That’s too defeatist. The way the left radically changed public opinion on same-sex marriage, and influenced the government to allow it, shows that a small movement can grow and achieve major change. Being relentless, believing in your cause, never giving up but also being strategic and cautious at times is all a part of succeeding at that.
I don’t think conservatism promises that an economy will not go through ups and downs on its own. That is the natural cycle. I don’t think the dot-com bubble was government-caused. It also wasn’t a huge devastation...it was a manageable dip. The housing bubble certainly was government-caused, but it was NOT because of conservative policies at all. That was entirely a result of Fannie and Freddie running the housing sector, something that was not created by conservative government. No conservative government has been very successful at ripping down many existing social programs. We did get welfare reform in the ‘90s and saw good results from that.
Well, it likely is defeatist to some extent, yes!
Fannie and Freddie was in fact passed with tremendous Republican support...and it started under Newt’s watch. Should Newt have been perfect? No, but my point is that even under governments with a conservative mix in them like as you mentioned, Reagan and Newt’s times, the leftward march went on steadily in America. The conservatism of those days really changed nothing at all in the course of the nation.
I don’t think the Left’s movement is small - or even starts small in the manner of pursuing its issues. It is a world-wide internationalist movement...socialism is the paradigm of the world right now. Post World War 2, Europe went hard left rapidly into what we called soft-socialism and America began a similar but much slower transformation into a socialist society. We are catching up with the where the rest of the west has already gone. The west was dominant post-WW2 and has developed the world system we now largely operate under, the Soviets were there for awhile but they were much weaker overall and Russia has always had trouble creating wealth.
America’s fall into socialism has been coming for 75 years. But maybe we shouldn’t curse it too much...there seems to be a rising new power in the face of the very weak, rudderless west mired in the sclerosis of its socialist paradigm. Islam and Shariah may be the new force that dominates the world, if the west is as corrupt, craven and ignorant as it appears to be...and that will be a very dark age indeed.