Posted on 04/30/2021 4:27:06 AM PDT by Kaslin
One of the unfortunate vestiges of liberalism's lingering influence upon American conservatism, and by extension the Republican Party that is conservatism's default political vehicle, is the pervasive knee-jerk tendency to view government action as per se bad and private-sector action as per se good. This ideology, which might be called "market fundamentalism" or "private-sector fundamentalism," takes on differing forms: in its more benign variation, a principled commitment to unwavering laissez faire, but in its more malignant variation, a less principled commitment to corporate boosterism and outright cronyism.
The realignment now unfolding before our eyes in American politics could finally retire the right's long-standing and lamentable fixation with these bromides. On the former front, the realignment right's leading institutions and proponents seek to recover the "Two Cheers for Capitalism" of Irving Kristol, allowing for a greater state role in channeling market efficiency toward the traditional conservative political ends of justice, human flourishing and the common good. That theoretical recalibration is welcome and proper.
The real recent action, however, has been on the latter, more tangible front. In the aftermath of corporate America's defenestration of the state of Georgia -- best encapsulated by Major League Baseball's obtuse decision to yank its All-Star Game out of the Peach State -- over its passage of a milquetoast election reform law, the already-festering tension between the GOP and its corporatist Chamber of Commerce wing has reached a fever pitch.
Earlier this week, Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., who has previously made realignment inroads with his advocacy of "common good capitalism" and vocal support for unionization in Amazon's Bessemer, Alabama, plant, took to the New York Post to decry how "corporate America eagerly dumps woke, toxic nonsense into our culture." Even more notably, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, a political disciple of Reaganite conservatism, took to The Wall Street Journal to pronounce that "starting today," he will "no longer accept money from any corporate PAC."
Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., meanwhile, is only ramping up his assaults on Big Tech oligopolists, most recently expressed by his unveiling of the aptly named "Trust-Busting for the Twenty-First Century Act." And on the House side, Rep. Ken Buck, R-Colo., is leading a campaign to foreswear all political donations from Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google and Twitter.
Those who came of political age associating the GOP's low-tax, low-regulation policy plank with Big Business might be taken aback by the sweeping nature of this pushback, but in truth, the GOP resistance to corporatism has been a long time coming. The tea party era of 2009-2012 took on a decisively populist, anti-corporatist hue, with its opposition to bailing out Wall Street and its resistance to other policies reeking of Beltway-style corporate cronyism, such as the Export-Import Bank that effectively amounts to a Boeing slush fund.
But the recent accelerant has been the emergence of woke capital as a destructive force tearing a grievously divided country ever-more asunder. As the cultural left nears completion of its Antonio Gramsci-esque "long march through the institutions," Big Business has joined the ranks of the academy, Hollywood and the mainstream media as a sprawling national edifice beholden to the illiberal woke ideology. Whereas just nine years ago, Wall Street donated to native son Mitt Romney's presidential campaign at a higher clip than it did to then-incumbent President Barack Obama, today corporate wokesters threaten boycotts of entire states due to Republican-backed legislation on wedge issues such as abortion and transgenderism -- all while prostrating themselves before the (literally) genocidal commissars of the Chinese Communist Party.
Republicans are right to stand up and solemnly declare that enough is enough, already. There is no compelling reason to suffer through the humiliating bromance with woke capitalists, "battered woman syndrome"-style, while corporate America makes itself clearer than ever before that it hates Republican voters' guts. Whether it is on human sexuality, the right to life for unborn children, gun rights, immigration sanity or a host of other issues, woke capital treats the Republican Party as more of an enemy than it would ever dream of treating sadistic detention facility managers in Xinjiang, China.
Republicans should stop trying to prevent the unpreventable and permit its amicable divorce from corporate America to continue apace. Indeed, that divorce is a "blessing," as the Post's op-ed editor, Sohrab Ahmari, argued in January. The GOP's future comes in the form of a multiracial working-class political coalition -- not in the C-suite.
What is unfolding before our eyes is that we are dangerously close to Mao’s China.
Corporate America needs to be beholden to its people, not its government.
The rest is just the Free Traitor rag.
