Liberalism

The Promotion Of Fear And Panic A Typical Republican Response To Any Issue Or Problem!

Ronald 8 Comments

The Midterm Elections of 2014 might be decided not on the issues, but on the promotion of fear and panic, being utilized to scare voters!

It is not a new tactic by the Republican Party, but rather an old strategy used in the past.

Leave it to the GOP to use fear of “Socialism”, “Progressivism”, “Liberalism”, distorting all three terms as against America, as a way to prevent political, social, and economic reform that takes power away from the wealthy and the corporations!

The Red Scare of the late 1940s and early 1950s, as promoted by Richard Nixon, Joseph McCarthy, and other demagogues, had a deleterious effect on people’s lives, and victimized many innocent people.

Fear and panic were used by Presidents, including Richard Nixon and George W. Bush to promote war in Vietnam and in Iraq!

The Republican Party has abandoned its original support of African American civil rights, and has now promoted racism to attract uneducated and poor and lower middle class whites to vote against their own economic interests.

Now fear and panic are being used because of the Ebola Crisis to convince people to vote Republican, despite the fact that the GOP has done nothing positive in any form, and has set out to obstruct everything that Barack Obama has tried to do, with him succeeding in many initiatives despite constant attack and criticism and attempts to block progress.

If the Republicans succeed in convincing the American people to go nuts over Ebola, when the flu and pneumonia causes 50,000 deaths a year without fear and panic; and if 11,000 people a year killed by firearms annually is not seen as a crisis; then the American people will get what they deserve—incompetent, corrupt, and uncaring government, which will work to undermine all of the progress of the New Deal and Great Society for the past 80 years!

Senator Elizabeth Warren’s Rousing Speech On “Eleven Commandments Of Progressivism”!

Ronald 2 Comments

Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, on a book tour for her recent publication, but also rousing progressives with her inspiring ideas, gave a speech last week at Netroots Nation, the progressive gathering often seen as the alternative to the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) held annually.

Warren summarized the views of those who are progressives and liberals, including:

The need for regulation of Wall Street.

The belief in science, and its role in preserving our environment.

Neutrality on the internet, not favoring powerful corporations.

Raising the minimum wage, therefore allowing a full time worker to avoid living in poverty.

A livable wage for fast food workers, with public support for them being demonstrated.

The avoidance of crushing college loan debt for students, by arranging realistic debt payments.

Protection of Social Security, Medicare, and pensions, so that retired workers can live in dignity.

Equal pay for equal work for men and women.

Promotion of equality in marriage, including gay marriage.

The need for immigration reform, as immigration is part of the story of American history.

The belief that women should control their own bodies, and corporations should not control the private lives and medical care of any of their workforce.

Also, her conclusion about conservatives is so appropriate, that they will do whatever they need to do to protect their own interests, and would say to all of the rest of us that you are on your own!

Wealth Is Not Issue, Hillary Clinton! Commitment To Those Less Fortunate Is The Issue, So Stop Protesting Your Wealth!

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Hillary Clinton is causing all kinds of grief and problems for herself by stating that she is not “truly rich”!

Sorry, Hillary, you and your husband have over $100 million in wealth, gained mostly through books and lectures, and just being famous, where people are willing to pay you and your husband large amounts for your thoughts and insights!

This is nothing to be ashamed of!

What would be something to be ashamed of is a wealthy person who did not earn their wealth through hard work, but simply lived off their parents or other relatives, and never knew what hard work was, and there are plenty of such people among the top one percent!

What is also to be ashamed of is a wealthy person who does not give a damn about others, about the middle class and the poor, who does nothing to try to make the lives of other Americans better.

Such is the case with most Republicans and conservatives, who flaunt their wealth, and do not care one iota about the future of the nation, only about their own selfish welfare!

The Clintons are not such people, as they have worked to help the advancement of those who are not as fortunate as them, both in America and the world, through the Clinton Foundation and Clinton Initiative.

Other such people in the past included Franklin D. Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt, Ted Kennedy, Jimmy Carter, and numerous other Democrats and some Republicans who devoted their public lives to making life better for the American people in a myriad of ways. These are people with progressive and liberal values as part of their basic commitment.

So having wealth is not the issue, but whether one, by his or her words and actions, is committed to public service in a way which advances the lives of those less fortunate!

The Republican Party Battle Has Gone On For A Century!

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When the Republican Party was founded in 1854, it was an activist liberal oriented party, against the expansion of slavery as an official doctrine, and with many of its founders and followers also being against slavery itself, wishing to abolish it.

Under Abraham Lincoln and Radical Republicans, the Republican Party advocated freedom, citizenship and voting for African Americans, while at the same time promoting the growth of industrial capitalism.

