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One of the most confounding aspects of Donald Trump’s election as 45^th President of the United States is that in the space of a year – indeed less than a year – a man with zero political experience has destroyed two of America’s most entrenched political dynasties: Bush and Clinton.

Just pause on this for a moment, and place it in the context of someone who when he first appeared on the political stage as a candidate for the Republican nomination was met with ridicule and scorn. Consequently, a mainstream media and liberal commentators for whom politics is an exclusive club, the preserve of a select group of blessed people who belong to this club as if by divine right, have just been delivered one almighty slap-down

The sense of entitlement that emanated from the Clinton campaign during this election was astonishing to behold. Hillary Clinton emitted the demeanour of a woman approaching a coronation rather than an election, disdaining not only Donald Trump but also his supporters, whom she infamously described as “deplorables”. This was her undoing.

Regardless of the attempt to paint her as someone in touch with the suffering and pain of the millions of Americans who have long been denied a seat at the banquet of US democracy, she came over as the very embodiment of a machine politician, a candidate whose credibility and character was irredeemably tainted by her connections to Wall Street, big business, the Saudis, George Soros, etc.

This is why it is not so much that Donald Trump won this election as that Hillary Clinton and her campaign lost. Here the Democratic Party only has itself to blame.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Coming of the Postliberal Era

October 1, 2016

The Coming of the Postliberal Era

One of the big challenges faced by any student of current events is that of seeing past the turmoil of the present moment to catch the deep trends shaping events on a broader scale. It’s a little like standing on a beach, without benefit of tide tables, and trying to guess whether the tide’s coming in or going out. Waves surge, break, and flow back out to sea; the wind blows this way and that; it takes time, and close attention to subtle details, before you can be sure whether the sea is gradually climbing the beach or just as gradually retreating from it.

Over the last year or so, though, it’s become increasingly clear to me that one of the great tides of American politics has turned and is flowing out to sea. For almost precisely two hundred years, this country’s political discourse has been shaped—more powerfully, perhaps, than by any other single force—by the loose bundle of ideas, interests, and values we can call American liberalism. That’s the tide that’s turning. The most important trends shaping the political landscape of our time, to my mind, are the descent of the liberal movement into its final decadence, and the first stirrings of the postliberal politics that is already emerging in its wake.

To make sense of what American liberalism has been, what it has become, and what will happen in its aftermath, history is an essential resource. Ask a believer in a political ideology to define it, and you’ll get one set of canned talking points; ask an opponent of that ideology to do the same thing, and you’ll get another—and both of them will be shaped more by the demands of moment-by-moment politics than by any broader logic. Trace that ideology from its birth through its adolescence, maturity, and decline into senescence, and you get a much better view of what it actually means.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Monopoly’s New Era

May 14, 2016

Monopoly’s New Era

NEW YORK – For 200 years, there have been two schools of thought about what determines the distribution of income – and how the economy functions. One, emanating from Adam Smith and nineteenth-century liberal economists, focuses on competitive markets. The other, cognizant of how Smith’s brand of liberalism leads to rapid concentration of wealth and income, takes as its starting point unfettered markets’ tendency toward monopoly. It is important to understand both, because our views about government policies and existing inequalities are shaped by which of the two schools of thought one believes provides a better description of reality.

For the nineteenth-century liberals and their latter-day acolytes, because markets are competitive, individuals’ returns are related to their social contributions – their “marginal product,” in the language of economists. Capitalists are rewarded for saving rather than consuming – for their abstinence, in the words of Nassau Senior, one of my predecessors in the Drummond Professorship of Political Economy at Oxford. Differences in income were then related to their ownership of “assets” – human and financial capital. Scholars of inequality thus focused on the determinants of the distribution of assets, including how they are passed on across generations.

The second school of thought takes as its starting point “power,” including the ability to exercise monopoly control or, in labor markets, to assert authority over workers. Scholars in this area have focused on what gives rise to power, how it is maintained and strengthened, and other features that may prevent markets from being competitive. Work on exploitation arising from asymmetries of information is an important example.

