https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2020/09/14/americans-vi...
In 1955 when that trust was super high, everyone could have trusted the government to stay out of their lives and to only interfere if we had to go to war. That’s very different from people wanting the federal government to take over healthcare, energy, housing, etc.
Of course health care was much cheaper when the doctor basically had no health care to give.
A medicine man 2000 years ago was even cheaper, practically free.
What is interesting to me (as a non-American who has never set foot in the US) is that big Government seems to have had a resurgence in Reagan's 1980s, thanks mostly to its military-related expenditure but not only. I think the final "Government is bad"/"we don't need it" coup de grâce was carried out in the Clinton years, the (in-)famous Third Way [1] which was mostly one way, to be honest, i.e. neoliberal policies carried with full speed.
It does seem that the Government and how it is viewed has started to be seen in a more positive light again, thanks mostly to the millennial generation (I hate the "generation" concept but that's the best I can come with), especially after the 2008-2010 financial crisis and the accompanying social changes (increase of economic inequality, mostly), which I find highly interesting. It was also interesting how the US was very keynes-ian in its response to the pandemic, I mean putting cash directly into people's pockets is I think more than Keynes would have hoped for.
What is a country with "less" government (by any standard you choose) and better quality of life?
What’s changed isn’t the parties but the valance of civil rights issues. The court cases today aren’t about facially discriminatory laws, but about whether the USDA can discriminate based on race in granting debt relief, or whether Harvard can use race as a criterion for admissions. The party of FDR and Wilson is the natural home for those efforts at bureaucratic social engineering, while the party of Hoover is the natural opponent of such efforts.
I probably don't have a beef with your defense of limited government! But obviously you can't use D'Souza-ism to build your case.
Goldwater lost in a landslide, losing virtually every traditional Republican state including his home state of Arizona. He won a few southern states, but Carter won all of those same states in 1976. Saying that Goldwater’s civil rights stance defines the modern Republican Party is like trying to call Joe Biden socialist. It’s red meat for Democrats, not historically accurate.
The Reagan re-sort was driven by economic development in the southern states, as those states became dependent on low taxes and low regulation to draw business from blue states. Carter won rural Georgia in 1980, but Reagan won up and coming Atlanta suburbs like Gwinnett and Cobb.
On race, Reagan ran on opposition to affirmative action, which is completely different than the civil rights laws Goldwater opposed: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/made-by-history/wp/2017/....
Goldwater's civil rights stance defines the modern Republican party. The party has moderated since Goldwater, of course, but Goldwater's positioning literally restructured US politics, from a de facto 4-party state (in the 1970s, Republican support for abortion rights was still an open question! There's a 1970s-era GOP platform where debate on abortion is a plank!) to the 2-party "liberal/conservative" one we have today. Rockefeller wouldn't even be a Kiwanis Republican today; he'd simply be a Democrat. Phil Gramm did become a Republican; in fact, almost every party switcher in the US after the Civil Rights act switched to the GOP, because they were fleeing the Democratic party after the Civil Rights Act.
The idea that the modern Democratic party is somehow accountable to votes against civil rights legislation is D'Souza-ism. It ignores the plain fact that those Democrats became Republicans, and, to a lesser extent, a bunch of liberal Republicans became Democrats. You see it clearly in the candidates themselves, but also even more clearly in shifts among voters.
But I don’t see any reason to misrepresent the Republican stance. That position is not opposition to civil rights laws, it’s opposition to affirmative action and quotas, and cabining the concept of “racism” to what’s facially discriminatory.
What drives race politics in the country is that Democrats have a special sympathy for Black people and want to help erase persistent disparities, and Republicans don’t care. Democrats want to change existing race-neutral systems to eliminate disparities, and Republicans resist such change. But Republicans as a group don’t want to make it legal for e.g. hotels to discriminate based on race.
See: https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/renos/files/carneyenos.pdf
> We suggest that modern racism scales are primarily capturing two phenomenon: 1) racial liberalism or sympathy and 2) a general set of attitudes about fairness, or a political orientation known as “just world belief” that perceives the world as consisting of people who work hard and those who do not.
See also: https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/americas-wh...
> Remarkably, white liberals were the only subgroup exhibiting a pro-outgroup bias—meaning white liberals were more favorable toward nonwhites and are the only group to show this preference for group other than their own.
It’s just the normal liberal versus conservative stuff. Social engineering versus letting natural forces play out. Focus on substantive fairness versus focus on procedural fairness. Focus on government as driving outcomes versus focus on culture driving outcomes. External locus of control versus internal locus of control. Etc.
It does not really say what is wrong with white liberals but simply shames them and aims to make white liberals seem ridiculous. The repeated use of the term "wokeness" for a liberal attitude is also a key part of the shaming strategy.
The substance of the shaming seems to boil down to three points.
1. White liberals support affirmative action and reparations
2. White liberals are positive about immigration
3. White liberals are more supportive of Palestine than Israel unlike before (anti colonialism and anti apartheid are obvious reasons)
Why should white liberals be ashamed of this attitude?! These are the insinuated reasons in the article.
1. We will call this "wokeness" and laugh at your ridiculousness
2. Oh you have a white savior complex? Hilarious.
3. Umm, do you know that colored liberals are not as liberal as you?
4. Isn't being pro Palestine anti Semitic?
5. You do know that white liberals supported Israel 10 years ago, right?
Rayiner sharing this hit piece, complaining about wokeness in the midst of Republican authored antivax epidemic is par for the course for him. But the audience cant allow him to make multiple cheap shots every day in the interest of sounding reasonable and accommodative. I would like to see him offer one comment of the crazy antivax Republican leadership killing hundreds every day instead of some cheap shots about wokeness, liberals and school administrators.
The particular example of rayiner compelling you to implicitly accept that "wokeness" is degrading society is the kind of Gish Gallop rhetoric that gets churned out in supposedly "intellectual" forums. A way of pushing the Overton window to the right in the more educated and wealthier forums beyond rural America.