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A BETTER PAST?
Was the past better? Well, to a great extent, it depends on who you are. For white men of wealth and property, perhaps. For others, perhaps not. When America was founded, propertied white males were the citizens with full rights. The "arc of progress" throughout American history empowered folks not included in that original group. Emancipation of slaves, women's suffrage, workers' rights, civil rights, gay rights, and other social justice movements -- all of these sought to raise others toward the status of the propertied white male. So, if you are a zero-sum game kind of person (if you believe one person's gain is another person's loss), an argument can be made that the past was better for propertied white males.
NOSTALGIC FOR WHAT?
Some conservatives would say that this preference for propertied white males is not the "better past" of which they speak. They would say that America was better in the past because the values we held then are superior to the values we hold now. It is this belief, a belief in the need to return to "traditional American values" that is at the root of the "culture wars" conservatives so often talk about waging. Well, I looked it up. Turns out there is no such thing, as far as dictionaries and encyclopedias are concerned. So I decided to go "straight to the horse's mouth", and look at what the GOP had to say on this issue in their 2000 Party Platform: REPUBLICAN PLATFORM 2000 Renewing America's Purpose. Together. Only, it's not there. So, as loathe as I was to rely on the press, that seemed my only option: Republican Party Platform 2000. Only, the platform doesn't define "traditional American values". So I don't know WHAT they mean, exactly. They don't say.
THE GHOST OF AMERICA PAST
"I told you that these were shadows of the things that have been," said the Ghost. "That they are what they are, do not blame me!"
-- A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens
PAST AMERICAN VALUES, AS EXPRESSED IN OUR LAWS
Blacks didn't used to be able to vote without jumping hurdles.
The American armed services didn't used to be racially integrated.
It didn't used to be illegal to refuse employment, accommodations, housing, etc., to people based on their race.
Women didn't used to have the right to vote.
It didn't used to be a crime to beat or rape your wife.
It didn't used to be illegal to kill your wife if you had been cuckolded.
It didn't used to be legal to marry a person of another race.
People didn't used to be able to divorce without proving fault.
We didn't used to have a social safety net for the poor, elderly or disabled.
There didn't use to be child labor and other laws to protect workers.
It didn't used to be a crime to beat your kids.
THE GHOST OF AMERICA PRESENT
"Oh, God! To hear the Insect on the leaf pronouncing on the too much life among his hungry brothers in the dust!"
-- A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens
What positions did conservatives take on the great shifts in social justice we have seen in Twentieth Century America?
ARE MODERN CONSERVATIVES "DIFFERENT"?
To preserve progress requires eternal vigilance. Conservatives have quite a historical track record to contend with, and to obscure this track record, they have "changed their tune", claiming to believe in something they call "compassionate conservatism". Don't believe the propaganda. Their bedrock philosophy has not changed. It is conservatism. Period.
They haven't changed their position on voters' rights, states' rights, gay rights, reproductive rights, consumer protection, progressive taxation, the environment... All that they have changed is their slogan.
THE GHOST OF AMERICA FUTURE
"Men's courses will foreshadow certain ends, to which, if persevered in, they must lead," said Scrooge, "But if the courses be departed from, the ends will change. Say it is thus with what you show me."
-- A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens
This is the essence of liberalism: being willing to depart from courses that we believe are faulty. The greatest gains in social justice and civil rights were radical departures from America's faulty course. It isn't that liberals didn't love America, it is just that we saw her untapped potential, and wanted her to realize that potential. To this day, liberals are not satisfied that we have achieved full justice and freedom for all Americans. We look to the future, not the past, for OUR better days, and we believe that mankind, essentially good, has the ability to create those better days in the future. Conservatives pine for the America of the past, which can be explained in only two ways: either they believe the changes we have made are faulty, or they are ignorant of the changes we have made.
(I report, you decide...)
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