Giving Thanks

If you are conservative, libertarian, or just plain lean right, happy days are indeed here. Corporations run the world, the government has essentially been neutered in a variety of ways, and our culture is made up of people who think only of themselves...going into anaphylactic shock at the mere mention people working together for the common good. Add in howls of derision at anyone who dare question another's self interest and the age of the rugged individualist (see: Randian adolescent power fantasy) is here.

This, of course, is reality. But in the world of the conservative blogsphere, we are all on a Road To Serfdom.

The Road to Serfdom was book written in the early 1940s by Friedrich von Hayek in which he warned of the coming tyranny of government controlled and centrally planned economies. His ideas have been co-opted today by many on the right in the vain (and sad) attempt to add intellectual shine to a fervent ideology. It's quite pathetic, really, considering how out of date Hayek's ideas are giving our current global and economic framework.

Honestly, his theories were never all that sound to begin with when you consider the clear results of unfettered markets. We've seen it a lot in the last 30 years and we really aren't that far off from Polanyi's chief criticism of Hayek: It's actually Serfdom's ideas that will lead to fascism. In the case of our country, it's the corporate bend of this ideology with a small group of people controlling both our nation's wealth and the government.

Interestingly, the recently defrocked (for not being a pure conservative...whatever that means), David Frum agrees with me. He wrote a column a while back entitled "We're not on a road to serfdom." and I have to say, it's brilliant.

The story of the past 50 years has been that the American economy has become freer and more dynamic.

Think back to 1960. The federal government regulated the price of every airfare. It regulated every rail, truck and shipping route. It regulated the price of natural gas. It regulated stockbrokers' commissions. It regulated the interest rates that could be paid on checking accounts. It told most farmers how much they could grow of what commodity. It regulated what kind of political and religious comment could be expressed on the airwaves. And of course it conscripted millions of young men beginning their careers into the armed forces.

All of that is gone, gone, gone.

It sure is gone and that's why we have all the problems we have today. Of course, Frum would never admit this but that's the narrow tunnel of his ideology entrapping him.

Yet conservatives sell our own accomplishments and principles short when they represent them as so fragile. The fact is: our win-loss ratio is actually pretty good. Free-market ideas have rescued states in much worse trouble than post-Obama America: Mao's China to name one outstanding example.

Of course they do because there always has to be an enemy. Time is always running out and they's always comin' to gin us!

One would think they would be thankful today, on this day of giving thanks, with the current state of affairs...CEOs making ridiculous amounts of money...Wall Street continuing to be up to its old tricks....Warren Buffet being taxed at a rate of half of his secretary...and the wealthiest 1 percent of our nation holding over a third of its wealth...the next four percent making it nearly two thirds. It's just the way they like it, right?

Wrong. They want more.

So who are the fascists again?