You just simply cannot make a post without insulting the person you are responding to. A most effective and mature communication and debate technique.
He didn't 'insult the person he was responding to'; in fact, you did that more than he did.
He criticized the comment, which I'll quote here - and you had NOTHING to say about it:
"You fail to realize that partisanship is brought about by "progressive" expansion of the federal government."
So someone makes the incredibly absurd comment that partisanship is caused by 'progressive expansion of the federal government', and you say, "don't criticize that!"
What is this "progressive expansion of the federal government"?
Well, there are a few major phases to it. Tell me which one you want to reverse most.
The first was following the gilded age - to fight things like the laws against workers' right to organize, for laws reducing child labor, 16x6 work weeks, etc.
This is in fact called the 'progressive era' in US politics. It also opposed the bought and paid for corruption of the appointed US Senate by allowing the people to elect their Senators, and created the Fed in response to one of the constant financial crashes, and to create the right in some states for the people to overrule corrupt legislatures with ballot measures. It lasted from about 1900-1920.
The second major 'progressive era' began after the Great Depression the right-wing policies brought the nation, with FDR's reforms, restricting banks from things like mixing their banking and investment activities that created conflicts of interest (Glass-Steagel), addressed a 90% poverty rate among the elderly with Social Security, strengthened unions such that workers did better and the middle class was made far stronger. The era that began was from about 1933-1979.
Later, it saw things like the expansion of medical care for senior Americans, benefits for the disabled, and the civil rights laws that banned the discrimination the US always had.
We actually haven't had a 'progressive era' since those. We've had two Democratic presidencies, under corporatist Democrats, Clinton and Obama.
There, while the corporations did far better in a 30 year period in which 80% of economic growth went to the top 1%, the massive debt the *Republicans* ran up was at least slowed under Clinton's 8 years while the deficit was reduced every year and Obama has had the biggest economic collapse since the Great depression to address - reducing the damage from losing 750,000 jobs monthly when he took office to tiny job private sector job growth for quite a while now despite Republicans obstructing.
The fact is, the claim that the 'explosive growth' in the government is 'progressive' ignores the massive CORRUPT growth under the Republicans that's not progressive at all, since Reagan. The defense industry explosion, the corporate subsidy explosion, even the Medicare Part D which actually was worse for many seniors but gave hundreds of billions of tax dollars to Republicans' biggest donor industry, big pharma.
Progressives did see growth - reducing elder poverty, providing medical care being the largest and other programs to benefit 99% - and the economy.
In fact, this is why all economic indicators - growth, personal incomes across the board, the stock market, employment, and others - have done better basically all the time in the last century under Democratic presidents than under Republican presidents. It's quite simple - the Democratic presidents - not all 'progressive' - have tended to help the people and Republicans have fought to help the 1% at the expense of the people.
So the quote is both inaccurate - ignoring the huge explosions of the government under Republicans since Reagan, including the massive increases in our debt in peacetime to buy a 'phony prosperity' that transferred wealth to the top and saw the country go from the biggest creditor to the biggest debtor - and it leaves you needing to answer just what 'progressive growth' you want to repeal. Elder poverty prevention? Medical care? Education? Other programs that help the people and the poor and middle classes?
You had NOTHING to say against the quote that is absurdly wrong - only to say that any attack on the quote was wrong.
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