Conservative Orthodoxy: A Unified Theory
In the milieu of Reaganite Conservative Orthodoxy - to today's Conservative - Reagan is the absolute final word in social and economic policy.
History began with Reagan. And in the mind of Reagan, history ended with the Warren G.Harding Administration. Between the two periods, nothing happened.
Nothing from which any policy lessons could be drawn.
Not the Great Depression; not the struggle and value of the Labor movement; not the deficit investment in industrial expansion leading up to WW2 which was in fact the greatest economic expansion in history; not the Eisenhower tax rate, the Interstate highway System or his timely warning against the Military Industrial Complex; or LBJs War on Poverty and Great Society Programs, or the salutory effect of public education in over-coming Seperate but Equal and the enfranchisement of blacks after the abolition of Jim Crow.
None of that exists, except as a horror that the Prophet Reagan saved us from.
As a consequence, despite all the struggles our nation has faced and surmounted and how we did it...the only tools left to us economically and politically are tax cuts, deregulation, privatization, the busting of unions, exportation of American jobs and the gutting of social supports and destruction of public education.
Also not included in the lexicon of Conservatives is that these policies crash stock markets and cause Wall St Meltdowns (1929,1987, 2008,) multi-trillion dollar deficits, and institutional bailouts (Reagan and Bush the Elder/ Saving and Loans because of Junk Bonds; Bush the Younger/Toxic Asset Relief Program.)
Unions are regarded as the enemy who feast upon the blood of the people.
Yet when unions are busted...meat packing for instance...they were replaced with busloads of undocumented immigrants who can be deported when they get uppity or make the mistake of asking for benefits. Or raises.
Manufacturing unions busted result in shuttered factories and jobs exported to where labor is cheap and regulations are minimal. And if intellectual property is the price of admission, well hell. Still a bargain.
After over three decades of union busting, only public unions remain at their pre-Reagan level - but these are now under assault.
Let us not forget when Bush the Younger attempted to privatize Port Security away from Public Unions. Who did he choose? Port World Security of Dubai. Using Arab scabs instead of Mexicans for a change. http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=1335349n
What makes anyone think the busting of public unions will mean more jobs for Americans?
Public schools, since Reagan, have been vilified as wastes of the public's dime on minorities who are destined to wind up in prison anyway - according to the Orthodoxy - despite the fact that 4 or 5 white children are served by public schools for every black child that goes there.
As as side note, the amount of precision in Reagan's prediction is really quite remarkable. Within 5 years of his taking office, drug wars were breaking out in inner-cities across America, requiring a police state to keep the violence in check. The War on Drugs. Remarkable,even if he did engineer the whole thing himself.
The particulars are tested further still today. Texas, Oklahoma, Mississipi, Louisiana (no particular order) are all similar in that they fund the least per student in public education and also have the dubious distinction of having the highest incarceration rates in the nation.
Faux educational initiatives by Bush and Obama reward funds to schools who produce "results" - or high standardized test scores - and closing schools that fail to deliver. Roughly akin to closing a hospital for having insufficient rooms and doctors for the demands placed upon it. The end result being Humanity courses being reserved for the wealthy and privileged students, while at risk students are Taught to the Test to the exclusion of considerations such as Art or Music.
The only other alternative is "School Choice" in Vouchers and Charter Schools and Private Schools which have the option of cherry picking the students they feel will excel. One particularly rich example of this Educational Solution...this alternative to the odious failures of the public school system...is found in Louisiana in the Accelerated Christian Education (ACE) System. This Alternative teaches that dragons were dinosaurs which were co-existant with human and that the Loch Ness Monster is a surviving example of one. Bad enough.
Far more egregious is the teaching...this being Louisiana, so presumably to black children...that
Once upon a time, the Great Depression was a national crisis of Austerity that tried the soul of the nation which we crawled out of at great pain and cost.
Now Austerity on the scale of the great Depression is being touted as the Remedy.
Until Reagan is recognized as the False Prophet that he is...America is DOOMED.
Fat chance we EVER get wise.
This also includes the massive damage done to our nation by the Bush/Cheney Administration. They were true disciples of Reagan and as such recreated the results he originally produced, but on a far grander scale.
Not only does Romney threaten to replicate the results, he promises to be to Bush/Cheney what Bush/Cheney was to Reagan.
As will EVERY additional Republican.
