Big lies

If Americans have a common fault, however, it's our tendency to suffer from historical amnesia. Too many of us have forgotten, or never learned, what kind of country America was under the conservative rule that preceded the century of liberal reform. And too many of us have no idea whose ideas and energy brought about the reforms we now take for granted.

If your workplace is safe; if your children go to school rather than being forced into labor; if you are paid a living wage, including overtime; if you enjoy a 40-hour week and you are allowed to join a union to protect your rights -- you can thank liberals. If your food is not poisoned and your water is drinkable -- you can thank liberals. If your parents are eligible for Medicare and Social Security, so they can grow old in dignity without bankrupting your family -- you can thank liberals. If our rivers are getting cleaner and our air isn't black with pollution; if our wilderness is protected and our countryside is still green -- you can thank liberals. If people of all races can share the same public facilities; if everyone has the right to vote; if couples fall in love and marry regardless of race; if we have finally begun to transcend a segregated society -- you can thank liberals. Progressive innovations like those and so many others were achieved by long, difficult struggles against entrenched power. What defined conservatism, and conservatives, was their opposition to every one of those advances. The country we know and love today was built by those victories for liberalism -- with the support of the American people.

Whether they now describe themselves as liberal or not, most Americans remain strongly progressive in their views about taxation, healthcare, education spending, Social Security, environmental protection, and corporate regulation. In fact, despite conservative political advances in recent decades, survey evidence gathered by pollsters of all persuasions suggests that Americans are still more liberal than conservative.

The best way to test that assertion is to shear away the current stigma attached to the L-word itself, and examine popular attitudes about specific issues. For more than 50 years, from Harry Truman's surprise presidential victory in 1948 to Bill and Hillary Clinton's failed reform effort in 1994, a signature liberal cause has been to provide every American, regardless of income or social status, with affordable healthcare. Many liberals support universal coverage funded by the national government, like the systems that protect all citizens in Europe and Canada.

The conservative position is equally clear, if not from their rhetoric then from their actions. They and their corporate allies abhor national health insurance. They spent millions to thwart the ambitious Clinton plan of 1994 -- and have fought every incremental step toward universal healthcare, including Medicare and Medicaid. (Those same conservatives now claim to be the protectors of the popular Medicare program while scheming to dismantle it.)

According to nearly every survey taken during the past decade, Americans favor the liberal side of this debate, supporting universal health coverage by very wide margins. The level of support for national health insurance ranges between 60 percent and 85 percent in various major polls. In October 1999, an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll found that 67 percent supported a federal guarantee of health insurance coverage for every American. Between 59 percent and 72 percent backed universal, guaranteed coverage in CNN/Time surveys from 1993 to 1995. And a Louis Harris poll in 1994 showed that 86 percent of respondents believed the federal government should provide universal health insurance for all Americans. Smaller but still respectable majorities -- from 60 percent in a 1990 Los Angeles Times poll to 51 percent in a 1998 Zogby poll -- backed a Canadian-style single-payer system when that question was asked.

Liberalism's most enduring domestic achievement is the Social Security system, another popular program that conservatives have always opposed and undermined. Created by Franklin D. Roosevelt, the patron saint of liberalism, Social Security embodies American values of community and fairness. Despite enormous publicity campaigns in recent years by right-wing organizations questioning its solvency and urging its privatization, public support for Social Security as a mandatory system of public pensions remains adamant. Asked whether people should or should not be required to pay into the Social Security system in a March 1999 NBC/Wall Street Journal poll, 70 percent answered "should be required." And in a March 2000 ABC News/ Washington Post poll, 67 percent responded that financing of Social Security should take priority over cutting taxes.

During the midterm elections in 2002, several Republican congressional candidates were forced to abandon the Bush privatization proposal. In fact, the same politicians suddenly pretended that they had never heard of privatization. Asked how they prefer to save the system, a substantial majority of American voters favors raising payroll taxes on the most affluent.

Most Americans echo the liberal concern that the tax system favors the wealthiest few. Responding to a March 1999 Fox News poll that asked registered voters what bothered them the most about the tax system, 21 percent said the large amount they pay, 26 percent said the complexity of the tax system -- and 46 percent said they were most troubled by the suspicion that some rich people get away without paying their fair share. People are especially wary of the Bush administration's overwhelming desire to cut taxes for the richest, tiniest minority of its supporters. A Gallup poll in January 2003 found widespread suspicion about the latest Bush scheme to remove all taxation on stock dividends as yet another sop to the rich.

Despite their professed suspicions about overweening government, Americans have consistently told pollsters by margins of 2 to 1 that they prefer public spending to tax cuts. That view hadn't changed as of late November 2002, when 69 percent of respondents in a CBS/ New York Times survey said they would have preferred devoting the federal budget surplus to Social Security and Medicare. Only 23 percent were happy that the surplus had been squandered on the 2001 Bush tax cut.

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