Ahistory 101

What do you do when history is working against you? What if people really do want to learn from history so they don't repeat it? Well, just rewrite it, of course. Republicans have been adept at this for years, most recently pretending the financial crisis started with Obama, or that Bush somehow solved it (even though it's still going on), or that they never blocked a nomination under Clinton. The latest incident is the so called "nuclear option," an apparently unprecedented attempt to circumvent the workings of democracy . . . or is it? In fact, the reconciliation process has been used 21 times since the 80s, mostly by Republicans. It was used for Reagan's huge tax cuts, for both Bush tax cuts and for welfare reform. Now Democrats want to take the political capital given to them in 2008 and using it to pass the healthcare reform most Americans want (unless it is labeled "socialist"): www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2010/2/24/840251/-Majority-rule-is-the-nuclear-option. But why allow history to cloud the fact that Democrats are actually using their majority in the House and Senate together with control of the Presidency to actually, gasp, do something without the Republicans. They seem to forget that that is exactly what they did for the first six years of the Bush administration; unless Dems supplicated (as they did on more occasions than they liked to admit). Thomas Jefferson once argued "If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." Of course, if we believe the lies why not believe we are free as well?