Among all of the progressive civil rights laws and interpretations… or entitilements made into law over the last 40-50 years, I’m trying to think of any major federal level setbacks.
The only one that comes to mind is welfare reform during the 1990’s.
Have there been any others or do you see any on the horizon?
Please stick to the federal level… no state propositions. Also please try to refrain from funding or enforcement issues. I’d also like to try to stay away from debateable interpretations of existing law ie Bush’s snooping.
As I understand it, the biggest setback to the Great Society, in particular the War on Poverty, was the Vietnam War, the cost of which made it impossible for Johnson to fund antipoverty efforts at anything near the level originally intended. But you wanted to avoid discussion of funding issues.
The Bakke decision was arguably a setback for affirmative action. Whether that counts depends on whether you consider AA an essential element of “civil rights”; there was controversy over that point even when AA first was introduced, and not all of it came from white supremacist holdouts. See The Next American Nation, by Michael Lind.
Jessie Jackson’s wisdom aside, The closest thing I can think of along this topic are past attempts at wage and price controls. Truman did it in WWII and Nixon did it in the early 70’s. I can’t comment on it’s wartime effects but when Nixon did it had the opposite effect on the economy.
Well, that changes the terms of the debate entirely. I would say the biggest setback for for post-FDR American liberalism has been not any particular court decision or Congresssional vote or election, but the growth, in reaction to liberal hegemony, of a highly organized and (crucially) very well-funded conservative movement following the Goldwater campaign of 1964. That’s what has made all conservative successes possible. We’ve always had conservatism, but a movement of this kind, on this scale – including astroturf organizations and genuine grassroots organizations, together with right-wing think-tanks and specialized media outlets, all working together in a coordinated way – has never before existed in American history. The whole story is told in Right Nation, by John Micklethwaite and Adrian Wooldridge. Read a telling excerpt here. For a less sympathetic account of the same story, read The Republican Noise Machine, by recovering conservative David Brock. See also One Party Country: The Republican Plan for Dominance in the 21st Century, by Tom Hamburger and Peter Wallsten. The latter is most interesting. The Pubs have built up a mighty machine with a lot of structural advantages locked in place, and that’s not going to change just because of the latest midterm election.
Those are alot of underlined blue words and I promise to click on a few over the holiday and try to read them. Prior to that however, its interesting that you seem to discount honest disagreement and chalk up Conservative succeses to, for lack of a better term, a vast right-wing conspiracy.
I think you should try to find a better term. “Conspiracy” doesn’t really make sense in this context, nor did BG use it. He’s very clearly talking not about a conspiracy, but rather a movement:
There is nothing in this description that excludes or “discounts” the factor of “honest disagreement” with liberal ideals, as you allege. In fact, the conservative “genuine grassroots organizations” that BG specifically acknowledged are exactly where you’ll find the bulk of “honest disagreement” with liberalism.
First of all, the union of “progressive civil rights laws” and “entitlements” seems odd. Second, what is a “federal level setback”? Are you asking whether any such laws or entitlements have been repealed? Or devolved back to the state and local level? Or are you asking whether there is a consensus that any particular federal program has been ineffective, or for our personal opinion as to whether a program is ineffective?
The one example that you gave, welfare reform, doesn’t clear things up at all. Welfare reform didn’t get the federal government out of welfare or devolve it back to the states; it merely tightened eligibility requirements and reduced long-term benefits. In what way was this a “federal level setback”?