On this 250th Consider How Different We Are, and Could Have Been
The list of things the left has been correct about over the last 100 or so years is astounding. With so much review of history that has been presented as part of the 250th anniversary of the country, this aspect deserves a review too.
Here’s a partial list. Then we’ll look at some of the items, and some caveats, context, and overview.
Resisting the Vietnam war.
Full civil rights, full respect, for all minorities.
For women too.
Consumer safety (e.g., Ralph Nader getting seat belts required in cars).
EPA, clean air, clean water.
Healthy openness about sex.
More aggressive stance on breaking up of monopolies.
Gay rights, gay marriage, LGBTQ+ acceptance.
More open to, and accepting of, non-mainstream religions.
Changes to sprays and refrigerants that caused the hole in the ozone.
Promoting sex education and protection to reduce teen pregnancies.
For decades seeking to raise the ceiling on social security tax to keep it solvent.
Against the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
Wanting to restrict corporate money in elections.
Taking climate change seriously.
It is a partial list. It could reach back farther in time but it gets fuzzier how to define what is “left”. And there are qualifications and caveats. Numerous of these were supported by many on the right too, but the left was the primary champion of them.
That is, championed by the people who actively promoted these views as opposed to Democratic leadership who often failed to, and who frequently just seemed to be Republican-lite. Party labels weren’t always consistent anyway. In the post Civil War era Southern conservatives, who were very conservative and often reactionary and against civil rights for minorities, called themselves Democrats to reject the Abraham Lincoln Republicans who had fought the South. In general, though, it has been the people of the left that have been correct on this list of issues and more.
Some are imperfect examples. Greater openness about sex than there had been in the 1950s was a good thing but the media picked it up as “free love” and made a joke of it. Ralph Nader got a new focus on consumer safety going with things like requiring seat belts in cars, but such regulations can eventually go to far. But that’s always true. Constant adjustment of governance is needed to try to keep it balanced.
Other people on the left might choose some different items for that list, and those on the right could come up with a list they’d like to claim. But the left has been correct about a long list of really big items that each did have, or could have had, profound impact on the state of the nation and the well being of our people.
Try to imagine how different the country would be if that list, and others items like it, had been adhered to. Less war. More health. Less animosity toward gays and minorities and anyone other than white males. Less divisiveness along that dividing line. That imaginary dividing line as if things like race really mattered. More economic focus on benefiting the bulk of the people. More care of the environment. Much better progress on renewable energy and limiting climate change.
Those items don’t just add up. It’s more like they multiply one another. Combine them all together and the country would be so much better off it’s hard to imagine.
Congratulations to the left on a long history in the U.S. of being on the correct side of many of our biggest issues and challenges. Through some successes, and despite some failures, you have made the country better. You also provide something essential now. As we start to move toward our next big anniversary, the 300th, you make us aware of a vision of where we have the option to go in the future. An option to make ourselves and our country even that much better.
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