Found Sounds and Such...

We were right about abolition. We were right about the Fugitive Slave Act. We were right about women having the right to vote. We were right about direct election of United States Senators. We were right about creating unions, about workplace safety, about child labor, about the eight-hour workday. We were right about creating the weekend. We were right about segregation and we were right about the Civil Rights Act. We were right about creating Social Security, about creating Medicare, about creating Medicaid. We were right about public water and about access to electricity. We were right about automobile safety. We were right about industrial pollution, about the thinning ozone layer, about recycling, about global climate change. We were right about women having the full rights of citizenship.

On each of these issues, right down the line, we triumphed over intense opposition. We dislodged the long-accepted policies of the ruling class. And with the passage of time, the matter of who is on the right side of history has seldom been ambiguous. This isn’t just rhetoric—look at the list above. A look at issues on which we didn’t necessarily prevail (yet) holds the same lesson. We were right about Viet Nam, about the Gulf War, about Iraq. We were right about the abuse of civil liberties by Woodrow Wilson, Richard Nixon and George W. Bush. We were right about “trickle down” economics. 

In light of that, consider that nowadays we’re right about gay rights and same-sex marriage. We’re right about net neutrality. We’re right about universal health care. We’re right about regulation of the financial industry, about regulation of the telecommunications industry, about regulation of oil drilling and of coal mining. We’re (still) right about trickle-down economics and its perpetual tax cuts for the richest.

The same people continue to have the same arguments about the same essential issue.

Though there’s a clear trend, progressive causes have been championed by Democrats and by Republicans; the same is true for conservative causes. Regardless of political party, conservative policies harness the twin powers of government and business to limit individual freedoms and take the treasure and labor of the vast majority, to re-route it toward the richest and most powerful among us. (For those who benefit, it’s rewarding and gratifying and nothing new, down through the centuries and around the world.) That’s seldom their rhetorical justification—and, importantly, it is not the intent of those who form their popular support—but it is almost always their practical effect. Progressives believe in the inherent, essential dignity of the human being, and the right to enjoy a reasonable standard of living in exchange for a lifetime of honest labor. We believe that government exists to step in to protect the vast majority who have limited wealth and limited power, to protect them from the creeping excesses of those who have an abundance of both. By definition, it is never easy to do this.

Progressives believe, at its simplest, that the public good of the vast majority outweighs the private good of the very few. That’s the fault line upon which any political issue in modern American history sits. Go back through the lists above; almost any one can be boiled down to this core conflict.

So, which side of history are you on?