Unfortunately, it's the same, tired old "Founding Fathers" argument that always fails so miserably. Why? Because the Founding Fathers were anything but unanimous in their views about what democracy means and what the role of government is. And yet the Right insists on appealing to the past as if all the answers are there. As if we, as a people and a nation, are incapable of changing and evolving and adapting to circumstances that the Founding Fathers could never have dreamed of.

The exceptionalism argument largely produces the kind of jingoism and military adventurism that has gotten us the Spanish-American War, Vietnam, and Iraq. All of them unnecessary, expensive, and wasteful of treasure and lives in the pursuit of Right Wing corporate ideology.

Lowry again and again trots out that other Right Wing bogeyman: European Socialism. That Obama's policies are taking us toward Socialism of the European variety, and that we're on the road to ruin. Here again he goes to the past for answers to where we are today. He talks a bit about the New Deal and how it was the beginnings of our dalliance with socialism. Of course, what he and all of the other revisionist historians never mention is that the United States was thought by many in both government and industry to be on the verge of a revolt--socialist or not--because of the massive unemployment caused by Wall Street malfeasance. Many of the unemployed and grossly underemployed seriously thought that Capitalism was a failed economic system and that Communism and Socialism had the answers. Corporate America was in a box: it either blinked and backed away from its profit-above-all stance, or it risked having the country go down the drain--and corporate economic power and wealth with it.

Many years ago I ran across an opinion piece that has stayed with me since. The author, whose name I've forgotten, said that there were three things that turned the United States away from Communism and Socialism:

• Social Security and the New Deal. Like it or not, the Social Security system, that mother of all government-run programs, not only provided a safety net in the 1930s, but it's still the bedrock of millions of Americans' financial security in old age. And the Corporatists and their Republican lackeys hate it and want to do everything in their power to destroy it. Bush's frontal assault didn't work, so now they're trying as much revisionist history as they can get away with to talk about how everything in the New Deal only prolonged the Great Depression and sowed the seeds of what they see as our problems today.
• Legalization of collective bargaining and unions. The 1931 Davis Bacon Act, the 1932 Norris La Guardia Act, the the 1935 Labor Relations Act and the Wagner Act legitimized unionization, collective bargaining, and held corporations accountable for adhering to that legislation. No more private corporate militias who used violence to keep workers in line.
• The unintended consequences of unionization. Most Communists and Socialists saw work as nothing more than labor--go to work, suffer, and go home. But a huge unintended consequence of unionization was not just the rise of the middle class, but the social ties that resulted from work ties. Groups of families whose fathers/husbands worked for the same company began socializing together, forming strong community ties that went far beyond the workplace, furthering the growth and strength of the middle class.

There's been quite a bit made lately of how the Millennial generation has been so coddled and spoiled. They've been told since birth that they're exceptional, a winner, special, entitled. Businesses are scared to death about that mindset because too many of these young people have no clue how to think for themselves, problem solve, think critically, and challenge groupthink. Many of them have ADD that results from their total absorption with digital gadgets. (If you haven't seen the Frontline special, "Digital Nation," I encourage you to watch it. Parts of it are truly frightening in their implications for the Millennial generation). To add insult to injury, a 2003 Gallup survey, which Lowry references in his article, found that 51% of young people expect to get rich (something that Lowry finds encouraging). Uh, well, not with their exceptionalist mindset and lack of work skills that some of these young people exhibit. And yet, here we are with the Right and its big business pocketbook touting the very thing in the nation that they lament in their new generation of workers. The Right is playing both ends against the middle: providing the amuse-yourself-to-death toys that keep people distracted, and holding out the carrot of getting rich to those same distracted, brain-addled people.

I hate to quote Sarah Palin (actually, the phrase belongs to Dr. Phil), but we all need to ask, "How's that werkin' fer ya?"