Or, “Perot’s Revenge!”
For the past thirty years, the Anglosphere has gone through a variety of socio-political changes that began with right-wing revolutions on either side of the pond and which have culminated in the reign of two embattled leftists — Prime Minister Gordon Brown and President Barack Obama — presiding over the economic and international ruin of once great empires. What’s interesting is the manner in which the U.S. and the U.K. have gone through parallel transformations almost simultaneously. Even more interesting is to examine the clues which suggest that what awaits both nations may be a great PaleoConservative re-awakening.
The story begins in the late ’70s/early ’80s. Then, the expansion of the state into every aspect of the lives of Britons and Americans alike led to a revolution in society and in government. Thatcherism was born — or was it Reaganism? — which promised to restore economic and personal freedom to societies whose cultures demanded those things and who were being denied as much by the creeping leviathan. This revolutionary conservatism was quite distinct from the Toryism of the past. It attempted to enact big, sweeping changes on society, but in a right-wing direction. It was optimistic and full of life and bested the tired, aging leftism of the past. Its victories were swift and exacting.
Eventually, though, revolutionary conservatism ran its course. It accomplished a few big goals — a dramatic increase in economic freedom, the rebuilding of the Anglosphere’s military prowess, and the end of the Cold War — but didn’t end the welfare state as its supporters had hoped nor did it ignite a cultural revolution on the ground. As debt piled up due to the continued growth of the state, and as new, less charismatic leaders took the reins of revolutionary conservatism in George H.W. Bush and John Major, Americans and Britons began to look for an alternative to their right-wing governments only to find standard issue leftists on the other side.
Then something interesting happened. In the 1990s, the Democrats and the Labourites figured out how to marry traditional support for left-of-center policies with the pro-growth and internationalist positions of the Reaganites. NeoLiberalism became the position of the left-of-center parties in the Anglosphere, with two young, charismatic NeoLiberals taking the helm on each side of the Atlantic. Both Bill Clinton and Tony Blair promised to maintain their nation’s prowess in a post-Cold War world, to avoid going back to pre-Reagan/Thatcher levels of taxation or regulation, and to do so by making government programs more market-friendly and more efficient, thus leading to less debt. With the technological economic boom that took place during the ’90s, the Anglosphere decided that there was nowhere to go but up and that the optimism of the high-tech, modern NeoLiberals was the future.
NeoLiberalism was the order of business for a decade and half in the Anglosphere. The UK’s political system allowed Blair to maintain power for about as long, but America’s system term-limited Clinton, of course, leading to the ascent of another NeoLiberal, or NeoConservative, we call it, George W. Bush. Bushism was essentially NeoLiberalism by any other name. Clinton had a Madeline Albright foreign policy of using the military for humanitarian reasons and to build nations, Bush had a Bill Kristol foreign policy of using the military to spread democracy and freedom and to build nations. The Clintonites and the Bushies were both pro-business, pro-trade, opposed to regulation, supportive of Alan Greenspan, and their sole disagreement over taxation essentially amounted to a four-percentage-point difference on the top tax bracket. Clinton had Dick Morris and Bush had Michael Gerson, but both essentially advocated using government to help people help themselves. Both were pro-immigration and staunch internationalists and neither actually did anything about social issues, despite coming from different cultural camps.
Then, tragedy struck.
When Islamic fanaticism reached American shores on 9/11, the natural orientation of the NeoLiberals towards internationalism led to an Anglo-American quest into Mesopotamia and Afghanistan that has resulted in much loss in blood and treasure without the promised conversion of these societies into something that fails to resemble the 10th Century. Meanwhile, at home, all of those supposed efficient and market-friendly reforms and entitlements did nothing to slow the creeping fiscal ruin, and in many cases seems to have made things worse. Taxes have remained low while debt has ballooned. The pro-business slant of the NeoLiberals started to make government look a little too close to business, especially in the wake of the bailouts which seem to have helped no one except for the robber barons, and the attempt to build an economy on one bubble after another led to all of the bubbles popping, yielding double-digit unemployment.
