Politics As Religion In The USA

Welcome friends!

I’m sure I’ve discussed it before, probably many times, but the arrival of the winter holiday season here in the USA makes me want to write a little something more about the increasingly clear relationship between religious modes of thought and the sort of overtly authoritarian and anti-democracy sentiment we’ve been seeing more and more from conservatives and members of our right wing Republican Party.

Of course, by winter holiday season I’m talking especially about Christmas which, in case you’re not already familiar with the history of the holiday, is basically now a nominally Christian holiday that postulates Jesus Christ was born in late December suspiciously near the date of the winter solstice, a date and an event that was apparently already or also celebrated as a holiday by various non-Christian cultures including the Ancient Romans, who had a big holiday in mid-December to honor their god of agriculture, Saturn, and the ancient Germanic tribes of Europe, who celebrated a holiday around the same time called Yule, which involved their own god Odin. Seems the tendency of American religious conservatives to not take things too literally and to be always up for a good story if it serves a rhetorical purpose didn’t begin with Donald Trump but has been around a good long while. But that’s not what I wanted to talk about. No, the relationship of American style political conservatism to religion that crossed my mind recently has more to do with the religious view of ethics than with a penchant for convenient fictions, although maybe it amounts to much the same thing.

Yes, I thought it might be a good time to just reiterate my belief that the most reliable basis of support for the ethos of political democracy is the realization that ethics are ultimately subjective and that the only sensible, stable, peaceful way for a society to temporarily and contingently resolve issues of social ethics, or at least the social ethics expressed in the law and in particular the law governing economic relationships, is to periodically agree upon them socially in some ongoing, perpetually reassessed way, that is to say, through democratic government. The opposing view, that ethics are objective, in the religious version laws set down by supernatural law givers, generally leads to fundamental dissatisfaction with democratic government and a yearning for a system in which high priests, or philosopher kings in the less common secular version, are given the power to enforce the one true code of ethics no matter the potential disagreement of the unfortunate populace. 

There are exceptions, as I’ve pointed out previously. Historically, some religious groups who presumably supported religion-based objective ethics argued right behavior resulting from government enforced edicts doesn’t really count for much in a religious sense and were perfectly willing to leave it to democratic government to come up with laws expressing popular ethics that might or might not correspond to what they believed represented the one true ethics. How else to demonstrate one’s ethical superiority and hence one’s religious credentials? And, of course, some religious folk who have historically endorsed objective ethics seem to have supported political democracy out of the rather sensible and practical fear the wrong sort might end up in charge of government and pronouncing on what they felt were the one true ethics and that diverse secular democracy ensuring individual freedom of conscience was their best bet to preserve a realm in which to discuss and pursue what they saw as the authentic as opposed to government endorsed one true ethics. Certainly religious warfare between different Christian sects was rampant in Europe in the centuries preceding the founding of the United States, so one can understand their concerns. However, in general, I would suggest the realization from the world of modern secular philosophy that ethics are based ultimately in a fundamentally subjective moral sense that must then be reconciled in some way with those of other people is one of the fundamental building blocks on which the ethos of political democracy rests.

Now don’t get me wrong. I wouldn’t argue for a moment a belief in religion-based objective ethics is the only point of connection between religious modes of thought and contemporary political conservatism and Republicanism here in the USA. Surely the peculiar suspension of human reason and normal modes of thought on the part of many conservatives and Republicans today is simply an application of pathological religious modes of thought to politics in which, in this instance, one’s faith in the chosen one must supersede anything and everything, including the evidence of the senses, and only slavish obedience to the chosen one promises salvation, with the opposition apparently irredeemably evil and in league with the devil and so on. The fanaticism, ignorance, bigotry, hatred, and ever present threat of violence alone would be enough for most objective observers to perceive the contemporary conservative and Republican movements in the USA to be little more than an expression of a modern religion inspired Age of Ignorance, which if unchecked one supposes must inevitably result in a benighted era here in America comparable in scope and intensity to medieval Europe’s long and unfortunate Dark Ages.

The rather obvious connection between religious modes of thought and political conservatism and Republicanism should remind us all the monster of contemporary conservatism is a multi-headed beast that we must address in some way in all its many guises and contexts. But fighting the multi-headed monster of modern conservatism is essential for the future not only of democracy here in the USA but elsewhere and indeed for the future of humanity itself.

I wish you all a happy holiday season and a new year very much better in every way than the old. 

O Glorious Day

Welcome friends!

November 7, 2020. Oh my goodness. Truly a red letter day for the ages. The day we here in the USA finally found out the results of our recent presidential election. It was a vastly more important presidential election than the previous one, and not just because of the apparent absence of the well documented foreign interference that muddied the results last time, but more importantly because all American voters knew exactly what they were voting on this time. There had been a great deal of speculation that conservatives and Republicans didn’t really know what they were getting with Mr. Trump the last time, that he was an unknown, a one off, a loose canon. When he was revealed over time to be a dishonest, corrupt, nepotistic, greedy, egoistic, secretive, cruel, incompetent, wannabe authoritarian dictator, a great many Americans wondered if we would see a massive popular repudiation of the man including from his conservative and Republican base. The answer came loud and clear. We did not. Conservatives and Republicans showed up in even greater numbers than in the last election to ecstatically and enthusiastically support the man and do everything they could to keep him in the White House. They were not put off at all by what they had seen. Far from it. They loved it. They supported it one hundred percent. Fortunately for all of us, an even greater number of American voters were motivated to finally get off their backsides and prevent conservatives and Republicans from succeeding this time around. In the past four years, Mr. Trump has managed to inflict a rather remarkable amount of damage to our democratic institutions and traditions, the rule of law, the professionalism of our civil service, the economy, the standing of the USA internationally, the environment, the national debt, race relations, public health, and a great many other things. There was understandable concern about what further damage he might manage given an additional four years in office and indeed reasonable doubt about whether American democracy would even survive in any recognizable form. As it is, we seem to have given ourselves a little respite, a few moments to collect our thoughts. But surely a few moments only. The briefest of time outs. American voters did see fit to return to Congress the Republican politicians who unquestioningly and completely supported Mr. Trump the past four years in everything he said and did including notably corrupt Senate kingpin Senator “Moscow Mitch” McConnell (Republican - Kentucky). The long term future of American democracy is still very much in doubt. So let’s take a few moment to consider the two primary forces I believe are threatening to end American democracy at this time: racism and bad economics. Yes, I considered other important forces and currents in contemporary conservatism, including religious bigotry, nativism, and nationalism, but I really believe the two I just mentioned predominate.

