Take Social Security, for example. Conservatives have always been opposed to the very idea of a retirement trust fund that benefits every citizen. It may have taken nearly 80 years of chipping away but they're finally about to sink it. The same story applies to the current griping about contraception. It's not new. It's just something so-called "progressives" assumed they had "won".
But nothing is ever won permanently because contrary to fashionable belief, power.. even in a democracy.. isn't about changing people's minds through rational discussion. It's about struggle between permanently and irreconcilably opposed interests. The wealthy don't give as shit about your retirement. They can pay for their own. It's completely rational for them to take this position and you're never going to change their minds about it. Religious fundamentalists are never going to agree that women who want to make their own decisions about their own bodies are anything other than "sluts". You're not going to change their minds either. So they need to be made to behave.
But you can only make people who don't want to behave do so temporarily and imperfectly anyway. So you're always having to re-fight old battles. And that's as it should be. But let's not pretend there's anything unnatural or anachronistic about fighting these fights. Otherwise you allow the other side to pretend that they're presenting you with something new when, in fact, they're just trying to bring back something very old.
Texas filed an amended complaint today [UPDATE, actually Tuesday] in its action to overcome the US Department of Justice’s objection to its voter identification law. The complaint now says that the Voting Rights Act section 5, as amended in 2006, “exceeds the enumerated powers of Congress and conflicts with Article IV of the Constitution and the Tenth Amendment.”
No comments:
Post a Comment