The Way We Really Are

Stephanie Coontz, 1997 / Tigard Lib 306.85 COO

A sequel to The Way We Never Were wikipedia . . . author website

The book corrects many incorrect claims by "Media Conservatives" about marriage, families, history, and better times in the past, with citations to actual peer reviewed research. Helpful ... until the "tax the rich so that bureaucrats can help the poor" stuff. Tested programs, yes, and testing new programs at observable scale, yes ... but the author suggests we already know that hypothetical national-scale programs will work as desired, rather than develop another raft of "self-licking ice-cream-cones".

European examples? As I write this, "peaceful Europe" is threatened by a rampaging bear to the East, chewing up a formerly independent peaceful country. It will take Europe years to create the military necessary to keep the bear contained, much less declaw it and push it back into its cage. That lack of preparation is partly why Europe has the wealth to pay for large social programs. I am personally very uncomfortable with those statist ideas, and a hacker employed by the bear may attack my website for including this paragraph, but ... allocating resources requires uncomfortable choices.

Attributing lack of public support for new programs to "... demoralization by a massive campaign ..." (p176) is a pejorative assumption, and we will remain stuck in pejoratives ("left" and "right") until we make the difficult effort to find common ground and expand it. The risk is that our "opponents" might change "our" minds, instead of the outcome we have already decided that we want.

THAT said, much right-wing ideology cites (and misinterprets) a very tiny fraction of the Christian Bible in support of personal greed and international conflict. Non right-wing Christians can quote much more of the New Testament to combat the right wing's selective sampling of the Old Testament.