It has even captured the Democratic Party and is most evident in the Administration of Bill Clinton. He had the courage to raise taxes and invest in job training. Supposedly he finished out his term with a budget deficit, others say this is a chimera borne by the tech bubble which burst soon after he left.
Maybe. But the surpluses were real enough for Bush to redistribute to his backers as tax cuts. That much is to Clinton's credit.
But as a successful politician, he pioneered the fine art of "triangulation." Adopting Republican positions on issues crucial to them...and forcing them to come to him or make them betray their ideology.
This is a serious cost associated with this which no one evidently anticipated. And it is profoundly generous to say that.
Clinton Triangulated on Free Trade Agreements which sent American jobs abroad.
He Triangulated on rolling back anti-trust laws and financial regulations.
He Triangulated on welfare reform.
In every instance, he agreed to the Conservative Orthodoxy at great cost to the nation - his financial deregulation in particular, provided the fuel for the conflagration that would consume Wall St with what would otherwise have been a simple matter of a stockmarket crash followed by an institutional bailout for junk bonds.
It would have been no worse than what faced Reagan when he crashed the stock market in 1987.
But it wasn't that simple. And never will be again.
Obama has picked up that vile habit practiced by Clinton.
Instead of being informed by the events and lessons of the 20th Century...he has taken most of his lessons from his immediate predecessors, Bush/Cheney.
In foreign policy he has far outstripped Bush in that he actually killed Osama bin Ladin. His policy of extrajudicial assassination by drone program is unlikely to generate any good will or lasting peace in the countries where it is exercised.
His record with whistle-blowers is exactly what we would have expected from Bush/Cheney, as is his retention of the Patriot Act with its codification of domestic espionage.
Yet most galling to me personally is his educational program. Microwave reheated No Child Left Behind which he renamed Race to the Top...all of which has as its premise the belief that education can be provided on the cheap by closing schools that under-perform.
Still...Obama is making a valiant effort to do right by the nation. No argument.
But for such a brilliant, educated and well qualified man to exhibit so little imagination and absolutely no will to challenge the Conservative Orthodoxy...to advocate no policy proven to have worked prior to 1980 when Reagan took office - regardless of how close the historical parallels have been...is deeply disappointing.
So long as Democrats and Liberals remain enslaved by the Conservative Orthodoxy, we remained on a downward spiral, albeit at a stroll rather than a sprint seen under Republican and Conservative presidents.
Policies like tax cuts, deregulation, union busting, off-shoring, outsourcing (to immigrants,) wars of choice, gutting social supports and crushing public education...these are all like the antiquated medical concept of "bleeding" patients.
Just the thing to do in surgury to stimulate new blood production. To Raise Revenue.
Just ask George Washington.
What we need to ask ourselves is just how many more times we can afford Stock Market Crashes, Wall St Meltdowns, exploding multi-trillion dollar deficits, Junk Bond and Toxic Asset boondoggles, massive unemployment, the continued destruction of the Middle Class and unfunded wars of choice and still survive as a nation.
All we need do is realize that there were solutions BETWEEN the Administrations of Warren G. Harding and Ronald Reagan.
And to do that, we must recognize the Reagan was a False Prophet of social, economic, and military policy. And that path he has laid out for us leads only to our destruction as a nation.
To save the nation, our polices and solutions MUST be...unOrthodox.
....................................................................................................................................................................
On the writing of this post:
I have started posting on Huffington Post comments and found myself having the exact same argument with various Conservative trolls, and having the the same affirmitive conversations with various historically aware liberals.
If you have followed me at all, this may come as a surprise...but I absolutely hate repeating myself. With this post, I can drop a link and drag and drop the relevant portions.
Too, maybe the information found herein may actually be useful to some.
There was a minimum of cited sources...granted. But these things should still be in living memory of those old enough to have seen them. I invite everyone to examine the facts and statistics and decide for themselves whether or not they fit the model I have just presented.
More than anything...I want to see policy that pierces the veil that hides everything before 1980 that has proven to work. I want America to last. To thrive and grow.
But right now, it ain't happenin'.
I welcome comments below, or can be emailed at donquixokie@yahoo.com .
History began with Reagan. And in the mind of Reagan, history ended with the Warren G.Harding Administration. Between the two periods, nothing happened.
Nothing from which any policy lessons could be drawn.
