I’m not always a fan of Jesse Jackson but I
love this quote, “America is a liberal
idea…It’s hard to be an American conservative because that’s a contradiction of
terms.” Inflammatory yes, but it contains truth.
From the founding liberal documents of the
country: constitution, bill of rights, declaration of independence, etc.,
liberals have been the driving force in the American dream. Freedom itself is a
liberal idea in contrast to the lack of it found in the countries we came from
if our families immigrated here. They contain dreams and the rights to pursue
them, to be happy and the government’s role is to protect and enhance those
dreams and make them possible.
We can thank liberals for Medicare,
Medicaid, Social Security, Pell grants, protected bank deposits, minimum wage,
weekends, vacations, public education, birth control, equal pay for equal work,
Family and Medical Leave Act, civil rights, rural electrification, collective
bargaining, Pure Food and Drug Act, land grant colleges, National park
services, Federal Reserve, Securities and Exchange Commision National School
lunch program, Voting Right Act, graduated income tax, etc. Conservatives such
as Paul Ryan (and Mitt Romney depending on the day) fight these freedoms for
reasons that confound me. When the work with liberals the country flourishes
and the middle class benefits but all too often the fight these ideas that make
life good. The Americans with Disabilities Act is a good example of when the
parties worked together during George H.W. Bush’s era. And then conservatives
fight against benefits for veterans even though they seem to like wars and
building of the military (and the debt that goes with it.) The record shows
conservative business and religious groups objected the disabilities act
because they just didn’t want to spend the money; oh yes, keep it for the 1%.
Colmes does a neat play on words with
Obamacare that conservative use derisively, but he sees it as Obama does care.
Obama cared that 2.5 million young adults between 19 and 25 gained insurance
coverage and the insurance companies are to spend at least 80% of premiums on
care for people rather than outlandish salaries or overhead.
The minimum wage is nothing to defend, as it forces companies to fire people rather than keep them on jobs in situations where the value of the fair wage is lower than the arbitrary and silly number of the wage level the government stuck out there.
ReplyDeleteThe school lunch program has become a failure, because like so many of these welfare programs, it has expanded to largely include giving free lunches to kids in families who can easily afford it.
Collective bargaining? It is a disaster as it is now, and not worth defending, due to the fact that MOST of the participants in collective bargaining agreement, the workers, are forced into the collective bargaining against their will and against their interest. Thanks to intrusive, fascist, anti-worker laws from government.
The Federal Reserve? Hardly anything worth defending, either
Colmes (?) sort of danced around this one, but conservatives did give us the Americans with Disabilities Act, for sure.
There are problems with other ones, or ones that conservatives had a lot to do with passing, but it seems accuracy was not on Colmes' mind.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteAddendum. Referring to your wording "...these ideas that make life good...."
ReplyDeleteSome of these ideas make life bad. Like if a small business owner has a job where the hourly pay is worth less than the government's minimum wage level, and wants to hire someone. the jackboot of the ignorant and intrusive ruling elites (the government) comes in and kicks the small business owner and the teen who wants this job. This makes life bad. The teen goes from earning money to earning $0, and the small business owner has a needed job left unfilled.
Or forced collective bargaining (which is the rule in states where workers are not protected by right to work). All of the union's members are forced to join, and then the union bargains for a situation that has nothing to do with realities (like when then successfully demanded that auto workers be paid $65 an hour to produce bad cars). The result of such unsustainable situations is that it forces factories to close. Life is not "good" for workers when the union destroys an industry and causes them to be jobless.