Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Strategies & Market Trends : Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: koan who wrote (76791)	3/24/2008 7:38:48 PM
From: Oblomov	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 116555

Krugman wouldn't know a conservative if one fell in his lap. Trying to understand the right by reading Krugman or Naomi Klein is like trying to make sense of the American left by reading National Review. You are doing yourself a disservice, if you really want to understand an ideology different from your own, if you only read works by its detractors. If I want to understand the left, I'll read Dwight MacDonald, Thomas Frank, or Rick Perlstein. I'm not going to be so condescending as to recommend a viscerally satisfying, hastily-scrawled, attention-grabbing book that just gives sanction to the pointless right-left battle we call "debate" here in the US. I would first note that Rand disagreed with almost every other libertarian thinker while she was alive, and although many libertarians were turned on to the political philosophy by her fiction works, few regard them as serious works of philosophy. Friedman definitely would not have agreed with her on many issues. Second, let me make some distinctions that Klein and Krugman won't, both because of their willful ignorance and because it wouldn't serve their cause: 1) a libertarian favors very limited government. There are anarcho-capitalists, such as Lew Rockwell, Justin Raimondo, and Bill Kaufmann, who favor no government at all. But the majority of libertarians, representatives of which might be found at Liberty magazine or Reason, are of the "minarchist" variety, favoring a "night watchman state" as described by the philosopher Robert Nozick. Libertarians are generally against the war in Iraq, and against state intervention in the market. 2) a paleoconservative, or "Old Right" conservative, such as those at American Conservative, is usually nationalist, but opposed to world-saving wars such as the war in Iraq. They are opposed to managed trade agreements such as GATT and NAFTA. There isn't a consensus among paleocons on much else. They have allied with anarcho-capitalists and libertarians in recent years. Interestingly enough, the paleocons have also allied on many issues with heterodox leftists such as Christopher Lasch and Kirkpatrick Sale. 3) a neoconservative is someone who accepts the welfare-warfare state as a given, but who embraces a traditionalist social policy. This might translate into direct government intervention in family life, something libertarians and paleocons would find abhorrent. They make a conservative cultural critique, but in Marxian terms. Contrast this with Christopher Lasch, who reached Marxian conclusions by making a conservative cultural critique in conservative terms. Sure, neocons favor the war... they invented it. They are somewhat to the right of the lefties on tax policy, but they could hardly be considered libertarians. Many on the right don't even consider them to be conservatives. National Review started out as an "Old Right" magazine that tolerated libertarians, but through the 90s became neoconservative. 4) there are other groups that might be called conservative, such as traditionalist rightists (Chronicles Magazine), distributists (Gilbert Magazine), and communitarians such as Robert Nisbet. They don't fit into one of the previous groups. So there you have it in a nutshell...a survey of the right that exceeds that of Krugman or Klein in substance and depth. Where do those you cite, such as Rumsfeld or Bush, fit? Well, they are politicians, not political philosophers, so one can hardly expect them to be consistent. But I would say that Bush is the most statist, left-wing President we have had since Nixon. And finally, I would say that Krugman is hardly a liberal. Someday I hope to recapture that fine word from the power-hungry people who have expropriated it.