Why America is moving left

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/01/why-america-is-moving-left/419112/?single_page=true

by imarg • 10 years ago

35 42 10 years ago

bobby_9x• 10 years ago

America isn't really moving left. The loudest people in the room aren't the majority.

finid3• 10 years ago

But that's the problem. The majority does not necessarily determine how the country will lean, only the loudest, the most vociferous, the most passionate, the most eh..., "patriotic".

The Nazis were not the majority, but they had a plan, and were loud and uncompromising about it.

McCarthy and Co were not the majority, but see how they managed to shaped the laws of the land. The majority didn't care enough to resist.

Presently, the right wing of the Republican party are not the majority in the party, but see how they are helping to define who gets elected to represent their party. By being the loudest, they've marginalized the "moderates" within their party.

In the waning days of an empire, which kicks in long before the empire loses complete grip on its sphere of influence, the empire tends to veer right. And that's because those who consider themselves the most "patriotic", who believe they know how to "make the empire great again", tend to be the loudest.

And they tend to be in the right wing of the political spectrum.

gozur883• 10 years ago

The Nazis were not the majority, but they had a plan, and were loud and uncompromising about it.

Yes, but the Nazis didn't have to contend with the American system, which would have kept them out of power unless they were able to get 50% + 1 electoral votes.

theseanstewart• 10 years ago

Every 4 years older people (and their ideologies) die off, and they're replaced by the younger generation that organically leans left. The current version of the GOP is going to continue facing an uphill battle unless they lighten their stance on social issues and move close to the middle.

douche• 10 years ago

The question there is whether the incoming new voters are enough to counter the predilection of existing voters to shift towards the center and right as they age.

Idealism burns out as it contends with the friction of reality and becomes jaded. Priorities also shift, as save the world becomes save my job becomes save my family.

BuckRogers3• 10 years ago

Things are changing, which makes it seem like we're going left. It appears that way because by its nature conservatism resists change. But I don't think there's any genuine move to the left. It's rhetoric from both sides.

I see little to no evidence that this country has moved left over the past 30 years other than GWB's expansion of Medicare and Reagan's Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act.

api• 10 years ago

Socially it has. Economically it really hasn't though I think that may change unless the decline of the American interior reverses on its own.

angersock• 10 years ago

Socially it has in certain places.

Don't assume the battle is won because you've captured a couple of cities and papers. The fact remains that the majority, at least in America, seem to be somewhat socially conservative.

EDIT: It'd be nice if we were more liberal. The biggest obstacle to that is the haughtiness and premature victory behavior that is endemic to the progressives right now.

Houston lost an important proposition for equality recently because all the progressives assumed the battle was won...and then they lost when the biblethumpers got their congregations to the polls.

rrss1122• 10 years ago

The major examples the article raises at the start are all major race outrages that quickly fizzled out. Moral outrage is not a sustainable foundation on which to build a movement to the left.

maxerickson2• 10 years ago

The ACA provisions eliminating lifetime maximums and making it mandatory to provide coverage regardless of preexisting conditions seem to compare favorably to the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act.

What bar does the latter cross that the former does not?

The cost shifting due to EMTALA probably isn't real leftist either (I would expect a more leftist policy to share the costs more broadly, not just among those utilizing a hospital).

finid3• 10 years ago

I don't think we're moving left. According to the latest Gallup poll, veering right seems more like it.

http://www.gallup.com/poll/188969/red-states-outnumber-blue-...

justin664• 10 years ago

To measure the validity of the article's claim you'd want to look at how many people are moving one way or the other, not how many states are moving one way or the other.

finid3• 10 years ago

So how do you determine in what direction states are moving, isn't it with people?

Is not as if states are independent of people.

CM303• 10 years ago

In the sense of support for gay marriage and trying to fix problems with inequality, it's moving left. But in terms of censorship and moral guardian attitudes, I'd say America is clearly going right. A lot of the thoughts about freedom of speech and 'offending' people are basically the views of the old school religious right, except with identity politics replacing the Bible or other religious aspect.

On another note, it's interesting how at the same time, a lot of Europe seems to be getting more right wing politically. Okay, not in the sense of certain social attitudes (support for equality hasn't changed), but definitely in the sense of euroscepticism, thoughts on immigration, etc.

justin664• 10 years ago

But in terms of censorship and moral guardian attitudes, I'd say America is clearly going right.

