Left's Ideology is Untethered From the Facts

http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=571897&p=2


Left's Ideology Is Untethered From The Facts 

By GEORGE F. WILL
Posted 05/11/2011 06:30 PM ET 

Outside  the venue where Rep. Paul Ryan recently spoke in Madison, Wis., a  
university town never lacking protesters, one product of America's  education 
system shouted that Ryan's budget proposal would return  America to the bad old 
days of the "18th-century robber barons."

The young man, full of zeal and destitute of information, does not  know that 
those capitalists of whom he disapproves — the ones who built  the railroads and 
other sinews of the nation's industrial might —  operated in the second half of 
the 19th century, not in 18th-century  agrarian America.

Last month, Barack Obama was asked by an interviewer from Texas why  he is so 
unpopular there. Obama replied: "Texas has always been a pretty  Republican 
state, for, you know, historic reasons." Well, yes, "always"  — if you believe, 
as many baby boomers seem to, that the world began  when they became more or 
less sentient. But, for the record:
Texas, one of the 11 states of the Confederacy, was, for historic  reasons, part 
of the solidly Democratic South for almost a century after  the Civil War. 
Deeply Protestant Texas voted for Republican Herbert  Hoover against Al Smith, a 
Catholic New Yorker, for president in 1928,  but it did not vote for a 
Republican presidential candidate again until  Dwight Eisenhower carried the 
state in 1952 and 1956.

It did not do so again until Richard Nixon in 1972. Four years later,  it 
embraced Jimmy Carter. Other than during Reconstruction, Texas did  not elect a 
Republican senator until 1961 (John Tower) and did not elect  a second one (Phil 
Gramm) until 1984, and there were not as many as  three Texas Republicans in the 
U.S. House until 1968. Republicans were  not a majority of the state's 
congressional delegation until 2005.

Responding to Ryan's budget proposal, Obama said it "would lead to a  
fundamentally different America than the one we've known certainly in my  
lifetime. In fact, I think it would be fundamentally different than  what we've 
known throughout our history."

Well. It is unclear what "fundamentally" means to Obama, but consider  some 
possible metrics of what is, and is not, different than what we  have known 
"throughout our history."

Defining Progress Down
Ryan's plan would reduce federal spending as a percentage of GDP from  the 
2009-11 average of 24.4 to 19.9 in 10 years. It was not until the  nation was 
158 years old — in the Depression year of 1934, with the New  Deal erupting — 
that peacetime federal spending topped 10% of GDP, and  it did not reach 12% 
until the war preparations of 1941.
Ryan's plan would alter Medicare. But Medicare has existed in its current 
configuration for only 46 of the nation's 235 years.

Ryan's plan would involve some seniors paying more of the costs of  routine 
health care. But what is anomalous, viewed in the context of  "our history," is 
today's "12 cents" problem. That is the portion of  every health dollar paid by 
the person receiving the care. Fifty years  ago, when John Kennedy became 
president and the nation was 185 years  old, the figure was 47 cents.

Ryan's plan would expand states' discretion in the administration of  Medicaid 
by making it a block grant program. Would it make America, in  Obama's words, 
"fundamentally different than what we've known throughout  our history" to take 
this small step away from the practice of reducing  states to administrative 
extensions of the federal government?

The hysteria and hyperbole about Ryan's plan arise, in part, from a  poverty of 
today's liberal imagination, an inability to think beyond the  straight-line 
continuation of programs from the second and third  quarters of the last 
century. It is odd that "progressives," as liberals  now wish to be called, have 
such a constricted notion of the  possibilities of progress.

Liberals think Medicare and Social Security as they exist are  "fundamental" to 
the nation's identity. But liberals think the  Constitution — which the Framers 
meant to be fundamental, meaning  constituting, law — should be construed as a 
"living" document,  continually evolving to take different meanings under 
whatever liberals  consider new social imperatives.

The lesson of all this is that one's sense of possibilities — and  proprieties — 
is shaped by what we know, and often do not know, about  history. The regnant 
ideology within the Obama administration and among  congressional Democrats is 
reactionary liberalism, the conviction that  whatever government programs exist 
should forever exist because they  always have existed.

That is, as baby boomers, in their narcissism — or perhaps solipsism; or both — 
understand "always."




________________________________
From: Karl Swenson <[email protected]>
To: DADL (off topic) <[email protected]>
Sent: Thu, May 12, 2011 12:29:13 PM
Subject: Re: [DADL-OT] Breitbart on Carolla

The whole thing resonates.  :)

-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On
Behalf Of Paul Christian Glenn
Sent: Thursday, May 12, 2011 6:54 AM
To: DADL (off topic)
Subject: [DADL-OT] Breitbart on Carolla


Andrew Breitbart is the guest on Adam Carolla today, and it's a very good,
funny, and interesting listen. Thought the bit about people on the left
calling others racista might resonate with some of you. :)

http://www.adamcarolla.com


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