Sunday, November 16, 2008

A Few Brain Cells Short Of Conservative

“Conservatism's current intellectual chaos reverberated in the Republican ticket's end-of-campaign crescendo” 'Socialism'? It's Already Here

Little wonder we are in a global economic mess when US commentators have little real understanding of the terms and dynamics of economic/political theory. The United States of America is just coming out of one of the greatest national socialist periods in history, leaving potentially as much destruction as the Nazi era.

The Bush administration was hell-bent on corporate welfare, for their chosen beneficiaries, while the masses were left to fend for themselves. The approach would have been a global pandemic had other countries populations, like those in Britain, Canada and Australia, not been so inclined to a reasonable level of social equity.

As it stands, the Bush economic allies did attempt to dilute that social equity, indeed, Canada’s Harper still enjoys vivid dreams of playing out the Bush fantasy. But as I suggest in my Sunday blog on ragebot.com; republican (or conservative) intellectual increasingly comes across as an oxymoron.

I have shouted loud and long on this blog over the fallacious claims of those conservatives who would champion the concept of free trade. They know bloody well that it has never been tried, instead we had a period where the market was opened up to those who were willing to plunder the rest.

In fact free trade was, and will continue to be a very expensive exercise, one where the beneficiaries could indulge in corruption freely, with the rest of us left to pay the cost. We’ll be paying for a long time yet! Conservative dogma is riddled with falsehood, greed and obfuscation, but very little of anything identifiable as intelligence.

I am increasingly convinced there are standard international definitions for terms, then American definitions followed by American conservative daffynitions. The article quoted above trots out many US (Democratic) instances of ‘socialism, most of them not going anywhere beyond sound economics.

These conservative attack dogs never even consider the fascist end of the socialism scale common to the American right. Nor do they mention the destructive McCarthyisms which so easily led a nation astray, and still echoes in the conservative voice. American conservatives might be in chaos, but I wouldn’t dignify it with the word intellectual. On an international measure I would suggest the US version is a few brain cells short of conservative.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

And as the Sarah Palin phenomenon proves, millions of US conservatives consider "intellectual" to be an insult.

Cartledge said...

I still cringe that after a decade or more the Australian proto-Palin, Pauline Hanson, still has a constituency.
Fortunately it is not large, or inside the political establishment any longer, but it still exists in a wistful sort of way.
Apart from that I just have an intense dislike of mindless 'conservatism', as opposed to genuine conservatism.

Anonymous said...

They know bloody well that it has never been tried, instead we had a period where the market was opened up to those who were willing to plunder the rest.

A 'gentlemen's agreement between scoundrels'?

The free trade debate has always mystified me: "Please accept our generous invitation to plunder your resources in exchange for minor ducats". No country enters into such an agreement without believing that they'll end up on the 'winning' side, but for smaller, weaker nations to ignore the history of such pacts seems like some kind of borderline mass dellusion.

D.K. Raed said...

American Daffynitions = it's only free trade as long as you're making money. If the money stops, your losses are then covered by people who never benefitted from your adventure. What's free about it seems to be any sense of responsibility. Our tax code mandates lower tax rates for money 'at risk'. Fatcats have hidden behind that facade for years, paying little or no taxes on their 'at risk' earnings. Now that the risk has resulted in big losses, guess who is really at risk?

Cartledge said...

Kvatch, what amazes me is that they are still pushing it, so maybe the delusion persists. Not sure how that can be when corps are putting their hands out for bailouts. Only free thing there is the corporate welfare.

DK, who will always be at most risk, regardless of the system?