Racism, the American Cancer, is the festering wound bequeathed to our nation by our so-called founding fathers. It is a bit of intellectual claptrap originally designed to provide a convenient if rather far fetched rationale for the slave labor required by immoral and greedy early European colonists to make a buck and build fancy manor houses on other people’s land. Later, it served famously as the primary cause of our most divisive and brutal domestic conflict, the American Civil War, a nauseatingly destructive bloodbath which one hundred and sixty years later still marches on in the minds of many Americans. Since that time it has been the inspiration for countless murders and other outrages against innocent men, women, and children. It was largely traditional American racism that was behind the immediate and automatic outrage and backlash against former President Obama, our first partially “black” president, an abomination for many. It is racism that underlies the obvious rural versus urban dimension of our current political struggle as racially homogenous rural areas fear and despise our thriving, diverse, cosmopolitan cities, the home of what they see as a dangerously racially and culturally heterogeneous and hostile cultural “elite” of the educated and competent that is perpetually out of step with their simple, time honored traditions. It is racism that underlies the geographic dimension of our current political situation with the deep southern states of the old confederacy voting always and automatically en masse in support of anti-democracy conservatism and the Republican Party, with the notable exception this year of the standout southern state of Georgia, home of the major thriving southern metropolis of Atlanta. It is racism that underlies as well the similarly single minded devotion to the conservative and Republican cause of the remote, sparsely populated Great Plains states, famous historically for their racial pogroms, lawlessness, corruption, and bloody mob violence. It is racism that makes conservatives and Republicans view the artifacts of American democracy generated in the distant past, before our more recent demographic changes and in many cases before even the extension of the vote to non-“white” citizens, as fundamentally different in character and far superior to the artifacts of modern American democracy, with its suspiciously swarthy and unreliable electorate. It is racism that leads conservatives and Republicans to their obsessive attempts to manipulate our voting system, gerrymandering voting districts, thinking always of new and inventive strategies to complicate and curtail voting. It is racism that has enabled arch conservative and Republican Mr. Trump to turn reasonable protests against apparently disparate police treatment for racial minorities into a charge that inchoate, lawless anarchism has taken hold in our American cites. It is racism that makes conservatives and Republicans see any and every attempt by our democratic government to help struggling people in terms of an us against them struggle against racial minorities and their allies that they imagine are trying to pick their pockets and destroy the ethical nature of our economic system. The racism of large segments of the population of the USA, both of the implicit sort and more recently of the rather more explicit, old school sort, remains one of the most vital and important drivers of American culture and politics. Racism alone may have the power to one day end American democracy.

Bad economics, a form of insincere and manipulative political rhetoric based on common and carefully cultivated misunderstandings of normative neoclassical welfare economics, is an independent but also very powerful generator of anti-democracy sentiment here in the USA. I discuss it often, although not as often as formerly now Hansel Krankepantzen is on the job. Bad economics suggests chimerical perfectly competitive markets or near enough approximations of the same (risibly assumed to equate to “free” markets in the vernacular) lead to socially optimal results if only democratic government can be prevented from “interfering” with them. That’s not really what neoclassical welfare economics says, of course, and is inconsistent with a well known feature of neoclassical welfare economics called distributional indifference, which derives from the definition of “utility” on which neoclassical welfare economics is based. Any given market result really has no normative or ethical significance until and unless democratic government assigns it normative significance based on synthesizing the subjective ethical or normative views of the populace on distributional and other controversial ethical issues not addressed within neoclassical welfare economics. What neoclassical welfare economics really says is that democratic government is absolutely essential to achieving socially desirable market results, not the opposite, that socially desirable market results can only be achieved if democratic government is eliminated or at least prevented from getting involved. Here in the USA, it’s largely the immense cultural popularity and significance of bad economics that makes so many people unrealistic, unreasonable, utopian, anti-democratic, and looking forever for scapegoats they imagine are “rigging the system” against them, as well as fighting a never ending war of the imagination against wily “communists” and “socialists” who fail to see the light and are cast as stock villains trying forever to muck up the works of the amazing clockwork mechanism for good that would prevail in their absence. If you’re interested in knowing more about bad economics and how it works its rhetorical magic, the best thing you can do is take a look at Hansel Krankepantzen’s blog, or if you’re a big spender his short book / pamphlet, and he’ll set you up and get you appreciating what’s really going on in that department a great deal faster than any competing resource in my opinion. And I should know. Because I’ve read them. And I thank you very much.

All joking aside, we’re not out of the woods here in the USA by any means. The forces of anti-democracy conservatism and Republicanism, based in sickly but powerful currents of American culture, racism and bad economics, and supported by vast economic wealth and foreign despots, is a foe not easily vanquished. It has its hooks in many millions of Americans and has proven it can make them do the most amazing, unlikely, and reprehensible things. If you live here in the USA, you should help me fight the dangerous influence of contemporary American conservatism and Republicanism. If you live abroad, be on your guard against conservative and right wing poison arriving from these shores. Know what it is, how it works, how to fight it. Stockpile the antidote. Prepare yourself, or like liberals and other democratic leftists here in the USA, you may find yourself one day suddenly, unexpectedly, on the ropes, fighting for your democracy like you’ve never had to fight before. Long live democracy!

American Conservatism And Anti-Democracy Sentiment Update

Welcome friends!

I thought I should probably update my years long commentary on the close connection between anti-democracy sentiment, mainstream conservative ideology, and bad economic theorizing here in the USA in light of some new information on the topic I saw recently. For many decades now, at least since former actor / president Ronald Reagan famously proclaimed our democratic government was the problem, not the solution, back in the early 1980s, conservatives and Republicans here in the USA have been all about shrinking our democratic government or, in the immortal words of conservative arch-bloviator Grover Norquist, reducing it to such a size he could “drown it in a bathtub.” However, while seeming to clearly express an anti-democracy frame of mind to me and many other liberals and democratic leftists, many traditional conservatives preferred to interpret such statements in light of the conceit they were still very much in favor of democratic government, just not one that might actually do anything, not so-called “activist” democratic government. An inert, inactive, neutered, powerless democratic government was just fine, so in that sense there were still big believers in democracy. I’m not entirely sure why anyone would value an institution like that, but that’s neither here nor there. The argument was they were perfectly happy with democratic government of that peculiar attenuated sort for whatever reason.  However, more recently I’ve been seeing conservatives delivering rather more forthright proclamations of their true feelings about political democracy. I commented previously on Mr. Trump’s recent pick for a seat on the Federal Reserve Board, Stephen Moore, who announced in no uncertain terms a while back he was “not even a big believer in democracy.” However, I was online the other day, don’t tell anyone but on Twitter, which is actually not as oppressively idiotic as one might assume as long as one is willing to mute and block the unending tsunami of knuckleheads talking rot and regaling one another with what they apparently believe are witty GIFs and so on, and I happened to stumble upon US Senator Mike Lee (R - Utah) discussing the issue as bluntly as one might ever hope. Yes, apparently at least a few conservatives have managed at long last to overcome the mysterious and oppressive social force known as political correctness that reportedly formerly required them to lie about what they really think about political democracy, “race,” religion, sexual orientation, and any number of other issues. According to Sen Lee’s missive of October 8, 2020, “democracy isn’t the objective” of the American political system or maybe he meant the American people. In his opinion, liberty, peace, prosperity, and a flourishing of the human condition are the objectives, and “rank” democracy can “thwart that.” Sounds pretty horrible, right? Damned democracy! In a different post from the day before, Sen Lee noted, “our form of government is not a democracy,” and opined that fact should be important for anyone “who worries about the excessive accumulation of power in the hands of the few.” Seems we’re finally getting somewhere on this front. Let’s take a few moments this week to break down the arguments here.

