Re-thinking the Politics of the Family: Part II
Skolnick, Arlene
AS THIS ISSUE of Dissent goes to press in late November, almost everyone from the center-left outward remains in various states of shock, disbelief, and depression about the election results....
...But Michael Schudson warns against the broader nostalgia that has afflicted the left in recent decades—almost a kind of domestic anti-Americanism that parallels and even at times overlaps with rightwing denunciations of the way we live now...
...Instead, the urgent task is to reframe the public debate so that it reflects those values...
...Now we've made subscribing easier...
...This political correctness has not only isolated us from the wider public we need to reach, but also has stifled discussion among ourselves...
...Nevertheless, it does seem clear that liberals and progressives have not done a good job in presenting our own ideas in a framework of values or challenging the right's narrow version of morality, which seems to stop at the bedroom door...
...it seems to have been less decisive than first reports indicated...
...There is nothing to be smug about, Schudson admits, and no lack of serious social problems begging for attention, but longing for some lost era will not lead to solutions...
...Carole Joffe tackles the issue most liberals and progressives find difficult to discuss: abortion...
...The future course of American politics has not been set...
...Put DISSENT on Your Credit Card...
...Further, the more we learn about the election results and current public attitudes, the less of a mandate Bush appears to have for a hard-right agenda, here or abroad...
...How can reproductive rights activists talk about abortion in ways that resonate with the general public as well as with other progressives...
...Joffe argues for a "mosaic" approach—policies that defend abortion as only one part of a larger agenda on reproduction, sexuality, and the capacity to raise healthy families...
...It's not yet clear how big a role the "moral values" issue played in the outcome of the election...
...they used their time in the wilderness to rethink and reinvent conservatism...
...She argues that we must find new ways to articulate persuasively a progressive view of reproductive politics...
...Moreover, a number of demographic and social trends appear to be working in our favor, in particular the cultural liberalism of America's younger generation...
...Rubin points out that there is contempt along with truth in Frank's much-cited recent book What's the Matter with Kansas?—a dismissive attitude, all too common on the left— that precludes any attempt to understand the working- and middle-class people who used to be the natural constituency of Democrats and progressives...
...Progressives have rightly DISSENT / Winter 2005 • 77 FAMILY POLITICS championed change in the old rules defining women's proper place, but we have not dealt with the dilemmas created by the loss of this unpaid care workforce...
...In the middle 1960s, after Barry Goldwater lost in a landslide, Republicans were frozen out of the political process...
...In sum, this means that progressives need to combine support for families and care with explicit support for individual rights and equal opportunity...
...Post Office, in good social democratic fashion, is the cheapest means of distributing magazines, we make money on subscriptions rather than bookstore or newsstand sales...
...This series on rethinking the cultural war over the family unfortunately turns out to be more timely than we had hoped...
...Because the U.S...
...HIS SECOND installment of the series presents four articles reflecting on how we can do better in addressing the public on the difficult issues raised by the sexual, gender, and cultural revolutions of the last thirty years...
...Why do blue-collar, workingclass voters sign on to a politics that, as author Thomas Frank puts it "strangles their own life chances...
...Since the 1960s and 1970s, she charges, we have become tone deaf to their concerns...
...It's understandable if liberals and leftists, after the shock of November 2, look backward in longing for the progressive eras of the 1960s, the 1930s, and earlier...
...ARLENE SKOLNICK, author of Embattled Paradise: The American Family in an Age of Uncertainty, is a member of the board of directors of the Council on Contemporary Families and a visiting scholar at New York University...
...Mona Harrington also argues that a framework of values should become part of progressive arguments...
...At the heart of conservative arguments is concern that changes in the roles of women threaten the loss of values that women have traditionally been assigned to uphold— care, nurturance, community, a predictable social and personal order...
...Instead, we have hunkered down behind a wall of "politically correct" stances on a variety of issues, from teenage sexuality to crime to welfare to race, and so on...
...Nor have we exploited the right's own vulnerability: the contradiction between its family values rhetoric and its economic and social policies...
...And war and terror may have come to G.W...
...Public intellectuals have a major role to play in the making of a new progressive vision...
...Both right and left lament the decline of community, the loss of civic virtue, the threat of rampant consumerism and individualism, the erosion of family bonds by self-fulfillment, and on and on...
...IN sum, none of these authors advocates giving up our own beliefs and values: fairness, equal opportunity, inclusion, tolerance...
...Schudson argues that this rhetoric of moral decline not only weakens progressive causes but ignores the considerable democratic advances of the past several decades: the reduction of poverty, the rights revolution, new possibilities for political action, and a more frank and open discourse...
...Bush' s political rescue, as September 11 did before...
...We need to use our own time in the wilderness as productively as they did—without benefit, of course, of the millions of dollars showered on conservatives to help them incubate ideas and sell them to the public and policy makers What we do have is a great deal of intellectual firepower, if we can use it well...
...We need also to link reproductive issues to economic justice, exposing the hypocrisy of a "family values" administration that withholds from many Americans the resources they need to responsibly bear and raise children...
...They constructed a radical new vision of American society, and built a grassroots social movement and a propaganda machine to change public opinion...
...Harrington argues that we need to create a space in political debate for radical change in the place of women in society...
...You can use your credit card on our Web site (www.dissentmagazine.org ) or on the order form printed in this issue...
...Lillian B. Rubin asks what is now, postelection, the central question: "Why Don't They Listen to Us...
...When Ronald Reagan came into office in 1980 there was a set of conservative ideas and policies ready to be put into practice...
...78 n DISSENT / Winter 2005...
...So, please, subscribe now, and while you are at it, subscribe for two years: that is an even bigger help...
...It may seem Pollyannaish to find anything positive about the current political landscape, but this could be seen as a moment of opportunity for progressives...
Vol. 52 • January 2005 • No. 1
