The Conscience of a Liberal: Reclaiming America from the Right Book

It is interesting to read this book, which was written a couple of years before Obama was elected, now that it is a couple of years after his election. This is an important book and one I would encourage you to read.

There was a time when America was a country that was interested in equality and was not really a 'class' society - but more a 'middle-class' society. There were rich and poor people, but mostly there was a kind of extended middle. That is no longer the case. Now the US is perhaps best described as a kind of caste society - it has very limited social mobility (let's put it this way, it has arguably less social mobility than Britain) and income distribution places it on levels comparable with Latin American countries, rather than European ones. Inequality is the order of the day - but how did it get to be this way?

The answer is that 'movement conservatives' have bought themselves a political party (the Republican Party - which, purely for the sake of brevity, we shall hereafter refer to as The Repugs). They have been so successful in this that they have effectively made America a deeply partisan country - apparently, and for perhaps the first time in American history, no Democrat is to the right of a single Repug in either chamber of government.

But this has not been achieved by money alone. One of the great questions of our time is why do people consistently vote against their own interests. Here in Victoria we have just gone through an election where the people of Frankston have voted in a Liberal (Liberal is a confusing name - in Australia that is the right of the political spectrum, i.e. a life form that would be referred to as a conservative elsewhere in the universe). Frankston has no right voting in a Liberal - it was just lucky it wasn't 2012 or I would have believed the world really was coming to an end.

The answer, of course, as it is with most things, is racism. Tell a white person that supporting any measure might just make a single black person better off will have them hacking off their nose as quick as you can say, 'spite your face'. We white people are reflexively racist and it is this somewhat less than endearing trait that has helped very strange people come to power in America. Did you know, for example, that Reagan's first speech after winning nomination as Repug Presidential candidate was the Neshoba County Fair - just a couple of miles from the town where the Good Ol' Boys in 1964 killed three Civil Rights workers. Reagan, of course, didn't say he didn't like black people - that would be rude - but he did say he loved state's rights, which everyone understood meant the same thing.

Racism is the most deeply repugnant of all human traits. After a century like the 20th one might think there would be cause for pause by politicians before letting that particular genie out of the bottle - but in America and in Australia the right wing always know it is a sure-fire winner. And so they don't hesitate.

This is a positive book and one that offers much hope in being able to move America towards being more egalitarian, before it is too late. He makes it clear that universal health care is the last best hope for the progressive forces to shift the US towards a fairer society. He was hoping that this could be virtually cost neutral on the basis of not extending Bush's tax cuts for the rich beyond 2010. Unfortunately, every step forward is met with two steps back.

Oh, and if you don't think inequality is a problem - and before you tell me that because I live in a 'socialist' country I don't understand 'freedom' perhaps you should look at or or even this

Thanks for recommending I read this guy Richard.