{"id":77,"date":"2003-05-09T15:27:14","date_gmt":"2003-05-09T15:27:14","guid":{"rendered":"0"},"modified":"2006-09-28T12:07:53","modified_gmt":"2006-09-28T12:07:53","slug":"the_fantasy_ideology_of_the_gop","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/?p=77","title":{"rendered":"The Fantasy Ideology of the GOP"},"content":{"rendered":"

The other day<\/a> I said:<\/p>\n

I begin to get a new way of parsing contemporary politics, and an explanation of why the conservatives in power now are really liberals in disguise.<\/I><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I expected a bigger response to this, but figure I may as well just jump into what I see as a new taxonomy of current American politics.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll start by setting out four of the corners:<\/p>\n

– Romantic Liberals
\n– Classical Liberals
\n– Classical Conservatives
\n– Romantic Conservatives…<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll try and explain what these are one by one, but I figure I\u2019ll have some fun with y\u2019all and start with the one guaranteed to make folk\u2019s eyes bug out.<\/p>\n

Romantic Conservatives \u2013 and why it is that the GOP today is really not conservative<\/b>. Today, the GOP is pretty squarely in this camp. Why do I call them Romantic?<\/p>\n

Because they are in thrall to an ideology almost as fantasy-driven as Al-Quieda\u2019s. It projects a fantasy of an economic America of limited government and yeomen entrepreneurs running small businesses, and a social America that looks like the television shows of the 1950\u2019s. Neither one reflects any kind of real American history any more than Qutb\u2019s fantasy connects to real Middle Eastern history \u2013 instead they are references to a series of Chamber of Commerce pamphlets and old situation comedies.<\/p>\n

And the concrete policies they choose completely undermine the fantasy \u2013 another characteristic of Romantic politics. The centerpieces of Bush\u2019s economic policy, if you look at them carefully, don\u2019t benefit small business, professionals, or small entrepreneurs. The impact of these incentives is as targeted as a JDAM, and it is on the large corporations who make up the GOP\u2019s core constituency.<\/p>\n

It assumes that the best way to promote small business is to \u2026 give tax breaks and shift policies in favor of big businesses and big investors, thereby accelerating the concentration of economic power \u2013 which means shuttering the small businesses as they go under. It assures us that the best way to preserve our way of life is to \u2026 deprive us of the liberties and the equality before law that are central to it. In essence, GOP policies are aimed at using the power of the State to reward those who they think should be rewarded and enforce their ideals of human behavior\u2026one of the basic definitions of liberalism, no?<\/p>\n

Note that a different set of large corporations and institutions make up the Democrat\u2019s core constituencies, and their policies are similarly targeted in denial of their stated ideology. We\u2019ll get to them later.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The other day I said: I begin to get a new way of parsing contemporary politics, and an explanation of why the conservatives in power now are really liberals in disguise. I expected a bigger response to this, but figure I may as well just jump into what I see as a new taxonomy of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=77"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=77"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=77"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=77"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}