Politix: Backwards Into the Future
That Rick Moran over at the ineptly named Rightwing Nuthouse (change the frickin’ name, for cryin’ out loud) has applied his ample intellectual horsepower to why so many conservatives are mired in an echo chamber that he calls a “Reaganesque fantasyland” in which the endless mantra is small government, low taxes, less regulation and strong national defense.
Rick writes that:
“The essence of the problem is that both liberals and conservatives today see government as almost a living thing to be hated or loved depending on one’s point of view. Government is not alive, although it is close to existing as a force of nature so large and nearly uncontrollable it has become. Instead, government should be seen as a utility to be organized as best as can be humanely done so that it becomes a servant of the people and not their master.
“Believing that we can roll back the size of government and make it ‘small’ is a pipe dream and, along with the idea that we can demand government do a million things and not raise the taxes to pay for them as well as ask government to protect us from impersonal corporations who seek to destroy competition, exploit workers, endanger our environment, foist their dangerous products on us, and generally wreak havoc on our lives and families without someone looking over their shoulder is absurd.
“The idea that the market will fix dangerous working conditions for miners or force companies to end exploitive work rules and policies in service industries is just not tenable in a 21st century industrialized democracy. Neither will the market clean up toxic waste, sensibly protect the environment, establish minimum standards for drinking water and breathable air, or ensure that some of the remaining green places left in the United States can be enjoyed by our grandchildren.”
Rick avers that for conservatism to survive and thrive, then conservatives need to recognize that today’s world is not yesterday’s world of Reagan. To which I humbly add two things:
The Republicans’ penchant for problem-solving by starting wars is especially troubling.
And liberals also need to recognize that today’s world is not yesterday’s world of JFK, LBJ or even Clinton, for them to survive and thrive.
The run-up to the 2008 campaigns would be a good place to start.
9 Responses to “Politix: Backwards Into the Future”
“today’s world is not yesterday’s world ”
The most important words written recently.
Not only yestersday’s world has gone, but I don’t see any of our leading politicians, in office or aspiring to be in office, even attempting to understand how today’s world is functioning and what kind of tomorrow we might be heading towards.
If it can’t be fixed by war or some outdated formuls, it’s ignored. I notice and worry about trends that I don’t understand, but when I look for a guide wjo understands them better, I seldom find one whp evem acknowledges them.
For example,I understand what the attraction and benefits are in privatizing. I worry, nevertheless,about the circumstance that those working under contract have no innate allegience to the US as a sovereign nation. What if Blackwater and its international army got a better offer from China, for example?
What if some other business performing vital services got a lucrative offer from an enemy to undermine US interests? If htey’re registered in Panama, our latest trading partner-to-be,,for example, it would be darn hard to trace what their financial dealings are, making it hard being Panama’s specialty, as I undestand it.
I’m not at all sure anyone is minding the home front while they plot deals and plan wars.
Yesterday’s world was not yesterday’s world, because anyone who lived thru Reagan knows he was a hypocrite who expanded government, nearly bankrupted the economy, economically savaged a generation of workers, had the PATCO fiasco- which led to the most unsafe decade of airflight in 50 years, decimated the environment, started stacking the Supreme Court, and on and on.
He was no Con, in any way, save a con man- or the puppet of con men; whichever reality you choose.
Since the Republican Party will not be around much longer, it does not matter what they do or what the candidates talk about.
The real question should be what will politics and government be like with only one real political party. With the government so large, so powerful, and so invasive, no group can afford to be out of power for even a short period of time. That is why business interests have stopped donating to Republicans and increased donations to Democratic candidates.
SD,
In a two party political oligarchy like we have now, the GoP will not easily be killed – if for nothing else because there is no viable party to replace them. The GoP is the yin to the dem’s yang and I don’t see either party going away anytime soon.
What do you think the name of my blog means? This tendency, especially on the part of the conservatives, to judge situations on the basis of the past is something I’ve considered appalling for a long time. The rate of change in our social environment which I consider to be created by a combination of changing technology, geopolitics and economics is so rapid that the answers that might have worked even a decade ago aren’t necessary applicable by the time they could be implemented if we try to apply them today. Then I hear conservatives try and say how well their beliefs worked for the country in the days before FDR ruined everything and think “What does that have to do with the 21st century?”.
9-11 was a single event which caused us to soil our diapers. During this five years period, while troubling and threatening, the situation is minor compared to the years 1963 to 1973.
1) The Iraq War is small in scale compared to Vietnam.
2) How many Kenedy’s, Malcom X’s and King’s have we seen assassinated?
3) College students and blacks rioted in the streets. Tell of today’s Kent States, Watts or Detroit. Where is todays Weatherman and Black Panthers?
4) We had real enemies like China and USSR with nukes pointed at us. Where is today’s Cuban Missile Crisis.
India, South Africa, Brazil, Iran, Israel and Pakistan tried or joined the “nukelar club”. Only Iran is still trying, while three are there right now.
5) While Bush 41 is bad, he isn’t yet to the level of Nixon on the Constitutional crisis.
I lived through the 1960′s, but only as a small child, and todays threat ain’t got nothin on the mid sixties. David Horowitz was the enemy then, now he’s just a cartoon figure in a wet diaper.
Rudi,
There are ways in which the present is worse thant the ’60s and Viet Nam.
1) Nixon did, in the end, hand over the tapes. Today’s administration has more clever lawyers, and we may never find out much of what has gone on behind the curtain.
2) We knew that the Viet Nam war would end one day, sooner or later, one way or another, and the troops would come home.
By contrast, the WOT has no end point, even if we were to withdraw from Iraq. The wartime mentality and the legislation enacted as a consequence has no forseeable end.
The Cuban missile crisis had a beginning and an end. Other than that and wars in far off VN and Korea, the threat of communism was largely a matter of non-violent tactics. Even the Hosue Unamerican Activites commitee died.
The WOT has the potential of becoming a permaent fixture in our lives. Without going into the pros and cons of particulars, it’s the permanence and how that feeds executive powers that makes the present a ball game of a whole new order.
As long as terrorists exist, the WOT will exist, even if the name of it and some details are changed.
Certainly not when entitlements have long gone to the middle class. However, the most regressive, retrograde, reactionary (even revanchist) Blue Nation liberals (for it is they who are such things and they who remain on the defensive about US rejection of so much of what they used to have, as well as support) will probably never see again the colossal conceit as well as alien concept of government embodied in Albany, New York (this nation’s Communist Bloc-style monument to such government).
SuperD you ever get tired of beating the one party drum? The GOP isn’t going to disappear, they are merely going to endure what the Dems did for 6 years. After the Dems balance the budget and get us out of our wars and rebuild our influence in the world the GOP will be back to waste it all again.