Conservatism v. neo-conservatism

2005.06.19 — Government | Politics | George W Bush | by Derek Jensen

There is a storm brewing inside the Republican party, a battle between two different kinds of conservatism. I'm not talking about traditional social values versus economic self-reliance. The fundamentalist Christians won the social values struggle, even if corporate America didn't surrender.

Altho undeniably economically conservative, corporate America, with its equal-pay, non-discriminatory, gay-friendly policies, is more socially liberal than a box of pot brownies.

No, what I'm talking about is economic self-reliance versus Soviet-like federalism.

George W Bush is the neo kind of conservative, the kind who thinks America needs to come first and be strong, even if it means alienating our allies, destroying the environment, and leaving some Americans in poverty. And even if it means that the federal government has to tell everyone what to do.

And even if it means bankrupting the country along the way.

Social values

Bush 2's social values are hardcore gay-bashing, mother-worshipping, God-loving, abortion-hating, death-penalty-wielding America circa 1964 (and I'm talking about pretty much all of 1964 America, not just Republicans).

Thanks to Pat Robertson and others like him who nurtured the movement in the 1980s, it is a very Old Testament kind of religious fervor, with a lot more Thou-Shalt-Nots than Love-Thy-Neighbors.

Let's face it: Jesus was a dirty hippie Jewish commune carpenter; God is senior management.

Social conservatism is a philosophy of self-delusion (just say no! wait till you're married! Jesus will save us from the hurricane! only bad people get venereal diseases!). But it's popular (now more than ever), even if people can't fully articulate what they believe.

W's economic policies are another matter. They're anything but conservative, but they are definitely different from the liberal economics of the Clinton and Johnson eras. For example: they won't work.

Economics

It may be said that liberalism is a philosophy that favors the welfare of the society because all individuals prosper when society as a whole prospers, so we must take care of those at the bottom because those at the top can take care of themselves. Conservatism, by contrast, is the philosophy that favors the welfare of the individual because it is the success of individuals that make a prosperous society, so we must get government out of the way of the individuals so they can build a world where opportunity arises for those at the bottom. Conservative economics has been criticized for being an excuse to be selfish, but it largely works (hey, it created the Industrial Revolution, didn't it?). It just causes more poverty and hardship than necessary (again, it created the Industrial Revolution, didn't it?).

But the Reagan/Bush 1/Bush 2 philosophy of neo-conservatism suggests that the welfare of the rich should come first because the rich support the rest of society (uh, eventually... somehow). This isn't merely selfish, it's downright plutocratic. It's the kind of economic policy that can only come from people who have lived their whole lives grumbling about the ingratitude of the rank-and-file. "I sign their paychecks, damn it. Without me, they'd be starving on the street."

In actuality, an economy is not driven by its wealthy few and their magnanimous job offers. It is driven by the teeming masses of consumers and their bottomless hunger for goods and services. Consumer demand is ageless. Consumer demand created corporations. Consumer demand should be grumbling about the ingratitude of corporate executives.

But George W Bush knows business only from the top down, and not very well. He thinks corporations drive the economy, and his policies reflect that, favoring wealthy investors and corporations to a fault. Weirdly, that makes for less of a market-driven economy and more of a Soviet-style planned economy, where the government tends to the factory and lets the field lie fallow; then it is dumbfounded when the workers starve.

That's what's happening today when Bush gives a pass to major corporations declaring bankruptcy and allows them to renege on pension benefits. Meanwhile, he tightens the drawstrings on personal bankruptcy to be sure major corporations get all the money they can squeeze out of debtors. It makes the economy less healthy overall at the expense of Bush's corporate executive friends.

The successful liberal economic model is to hold corporations to their obligations and let them die or be bought out, but provide a safety net for the employees caught underneath its collapsing bulk.

Cognitive dissonance

Bush 2 has therefore had a seemingly contrary approach of enriching the rich at the expense of the common folk and championing the prejudices of the common folk against fringe elements (you know: gays, blacks, Jews, working women, unwed mothers, hippies; the usual subversives).

After four years of Reaganomics Episode 3: Revenge of the Sith, some of the common folk have at last caught on. While they like W's social sermonizing (abstinence! self-reliance!), they object to the irresponsible spending (and, perhaps, the junkyard dog politics).

Up until now, Junior has been able to camouflage his fiscal irresponsibility with tax-cut sleight of hand and the "war on terrorism" (AKA the "war on bad guys who live on valuable land"). This was enough to get him re-elected, but it's not likely to last. After all, everyone—from the CEO of a Fortune 500 company to Joe Streetcorner can see that Bush's economic policies have not re-lit the fires of the 1990s.

It's likely that Bush's supporters in Congress will lose ground with their constituents as the family-values rhetoric collapses under the weight of their hypocrisy and economic failure. Those voters who are truly economically conservative may well decide that liberal economics at least works, even if it is soft. Bush's gigantic deficits, uniformed economic choices, and general failure in the economy may make liberals of them all.

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