But in the Gilded Age of the late 19th century, the party lost its bearings, becoming a corrupt party, beholden to the top one percent of the nation. There was a need to reform the party, and Theodore Roosevelt came along at the turn of the century, and revolutionized the Presidency and promoted progressivism, and activist government, including labor rights, consumer rights, environmentalism, and the promotion of political reforms to bring direct democracy.

But after he left office, the party lost its bearings again and went into the darkness of the conservative 1920s, as Woodrow Wilson took on much of the progressive reform program, and set the Democratic Party on the road to Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry Truman, John F. Kennedy, and Lyndon B. Johnson, and a whole slew of domestic progressive and liberal reforms.

The Republican Party, by following the Gilded Age mentality again in the 1920s, helped to cause the greatest economic downturn in American history, and the Great Depression under Herbert Hoover put them in the wilderness, although revived by the moderate progressivism of war hero Dwight D. Eisenhower in the 1950s.

But then, they were again in the minority, and although Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford promoted some substantial reforms in the late 1960s and early 1970s, in the midst of the New Frontier-Great Society mentality. scandal emerged under Nixon, and the Vietnam War sapped the party, and they turned once again to conservatism and Ronald Reagan, who had a better persona than conservative Barry Goldwater, who had been soundly defeated by LBJ in 1964. Reagan appealed to the top one percent, and promoted fear of the white working class toward minorities, and the GOP dominated the next generation and more, with the Jimmy Carter respite very brief, and Bill Clinton being mildly progressive, not really the tradition of FDR, Truman, JFK, and LBJ. But that meant that the Republican Party was backing away from the traditions of Lincoln, TR, and even Ike! The middle class and the working were victims, without realizing it until very recently.

Here they are today in the era of the most progressive Democratic President since LBJ, and the Republican Party is what it was in the Gilded Age and 1920s and since the 1980s, a party that backs away from domestic reform, from compassion, from concern about the environment, from concern about working people, from concern about women and ethnic minorities and the vast majority of Americans. Instead, they are the party of the one percent, as they were in the Gilded Age and 1920s, and the attempt to move the party to the center, and return to the Lincoln–TR–Ike tradition is engaged in what seems clearly a losing battle!

That means that the Republican Party, 160 years old this year, is likely in its death throes, a party which has gone awry, a really tragic set of circumstances!

The Turnaround In California: Liberalism at Work Under Jerry Brown!

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Just a couple of years ago, California was called the classic example of the failure of liberalism, and conservatives and Republicans denounced the largest state as a total disaster financially, which it had been under Arnold Schwarzenegger, and also a victim of the Great Recession.

But now, under Governor Jerry Brown, California has had a renaissance, seeing a massive debt become a massive surplus, with liberal ideas, including higher taxes, and more regulations, and it has become a model of a “blue” state.

Not bad for a governor who was in office from 1975-1983, and then came back 28 years later, and is now seen as a hero and a genius, in regards to improving the future of California.

Understand that this author is not saying that California has no problems or issues, but it has seen an amazing turnaround, at a time when “red” states are in worse shape than “blue” states in all kinds of statistics.

It is not time to say that liberalism and the Democratic Party are dead, and we will see a revival of the story in California elsewhere, as soon as the citizenry realizes that they have been bamboozled big time.

Even the state of Kentucky proves this, where monstrous Senators Mitch McConnell and Rand Paul rail against ObamaCare, but the Democratic Governor, Steve Beshear, has made ObamaCare a great success story, and is a hero!

Government is NOT evil, and it is time for voters to throw out the right wing extremists and return America to optimism and belief in the future!

The Most Significant Long Range Events Of 2013

Ronald 1 Comment

Now that we are in the last day of 2013, it is time to reflect on what the most significant long range events of 2013 are, events that will affect us in the future, and are signs of progress, which can never be reversed.

They include in no special order:

The accomplishment of national health care, a dream since Theodore Roosevelt first mentioned the concept in his Progressive Party campaign in 1912, later suggested by Harry Truman, partially enacted by Lyndon B. Johnson, attempted by Bill and Hillary Clinton unsuccessfully, promoted by Senator Ted Kennedy, and finally becoming law under Barack Obama. Even with all of the kinks and quirks now and in the future, national health care is here to stay, finally making America reach the stage of all other democracies in the world, but as usual the last to adopt social and economic reform, as compared to Europe, Canada, and Australia.

The acceptance by the Supreme Court of the concept of gay marriage, and the expansion from nine to eighteen states of acceptance of same sex marriage, and nothing will ever reverse what has happened, and eventually, the Supreme Court will mandate its legality throughout America, just as they did for interracial marriage in 1967. Many may not like it, but just as with interracial marriage, one does not have to engage in either interracial or same sex marriage, but it is nobody’s business to tell someone else who he or she is to love and to have the benefits of marriage, and no religious institution needs to accept it, as civil marriage will always be available.

