September 08, 2005

I Blame Ronald Reagan

That man recited the phrase "Government isn't the solution. Government is the problem." Ever since then the Republicans and many Democrats have run campaigns based on that idiotic philosophy. It never made sense to me anyway; if you hate the government, why try so hard and spend so much of other people's money to get into it?

Robert Scheer has a very good column in the LA Times which discusses how that attitude caused the post-hurricane catastrophe.

For half a century, free-market purists have to great effect denigrated the essential role that modern government performs as some terrible liberal plot. Thus, the symbolism of New Orleans' flooding is tragically apt: Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal and Louisiana Gov. Huey Long's ambitious populist reforms in the 1930s eased Louisiana out of feudalism and toward modernity; the Reagan Revolution and the callousness of both Bush administrations have sent them back toward the abyss.

[snip]

None of this is an oversight, or simple incompetence. It is the result of a campaign by most Republicans and too many Democrats to systematically vilify the role of government in American life. Manipulative politicians have convinced lower- and middle-class whites that their own economic pains were caused by "quasi-socialist" government policies that aid only poor brown and black people — even as corporate profits and CEO salaries soared.

For decades we have seen social services that benefit everyone — education, community policing, public health, environmental protections and infrastructure repair, emergency services — in steady, steep decline in the face of tax cuts and rising military spending.

Ain't it the truth. Is there any real need, particularly post-Cold War, why we need to spend $385 billion dollars a year on the military? Is the idea of a social compact among all citizens so terrible that it pales beside the desire for tax cuts for the richest among us?

Who the hell are we?

Posted by Linkmeister at September 8, 2005 12:01 AM | TrackBack
Comments

The science fiction author David Brin has a wonderful web log, and has been writing about this issue recently.

I recommend it

http://www.davidbrin.blogspot.com/

Posted by: pixelshim at September 8, 2005 04:03 AM

You blame Reagan? Gimme a break -- Reagan would have handled this with more competence, class and compassion than any Bush supporter could ever imagine. This is not about Reagan's ideology (flawed though it is); it's about Bush's maturity, honesty, intelligence, and competence.

Ronald Reagan was a decent and compassionate man, though not the sharpest tool in the shed by any means. Bush is a stupid spoiled brat who never had to do any real work, handle any real suffering, listen to any real advice, or answer for any real consequences. Reagan and his ideology are NOT to blame for ANY of this.

Posted by: Raging Bee at September 8, 2005 10:57 AM

You're missing my point, which was that Reagan gave life to the idea that government was "in the way," a philosophy that has seriously damaged our civic life.

Reagan may have been a compassionate man, but he also managed to ignore social problems he didn't want to address (c.f. AIDS).

I certainly agree with your assessment of Bush.

Posted by: Linkmeister at September 8, 2005 11:09 AM

Not sure where I got the link initially, but I was listening to G.Norquist (VILE!) on an npr clip- going on about "we (citizens) and them (government)" visa-vis "them" spending too much of "our" money. This is the BS that the US (we) bought in to for obviously way too long. now we have to pay the bills.

Posted by: Dusty59 at September 8, 2005 12:03 PM

Hey Linkmeister,

You make a lot of great points. I definitely trace our current loss of any sense of public good to Ronald Reagan's presidency.

But you need to understand the appeal of what he said. Reagan spoke about getting government off our backs, and I believe that most people genuinely want that.

However, the Republican idea of getting government off our backs is really about letting corporate America have its way on everything.

As George Carlin once pointed out "They say they want to get government off our backs, but they don't mind being in a woman's uterus."

Not only are these conservatives against a woman's right to choose, but try having a calm, rational discussion on the merits of drug legalization. Guess what? It can't be done.

Come to think of it, they say they want to get government off our backs, but they don't mind supporting laws saying who can get married and who can't.

And these same Repubs were the ones who used Bill Clinton's avoidance of the draft in Vietnam against him. But try to point out to these people that the Constitution forbids "conditions of involuntary servitude" and goes on to state that no one "may be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law." A military draft fails on all counts.

