Conservative Strategy Since 1980

The Leftist blog Economists View posts that Stiglitz writes that there is an ideological crisis in western capitalism. by which he simply means the “right is wrong”, and Stiglitz is right.

Really. That’s all he says.

And, of course, Stiglitz’s analysis is a straw man.

CONSERVATIVE STRATEGY
The conservative strategy since 1980 has been:
1) Defeat ideological communism as a threat to the international order, and to American trade interests – and to borrow any amount of money to do so.
2) Dismantle the left wing “great society’ movement, and if possible privatize education, social security and medicare as a means of starving and de-politicizing the government.
3) Starve the government either by over commitment or over extension, forcing either the dismantlement or privatization of ‘socialist’ programs.
4) Support of the entrepreneurial class, and increase home ownership in order expand conservative sentiments.

UNEXPECTED
a) The replacement of ideological communism with ideological Islam was an unexpected threat and a high cost.
b) The christian whites have become a minority was faster than they expected, and the transition of christian whites into a political block that acts like an minority was also unexpected. Therefore the conservative movement has not been able to ideologically adapt to this change fully – they still remain attached to the Classical LIberal Constitutional model, despite the obvious evidence that the model has failed them and (per Epstein) attacks on constitutionalism by the courts and leftist cultural indoctrination by the schools has been largely successful. The next development in conservatism will be to acknowledge that failure and to become a more consistently adversarial, entrenched and likely racially or culturally identifiable block.

RESULTS
The end result is :
a) that the country remains center-right, and will continue to remain center-right for any politically actionable period of time.
b) the process of converting the rest of the world to some form of capitalism, albeit, totalitarian capitalism, or social democratic capitalism, is complete, outside of Islam, which now only needs one or more likely two core states to emerge – neither of which will be an expansionist and militant Iran.
c) the country is fragmenting into permanent regional blocks opposed to one another. Family moving patterns suggest that this trend will continue to create stronger divisions, further amplifying the effects created by the end of southern conservatism’s association with the Democratic party.
d) the attempt to move people into home ownership as a means of encouraging the conservative sentiment has failed and was an unwise plan in the first place. THe lower class population needs to be mobile and increasingly urbanized to compete.
e) the right will claim that the constitution has been sufficiently undermined that it no longer holds sway, and that the left will simply use temporary political power to circumvent it, and there the right will develop the mantra that ‘it’s just mob rule’ and that the constitution is simply ‘how we conservatives shackle each other and give the left time to undermine freedom.’ This will be the next political movement for the right. It is only logical.
f) it may be true that Chicago monetarism has been undermined, but it is also true that almost all quantitative DSGEM theory has been undermined. But the institutional investment in academia in the failed doctrine will continue to persist until a radical paradigmatic changes has been developed elsewhere.

TRENDS
The general trend that will drive support for conservative sentiments will be:
1) the regionalization and fractionalization of domestic culture due to demographic concentrations. and the eventual exhaustion of the population’s tolerance for discord. It appears from the data that our urban centers are headed toward the south american model of an elite urban (white) center, surrounded by a ring of poverty, and a (white) conservative rural culture.
2) the increase in small businesses due to repositioning of the US work force in the global economy.
3) the increase sense of threat from weakened US strategic and economic power.
4) the extended economic stress that will likely lose a generation of permanently displaced workers.

STRAW MAN
So, Stiglitz simply does not understand conservative strategy or motivations and is arguing against a straw man by assuming that conservative and liberal goals are the same.

FREEDOM IS A GOAL IN ITSELF
To conservatives, freedom is the goal itself, and freedom is incompatible with the left’s agenda. And the willingness to protect that freedom is infinite. Revolt works from both directions. The left is willing to create the totalitarian redistributive society by class warfare and destruction of the western identity. The right is wiling to bankrupt what they see as a corrupt government in order to preserve it’s identity.

The fact that one monetary or economic policy or another was used to accomplish this is immaterial.