The Right Wing Rationale: IV

Much of what the Bush administration has done seems to contradict orthodox conservative principles, particularly its willingness to allow enormous deficits to form. In the past, “deficit spending” was associated with Keynesian economics, while it was Republicans who looked to balanced budgets. Upon closer inspection, however, (not that much closer; it is fairly obvious), this apparent contradiction turns on a crucial difference, namely, Democrats were willing to borrow on the future in order to subsidize social programs or to maintain full employment, while Republican deficits are almost entirely the result of military spending and redistributing tax surpluses to the wealthiest sector of the population. In a return to an almost medieval and feudalistic economic arrangement, the rulers tax the people and then lavishly distribute those tax dollars to the warrior class, the upper class (nobility?) and the churches leaving the mass of the population to engage in the vagaries of the marketplace. (Remember when such people were called “reactionaries”? A perfectly fine word that is crying out to be restored to our political vocabulary.) While there is often a lot of accompanying rhetoric about a rising tide lifting all boats and how money in the hands of the entrepreneurial class is good for the whole economic spectrum, the result is an inarguable degradation in the economic and social conditions of the vast majority of the citizenry. Some see this phenomenon as driven by pure greed and an abuse of power in order to secure ill-gotten gains for as long as possible. And there is no doubt that greed and the maintenance of the prerogatives of power are what it is all about. But lots of folks here in the U.S. have difficulty believing that the old WASP establishment (and their entourage of pious social climbers and a handful of highly visible [two Black secretaries-of-state in a row—and one of them a woman] arriviste ethnics) look themselves in the mirror each morning and say, “Let’s see, what can I do today to feather my nest and guarantee that my power is secure?” The fact is they don’t ask themselves any such question. On the contrary, they see themselves and the work they do as virtuous, all in the name of our old friend, “the greater good.”