Noam is no dummy but he gets several things wrong here. He sees the opposite of reality, he thinks the right has gone extreme while the left hasn't moved. Several studies (Pew research, Harvard and a few others) have confirmed that the opposite is true, the right has only moved slightly to the right but the left has drastically gone far left.
Do you have a time span for these moves? Because, that sounds correct for the last decade or so - but NOT for the
period of my lifetime.
Yeah, I guess the Jim Crow south was a bit before your time. Different studies have different begin dates, the earliest I saw was 1972 and the republicans have had only slight oscillations in that time period.
Rather than watching a 17 minute video, of someone going ga-ga about some charts he made to instead
I'd prefer some written evidence of the methodology used to paint those pictures.
Here's a few things I know (from the mid 70's as a starting point).
Taxes - higher than they have been since - especially on unearned income
Abortion - I was in a consistently Republican area (of NY state). There was little or no noise opposing it. Definitely some from down in the bible belt though.
Unions - far stronger than they are now
Environmental - can't remember much noise about "too much regulation"
ERA - yeah, this was a big thing
Guns - municipalities could impose pretty much whatever controls; no one was going around open carrying except when out hunting. And remember, even Clinton era congress passed the assault rifle (whatever that is) ban, background checks, ect.
Criminal Sentencing - the idea of mandatory minimums hadn't taken hold
Wages - minimums were set far higher in real dollars than today
Welfare - it was very easy to get a free ride
Education & the Arts - a lot more money for these
World Policeman - yeah, that was us, though 'Nam had trimmed our wings
Homeless - not much of a problem, most were institutionalized at state expense
Infrastructure - the roads were maintained
Busing - the state was moving kids quite a distance to achieve racial balances in schools
Using public school funding for religious schools - not a chance
Inheritance tax - legacies were not unlimited
Socialized medicine - even Clinton tried for this
Nazis - not good people
Mexican immigrant labor - seen mainly as misused
Bank Regulation - far more robust
Tariffs - far greater; but is the CiC changing the R's view on these? Dunno
That's not to say everything fits that mold though.
Interracial Marriage - yeah, this was still seen as pretty iffy.
Gay marriage - yeah right. Inconceivable.
Drugs - very few pols were in favor of any kind of legalization
Political Correctness - no where near what it is now. You can't even parody anti-PC speech now.
Socialism - pretty close to a dirty word
Monopolies - mixed; ok for utilities, big mergers were somewhat less acceptable
So, depending on which vectors you choose, I can see where you might manufacture what you like (in either direction).
If you make the argument that you're trying to pass off here though, you're basically saying that
Reagan didn't matter. Given that's at odds with what all sides of the spectrum (other than perhaps some
fringe groups on either side) have consistently believed since his presidency, it seems you've been taken
in by some disinformation.
Indeed, if you take the more libertarian side of the conservative movement, outside of free speech, it looks like
an across the board win. Of course, that was never the mainstream.
