So, through an odd series of FB flukes I ended up in an exchange of ideas with one of Montanas senior Republicans, a former office holder. There were three things that stick with me from this exchange. First, through some interesting intellectual legerdemain, there are conservative Republicans who in good conscious believe that Fascism is another form of socialism. Their belief is based on what they see as the role of the state. It would appear that anytime economic power rests in government, this is socialism. This position would come as quite a shock to anyone who toiled in the gardens of history for the past 100 years, give or take. The Fascist State has always been understood as a tool of the oligarchy, the very, very wealthy. There are many schools of thought that could be seen as coming under the rubric of socialism, but none of them have as a founding principle defense of the aristocracy or the oligarchy. And, there are no socialists who are as xenophobic as the Fascists. Now, we are not considering Stalinists as good socialists. They are totalitarians, which is a whole different discussion. The Second observation is that any discussion of the common good, or efforts to promote the common good are automatically deemed Socialism. Any critique of Laissez-Faire, is deemed Socialism. What is curious is the model put forth as a justification. There is no mention of the wealth and power concentrated in the hands of large corporations, which may not employee the majority, but which control the most wealth. Instead there is a romanticization of the small shop keeper or local manufacturer. The idea that TR, FDR, Keynes, and many others had to work extraordinarily hard to save capitalism from the moral short sightedness of Laissez-Faire seems to have slipped right by them. The idea that in practice Laissez-Faire is a justification for slavery, because Social Darwinism is never far behind Laissez-Faires defense of the aristocracy of the Robber Baron, seems to have slipped right past them. Finally, there was the dismissal of demographic data as subjective. As a student of social science I can assure you that demographic data is a paradigm case of objective data. The criteria are universally set and universally applied. The criteria are publicly known, and known before the sampling is done. And, the data are collected the same way, both over time and at each sampling point. This is the paradigm of objectivity. I have often wondered why conversations with Laissez-Faire conservatives leave me bewildered. Now, I think I know, they live in a parallel universe. One that occasionally has contact with the great stream of history. Now, I am not saying all Republicans subscribe to these theories. But, I think that as a result of 50 years of rightwing think tanks trying to generate alternative explanations, there are far too many that do.
Posted on: Fri, 26 Sep 2014 17:48:14 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015