Progressive Opinion

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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washingtonpost.com — Mitt Romney likes to say that this election is a battle for “the soul of America.” He’s right — just not in the way that he thinks. Romney asserts that President Obama wants to “fundamentally transform America,” turning the country “into a European-style entitlement society.” In fact, Romney and his Republican presidential rivals have a far more radical transformation in mind. They envision a dramatically shrunken federal government and a dangerously unraveled social safety net.

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dailykos.com — Smart people know that who gets food stamps and covered by Medicaid has nothing to do with race and everything to do with poverty. Unless, of course, you're a Republican candidate looking for whatever wedge issue you can dredge up to distinguish yourself from all the other candidates in the final moments of the first big contest of the 2012 season.

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inthesetimes.com — Newt Gingrich’s recent utterances about poor children — they “have no habits of working and have nobody around them who works” — reflect not only the inability of conservatives to talk seriously about poverty, but a mean-spiritedness that, unfortunately, largely eludes public scrutiny. Gingrich’s false and primitive protestations about the poor were distinguished by what he left out. The GOP’s newest presidential frontrunner failed to mention the constellation of forces that conspire to marginalize and degrade poor communities — including policies he and his party have long championed. Of course, no one expects Gingrich and the right-wing crowds to which he panders to engage in critical thinking about race and poverty. They are invested in avoiding systemic analysis that illuminates the influence of external factors on the human condition.

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washingtonpost.com — Speaking of things that the European crisis is not about, while I was in Germany, my colleague Robert Samuelson wrote that “Europe’s turmoil is more than a currency crisis and was inevitable, in some form, even if the euro had never been created. It’s ultimately a crisis of the welfare state, which has grown too large to be easily supported economically.” I don’t think that quite works. Take Germany. They have a pretty big welfare state: pensions, health care, paid vacations, unemployment benefits equal to two-thirds of one’s income. In 2007, Germany spent 25.2 percent of their GDP on such things. Greece spent 21.3 percent on social policies. Yet Greece is in crisis, and Germany is fine. In a broad sense, I don’t think the crisis in Europe is really even about debt. It’s about the interplay of slow growth, heavy debts and weak institutions. But it’s really not about welfare states.

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alternet.org — Imagine how much harder the last three years would have been without the safeguards erected over the past 80 years, in many cases with bipartisan support. Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and unemployment insurance are the broadest, but there are also the programs specifically targeted toward low-income Americans: the earned income tax credit, community health centers, school lunch programs, and food stamps, to name a few. These policies have two things in common. They’ve historically enjoyed high levels of support, not just from the Democratic Party, but from Republicans as well. And today’s GOP plans to dismantle or seriously weaken all of them, setting back almost a century of progress.

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sacbee.com — Any young person's success depends largely – though not exclusively – on personal resolve. But for boys and young men of color, particularly those born into fractured families and bereft of crucial community supports, a by-your-bootstraps model alone simply won't do. This issue is fundamentally one of equity and will determine whether we, as a nation, flourish.

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