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The liberal ideologies of helping the "poor and weak masses" in the 1930's no longer applies in today's world. Today, these philosophies amount to unfair entitlements at the cost of Middle Class workers.
The liberal ideologies of helping the "poor and weak masses" in the 1930's no longer applies in today's world. Today, these philosophies amount to unfair entitlements at the cost of Middle Class workers.
Political ideology, in most cases, is like a car or a computer operating system .. in that .. new and improved becomes old, worn out and tired .. obsolete .. over time, as newer versions or ideas come to the forefront.
Rebuilding the same old broken down principles or programs only serves to cost more money over time, and does nothing to accomplish it's original intented goal.
Once a program achieves it's goal, or usefulness, it should be either traded in for the new, or just thrown out altogether.
I'll cite Dept. of Education, Subsidized Housing, and Welfare as just a few examples.
We do operate from paradigms. There is a liberal paradigm. There is a conservative paradigm. Both are based on historical realities (and perceptions) and are slow to catch up with reality. I'm hoping to see a good rebutal-ish piece to this, because I think this idea is interesting but misses the mark.... Most liberals simply do not think in terms quite this paired-down...it's close..but off.
Oddly, the prefect lead-in for a piece on how out-of-touch conservatives are is found in the closing remarks: most Americans do NOT have college degrees! Most Americans that writers for newspapers know, yes....I believe the number is about 28%.
John Tantillo just published a piece on his marketing blog that links to this post and say's it's right-on. [url]http://blog.marketingdoctor.tv/2009/11/09/tantillos-brand-winner-and-loser-the-republican-party-and-the-democratic-party.aspx[/url] I at least agree with his assertion that both parties should be using Facts to Market (i.e. communicate) to their Target Market. (28% college grads is a fact..) This was my favorite part of the piece:
"Poli-marketing dictates that when you lose an election, you take the loss as some serious data collection and scour the data for everything that it is telling you about not meeting the needs of your Target Market. Well, if people like Paul Krugman are any indication —i.e., blame the voter not the candidate— then the Democrats will be more inclined to blame Fox News and Rush Limbaugh for the losses than to see the data as a repudiation of their own agenda. So just what are Krugman and these other geniuses thinking? They’re not thinking… they’re being driven by what they want to believe —not what the data is telling them."
Last edited by slupp; 11-09-2009 at 12:03 PM..
Reason: trying to make link work properly..
An interesting article, but like the premise that it portrays it is a bit dated. The rise of the Democratic Leadership Council during the Clinton administration rewrote the book on liberalism and it's acceptance of markets and corporatism. It should also be noted that the wolf class is inhabited by quite a few shepards. Also, while Obama isn't as blatantly corporate friendly as the Clintons, to characterize him as one who deems to wolves to be inherently evil flies in the face of many of recent policy decisions.
Today's column by Russ Douthat in the Times contains this relevant analysis:
our domestic politics are shot through with antitotalitarian obsessions, even as real totalitarianism recedes in history’s rear-view mirror. Plenty of liberals were convinced that a vote for George W. Bush was a vote for theocracy or fascism. Too many conservatives are persuaded that Barack Obama’s liberalism is a step removed from Leninism.
These paranoias suggest a civilization that’s afraid to reckon with its own apparent permanence....Humankind fears judgment, of course. But we depend on it as well. The possibility of dissolution lends a moral shape to history: we want our empires to fall as well as rise, and we expect decadence to be rewarded with destruction.
Not that we want to experience this destruction ourselves. But we want it to be at least a possibility — as a spur to virtue, and as a punishment for sin.
This was how the Soviet threat often played on the home front. Remove the stain of segregation, liberals argued in the 50s, or the Communists will win the world. Repent of your hedonism and pacifism, neoconservatives urged Americans in the 70s, or the West will go the way of Finland.
Neither group wanted the United States to lose the cold war. But they wanted to inhabit a world where America could lose, and pass into history, if we failed to live up to our ideals.
This could be why we don’t celebrate the anniversary of 1989 quite as intensely as we should. Maybe we miss living with the possibility of real defeat. Maybe we sense, as we hunt for the next great existential threat, that even the end of history needs to have an end.
What happens when those "poor and weak masses" outnumber the more wealthy who are taxed to support them ? It's getting close to a 50/50 breakdown in America. I don't think that was the purpose of all these social programs. When 1/2 of Americans rely on the other half to keep them in a basic standard of living, then something is drastically wrong with America. The trend is is not turning and only getting worse over time.
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Originally Posted by ovcatto
An interesting article, but like the premise that it portrays it is a bit dated. The rise of the Democratic Leadership Council during the Clinton administration rewrote the book on liberalism and it's acceptance of markets and corporatism. It should also be noted that the wolf class is inhabited by quite a few shepards. Also, while Obama isn't as blatantly corporate friendly as the Clintons, to characterize him as one who deems to wolves to be inherently evil flies in the face of many of recent policy decisions.
Exactly. You can't ignore the DLC's influence on the Democratic Party. Clinton did a lot of things that progressives didn't like, such as "Don't Ask Don't Tell" and Welfare Reform in its final form.
I think a better book that really explains the difference between how conservatives and progressives see the world is George Lakoff's *Don't Think of an Elephant.* If anyone is interested, I can offer a brief summary.
There are a lot of about both parties from the past that no longer apply. A reputation is a hard thing to erase, especially when politicians from both parties are more than happy to fall back on them and use them when ever it will benefit them (even though they no it's really no longer the case).......and a big chuck of their core, will buy it every time too.
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