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Over And Done With

Observe the strange inversion of all order and sense!  Dignity debased; how vilely is the function of a consul prostituted! ~The Craftsman  In the wake of one of the largest government interventions in the American private sector in history and on the eve of the terrible interventionist plan for the mega-bailout, Noemie Emery asserts that the following is […]

Observe the strange inversion of all order and sense!  Dignity debased; how vilely is the function of a consul prostituted! ~The Craftsman 

In the wake of one of the largest government interventions in the American private sector in history and on the eve of the terrible interventionist plan for the mega-bailout, Noemie Emery asserts that the following is not true:

Three weeks ago, the wisdom was that the conservative movement was over and done with. It had burned itself out, taking the Republican party down with it, and setting the stage for the biggest explosion of liberal governance since perhaps the New Deal.

Probably the better way to describe what had happened was that the GOP took the conservative movement down with it, but either way this is basically correct.  What no one foresaw three weeks ago was that the biggest explosion of liberal governance since the New Deal, much of which had already happened on Mr. Bush’s watch in years past, would be capped off with a veritable nova of government intervention in the economy to make up for the blunders in monetary, housing and fiscal policy that took place under Republican leadership, at the behest of Republican appointees and in service of stated Republican objectives.  Mr. Bush’s prattling on about the “ownership society” contributed directly to the current crisis, since this drive to put people in houses they owned encouraged many to take out mortgages they could not afford.  This risky path was recommended by no less than the guru Greenspan himself.  Call it the soft bigotry of adjustable interest rates.

Of course, there was some irony that Mr. Bush was talking about ownership in the same decade when a Republican-dominated Court did everything it could to vitiate property rights for the sake of development corporations in Kelo, but no matter.  The same people who ridicule government support for industries that actually produce things and who simultaneously glory in the de-industrialization of the country (“creative destruction”!  the global economy must be served!) are suddenly very anxious when the old Hamiltonian alliance of concentrated wealth and power is endangered by its own recklessness.  Suddenly the destructive aspect of “creative destruction” worries them when it begins to affect them and parts of the country they can be bothered to notice.  When the very centralism and concentration of wealth that they have championed threatens the welfare of the entire commonwealth, watch as they become the most devoted believers in socializing risk and imposing the costs of their vision on the people.  Actually, that has always been the point of “creative destruction”–the people bear most of the costs, and the dynatoi receive the benefits.     

The collusion between financial interests and the government is an old story, and it is one viewed with hostility by the Country tradition, a significant part of the American political tradition, dating back before Jefferson inveighed against “the moneyed interest.”  Nothing can better demonstrate how antithetical this collusion is to a free market economy than the last week’s events.  And what does the conservative movement, supposedly so energized and dynamic now that Sarah Palin has arrived on the scene, to say about any of this?  Very, very little.  These are the people who will refer to prominent figures in the movement’s past, will name-check their books and will talk about reducing the size of government, but they are ultimately quiescent, or even actively supportive, when an administration that they have empowered oversees one of the largest expansions of the state in U.S. history.  Absurdly, their new champions, including the mighty Palin, talk about fiscal responsibility and restraining spending…while more or less signing off on some of the largest spending measures ever undertaken that will ultimately add over one trillion to the national debt.  That does not even touch the merely fiscal costs that the war that they have cheered on has imposed.  If the last eight years of Republican administration have not shown that the GOP is an unworthy representative of conservatives, and if conservatives cannot wean themselves from the debilitating alliance with the GOP even after the last week, the conservative movement probably should be over and done with, as it seems not to have done very much for our country in recent years.

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