“What is unfolding before our eyes is that we are dangerously close to Mao’s China.”
I’m thinking more like 1933 Germany.
Frankly, I’m not clear on the distinction.
Mao’s China currently exists. Hitler’s Germany does not. It is far easier seeing the former being forced on us than the latter.
In Nazi Germany, the government took control of industry. In China, there is no industry but government. I believe that this is where we are headed.
Corporate America is in bed with China...that is where the money is....plus everything comes from China....the U.S. is just a failing welfare state....
Only a matter of time to the dollar is worthless..
One of the unfortunate vestiges of liberalism's lingering influence upon American conservatism, and by extension the Republican Party that is conservatism's default political vehicle, is the pervasive knee-jerk tendency to view government action as per se bad and private-sector action as per se good... On the former front, the realignment right's leading institutions and proponents seek to recover the "Two Cheers for Capitalism" of Irving Kristol, allowing for a greater state role in channeling market efficiency toward the traditional conservative political ends of justice, human flourishing and the common good. That theoretical recalibration is welcome and proper... Those who came of political age associating the GOP's low-tax, low-regulation policy plank with Big Business might be taken aback by the sweeping nature of this pushback, but in truth, the GOP resistance to corporatism has been a long time coming.
Oh, just shut up.
I'd encourage you to ponder these words from Hayek. I'd say they apply to China as well as Nazi Germany and Communist Russia.
Although our modern socialists' promise of greater freedom is genuine and sincere, in recent years observer after observer has been impressed by the unforeseen consequences of socialism, the extraordinary similarity in many respects of the conditions under "communism" and "fascism." As the writer Peter Drucker expressed it in 1939, "the complete collapse of the belief in the attainability of freedom and equality through Marxism has forced Russia to travel the same road toward a totalitarian society of un-freedom and inequality which Germany has been following. Not that communism and fascism are essentially the same. Fascism is the stage reached after communism has proved an illusion, and it has proved as much an illusion in Russia as in pre-Hitler Germany."
No less significant is the intellectual outlook of the rank and file in the communist and fascist movements in Germany before 1933. The relative ease with which a young communist could be converted into a Nazi or vice versa was well known, best of all to the propagandists of the two parties. The communists and Nazis clashed more frequently with each other than with other parties simply because they competed for the same type of mind and reserved for each other the hatred of the heretic. Their practice showed how closely they are related. To both, the real enemy, the man with whom they had nothing in common, was the liberal of the old type. While to the Nazi the communist and to the communist the Nazi, and to both the socialist, are potential recruits made of the right timber, they both know that there can be no compromise between them and those who really believe in individual freedom.
-- F.A. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom
Agree...Just as Satan wants complete control, history is full of humans who are also convinced that they hold the knowledge and wisdom to lead the less sentient masses to the “good” life. From ancient rulers to modern Rats, it’s the same —a disgust for and a desire to to crush individual freedom. This $hit begins in the sandbox.
The scary thing about the current situation in the US is that it appears the corporations control the politicians.
When the politicians are in charge there is a chance they can be deposed. However, if the strings are being pulled behind the scene by anonymous corporate puppetmasters then the people have little chance of freeing themselves from corporate tyranny.
The problem is not Biden, Obama, Bush, Clinton, etc. The problem is the Swamp. And the Swamp is not just located in D.C., but in corporate suites around the country and the world.
Rampant individualism makes us all easy targets for those who collude to run our lives.
The pandemic lockdowns have made it near impossible for coordinated efforts against the election fraud, and in fact helped along the fraud itself.
I heard that the reason for Prohibition was in part because people were beginning to organize against the government in pubs, and prohibition was a way to stomp out this activity.
Social Security puts a government middleman in between family generations, as does Medicare. We are now individuals freed from our familial responsibilities, but was that really something to cheer?
Individuals can freely engage in all manner of perversion and get their afflictions cured at no cost... except to the taxpayer.
Oh but if we lived in a truly libertarian society then the perverts would have to pay for their own treatments or die in the street. Yes, and leprechauns will ride unicorns to the ends of rainbows in that world as well.
You make some interesting points...IMO, it’s probably a chicken or the egg proposition.
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