Alan Wolfe wrote that almost a decade ago. Has anything changed? We're still dealing with a punitive, mindless faction of elected officials determined to preserve and protect the wealth and power of the few at the expense of the many, with visions of returning to a sanguine, Neanderthal-like (and vividly imagined) era of days gone by a cultural bonus. Given the challenges we face, this rigid ideology will cause much more harm than will an unfettered big government.
When do these destructive efforts end before they end badly for all of us?
So do they re-group and come back with some reasonable and fair proposals? Right!
Fear, misunderstanding, and a steady stream of hand-fed falsehoods and misrepresentations further the ideology regardless of consequences. Failure to negotiate or appreciate the value and vitality of compromise in order to advance us all one small step at a time is destructive today and tomorrow. That will only make things worse, except that too few of these officials seem to care. They'll be well cared for, so what's the worry?
What if we devoted more effort, compassion, partisan contributions, talent, experience, and wisdom hard-earned not to revive a great past upon which too much Republican effort is focused--one whose edges have been softened by the convenience of time passing--but instead to create a greater today and tomorrow?
It should not be anywhere near as idealistic as it sounds. It will never happen if we continue to look behind us for our destination.
(Adapted from several recent blog posts of mine.)
When do these destructive efforts end before they end badly for all of us?
[Paul Ryan] has prefaced his budget with a review of the scholarly literature of the entire range of federal anti-poverty programs. In the place of grandiose, Randian lectures, Ryan ventures outside the world of right-wing pseudo-scholarship and actually attempts to engage with mainstream economic analysis.
This decision is very much to Ryan's credit. On the other hand, it turns out to have been a gigantic mistake.
Basically everything in Ryan's report turns out to be wrong. The Fiscal Times contact[ed] a number of researchers whom Ryan cites, and they all report that Ryan knows nothing of their work....
And Ryan's budget absolutely slays the budget for anti-poverty programs -- the vast majority of his spending cuts come from the minority of federal programs aimed at the poor....
[S]cholarly literature is never going to show that his plans to impose massive cuts to the anti-poverty budget will help poor people.
And yet, without the massive cuts to the anti-poverty budget, Ryan has no plausible way forward. Reconciling the ideological goals of the House Republican caucus with the best findings of social science is fundamentally impossible (links in the original article by Jonathan Chait).
So do they re-group and come back with some reasonable and fair proposals? Right!
What if we devoted more effort, compassion, partisan contributions, talent, experience, and wisdom hard-earned not to revive a great past upon which too much Republican effort is focused--one whose edges have been softened by the convenience of time passing--but instead to create a greater today and tomorrow?
It should not be anywhere near as idealistic as it sounds. It will never happen if we continue to look behind us for our destination.
(Adapted from several recent blog posts of mine.)
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