Going Downhill

When I was born, liberal New Deal politics was dominant. As I grew up, Republicans first made headway using the Red scare, McCarthyism and anti-union propaganda: "union bosses," vs "corporate statesmen." The first chinks were Taft-Hartley, the McCarran Act, and Cold War hysteria.

Still, Ike, a Republican, continued New Deal policies (including top-end tax rates of 91%) and sponsored large government programs like the Inter-State Highway system. Then, the John Birch Society was at the right-wing fringe of politics, inveighing against the Communist threat, and seeing liberal movements like civil rights for blacks as Communist conspiracies.

Ron Paul keynoted last year at the 50th anniversary of the Birchites, and yet it appears the only reason that conservative Republicans ignore his Presidential campaign is because he says things like: the empire is nearing its end.

On other issues, Paul is even to the right of Bachman and Perry. He's against all abortions, even pregnancies caused by rape. In effect, he'd enable rapists to pick the "carriers" of their babies. He'd also abolish the Fed and the income tax, both of which date to the Progressive era before we entered WWI, yet he's even popular among some progressives.

How did we get here from there, from a political system in which a relatively conservative Texas Democrat--LBJ--could propose and pass Medicare, Medicaid and the voting rights act?

Part of the answer has to be the success of a reactionary slice of the wealthy, which sank billions of dollars into think tanks, educational institutions and the media, beginning as a reaction against LBJ's Great Society, and Nixon's continuation of it--and Nixon's elimination of the last remnant of the gold standard, (which Ron Paul would undo).

Part of the answer is the successful demonization of "big government" as partial welfare state, when the demand-driven inflation from the Vietnam War, met the supply-driven inflation caused by OPEC.

And part of the answer is the successful recruitment of front men: Reagan, especially, and a whole series of young, conservative Supreme Court Justices.

And then, along came Bush II. He may not be the culmination of this conservative counter-revolution, despite the crash, in part because liberals/progressives did such a poor job recruiting their own front men. Obama is determinedly non-ideological and appears constitutionally incapable of confrontational politics. I bemoan Truman's absence: he was re-elected by bashing the "Do-nothing Republican Congress."

Even if Obama is re-elected, he'll stand for little but the lesser evil. Perry, Bachman and Ron Paul offer small government premised on the dominance of the super-wealthy (the selfish class)--who wish to eviscerate government services, because they don't need them--they only want profitable government contracts.

It'll be a privatized world of crony corporations. However, they won't create jobs when there's no demand (only government would do that). It's doubtful they can resuscitate a dying empire, either.

Maybe they'll try to "outsource" and privatize it.