Winning by Wearing Down

The fanatics on the right may win the war of ideas because they are simply so rabid that they won't quit and won't be worn down. That's the fear of Robert Reich in a post on his blog:

Cynicism about government works to the Republicans’ continued advantage.

Case in point. House Budget Chair Paul Ryan unveiled a plan today that should make every American cringe. It would turn Medicare into vouchers whose benefits are funneled into the pockets of private insurers. It would make Medicaid and Food Stamps into block grants that allow states to ignore poor people altogether. It would drastically cut funding for schools, roads, and much else Americans need. And many of the plan’s savings would go to wealthy Americans who’d pay even lower taxes than they do today.

Ryan’s plan has no chance of passage – as long as Democrats are still in control of the Senate (even Democratic deficit hawks like Kent Conrad and Ben Nelson are appalled by it) and the White House.

But this so-called “blueprint” could be a blueprint for America’s future when and if right-wing Republicans take charge.

Which is where the cynicism comes in – and the shutdowns. Republicans may get blamed now. But if the shutdowns contribute to the belief among Americans that government doesn’t work, Republicans win over the long term. As with the rise of the Tea Partiers, the initiative shifts to those who essentially want to close it down for good.

That’s why it’s so important that the President have something more to say to the American people than “I want to cut spending, too, but the Republican cuts go too far.” The “going too far” argument is no match for a worldview that says government is the central problem to begin with.

Obama must show America that the basic choice is between two fundamental views of this nation. Either we’re all in this together, or we’re a bunch of individuals who happen to live within these borders and are mainly on their own.

This has been the basic choice all along — when the Founding Fathers wrote the Constitution, in the Civil War, when we went through World War I and World War II and the Great Depression in between, during the Civil Rights movement and beyond.

The President needs to remind us that as members of the same society we have obligations to one another — that the wealthiest among us must pay their fair share of taxes, that any of us who loses our jobs or homes or gets terribly sick can count on the rest of us, and that we have collective obligations to our elderly, our children, and the rest of the planet.

This is why we have government. And anyone who wants to shut it down or cut it down because they say we can’t afford it any longer is plain wrong. We are the richest nation in the world, richer than we’ve ever been. We can afford to remain a society whose members are in it together.

The politics of the right is libertarianism, the argument that there is no good government, there are no real social bonds, all that exists are temporary "contracts" in which I do something for you in exchange for what you do for me. But that is a crazy social philosophy. Parents don't barter services to their infants! The sick, handicapped, and mentally incapacitated don't negotiate a tit-for-tat with those who are better off.

The Republicans claim to be for "family values" and to be religiously motivated, but I know of no society where parental responsibilities are ignored and "contracts" replace them. I know of no religion that tells people "you are not your brother's keeper, what you are is an independent contractor and your job is to negotiate the best deal you can get from everybody around you because your job #1 is to get the most money, most power, most everything for yourself!"

I don't understand how this rancid, poisonous, corrosive philosophy can get anybody elected to anything. But apparently there are tens of millions of Americans who believe this is the "philosophy" that best sums up their view of their fellow humans.

If so, I would quickly pack and move as far away from those crazies as I could get. Nothing good can come of a society which believes the crazy things that the ideologues of America's right wing party espouses.