The last few years have thus seen a NeoLiberal/NeoConservative collapse at home and abroad, with Americans and Britons installing PaleoLiberals in their place. Gordon Brown and Barack Obama represent a type of liberalism that has run neither the UK nor the US since the 1970s, and yet both are now in power, largely because both represent a desire for the return of security and stability. Revolutionary Conservatism didn’t work, NeoLiberalism didn’t work, so how about PaleoLiberalism?
Well, that doesn’t seem to be working either. Obama and Brown are both on the ropes, largely because they have done exactly what one would expect them to do: fail to end military intervention abroad, probably for humanitarian reasons, attempt to continue the expansion of government at home, not in a market-friendly way but in a traditional leftist way, and send the bill to the people in the form of a still rising national debt.
It’s because of the failures of both NeoLiberalism and PaleoLiberalism, and because of the seeming failures of Revolutionary and NeoConservatism, that I expect to see a resurgence of PaleoConservatism in the coming years. This makes sense given that PaleoConservatism is the one political approach that hasn’t been tried in awhile by either country, and that growing popular angst at things like internationalism, top-down government, and government debt will make PaleoCons seem prescient, given that they’ve been issuing warnings about all of these things for years. That doesn’t necessarily mean that the Paleos were right. History will make that final determination. But at least in the near future, they’ll start to seem as if they were right.
We can already see shades of this in the popular political uprisings over the past few years. Ron Paulism was all about an end to the utopian quest for Pax Americana, curtailing government, and existed against the backdrop of a suspicion of the special interests who have long been in bed with the political establishment. The Tea Party/Palin/Beck movement also focuses on essentially being left alone by government and is especially hostile to the bailouts. And the new supposed purity test for Republicans advocated by certain prominent conservatives, far from a NeoCon document extolling the importance of using government to enact a revolution at home and abroad, is ultimately a call for the devolution of power away from the federal government and towards states, communities, and citizens. Even the cultural issues involved are presented in a federalist or anti-government manner: don’t use MY money to fund abortion, don’t force MY state to change its marriage laws, etc.
Meanwhile, in the U.K., David Cameron is also quite distinct from Thatcher’s Revolutionary Conservatism, Blair’s NeoLiberalism, and Brown’s PaleoLiberalism. Cameron focuses primarily on the citizen, the family, the community, the locality, and opposes expansion of the national government. A Cameron government would likely represent the ascent of a type of Toryism that the UK hasn’t seen in awhile either.
Ultimately, the failures of the Anglosphere at home and abroad have made Americans suspicious of all the things that their leaders have sold them for the past thirty years. Top-down revolutions either imposed by the federal government or forced onto other societies through the sword don’t seem to work. And that’s leading people to re-discover the concept of organic change at home and of the limits of what America is capable of doing abroad. Massive tax cuts didn’t seem to create enough growth to close the national debt. Nor did trillions of dollars in new spending. And that’s resulting in folks focusing on fiscal responsibility rather than more tax cuts or new entitlements. And speaking of which, both sleek, market-friendly entitlements and big, bulky entitlements seem to yield the same result, which is resulting in a move towards small-bore and targeted reforms and away from big, sweeping solutions. And the economic situation on the ground is making a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants even more unlikely and is causing folks to wonder whether Ross Perot was right about trade policies.
In fact, Ross Perot was arguably the John the Baptist of whatever PaleoCon Moment the nation is about to experience, as it was he, in the middle of the three-decade-long Anglosphere frat party, who came the closest to the presidency while warning of the dire consequences of not eating one’s vegetables. Perot derided the excess of both the Reaganites and the Clintonites, issuing Cassandra-esque warnings of imminent fiscal collapse due to the trajectory of the entitlements and the fantasy of perpetual economic growth. Perot hated the proximity of special interests to those in public office and opposed the Gulf War (a view which Ron Paul’s supporters would like) while questioning the economic impact of an ever-increasing trade deficit on the American economy. He had no interest in social issues because they weren’t national issues. As Perot once said to Larry King, and I paraphrase, most issues are local issues, which means most laws should be local laws. A few issues are state issues, which means that a few laws should be state laws. And every now and then, an issue is so big that it has to be a federal issue, requiring a federal law. Sounds a lot like what today’s Paulites and Palinistas are raving about.
