Two classes this semester—one filled with very liberal students (my Long Island Experience class); the other filled with a very high percentage of conservative students (my Rhetoric class). I gave an on-line Political Compass Test to the first group and they scored off the charts as having a left/libertarian bent. The latter group, which includes a high percentage of business majors, on the other hand, fought with me over the issue of the death penalty last class, not because they were opposed to the idea of execution, but because some of the students thought lethal injection was too kind. Not exactly a liberal stance to be sure!

Over the past four or five years, I’ve noticed that the college-aged students I teach are, in fact, becoming much more progressive overall. This is in keeping with nationwide trends that young Americans are moving to the left on many political and social issues. From my experience, the average college student today is extremely concerned about environmental issues, opposes any kind of discrimination on the basis of factors beyond a person’s control (race, gender, sexual orientation), thinks that people should have the right to live any way they want provided they don’t interfere with the rights of other people to do the same, generally supports the idea of universal health care, has a tolerant attitude towards immigration, believes that the rich control too much power in this country, and thinks government has an important role to play in promoting the welfare of its citizens.

This trend seems to suggest that conservatives will have a difficult time appealing to this generation, because their values are so at odds with those of most young Americans. Indeed, Barak Obama won the under 30 year old voting block by ridiculously high margins in 2008 and will probably do the same this time around as well. In short, the future bodes extremely well for the liberal-progressive agenda.

In the end, the conservative-leaning students in my Rhetoric class represent an anomaly among educated young people in the United Sates. Their views have probably been skewed living in a reactionary place like Nassau County, coming from conservative-leaning families, and having majors that promote a conservative world-view like Business, Law, and Criminal Justice. I have no doubt, however, that many of these students will probably see their views becoming more like the mainstream of their age-group once they leave home and get a first-hand perspective on just how unjust the world actually is.

So, I’m fairly optimistic about the ultimate triumph of the kind of progressive agenda that I’ve always supported. In another decade, the Eisenhower generation will be gone, and what will be left will be the Baby Boomers who grew up in the 60s and younger generations whose minds have been shaped by the best that the 1960s had to offer: a world-view that is tolerant, open to diverse ideas, committed to social justice, and dedicated to correcting the harm that has been done to our global ecosystems.

And what an amazing world that will be!

According to a recent report issued by the Mercatus Center, a libertarian-leaning think tank out of George Mason University, one-third of all Americans received some form of means-based public assistance, like Medicaid or food stamps, in 2010. The report then goes on to say that when Social Security, Medicare and unemployment benefits are included, nearly half the country—148 million Americans—were living in a household receiving some form of government benefits.

This comes at a time when less than half of all Americans are paying income tax.

It makes your blood boil, doesn’t it? Just think about it: half the country footing the bill for the benefits of the other half; the industrious ones being crippled by onerous tax burdens to prop up those who are too lazy or stupid to take care of themselves.

The problem with this report is that Social Security, Medicare, and even unemployment benefits are not “gifts” from the federal government. People pay into these programs throughout the course of their working careers, and, therefore, they can hardly be considered government entitlements. So the 50% number is pure propaganda designed to enrage those who look for any excuse at all to bash any and all government programs—even successful ones like Social Security and Medicare .

This is not to say that we don’t have a problem in this country, however. When one-third of the country is so poor that they require public assistance and when one-half of all taxpayers make so little that the government can’t even tax them, that should concern all of us, because it means that our country is on an unsustainable economic path. The question is how do we interpret this data.

Economic conservatives like those at the Mercatus Center and the Heritage Foundation would argue that the size of the American government itself is the issue. They would probably maintain that government programs designed to assist the poor actually create a perverse incentive not to work, while at the same time penalizing those who are the most industrious in the country. The solution, then, would be to dramatically reduce the size of government, thus lowering taxes, giving wealth creators (i.e., the rich) more money to invest, and creating jobs for those Americans who actually want to work. To do this, they advocate privatizing some current government programs (Social Security, for example) and entirely eliminating other programs (Medicaid) and troublesome government agencies (The Environmental Protection Agency, among others).