The civil war raging in the Republican Party, which will determine if the party of Lincoln, TR, and Ike will survive or go into the dustbin of history, which Is certain, if the right wing Tea Party Movement is allowed to take over the party apparatus, and control the House and Senate Republican caucuses, and control major state governments around the nation. An extreme right wing Republican Party will not survive, and will give the Democrats such dominance that a moderate centrist party, maybe on the pattern of the Whig Party of Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, John Quincy Adams and Abraham Lincoln in the 19th century, will then emerge as a valid alternative to the more leftist Democratic Party by comparison.

The rise of a permanent Democratic majority in the Electoral College, as Georgia, Texas, Arizona and North Carolina will turn “blue” over the rest of the second decade of the 21st century, due to the growth in the Hispanic-Latino population, and the alienation of women from the Republican Party, which is working to control the reproductive lives of women. Both groups will swing these Sun Belt States to the Democrats, and with the Atlantic Coast from New England down to Virginia, and the Pacific Coast and the Upper Midwest more “blue” all of the time, there will be no way that Democrats will lose the White House over the next couple of decades, whether they nominate Hillary Clinton or Joe Biden, or someone else, for the Presidency in 2016 and beyond.

The Supreme Court will turn more liberal, as over the remaining years of this decade, the likelihood of new Supreme Court appointments, as well as circuit and district courts, will fall to Democratic Presidents, who no longer have to worry about a filibuster proof majority of 60 votes. The need for only 51 votes or 50 with the Vice President breaking the tie, insures that the courts, and eventually the high Court, will take a different view over time on same sex marriage, abortion rights, civil rights, and civil liberties, reminding one over the next two decades (due to lifetime appointments) of the history of the Warren Court.

A happy 2014 to all my readers and contributors!

Right Wing Obscenity: Trying To Claim John F. Kennedy As One Of Their Own On 50th Anniversary Of His Assassination!

Ronald 1 Comment

The right wing has no shame, as it is now claiming, on the 50th anniversary of the assassination of John F. Kennedy, that he would be one of their own, and as stated by lunatic Glenn Beck, that JFK would be a Tea Party Movement radical! The nerve of Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and other right wing promoters of lies and deceit, to sully the good name of our 35th President!

John F. Kennedy stated publicly that he was proud to be a liberal.

John F. Kennedy moved toward the idea of ending the Cold War in his last year in office, through promotion of diplomacy and ending the arms race.

John F. Kennedy spoke up for civil rights, planned a war on poverty, advocated the creation of Medicare, and the promotion of federal aid to education.

John F. Kennedy wanted to create a department of urban affairs to deal with the growing problems of the cities, while trying to promote racial equality and justice.

John F. Kennedy promoted the space program and the advancement of science.

John F. Kennedy advocated helping the third world nations through the establishment of the Peace Corps.

John F. Kennedy was out to promote the expansion of the New Deal of Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Fair Deal of Harry Truman.

John F. Kennedy had brothers who promoted liberalism in his memory–Robert Kennedy and Ted Kennedy–and they knew, better than anyone, what he was all about.

In this, and a multitude of other ways, John F. Kennedy was a proud Democrat and liberal, and would have repudiated everything the Republican Party of 2013 represents, and would have condemned the right wing, which hated his guts in his lifetime, and he would have fought against the backwardness, the racism, and the promotion of hate and division that the Tea Party Movement represents!

Five Year Anniversary Of Obama Being Elected President, And Low Point Today Of His Presidency!

Ronald 22 Comments

Barack Obama became our 44th President on this day five years ago, and on this fifth anniversary, he has reached his low point in public opinion polls, with 42 percent satisfied with his performance.

The likelihood is that Obama’s poll ratings will continue to go down, due to the total disaster of the inception of the ObamaCare website, plus the horrible mistake of Obama claiming that anyone could keep his health care plan if satisfied with it.

The glitches in the website are bad enough, but the fact that 5 percent, about 15 million Americans, are discovering that their health care plans are being canceled, and that the future of their health care is unsettled, and that many seem to be likely to pay a lot more for health care, if not resolved soon in a satisfactory manner, could destroy the signature achievement of the Obama Presidency.

Obama is shown to have lied, shown to be arrogant in refusing to listen to experts on the website matter, and to have thought that the fact that the purpose was to improve health care would, somehow, overcome the insecurity and uncertainty of millions of Americans suddenly having the health care plans they had taken away from them so abruptly.

It is said that millions of Americans will benefit from ObamaCare, but the fact that other millions are being victimized in coverage and cost, to fit the model that the government wants them to have, could destroy any chance of the long term success of ObamaCare.

This could ruin the long term legacy of Obama, and hurt the Democratic Party and those who believe in progressivism and liberal values.

