On Democracy (1)

I've been rereading possibly the greatest book in the world, On Democracy by Joshua Cohen and Joel Rogers (1983), but I did not always think this was the case. The genius of the book is its prescience in that it presages political events and trends that I did not think were possible upon first reading in the fall of 1990. However, just the back cover is quite revealing:

America's economy is in turmoil. Millions of workers are unemployed. Record number of businesses have gone bankrupt. Once powerful core industries are in decline. The government spends billions of tax dollars on nuclear weapons and cuts millions from health, education, and social-welfare programs. In place of open public debate, we have special-interest groups, corporate political action committees, decaying political parties, attack on conventional freedoms. A pervasive cynicism, frustration, and distrust of the political system characterizes life in contemporary America.

I mentioned prescience earlier, and the question here is whether this description that was targeted against 20th century Reagan conservatism actually doesn't apply better to 21st century Obama progressivism. In which era was the economy in more turmoil, more workers unemployed, and more businesses going bankrupt? The late 80s, after Reagan has shaken off the economic doldrums leftover from Carter's failed progressive policies, are remembered today as a time of economic plenty that led into the Clinton years.

The traditional guns and butter tradeoff continues, but the millions added to health, education, and social-welfare programs have become a drain on the economy. And the chief progressive himself, Barack Hussein Obama, is the one leading the attacks on personal freedoms whether it is the IRS scandal, the spying scandal, or his attempts to silence the press. And yet, the progressive don't seem quite as angry and vocal when the culprit is Obama rather than Reagan, which indicates that the real goal wasn't to address these problems so much as to use them as leverage to wrest control the levers of government power. And now that those levers are in the hands of progressives and these problems from the 1980s are all much worse, in place of open debate, we instead have denials, attacks, obfuscations, and transparent plays for more time. So in the words of Cohen and Rogers, "a pervasive cynicism , frustration, and distrust of the political system characterizes life in contemporary America." As the song says, "everything old is new again."