One of the fundamental questions our world is finally beginning to ask is where in our society we want power to be controlled. Conservatives would have you believe that the choice we have to make is between putting power in the hands of government (your friendly neighborhood faceless bureaucrat) or keeping the power for yourself. Especially right now, with the government basically refusing to govern effectively, if at all, that choice seems pretty simple.
But, of course, that is clearly not the actual choice. America is not made up of small, family driven western towns any more. Once the government has given up power over a specific function: health care, education, law enforcement, infrastructure building, street cleaning, etc. then the power that once rested in the hands of that government (and therefore, at least by the books, in the hands of the people) is now controlled by a private corporation. These are not small mom and pop corporations. These are huge corporations interested only in the financial wellbeing of their richest shareholders. Deregulating the economy will lead to more control of the market by these gigantic corporations, not less. If its not a government bureaucrat looking over your medical records it won't be your friendly family doctor down the road, it will be an employee of that privately owned corporation. More than likely that person will live in India and make just enough to keep them over the poverty line (that's sixty five cents a day, if you're counting). Not exactly the picture of society that you had in mind?
In the end, the root of the conservative populist message is a yearning to return to the 'uncomplicated' days of the old West, where government was too far away to really do much of anything, where men could be men, women could be property, and anyone not white could basically be in constant danger of being shot/raped/enslaved. Not only is this unpalatable desire entirely impossible to recreate in a country like America, it is spread around as subterfuge, something to hide the true message and desire of the conservative elites: the desire to create (or, truly, re-create) a world where the options available for the upper 1% of society are radically different than for the rest of the populous.
So, for those true libertarians out there, or even for the strange American brand of libertarian who can somehow believe in small government everywhere except for on social issues, I urge you to stop letting the neo-conservatives steal your populous (well, questionably populous) message while pushing a deeply anti-populous platform, a platform designed to benefit only the elites. Libertarians, religiously-motivated voters, small government austerity-backers, you have every right to feel discomfort at probably having to vote for Mitt Romney. As much as we on the left might dislike Romney, I think hardcore conservatives have even more reason to despise him. He's interested in small government only to the extent of deregulating massive corporations. He talks about the debt crisis because, in the current political climate, he has to, but you can tell its not as monumental an issue to him as it is to say, Ron Paul. And he has no real stomach for any kind of legislation on social issues. Some of the most passionate movements in this country, seen in both the Tea Party and many parts of the Occupy movement, is a move towards extremely limited government and towards (less in the Occupy movement) a greater Christian influence in that limited government. The fact that there will not be a candidate whose platform really includes either of those things is a disgrace. As I said in my previous post, truly the only way we can solve this schism is to break down the two party system.
That being said, the election of one of those American Libertarians to the office of President would have the potential to be even more dangerous than Romney. There are very few examples that can be called upon in terms of comparable governments to the one they might try to envision. However, want an example of a mostly isolationist, religiously motivated government with extremely limited social programs? Just check out Muammar Gaddafi's Libya.
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