Posted on 02/16/2013 4:52:51 AM PST by Kaslin
People who have been around for a while all seem to agree. Never in living memory has the atmosphere on Capitol Hill and in Washington, D.C., generally been so toxic.
I don’t find this to be true out in the hinterland. The country as a whole is divided politically. But it’s not obviously more divided than it was 50 years ago. The toxicity of politics is a D.C. phenomenon. What’s more, the polarization is worse among the elites. It seems that the more education they have, the more polarized people become.
Why is that?
I have a theory. Any period in which there is radical political change is likely to be a period when raw emotions are strained. The reason: political change means we are moving from an old system to a new one. When that happens, people who were wedded to the old system will perceive that they are losing something — a way of life, a shared way of looking at the world, institutions that they relied on.
We are living in such a period. Over the past 30 years the entire world has seen a complete reversal in the political trend of the twentieth century. There was a time, not long ago, when many of us believed that the march toward communism and socialism was inevitable. Country after country moved left. In the first eight decades of the twentieth century, I can’t think of a single place where individual liberty increased — unless you count the aftermath of war in Germany, Italy and Japan.
Collectivism, it seemed, was unstoppable.
Then, in the last two decades of the last century, everything changed. Communism was dismantled almost everywhere. It was not only politically dismantled. Collectivism was intellectually discredited. All around the world, a new wave of thinking emerged — one which saw that the left was wrong. Wrong about everything. Wrong about communism. Wrong about socialism. Wrong about the welfare state.
In country after country, the power of government was rolled back — through deregulation and privatization. It’s hard to exaggerate how fundamental this change has been. When Ronald Reagan was president, not even the most conservative politician would dare talk about privatizing Social Security. This was true in other countries as well. Yet today, more than 30 countries around the world have fully or partially privatized their social security systems. We haven’t done it yet. But we’ve discovered that a presidential candidate can talk about it and still win two elections.
About 40 countries now have a flat tax and tax rates have been generally falling almost everywhere. In Europe, talk of privatizing health, education and welfare was once as taboo as talk of privatizing Social Security was in the US. No longer.
Sweden, once thought of as the model for the modern welfare state, now has a full-fledged school voucher system, has privatized large segments of its health care system and is on the way toward privatization of almost all of its welfare state. Britain, which once boasted that its system of socialized medicine was “the envy of the world” has been privatizing health services for the past decade. Since 2008, National Health Service (NHS) patients have been able to choose any provider (NHS, private for-profit, private non-profit, etc.) they wish for elective care.
The dismantling of the state has not been smooth or even continuous. Some countries have seen reversals. Venezuela, Argentina, Ecuador and France come to mind. In our country we have gone from Bill Clinton’s declaration that the era of big government is over to a massive new entitlement created by ObamaCare.
These reversals give people on the left hope that the trend is not inevitable. Rather than being resigned to defeat, they see hope that collectivism might rise again.
A persistent myth is the idea that polarization and toxicity in politics has originated on the right. Nothing could be further from the truth. The Tea Party folks are…well…just plain folks with a point of view. If you want to find real bitterness, go interview the participants of Occupy Wall Street.
Paul Krugman is a New York Times columnist who routinely questions the motives, the ethics and even the sanity of people who disagree with him. You can’t find editorials on the right that come close to his routine level of vitriol.
For the most part, the left in this country feels deeply threaten by events occurring all over the world. Every cherished belief of theirs is proving to be wrong. The institutions they revere are being dismantled.
They’re mad.
The dim party has morphed into the cpusa.
Look at their goals and the actions of the dim party and their president. Same same.
They are overtly cooperating with the radical muslims becuase they have the same goal.
The MSM is on the same team, so they will never “out” jarrett.
It isn’t.
The polarization is between DC, and most urban area, and those of us living in “flyover country.”
This might occasionally show up in Congress, but mostly Congresscritters just go along to get along - esp. the GOP.
Cruz is simply a breath of fresh air, and he’ll be corrupted into the system shortly.