So today is not a day to celebrate, but rather to hope that the disaster that has been occurring can be resolved very soon in a satisfactory manner, for those affected, and for the future of the concept that the federal government can do things right, as to promote anything else, means a return to abuses by private business interests without government oversight in the interests of the American people.

40 Years Since The Middle Class Reached Its Peak: The Republican And Conservative Role In Middle Class Decline!

Ronald 4 Comments

Forty years ago, in the year 1973, during the Presidency of Richard Nixon, the middle class, which had been steadily growing since the end of World War II, reached its peak in economic terms.

In the years of Harry Truman, Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, and Richard Nixon, an optimism that the future would be better was fulfilled, and the “American Dream” was a reality for millions of Americans, many of whom emerged from the lower middle class or from poverty.

This was the age of liberalism, a time of expanded government and social programs, whether under Democratic Presidents Truman, Kennedy and Johnson, or Republican Presidents Eisenhower and Nixon.

But a right wing reaction was beginning to emerge, and reached its ultimate success under Ronald Reagan, after sniping at Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter, undermining both of them in their attempts to continue the direction that the nation had been engaged in for 28 years.

And despite what seemed like improvement under Bill Clinton in the 1990s, the reality was that conservative ideology even infected him, and while some benefited from the prosperity of the tech revolution of the 1990s, many were left behind by the trend toward making government the evil, rather than the source of much of the prosperity that brought about the middle class advancements.

And once the Republican Party gained the two houses of Congress in 1994 and kept it until 2006, and then regained the House of Representatives, beginning in 2011 until now, the middle class continued its decline, and here we are with hardly any wage increase and asset growth for the middle class, or what used to be the middle class, as we reach the two generations that have passed since the ultimate peak of the middle class.

Leave it to the GOP, and as long as the wealthy do well, they will continue to war on the middle class and turn them against the poor, so as to keep the wealthy in a privileged position, paying lower levels of taxes than they ever did during the years from FDR to Nixon!

So those who see themselves as middle class, and are struggling, need to realize who the real enemy for them is—the Republican Party and conservatism, not the Democratic Party and modern liberalism and progressivism!

“Turning Point” Presidencies: Those With The Greatest Impact!

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With Presidents Day coming up on Monday, this author has, already, made clear which Presidents were transformative in the areas of foreign policy and diplomacy, and in domestic affairs.

Now, it is appropriate to make clear which Presidents have been the true “turning points” in American history, in the sense of changing the dynamics of Presidential leadership.

This author would say that there have been EIGHT Presidents who transformed America by their actions in office. In chronological order, they are:

Thomas Jefferson (1801-1809), who was the first President to transition from opposition leader to one who united the country in his inaugural address, adopted many ideas of the opposition as his views, and doubled the size of the nation, and kept America away from a war with Great Britain.

Andrew Jackson (1829-1837), who added greatly to Presidential power, and was the symbol of the spread of democracy to all white men, rather than just the aristocracy, and became the father of the Democratic Party.

Abraham Lincoln (1861-1865), who saved the Union by fighting the Civil War against the Confederacy, brought about the end of slavery, promoted nationalism over states rights, made the Republican Party the majority party in America, and greatly increased Presidential power

Theodore Roosevelt (1901-1909), who revived and expanded the Presidential office, promoted government intervention in the economy, advocated for the environment and for labor rights, and became a model for later Presidents of both parties.

Franklin D. Roosevelt (1933-1945), who helped bring America out of the Great Depression by massive federal government intervention and programs through his New Deal, and took America through another great crisis (World War II), all the time greatly increasing Presidential authority.

Lyndon B. Johnson (1963-1969), who greatly expanded federal authority beyond beyond the New Deal through his massive Great Society domestic programs, becoming the image of modern American liberalism at its peak.

Ronald Reagan (1981-1989), who promoted a conservative “Revolution”, reversing the direction of the previous fifty years, and helped to bring about the end of rhe Cold War and the demise of the Soviet Union.

Barack Obama (2009-2017), who brought about the greatest domestic reforms, including ObamaCare, since the Great Society of Lyndon B. Johnson, and moved to change the direction of foreign policy and fight terrorism effectively, with of course, his final record of accomplishments still in process.

These eight Presidents all ushered in a generation or more of their political party’s dominance, with the exception of TR and LBJ, who saw what they represented repudiated or replaced by the opposition party within a short span of time.

And of course, the long range effect of Barack Obama is still questionable, although at the moment, it looks likely that his agenda will be pursued by a stronger Democratic coalition seen as likely to keep the Presidency in 2016 and beyond, with either Hillary Clinton or Joe Biden as the standard bearer and inheritor of the Obama legacy!

Also, notice that these “Turning Point” Presidencies occur within a 16-40 year range from one President to another, with most within a generation of earlier such Presidents by the end of each of these Presidencies!