In case you think I’m making this all up, and these days I would forgive you for suspecting that because there’s certainly a lot of it about, let me just give the full text of the two posts I’m talking about. I’m not interested in playing silly rhetorical games. I just want to discuss for a few moments what I feel are some important issues creating divisions in our society that must at this point be obvious to even the most casual of observers.

Mike Lee@SenMikeLee

Democracy isn’t the objective; liberty, peace, and prospefity (sic) are.  We want the human condition to flourish.  Rank democracy can thwart that.

2:24 AM · Oct 8, 2020·Twitter for iPhone

Mike Lee@SenMikeLee

The word “democracy” appears nowhere in the Constitution, perhaps because our form of government is not a democracy.  It’s a constitutional republic.  To me it matters.  It should matter to anyone who worries about the excessive accumulation of power in the hands of the few.

9:06 PM · Oct 7, 2020·Twitter for iPhone

At this point I’d like to change the format a bit. I didn’t study Sen Lee’s oeuvre of tweets to discover how exactly he feels rank democracy can thwart the pursuit of the various objectives he mentions, but I think I’ve heard enough conservative claptrap in my day to speculate on the sort of thing conservatives generally have in mind when they say these sorts of things, so let me just go ahead and proceed on that basis using Sen Lee’s statements as the starting point, with the understanding I’m now talking about my impression of how some general conservative themes may be involved and not necessarily about Sen Lee’s undoubtedly unique and fascinating personal take on these issues.

One of the social objectives Sen Lee suggests may be thwarted by “rank democracy” is liberty. It seems quite possible the term liberty here is being invoked in the so-called libertarian sense, so not referring to some abstract principle of personal freedom or liberty, which of course would be irrelevant to all real economic issues involving resolving interpersonal conflicts of needs and wants because both sides would have a claim to such freedom or liberty, but instead referring to resolving interpersonal conflicts of needs, wants, desires on the basis of economic power in markets. That is to say, the liberty involved in statements like that is usually the liberty of rich folk to get what they want based on their economic power in markets as the gods or sometimes nature intended. Democracy can thwart “liberty” defined in that way because of course political democracy, which created the legal specifications of property ownership, contract law, and all the other legal and political underpinnings of real world markets, can just as easily change them. But if democracy changes certain aspects of that system, then the interests of those who interests would prevail now might not prevail in the revised version, or in the words of conservatives, their own liberty to get what they want will have been thwarted, never mind the corresponding but opposite change in liberty of whatever other parties may be involved. It’s confusing argument that I think would be filed under the philosophical category of assuming the conclusions. That’s really why we have democracy. To make sure everyone or at least most people agree the conditions we’ve set up as far as the distribution of economic power and the use of markets to resolve particular interpersonal conflicts is ethically correct and to give people a way to revise those conditions or use other mechanisms if they’re not.

Another of the objectives Sen Lee suggests may be thwarted by “rank democracy” is peace. It’s hard to imagine anyone seriously contending democracy is any less conducive to peace in the sense of avoiding violent international conflict than any other political system. Historically, non-democratic authoritarian systems such as feudal monarchies historically or more recently fascist authoritarian market states like Nazi Germany or authoritarian communist states like the USSR have seemed every bit as happy to mix it up militarily as any democratic state has ever been. When conservatives talk like that one suspects they may have in mind some notion of domestic peace or social and political tranquility, some sense that in the absence of democracy those with economic power would be able to enforce their will more completely on others and there would be less debate and potential criticisms of the system from the hoi polloi. One has the impression many conservatives suppose an absence of political democracy would lead to what the old medieval political theorists called a well ordered society, in which everyone from the all powerful monarch and his privileged and wealthy cronies all the way down to the lowliest and most powerless peon or serf working in the fields knew his or her place and was content with the world. Not, I think, something any non-conservative might really look forward to. 

Another of the objectives Sen Lee suggests may be thwarted by “rank democracy” is prosperity. I think this one pretty much gives the game away as far as the influence of bad economics because one of the hallmarks of bad economics is the suppression of the important ethical issues associated with resolving interpersonal conflicts of needs and wants on the basis of economic power in markets, notably distributional ethics, the issue of who should have what level or amount of economic power and why. According to the mangled version of neoclassical welfare economics one finds in bad economics, once one arrives at some arbitrarily near enough approximation of a perfectly competitive market one must refrain from “interfering” with it because it maximizes everyone’s “utility” and one loses total output or sometimes rather more comically “economic efficiency” if one tries to change it. If you read Mr. Krankepantzen’s blog at all you’ll recognize the components of the argument that render it bad economics. Maximizing “utility” as defined in economic theory is a characteristic shared by many potential market outcomes. Deciding between them is a matter of controversial ethics lying outside economic theory. Indeed, deciding between any “utility” maximizing outcome and certain non-“utility” maximizing outcomes is impossible on the basis of “utility” and is a matter of controversial ethics lying outside economic theory. The idea of a tradeoff with total output is first of all conjectural, in the sense a more even distribution of economic power may lead to more robust demand and hence better economic results, but more importantly is normatively or ethically entirely unrelated to arguments and conclusions based on “utility” as defined in economic theory. Depending on where the resources are actually going there may be no way to compare on the basis of “utility” an economic outcome with a higher total output to an outcome with a lower total output. It’s an entirely different argument in terms of the ethics involved than that associated with neoclassical welfare economics. And, of course, if one is talking not about the normative content of neoclassical welfare economics but just unrelated ethics in general, trying to define “prosperity” as total output with no concern over where it’s going, how actual people are faring, whether a few or perhaps many people are suffering material want, etc., seems rank philosophical sophistry. If you’re interested in those sorts of issues you really should take a look at Mr. Krankepantzen’s blog or books someday. He spends a lot of time discussing those issues, so I don’t have to.

Moving on to his penultimate concern about the ostensibly deleterious effects of “rank democracy” at least in the two comments I read, goodness knows how many other concerns he may have voiced in other comments, Sen Lee goes on to establish the US Constitution envisioned the political system of the USA as a constitutional republic rather than a direct democracy or in his words a democracy. That’s absolutely correct as any schoolchild here in the USA knows quite well. Our original system was cobbled together as a compromise between the wealthy big wigs of various former English colonies clearly concerned about losing out to their counterparts in the other colonies, including on the basis of the relative size of their respective voting populations. It’s simply a historical fact, along with the fact the US Constitution granted the states the power to set voting requirements, which most states promptly limited to property owning (so tax paying at that time) “white” males, which apparently because of how property was defined at the time came out to only about six percent of the population according to the Wikipedia article on the subject. That part checks out. However, Sen Lee then seems concerned to set up a sort of false dichotomy between a constitutional republic and political democracy. With at least some citizens voting in even the earliest incarnations of our constitutional republic, our system was clearly always a democracy as well as a constitutional republic. And, of course, over time the trajectory or pattern of development of the political system here in the USA has been to increase the level of democracy, first with the abolition of the property requirements for “white” males, then prohibitions on denying the vote to males on the basis of “race,” color, or previous conditions of servitude” (i.e. slavery), then eventually the granting of the vote to women. So the USA may have always been a constitutional republic, but it’s always been a constitutional republic that is also a democracy and that has trended toward ever increasing levels of democracy throughout its long history.