While it’s true that Ron Paul supporters, the Palin/Beck/Tea Party crowd, and the throngs of Obama ‘08/McDonnell ‘09 angry middle class independents are ultimately three different and distinct groups of Americans, it’s also true that all of these voters, whether white collar or blue collar, whether carrying a bong, a Bible, or a BlackBerry, have several things in common. They all oppose the top-down decision-making of the federal government. They all view the nation’s special interests as modern day robber barons who are being bailed out while they suffer. They all want the devolution of government power, the reduction of government debt, and a decrease in internationalism in some form or other, with some opposed to our trade deficit, others opposed to our military presence in the Middle East, others opposed to the U.N., immigration, etc. They are, essentially, three different heads of a growing PaleoCon movement. And the giant is sleeping right now because each group distrusts the other. If one leader were savvy enough to unite them all under a common banner, they just may be unstoppable.
November 24th, 2009 at 3:36 pm
Hopefully so.
There are really no decent candidate though besides Ron Paul. IMHO.
Only two republican congressmen voted against the Iraq war.
Only two republican congressmen voted against making regime change change in Iraq the official poicy, and one of them is about to be impeached in S.C.
November 24th, 2009 at 3:40 pm
“Only two republican congressmen voted against the Iraq war.” If this is about joining a bunch of anti-war malcontents count me out. Otherwise, count me in.
November 24th, 2009 at 3:59 pm
A DaveG column. The day just got better.
November 24th, 2009 at 4:00 pm
Not sure I can entirely agree with thise analysis. I do see a sharp rise in pseudo-PaleoCon sentiment, but there are so many different strains of it that tying them together will be hard. You have angry immigration people (Lou Dobbs, Tom Tancredo) who probably represent the purist PaleoCon thread. You have the Paulites – who really aren’t all that united themselves in that they range from hard-core Buchananite PaleoCons to Pink-haired college pacifists who just want to legalize EVERYTHING. You have the Beck/Tea Party crowd – which is traditionalist in it’s thought process but libertarian in it’s application. You have Palinities – who in their purest incarnation are just movement conservatives with a heavy anti-establishent twist (and I’m not even sure count). There’s a lot overlap in these groups but not a united front of any kind.
Some of it may get leveraged into some wild third-party presdential run (Dobbs?), but Palin is going to steer her people back into the GOP. Ron Paul’s people could go in any direction, multiple directions, or no direction at all. My guess is that they are active in GOP primaries but ultmately splinter to the four winds in generals (the sane ones go GOP, the anti-war nuts go Dem, the rest go third party or stay home). Beck in all likelihod will go GOP in 2012 for no other reason than that he likes Palin so much, but who knows what he and his people do if she’s not the nominee.
Gary Johnson will likely get some of these people in 2012. Dobbs or some other wild-eyed indy could get a bigger chunk than Nader without equalling Perot. And obviously Palin can suck up a lot of them to keep them in the GOP fold. So in other words we have a surge in dissafection but not a movement.
November 24th, 2009 at 4:07 pm
Well said Adam Brickley, I for one could live with the idea of Mr. G. Johnson, but I want little to do with Mr. Dobbs.
November 24th, 2009 at 4:15 pm
http://www.democracycorps.com/wp-content/files/dcor111609fq12.web_.pdf
Among voters
Barack Obama 47%
Mitt Romney 37%
Lou Dobbs 5%
Ralph Nader 4%
Among likely voters
Barack Obama 45%
Mitt Romney 38%
Lou Dobbs 6%
Nader 4%
Obama approval/disapproval among voters
50/44
Among likely voters
48/46
November 24th, 2009 at 4:17 pm
So in other words we have a surge in dissafection but not a movement.
That’s a very good way of putting it I think.
November 24th, 2009 at 4:20 pm
Is this ego?
Are we going to vote for someone that doesn’t have any executive experience?
Will this ensure an Obama victory?
