused, and put a stop to this drive to destroy much of what is best in our country.''

At the time, the right was still celebrating the illusion of victory in Iraq, and the bizarre Bush personality cult was still in full flower. But now the great revulsion has arrived.

Tuesday's election was a truly stunning victory for the Democrats. Candidates planning to caucus with the Democrats took 24 of the 33 Senate seats at stake this year, winning seven million more votes than Republicans. In House races, Democrats received about 53 percent of the two-party vote, giving them a margin more than twice as large as the 2.5-percentage-point lead that Mr. Bush claimed as a ''mandate'' two years ago -- and the margin would have been even bigger if many Democrats hadn't been running unopposed.

The election wasn't just the end of the road for Mr. Bush's reign of error. It was also the end of the 12-year Republican dominance of Congress. The Democrats will now hold a majority in the House that is about as big as the Republicans ever achieved during that era of dominance.

Moreover, the new Democratic majority may well be much more effective than the majority the party lost in 1994. Thanks to a great regional realignment, in which a solid Northeast has replaced the solid South, Democratic control no longer depends on a bloc of Dixiecrats whose ideological sympathies were often with the other side of the aisle.

Now, I don't expect or want a permanent Democratic lock on power. But I do hope and believe that this election marks the beginning of the end for the conservative movement that has taken over the Republican Party.

In saying that, I'm not calling for or predicting the end of conservatism. There always have been and always will be conservatives on the American political scene. And that's as it should be: a diversity of views is part of what makes democracy vital.

But we may be seeing the downfall of Movement Conservatism -- the potent alliance of wealthy individuals, corporate interests and the religious right that took shape in the 1960s and 1970s. This alliance may once have had something to do with ideas, but it has become mainly a corrupt political machine, and America will be a better place if that machine breaks down.

Why do I want to see Movement Conservatism crushed? Partly because the movement is fundamentally undemocratic; its leaders don't accept the legitimacy of opposition. Democrats will only become acceptable, declared Grover Norquist, the president of Americans for Tax Reform, once they ''are comfortable in their minority status.'' He added, ''Any farmer will tell you that certain animals run around and are unpleasant, but when they've been fixed, then they are happy and sedate.''

And the determination of the movement to hold on to power at any cost has poisoned our political culture. Just think about the campaign that just ended, with its coded racism, deceptive robo-calls, personal smears, homeless men bused in to hand out deceptive fliers, and more. Not to mention the constant implication that anyone who questions the Bush administration or its policies is very nearly a traitor….

Click here for the whole Krugman piece.

Here’s in part what Movement Conservatism advocates: elimination of the social safety net created by the Dems since the Great Depression, including the Social Security, the advances of the Civil Rights era, and the underlying concepts that support an effective United Nations. Mentioned by Krugman, above, is Grover Norquist, a real barracuda, that I heard interviewed by Bill Moyers on the old PBS program, NOW. In speaking face-to-face with Moyers, Norquist toned-down his normally strident rhetoric, so perhaps the passage below fails to portray him accurately:

BILL MOYERS: You're on record as saying, my goal is to cut government in half in 25 years, to get it down to the size where we can drown it in the bath tub. Is that a true statement?

GROVER NORQUIST: No. The first part is an accurate statement of exactly what we're trying to do. We've set as a conservative movement a goal of reducing the size and cost of government in half in 25 years, which is taking it from a third of the economy down to about 17 percent, taking 20 million government employees and looking to privatize and get other opportunities so that you don't have all of the jobs that are presently done by government done by government employees. We need a Federal government that does what the government needs to do, and stops doing what the government ought not to be doing … Read more

The Dick Cheney-Donald Rumsfeld nexus is (was, I hope) integrated into the chemistry of Movement Conservatism. Over the past six years, besides Rush Limbaugh, Fox TV, our ears have been blasted by Cheney’s speeches before an adoring crowd – any of the DC-based conservative think tanks, the VFW conventions, you name it — where we could depend upon him bad mouthing anybody lacking the sense not to see the vitalness of America’s engagement in a full blown “war on terror”. Before the election, I actually heard snatches of quotes from the hard-right talking-radio-heads claiming, “Democrats are our enemies”.

As I wrote recently, with the Cheney-Rumsfeld nexus dismissed, perhaps we can live to see a restoration of America’s geopolitical policies as they were practiced before Iraq. Does the era Bush I, now, seem like it was pretty good? It wasn’t, but compared to Bush II, maybe it wasn’t so bad.

On the front page of yesterday’s NYT, David Sanger writes

Robert M. Gates, President Bush's choice to become defense secretary, has criticized the Bush administration's handling of the Iraq war and has made clear that he would seek advice from moderate Republicans who have been frozen out of the White House, according to administration officials and Gates' close associates.

Administration officials said Bush was aware of Gates' critique of current policy and understood that Gates planned to clear the "E Ring" of the Pentagon, where many of Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's senior political appointees have plotted Iraq strategy.