Finally, Sen Lee opines that his belief that the US Constitution never envisioned the USA as a democracy should be important for anyone who worries about the excessive accumulation of power in the hands of the few. It’s an interesting argument because, of course, when most people think of political democracy relative to other potential political systems they associate it with just the opposite, with trying to spread political power around to avoid the excessive accumulation of power in the hands of the few one tends to see in various non-democratic and authoritarian political systems. Indeed, one wonders what other political system Sen Lee has in mind that performs better in that regard. What conservatives usually have in mind, of course, is a plutocracy or some sort of corporate fascism in which technocrats, usually economists, are meant to determine and set the legal requirements for markets, after which all issues and conflicts are meant to be determined on the basis of economic power in markets. One suspects the underlying issue is not really the number of people involved. There may be relatively few elected officials, but there are many voters who put them there and can remove them as well. In contrast, there may be many people with some modicum of economic power, but there are usually a handful of people with rather greater amounts of economic power, and no one can really remove them. No, it seems much more likely to be about the basis of power. Not the number of people involved, but who has the power and why. In a market system, those with economic power effectively have more votes in the market system than others. It’s obviously galling for rich conservatives to end up in our democratic political system with one measly vote like everyone else when they feel through their economic stature and their economic power in markets they should have much more power than they already do from the more informal expressions of economic power in our political system. It seems they feel manipulation of the democratic system through such mechanisms as donations and patronage, holding the economy hostage, and funding conservative media and academic institutions is not always enough to ensure their will prevails in a democratic system. The potential for some broad expression of political will on the part of the people is always there, waiting in the wings, preparing to stride onto the stage at any moment. Frightening, isn’t it? Not for me, of course. I think it’s great. I mean frightening for people convinced they deserve whatever relative power they currently have, if not more, and concerned to ensure they suffer no diminution of that power in the future.

Well, I suppose that’s quite enough for one day, isn’t it? I feel I’ve been writing for some time now, so presumably anyone who’s made it this far will be feeling similarly fatigued. The point is simply that American conservatives and their political wing, the Republican Party, are becoming much more forthright in their disparagement of political democracy here in the USA, as any observer of the overall arc of their ideology and rhetoric over the past several decades will have long anticipated. It’s not really a mystery any longer. The cat is well and truly out of the bag. If you support political democracy here in the USA, then you’ll want to vote against the biggest and most serious threat it’s ever faced: the American conservative and Republican movement. You know my views. I’m an open book. Long live American democracy!

Anti-Democracy Sentiment And American Popular Culture Of The 1980s

Welcome friends!

I was watching a movie from the 1980s the other day and it reminded me of something I’ve long been interested in and indeed have likely discussed a number of times before: the historical development of that influential element of the right wing conservative movement here in the USA concerned with fighting what they call “activist” democratic government, so groups like the so-called “libertarians,” devotees of so-called “Austrian” economics, and fans of market-based fake “anarchism” (so-called “anarcho-capitalism” or something along those lines). The most interesting part of that development to me is the relationship of that element of the American conservative movement to the worst excesses of the self-indulgent late stages of the similarly egoistic albeit rather more genuinely anarchic and nominally “leftist” utopian hippiedom of the 1970s; an echo of that fascinating and complicated era of popular American culture between the folk singing, sincere as all get out, idealistic, socially conscious progressivism of the 1960s, and the smug, oleaginous, cynical, money grubbing, proudly egoistic, Greed is Good, “yuppie” movement of the 1980s. Maybe I’ll discuss that a bit more today.

One of the popular tropes you’ll find in artifacts of American culture from the 1980s is that, in the immortal words of then president Ronald Reagan, (democratic) government is not the solution to our problems, it’s the problem. In fairness to Mr. Reagan, he may have been speaking specifically about a particular problem at the time, but the quote was widely taken as a statement of a broader principle of conservative ideology. The popularity of Mr. Reagan and the conservative movement at that time is reflected in films of that era in which every US government employee is dutifully depicted as, at best, a mean spirited, pencil pushing prig, and at worst, a wily super villain of near supernatural abilities. Many of these depictions still resonate with conservatives today such as, for example, the high handed, perpetually angry, emotionally unstable EPA inspector in Ghostbusters whose puny mind and unreasonable enforcement of draconian regulations nearly allows NYC to be overrun by ghosts, or evil slime, or threateningly foreign sounding Eastern Europeans of the supernatural sort, or whatever it was. Lucky for us the boys managed to sock democratic government in the eye and save the day. Conservatives are still fulminating against the EPA and I would suggest the character of the evil EPA inspector in that particular film could just as well have been written yesterday. Other films seem rather less fortunate in that department. In the particular film I was watching, a gratingly irritating bit of juvenile claptrap named Coneheads, the requisite US government villain took the form of a cold-hearted functionary intent on rooting out illegal aliens, the joke being the illegal aliens in this case were not desperate, struggling families from south of the border but the extraterrestrial Coneheads themselves. I know. What a jerk, right? Leave those aliens alone! Except, of course, unlike the evil EPA inspector of Ghostbusters the evil immigration official of Coneheads is actually right up conservatives’ alley just now. Indeed, if they were to have any criticisms of the character today it would likely be he was too incompetent or perhaps too humane or lenient to effectively eject the lovable Coneheads thus preserving American culture. Funny. Seems the two films straddled the line between two opposing notions of what we all were talking about when contemplating the evils of activist democratic government. And that really is the root of the issue, isn’t it? It was never simply the general proposition that activist democratic government is inherently bad, but that political democracy allows activist democratic government to sometimes end up doing things one does not personally support.

To make sense of this, it may help to appreciate the 1980s stock character of the evil US government functionary originated with popular opposition to the Vietnam War in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The basic idea at the time was the “establishment,” including the military, the police, the courts, and indeed often democratic government itself, was not to be trusted. It was an anarchic, nihilistic mindset that was popularly associated with a sort of swoony, unmoored liberalism or leftism of the utopian variety and roundly despised by conservatives of the day. However, at some point some conservative group somewhere apparently realized conservatives themselves could make use of those themes to construct a bit of popular rhetoric to advance their own agenda. They did so by peeling off the activist democratic government they had long opposed under the influence of bad economics, in which markets are seen as panaceas and democratic government as unnecessary at best and harmful at worst, and identifying that specifically as “the establishment,” thus allowing the other erstwhile components of “the establishment” to go unchallenged and immune from criticism and revision. They did so by emphasizing the ills of democratic government not in the context of lawless utopian anarchy but in the context of their preferred baseline of markets, property rights, contracts, laws, police, prisons, militaries, etc. The legal and perforce ethical baseline associated with those institutions receded into the intellectual background to such an extent these conservative spinmeisters convinced many people those institutions were not, themselves, simply artifacts of the now despised political democracy, but natural laws or divine edicts or some such thing having no particular relationship to democratic government and law. The result is that a generation of what would have formerly been called, and are now again increasingly called, economic and political conservatives, became confusingly miscast as fake “anarchists,” fake rebels, people presented as carrying the banner of the let it all hang out, do what you want, self-obsessed hippies of the 1960s striking a blow against the strictures of democratic government and law and society itself, but really in their case doing so on behalf of existing power relationships and arrangements, on behalf of rich folk and the institutions that reflect the interests of rich folk, that is to say, on behalf of what real hippies of the day would have recognized as “the establishment.” Basically, they became what amounts to right wing anti-democratic fascists.