November 24th, 2009 at 4:22 pm
I like Johnson marginally more than I like Paul – but I don’t think either are going to be sucessful in anything other than raising funds and hell. If the Paulites want to do something, they’re going to have to compromise a little and build bridges with other people in the GOP who they agree with 60-80% of the time (MAYBE Palin, or people like Jeff Flake or pre-scandal Sanford). Unfortunatley, I think their all-or-nothing rigidity will prevent them from doing so. I think Mark Sanford offered them their best shot at mainstreaming and was getting a lot of thier support – but he dropped the ball and now it looks like it’s just going to remain a protest movement (although I’m watching the Rand Paul campaign in Kentucky to see how much they can leverage their cash-capabilities in a two man race)
November 24th, 2009 at 4:25 pm
On Dobbs – Executive Experience does not mater to everybody. Obama has none. Perot had none. So yes – he could get a lot of votes IF he did it right. He could win, but he could muck things up.
Is it ego? Uh…yeah. Though I hope he backs out when he realizes he hasn’t got much of a shot – though he might run just to make a point.
November 24th, 2009 at 4:25 pm
Correction: he could NOT win
November 24th, 2009 at 4:30 pm
#6, Dobbs and Nader will never get that much.
The third party candidates always poll way higher than what they get. Bob Barr was polling around 4-5% in late 2008, but only got around .5% of the vote.
November 24th, 2009 at 4:33 pm
Kevin, you are aware Perot got 19% of the vote in 1992, are you not?
November 24th, 2009 at 4:36 pm
Dobbs is the first very serious cloud on the new horizon which was opening up — almost a “sure things” — for the GOP, Palin, and America.
That Dobbs could muck things up is an understatement! (and leaves me wondering who is really behind him)
If Dobbs is a real bid, then this is a disaster. (Team Palin should take note and address.)
November 24th, 2009 at 4:42 pm
Kevin, the little reported thing about Palin is that the 3rd Party Bob Barr IS PRECISELY WHY MCCAIN PICKED PALIN!
(Remember the reiterations of the ubiquitous internet commenter, “Ted”, a/k/a “original Ted”: “Q&A How can McCain SIMULTANEOUSLY attract both Hillary AND Bob Barr voters? Answer: PALIN Veep!”
November 24th, 2009 at 4:43 pm
We should be pushing Bloomberg into a third-party run.
November 24th, 2009 at 4:50 pm
#13, yeah, and he got 8% in 1996.
But that was the exception. The country’s mood was right, and Perot’s wackiness worked well. (as well as all of the money)
The only potential third party candidates that I could see getting 15-25% are Palin and Bloomberg (who could win).
November 24th, 2009 at 4:56 pm
Kevin, of course Dobbs couldn’t win, or even get 15% of the vote. That’s not the point. The point IS he’ll PREVENT A GOP WIN as no one else currently could.
I’m suspicious of who is behind this, if it’s not simply Dobbs’ ego.
November 24th, 2009 at 5:08 pm
“The Coming PaleoConservative Moment”
One can only hope and pray.
For a while, I’ve been tossing around the idea of the resurgence of the Perotistas in this time of economic crisis/ruin. I wasn’t thinking of it in quite the same terms as Dave, but I think he’s working in the right direction here. I think there is a “radical middle” reemerging that is sick and tired of deficits and high risk theories of government from both right and left.
They don’t believe that government can solve everything (paleo-liberals), in fact it often makes it worse.
They don’t believe that tax cuts can solve everything. especially as our deficits reach critical mass.
They don’t believe that America can recreate the world in our own image (neo-conservatives), nor that such an impossible mission is necessary to ensure security.
They don’t believe that a business-government partnership and free trade (neo-cons/neo-libs) leads to eternal growth. In fact it has lead to financial ruin, with that wonderful partnership mainly making good a lot of bad bets among the monied interests, at the expense of us all.
November 24th, 2009 at 5:11 pm
Economic nationalism. Nativism. Authoritarianism. The paleocons are our only fellow travelers I would not care to travel with. I’m not even convinced they belong on the right.
