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I
t might seem an odd time to make a case for government. After all, government, its scope and role, was at the center of the recent election campaign, and voters unequivocally said “enough.”
But progressives aren’t going to give up on government because of one election. A strong role for the federal government as incubator, nurturer, and watchdog is central to the progressive vision of society. What needs to be reexamined is not our commitment to it. Rather, we need to reexamine just how it is that the right has made so many people so furious at the very idea of government, and how we succeed and fail at persuading them otherwise.
In this “First Principles” series, Democracy will visit core questions across a range of topics in succeeding issues. We’ll look at citizenship and civic values, the economy, the Constitution and the courts, and other subjects. In each package, we will feature essays that look at how the right built its arguments, break down why those arguments are misleading, and put forward new progressive facts, ideas, and metaphors.
Here, the esteemed historian of the right, Rick Perlstein, gives us a bracing intellectual history of conservative arguments against government; the exaggerations and calumnies that may feel new to some people today go back to the 1920s and revolve (then as now) around whipping up fears of indoctrination and limited freedom. Alan Wolfe, director of Boston College’s Boisi Center for Religion and American Public Life, argues that conservatism is not a movement of limited government, as it claims to be, but one of willful failure: Today’s conservatives are so irate and extreme, and so obsessed with political advantage, that they not only cannot govern but will not govern. And Eric Liu and Nick Hanauer, authors of The True Patriot, make a strong and provocative case for a redesigned federal government, a government with large ambitions–indeed, even larger than its present ones–but with a far less controlling hand over how those ambitions are achieved. It’s the kind of fresh thinking that we need right now, with one of the central pillars of our vision of society under sustained attack.
Enemies of State
Rick Perlstein
Why Conservatives Won't Govern
Alan Wolfe
The “More What, Less How” Government
Eric Liu and Nick Hanauer
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ISSUE #19, Winter 2011 |
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Michael Tomasky is the Editor of Democracy: A Journal of Ideas and American Editor-at-Large of the Guardian (UK).
First Principles: The Role of Government
Michael Tomasky: Progressives aren’t going to give up on government because of one election. A strong role for the federal government as incubator, nurturer, and watchdog is central to the progressive vision of society.
Enemies of State
Rick Perlstein: Historically, nothing has terrified conservatives so much as efficient, effective, activist government.
Why Conservatives Won't Govern
Alan Wolfe: Rather than using government badly out of a conviction that it always fails, they now refuse to allow government to do its work at all.
The "More What, Less How" Government
Eric Liu and Nick Hanauer: What is government for? Over the last two years, this has been the dominant question of American politics. Yet so few leaders have offered coherent answers.
America 2021: Jobs & the Economy
The Jobs & Economy Roundtable: In 2021, we will still bear scars from the Great Recession. But will America be a mighty economy again? What key investments are needed to ensure our growth and prosperity? Five experts take the long view.
The 10 Percent Solution
Andrea Louise Campbell: How progressives can stop worrying and love a value-added tax.
The Science Wars Redux
Michael Bérubé: Fifteen years after the Sokal Hoax, attacks on “objective knowledge” that were once the province of the left have been taken up by the right.
Amend and Improve, 2016
David Kendall: The key to improving health-care reform lies outside Washington. A response to Jacob S. Hacker.
The Philosopher President
Alan Brinkley: Two years into Barack Obama’s presidency, we can’t doubt his intelligence, but we can wonder whether there are more important qualities.
God and Country
Mary Jo Bane: Despite increasing religious polarization, there is surprisingly little religious hostility in America. So why doesn’t it feel that way?
Utopia Lost
Yehudah Mirsky: Human rights as utopian politics may have failed us, but human rights as catastrophe prevention is the least we must insist on.
Apocalypse Then, and Now
Jennifer Klein: Two historians trace our economic mess and growing inequality to that dismal decade—the 1970s.
After Hegemony
Nina Hachigian: America is no longer the world’s only pivotal power. Americans are adjusting—but can their leaders?
Moral Witness Through Comedy
Michael Tomasky: Imagining the hastening of the day when Arab Americans are just another unsuspected and unsurprising part of American culture.
Sawhill, Anrig Continue Debate at Brookings Event
News: On November 17, the Brookings Institution hosted a panel discussion featuring Brookings’s Budgeting and National Priorities Director Isabel Sawhill and Century Foundation Vice President for Policy Greg Anrig, reprising their debate on the deficit and entitlement reform published in our Fall Issue.
Warren to Head Consumer Financial Watchdog
News: President Obama appointed Elizabeth Warren to establish the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau—an agency that Warren first proposed in the Summer 2007 issue of Democracy.
Health-Care Reform, 2015
Jacob S. Hacker: What the next health-care fight will look like—and why it might be even harder than the last one.
Attention: Deficit
Isabel Sawhill and Greg Anrig: Should progressives embrace entitlement reform? Or look elsewhere to narrow the gap? An exchange between two leading fiscal experts.
A More Perfect Union
Henry Farrell: Over the years, European leaders forgot how to justify integration to their citizens. It’s time they remember—and proceed with tough reforms.
Why We Must Judge
Roger Berkowitz: It’s not all relative: Without judgment, a society loses its sense of justice.
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