A Turn To The Left?

A recent issue of The Economist (8/11/07), a determinedly conservative British magazine, features a cover article entitled, “Is America Turning Left?” Interestingly, they devote only one page to this story, then spend three pages (“Under the Weather”) decrying the perilous state of the Republican Party and its so-called “Conservative” mandate.

After asserting that the Republicans are ”better organized and more intellectually inventive than their ‘liberal’ [sic] rivals,” they point out that the manifest failures and misdeeds of the Bush Administration are being blamed for the ascendancy of the Democrats and the decline of Republican popularity with voters, yet insist that “this President Bush is not a good scapegoat,” because he has given his party “virtually everything it craved, from humungous tax cuts to conservative judges.” Under the heading “Be careful what you wish for,” they conclude that most Americans urgently want a change of direction.

The issue’s second, longer piece is something of an obituary for the Republic Party as it is presently organized and represented. While correctly distinguishing between “paleo-conservatves” (small-government Libertarians), neo-conservatives (we know what they are) and social conservatives, they fail to realize that the only correct designation for all of those who now call themselves “Conservatives” is Radical Reactionaries! There is nothing conservative about them. Most don’t care about conserving our natural resources, or even the planet itself. They have advocated and implemented extremely radical policies designed to drag us back at least 150 years if not a millennium. I prefer to dub them “neo-feudalists,” because they actually believe that government exists only to protect and enhance the wealth, power and privileges of the few, at the expense of the many.

My response is to call myself a “radical progressive,” since the “liberal” opposition seems incapable of or unwilling to respond appropriately to this devolutionary ideology. They are content to address only symptoms and fail to deal with the cause, which is nothing less than stealth Social Darwinism, disguised as the unseemly worship of the unregulated marketplace. Our precious democracy has been hijacked.