This link has been bookmarked by 3 people . It was first bookmarked on 18 Oct 2008, by NC.
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06 Nov 08
Clay BurellExcellent reflection on, and history of, the progressive-conservative tensions and patterns of US politics.
politics progressive history usa obama elections08 conservatism
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28 Oct 08
J. DunnAmerica remains a center-right nation, a fact that a President Obama would forget at his peril. (The concern-trolling begins, already. Can't they let us enjoy this a few days? A shitty, tendentious argument. There may be one for it, but this ain't it.)
politics.beltway politics.centrism politics politics.elections politics.elections.2008 politics.party politics.party.democrats politics.politicos politics.policy politics.politicos.obama politics.progressive culture culture.zeitgeist ideas.bullshit ideas
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18 Oct 08
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But history, as John Adams once said of facts, is a stubborn thing, and it tells us that Democratic presidents from FDR to JFK to LBJ to Carter to Clinton usually wind up moving farther right than they thought they ever would, or they pay for their continued liberalism at the polls. Should Obama win, he will have to govern a nation that is more instinctively conservative than it is liberal—a perennial reality that past Democratic presidents have ignored at their peril. A party founded by Andrew Jackson on the principle that "the majority is to govern" has long found itself flummoxed by the failure of that majority to see the virtues of the Democrats and the vices of the Republicans.
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Contrary to caricature, to be conservative is not necessarily to be racist, or retrograde, or close-minded. It is, rather, to be driven by a fundamental human impulse to preserve what one has and loves. Liberals and moderates share this impulse, of course; and many conservatives, like many liberals and moderates, are generous, future-oriented and interested in reform. The point is that history suggests America is more likely to tack toward the familiar on big questions of politics and culture than it is to enthusiastically embrace radical change. If you doubt this, ask an African-American or an advocate of universal health coverage.
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I spoke to Buckley briefly last Friday. "My hope is that Obama will govern, in that dolorous phrase, from the center," he said. "I think his instincts are conservative—he is a churchgoing, Christian family man. If his family resembled Sarah Palin's family, can you imagine the howls from the right?" Buckley paused. "He will have to be an artful dodger, for sure. But he knows the country is basically conservative." It is something Obama needs to remember as the trumpets begin to sound—not for a Roosevelt or a Reagan, but for him.
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