Stephen J. Hadley, the national security adviser, said Thursday afternoon that Bush regarded his choice of Gates as "a terrific opportunity" to rethink Iraq… read more

(Let me say that I am not advocate of the hegemonic geopolitical strategies followed by American Republican presidents in the last half of the 20^th century. Even Clinton was bad in this regard, in my view, but at least he put people like Madeleine Albright, Bill Richardson and Richard Holbrooke, as America’s voices at the UN, all perhaps a little too conservative for me, but if you look at some of their achievements, say the settlements reached among the newly formed nations in the fallout of Yugoslavia’s collapse, not too bad.)

Thus as an lifelong idealist, the gist of what is stated above in the salmon shaded area is saddening to me, because I think that even a revised American policy still doesn’t inject a satisfactory solution into the situation in the Middle East. However, as a common-sense realist, I know that Gates take-over of the DOD means a more pragmatic search for a solution, one that might begin to at least make a shift in our international idiocy that has us playing God with another nation’s welfare and sovereignty.

But there is other evidence:

Remember “Freedom Fries”? When the response to the 9/11 attacks included attacking Iraq for its alleged harboring of Al Qaeda, any nation not fully embracing the Bush-doctrine – the Neocon preemptive-strike – was, in the view of “movement conservatives”, America’s enemy. We’re shifting back to an acknowledgment that the rest of the world needs to be brought along with us, if we are to have any lasting impact on settling international strife.

Latin America, bless it, has almost to a man, rejected America’s hegemony in the region, including the dismissal of the free-trade agreement, CAFTA, and – if somewhat episodically -- drifted toward softer, more beneficent social democratic regimes, with a greater focus on working together in their own region.

On the national front, signs suggest a renaissance of sorts, signs that foretell the dawning of a “Morning in America”.

1. Barack Obama’s book, The Audacity of Hope, tops the NYT’s best-seller list. I admit that I have not read the book, and don’t have it at hand to scan passages this morning; instead, below is a snatch from the random House website, which gives a little about what his readers are excited about:

… in The Audacity of Hope, Senator Obama calls for a different brand of politics–a politics for those weary of bitter partisanship and alienated by the “endless clash of armies” we see in congress and on the campaign trail; a politics rooted in the faith, inclusiveness, and nobility of spirit at the heart of “our improbable experiment in democracy.” He explores those forces–from the fear of losing to the perpetual need to raise money to the power of the media–that can stifle even the best-intentioned politician. He also writes, with surprising intimacy and self-deprecating humor, about settling in as a senator, seeking to balance the demands of public service and family life, and his own deepening religious commitment.

At the heart of this book is Senator Obama’s vision of how we can move beyond our divisions to tackle concrete problems. He examines the growing economic insecurity of American families, the racial and religious tensions within the body politic, and the transnational threats–from terrorism to pandemic–that gather beyond our shores. And he grapples with the role that faith plays in a democracy–where it is vital and where it must never intrude. Underlying his stories about family, friends, members of the Senate, even the president, is a vigorous search for connection: the foundation for a radically hopeful political consensus.

If Obama isn’t articulating a plan for a restoration of classical American liberalism that I quoted at the top of this piece, then I am crazy, have lost my marbles, and am really ready to be put down. Other recent books that advocate similar reforms are

2. Jeff Madrick’s review of Friedman’s The Moral Consequences of Economic Growth in the January 12, 2006 issue of New York Review of Books is extensive, giving it the serious attention that it justly deserves. (See my blog post, January, 2006.) Briefly, in capturing the details of Friedman’s thesis, Madrick states

…. In his new book, The Moral Consequences of Economic Growth, [Friedman] argues that since the In­dustrial Revolution, progressive poli­cies have usually been associated with rapid economic growth and rising in-comes in all levels of society, and not with uneven growth or economic stag-nation. Friedman is concerned with the moral as well as the material ef­fects of economic trends. He argues that economic growth—if it is broad­based—can advance such fundamental moral aims as tolerance, democracy, and equality. The first progressive age, for example, took place during the long industrial boom of the first twenty years of the twentieth century. The nation imposed income taxes. bat­tled the trusts, established female suf­frage, and adopted regulations to pro­tect workers. John F. Kennedy's New Frontier and Johnson's Great Society were direct outcomes, Friedman ar­gues, of the rapid growth and rising standard of living of the 1950s and 1960s. During these periods, rising productivity, or the increase in goods and services produced per hour of work, was matched by wage gains for all income levels.

By contrast, according to Friedman, during times of uneven prosperity the American government has typically cut taxes, reduced social programs, and restricted immigration. As exam­ples he cites the "populist era" be­tween 1880 and 1895, when real per capita income stagnated and racism and anti-immigrant sentiment were prevalent: and the two decades be­tween 1973 and 1993—from Nixon to Reagan—which he calls the "backlash era." Friedman also identifies the 1920s, a period of expansion for many businesses, as a time of economic stress for average Americans; the re­sentments and anger of the time helped give rise to racist movements such as the Ku Klux Klan.

