Despite the implosion in recent days of his campaign apparatus and nagging revelations about his personal and business entanglements, former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich on Thursday revved up the GOP faithful by vowing not only to unseat President Barack Obama in 2012 but to spearhead a "cataclysmic election which would end the 80-year rule of the left in the United States."
Times-Picayune
What a long, strange trip it's been, eh, brothers and sisters?
From the darkest days of the Last Depression and the Last World War, through the Eisenhower Interregnum, Kennedy's terms, Johnson's terms, Humphrey's terms, Carter's terms, the Mondale years, those wonderful, wonderful Wellstone years. . .
The challenges we've faced and overcome--segregation and economic inequality, abuse by great financial interests, oil dependence--they seem almost like a bad dream today. But they were real, and, without the dedicated work of socially liberal administrations and the vision of activists pushing those hesitant leaders further left, lord knows where we'd be today.
I know it's hard to imagine, but just think of what America would be like today had we returned to the policies of corporate coddling and institutionalized inequality that reigned back in the 1930s. We'd live in a country where a handful controlled half the wealth made by all, where the prejudices of one group defined how all could live and where dissent was a crime or, at the very least, a guarantee of harassment.
Well, thank god we chose the right path, that the forces of hate and greed were held in abeyance. Now, as we look ahead to the new century, we can be assured of a fair, sustainable society in which every man and woman can count on the rewards of work, the help of a compassionate society when it's needed and the freedom to speak, believe and live as we please without fear of the tyranny of bigotry.
What a wonderful eighty years it's been.