I just don’t agree with the article. What I see is the world moving toward a middle ground, sort of a democratic socialism (or Democracy with a safety net), which neither side is happy with.
I don’t thing Cruz is going to be corrupted.
He’s the real McCoy.
Was very sorry to read just now, he’d Canadian? Is that true?
(bummer if so)
The one stream media's lock down on good news is effective, but people are waking up anyway, not liking what they see and making changes.
Bring back the bullwhips and dueling pistols.
Abe Lincoln once jumped out a window to avoid voting and another time he challenged a senator to wrestle for a vote.
If they don’t start that way, then the power and access will eventually corrupt them.
For example, an otherwise good judge, Roberts, got nailed because he circumvented Irish law to adopt his kids - now we have Obamacare, permanently. The same thing can be done to just about anyone.
There is always leverage on everyone. If there is not, then Parties will do their best to rid itself of them.
As outlined in Fahrenheit 451.
Polarization is the entire goal of those rules, especially #13, which is their favorite.
SAUL ALINSKY'S RULES FOR RADICALS
For a long time, it was dems 40, reps 30, ind 30 and the dems won all the time.
This meant that the dems had to worry more about governing than winning and the repubs chipped in by being gracious losers but also trying to improve the dems product.
Now it is dems 30 repubs 30, ind 40. Now the dems are more concerned about winning than governing. The Repubs instead of being a cooperative minority are now a competitive party and also want to win.
It is now all about winning and not so much about governing.
Since the U.S. election I haven’t been optimistic about this country’s prospects. Seeing some instances in which European countries are stepping back from socialism is encouraging. Maybe there’s hope that once things become even worse here, leftists too will start to see the error of their ways (or a portion of them anyway).
Still, on the whole socialism seems pretty dominant in Europe. I have my doubts about its being able to move very far back in the other direction. Also in Europe the Muslim population is increasing, and along with it the threat of Islamist extremism. There’s not much left of the optimism that I felt for the West (and for the world as a whole) at the end of the Cold War. Glad to see the listing of some positive developments, though.
Agree with your post 29.
It was those years where we paid more attention to sports than politics that the great strides toward communism were made. From Social Security to LBJ’s war on poverty (which greatly expanded poverty) to Agenda 21 which is already making great strides. We almost slept too long. Far better they know who the politicians are and what they are up to than sports teams. In fact, I’ve been suspecting for a while that the bread and circuses of sports was what distracted Americans from their civic duty. When the American Revolution occurred, we had 150 years experience with self-government. We have been on auto-pilot, letting politicians run amuck for about a century now - so we are paying dearly for our past dereliction of duty as citizens.
Let the games continue, polarization is not the problem.
RULE 12: “The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative.” Never let the enemy score points because you’re caught without a solution to the problem.
Zippy has NO solutions. He keeps doing the same destructive things while campaigning against them. We know he wants the destruction, but most people have no clue. Hopefully, as the fiscal situation deteriorates, more people will notice that he DOES nothing--only talks.
The time race is whether they figure it out before he has cinched the deal and totally destroyed the whole country and then they turn on him. I hope we can wake up these losers in time!
Of course, the complicit fellow traveler media are all that keep him safe from reality. They are the ENEMEDIA!!! We will need to beat them too.
“Paul Krugman is a New York Times columnist who routinely questions the motives, the ethics, and even the sanity of people who disagree with him.”
That’s the reason for the toxicity in Washington.
Multiply that sort of venom by hundreds of Progressives in Congress and the recipe for nastiness, bad manners,
and schoolyard-bully tactics makes its appearance in an atmosphere that hangs heavy like smog.
IMHO
Freedom vs Socialism
True enough, I guess. But this idea that “the state” can or should be “dismantled” is questionable. Can you really make that a slogan and put it on flags and bumpers and expect the atmosphere not be polarized?
Easy answer in a sports analogy:
Conservatives’ goalposts are in a fixed location.
Liberals’ goalposts are always being moved further away from conservatives’ goalposts.
Hence, polarization is always increasing.
And, BTW, every compromise with liberals is an implicit approval for them to move their goalposts again.
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