THE TIDE OF HISTORY FLOWS LEFT

By James A. Haught (provided by Edd Doerr) 

Tribune News Service (TNS)

One of my history-minded friends has a long-range political view summed up
in three words: Liberals always win. Complex social struggles may take
centuries or decades, he says, but they eventually bring victory for human
rights, more democratic liberties and other progressive goals.

Look how long it took to end slavery. Generations of agitation and the
horrible Civil War finally brought triumph for liberal abolitionists and
defeat for conservative slavery supporters.

Look how long it took for women to gain the right to vote. In the end,
liberal suffragettes prevailed, conservative opponents lost.

Look at the long battle to give couples the right to practice birth control.

Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger was jailed eight times for the
crime of mentioning sex - but she eventually transformed U.S. society. A
Supreme Court victory in 1965 struck down contraceptive bans for married
couples, and a follow-up victory in 1972 struck them down for unwed ones.
Liberals won, conservatives lost.

The same pattern applies to the struggle for Social Security pensions for
retirees - and unemployment compensation for the jobless - and equality for
blacks - and Medicare and Medicaid - and equality for women - and food
stamps for needy families - and expanded health insurance under the
Affordable Care Act - and equality for gays - etc. These stormy social
conflicts ended the same way: Liberals always win. Conservatives always
lose.

Of course, history doesn't move in a clear, predictable manner. Germany was
advanced and modern - yet it sank into the horrors of Nazism. Other setbacks
occur. But the overall tide of civilization flows in a progressive
direction.

In his landmark book, "The Better Angels of Our Nature," Harvard
psychologist Steven Pinker concludes that all sorts of human evils - war,
genocide, murder, rape, torture, dueling, wife-bashing, attacks on
minorities, etc. - have faded enormously from the Western world.
International warfare has virtually vanished. Pursuit of such humane goals
lies at the heart of the liberal agenda.

When I first became a news reporter in the 1950s, conservative Bible Belt
morality was enforced by laws. It was a crime for stores to open on the
Sabbath. It was a crime to look at the equivalent of a Playboy magazine, or
to read a sexy book. (Our mayor once sent cops to raid bookstores selling
"Peyton Place.")

Back then, it was a felony to be gay, and those who were caught were sent to
prison under old sodomy laws. Back then, it was a felony for a desperate
girl to end a pregnancy. It was illegal for an unmarried couple to share a
bedroom. Divorce or unwed pregnancy was an unmentionable disgrace. Jews
weren't allowed into Christian-only country clubs. Public schools had
mandatory teacher-led prayer. It was a crime to buy a cocktail or a lottery
ticket.

That world disappeared, decade after decade. The culture slowly evolved.
Sunday "blue laws" were undone. Teacher-led prayers were banned.

Gay sex
became legal. Liquor clubs were approved. Abortion became legal. State
governments became lottery operators. Censorship ended. Other conservative
taboos gradually disappeared.

Within my lifetime, morality flip-flopped. Conservative thou-shalt-nots lost
their grip on society. Liberals won - yet it happened so gradually that
hardly anyone noticed.

For several decades, the strongest indicator of politics was church
membership. White evangelicals voted overwhelmingly for Mitt Romney. People
who don't attend worship voted overwhelmingly for Barack Obama. The latter
became the largest group in the Democratic Party base.

Today, survey after survey finds American church membership fading, while
the young generation ignores religion. Sociologists think the secular trend
is unstoppable. People who say their faith is "none" already comprise
one-fourth of the adult population - 56 million Americans - and they seem
destined someday to be the largest segment. The social tide is flowing away
from conservative fundamentalism and its Puritanical agenda.

All these factors support my friend's maxim that liberals always win. The
progressive worldview is called humanism - trying to make life better for
all people - and it's a powerful current. In 1960, John F. Kennedy said in a
famed speech:

"If by a 'liberal' they mean someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone
who welcomes new ideas without rigid reaction, someone who cares about the
welfare of the people - their health, their housing, their schools, their
jobs, their civil rights and their civil liberties - .then I'm proud to say
that I'm a liberal."

Amid all the chaos and confusion of daily life, through a thousand
contradictory barrages, the struggle for a safer, fairer, more secure, more
humane world never ceases. Thank heaven for progressive victories that keep
on prevailing.
---
ABOUT THE WRITER:  James A. Haught is editor of West Virginia's largest
newspaper, The Charleston Gazette.  Readers may reach him by email at
haughtwvgazette.com or phone at 304-348-5199.
This essay is available to Tribune News Service subscribers. Tribune did not
subsidize the writing of this column; the opinions are those of the writer
and do not necessarily represent the views of Tribune or its editors.
---
C2015 James A. Haught
Distributed by Tribune Content Agency - Aug. 1, 2015

In addition to the info at the  end of the piece, Haught is also a fellow
columnist for Free Inquiry. -- Edd)

Some thoughts on Chris Mooney's Republican Brain

by Simone Amselli (posted with her permission by Gary Berg-Cross

The following were some thoughts Simone had about Chris Mooney's presentation at WASH MDC on The Republican Brain. Simone is a teacher of French & Spanish.
others who attended or have read the book will be interested in these and in commenting.:

1-First, Mooney based his studies on only two elements of the political spectrum: the Liberals and the Conservatives. This is what I call a “black and white” outlook on the subject. There are so many nuances of grey that can be addressed.

2- The topic is presented as scientific (which would mean that the theory could be applied universally), but it contemplates only the American perspective.

