Gray Brechin (San Fran Chronicle): New Deal's legacy in danger of being ruined

[keepCAblue]

Gray Brechin
San Francisco Chronicle March 26, 2011 04:00 AM Copyright San Francisco Chronicle. All rights reserved.

03/27/11


Many of those who worked for the New Deal believed that they were building a civilization. They left us thousands of schools, colleges, bridges, dams, murals, parks and aqueducts, now falling into ruin, as did those of ancient Rome. To recover their vision, we must relearn an ethical language now as alien as Latin. It speaks to us from the buildings New Dealers left in their faith that we would continue to build toward greater human happiness and opportunity.

"The noblest motive is the public good," declares an inscription from Virgil on San Diego's County Administration Building. A terrazzo floor in its rotunda proclaims, "Good government requires the intelligent interest of every citizen."

A Deco relief of St. George slaying the dragon of ignorance on Berkeley High School bears a text panel announcing, "You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free." That, after all, was what the public education we are told we can no longer afford was ideally all about...

(snip)

...Whereas FDR spoke of government in the first-person plural, Reagan and his acolytes have done so in the third person, not as "we" but as "it" and "them." By making government and its employees the enemy, Reagan made a rhetorical shift that has withered the very notion of social progress once synonymous with the United States.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/03/25/INE21IICQG.DTL#ixzz1Howhja6i

[OHdem10]

1. At last someone(s) is/are waking up to REALITY.

Get rid of the New Deal and America retreats into
darker time. This has been the goal since Reagan
took office. We are fast returning to the time
when America was a country of Elites and the Masses.
No Middle Class to make it a real Democracy.

What some people never seem to get: there are
those who believe in Aristocracy.

[WingDinger]

2. I can hardly wait till we storm their compounds.

:9 :9

[DBoon]

3. the republicans are the vandals and goths

destroying a once great civilization as they loot and pillage