This coup of political rhetoric has led to all manner of peculiar and seemingly lasting consequences for our public conservation here in the USA. One notable example is the ascendency of wealthy, corrupt, lawless, power mad, anti-democracy businessman Mr. Trump to the White House based partially on the populist conservative notion the man is an “outsider” intent on taking on “the establishment.” Old timers, of course, will recognize immediately that the man exemplifies everything about the establishment those in the late 1960s and early 1970s who were concerned about such things wanted to fight against. It has also led to such comical notions that hoary free market ideology from the nineteenth century is a bold new idea no one has ever yet considered or tried because of opposition from “the establishment,” and that people like Ms. Rand and other “libertarian” writers of her ilk invented the revolutionary new ideas of selfishness, egoism, and greed, and it’s only the reactionary small mindedness of “the establishment” that prevents the power of their astonishing new discoveries being put to proper use. In other words, the American conservative movement’s bit of cynical nonsense and repackaging of bad ideas has done a lot to make the popular public conservation about political, economic, and social issues here in the USA what is today: ignorant, idiotic, confusing, dangerous, and unintentionally comical. All reasonable people will want to fight the intellectual rot of the conservative movement if only to discuss these important issues in a reasonable and responsible way.

Neoliberalism and Marxism

Welcome friends!

You may recall I did a post not long ago on the curious habit in some circles of using the word “neoliberalism” to refer to the orthodox free market ideology we’ve long associated with economic “conservatism” here in the USA. I pointed out that in traditional American terminology the “neoliberals” were simply erstwhile liberals who adopted long-standing conservative free market ideology in the 1980s but retained other aspects of the broader liberal political agenda and hence were not simply called conservatives. I suggested calling conservative economic ideology “neoliberalism” seems rather comical to me, as that very same free market ideology existed in this country long before the 1980s, and even after the 1980s has been championed primarily by economic conservatives rather than neoliberals. It struck me as very much an instance of what I believe they call the tail wagging the dog. I wondered why that shift in terminology might have occurred and looked for antecedents in the various ways the term “neoliberalism” was used in Europe prior to the 1980s and so on. However, more recently I had an online exchange with a very enthusiastic fellow who gave me an entirely new perspective on what might be going on with that term, so I thought I might just do a quick update on that issue today.

My interlocutor seemed very much concerned to establish that free market economic ideology essentially began in the 1980s and was the work of liberals in the guise of neoliberals. He didn’t believe free market ideology existed prior to 1980 or if it did was related at all, nor did he associate free market ideology with “classical liberalism,” which he accepted as an older eighteenth century term for something, although I’m not entirely sure what. I’m also not too clear on what happened to the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in his historical scheme, but it doesn’t really matter. Interestingly, he didn’t seem to associate any economic ideology at all with conservatism, apparently believing the term “conservatism” referred only to political and social ideas unrelated to economics. Thus, he seemed to believe all the economic debate in this country at least since the 1980s has been an internal affair between different groups of liberals. When I suggested what I believe is the more conventional use of the terms conservative, liberal, and neoliberal in the economic arena, he suggested my terminology was quaintly old-fashioned and not current at all with what he called “hardcore Marxism,” which he suggested was the more common way of discussing these issues today.

I found it all quite interesting. I had actually suspected a connection to Marxist theory given the generally foreign origin of much of the discussion of “neoliberalism” online. I’m not being nationalistic, just saying my impression is that Marxism has always been rather more popular in many foreign countries than here in the USA. He ended the discussion with the usual dismissive sort of insults one generally encounters when discussing popular economics with random people online, although I thought perhaps rather milder in tone than what I usually encounter from those with more right wing interests.  More, “you don’t seem to understand very much about economics, politics, history,” etc., rather than the more typical conservative or right wing “why don’t you go screw yourself?” sort of thing. We parted company.

One thing that crossed my mind after learning of the connection to Marxism, or at least after having gotten some confirmation of the connection, is the way that theory seems to be such fertile ground for confusion relating to terminology. A big part of the problem I think is that Marxism downplays the importance of ideas, theories, and ideologies, in favor of material relations and conditions. Thus, it tends to use words ending with “ism” not in the conventional way to refer to a collection of ideas, theories, or an ideology, but to various material conditions. “Capitalism” in traditional Marxist terminology is not a theory or collection of ideas relating to capital but a certain form of economic and social organization. A “capitalist” is someone who lives under such conditions regardless of his or her thoughts on economic or political ideas. The person can be as leftist as you like, but he or she is still a “capitalist.” This makes me suspect one fairly benign mechanism that might underlie the current confusion over the term “neoliberal” is that some Marxist writers somewhere may have decided at some time to call the economic and social conditions or arrangements since 1980 “neoliberalism,” so that anyone who has happened to live under those conditions is perforce a “neoliberal.” 

The problem, of course, is that “neoliberalism” also has a completely different definition based on ideas. In that other definition “neoliberalism” relates to the ideas or theories of a particular group of people, “neoliberals.” Under that definition, “neoliberalism” conventionally denotes conservative free market ideology combined with random other social and political ideas otherwise associated with traditional progressive liberalism. If this is what has been going on, I have to way it was all lost on my interlocutor, who despite his ostensibly hardcore Marxist leanings seemed clearly to be jumping back and forth between Marxist materialist terminology and more conventional idea based terminology in the most confusing way imaginable.

However, the connection to Marxism also made me wonder if there might be a rather more sinister reason for this apparently coincidental congruity of terms.  That notion certainly gave me reason to pause because in recent years I’ve come to associate heavy handed rhetorical and linguistic game playing mostly with conservatives and right wing sorts, who seem forever redefining and conflating terms, overgeneralizing, using misdirection, and so on. But I do believe some leftists have done that sort of thing in the past, so I suppose there’s no real reason to think they can’t be doing it again right now. Certainly the confusion relating to the term “neoliberalism” I’ve been discussing might play to their political advantage. If people feel progressive liberalism / democratic socialism / social democracy is essentially the same thing as neoliberalism and hence free market economic conservatism, then that would presumably make Marxism appear a rather more attractive alternative for those critical of our current economic arrangements. Indeed, it may make it appear the only game in town. 

It may seem farfetched, but I’ve noticed that pattern quite a lot online recently. Some leftists seem just as much or more concerned to fight against progressive liberalism as conservatism, against the relatively progressive or socially oriented and leftist Democratic Party as against the conservative and right wing Republican Party, against Mr. Biden as Mr. Trump. In a weird way contemporary Marxists seem often to be fighting on the same side as conservatives against what is apparently their common foe: reasonable liberals, progressives, social democrats, and democratic socialists. Indeed, it makes me wonder if contemporary Marxism might actually be bankrolled by wealthy conservatives specifically for that purpose. Not saying they are, but if I were a clever right wing operator and I thought Marxism itself could be easily contained for some reason, let’s say the historic antipathy of the American electorate in general to Marxist ideas, I might just throw some money their way so they could do a number on the more serious competition.

