Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, April 22, 1995 TAG: 9504240014
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-9 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MITCHELL L. MENDELSON
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Though Larson grudgingly admits that Republicans and/or conservatives cannot fairly claim a monopoly on political righteousness, his commentary is more partisan screed than reasoned argument, more diatribe than analysis. Ultimately and weirdly, it dissolves in a plea to abolish the National Endowment for the Humanities and its Virginia affiliate - as if these rather benign organizations were the rootstock of corruption and evil in America today.
He suggests that until recently liberals and conservatives shared roughly the same ideological agenda. ``Only in the past decade has the ideological gap [between Democrats-liberals and Republicans-conservatives] widened enormously." But even a casual understanding of American political history of the past 75 years indicates the opposite is true. For most of this century, there were clear, unmistakable and often unbridgeable differences between liberals, conservatives, Republicans and Democrats.
Only in recent years - with the bland standardization and trivialization of politics, the election of a ``new'' (i.e., centrist-conservative) Democrat as president, and a desperate policy of appeasement to the right wing by many Democrats and former liberals - have the parties and philosophies drawn closer together. George C. Wallace's famous dictum, ``There's not a dime's worth of difference'' between Democrats and Republicans, has never been as true as it is today. What we see in today's shrieky partisan debates is posturing and window dressing. This obscures the fact that both parties seek the same goals: to acquire and retain political power, stay in office as long as possible, and recklessly spend public funds as they see fit.
While it's true the current Congress, or more precisely the current House of Representatives, has drawn a few lines in the sand, this will eventually give way to the normal processes of compromise and maintenance of the status quo. Every new Congress promises to change the world, and every new Congress soon learns that changing the world requires hard work and risk, the two things congressmen will do almost anything to avoid.
Where Larson clearly leaves the rails is in his all-too-common assertion of cultural decline: ``Since [the '60s], billions of dollars have been spent on domestic programs, yet the decline of American culture has accelerated.'' The fact that social programs have almost nothing to do with ``American culture,'' whatever that may be, doesn't stop folks from nodding in agreement at such sentiments. All you have to do to be hailed as a sage these days is decry social programs and cultural decline in the same breath.
About that ``decline of American culture,'' a notion so easily believed by anyone who has heard rap music, seen a pregnant unmarried teen-ager with orange hair and a nose ring, turned on a daytime television talk show, or asked a high-school graduate to fill out a job application. Pause a moment in your haste to agree that American culture has declined, and consider the nationwide expansion and proliferation of art museums, the success of such ventures as the Discovery Channel and A&E, the popularity of new mega-bookstores, redevelopment and gentrification of decayed downtown neighborhoods, baby boomers' rising interest in religion, all facets of society demanding improved public education, and the sheer persistence of such important cultural expressions as poetry, dance, serious theater, literature, art music and other fine arts in a society. Since the '60s, American culture has grown and advanced.
Larson assures us that ``the people are at last fed up with the wasteland created by liberalism.'' Just where is this wasteland? Is it at Wytheville Community College, where Larson teaches, and which was a product of the liberal initiative to expand public higher education to communities like Wytheville? Is it along garish strips of suburban sprawl that are typically built in defiance of liberal efforts to impose land-use controls?
Liberal policies cleaned up toxic-waste dumps, and prevented cities and businesses from dumping sewage in public waterways. We breathe cleaner air and drink better water because liberals successfully fought conservative business and political interests. Publicly subsidized mass transit, another great liberal idea, reduces traffic congestion and benefits businesses by providing inexpensive access for workers or customers. By contrast, slums, blight, economic decline, deindustrialization, deregulation and suburban sprawl all tend to result from conservative laissez faire economic policies.
Liberals hold no patent on wisdom. But neither have they built and carried the hand basket in which this still-great nation supposedly went to hell. I argue that America isn't nearly so terrible a place as today's conservative loudmouths would have us believe, and whatever ills we suffer are far too complex and deeply rooted to be the manifest result of a single political philosophy.
Conservatives can point fingers, call names and flay straw men all they wish. But our problems are of our own making - all of us Americans. We won't solve them by setting up false dichotomies and claiming doctrinal superiority over those with whom we disagree, but by respecting and even cherishing our differences as we work together. That's one American tradition worthy of preservation.
Mitchell L. Mendelson, of Roanoke, is a former print journalist.
by CNB