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Politics

Response to "These Days" Guest Paul Krugman

Recently, Paul Krugman , the prolific New York Times political columnist, Princeton economics professor and best selling author, was interviewed by Tom Fudge on the KPBS program "These Days." Mr. Krugman was on the air discussing his new book, The Conscience of a Liberal , about the demise of the country from "strong democratic values and broadly shared prosperity" into a nation divided by the new Gilded Age. &

His book is thought-provoking, not just because it proposes a restoration of New Deal social programs -- i.e., when Franklin D. Roosevelt's government did more to build a strong middle class than today's under funding of public schools, union busting, and "borrowing" from Social Security to pay off federal debts-- but also because the book draws an impenetrable line between liberals and "new conservatives," or "goal movement conservatism," as Krugman calls it in his book. &

So why did his comments that there is no middle ground between liberal and conservative philosophies, and that fighting hard against Republican ideas is a necessary thing, really strike me as being regressive instead of progressive?