…. When growth in family incomes is strong, more peo­ple are willing to support efforts to ex­pand individual rights, restrain preju­dice, allow immigration, and open opportunity to larger numbers through public education. They support these efforts because they are aware of new possibilities for themselves. When there is a lack of growth, Americans are more concerned about their own eco­nomic security and seek to limit gov­ernment attempts to redistribute wealth and opportunities to others and often seek reductions in taxes.

… growth in America has usu­ally benefited most levels of society. When it does so, it fosters democratic values and progressive policies. If eco­nomic growth falters, or is more nar­rowly confined to particular groups in society, these values are endangered. In this regard, Friedman argues, the experience of the past thirty years poses a threat: [text in red is from Friedman’s book]

Broad-based economic growth in America was not a myth. Nor is it true that the growth Americans enjoyed in the early postwar decades was merely an aberration to which we nonetheless became accustomed. The pace of increase in living standards in those years was little more than what the na­tion had experienced on average during the previous century and a half. It is instead our own era, dat­ing from the early 1970s, that stands out as exceptional. A rising standard of living for the great majority of our citizens has in fact been the American norm, and it is we. today, who are failing to achieve it.

… When the economic slowdown in the 1970s began, Friedman observes, few commentators understood the re­gressive influence of economic stagna­tion on popular attitudes. The conser­vative reaction that gathered strength with the Goldwater movement was often explained not as a symptom of economic frustration but as a conse­quence of shifting political ideologies and new culture wars of abortion, gay rights, and affirmative action. These mattered, and Friedman's argument for the priority of economic factors would have been stronger had he addressed more directly the cultural and political causes of this shift. Apart from growing discord over abortion and gay rights, and the influence of highly organized and well-financed Christian right groups and conserva­tive think tanks, Friedman might have devoted further analysis to the Southern resistance to Democratic mea­sures supporting racial equality and to the shift of Southern voters from the Democratic to the Republican Party.

… Friedman's thesis that broad-based economic growth is a precondition of social progress forces us to ask a trou­bling question. What happens to Amer­ica's moral purpose if the living stand­ard of average Americans fails to rise as it did in the past?

3. Jacob S. Hacker’s The Great Risk Shift: The Assault on American Jobs, Families, Health Care and Retirement And How You Can Fight Back

From the oxford university press website:

America's leaders say the economy is strong and getting stronger. But ordinary Americans aren't buying it. They see what the rosy statistics hide: We are all struggling under the weight of terrifying economic instability. No matter how well educated and hard working we are, we know that the bottom can fall out at any moment. Meanwhile, the safety net that once protected us is fast unraveling. With retirement plans in growing jeopardy while health coverage erodes, more and more economic risk is shifting from government and business onto the fragile shoulders of the American family.

In The Great Risk Shift , Jacob S. Hacker lays bare this unsettling new economic climate, showing how it has come about, what it is doing to our families, and how we can fight back. Behind this shift, he contends, is the Personal Responsibility Crusade, eagerly embraced by corporate leaders and Republican politicians who speak of a nirvana of economic empowerment, an "ownership society" in which Americans are free to choose. But as Hacker reveals, the result has been quite different: a harsh new world of economic insecurity, in which far too many Americans are free to lose.

The book documents how two great pillars of economic security--the family and the workplace--guarantee far less financial stability than they once did. The final leg of economic support--the public and private benefits that workers and families get when economic disaster strikes--has dangerously eroded as political leaders and corporations increasingly cut back protections of our health care, our income security, and our retirement pensions. Hacker concludes by advocating an "insurance and opportunity society" that would safeguard economic security and expand economic opportunity, ensuring that all Americans have the basic financial security they need to reach for and achieve the American Dream.

Jacob Hacker brings into focus as never before the pressures that the Great Risk Shift exerts on our pocketbooks and on our lives. Blending powerful human stories, big-picture analysis, and compelling ideas for reform, this remarkable volume will hit a nerve, serving as a rallying point in the vital struggle for economic security in an increasingly uncertain world.

If you have read everything, you are probably saying to yourself, why does this guy – now over 70-years old – waste his time writing this stuff? It is not going to accomplish anything. Well, you are right, except for what it does for me. Writing about “hope” is the way I maintain my sanity. I get satisfaction from thinking, “It’s gotta get better!” And when the signs get more numerous, I like to do inventories. What I’ve discussed above is a sort of “Inventory of Hope”, but maybe I’m too influenced by Obama’s title, Audacity of Hope.

Tags: social-safety-net, Movement Conservatism, liberalism, Paul Krugman, Robert Gates, Grover Norquist, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Barack Obama, Benjamin Friedman