Now that I’ve come to suppose this shift in terminology is not the result of natural linguistic drift but simple terminological conflation combined possibly with purposefully misleading and manipulative rhetoric, I’m encouraged to be a little more active confronting misuse of the term “neoliberalism.” Indeed, I take back what I said earlier about not caring if I’m considered a liberal, per se. I think now I do care. I’m what you call a traditional American liberal. I support using activist democratic government to address the ethical shortcoming and failures of market systems, and in that I agree with those calling themselves progressives, social democrats, and democratic socialists. I’m fighting against simplistic conservative / “neoliberal” free market ideology.

Values, Facts, and Conservative Ideology

Welcome friends!

I’ve been noticing a trend recently among conservatives and right wing sorts in which they seem increasingly concerned to deny the traditional philosophical distinction between value and fact, ethics and science, normative and positive, subjective and objective.  Have you noticed any shift in that long standing staple of Western philosophy at least of the more analytical and less “continental” variety?  One expects it from religious conservatives, of course, who have long fancied ethics and morality meaningless unless objective and factual or at least treated as though they were.  However, recently I’ve been hearing similar ideas from random purveyors of bad economics, who seem concerned to establish the ethics they promote in their various economic theories and frameworks are not just their own subjective ethical values but propositions that have been scientifically and mathematically proven to be correct, like the laws of physics seems a common refrain, and hence only subject to dispute by slow witted clods who cannot comprehend the generally rather simplistic science and math involved.  It occurred to me this fundamental bit of philosophical confusion is very likely what’s ultimately behind most conservatives’ increasingly obvious antipathy toward political democracy.  How did I work that out?  I’ll be happy to tell you right now.

Let me first set out my own view on what ethics is really all about, which I think is pretty standard stuff in the context of secular ethical philosophy.  First, ethics and morals and values are inherently subjective, whether we like it or not, whether we talk about them that way or not.  They’re in a different epistemic category from factual statements relating to what we perceive as the external world.  If an alien were to visit Earth he or she or it would need to come to terms with what we perceive as the objective facts of our existence here on Earth.  Let’s go with “it” this time, shall we?  I’m imagining a creature of uncertain gender but with many menacing tentacles and one eye.  Wait, was that on TV?  Doesn’t matter.  Now, this creature might not like the idea of gravity, but there gravity would be nonetheless.  So sad.  The same cannot be said of our human ethics.  If we’re not there to explain them to it, it might never know they even exist.  We could argue ethics with it, hopefully some form of ethics that doesn’t involve the awesome superiority and godlike rights and appearance of the human race or whatever, and maybe it would be persuaded by what we say and maybe not.  But the ethical propositions would not be in the same category as propositions about gravity.  There is nothing in this world that would compel the alien in question to either accept or reject our ethics.  It’s subjective.  It’s a statement about values we hold.  Maybe aliens hold similar values; maybe they don’t.  It’s not a statement about an objective fact one can demonstrate by getting out the old valuescopeometer and taking a few quick readings.

So, if it’s all subjective anyway, what’s the point of ethical philosophy?  You think whatever you want, and I’ll think whatever I want.  Well, for one thing, you may not know really know what you think.  You may think you do.  You may have a vague idea what you think.  But then an awkward situation rolls around and you discover it’s not so clear and you have to sit down and think it through.  So that’s one point of ethical philosophy: challenging and understanding your own ethical beliefs just for your own self-awareness.  What ethical propositions correspond to your fundamental moral sentiments and stand on their own with no further need of analysis?  What ethical propositions are logical developments based on those moral sentiments?  Where may you have made logical or philosophical errors in what you supposed your moral sentiments implied based on divergence of conclusions and your moral sentiments?  

Then, of course, you have the problem of having to deal with other people.  People who may have their own subjective moral sentiments and their own set of ethical beliefs.  How do you intend to deal with them?  Yes, you could always try ignoring them, or if you found yourself at cross purposes, sneaking up behind them and hitting them over their little heads with a rock.  That’s what you might call the traditional approach.  However, you could also sit down, armed with your self-knowledge about your own ethics and your own moral sentiments, and try to work something out with them, understand their ethical arguments, work your way back hopefully to some kernel of commonality, some shared moral sentiment.  I mean, the rock isn’t going anyplace.  It will always be there if you need it.  But it’s nice to give philosophy and reasoned discussion a try.  In that sense, secular ethical philosophy seems rather more robust than religion based ethics, which may be perfectly sensible and persuasive for those holding the same religious views, but which lose their effectiveness rather rapidly when one moves to people in different sects of a shared religion, different religions, or differing views about the value of the whole religious enterprise.  And, of course, with religion, ethics is just part of a much bigger package, so lots of other issues about to complicate and potentially end the discussion of ethics prematurely.

Now, if you hold this view of subjective ethics, a funny thing happens.  No one person can ever really lay claim to being the ultimate arbiter of ethics.  Everyone has their point of view.  Some people may have thought through some issues a little more carefully than others; but when it comes to the inputs and conclusions they find consistent with their moral sentiments, no one is in any better situation than anyone else really.  When it comes to society making collective ethical decisions, it’s just a bunch of people talking to one another.  And how do you make order from a bunch of people talking to one another and having different views and so on?  Political democracy, freedom of thought, freedom of speech, that sort of thing.  You talk it out, and then you have some mechanism where you vote and decide what you’re going to do, maybe with some mechanism for protecting the minority with maybe some harder to revise rules that are still nonetheless subject to democratic processes and potential revision.  There is a close link between secular philosophy, the idea that ethics are ultimately subjective, and the philosophical basis of political democracy.

Of course, one can get to democracy by other routes, including a religious one, which is kind of interesting itself.  What normally happens when one comes to believe ethics are objective is one will be drawn to some sort of authoritarian political regime that will make other people behave ethically.  If we’re talking about religious ethics then we’re talking about an authoritarian theocracy of the sort one finds in various places around the world today.  Doesn’t always happen that way.  Some religious traditions historically associated with political democracy stress the subjective choice involved in accepting their ostensibly objective ethics.  In those traditions, whatever it is doesn’t really count as ethical if one is only doing it because one thinks if one doesn’t the religious police or local holy man or woman will hit you on the head with a rock.  People with this perspective are basically fine with society at large deciding to reject what they see as the one true ethics, indeed they often expect as much and consider such a result essential to their own self-identity and particular worthiness, but they never doubt for a moment the objective veracity of their own ethics.  There are yet other possible routes by which those who support the idea of objective ethics may support political democracy.  For example, they may simply fear authoritarian rule because of the very sensible concern the wrong sort might end up dictating ethics.  But that seems a rather unstable situation.  If ever they felt there was a way they could ensure the correct result they would prefer to do away with political democracy.  It’s very much a second best solution. However, in general, one has a much trickier and less direct route to supporting political democracy if one thinks ethics and morality are objective rather than subjective because in the latter case political democracy is really the only sensible game in town.

