I've argued before that this nation's most towering manifestations of socialism -- Social Security and Medicare -- are by now splendid examples of, in reality, conservatism writ large. And I'll do it again.
Both programs launched in more circumscribed forms under presidential temperaments of conservative caution -- a Yankee blueblood and a Southern Democrat, both men vastly experienced in the care, feeding, and eventual prodding of Congressional inertia -- exemplifying prudent natures of slow and gradual change. Both socialist programs were warmly greeted by the conservative multitudes: the wreckage of financial depression, persistent and extreme poverty, and a lack of even fundamental healthcare have a way of recalibrating the politically acceptable and sentimentally embraceable. And, by this second decade of their next century, both Social Security and Medicare are seen by the electorate as American as elections themselves. They are, in a conservative word, tradition.
How bizarre, then, that George Will, keeper of the Conservative Tablets, should this morning ridicule liberals for their "inability to think beyond the straight-line continuation of programs from the second and third quarters of the last century." He further finds it "odd" that liberals "have such a constricted notion of the possibilities of progress."
Sarcasm aside, how can Will miss that liberals are but attempting to conserve cherished programs from a traditional past? As a conservative, he should be thrilled that liberals are hyped on mere "continuation," not cataclysmic change.
Will is woefully confused on one other issue -- OK, many others, but I don't have that much time; he writes that "Liberals think Medicare and Social Security as they exist are 'fundamental' to the nationโs identity." Well blow me down. In Will's calculation, liberals just went from about 20 percent of the electorate to roughly 80 percent, I guess, since the latter is approximately the percentage of Americans who believe those programs "as they exist are 'fundamental' to the nationโs identity."
Will does make one valid point, though, and again, it's the one I've made myself. He notes: "The regnant ideology within the Obama administration and among congressional Democrats is reactionary liberalism, the conviction that whatever government programs exist should forever exist because they always have existed."
Putting aside, like his sarcasm, Will's hyperbole -- "whatever government programs exist should forever exist" -- it seems at least to me (and to Will, I can only conclude) worthy of debate and serious deliberation that contemporary liberals are indeed the new conservatives: It is modern liberalism that works to conserve society's most cherished, and by now undeniably traditional, institutional values.
It is, to paraphrase that conservative giant, modern liberalism that stands athwart the onslaught of the revolutionary radical right, yelling Stop: No more.