Tag: LBJ

In the present fraught moment -- with the Democrats hesitating in dealing with by far the most impeachable President America has ever had --...

This piece is appearing this week and next week in newspapers in my very red congressional district (VA-06). ***************************** “To err is human.” So we all...

This piece is appearing in newspapers in my very red congressional District, VA-06. *************************** For the entire history of human civilization, the international system has been...

Here's my subjective ranking of the legitimacy of U.S. presidential elections since 1932 on a scale of 0 (not legitimate at all) to 10...

Just substitute the name "Donald Trump" (or "Ted Cruz" for that matter) for "Sen. Goldwater" and this rings eerily true to today. A few...

I cannot understand why some progressives and liberals engage so frequently nowadays in hand wringing and fussing about how President Obama isn't "liberal enough." People, please take note. Progressives and liberals won all the big battles in the 20th century over whether America was going to become a moderate nation with a social safety net or one that followed the aggressively selfish philosophy of someone like Ayn Rand and her ilk. That war is over. We won. Now, we just have to be sure we don't lose the "peace" by allowing what passes for conservatism today (actually, it's reactionary and extremely dangerous to our representative democracy) to divide us and conquer us all.

President Obama never was a leftist politician. He never pretended to be. He is a centrist or at best a center-left pragmatist who understands that getting half a loaf in the poisonous atmosphere in Washington today is far better than going for it all and losing it all. We also need to understand that this nation is, at best, a centrist country, with a tendency to lean to the conservative side unless self interest makes us want the federal government to save us from something. The good thing is that a majority of Americans support the social safety net and the programs given to us by those who have gone before, giants like Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, and Lyndon B. Johnson.

If you like knowing that someone has inspected the meat you are going to feed your children, thank TR. You also can thank him for the Pure Food and Drug Act, which banned food and drugs that are impure or falsely labeled from being made, sold, and shipped.