"You're on the wrong side of history."

[skip fox]

The new mantra for the rabid right. The right side is, presumably,
more unequal distribution of wealth, stricter marijuana laws, a constitutional
amendment banning gay marriages, elimination of hate-crime laws, fetal-
homocide laws, less gun control, elimination of NPR and a progressive
income tax, etc., etc.

Makes me remember the king in classical legend who ordered the tide not
to come in. (He drowned.)

Seriously, I think this "wrong side of history" obession indicates the desperation
they must feel as the country becomes more and more multicultural and less and
less the sandbox of rich, white males. They are watching the demographics
and they are trying, gamely, to stem the tide.

[Sava]

1. there should be fetal homicide laws...

Liberals are a bit too defensive on this issue. The fetal protection laws clearly state that if the mother plans on having the baby, then the crime is considered murder. It isn't vague and it doesn't lead to a slippery slope against abortion. Personally, if my wife or GF was pregnant and the baby was killed by an attacker, the guy should be convicted of murder and should be put to sleep.

[aquart]

2. Their side of history caused the guilotine to be invented.

Killed ten percent of the German people (and millions of others).

Left Mussolini hanging upside down from a rope.

Their side of history is a bonanza for gravediggers.

[Sava]

5. big deal... arguably... the left gave us Stalin...

Such discussions are stupid and pointless. Debate the issues, not the people. The Right today has nothing to do with the people who invented the Guillotine. The politics of even 40 years ago in America is vastly different from today... let alone France, hundreds of years ago. :eyes:

[Maccagirl]

3. It's called projection

and they have it down to an art form. "Through the looking glass" says Alice.

[mix68]

4. this 'end of history'

crap has been peddled and peddled

there is no empirical basis for the claim that American style democracy and capitalism is the culmination of this thing called History after 1989

it's the same classed based notion of history that Guizot made in the 1820s and 30s in France to justify the political power of the middle classes

now, it's another way of saying that the American middle classes have won, therefore they matter most and everyone else has to mimic them

there is scant evidence that these ideas have taken root in the last decade anywhere or have increased standards of living

the environmental record has also been disastrous

[skip fox]

6. Good Post

Yes, it was a State Department official, one Francis Fukuyama (sp?) who claimed
we were at the end of history. The grand dialectic has seen its final act: the clash of
democratic capitalism and communism. No more wars. Maybe just some minor
mopping up operations. One world, one mall (which might be a fitting bumpersticker
for these folks).

But the "other side of history" they're speaking about today lacks even the jingoistic
context of Fukuyama's "analysis." It's more simply a way of saying we were better off
before the 60s and we're going to drag the nation's ass back there! I believe, however,
that the nature of history is (basically) progressive. That we'll be right in the long run,
though there may be some significant (even great) regressive movements. (The question,
as always, is how 'significant'?)