In the West in the post-World War II era, the liberal school of thought has dominated. Yet, as inequality has widened and concerns about it have grown, the competitive school, viewing individual returns in terms of marginal product, has become increasingly unable to explain how the economy works. So, today, the second school of thought is ascendant.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

A Few Notes on Burkean Conservatism

May 14, 2016

A Few Notes on Burkean Conservatism

Several times recently, in posts on this blog discussing the vagaries of current American politics, I’ve had occasion to reference my own political philosophy by name. This has caused a certain amount of confusion and curiosity, because the moniker I mentioned—“moderate Burkean conservative”—falls nowhere on the narrow range of political opinions allowed into our collective discourse these days.

Now of course a good part of the confusion arises because the word “conservative” no longer means what it once meant—that is to say, a person who wants to conserve something. In today’s America, conservatives who actually want to conserve are as rare as liberals who actually want to liberate. The once-significant language of an earlier era has had the meaning sucked right out of it, the better to serve as camouflage for a kleptocratic feeding frenzy in which both establishment parties participate with equal abandon. Putting meaning back into the words can be a risky proposition, in turn, because so many Americans are used to waving them about as arbitrary noises linked to an assortment of vague emotions, the common currency of what passes for thought in so much of modern American life.

Nonetheless, I think the risk is worth taking, if only because a genuine conservatism—that is, a point of view oriented toward finding things worth conserving, and then doing something to conserve them—is one of the few options that offer any workable strategies for the future as the United States accelerates along the overfamiliar trajectory of a democracy in terminal crisis.

Let’s start with the least familiar of the terms I mentioned above, “Burkean.” The reference is to the Anglo-Irish writer, philosopher, and politician Edmund Burke (1729-1797), generally considered the founder of the Anglo-American conservative tradition.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Progressive Liberal’s Push Toward Tyranny

April 10, 2016

The Progressive Liberal’s Push Toward Tyranny

Progressives Cling to Collectivism
Here, in my opinion, are some of the essential issues and dilemmas facing the advocate of individual liberty, free markets, and constitutionally limited government. Too many of our fellow citizens do not believe that individuals have a right to live for themselves. They truly and honestly believe that “society,” “community,” the collective, is something independent of the distinct individuals who comprise it, and for which the individual is morally, politically and legally obligated to serve and sacrifice for. Police power is a legitimate and appropriate tool of enforcing these obligations and duties, if resistance or indifference is experienced among the citizens citizens in the undertaking of these activities.

For the “progressive,” government is “society’s” agent to undertake the tasks of “social justice” and “entitlement” that are owed to each member and to which everyone is required to provide their contribution. Police power is the means by which everyone is made to contribute their “social dues” in the form of either obedience to government regulations or payment of taxes for redistributive purposes.

Liberty and the Meaning of Society and the “Social”
For the classical liberal or libertarian, on the other hand, government is considered an agency for the protection of each individual’s rights. “Society” is comprised of the networks of relationships and associations formed by individuals and in which they interact for various fulfillments of human happiness and well-being. These are not only the market exchange relationships of peaceful cooperation through competition and the buy and selling of goods and services.

It incorporates family, friends, professional associations, intellectual organizations and hobby groups. It includes faith and religious affiliations and participation, and all networks of charity and philanthropy at local community and wider levels. These networks of human association are what are often called “civil society.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Socialism and the Battle of Ideas

February 13, 2016

Socialism and the Battle of Ideas

[This article is excerpted from Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis]

It is a mistake to think that the lack of success of experiments in Socialism that have been made can help to overcome Socialism. Facts per se can neither prove nor refute anything. Everything is decided by the interpretation and explanation of the facts, by the ideas and the theories.

The man who clings to Socialism will continue to ascribe all the world’s evil to private property and to expect salvation from Socialism. Socialists ascribe the failures of Russian Bolshevism to every circumstance except the inadequacy of the system. From the socialist point of view, Capitalism alone is responsible for all the misery the world has had to endure in recent years. Socialists see only what they want to see and are blind to anything that might contradict their theory.

Only ideas can overcome ideas and it is only the ideas of Capitalism and of [Classical] Liberalism that can overcome Socialism. Only by a battle of ideas can a decision be reached.

Liberalism and Capitalism address themselves to the cool, well-balanced mind. They proceed by strict logic, eliminating any appeal to the emotions. Socialism, on the contrary, works on the emotions, tries to violate logical considerations by rousing a sense of personal interest and to stifle the voice of reason by awakening primitive instincts.

