The Wrong Side of History ... again

There is a dangerous meme that says something to the effect that conservatives today need to reform to their basic principles like the good old days. That somehow they've gotten off track and need to return to their roots from some golden age of conservatism.

Let's be clear. It is the same as it ever was. Fear-based paranoia of loss of a mythologized America and one that, then as now, is based not on how things work in the real world but on ideology.

Op-Ed Columnist - The Wrong Side of History - NYTimes.com:

Indeed, these same arguments we hear today against health reform were used even earlier, to attack President Franklin Roosevelt’s call for Social Security. It was denounced as a socialist program that would compete with private insurers and add to Americans’ tax burden so as to kill jobs.

In hindsight, it seems a bit ridiculous, doesn’t it?  Social Security passed, and the republic survived.

Similar, ferocious hyperbole was unleashed on the proposal for Medicare.  President John Kennedy and later President Lyndon Johnson pushed for a government health program for the elderly, but conservatives bitterly denounced the proposal as socialism, as a plan for bureaucrats to make medical decisions, as a means to ration health care.