Not the Great Depression; not the struggle and value of the Labor movement; not the deficit investment in industrial expansion leading up to WW2 which was in fact the greatest economic expansion in history; not the Eisenhower tax rate, the Interstate highway System or his timely warning against the Military Industrial Complex; or LBJs War on Poverty and Great Society Programs, or the salutory effect of public education in over-coming Seperate but Equal and the enfranchisement of blacks after the abolition of Jim Crow.
None of that exists, except as a horror that the Prophet Reagan saved us from.
As a consequence, despite all the struggles our nation has faced and surmounted and how we did it...the only tools left to us economically and politically are tax cuts, deregulation, privatization, the busting of unions, exportation of American jobs and the gutting of social supports and destruction of public education.
Also not included in the lexicon of Conservatives is that these policies crash stock markets and cause Wall St Meltdowns (1929,1987, 2008,) multi-trillion dollar deficits, and institutional bailouts (Reagan and Bush the Elder/ Saving and Loans because of Junk Bonds; Bush the Younger/Toxic Asset Relief Program.)
Unions are regarded as the enemy who feast upon the blood of the people.
Yet when unions are busted...meat packing for instance...they were replaced with busloads of undocumented immigrants who can be deported when they get uppity or make the mistake of asking for benefits. Or raises.
Manufacturing unions busted result in shuttered factories and jobs exported to where labor is cheap and regulations are minimal. And if intellectual property is the price of admission, well hell. Still a bargain.
After over three decades of union busting, only public unions remain at their pre-Reagan level - but these are now under assault.
Let us not forget when Bush the Younger attempted to privatize Port Security away from Public Unions. Who did he choose? Port World Security of Dubai. Using Arab scabs instead of Mexicans for a change. http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=1335349n
What makes anyone think the busting of public unions will mean more jobs for Americans?
Public schools, since Reagan, have been vilified as wastes of the public's dime on minorities who are destined to wind up in prison anyway - according to the Orthodoxy - despite the fact that 4 or 5 white children are served by public schools for every black child that goes there.
As as side note, the amount of precision in Reagan's prediction is really quite remarkable. Within 5 years of his taking office, drug wars were breaking out in inner-cities across America, requiring a police state to keep the violence in check. The War on Drugs. Remarkable,even if he did engineer the whole thing himself.
The particulars are tested further still today. Texas, Oklahoma, Mississipi, Louisiana (no particular order) are all similar in that they fund the least per student in public education and also have the dubious distinction of having the highest incarceration rates in the nation.
Faux educational initiatives by Bush and Obama reward funds to schools who produce "results" - or high standardized test scores - and closing schools that fail to deliver. Roughly akin to closing a hospital for having insufficient rooms and doctors for the demands placed upon it. The end result being Humanity courses being reserved for the wealthy and privileged students, while at risk students are Taught to the Test to the exclusion of considerations such as Art or Music.
The only other alternative is "School Choice" in Vouchers and Charter Schools and Private Schools which have the option of cherry picking the students they feel will excel. One particularly rich example of this Educational Solution...this alternative to the odious failures of the public school system...is found in Louisiana in the Accelerated Christian Education (ACE) System. This Alternative teaches that dragons were dinosaurs which were co-existant with human and that the Loch Ness Monster is a surviving example of one. Bad enough.
Far more egregious is the teaching...this being Louisiana, so presumably to black children...that
"The [Ku Klux] Klan in some areas of the country tried to be a means of reform, fighting the decline in morality and using the symbol of the cross ... In some communities it achieved a certain respectability as it worked with politicians," the textbook reads, according to the Herald.THAT is what the Conservative Orthodoxy would have us believe is a viable alternative to the public education system that overcame the inequalities of Seperate but Equal and which enfranchised blacks even when there was no successful school intergration.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/25/louisiana-students-loch-ness-monster-disprove-evolution_n_1624643.html
Once upon a time, the Great Depression was a national crisis of Austerity that tried the soul of the nation which we crawled out of at great pain and cost.
Now Austerity on the scale of the great Depression is being touted as the Remedy.
Until Reagan is recognized as the False Prophet that he is...America is DOOMED.
Fat chance we EVER get wise.
This also includes the massive damage done to our nation by the Bush/Cheney Administration. They were true disciples of Reagan and as such recreated the results he originally produced, but on a far grander scale.