Even with those of intellectually higher standing, with the few capable of independent reflection, this seems to give Socialism an advantage. With the others, the great masses who are unable to think, the Socialist position is considered unshakable. A speaker who inflames the passions of the masses is supposed to have a better chance of success than one who appeals to their reason. Thus the prospects of Liberalism in the fight with Socialism are accounted very poor.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Welcome to the Twenty-First Century

February 1, 2016

Welcome to the Twenty-First Century

BERLIN – The start of 2016 has been anything but calm. Falling equity prices in China have destabilized markets worldwide. Emerging economies seem to have stalled. The price of oil has plunged, pushing petroleum producers into crisis. North Korea is flexing its nuclear muscles. And in Europe, the ongoing refugee crisis is fomenting a toxic tide of nationalism, which threatens to tear the European Union apart. Add to this Russia’s neo-imperial ambitions and the threat of Islamic terrorism, and comets streaking across the sky may be the only thing missing from a picture of a year shaping up to be one of prophetic doom.

Wherever one looks, chaos seems to be ascendant. The international order forged in the fires of the twentieth century seems to be disappearing, and we have not had even the faintest glimpse of what will replace it.

It is not difficult to put names to the challenges we face: globalization, digitization, climate change, and so forth. What is not clear is the context in which the response will come – if at all. In which political structures, by whose initiative, and under which rules will these questions be negotiated – or, if negotiation proves impossible, fought over?

Political and economic order – particularly on a global scale – does not simply arise from peaceful consensus or an unchallenged claim by the most powerful. It has always been the result of a struggle for domination – often brutal, bloody, and long – between or among rival powers. Only through conflict are the new pillars, institutions, and players of a new order established.

The liberal Western order in place since the end of World War II was based on the global hegemony of the United States. As the only true global power, it was dominant not only in the realm of hard military power (as well as economically and financially), but in nearly all dimensions of soft power (for example, culture, language, mass media, technology, and fashion).

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Illusion of Freedom

December 29, 2015

The Illusion of Freedom

A campaign rally last week in Michigan. In the current presidential contest, a frustrated white working class has been receptive to anti-democracy messages. (Carlos Osorio / AP)

The seizure of political and economic power by corporations is unassailable. Who funds and manages our elections? Who writes our legislation and laws? Who determines our defense policies and vast military expenditures? Who is in charge of the Department of the Interior? The Department of Homeland Security? Our intelligence agencies? The Department of Agriculture? The Food and Drug Administration? The Department of Labor? The Federal Reserve? The mass media? Our systems of entertainment? Our prisons and schools? Who determines our trade and environmental policies? Who imposes austerity on the public while enabling the looting of the U.S. Treasury and the tax boycott by Wall Street? Who criminalizes dissent?

A disenfranchised white working class vents its lust for fascism at Trump campaign rallies. Naive liberals, who think they can mount effective resistance within the embrace of the Democratic Party, rally around the presidential candidacy of Bernie Sanders, who knows that the military-industrial complex is sacrosanct. Both the working class and the liberals will be sold out. Our rights and opinions do not matter. We have surrendered to our own form of wehrwirtschaft. We do not count within the political process.

This truth, emotionally difficult to accept, violates our conception of ourselves as a free, democratic people. It shatters our vision of ourselves as a nation embodying superior virtues and endowed with the responsibility to serve as a beacon of light to the world. It takes from us the “right” to impose our fictitious virtues on others by violence.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Distortion, Revisionism & the Liberal Media

November 30, 2015

Distortion, Revisionism & the Liberal Media

jcorbyn

American readers will be familiar with the enduring notion that the media has a liberal bias. Sensible ones will know that this notion is absurd, or at least requires a rather loose working definition of the word “liberal”. There isn’t quite the same feeling about the media in Britain, at least not taken as a whole, and this is all the more effective in sustaining the myth that freedom of press and speech are more or less protected and culturally ingrained. British people can buy a “liberal” newspaper or a “conservative” one and be happy in the knowledge that they are consuming more or less independent news, spun in their favoured direction. Conservative citizens may howl at the supposedly extreme-left views churned out by the various Marxist propaganda mills, such as The Guardian, or the Daily Mirror, and the liberal centre-left can find refuge in these texts from the right-wing forces of darkness in The Times, The Daily Telegraph and the Daily Mail.

