The war the fellows in the Minuteman costumes thought they were fighting was already lost generations if not centuries ago.
#Tea Party
American conservatives
Posted in Neo-Imperialism, Political Philosophy, Politics, US History Tagged with: Conservatism, neo-imperialism, Tea Party
Repealing Godwin’s Law
As a matter of history, the administrative state, the FDR state, that the Tea Partiers are glad to shut down temporarily, and that some would like to shut down permanently, is the same state that arose contemporaneously with the fall of the Weimar Republic, in relation to common and overlapping challenges, and that was consolidated in political competition and eventually at war with its immediate successor (which technically still functioned under the Weimar constitution). A serious discussion of an actual or potential crisis of liberal democracy in the leading liberal democratic nation-state, and on the system level – the level of basic responsibilities and assumptions of government – cannot help but take into account prior, concretely related crises, even if particular circumstances initially appear vastly different.
Posted in Featured, History, Internet, Neo-Imperialism, Politics, The Exception Tagged with: Debt Limit, Shutdown, Tea Party, Weimar
The Theory of O
For present purposes, it may well be that nothing as ideologically coherent as an authentically left program or for that matter as Tea Party “federalism” (or Romney-Ryan free market devolution) can be implemented in the United States of America. The Theory’s very adequacy to the political moment may therefore be identical with its inadequacy to greater challenges that the American political system, maybe the American nation-state itself as presently constituted, cannot even recognize, much less successfully confront. From this point of view, the apocalypse would be not what was avoided via the Showdown, but what the showdown showed us through a crack in the blinds, something that cannot forever be voted in or out or up or down, hidden under a “tarp,” or put off until another year or two for further putting off for another year or two…
Exploding on the leftist launchpad, again
Sloppy self-indulgence will not aid anyone who hopes to reconstitute some version of an authentic American left.
Newt: The Establishment Nightmare That Could Come True
Conservative activists have a different view of the risks and opportunities of 2012 than either establishment pooh-bahs or the pundits. What looks to some like a winnable-or-losable general election looks to ideologues like the best chance in decades to replay 1964 and repeal the Great Society and the New Deal.
Dreaming of an O landslide
If this tantrum lasts through the election, and if 2012 is for the Republicans what 1984 was for the Democrats, then finally our polity stands a chance of functioning again. The Tea Party will be dead and buried.
Conservative Politics as Warfare
The most dangerous group of political extremists today is not the grass roots supporters of the Tea Party. It is the major sector of the Republican financial and ideological elite who have embraced the philosophy of “politics as warfare.”
The Head Decapitant
The TPers think they’re fighting to save capitalism, American freedom as ordained by God, before it’s too late, “too late” amounting to “any day now” by their variously innumerate and fantastical pseudo-calculations. Yet, in a way, kind of a park…
Understanding the TP
I’d meant to cut this one down, and save it for future reference and re-editing, but instead accidentally published the whole thing at Jonathan Bernstein’s (great) “plain blog about politics.” It’s kind of embarrassing to be caught depositing long, pretentious…
Posted in Economics Tagged with: Debt Ceiling, Hayek, House Republicans, Keynes, Republican Party, Satan, Tea Party