You know how you feel when you see the civil rights demonstrations

[TNDemo]

and how hostile people were to it, and you wonder why people were so hateful and unwilling to side with it? And how you see the suffragettes and their long battle to get the right to vote and how angrily a big portion of the population reacted? And both of these were going to destroy the country. You think how unenlightened these people were. I have a feeling in years to come we will look back at this healthcare issue and think the same thing. How can you be that passionate about denying people healthcare?

[TlalocW]

1. There was a great article on this basic theme

It's that whether conservatives like it or not (and whether liberals like the speed of it or not), society becomes more liberal, and it's good for both liberals and conservatives. The reasons why are obvious for liberals. Not so much so for conservatives.

The thinking is this - think back on famous examples of conservative opposition to change: opposition to Galileo's discovery of how the Earth was not the center of the galaxy/universe, slavery, women's suffrage, desegregation, civil rights, interracial marriage, etc. Every one of these had a conflict that makes the last year's craziness look like a minor kerfluffle. To me, a guy born in the 1970s, I can barely understand how there could have been any opposition to making sure all races had equal rights. Opposition to women's voting is straight out, and the Vatican opposition to Galileo is mock-worthy. Now that's not saying we're 100% there on any of these issues - plenty of racism still exists, a college friend of mine was against women voting, and there are flat-earthers (and conservative Catholics - haha), but they're the lunatic fringe. The majority of conservatives today not only have to disassociate themselves from them (because they will get pounced on by the media - remember, "macaca?"), but in conversation they would pretty much have to agree that the people in the past, the conservatives of the time (who opposed the things we now more or less are taking for granted) were wrong or nuts. And most people think that way.

"They didn't allow women to vote? That's crazy! I just can't wrap my mind around that!" That attitude allows conservatism to survive because we look at certain things in the past as so foreign, so alien, that most people don't make the connection that the people trying to stop the inevitable change were as conservative as the people trying to stop health care reform or stop gay marriage, etc.

It will take many years, decades even, but people will look back at this time as primitive and alien and ask, "People once didn't want everyone to have health care? There were those who didn't think gays had the same rights as straights? That's crazy!"

We'll have moved forward, but there will still be conservatives trying to hold us back on the latest issue, and there will be people listening to them, even though they were wrong now, and they were wrong in the past.

TlalocW

[Hestia]

2. Excellent post TlalocW. Well done. - n/t