November 24th, 2009 at 5:22 pm
dotan,
Authoritarian? Are you serious?
What’s authoritarian about the devolution of power to the states and localities? Paleo-cons have been pushing that for years. What’s authoritarian about tradition- about what we’ve always known? No, authoritarianism is the government wrecking our future for the sake of its OWN goals internationally, and for the sake of its well connected friends in the Fortune 500.
The government has been stealing from you for years, picking winners and losers, and both the neo-cons and the neo-libs are in on it. In fact, as Dave so eloquently argued, they are basically one and the same.
November 24th, 2009 at 5:26 pm
Overlords of the Firmament, please send help.
What’s with this guy?
After bowing and scraping his way across Asia — while snubbing Tibet and India in the process — Our Vaunted O-Mighty Toastmaster General tells Indian PM Singh in essence, “You’re so honored to be the first foreign guest invited to visit ME!”
Is this jerk dropping some sort of hint that someone should be taking deep bows in his presence for a change?
November 24th, 2009 at 5:32 pm
I’m deadly serious.Paleocons are not libertarians. And the closed-borders economic nationalism that Buchanan and other paleocons promote would be a huge intervention of government in the private sector. Buchanan et al. promote something akin to the corporatism proposed by Pope Leo XIII; which, incidentally, became the model for Italian Fascism.
As for neo-cons and neo-libs picking promoting government-business partnerships (as you put it), to the degree they do they violate their own principles of governance–especially neoliberals. Neo-cons–and I count myself a neo-con, which is way too often a code name for Jew–have almost nothing to say about the economy. Personally I hold to Hayek, Rothbard, Murray, and especially Schumpeter.
As for devolution, it delivers nothing in itself, e.g.: the Confederate States of America were completely devolved; and England under Gladstone was totally centralized. Yet which social order was freer for those who lived or traded within it, and saner for the other polities who had to live with it?
November 24th, 2009 at 5:44 pm
[...] race42008.com » Blog Archive » The Coming PaleoConservative Moment [...]
November 24th, 2009 at 5:53 pm
dotan,
“And the closed-borders economic nationalism that Buchanan and other paleocons promote would be a huge intervention of government in the private sector”
Except for the closed border part, that was OUR government’s policy for the bulk of the first 160 years or so of our existence.
November 24th, 2009 at 5:53 pm
…..and it worked pretty well, I think.
November 24th, 2009 at 5:56 pm
#23, a political philosophy that has nothing to say about the economy? That’s just great.
November 24th, 2009 at 6:03 pm
Philosophy? Neo-conservatism does not rise to the level of a philosophy. It reduces to a set of beliefs about the world and the use of institutions of national power.
November 24th, 2009 at 6:08 pm
Well, duh. For the first 160 years we were primarily an agrarian society. 50% of our workforce were still in agriculture–still on the land–when the 19th century passed into the 20th. Now it’s about 2% and we produce far more than we can possibly eat. But an industrial society or even a post-industrial information based economy requires trade because it delivers a more advanced and sophisticated material culture. Do you really want to revert to an agrarian economy? Do you really want North American to resemble North Korea, which is what an industrial economy without trade to sustain inevitably becomes, i.e. stagnant, backward, and stunted.
November 24th, 2009 at 6:11 pm
Corrected version: Do you really want North America to resemble North Korea, which is what an industrial economy without trade to sustain it inevitably becomes, i.e. stagnant, backward, and stunted.
November 24th, 2009 at 6:14 pm
I love how MWS can blithely ask how tradition is authoritarian?
Then again, he’s the only guy I’ve run into on this planet who defends the Dark Ages.
November 24th, 2009 at 6:22 pm
Economic nationalism. Nativism. Authoritarianism. The paleocons are our only fellow travelers I would not care to travel with. I’m not even convinced they belong on the right.
Word.
Then again, he’s the only guy I’ve run into on this planet who defends the Dark Ages.
Most traditionalist Catholics will tell you straight up that they prefer the Middle Ages and even the Dark Ages to the Modern Era and the Enlightenment, which they usually put in quotes.
