There is a substantial reason why America’s political factions cannot find sufficient areas of compromise to work together for the common good. Quite bluntly, their goals are quite different.
Those in the center and right tend to emphasize the nuts and bolts of government to resolve specific problems. On the local and state levels, their top priorities are protection from crime and the provision of efficient municipal and state services. Nationally, they emphasize the deterrence of foreign aggression, and the maintenance of a paradigm that allows the economy to thrive and prosperity to grow.
Those on the left see government as a tool to attain ideological goals. While not oblivious to the need to provide basic services, that consideration is a distant second to their primary purpose of, as Barack Obama stated, “Fundamentally transform America.”
As David Horowitz reported in the Washington Times in 2012, “A practical politician attempts to address problems and fix them, not to fundamentally transform an entire nation…In a national crisis such as America faced in 2009 when 800,000 of us were losing our jobs every month, traditional leaders would have regarded their first task as one of rallying the country on a common agenda and bringing Americans together. Instead, Mr. Obama and Mrs. Pelosi put their radical agenda first — passing a massive health care bill, the most transformative legislation in American history, and passing it over the opposition not only of Republicans but even of Democratic voters in Massachusetts, who elected Republican Scott Brown to cast a vote against it…Far from pursuing national unity to solve the crisis, Mr. Obama put his goal of transformation in front of everything. In order to achieve the change he wanted, he shut out the congressional Republicans in drafting his revolutionary legislation, and then disregarded the majority of Americans when they rejected his plan, defeating Democrats in special elections in New Jersey and Virginia — states that he had won.”
John Fonte, writing in the Claremont Review of Books noted: “Professor John Marini recently detailed progressives’ transformation of the American regime. First, they transformed key institutions, shifting power from the sovereignty of the people, exercised through our constitutional framework of separation of powers and federalism, to a centralized administrative state, run by a transnational managerial elite exercising executive, legislative, and judicial powers without the consent of the people or its elected representatives. Second, for contemporary progressives, moral authority or civic morality resides not in the individual American citizen and his voluntary associations, but in racial-ethnic-gender group identity. “Public figures have come to be judged not as morally culpable individuals,” he writes, “but by the moral standing established by their group identity.”
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No rational politician is in favor of allowing the planet to become unlivable. That, however, is where the common interest diverges.
Much of the debate has centered on Progressive support for responses such as Paris Climate Agreement and the Green New deal, both largely operating within the concepts of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. However, even if every signatory to the Paris Accord totally lived up to their obligations under the deal, and every U.S. state complied with the Green New Deal it would make little difference in global temperatures, assuming manmade global warming is indeed a significant issue. It would, however, reshape the world economy in a manner that the Left has advocated for a very long time. Contrast that ideological-driven response with the more pragmatic approach of the conservative White House administration.
Speaking last July 8, President Trump stated “I have given [the EPA] clear direction to focus on addressing environmental challenges … In addition to clean air and clean water, that means being good stewards of our public lands; prioritizing cleanup of polluted lands that threaten our most vulnerable citizens, and threaten them very dearly… One of the main [factors] of air pollution — particulate matter — is six times lower here than the global average… That’s a tremendous number…Since 2000, our nation’s energy-related carbon emissions have declined more than any other country on Earth. Think of that. Emissions are projected to drop in 2019 and 2020…While we’re focused on practical solutions, more than 100 Democrats in Congress now support the so-called Green New Deal. Their plan is estimated to cost our economy nearly $100 trillion — a number unthinkable; a number not affordable even in the best of times…It’ll kill millions of jobs, it’ll crush the dreams of the poorest Americans, and disproportionately harm minority communities.”
The clash between the two concepts illustrates the contrast between those who, on one side, see government action as a tool to solve specific challenges, and those, on the other, who see government as a vehicle not to solve particular problems but to “fundamentally transform” the nation.
Illustration: Pixabay