Not really. Seriously, not at all. It's just that whenever a group is attacked by another group for something they've said or done, they tend to accuse the other of censorship. It's a frequently misused term.

The most striking recent example I can think of is when a fairly large number of people boycotted Chic-fil-A because the company's ownership was using its money to lobby for far-right social causes. People on the right accused the left of censorship, purely because they don't understand the meaning of the word but they understand that it's a nasty accusation.

If you look at actual instances of censorship, it's really going down. It is a little amazing what you can print and what you can say, compared to a few decades ago. Small towns occasionally do book bans, and the FCC occasionally scolds someone for something they say on-air, but if you look at the content of what's published and put on the air, things are trending closer and closer to anything goes.

CM303• 10 years ago

Then how about the examples where people have been banned from sites like Twitter because they offended people, and one of the offended individuals had 'friends' at the company? Or when people nearly got blacklisted from industries because a couple of people hated their political views? Or perhaps a certain portion of the media's attempt to sweep under the rug any bad behaviour by groups they consider 'disadvantaged'. Or a willingness for certain social media sites to ban people and delete content for mentioning those negative issues.

A lot of this isn't boycotting. It's trying to kick someone off a large portion of the internet because they said something you don't like by pulling strings or falsely reporting their work as 'illegal'. It's trying to remove 'wrongthink' because your political narrative crumbles the minute it's put under any scrutiny.

There's definitely an interest in censorship there. Double so on college campuses and some other such areas.

bluejekyll• 10 years ago

It's a good article and definitely supports its claims on social movement to the left. I think this is generally true. More and more people are taking the attitude that people should be allowed to do with themselves what they want.

What it doesn't do a good job is movement to the left on financial issues. Equality etc., beyond some reference to socialism. The idea of upward mobility is so strongly ingrained as part of US's dogma, even pushing it a little to the left is always going to be hard.

GnwbZHiU• 10 years ago

I think America is already in the left, and now is moving a bit to the right, although still in the left of the centre.

gozur883• 10 years ago

Heh. Wishful thinking. The Democrats lost both houses of Congress and (more) state houses because they pushed the government further to the left than the people were willing to go. If Ted Cruz is elected we'll have the most conservative president since Reagan.

diego_moita• 10 years ago

Clearly, you didn't read the article and are answering to the title.

gozur883• 10 years ago

Or I did read it, and I think it's wrong. This kind of triple bank shot wishful thinking on the part of leftists is kind of amusing, where every defeat is actually a victory, because something something Republican something.

The reality is the country is quite a bit more conservative than Peter Beinart wishes it was. This:

But it is louder than it is strong. Instead of turning right, the country as a whole is still moving to the left.

is simply wrong. Barack Obama did not change the American political trajectory. The only thing he did that will last beyond January is the ACA. And even that won't last in its present form.

This is the sort of article people of all political persuasions like to read as they're getting a good ass kicking. "I'm not losing. Look, his knuckles are getting a bit bruised."

ksec• 10 years ago

From an non-american, outsider prospective; America looks very messy. I wonder do american think of the same, or is it the case loudest people trying to make claims?

maxerickson2• 10 years ago

Can you expand very messy out to a couple of sentences or paragraphs?

Speaking as an American, lots of things that a person does day to day aren't messy at all, but there are other things that are incredibly frustrating to have to deal with. So it really depends on what you mean.

jqm• 10 years ago

I wish the whole left-right paradigm would fade away. Personally I feel it's a bit of an artificial dichotomy.

I'm all for governance by good sense with an eye toward improving society in general.

CountSessine2• 10 years ago

The political left-right paradigm is an abstraction around the deeper tension between shame and fear. As long as someone wants you to be afraid of something, right-wing politics will exist. As long as someone wants you to feel ashamed of something, left-wing politics will exist.

Complete rejection of both fear and shame and anyone who wants you to feel them is the only way to escape the left-wing/right-wing dichotomy.

ende• 10 years ago

What is left and right? These are completely meaningless concepts, especially in an American context where the political nomenclature makes no sense at all.

Why America is moving left

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