Dennis

Omitted from all the furor of the brownshirt behavior of the right, the rabble, and the Rush is the more important governmental philosophical perspective that Obama made explicit in his quotation from Sen. Kennedy’s letter and his invocation of national character. The prime distinction between the FDR-LBJ era to the Reagan-Shrub era was the shift from a Social Gospel, “I am my brother’s keeper because I am my brother”, “we’re all in this together” v. the Neo-Puritan, every man for himself, social Darwinism. Obama throughout the campaign and in his policy approaches is moving public policy back to the Social Gospel. He made it clear in the speech that his Health care interest is in government as helping those who can’t help themselves and need some assistance. Not the Bush approach of only giving help to those who “deserve” help based upon some, generally, theological moral basis. The book “Hellfire Nation” by James Morone elaborates on these themes, though for a pre-Shrub era.

Anyone interested in the George Ryan story should watch the clip of Carol Marin’s interview w/ Scott Fawell and his squeeze from tonite’s Chicago Tonite:   http://www.wttw.com/main.taf?p=42,8,8&vid=082609y

This brings back all the questions of what is politics and what is government and where are the lines.  That discussion has been lost w/ the total political and governmental incompetence of Blago.  But w/ Ryan there was a serious debate lost on where has the line shifted w/in the criminalization of politics and the redefinition of ethics.  Fawell was the downfall of Ryan and Ryan was the ghost of politics past and Patricks Fitzgerald/Collins were/are the ghosts of politics/government future.  Discuss….