In 1981, Ronald Reagan proclaimed “government is not a solution to our problem, government is the problem” bringing the modern conservative movement into the mainstream, marking an end to the New Deal concept that public works can smooth the edges of capitalism’s sharper sides. A generation later and you’ve got to marvel at the way market-driven, laissez-faire strategies dominate public policy. Few among the mainstream even question the approach. For that, you’ve got to give those conservatives some credit. They’ve been rather successful.

Until now. More and more you can read about the crisis facing the movement, the trouble for conservative think tanks, and the poor Republican electoral chances in 2008, while conservatives search for strategies to recapture the American mindset. What you don’t see - yet - in the commercial media is the reason conservatives are scrambling in the first place: The fanatical attempt to fit every social policy within a free market framework has failed. Sometimes, the message stops resonating because the philosophy is bankrupt.

Case in point: The NY Times had a good read a few weeks back called “Conservative Thinkers Think Again” analyzing how the intellectual right struggles to articulate “solutions to emerging problems like energy, the environment and immigration” within a conservative ideology. What’s missing from the article is the critical point that these desperate social problems exist as a direct result of the market-driven, hands-off conservative policies of the last twenty-five years.

I mean, c’mon already. Not mentioned in that Times article are other problems, like the indisputable shift in wealth to the top percent, the wild gulf between super-rich and everyone else, the nation’s crumbling infrastructure, out-of-reach college costs, suffocating personal and family debt, the destruction of our downtowns, black box outsourced voting, and on. In fact it’s hard to find a modern problem that you can’t connect back to the corporatization of our society and its priority of profit over people that so defines the last twenty-five years.

Listen, I am not saying that free market solutions are wrong, always, end of discussion. The point is that no single ideology fits every situation. That’s fanaticism, and it’s as dangerous on the right as on the left. A more moderate approach - call it the “Progressive Middle” would choose appropriate strategies to address particular social challenges according to the most reasonable method. Need new technologies to solve a worldwide energy crisis? Free market innovation through competition (albeit backed by government incentives) might be just the thing. Need to provide every sick person with affordable, effective health care? A government-run Single Payer system is the way to go.

My argument is that there’s a balance somewhere between “all free market, all the time” and a Soviet Five Year Plan. Talk to your friends in Europe and you’ll see that life can be financially stable for a majority, provide an effective social safety net for those who need it, and allow people to live satisfying lives. (And you get to take four-week vacations in the summer, imagine that.) Yeah, I know, the taxes, the taxes. Most likely there are lot fewer millionaires in Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Germany, France, Italy, etc. But I know there’s a lot more contentment, less stress and more leisure time than the US, AND there’s excellent social services, reliable public transportation, and a high quality of life overall. Is it utopia? Well, no. But can we learn a thing or two? You bet.

I’m not addressing in this post the hypocritical side of the modern conservative movement which - in practice, if not theory - has been one of the greatest bait and switches in history, a philosophy that says “small government” is fine when it involves working or poor or middle class folks, but a whole different thing when it involves military or corporate pockets. Instead, I’ll just quote Howard Zinn:

The good news is that words like Zinn’s are finding an audience among the mainstream, finally. It seems that the insanity of our corporate American dystopia here in 2008 is starting to become recognized, understood, and rejected (that happens a lot during really bad economic times.) But it’s probably what’s behind Obama’s charge (even as he tacks to the right) and it’s what’s been driving the Netroots movement as well.

Fingers crossed, but as we start the new century it’s possible that new ideas will find footing. Worth hoping for, anyway.

I was a teacher for a few years in the early 90s - an “adjunct professor of English and History”. I liked teaching but not always being a teacher; that endless stack of blue books was a chore. I also wanted to buy groceries and pay rent, and being an Adjunct is like having a music career; you’ve got to love what you’re doing because those early years are tough.

After my first year teaching Freshman Comp I landed a history gig a few days before that semester’s start. This would mean a lot fewer blue books - a plus - but little time to “prepare” a class that would run from Columbus to the day before yesterday. I had a whole three days.

I got to thinking about this when I stumbled onto the July 4th Special: Readings From Howard Zinn’s “Voices of a People’s History of the United States” over at Democracy Now. Because that semester, A People’s History of the United States saved me. It became my constant reference, and truth be told it remains so to this day.

