Originally posted by: Fern
Originally posted by: Craig234
Originally posted by: Atreus21
I've come to accept the fact that if liberals ever become content, they cease to be liberals.
Rather, it's that you righties are too easily contended, failing to improve society.
You would have left in place the colonies under England, slavery, women not voting, the robber barons with mass poverty, 90% of American elderly in poverty before socieal security, 'separate but equal', labor 'signing individual contracts' for low wages and bad conditions rather than haveing the right to organize, and more.
Liberals are content with a lot, and looking to fix little things like tens of trillions in debt.
See my sig 
Fern
Yes, I know, the right doesn't see problems as problems.
For example, when JFK ran for president in 1960, the Republicans looked at domestic poverty and did not see a problem, only a danger for the government to do anything.
Kennedy saw a problem, and promised the malnourished families in West Virginia to increase the government's food aid, and his first executive act fulfilled that promise.
The democrats in the 60's saw poverty as a problem, and by the end of the decade, the poverty rate for Americans was reduced by a third, and has remained reduced.
Republicans hear that and predict disaster - we can't afford any spending on our own people, the debt will skyrocket, it's fiscally irresponsible!
They don't look at the facts - LBJ, with his great society AND the enormously expensive Vietnam war AND the moon project eating up to over 5% of the federal budget - LBJ's last budget, in 1969, was the last balanced budget the US had until Bill Clinton's later budgets at the end of the 1990's. Don't ask a Republican to explain that - all they know is that the Republicans talk small, and so they're for them, and they don't agree with their party when democrats point out the facts, but they'll still side with them for saying what they like.
90% of the elder in poverty in the US before FDR? What are you gonna do? Not a problem says the right, always been that way. FDR created social security and the number slipped eventually down to 10% in poverty. Yes, Republicans fought hard against the program and predicted it was unworkable. Yes, they continued to fight it for decades after it was working so well and their predictions had been proven wrong.
Politics in American should be Americans acting as a whole to do things they want their society to do.
The right's animosity to politics is its anti-Americanism, since America was founded to give political power to the people through an elected government.
The right will praise the idea of our democracy all day while demanding the people not actually use the government to do anything, just as they praise the idea of free speech and condemn actual use of it to criticize the government. For them, free speech is only useful for something to brag about regarding their nation, and to demand for themselves.
Of course there is one area the right can see problems - even where they don't exist, and that's wherever their limitless appetite for the land, the services, the belongings of others are at stake, able to see a 'threat' demanding our ever-increasing dominance in response in the world. They'd be at home in any of history's empires, more than the land of our founding fathers' land of peace, with Washington's call for avoiding any foreign entanglements and Jefferson's warnings about standing armies threatening democracy.
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