November 24th, 2009 at 6:24 pm
Pat Buchanan is so obviously a Nazi sympathizer and an Israel-hater that I don’t see how any sane person could actually support the man. Unless some people missed the “Did Hitler Really Want War?” column — or the fact that he called the Gaza Strip a “concentration camp” run by Israel.
November 24th, 2009 at 6:27 pm
I can’t believe MSNBC still has Pat Buchanan on so much.
He’s about as radical as they come.
November 24th, 2009 at 6:28 pm
Dotan is completely wrong when he says that neoconservatives have nothing to say about the economy.
Setting aside DaveG’s weird usage of the term, neoconservatives like Irving Kristol generally supported big business, were resigned to — if not outright comfortable with — the New Deal and the welfare state and were convinced that conservatives needed to accept it and conceive of conservative conceptions of it, and believed in regulation to create a more moral culture, such as censorship, which Kristol wrote vigorously in support of.
November 24th, 2009 at 6:30 pm
Neoconservatives, Kristol said, are far more likely to look to men like the Roosevelts as political icons, while people like Goldwater are “politely overlooked.”
Irving Kristol was very much a precursor to the idea of national greatness conservatism.
John McCain is the closest we’ve had to someone who Irving Kristol would have liked to see be president in our modern era. McCain himself named TR as his favorite president. For those who haven’t swallowed the TR Kool-Aid: he was an abominable president.
November 24th, 2009 at 6:38 pm
Kristol is generally counted as neocon. Kristol’s thoughts on the economy, however, are his own. Wolfowitz, Kagan, Boot, or the crowd at Commentary are all over the map economically. There is neocon consensus on the projection of national power to pursue national interest. (Politics to neoconservatives is based not on emotion or ideology but on interests.) But there is no neocon consensus on economic issues; the arguments among us generally reduce to the question of what is in the national interest at this particular moment in history? Hence we often sound like statists because we know that we can’t do away with the institutions of the welfare state quickly or easily. They’re here. They exist. We have to accept the world as it is before we can begin to change it.
Neocons are dialectical thinkers. Most of us are converts from the left, e.g. Horowitz. I’m a former Trotksyist.
November 24th, 2009 at 6:47 pm
Kristol is generally counted as neocon.
Yes, I would say so, given that he penned the book “Neoconservatism: The Autobiography of An Idea.”
Wolfowitz, Kagan, Boot, or the crowd at Commentary are all over the map economically.
They are “neoconservatives” insofar as the term has morphed into something being relevant only to foreign policy. I honestly haven’t the faintest clue where Kagan or Boot stand economically, although both are brilliant when it comes to foreign policy.
It’s generally accepted that the godfathers of neoconservative thought are Irving Kristol and Norman Podhoretz. To that extent, foreign policy takes the primary focus, but they aren’t without their domestic ideas, and they are not disposed to libertarian thinking.
November 24th, 2009 at 6:59 pm
Yes. I know. Kristol would like you to believe that he is the father of the movement. He isn’t. Podhoretz has claimed no such honour for himself. (There is no movement, by the way.) Neocons are generally either Straussians (by this I mean people who actually studied with or under Leo Strauss, not just people like me who have read and enjoy his books) or disaffected Trotskyites (there were lots of Trotskyite student groups among the Jews in the 50s and 60s). What Strauss and Trotsky have in common is a sensitivity to the twilight struggle–the longue durée–and to institutional norms, as Strauss and Trotsky both believed in collective action.
So, yes, you’re right. Neo-cons are not libertarians. Libertarians point to the individual as the locus of value; neo-cons point to national institutions as the guardians of those values. But neocons have no economic programme. None. That’s just not what interests them except to the degree that it influences issues at the national or international level.
November 24th, 2009 at 7:08 pm
We’re too timid and individualistic for any serious paleo-conservatism.
It will be a long time before we rediscover the maturity required for facing our national situation like adults. The parties will keep offering us free goodies (welfare, tax cuts or both) as long as Americans remain intolerant of harsh truths.
Even the climate change religion is too weak to command sacrifice by its followers.
November 24th, 2009 at 7:14 pm
#40: Heil Forrester! Confirming paleoconservatism is authoritarian.