It’s a roughly similar situation in the realm of economics and economic theory.  What usually happens when one thinks one has found the one true, objectively correct ethics as far as economic arrangements go is one wants to set things up in the ostensibly ethical way and then prevent other people interfering through such dastardly mechanisms as, for example, the monopoly on legal power of an activist and democratic government.  One becomes a sort of technocratic and secular priest of the one true ethics, akin in many ways to power mad religious extremists.  Think I’m being funny?  Have you had the temerity to challenge the ethical views or values relating to economic issues of an academic economist recently?  How about one of these hot headed and forever foaming at the mouth economists of the boulevard?  Think religious extremists are not always entirely rational and sometimes a little overly emotional?  You should get out more.  There’s a lot of it about.  And, of course, if one feels one’s role on this earth is to make and defend an economic system that reflects the one true ethics, the question of how one goes about it may become a secondary consideration.  Maybe one talks honestly about one’s values, but the risk is always there someone might disagree or get confused and end up doing the wrong thing.  One will be tempted to believe the ends may justify the means and just go with whatever works on a strictly rhetorical basis, even if, wink wink, you and I know it’s not really honest or technically true or entirely correct.  Basically, one comes to believe things like maybe the common misinterpretations of neoclassical welfare economics in which it appears to take up distributional issues isn’t really so bad after all, as long as it leads people to the ostensibly ethically correct result.

We’re currently witnessing a serious degradation and degeneration of support for political democracy here in the USA with multiple branches of the conservative movement involved: bad religion, bad economics, and bad ethics.  The trends will likely continue unless we begin to get serious and teach our young at least the rudiments of real philosophy, so they can at least understand the difference between value and fact, normative and positive, ethics and science, subjective and objective.  If we don’t, then we shouldn’t be surprised at all if one day they can’t really see the point of political democracy, free speech, free thought, and all the other democratic values we’ve traditionally held in this country and throughout the modern developed world.  If that day arrives, we will have been the architects of our own demise.

Liberalism and “Neoliberalism,” and Conservatism

Welcome friends!

Have you noticed a curious trend online in which economic arguments long associated with traditional American economic conservatism are described instead as “neoliberal,” for example in phrases like the “neoliberal doctrine of free markets” and so on?  While it’s true what distinguishes so-called “neoliberals” from normal, traditional, American-style “liberals” is the former’s adoption of conservative economic reasoning, and in that sense I suppose it’s technically correct to call conservative economic ideas “neoliberal,” there’s something suspiciously odd about it to me, especially when not used as part of a hyphenated formulation like “conservative / neoliberal economic reasoning.”  To me it always sounds like the tail wagging the dog, or what I imagine that must sound like anyway.  Neoliberalism here in the USA as far as I can remember has always referred to liberals who adopted conservative economic language during the so-called Reagan Revolution of the early 1980s when conservatism and in particular economic conservatism was rampant in this country.  So, as I’m sure you can appreciate, it sounds rather jarring to the ears of anyone like me who was alive at that time to now misplace the derivative connection to what was in the past always considered mainstream conservatism and call free market ideology a neoliberal idea, as though it was something they had worked out amongst themselves and, who knows, perhaps later told conservatives about?  It raises one’s suspicions that some sort of rhetorical funny business involving words is going on, along the lines of conservatives’ attempt to redefine and broaden the meaning of “socialism” as we’ve always understood it in this country to now include the mundane fixing of market problems and addressing distributional issues that have long been considered part of the neoclassical economic orthodoxy.  However, when I raised my concerns to a fellow online the other day he pointed out the term “neoliberal” has a long of tradition in Europe going back to the 1930s of referring to the economic policies we traditionally associate with conservatism in the USA.  What the heck?  Really?  Why have I never heard about this before now?  Why is everything always so damned complicated and confusing?  Because some people like it that way?  Oh.  Yeah, probably.  Anyway, it sent me to Wikipedia to learn more about this newly strange beast called neoliberalism.

Part of what the authors had to say about neoliberalism in the Wikipedia article seemed to make sense to me.  “Neoliberalism constituted a paradigm shift away from the post-war Keynesian consensus that had lasted from 1945 to 1980.”  That sounds about right.  That timeframe would make the start of neoliberalism contemporaneous with the conservative revolution here in the USA.  That’s what I always understood to be the case.  Some traditional liberals, the sort who supported Keynesian and New Deal policies to confront the conservative free-market policies that arguably led to the Great Depression and initially prevented any effective response to that economic calamity, gave up their by then traditional liberal economic ideas to adopt conservative economic ideas relating to worshipping the free market as a panacea and in so doing became so-called “neoliberals.”  They were neoliberals rather than plain old conservatives at that point I suppose because they retained their interest in other non-economic parts of the traditional liberal agenda in this country, presumably things like the separation of church and state, racial equality, etc.

However, after this promising start the article promptly began to go perceptibly pear shaped.  The authors noted English-speakers have actually been using the term neoliberalism since the start of the twentieth century but with different meanings and, to make matter worse, with definitions that have changed over time.  Of course.  As the name of an “economic philosophy,” it was apparently used by European “liberals” in the 1930s (and, yes, I have no idea who we’re talking about now, maybe anyone who wasn’t a fascist?) as they attempted to revive the central economic ideas of so-called “classical liberalism,” which is an even older term for what we here in the USA have long called conservatism in the realm of economics, that is, people who view so-called “free markets” as panaceas.  So, in Europe in the 1930s, neoliberal apparently didn’t mean “new” American-style liberals who had adopted conservative economic principles in the 1980s, it basically meant proponents of a “new” or resurgent form of classical liberalism or conservatism as we call it here in the US.

But we’re not done yet.  The article also noted that at some point in the 1930s there was a time in which European “neoliberalism” apparently didn’t simply imply a return to “classical liberalism” (conservatism in American terminology) but was meant to contrast with the latter by accepting a role for the state to “intervene” in markets when necessary, which of course here in the USA is a hallmark of what we call “liberalism” rather than “neoliberalism.”  The 1930s in Europe sounds a very interesting time, doesn’t it?  I hope I never see anything like it during my lifetime.  Oh, it’s happening again?  Right now?  Damn.  Oh well, let’s just carry on, shall we?

Anyway, to continue our narrative relating to what Wikipedia had to say about the topic, the term neoliberalism apparently entered or maybe re-entered common use internationally in the 1980s in connection with Augusto Pinochet’s economic reforms in Chile and quickly took on negative connotations.  At that time it was apparently used as a pejorative term people critical of free market ideology applied to those less critical of that ideology.  In that context, it became associated with people like Milton Friedman, Friedrich Hayek, and James M. Buchanan, all considered notable “conservative” writers here in the USA.  But, then again, I guess the article didn’t say these conservatives ever referred to themselves as neoliberals, only that their critics referred to them as such.

