Morning in America

The recession, the credit crisis, and the stock market crash have made inequality, unemployment, housing, and health care important policy issues once again. After 30 years of conservative ascendance, calls for effective regulation of Wall Street, fairer tax policies, and expanded programs serving the unemployed, the ill, and other vulnerable populations have replaced an unbridled faith in the market and a disdain for government programs. As a result, the 2008 elections have provided social workers with an opportunity to develop a stronger public commitment to social welfare. Since Ronald Reagan convinced a generation of Americans that the nation's economic and social problems resulted from excessive government, conservative ideologues have made a fetish of their opposition to government programs designed to promote equality (lost, Glaser, Kruglanski, & Sulloway, 2003). Conservatives claim that government caused economic and moral decline (Bork, 1997; Gilder, 1981) and that social welfare programs actually harm recipients (Mead, 1986; Murray, 1984). Conservatives in control of the federal government reduced taxes, deregulated business, and diminished social programs. The Bush administration outsourced government functions and tolerated corruption and corporate irresponsibility, leaving the economy in ruins (Frank, 2008, Galbraith, 2008). Although the 2008 elections and poor economic conditions suggest a major change in sentiment, the United States remains bitterly divided along ideological lines--"red" and "blue" states. Ideological convictions provide comfort, identity, and a rationale for policy. Impervious to rational discourse and empirical evidence, they calm fears and settle uncertainty. Well-established conservative interest groups committed to a free market and low taxes, mistrustful of government, and passionately opposed to the left mean that the Obama administration will face rancorous conflict as it takes up issues of the budget, tax policy, health care, and social security. The Obama administration needs the active support of social workers from every field of practice. Liberals and conservatives think differently about morality, politics, and social welfare (Lakoff, 2002). Conservatives believe that individuals are entirely responsible for their life circumstance; they are less empathic, less tolerant of difference, higher in authoritarianism, more accepting of material and status inequalities, and inclined to support the status quo. In contrast, liberals value empathy, openness, and fairness; they value equality and welcome change (lost et al., 2003; McAdams et al., 2008). Every major policy debate the Obama administration faces is as much a debate about values as it is about the details of the budget, health care, or social security. If Congress honors conservative values, social workers' hopes for reversing rising inequality, securing universal health care, and protecting a robust social security system will go unaddressed. Conservative campaigns featuring slogans about the evils of socialism, class warfare, taxes, and debt try to make the liberal view seem "other," foreign, and un-American. Quoting Abraham Lincoln, President Obama (2009) has argued that "the legitimate object of government is to do for the people what needs to be done, but which they can not, by individual effort, do at all, or do so well, by themselves." Obama (2009) asserted that Lincoln recognized that while each of us must do our part, work as hard as we can, and be as responsible as we can--in the end, there are certain things we cannot do on our own. There are certain things we can only do together. There are certain things only a union can do. By connecting this call for positive government to Lincoln--a hero admired by both the left and the right, a hero who stands apart from the contemporary left-right debate--and harkening back to frontier images, Obama placed the liberal social agenda in a proud historical tradition. …