Tuesday, February 18, 2014

A Historical Perspective on Right-Wing Populism

By Mike Dorf












Peter Gerdes said...

I'd argue that both forms of populism have little directly to do with money and mainly to do with moral attitudes.

The fundamental divide comes down to whether pleasure (social welfare) is an unalloyed good or whether unearned pleasure is somehow immoral or bad.

Of course the division isn't perfect but ask people how they would feel about a euphoriant with now side effects, no change in personality just a drug that made things more cheery. The exact same way that many people today are born with higher happiness set points.

Or ask how people would feel about windfalls that benefited the lazy and industrious alike, aliens who gifted us with robot servants and the like.

I know none of this captures it perfectly but I suspect there is a deep seated difference as javascript:void(0)to whether people feel that a good life must be earned or the cost of earning it is a necessary evil.

Anonymous said...

What is at stake here is less "moral" in a traditional sense of morality and pleasure (as Peter frames it) and more the amalgamation of morality and labor-based self-sufficiency we American's call the Protestant Work Ethic.

There is a fundamental division on economic matters in the American political scene today. (A) those who embrace the legacy of the protestant work ethic and subscribe to the belief that work is an inherent moral good. The second (B) is the "post-scarcity" crowd that view work--or at least the majority of work--as a relic of the past; technology has freed us.

Most of the Tea Party anti-corporatism is driven by the intuition that most big-money capitalism is driven by a alien-robot alliance--Peter isn't for off on that score. But the underlying fear, as it is with gun control, is a removal by the state of the individual's self-sufficiency.

This division is most clear in the response to the ACA. The liberal view of the ACA is that in the long-run it is an advance in human freedom. It will reduce the chilling effect that fears about health care have on the free movement of labor and will allow the creative potential of the population to be further unlocked. In the Tea Party view the ACA will rob people of their initiative and reduce their self-sufficiency by increasing their dependence on "government". In their view the ACA is a reduction in human freedom--a point Ron Paul often harps on.

On of the oddities of the current debate is that both sides embrace the discourse of freedom. For liberals freedom is found in the freedom from fear (ACA) and freedom from want (minimum wage) that can only be achieved by group solidarity (taxes and wealth redistribution). For conservatives freedom is found in freedom from dependency on others (small government) and freedom from abuses of power (pro-gun).

The result is that superficially--sometimes--liberals and conservatives can appear equally hostile to corporations and "big money." But their critique is different. Liberals tend to view corporations as interest groups who are trying to avoid paying their fair share—they object to the “money” part of big money. On the other hand conservatives tend to object to the “big” part of big money, they like their own money well enough.

/sorry this came out much longer than I intended.

David Ricardo said...

One of the problems here is that this post seems to take the position that individuals, particularly those on the right, adopt an ideology and that their positions on policy then flow from that ideology. Actually the reverse is true, individuals across the political spectrum take policy positions based largely on qualitative views and then adopt the ideology that best fits their previously determined position.

The reason for the perplexities that Mr. Dorf observes is that the result of adopting an ideology based on personal likes and dislikes on policy is that sooner or later ideology conflicts with personal likes and dislikes. This has been true from the beginning of the nation, and no one can ever reconcile the incredibly passionate words of Thomas Jefferson on freedom with his personal holding of slaves. But recently the dichotomy between policy prescription of ideology and of personal preference on the right have grown so much that Conservatism in the 21st century cannot be taken seriously as a governing philosophy. To wit.

1. The recent enactment of the Farm Bill saw conservatives greedily fighting to feed at the trough of government support and subsidies, in large part because those same conservatives mostly inhabit states that obtain huge benefits from those government programs. True Conservatism would have been adamantly opposed to government agriculture welfare.

2. Conservatives proclaim freedom of religion as a near absolute right, but when there was a proposed mosque near the site of the World Trade Towers (which was neither a mosque nor exactly next to the World Trade Towers) conservatives led the opposition. The anti-Muslim feelings in this nation emanate largely from the Conservative movement.

3. In economics Conservatives proclaim that government deficits caused by increases in government spending are highly damaging to the economy and that deficits caused by cutting taxes are beneficial. In Economics this is pure nonsense.

4. Conservatives decry the involvement of government in health care as it affects individuals, but it is conservatives that want government to interfere in the health care decisions of women, want government to insert itself into the most intimate issues involving a woman and her physician and want government to dictate to physicians what they can and cannot say in providing treatment.

One could go on and one, but the true test, the indisputable evidence that conservatives abandon their ideology when it conflicts with personal opinions is their position on physician assisted suicide. If an individual, with the support of the medical profession want to end his or her life then surely Conservatism would argue that government has no role to play here other than making certain that this is done in a voluntary manner. Yet conservatives are adamant in trying to use the power of government to interfere in the private life of such an individual and prevent him or her from doing what they want to do of their own free will. Physician assisted suicide is an act which has no impact whatsoever on the lives of those who would use the power of government to prohibit it. This makes them hypocrites, not conservatives.

Bill Walton said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Bill Walton said...

LOL elo boost

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