Conservatives Are, And Have Always Been, The Problem

This man has no desire for change.

I’ve discussed in recent articles how much opposition there is to basic improvement in America. Health care, racial equality, coronavirus response — they all could see progress, but simply do not. It’s the conservatives, the Republicans who take pride in their unwillingness to accept change, who are at fault for this.

America has always had trouble accepting it has issues. The particularly conservative attitude across the country stands in direct contrast to many western nations who have had an easier time passing basic progressive legislation.

The history of the United States is one of progressives trying, to slow and often minimal success, to push back on conservative stalwarts. As John Oliver recently talked about on Last Week Tonight, history is neither linear nor inevitable. We weren’t always on a path toward abolition in the 19th-century, or toward civil rights in the 20th. It took a minority of powerful communicators who favored immediate change — the Frederick Douglasses and the Martin Luther Kings — to overcome conservative attitude.

That has always been the way the United States has operated post-founding, never mind that the founders themselves were particularly liberal for their time. (Even they ran into opposition from conservative American factions who were dedicated to slavery.) An…