{"id":14135,"date":"2011-06-11T02:28:10","date_gmt":"2011-06-11T08:28:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nonesoblind.org\/blog\/?p=10371"},"modified":"2011-06-11T02:28:10","modified_gmt":"2011-06-11T08:28:10","slug":"no-true-patriot-a-two-party-commentary-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/abetterhumanstory.org\/pressthebattle\/no-true-patriot-a-two-party-commentary-2\/","title":{"rendered":"* No True Patriot: A Commentary Now in Two Parts"},"content":{"rendered":"

The first part of this piece was a commentary on the NPR station in my region. The second part of it I added subsequently.<\/p>\n

(The radio commentary can be heard here: www.publicbroadcasting.net\/wmra\/news.newsmain\/article\/0\/3507\/1776933\/Civic.Soapbox\/No.True.Patriot<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

*********************<\/p>\n

No True Patriot<\/em><\/p>\n

by<\/p>\n

Andy Schmookler<\/p>\n

Many conservatives nowadays have been persuaded that the liberal approach to governance deserves no respect, that it is something alien to the real America and that \u201cNo compromise!\u201d is an appropriate stance to take when dealing with liberal proposals.<\/p>\n

No true patriot should support this dismissive attitude\u2014not if patriotism requires honoring the vision of our nation\u2019s founders.<\/p>\n

Our founders did not give us a government of ayatollahs, possessing some exclusive truth. Rather, they gave us a democratic process by which we as a people can search together for our best way forward.<\/p>\n

They believed that out of that conversation \u2013out of the competition in the marketplace of ideas\u2014we the people, endowed with the capacity for reason, could reach good decisions.<\/p>\n

Over generations of that competition of ideas, roughly half the American body politic has embraced the liberal approach to the organization of society\u2014a mixture of market forces and government policy, a belief that government has a necessary role to play in shaping our society.<\/p>\n

This has been no fleeting whim. American liberalism has unfolded with great continuity: Obama\u2019s health care reform is of the same cloth as FDR\u2019s Social Security and LBJ\u2019s Medicare.<\/p>\n

Liberalism is an enduring part of America\u2019s body of thought and values, just like the persistent principles of American conservatism. To treat either as unworthy of respect, as an alien element suitable only to be fought and defeated, is to betray our founders\u2019 concept of how the will of the people is to emerge from the democratic process.<\/p>\n

To hate liberalism is to hate a part of America\u2019s heart.<\/p>\n

It is also to ignore American history. When some conservatives bewail the loss of the America they grew up in, what is that America they\u2019re hankering for? Chances are, the America they long for is one in which the liberal spirit was ascendant.<\/p>\n

If it is conservatism that has dominated for the past thirty years, surely it was liberalism that was dominant from the beginnings of the FDR presidency in 1933 onward for some four decades. And that time of liberalism\u2019s ascendancy may also have been the time of America\u2019s greatest glory.<\/p>\n

Was there ever an era of greater achievement than after the triumph of World War II, when America led the creation of a wise international order. Never was America more beloved in the world than in the era of the Marshall Plan, which revived war-torn Europe and saved it from communism. Never did America invest more wisely in its people than with the G.I. Bill of rights, building a strong middle class.<\/p>\n

It is because of the fruits of American liberalism that the old are not destitute, that the sick are not left untended, that the children of the poor are educated, that whole races are not condemned to second-class citizenship.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s why no true patriot should show contempt for the liberal part of America\u2019s political life\u2014not if a patriot is someone who takes pride in the glories of his country. <\/p>\n

******<\/p>\n

The foregoing is what I would say to the decent conservatives I know who have been persuaded to adopt that contemptuous attitude toward liberalism. But an important question remains: What of the persuaders? Why has today\u2019s \u201cconservative\u201d political leadership sought to inculcate this scorn in its followers?
\nHere\u2019s my take.<\/p>\n

Imagine that you are part of a political force that does not want to be bound by the American political ideal in which different factions find ways to cooperate to meet the nation\u2019s challenges.<\/p>\n

Imagine that you don\u2019t want to pay a political price for trying, even with the nation in crisis, to make the president from the other side fail. Imagine further that you want to seem righteous, not despicable, if you try to prevent the \u201cother side\u201d from having any record of achievement by repealing whatever accomplishments you were not able to block.<\/p>\n

Imagine above all that your goals include transferring power and wealth from average Americans to those already powerful and wealthy. And that you judge that you can achieve such a goal only by dividing groups of Americans against each other so bitterly that the American people will be unable to act together, on the basis of their shared values, to protect their common interests.<\/p>\n

For all these purposes, it is hard to conceive of a more effective strategy than to persuade your followers that the people on the other side of the political divide are so beyond the pale \u2013so un-American as to border on being betrayers of the nation– that no good can possibly come from dealing with them in any cooperative way, that complete enmity is the patriotic position.<\/p>\n

Andy Schmookler, author of the prize-winning book The Parable of the Tribes: The Problem of Power in Social Evolution, is running for the Democratic nomination for Congress in the most Republican district in Virginia.
\n<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The first part of this piece was a commentary on the NPR station in my region. The second part of it I added subsequently. (The radio commentary can be heard here: www.publicbroadcasting.net\/wmra\/news.newsmain\/article\/0\/3507\/1776933\/Civic.Soapbox\/No.True.Patriot.) ********************* No True Patriot by Andy Schmookler Many conservatives nowadays have been persuaded that the liberal approach to governance deserves no respect, that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[9,3],"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abetterhumanstory.org\/pressthebattle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14135"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abetterhumanstory.org\/pressthebattle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abetterhumanstory.org\/pressthebattle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abetterhumanstory.org\/pressthebattle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abetterhumanstory.org\/pressthebattle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14135"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/abetterhumanstory.org\/pressthebattle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14135\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abetterhumanstory.org\/pressthebattle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14135"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abetterhumanstory.org\/pressthebattle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14135"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abetterhumanstory.org\/pressthebattle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14135"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}