The supposed ideological biases of these publications are known and accepted. The only media outlet truly accused of bias as though it were crime is the BBC, which has long been accused of having a liberal agenda. This idea has received some support from those who ought to be in the position to know, for example the former business editor, Jeff Randall, who now works for Murdoch’s Sky News. Randall claims a “very senior BBC person” told him that “the BBC is not neutral in multiculturalism: it believes in it and promotes diversity”.[i] Andrew Marr, a former editor of The Independent, a newspaper which defines itself by its apparent freedom from party-political bias, moved in the opposite direction and now works for the BBC.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Limits of Liberal War Opposition

November 24, 2015

Limits of Liberal War Opposition

Robert Reich’s website is full of proposals for how to oppose plutocracy, raise the minimum wage, reverse the trend toward greater inequality of wealth, etc. His focus on domestic economic policy is done in the traditional bizarre manner of U.S. liberals in which virtually no mention is ever made of the 54% of the federal discretionary budget that gets dumped into militarism.

When such a commentator notices the problem of war, it’s worth paying attention to exactly how far they’re willing to go. Of course, they’ll object to the financial cost of a potential war, while continuing to ignore the ten-times-greater cost of routine military spending. But where else does their rare war opposition fall short?

Well, here, to begin with: Reich’s new post begins thus: “We appear to be moving ever closer toward a world war against the Islamic State.” That helpless fatalism doesn’t show up in his other commentary. We’re not doomed to plutocracy, poverty, or corporate trade. But we’re doomed to war. It’s coming upon us like the weather, and we’ll need to handle it as well as we can. And it will be a “world” affair even if it’s principally the 4% of humanity in the United States with a military engaged in it.

“No sane person welcomes war,” says Reich. “Yet if we do go to war against ISIS we must keep a watchful eye on 5 things.” Nobody, inlcuding Reich as far as I know, ever says this about plutocracy, fascism, slavery, child abuse, rape, de-unionization. Imagine reading this: “No sane person welcomes massive gun violence and school shootings, yet if we’re going to let all these children die for the gun makers’ profits we must keep a watchful eye on 5 things.” Who would say that? What could the 5 things possibly be?

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Sufficient Liberal Stories–The Krugman Function Part 4 – Transition Milwaukee

November 3, 2014

Sufficient Liberal Stories–The Krugman Function Part 4 – Transition Milwaukee.

On the face of it, Paul Krugman appears entirely confident in the future of the American way of life and the growth of a globally inclusive economy. He is similarly confident in our ability to address climate change by running that economy on renewable energy.

This needs two significant qualifications. First, it is unclear whether this is what Krugman hopes, or what he expects; whether he is rallying us in an inspirational mode, or lecturing in an analytic one. In contemporary political culture the roles of coach and analyst are becoming increasingly indistinct and it may not be possible to separate the two. Second, Krugman’s optimism is clearly dependent on the ability of political liberals to get wrong-headed, fuzzy-thinking conservatives out of the way; it is only by becoming lost in the enthusiasm of a pre-game pep-rally that one could feel all that confident about liberal prospects in upcoming political contests. A good deal of commentary these days seems to be busy staking out terrain from which the commentator can say, when things have gone very badly indeed one day, “don’t look at me, I told you this would happen if you didn’t listen to me”

Setting aside the various undercurrents that pull at any person putting ink to paper or fingers to keyboard, Krugman’s narrative, itself, is very optimistic, and for reasons that form the major subplot of that same narrative. As we began to show in our last installment, political efficacy, easy choices, as well as the ever-popular free lunch, are built into the narrative as the ultimate driver of action. All narratives contain within them a “theory” of cause and effect, whether it is the fate, history, chance, and interconnection we see in Thomas Hardy, or the exercise of individual virtues Jane Austen deploys, to mention two very different narrative theories of cause. In history, Karl Marx argued that history was driven by class conflict, while in Darwin history is moved by the act of survival and ability to procreate. Enlightenment philosophers viewed historical change as the conquest of myth by reason. Krugman is most similar to the latter. In his story the action is moved by practical insight, the courage to accept its conclusions, and the determination to act upon it.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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