I hate posting about politics on this forum, but I can't resist this one.
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The original post, of course, presumes that liberals have always been right. That could not be further from the case.
The easiest example is eugenics. Progressives believed we could sterilize "morons" (a medical term back in the day) in order to improve society.
The second easiest example is prohibition. It is laughably oversimplistic to presume that this was a bunch of evangelicals -- the prohibition movement did originate with evangelicals in Ohio, Maine, and Kansas; but by the turn of the century, the movement was largely led by both the Anti-Saloon League (a religious movement) AND progressives, and probably more so progressives, who became very active in regulating individual behavior around this time. We can argue history here, but it is no coincidence that the 18th amendment is smack dab in the middle of a handful of progressive amendments.
Another example is student loans. Progressives wanted everyone to go to college, and thus decided that the federal government, and not banks, should fund college, thus giving colleges a blank check to charge whatever they want. Schools are, in turn, becoming the biggest corporations in their respective states, and it's not close. Nothing has been more responsible for skyrocketing costs of higher education and crippling a generation of Americans than the federal government's involvement in handing out blank checks. The correlation is astonishing.
I could go on, but there are many examples of progressives attempting to address a social issue and only making it worse. Obviously there are conservative examples of this as well, which gets to my larger point...
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The greatest failure of progressives is the federalizing of EVERYTHING. It's amazing to me that progressives can largely say "LOL prohibition," and in the same breath think the FEDERAL government is the answer to all of society's ills. Maybe, just maybe, it's not.
The beauty of how this country was supposed to work was that the founders recognized that this was a vast land to be inhabited by people from all religions, cultures, etc. So they established a federalism whereby the local government would be the most important, state governments next, and then a limited federal government. If you wanted to change this, you convinced the country through a democratic process to amend the constitution. This meant we could create a majority out of extreme diversity, and ultimately get along despite our vast differences.
87% of England is English. 93% of Italy is Italians. 94% of China is Chinese.
The Founders realized this type of hegemony was never going to be the case in America, and thus established a federalism whereby these groups could be governed by local governments rather than the federal government. It was basically a predecessor to the EU.
The idea that a person in Maine would have the same view as, say, a person in Texas about a complicated issue like abortion is insane. So the founders created a system whereby different cultures could aggregate in different places, and the federal government would largely stay out of their way. If society had progressed on a certain issue, the constitution could be amended.
The progressives mostly demolished this around the New Deal era. We now live in a world governed largely by:
- Agencies that are remarkably undemocratic and ignore the constitution's legislative process -- very important rulemaking is supposed to go through the House and Senate, not the whims of the executive branch and the president's appointments;
- A legislative branch that has far more power (cough Commerce Clause cough) than ever intended;
- A Supreme Court that is far more powerful than ever intended -- progressives are now ruing how powerful they made the Supreme Court in the 1930s;
- And a corporate oligarchy that blossomed, mostly, because corporations now only had to lobby one government (the federal government) instead of 50 governments (the states).
That *cough* about the Commerce Clause -- using an example here -- conservatives would never have been able to implement the war on drugs had progressives not pushed cases through the Supreme Court in the 1930s vastly, vastly, vastly, vastly increasing Congress's Article I powers. But I digress.
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I could go on and on, and I don't want to debate any particular issues, but this phrasing, from one of the most intelligent posters on this forum, struck me:
To me at the moment they kinda appear to be (in no particular order):
- Anti-homosexuality
- Anti-sex ed
- Anti-theory of evolution
- Anti-abortion
- Anti-religion (other religions than what the social conservative believes)
- Pro-religion (but only the personal interpretation of the religion or a small tight knit group of religions that the social conservative believes are acceptable)
- Anti-transgender
- Anti-racial equality
Liberals have largely created caricature of conservatives that are an extreme minority of conservatives. I do not pretend that the professors and students who took over Evergreen State University represent liberals as a whole, and I just wish liberals would acknowledge the same about conservatives.
Most conservatives I know are not "anti" everything stated, but merely object to the FEDERAL GOVERNMENT being the one to control individual behavior. The "anti-sex ed" is the easiest one -- most conservatives are not anti-sex ed, but instead believe that the family unit should be the entity informing youth about sex and its implications, not the state.
I could go on with each of these issues, but they all carry largely the same message -- a FEDERAL government is not the answer to these issues.
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In sum, the idea that conservatives are always wrong is loony; the idea that liberals are always right is equally loony.
Society is extremely complex, and having one party pushing forward with another resisting that push is actually the sign of a healthy democracy, not a bad one.
We are a country of extremely diverse opinions and viewpoints. I happen to believe a more decentralized government would be the best way to address this type of society, and I thus believe conservatives are correct in their procedural positions as to how society should move forward.
If that makes me "anti anti anti" man, so be it.