Even back then I wanted to challenge people to consider alternative views, not just blast them with the same old facts and events. So Zinn’s first chapter - which from page one gets you to sit up and pay attention - became required reading for that and every subsequent semester I taught. It’s a book I still read, and you should too. It’s as critical for a student as for a member of a democracy.

Here’s why: If you think it’s a crime to criticize your government this is not the book for you. If you think it’s your duty to help shape and redirect improper laws and actions, then this is a must read.

Right off the bat, from the opening paragraph, there’s the kind of thing to make a reactionary swoon:

I hear it now: Shouts of “revisionist history” across the web. Well, was Columbus a saint? For many years kids were taught an expurgated Columbus story, that he discovered America, that he was a brilliant navigator, and a hero. Was that the truth? Or the quote above?

How about both.

History - just like our every day lives - is not a collection of neatly cleaved stories out of a TV sitcom. Human experience is rich, and complex, and full of contradictions. Those we call heroes one day can break your heart the next. Just look at your parents. When it comes to people - and what’s history if not a story about people? - nothing’s ever simple. This is what grown-ups understand, and why the netroots these days reject commercial infotainment and the mainstream press as being written for a childlike audience with childlike simplicity. What’s that kind of approach get you? Eight years of a social and political disaster, for one. The same holds for “traditional” history, because unless we have an honest, self-critical understanding of where we came from we’ll just keeping barreling on to the next catastrophe.

So Zinn would reject the term “revisionist history” outright because it makes the assumption that everything is already known and there can be no new ideas. But that’s ridiculous. We don’t reject new technology as “revisionist technology”. When ice is found on other planets we don’t call it “revisionist science”. We’re constantly making new discoveries, whether in a test tube or in the library. “Revisionist” history is a claim for reactionaries to resist new ideas which might - heaven forbid - lead to social change.

Zinn ignores the traditional stories from the standard texts and paints a picture based on primary sources, from newspaper articles or journals and diaries of the times. This means history through the words of people as they lived it, rather than interpretations of scholars. This is what a “people’s” history is all about.

That’s what makes Zinn’s book such an important contribution to our collective understanding of the past. It’s OK to be proud of our past and to be happy with the personal freedoms we have. Lincoln WAS a great leader, if you ask me. Washington WAS a fine first president. I’m very pleased to live in a country where I can write this very post without fear of incarceration. But we didn’t get these freedoms out of the establishment’s generosity. It took a lot of pushing and shoving - much of it ugly - to attain most of what we take for granted now. It’s going to take the same watchfulness to make sure they stick around, too.

Zinn’s book wasn’t the first to make these points but his book is the most readable and engaging one I know and thus its success. In fact it’s a page-turner, a must read for anyone who wants a fuller, more honest view about where we came from and where we’re headed. It’s one of the most important book I’ve ever read. It may be for you too.

If you’re a regular reader of ChangeAny1Thing you’ll have noticed a distinct lack of activity around here. The cause: I’ve left my job of seven years for greener pastures. And by “green” I don’t mean - alas - that I’ll be working on sustainability projects in DC. Instead I may be able to pay a few more bills without having a heart attack when I open my checkbook. But it leaves much less time for kicking around blogs and posting to my heart’s content all day.

This site is not going away; there’s still - more than ever - a need for transformative social progress; even though Obama appears to have defeated the forces of evil we are a long, long way from the progressive changes we really need.

So watch this space. It’s going to be a long summer of presidential politics, and it’ll get ugly. Meantime, there’s talk of gas hitting $7.5o a gallon. A frightening thought that would reach deep into the economy, all the way to the upper middle class which has been able to weather all of the economic changes of the last 25 years, and which has functioned as a reactionary bulwark against real change.

There’s good and bad in the oil prices, I guess. The bad is the devastating impact on so many American families, including mine. The good is the anger level that would rise with prices (and more responsible use of energy), raising a collective willingness for serious, elemental change. And maybe - just maybe - the generation that gave us the last great social movement of the 60s would wake up from their generational sleep and help bring the next one.

At the risk of further alienating pro-Hillary readers I have to point out a new article in National Journal where Greg Craig, a foreign policy adviser to Bill Clinton, calls Hillary’s experience “overstated”. The Huffington Post picks up the story:

But when did facts ever interfere with a good ad campaign? [Read more →]