Über die Bedeutung politischer Rhetorik

Marmor und Mashaw versuchen in einem Artikel für die New York Times die Unterschiede in der politischen Rhetorik und auf der Präferenzenskala herauszuarbeiten - im Vergleich der Zeit der Großen Depression, die den amerikanischen Bürgern in den 1930er-Jahren das Leben schwer machte, und den schwierigen wirtschaftlichen Zeiten, denen sich die Amerikaner aktuell gegenübersehen:

there is a crucial difference between then and now: the words that our political leaders use to talk about our problems have changed. Where politicians once drew on a morally resonant language of people, family and shared social concern, they now deploy the cold technical idiom of budgetary accounting. This is more than a superficial difference in rhetoric. It threatens to deprive us of the intellectual resources needed to address today’s problems. [...]

In 1934, the focus was on people, family security and the risks to family economic well-being that we all share. Today, the people have disappeared. The conversation is now about the federal budget, not about the real economy in which real people live. If a moral concept plays a role in today’s debates, it is only the stern proselytizing of forcing the government to live within its means. If the effect of government policy on average people is discussed, it is only as providing incentives for the sick to economize on medical costs and for the already strapped worker to save for retirement.

From the 1930s to the 1960s, as the Princeton historian Daniel T. Rodgers demonstrates in his recent book, “The Age of Fracture,” American public discourse was filled with references to the social circumstances of average citizens, our common institutions and our common history. Over the last five decades, that discourse has changed in ways that emphasize individual choice, agency and preferences. The language of sociology and common culture has been replaced by the language of economics and individualism.

In 1934, the government was us. We had shared circumstances, shared risks and shared obligations. Today the government is the other — not an institution for the achievement of our common goals, but an alien presence that stands between us and the realization of individual ambitions. Programs of social insurance have become “entitlements,” a word apparently meant to signify not a collectively provided and cherished basis for family-income security, but a sinister threat to our national well-being.

Quelle: NYT