Eric Foner at The Nation writes—American Radicals and the Change We Could Believe In:
Last spring, I taught my final class at Columbia University, and now I’m riding off into the sunset of retirement. The course, which attracted some 180 students, was called “The American Radical Tradition.” Beginning with the American Revolution, it explored the ideas, tactics, strengths, weaknesses, and interconnections of the movements that have attempted to change American society—from abolitionism and feminism to the labor movement, socialism, communism, black radicalism, the New Left, Occupy Wall Street, and Black Lives Matter. Although the word “radicalism” is often applied to those on the right as well as the left, I announced at the outset that since we had only one semester, I planned to focus on what might be called left-wing radicalism. Those students who wanted exposure to right-wing radicalism, I added, could enroll in any class in Columbia’s business school. [...]
American radicalism entails a visionary aspiration to remake the world on the basis of greater equality—economic, legal, social, racial, or sexual. Despite the occasional resort to violence, most of these movements have reflected the democratic ethos of American life: They’ve been open rather than secretive and have relied on education, example, or political action rather than coercion.
Not surprisingly, they have also reflected some of the larger society’s flaws; radicals are a product of their society, no matter how fully they reject certain aspects of it. While I made clear my sympathy with most of the groups we studied, I also insisted that we should not be surprised that some abolitionists were antifeminist, some feminists racist, some labor organizations hostile to immigrants. Neither history nor politics is well served by simple hagiography.
From Thomas Paine’s ideal of an America freed from the hereditary inequalities of Europe, to the vision of liberation from legal and customary bondage espoused by abolitionists and feminists; from the Knights of Labor’s concept of a cooperative commonwealth, to the socialists’ call for workers to organize society in accordance with their own aspirations; from the New Left’s embrace of personal liberation as a goal every bit as worthy as material abundance, to the current efforts to counteract the less appealing consequences of globalization, each generation has made its distinctive contribution to an ongoing radical tradition.
Many achievements that we think of as the most admirable in our history are to a considerable extent the outgrowth of American radicalism, including the abolition of slavery, the dramatic expansion of women’s rights, the respect for civil liberties and our right of dissent, and the efforts today to tame a rampant capitalism and combat economic inequality. Many of our current ideas about freedom, equality, and the rights of citizens originated with American radicals. [...]
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At Daily Kos on this date in 2009—Reid Caves: Medicare Buy-in, Public Option Pulled from Senate Bill:
With Tom Harkin pre-capitulating, telling TMPDC that "There's enough good in this bill that even without those two, we gotta move," even before the Dem caucus met to decide the way forward, the writing was on the wall. Add Rockefeller, who says he'll vote for the bill even without Medicare buy-in, and it's gone.
A number of sources are reporting that the majority capitulated to Lieberman, who was in attendance in the meeting, cuz, you know, he's with us on everything but the war.
Senators emerging from the special Democratic caucus confirm that the Medicare buy-in proposal will have to be stripped from the Senate bill in order to achieve 60 votes.
So what's out next at Lieberman's demand? The 90% medical loss ratio is destined to be a goner, now that the CBO has concluded that requiring insurance companies to pay 90% of money collected through premiums out in direct medical care would--and this I don't get at all--"make such insurance an essentially governmental program," that's gonna be out.
What's Lieberman's next demand going to be? My guess is Medicaid subsidies have to be removed.
On today’s Kagro in the Morning show: Somebody made out like a bandit when Trump’s tweeting sent stock prices plummeting. Mike Flynn’s looking kinda spy-ish. Greg Dworkin and Joan McCarter discuss Trump voters who hope to keep their Obamacare and the senators who’ll screw them.
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