November 24th, 2009 at 7:14 pm
Gary Johnson or Lou Dobbs, Palin is used goods, to many negatives.
This is a great piece, have to agree with basic arguement.
November 24th, 2009 at 7:14 pm
“Kevin, the little reported thing about Palin is that the 3rd Party Bob Barr IS PRECISELY WHY MCCAIN PICKED PALIN!” BINGO!
November 24th, 2009 at 7:35 pm
Individualism is childish!
Submitting to the state is a sign of maturity and adulthood.
Heil Doug Forrester! Heil!
November 24th, 2009 at 7:35 pm
Everything about post 43 makes me want to gag.
November 24th, 2009 at 7:37 pm
Fine, enjoy gagging.
November 24th, 2009 at 8:00 pm
#44 I guess given Godwin’s Law you’ve shown you’re unable to discuss this like an adult. However I will reply for the sake of others who aren’t stuck at the self-absorbed-infant stage.
I never used the word “state” in #40. However in a modern society sometimes individuals have to sacrifice for the good of others.
This is clearest in the military but is true in other situations.
If we wish to ever deal with our national debt it will require personal sacrifices. There’s no way to solve our debt crisis without many of us being worse off for a period of time.
November 24th, 2009 at 8:19 pm
The Paleocon and Libertarian movements may be divided, but opposition to the two occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan is the one thing that unites all of us against Bush\Cheney\Frum\etc.
“War is a great clarifier. It forces people to take sides. The paleoconservatives have chosen — and the rest of us must choose too. In a time of danger, they have turned their backs on their country. Now we turn our backs on them.”
-David Frum
November 24th, 2009 at 8:25 pm
Palin is a hardcore neocon too. She cosigns a lot of pro-occupation petitions for Bill Kristol, and she ran on the McCain ticket.
Among other things like her statement about settlements last week. She’s psycho.
November 24th, 2009 at 8:35 pm
This thread might set a record for idiotic comments made by smart people.
1. Paleo-conservatism is NOOOOOT statist. Pat Buchanan, Richard Weaver, the Southern Agrarians, Mel Bradford, Joe Sobran, et al. are EXTREMELY anti-statist.
2. Nazism and fascism are based on perverse utopian ideals. Paleoconservatism is decidedly anti-utopian, as well as anti-statist.
3, Doug Forester railing against free goodies from the government hardly equates into Nazism.
November 24th, 2009 at 8:37 pm
4. Ayn Rand is just as Utopian as Karl Marx. It would take the destruction of society to enter her Brave New World. What would we find there? Nobody knows for sure, but Utopias always run up against human nature and generally end in destruction and misery.
November 24th, 2009 at 8:39 pm
Doug,
“If we wish to ever deal with our national debt it will require personal sacrifices.”
Metro and Alex don’t believe in personal sacrifices.
November 24th, 2009 at 9:02 pm
I was just reading an article on Red Toryism in Britain and came across this gem:
The whole article is worth reading, and also discusses Dave’s idea of the passing of neo-liberalism:
http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/2009/02/riseoftheredtories/
November 24th, 2009 at 11:16 pm
MWS,
If the cost of doing business here is higher than in other countries, corporations and businesses have no other choice but to take their businesses elsewhere. If protectionist policies are implemented without a reduction in the costs of doing business, the incentive to continue a business declines dramatically.
November 24th, 2009 at 11:33 pm
I believe in doing both; protecting American businesses and reducing the cost of doing business.
I would add that I would bust up a lot of these enormous businesses that are “too big to fail” as well as the cartels and oligopolies. Too much power concentrated in too few hands is dangerous, whether in government or business. And as we’ve found out recently, the boys at Goldman, Merrill, Lehman, and AIG have enormous power over our lives. Big government and big business go hand in hand. Each helps sustain the other. I don’t see how a conservative could support an economic system where the decisions of a handful can bring economic ruin to an entire country. I believe in real markets, not fake markets, monopolies, and cartels.
November 25th, 2009 at 2:25 am
I can’t argue with that.