3-My opinion is that in what determines our personality, the cultural element is much more important than our genetic disposition. Mooney said rightly, that the choices we make in politics can be compared to those we make in religion. However, most of the time people don’t “choose” their religion; they were raised in it. This can apply to politics. I see my students just repeating the political arguments their parents are using; this was quite obvious at the time of the last election. I wonder if a study has been made, or could me made to see if the children of the so called “liberal parents” feel more free not to stand by their parents ‘political affiliation than the Conservative’s. Of course, in that topic, like in many others that pertain to human sciences, there are a lot of gray areas.

4- Regarding the definitions Mooney give of each group: the Liberals being more open-minded, and the Conservatives liking structures, they can be applied to the individual members of each party: There are among the “Liberals” people who like structure (and are not "messy") and are used for their sense of duty and organization. There are among the “Conservative” people who like to discover, learn new things. All parties need people who reach out, and others that are duty oriented. All spectrums of personalities can find their niche in any party.


5-and last: I agree with the comment of the gentleman who said that Mooney’s theory is somewhat deterministic: "our political inclination is dictated by the configuration of our brain". This seems to be the conclusion Mooney is aiming at. However determinism is a huge subject… and a lot can be said about it. Even the cultural context can be deterministic.

Battles Discussing the Elites -America Lite & Twilight of the Elites

by Gary Berg-Cross
In this book-crowded summer of contentious reads David Gelernter has added to the pile with his America-Lite: How Imperial Academia Dismantled Our Culture (and Ushered in the Obamacrats). One may agree with some of the broad statements: "The nation is filling inexorably with Airheads, nominally educated yet ignorant; trained and groomed like prize puppies. " But wait a minute who does he say are the puppies? Good liberals. Oh, I had some other airheads in mind. Did Gelernter follow the Republican primary?
 

The book's already the object of battling reviews. The National Review cautiously likes it and talks about it's argument of Dismantling of a Culture - "America’s elites now disdain the rest of America." 

They interviewed a disgruntled Gelenter, who was happy to add to his earlier arguments from Americanism:The Fourth Great Western Religion.

In that earlier work Gelenter asked what it means to “believe” in America? Why do we always speak of our country as having a mission or purpose that is higher than other nations? I think our founders gave us some hope for this with things like separation of church and state.  But David argues that modern liberals have "invested a great deal in the notion that America was founded as a secular state, with religion relegated to the private sphere." So to Gelernter, America is not secular at all, but a powerful religious idea—that males its sort of a religion in its own right. What kind you ask? Gelernter says that what we have come to call “Americanism” (as in American Exceptionalism) is in fact a secular version of Zionism. This is scary language to some since Zionism has produced a conservative state based on religion. And it attitude towards the use of the military option and settling disputes with neighbors leaves something to be desired.

His new book takes off from there to continue the attack on intellectual elites, a topic I've blogged on earlier.

"In a piddling few decades, the world’s most powerful, influential cultural establishment happened to get demolished and rebuilt from the ground up. What had been basically a Christian, patriotic, family-loving, politically moderate part of society became contemptuous of biblical religion, of patriotism, of the family, of American greatness. The American cultural elite used to resemble (more or less) the rest of America. Today it disdains the rest of America. That’s a revolution."

A good counter arguement to Gelenter's is offered in Russell Jacoby's review of the book in an article called Dreaming of a World With No Intellectuals.

As he notes Gelernter highlights the role of American Jews as a way to trace the enormous cultural change and its consequences in higher education. But Gelenter's argument seems to be one of selective data and does not live up to comparative analysis as suggested in the quote below from Jacoby's review which includes quotes from the book.

"Up through the 60s, the WASP establishment excluded Jews from elite universities. But by 1970, Jews had pushed their way into student bodies, faculties, and administrations. The consequences? Again, easy. Jews are both leftist and aggressive. "Naturally, we would expect that an increasing Jewish presence at top colleges" would imprint the schools with those qualities. "And this is just what happened." Colleges and universities became more leftist as well as more "thrusting" and "belligerent."...

"Gelernter is Jewish, and it is not likely that a non-Jew would airily argue that obnoxious leftist Jews have taken over elite higher education. But Gelernter does so with enthusiasm untempered by facts. Aside from quoting Jewish neoconservatives such as Norman Podhoretz as sources, Gelernter does not offer a single example of what he is writing about. Who are these belligerent leftist Jewish professors? Anthony Grafton? Steven Pinker? Richard Posner? Martha Nussbaum? Perhaps Alan Dershowitz?

Moreover, the entire formulation remains vague. What does it mean that colleges have acquired "a more thrusting, belligerent tone"? The whole college? The administration? The students? One might imagine that Brandeis University, founded in 1948 by Jews, would be a perfect example to verify Gelernter's argument. Is it loud and leftist? Gelernter does not mention it."

Chris Hayes has also written a book this summer on called Twilight of the Elites. In Hayes' view the problem is less ideological of left and right and more of elite self interest which detracts from solving problems. "Part of the problem is that this kind of elite solidarity, this self-protection impulse, it stretches across the public and private sector, and it stretches across, in some way, ideological lines," (More on Hayes book, perhaps in a later post.)

It would be great to get Chris and Gelernter to debate this point and one might hope we could see this on Chris's weekend show Up with Chris Hayes. If he invites Susan Jacoby to the discussion it should be world class. She was great when the Up show discussed the Reason Rally this Spring. He could also invite Janine R. Wedel who could discuss her idea of Shadow Elite - see
The Scandal of Anti-Intellectualism and Elites.

Picture/Image Credits

America Lite:http://www.writersreps.com/America-Lite

American Zionism: http://www.fourwinds10.net/siterun_data/history/zionism/news.php?q=1341887958

Twilight of the Elites: America After Meritocracy : http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2012/07/11/review-christopher-hayes-twilight-elites-america-after-meritocracy

Why Are Jews Liberals?:http://www.toqonline.com/blog/sailer-on-podhoretz/