So that cleared it up, right?  Clear as mud?  Who the heck cares, anyway?  Why am I even talking about it right now?  It’s only a word, right?  Well, I think maybe it matters a little bit here in the USA for a couple of reasons.  First, given our recent history, it raises the suspicion conservatives are starting to play funny words games in an effort to smear traditional liberalism, which in the USA has always been about using democratic government in a pragmatic and progressive and I suppose generally leftist or socialist way, by associating it with neoliberalism and hoping people won’t notice the difference.  Second, and along the same lines, it seems to make the entire economic debate of the past few centuries a debate between two schools of “liberals,” with conservatism apparently not involved at all, waiting in the wings to emerge as the new kid on the block recently arrived to save the day with bold new economic thinking rather than representing the hoary old traditional “free market” economic thinking dating back to at least the nineteenth century in opposition to which American-style liberalism was formed.

However, it may well be that in our new Age of Ignorance that ship has sailed.  The good ship Funny Terms.  My impression now is that many people who would formerly have proudly proclaimed themselves liberals now seem not entirely sure what the word really means and hence prefer alternative labels such as progressives, democratic leftists, democratic socialists, social democrats, etc.  You know, it’s fine with me if you want to call yourself that, it’s the same thing, we can still be friends, but I can’t help thinking what sort of confusion it’s going to generate down the line if ever those young people crack a history book and read about the long conflict between liberal and conservative economic ideas here in the USA.  

At the same time, “conservatism” as far as economic principles, seems to have become unmoored from what we’ve always considered conservative economic thought in this country.  Where previously economic conservatives would have agitated for the free movement of labor, they now argue for limiting immigration.  Where previously they would have agitated for the free movement of goods, they now argue for tariffs and trade wars.  Where previously they would have agitated for the free movement of capital and the principles of competitive advantage, they now tout nationalistic economic warfare.  Where previously they would have advocated reduced government spending, they now support running up the national debt like there’s no tomorrow.  Where previously they would have demanded government impartiality, they now support government doling out economic favors and treats to the president’s favorites and loyal minions.  Actually, now I think about it, I suppose that may be a rather more benign reason the economic debate in this country seems increasingly to be defined as an internal conflict between two sets of liberals.  Because conservatives no longer seem to have any coherent economic philosophy at all, and it’s becoming increasingly difficult for young people to remember back to the time they did.

Oh well.  I guess words are always changing.  Let’s face it.  I’m old.  Well, older anyway.  My moniker refers to myself as a “liberal” humanist and that’s the way I’ll always think of myself.  That’s the world in which I was born.  But if you’re young and want to say it some other way that’s fine with me.  I can be a progressive humanist or a democratic leftist humanist or a democratic socialist humanist or a social democrat humanist if you like, just don’t call me a neoliberal or conservative humanist.  Good enough?

Fighting the Establishment

Welcome friends!

I know, it has been awhile.  Sorry about that.  Lots of stuff going on just now.  But I would like to register an opinion on this site now and then.  Maybe a little fewer and farther between than formerly, but still trucking as they used to say.  Or is that truckin’?  I have the old days on my mind just now, for reasons that should become clear when I get to my topic for today.  But enough tomfoolery, let’s get the ball rolling.  My topic for today is a funny little article I read in the paper the other day about how many people here in the USA are interested in fighting “the establishment,” although what and who they’re actually fighting is quite different and often contradictory, so they end up fighting one another rather more than the establishment.  How true.  And funny.  Not, of course, in a slap your knee and spurt coffee from out your mouth way, but in an ironic way.

To be a tad more specific, the article argued that for conservatives and right wing elements here in the USA “the establishment” has come to mean our democratic government, the politicians and bureaucrats who work in it and for it, regulatory agencies, and on, while for liberals and left wing elements “the establishment” means the wealthy elite of the nation they feel have long held oversized influence over our democratic government and have long tended to use it to their own advantage rather than for the commonweal.  The article also provided some historical perspective, all interesting and worthwhile, but not necessarily relevant to my thoughts on the subject.

The funny thought that occurred to me is that “back in the day,” as they say or used to say back in the day anyway, when I first started hearing about it in the 1960s (who knows how long it had been going on before that, probably decades, maybe forever), “the establishment” meant both.  It meant the wealthy elite, bankers, CEOs, denizens of Wall Street, economically powerful muckety mucks of all stripes, and the nominally democratic government and justice system they were seen as controlling behind the scenes mostly for their own benefit.  “Conservatives” were people who thought everything was working quite well and wanted to defend the establishment.  “Liberals” and progressives and leftists had some concerns and wanted to fight the establishment.  Everything made sense and had a sort of logic, at least as far as talking about the establishment went.

However, in the early 1980s or there about enterprising conservative and Republican ideologues started working on ways to peel off some liberals to their side.  That’s the distinctive thing about the establishment: they have the time, money, and power to try all manner of tactics and strategies to maintain and enhance their situation.  They’re always trying to come up something.  They’re always a worthy adversary.  In this instance, they ended up using a slippery con game of misinterpreting neoclassical welfare economics to successfully convince many Americans all their problems would be solved by the magic of “the free market” (not any particular market structure mind you, just any old free one), if only what they started to call “activist” democratic government could be taken out of the picture.  I suppose they felt democratic government was fine as long as it didn’t actually do anything.  It all worked out quite well for them because of course the “free market” does indeed tend to work out quite well for the wealthy elite who made their money on whatever the market happened to be freely doing at the time, although how much it did and does in general for anyone else is a matter of dispute.  According to this new theory, “the establishment” was redefined as the elected officials and government employees who were ostensibly determined to use democratic government for their own nefarious purposes, and who were opposed by freedom loving people trying valiantly to throw off the yoke of democratic government, with the people being led, of course, by some very wealthy and powerful people indeed.  Their goal became minimizing the role of democratic government, or I suppose in the best case scenario eliminating it entirely.  Thus, when enormously wealthy and corrupt as hell Donald Trump tries now to do everything he can to undermine democratic government, rank and file conservatives and Republicans in this country are right there with him, fighting the good fight against the establishment as they see it.  Meanwhile, many liberals never fell for the bad economics of the conservative ideologues.  Some did to varying degrees, of course, the so-called “neo-liberals.”  But others just kept on being concerned about fighting the establishment in the form of the wealthy elite who they still saw as dominating democratic government and using it for their own purposes.  Their notion of fighting the establishment was to make democratic government stronger, not weaker, more representative of what average people wanted, and just in general reducing the influence of big money in politics and government.  From their perspective, the advent of Donald Trump simply made a long-standing bad situation much, much worse, handing the establishment much greater power than it ever had before.  Bernie Sanders is very much in this tradition of what we might call unbowed traditional American political liberalism also known as progressivism.

So that’s where we are today.  Lots of people fighting “the establishment,” but the establishment doing just fine and indeed better than it ever has before.  Oh well.  Life goes on.  We can always fight the establishment another day and most likely will, and the day after that, and the day after that, and …. well, you get the picture.  But if you really want to fight the establishment, you might consider taking a few moments to understand the root of conservatives’ 1980s anti-democracy claptrap in bad economics.  (See Hansel Krankepantzen if you don't know how that works.)  But you know, if you’re too busy fighting, just carry on.  Don’t let me get in your way.

References

Both Republicans and Democrats hate the establishment, but they hate very different things.  Jon Ward. Washington Post.   February 11, 2020.  https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/02/11/both-republicans-democrats-hate-establishment-they-hate-very-different-things/#comments-wrapper