November 25th, 2009 at 2:26 am
I would argue with this, however. Economic nationalism assumes a robust state pursuing economic interests in the form of policy.
November 25th, 2009 at 4:37 am
Well, if founding two multi-billion dollar companies qualifies for no executive experience, then I guess that statement is true.
November 25th, 2009 at 6:45 am
Nazi Pat loves the state, as long as it’s his regulations that are being implemented — usually social or nationalistic (tariffs, anyone?).
November 25th, 2009 at 8:05 am
Protectionism ultimately fosters Big Government, which grows bigger thanks to cozy, symbiotic relationships between politicians and business interests.
The track record for modern protectionist efforts is unambiguously bad. If you look at how countries in the Non-Aligned Movement performed during the Cold War, you’ll find high costs and stagnant, low standards of living. As those countries have opened their markets through the successive GATT rounds, they have experienced rapid growth and rising standards of living.
November 25th, 2009 at 8:45 am
Every idiot knows that free trade fosters growth.
People who oppose it on the right think that it hurts American culture.
November 25th, 2009 at 8:55 am
61 – People who oppose it on the right, IMO, are really just Republicans because of the social views and do not necessarily believe in pro-growth conservatism. They believe the American worker is getting pushed aside and the jobs are being sent to other countries…all of which is a symptom of the disease of free trade.
November 25th, 2009 at 8:59 am
In continuation, the reason the American worker is being pushed aside is because of a natural evolution in our society. We went from an agrarian society to an industrialized, manufacturing society and now we are moving into techno society. Our workforce needs to be retrained and better educated in the jobs that will be in available in the coming years. One thing, amongst others, that I gave Bush credit for is that he told the American people to get retained in the jobs of the 21st Century. I believe it was in ‘03 or ‘04 at some adddress to the nation.
November 25th, 2009 at 9:04 am
“People who oppose it on the right think that it hurts American culture.” In a small way, trade does hurt the cultures of all those involved in it. By exporting American products to other countries, we in a very small way destroy their culture and our culture is sacraficed in a very small way when we import non-American goods. However, on the other hand, we are also culturally richer because more product selection makes us more diverse. Also, the small loss in American culture is usually a small price to pay for economic development.
November 25th, 2009 at 9:13 am
Well, they think it hurts the American worker — they are wrong; they are falling symptom to the same damn fallacy that has haunted protectionists for centuries — but they also think it hurts our culture.
I once saw it put well: leftists think that globalization is bad because America is bad for the world. Paleocons think that globalization is bad because the world is bad for America.
November 25th, 2009 at 9:22 am
There is a thin line we have to acknowledge, and IMO, we should try not to cross. Free trade obviously leads to and builds a more global economy…which is inevitable. MultiNational Corporations are free to trade and build businesses in most countries. These multi-conglomerates end up having a more compelling foreign policy than that of any nation because of the immediacy of the money being funneled into that nation via jobs, taxes, etc…
November 25th, 2009 at 2:12 pm
Jah, effendi. Nation state passes into market state mediated by multi- and trans-national corporations and other forms of collective ownership (e.g. the state capital enterprises of China, Russia). The problem for our policy elites is how to maintain the jurisdictional integrity of a nation even as the material-economic basis for that integrity–the global trading networks–increasingly negate it. Rather like trying to maintain a feudal order during the rise of a money economy. Good luck with that, guys!
November 25th, 2009 at 3:30 pm
The critics of globalization are correct about the horrendous costs. Schumpeter in the 1930s famously predicted a backlash severe enough to cancel the entire enterprise. I believe in free trade. But you don’t need to believe in the law of combined and uneven development to know that it causes massive social dislocations as heritage capitals and inefficient local producers are liquidated en masse in favour of capital emancipated from any border or jurisdiction. Our own automobile industry is case-in-point. Once again, as a dialectician I understand this to be the operation of historical processes: I believe that free trade is the correct path. It generally delivers progress and prosperity, but never equally, and never evenly. And sometimes and in local cases it delivers the precise opposite: Fundamentalist Islam is just one example of an unintended reaction formation to the process of globalization.