Progressive Opinion

guardian.co.uk — A picture of the man who has come to embody the inequities of Greece's financial crisis has begun to emerge, with friends and neighbors shedding light on the life of the elderly pensioner who killed himself in Athens on Wednesday. Named as Dimitris Christoulas by the Greek media, the retired pharmacist was described as decent, law-abiding, meticulous and dignified. The 77-year-old had written in his one-page, three-paragraph suicide note that it would be better to have a "decent end" than be forced to scavenge in the "rubbish to feed myself". "With his suicide he wanted to send a political message," Antonis Skarmoutsos, a friend and neighbor was quoted as saying in the mass-selling Ta Nea newspaper. "He was deeply politicized but also enraged."

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robertreich.org — The returns aren’t all in yet on today’s Republican primaries but President Obama didn’t wait. He kicked off his 2012 campaign against Mitt Romney with a hard-hitting speech centered on the House Republicans’ budget plan – which Romney has enthusiastically endorsed. Here’s what the President had to say about it: "Disguised as a deficit reduction… it is really an attempt to impose a radical vision on our country. It is thinly veiled social Darwinism." We are likely to hear a lot more about social Darwinism in the months ahead.

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prospect.org — If there was a question President Obama tried to answer with his speech this afternoon to the Associated Press, it was this—“what happened to the Republican Party?” And to that end, he marshaled evidence from a century of political history to show that today’s Grand Old Party is dangerously unmoored from the American consensus, with a budget proposal that amounts to “thinly veiled social Darwinism.” To a large degree, Obama’s speech was filled with the frustration of liberals who see the extent to which the Republican Party has rejected the notion of a government that works positively within the economy. Obama’s challenge is to convince the public that Republicans would continue on that path if elected to office. At the risk of sounding too certain, I think he can do it.

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newdeal20.org — The way to talk about the purpose and value of government and be persuasive is simply to tell the truth. This has been in short supply over the last generation. To the contrary, government has been demonized in much discourse. It has at least, to coin a new verb, been “skepticized.” Trust in government now is very low. But trust in government has been falling on balance since the late 1960s and took an especially large hit in the 1970s. The nation hasn’t truly regained its confidence in it ever since. In fact, the nation has been vulnerable to mythology and misinformation that has seriously damaged America’s future. There are many such myths, but the primary one is that any social program or any increase in government spending dampens economic growth. It is simply not true.

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nytimes.com — Corporations will tell you that the American labor movement has declined so significantly because unions are obsolete in a global economy, where American workers have to compete against low-wage nonunion workers in other countries. But many vibrant industrial democracies, including Germany, have strong unions despite facing the same pressures from globalization. Other skeptics suggest that because laws now exist providing for worker safety and overtime pay, American employees no longer feel the need to join unions. But polling has shown that a majority of nonunion workers would like to join a union if they could. In fact, the greatest impediment to unions is weak and anachronistic labor laws. It’s time to add the right to organize a labor union, without employer discrimination, to Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, because that right is as fundamental as freedom from discrimination in employment and education.

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progressive.org — Rick Santorum’s true colors are really coming out these days, and they are the colors of the Ayatollah and Savonarola. On Sunday, Santorum told George Stephanopoulos that JFK’s famous speech delineating the wall between church and state made him want to “throw up” and should make every American want to “throw up.” Well, here’s what JFK actually said: "I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute... I believe in an America . . . where no public official either requests or accepts instructions on public policy from the Pope, the National Council of Churches or any other ecclesiastical source -- where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general populace or the public acts of its officials.” And that’s precisely where Santorum has a problem with JFK’s statement — and with our Constitutional system.

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tnr.com — While neither political party has a monopoly on “community,” in recent years Democrats have been more inclined than Republicans to invoke it — none more conspicuously than Barack Obama. In the peroration of the 2012 State of the Union address, he declared that “No one built this country on their own. This nation is great because we built it together. This nation is great because we worked as a team.” On one level, Obama was offering what he takes to be a cool statement of fact: America works well when it works together. But for the duration of his presidency, Obama has also been saying more than that. Indeed, undergirding many of Obama’s pronouncements about the country’s economic life has been a distinctly ethical claim: that Americans are deeply connected to their fellow citizens, and that we must act on the basis of those bonds. Even as we compete, we must cooperate. The question remains: How effective will Obama’s version be?

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washingtonpost.com — “I’m concerned about the poor in this country,” Mitt Romney said the other day. “We have to make sure the safety net is strong and able to help those who can’t help themselves.” I perked up at those words, because they were something of a departure from his usual stump speech and because they happened to come on a day when I had written about the dire implications of Romney’s proposals for the social safety net. I don’t question his sincerity. The problem: This fine sentiment doesn’t square with his actual policies.

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thedailybeast.com — This Martin Luther King, Jr. Day found our nation rightly united in honoring the man who challenged America to live up to the promise that all men are created equal. But it’s also worth remembering that it was not always this way. King was widely reviled in his lifetime, attacked as a troublemaker, a liar, a con man and a communist. These smears are part of his legacy as well. They remind us that even American icons were once demonized and derided. And when we whitewash history into simplicity, we lose a sense of the real struggle that can inspire endurance today. That’s why I can’t help but smile when I hear some of the figures honoring Dr. King.

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