Progressives, on the other hand, would interpret this data as evidence that the middle class is being squeezed economically to the point of oblivion and that our public policies, which are skewed in favor of the top 1%, are creating a nation of rich and poor. If 50% of Americans pay no taxes, they would argue, it’s because they aren’t making anywhere near enough to be taxed in the first place. Cutting government programs like unemployment benefits, Social Security or Medicare is exactly the wrong thing to do, especially at this time, they would argue, because all this will do is push more Americans into the ranks of the poor. Taking their refrain from Franklin Roosevelt, progressives would argue that, especially during difficult economic times (i.e., right now), what we need is an even stronger safety net reestablished for the most vulnerable Americans and large-scale public spending to stimulate the economy.    

So what’s the right way to interpret the data put out by the Mercatus Center? This issue, I believe, gets to the heart of politics in the United States. It pits those who believe that “government is the problem” (conservatives/libertarians) against those who believe that government has an important role to play in insuring that all citizens have a decent minimum standard of living and have access to those goods that are vital for human flourishing—employment at a living wage, adequate health care, and some degree of economic security in their old age (progressives/liberals).

So which side of this issue do you come down on and why?

As I was reading the New York Times on Saturday morning, I happened upon two stories that give a good indication of just how dangerous the reactionary right-wing in this country can be.

The first story has been all over the news this past week. The Susan B. Komen for the Cure foundation is one of the country’s largest charitable organizations in the fight against breast cancer. You’ve undoubtedly seen their ubiquitous pink ribbons on the back on people’s cars, and may have even given donations over the years to help this organization in its important work.

Last week, Komen, caving under pressure from conservatives who are determined to kill off Planned Parenthood, made an announcement that it would no longer be helping to fund Planned Parenthood’s successful program of offering breast exams to low income women, because there was supposedly a question about whether they have used taxpayer funds for abortions (they don’t and never have). Fortunately, the sane majority of our country was outraged by this decision, and Komen received a barrage of hostile emails from people who, not surprisingly, were disgusted by the politicizing of this issue. Reeling from public pressure, the Komen foundation finally announced that they would, in fact, be continuing to fund breast exams through Planned Parenthood.

The other story that caught my attention was one that hasn’t been in the media much, but may even be more important than the Komen story. The Times reported today that over the past few years activists associated with the Tea Party have been using their clout to attack local programs to conserve energy, limit sprawl, and promote public transportation. Apparently, they view these green initiatives as part of a “United Nations-led conspiracy” to undermine the freedom of Americans to live as irresponsibly and destructively as they want. Although normal Americans might laugh off this type of activism as the by-product of the paranoid and delusional mindset of the typical Tea Party fringe lunatic, the protests that have occurred in recent years have actually caused some important environmental legislation on the local level to be undermined, according to the Times.

In a recent post, I argued that younger Americans are increasingly becoming more progressive in their politics, so you would think that the type of right-wing activism that is trying to kill off Planned Parenthood and eviscerate all decent environmental programs (not to mention deny women, gays, minorities, union workers, and immigrants their legal rights) would be doomed to fail. And, indeed, it will fail in the end. The problem is that the right-wing in this country is well funded, vocal, and highly motivated, and progressives, unfortunately, are not. In the short term that means that reactionaries like those who seek to cast doubt upon the reality of global warming, for example, can do a great deal of damage to our planet and the people who live on it.

Fortunately, progressives—and I speak of real progressives here, not Democrats, who haven’t stood up for their beliefs since the time of Lyndon Johnson—are learning to fight just as tenaciously as their reactionary counterparts. The efforts to defund Planned Parenthood have failed so far precisely because people on the left were able to shame the Komen foundation. This shows that political overreach on the part of the right in this country can be thwarted, but it will take constant vigilance on the part of everyone who considers themselves part of the sane majority.

Rabid reactionaries may score some victories in the short-run: they’ve already succeeded in causing grave harm to an environmental movement that has been teetering on the precipice of irrelevance for some time now. But the future is not theirs. It belongs to those on the left who have the courage and conviction to stand firm during the dark times that are undoubtedly ahead of us.