Then why did many politicians criticize and oppose the Surge and even initially call it a “failure”?
I actually hesitated before putting those two here but from what I’ve seen liberals outside of forums like these mostly oppose free-trade and nuclear power while conservatives mostly support these policies.
Nitpick: the first commercial nuclear power plant didn’t open until Eisenhower’s second term. And some were built in the 60’s, but nuclear power didn’t really take off until the 70’s. But it’s difficult to say that was a “policy” of either party. Or a success.
If you consider the goal of permissive gun laws to be permissive gun laws, then they’ve been a perfect success, but then, by that standard, ever law that’s ever been passed has been a success. If you consider the goal of such laws to be increased safety, however (which is the goal most often expressed for them), then they’ve been a miserable failure.
And opposition to nuclear power unfortunately seems to be rather bipartisan, though of course conservatives and liberals tend to oppose it for different reasons. Liberals tend to oppose it out of fear for environmental consequences, while conservatives tend to oppose it out of fear of terrorists.
Another from the field of education: English-only instruction.
I would point more to the coal lobby finally giving up on Democrats and going full bore for Rs now as the bigger reason conservatives aren’t as high on nuclear power as they used to be.
Not with much success. When’s the last time a new one was built here?
A conservative seeks to maintain the status quo, so in that sense anything that is working and liberals want to change for the worse but fail is successful. In that sense obstruction is their achievement, but that’s only applicable as a success in the short term. Taken as a whole every great thing any social structure has ever accomplished is in spite of conservatives.
I know this isn’t the united states, but nations like China and Vietnam abandoning planned economies in favor of market economies was a conservative/libertarian success. However those nations (esp china) have a very strong statist role in the economy still. Nonetheless deregulation did succeed there.
Airline deregulation in the 1970s led to lower costs. However despite it being deregulation it was spearheaded by Ted Kennedy and signed by Carter.
Some have asked me to clarify what I mean by “conservative policies.”
Here is the clarification, copied and pasted from this thread’s counterpart
"The goal if the threads is to determine whether it was liberal or conservative policies that have advanced us more. It was liberal at the time to support abolitionists. Now it’s assumed if both conservatives and liberals to uphold abolition, if at least publicly.
Therefore, policies shall be defined as liberal or conservative given their historical contexts."
By what metric are you judging the success of that program? And how does it compare to ESL programs?
Political sniping is not the same as ideology. Opposition to the surge, or support of it, was not based on either liberal or conservative principles.
Yes, but there was lots of work and funding for commercial nuclear power all through the '50s. I agree that nuclear engineering is not ideological.
This may not qualify as “policy” but the efforts by Bush 41 and Bush 43 to combat AIDS and malaria are considered a success here.
Various studies. This essay has an overview:
Both English-immersion and bilingual education are ESL programs, in that the goal of both is to teach the student English. English immersion teaches English first, then works on the other subjects, while traditional '60s-style bilingual education teaches in the student’s native tongue while phasing in English over several years.
First of all this just isn’t true.
However, even if it were true that guns being legal meant increased gun deaths that still doesn’t prove anything.
If you only look at safety and nothing else, cars are a disaster and should be banned immediately! Think of all the lives saved.
Of course safety isn’t the only and isn’t the most important factor in gun rights. It’s about freedom, not safety.
Sticking to my lifetime, deregulation of the air and trucking industries, Reaganomics, free trade, the Cold War, broken windows policing, longer prison sentences, gun rights, welfare reform, ending bilingual education, charter schools, the surge, right to work laws, neoliberalism, and acid rain cap and trade.
Cars are far safer today than they were 30-40 years ago. Agreed?
Longer prison sentences? I think even conservatives are wishing that we didn’t go down that road. And, have we ended bilingual education? I haven’t noticed.
I think the right to work laws contributed to wage stagnation and the decline of the American middle class.
I do think that Airline deregulation has been an overall positive.
Air deregulation: Does anyone think air service is better now than in the past? Or that we’re better off with fewer airlines?
Reaganomics: A complete failure. It was the beginning of the conservative “Yes, there’s a free lunch and we’re going to eat it.” Cut taxes for billionaires and pretend it’s going to help the rest of us, and con enough stupid poor people to believe in the voodoo so that you can get elected.
The Cold War: Not a conservative victory. The USSR collapsed under internal pressure, not because of anything the US did and certainly not because of a senile cowboy actor playing the role of president.
Longer prison sentences: Now we have a higher percentage of the population behind bars than anyone else. What has it accomplished?
Gun “rights” Thanks to a Republican majority on the court, 5 justices decided the first half of The Holy Second Amendment doesn’t matter.
Ending bilingual education: I suppose a lot of new Americans would disagree.
Charter schools: Euphenism for weakening the public schools
The Holy Surge: Bunch of crap. Iraq was broken before The Holy Surge, is broken now, and will never be fixed. Going into Iraq in the first place was a conservative debacle.
Right to work laws: Euphemism for union busting. Corporations buy a state legislature and governor and get to fuck over their workers more.
Correct, but completely irrelevant to the point I was making.
If it matters, guns are safer today than 30-40 years ago also.