Not only does Romney threaten to replicate the results, he promises to be to Bush/Cheney what Bush/Cheney was to Reagan.
As will EVERY additional Republican.
It has even captured the Democratic Party and is most evident in the Administration of Bill Clinton. He had the courage to raise taxes and invest in job training. Supposedly he finished out his term with a budget deficit, others say this is a chimera borne by the tech bubble which burst soon after he left.
Maybe. But the surpluses were real enough for Bush to redistribute to his backers as tax cuts. That much is to Clinton's credit.
But as a successful politician, he pioneered the fine art of "triangulation." Adopting Republican positions on issues crucial to them...and forcing them to come to him or make them betray their ideology.
This is a serious cost associated with this which no one evidently anticipated. And it is profoundly generous to say that.
Clinton Triangulated on Free Trade Agreements which sent American jobs abroad.
He Triangulated on rolling back anti-trust laws and financial regulations.
He Triangulated on welfare reform.
In every instance, he agreed to the Conservative Orthodoxy at great cost to the nation - his financial deregulation in particular, provided the fuel for the conflagration that would consume Wall St with what would otherwise have been a simple matter of a stockmarket crash followed by an institutional bailout for junk bonds.
It would have been no worse than what faced Reagan when he crashed the stock market in 1987.
But it wasn't that simple. And never will be again.
Obama has picked up that vile habit practiced by Clinton.
Instead of being informed by the events and lessons of the 20th Century...he has taken most of his lessons from his immediate predecessors, Bush/Cheney.
In foreign policy he has far outstripped Bush in that he actually killed Osama bin Ladin. His policy of extrajudicial assassination by drone program is unlikely to generate any good will or lasting peace in the countries where it is exercised.
His record with whistle-blowers is exactly what we would have expected from Bush/Cheney, as is his retention of the Patriot Act with its codification of domestic espionage.
Yet most galling to me personally is his educational program. Microwave reheated No Child Left Behind which he renamed Race to the Top...all of which has as its premise the belief that education can be provided on the cheap by closing schools that under-perform.
Still...Obama is making a valiant effort to do right by the nation. No argument.
But for such a brilliant, educated and well qualified man to exhibit so little imagination and absolutely no will to challenge the Conservative Orthodoxy...to advocate no policy proven to have worked prior to 1980 when Reagan took office - regardless of how close the historical parallels have been...is deeply disappointing.
So long as Democrats and Liberals remain enslaved by the Conservative Orthodoxy, we remained on a downward spiral, albeit at a stroll rather than a sprint seen under Republican and Conservative presidents.
Policies like tax cuts, deregulation, union busting, off-shoring, outsourcing (to immigrants,) wars of choice, gutting social supports and crushing public education...these are all like the antiquated medical concept of "bleeding" patients.
Just the thing to do in surgury to stimulate new blood production. To Raise Revenue.
Just ask George Washington.
What we need to ask ourselves is just how many more times we can afford Stock Market Crashes, Wall St Meltdowns, exploding multi-trillion dollar deficits, Junk Bond and Toxic Asset boondoggles, massive unemployment, the continued destruction of the Middle Class and unfunded wars of choice and still survive as a nation.
All we need do is realize that there were solutions BETWEEN the Administrations of Warren G. Harding and Ronald Reagan.
And to do that, we must recognize the Reagan was a False Prophet of social, economic, and military policy. And that path he has laid out for us leads only to our destruction as a nation.
To save the nation, our polices and solutions MUST be...unOrthodox.
....................................................................................................................................................................
On the writing of this post:
I have started posting on Huffington Post comments and found myself having the exact same argument with various Conservative trolls, and having the the same affirmitive conversations with various historically aware liberals.
If you have followed me at all, this may come as a surprise...but I absolutely hate repeating myself. With this post, I can drop a link and drag and drop the relevant portions.
Too, maybe the information found herein may actually be useful to some.
There was a minimum of cited sources...granted. But these things should still be in living memory of those old enough to have seen them. I invite everyone to examine the facts and statistics and decide for themselves whether or not they fit the model I have just presented.
More than anything...I want to see policy that pierces the veil that hides everything before 1980 that has proven to work. I want America to last. To thrive and grow.
But right now, it ain't happenin'.
I welcome comments below, or can be emailed at donquixokie@yahoo.com .
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