On Fri, 25 Feb 2011, Michael Pollak wrote:
> The left side of the debate has been truncated (things that used to be
> commonly discussed are now unthinkable to propose). The right side has
> been supercharged (things once on the fringe are now on the evening
> news).
The tricky thing about all this is the sharp disjuncture between economic and social issues. All this rightward shift is true about the economic agenda. But of course when it comes to social freedom for blacks, women and gays, things are incomparably better now than 50 years ago.
It makes it hard to talk coherently about things moving left or right when the political culture has moved in quite opposite directions on these two axes.
Michael