georgephillip
Diamond Member
Anybody remember Archie and Edith?
"Everybody pulled his weight.
Didn't need no welfare state...
Those were the days!"
Archie Bunker, protagonist of the popular 1970s TV sitcom "All in the Family" and today's Tea Party movement seem to share a misconception of just how "conservative" the 1930s, 40s and 50s actually were.
Were those decades a time when hard-working Americans pulled themselves up by their own bootstraps?
"It's true that Americans worked hard during these years.
"But the bootstraps stuff is nonsense.
"The 30s through 50s were the time of the New Deal, low-cost loans from the Federal Housing Administration, the GI Bill, huge subsidies for defense contractors during the Cold War and other industries that employed millions of people, massive transfer of funding from cities to the burgeoning suburbs, federal projects like interstate highway construction and the space program, generous investment in public schools, record union membership, high tax rates for corporations and the wealthy, good job benefits, and Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, which ensured financial stability in old age and medical crises...
"On the evidence of history, calling today's Republican Party and their Tea Party supporters 'conservative' is as absurd as calling supporters of civil rights and racial justice 'reactionary' because they invoke the values of the Reconstruction Era."
Which Side Are You On? New Language for a New Political Reality | Common Dreams
"Everybody pulled his weight.
Didn't need no welfare state...
Those were the days!"
Archie Bunker, protagonist of the popular 1970s TV sitcom "All in the Family" and today's Tea Party movement seem to share a misconception of just how "conservative" the 1930s, 40s and 50s actually were.
Were those decades a time when hard-working Americans pulled themselves up by their own bootstraps?
"It's true that Americans worked hard during these years.
"But the bootstraps stuff is nonsense.
"The 30s through 50s were the time of the New Deal, low-cost loans from the Federal Housing Administration, the GI Bill, huge subsidies for defense contractors during the Cold War and other industries that employed millions of people, massive transfer of funding from cities to the burgeoning suburbs, federal projects like interstate highway construction and the space program, generous investment in public schools, record union membership, high tax rates for corporations and the wealthy, good job benefits, and Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, which ensured financial stability in old age and medical crises...
"On the evidence of history, calling today's Republican Party and their Tea Party supporters 'conservative' is as absurd as calling supporters of civil rights and racial justice 'reactionary' because they invoke the values of the Reconstruction Era."
Which Side Are You On? New Language for a New Political Reality | Common Dreams
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