There's life after conservatism--right?
Things still look fairly crappy right now on the national stage. The malaise permeates the entire country. While about one third of this country are still immersed in the Bush personality cult, the remaining two-thirds either want the guy impeached or are just biding their time until 2009. But there's a shift in national mood. With the rise of Bushco and Republican control of all three branches of government, conservatism has entered its decline. The Bush administration has tried to turn America into a testing ground for all sorts of right-wing frames and ideas hatched in conservative think tanks when it should've been, y'know, running the country.
William Greider calls for a new economic approach to replace conservative orthodoxy. Recent years have demonstrated that Reagan-style trickle-down economics don't work. Shrinking government until it can't provide the basic needs of the people doesn't work. The everyone-for-themselves mentality doesn't work. Behaving as if the market is a magic wand of sorts that can solve everything doesn't work. Long story short: the conservative movement jumped the shark in 2004 when Bush was re-elected. Since then, all Bush's bumblings have come back to haunt him and the conservative movement.
Public dialogue seems to be dominated, however, by people with a profound sense of entitlement. People who blab on and on, ad nauseum, about "wealth redistribution" without knowing what it is. People who think public parks and traffic signs are a form of socialism. People who don't complain about tax breaks for the ultra-wealthy but do react with horror to the idea of more money for schools. People who identify themselves as "libertarians" just so they aren't mistaken for garden-variety dittoheads. People who believe they live in a perfect world marred by a few pests who somehow manage to get really sick, have car accidents, become victims of terrorism, or generally have a streak of bad luck. People who haven't figured out that borrow-and-spend conservatism is as bad as tax-and-spend liberalism.
So what can replace conservative economic policy? Greider has some ideas.
William Greider calls for a new economic approach to replace conservative orthodoxy. Recent years have demonstrated that Reagan-style trickle-down economics don't work. Shrinking government until it can't provide the basic needs of the people doesn't work. The everyone-for-themselves mentality doesn't work. Behaving as if the market is a magic wand of sorts that can solve everything doesn't work. Long story short: the conservative movement jumped the shark in 2004 when Bush was re-elected. Since then, all Bush's bumblings have come back to haunt him and the conservative movement.
Public dialogue seems to be dominated, however, by people with a profound sense of entitlement. People who blab on and on, ad nauseum, about "wealth redistribution" without knowing what it is. People who think public parks and traffic signs are a form of socialism. People who don't complain about tax breaks for the ultra-wealthy but do react with horror to the idea of more money for schools. People who identify themselves as "libertarians" just so they aren't mistaken for garden-variety dittoheads. People who believe they live in a perfect world marred by a few pests who somehow manage to get really sick, have car accidents, become victims of terrorism, or generally have a streak of bad luck. People who haven't figured out that borrow-and-spend conservatism is as bad as tax-and-spend liberalism.
So what can replace conservative economic policy? Greider has some ideas.
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