And lastly, as a proud, albeit liberal, gun owner, I can safely say that big city Republicans are just as anti-gun as big city Democrats. Just consider, William Weld, George Will, Bill O'Reilly, George Pataki, Al D'Amato, Rudy Guiliani and countless others.

In short, it is not the rollback of public services or the rollback of any checks on corporate power that attracts people to the Republicans. It is the rhetoric that reflects a very real concern about the government - namely its power to intrude into the private lives of individuals.

Posted by: Hell's Liberal at September 8, 2005 03:04 PM

Thank you for bringing up this issue. Reagan and his idiotic fellow thinkers have been proven wrong so many times. Bring on this discussion. Let's start with the unfettered power of the corporations, the unregulated savings & loan (how much did that cost taxpayers?), airlines, homeless, mentally ill left to fend for themselves, out of control deficit (brought under control by Clinton) Iraq...

Posted by: JCS at September 8, 2005 05:53 PM

Who is intruding in our lives? Who is infringing on our rights of privacy? Who is infringing on our sexual lives? REAGAN REPUBLICATIONS

Posted by: JCS at September 8, 2005 05:55 PM

Thanks for another opportunity to get up on my high horse. To me, Reagan's principal infraction against the American way was his 1980 campaign slogan:

Are you better off now than you were four years ago?

That's a tragically wrong question. The right one to ask, the one that sustains the Common Good, the one that conforms with the spirit of America, is:

Are we better off now than we were four years ago?

Posted by: N in Seattle at September 8, 2005 06:54 PM

Raging Bee, Reagan was not a" decent and compassionite man". He was a mean-spirited jerk, indifferent to social injustice, disdainful of the poor and under-privileged, and 100% the tool of the Texas oilmen/king-makers who groomed him for the presidency. Just one example of his moral autism- when the SLA demanded and got a free food givaway for the poor in LA as a condition of their releasing Patti Hearst, Reagan, then Governor of California remarked "it's a shame there isn't an outbreak of botulism".

Posted by: louisms at September 8, 2005 07:36 PM

I think a comparison of 3 FEMAs, Bush 41, Clinton, and Bush 43, is instructive, and puts the lie to Reagan's meme. What we've missed all along is that Reagan's pithy litte soundbite was an expression of ideology that signaled intent. They were telling us the standard to which they believed they had to perform. What we see in both Iraq and the Gulf coast disaster is the natural progression of swallowing that ideology and uncritically allowing the people we elect to make that policy.

Posted by: Jeany at September 8, 2005 11:47 PM

I wish I could find the link; I read a great article a while back purporting that Reagan is at least partly to blame for every problem facing America today. The author made a pretty good case, too.

The deficit, obviously. Widening gap between rich and poor. But you can get into some real specifics, too. Reagan's foreign policy included arming and training Osama bin Laden and the Taliban, and putting Saddam Hussein into power... gee, that really worked out in the long term. He also did away with the fairness doctrine, resulting in the "fair and balanced" media we have today. And he made corruption cool again after the taint of Watergate. And made the Democrats think they had to appeal solely to conservatives in order to win back "Reagan Democrats". And that's just off the top of my head.

Posted by: schroeder at September 9, 2005 11:37 AM

Excellent point. And yes, it is part of a trend. But it goes much further.

For 2 to 4 *decades* the Republicans have been actively engaging in "framing" many issues including this "validity of government" issue.

Another example is "tax reform" - this very term (used by everyone now) is deliberately *designed* to frame taxes as bad.

This is an are we ALL need to understand. A great tutorial, written by the master in this area, George Lakoff, is "Don't Think of an Elephant".

We can *design* frames too. Sadly, as Lakoff points out, the simple truth is not enough.

I read this on my vacation and EVERY Progressive needs to read it. It is a fast read and it only costs $8. Read it, share it, give it for Christmas presents this year. And join me in framing everything we care for in a constructive way.

While you are waiting for the book go to the Rockridge Institute's site and start reading up on framing there. BTW, Rockridge is one of the *very few* think tanks working on our side. The deserve our support.

www.rockridgeinstitute.org

Thaks for reading.

Posted by: Rolf at September 9, 2005 12:10 PM