MGB:_The Founding Fathers believed in social and economic progress as part of the natural evolution of human society. We would one day be done with slavery (not just chattel slavery but what we would call capitalism) and sexism, but they allowed the interests of property and order to have a say in government so that this progress would not come too fast. Most leftists would say they overdid it on the brakes. Madison would not be at all surprised at how things at worked out, as the main change was the size of the nation and he helped Jefferson negotiate that, so he knew anything was possible.
Madison would quietly chuckle at the abortion debate, as there is really no underlying policy dispute involved so no one has raised any options. He would be more fascinated at how whites in the south have been allowed to live for so long and then be ashamed at his role in keeping them in power. The truth is that once you showed him the Internet, he would slap you if you tried to ask him any questions. Once he found Amazon, you would not see him for years. Hopefully he would find Corey Robin’s book on The Reactionary Mind and the books by Douglass and Wildavsky, et al on Cultural Theory, at which point he would tell MSW to quit looking for truth at the Manhatten Institute and then slap him again. He’d slap Haidt too.
Robin’s book shows clearly why conservatives do what they do. Social progress is not their desire. They justify themselves by refighting their last defeat and making it seem like there is a real issue to be waged, when abortion, gay marriage and transexualism, their current big three, are essentially settled. The purpose in doing this may just be to distract progressives from seeking the kind of economic solidarity needed to eliminate capitalism and the patriarchy that it sustains. Workers cannot be made to know that they can control the means of consumption, lest they realize that management is a consumable good. Jesus would ask the same question and is, through us.
Since you briing up the idiot, the Left is going to win Congress back because of him an merely has to chose between electing Pelosi or Clinton as speaker, depeding on how many conviction votes it can find in the Senate. The GOP should see this and deal with Trump before Novemeber. This is about stupidity and crime, not ideology.
See Leo Casey’s article in Dissent’s winter issue, which demolishes this view. The link is posted on my wall. In essence, he says that racial discrimination (et al) and capitalist attacks on workes come from the same place. Right wing racial politics are designed to have white workers accept their fate in the system. Authoritarianism must be attacked on all fronts (including when it co-opts the Church).
https://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/perils-of-universalism-race-class-democracy-defense-identity-politics
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