The news is always bad. This is a simple, reassuring truism,
although it often is uttered as a lament.
“News,” by definition, is the label journalists give to the
exceptional. The ordinary is rarely considered to be newsworthy. That the news
is generally negative should be taken as a signal that positive events—with the
exception of the truly extraordinary—are viewed as the norm. We don’t get
exciting about routine goodness; we expect it. Despite all of the world’s ills,
this is reassuring. Positive is normal, negative is not.
So, one feels compelled to ask, why does negativity appeal
to a large—and largely conservative—segment of the American population? I am
not talking about negative campaigning here. Both conservative and liberal
campaigns stoop to mudslinging. Rather, I am talking about the fundamental
positions held on the left and the right: the “pro” and “anti” positions that
undergird our opposing political parties’ philosophies.
By far, conservatives rack up more negatives than do
liberals. The farther right, the more negative conservative positions are
likely to be. The Right can be counted on, for example, to be anti-tax,
anti-gun control, anti-immigrant, antigay, and anti any number of other things.
But, hang on, what about pro-life?
The veneer of “pro-life” overlies a thoroughly negative
underbelly. Pro-life actually means pro-fetus; the “pro” does not extend to
life after birth. Anti-universal health care (more recently, anti-Obamacare) accounts
in large measure for the position of the United States in the statistics on
infant mortality: 34th in a field of 194 nations, behind the European
countries, Australia, New Zealand, and some unlikely nations, such as the Czech
Republic, Slovenia, Brunei, Croatia, and Cuba. This is according to the United
Nations. The 2012 CIA World Factbook puts the United States at 49th among 222
countries. These are dismal showings for the richest nation on earth.
“Pro-life,” incidentally, does not include pro-life
imprisonment; and pro-death penalty can hardly be counted as a positive.
Perhaps (tongue firmly in cheek here) it’s the “pro” in “progressive” that
conservatives are responding to so negatively. It’s truly a bleak vision of the
world, this country, and our population. It’s a black-and-white view where
black predominates.
Theodore Roosevelt said, “A great democracy must be progressive or it
will soon cease to be a great democracy.” Sloganized patriotism—“America
First,” “We’re Number One”—belies the facts in many aspects of our commonality
that we are not at the top of our game as a great democracy. We have made
strides in expanding civil equality and the “right to Life, Liberty, and the
pursuit of Happiness” spoken about in the Declaration of Independence, mostly
uphill against the persistent tide of regressive conservatism. But there is
much left to do.
American positivism, rooted in the core belief in democratic
progressiveness, as expressed by Roosevelt and many others, is an essential
attribute in the struggle for the common good, whether it be in terms of civil
rights expansion, the welcome we give new immigrants to our immigrant-created
nation, or the extension of adequate health care to all our citizens. It is our
civil faith and our national ideal, though it falls short of universal acceptance.
