Dean's World

Fareed Zakarias has a pretty good riff on why conservatism--at least, as it's been broadly understood in the US for the last 30 or so years--is a fading philosophy:

Conservatism grew powerful in the 1970s and 1980s because it proposed solutions appropriate to the problems of the age—a time when socialism was still a serious economic idea, when marginal tax rates reached 70 percent, and when the government regulated the price of oil and natural gas, interest rates on checking accounts and the number of television channels. The culture seemed under attack by a radical fringe. It was an age of stagflation and crime at home, as well as defeat and retreat abroad. Into this landscape came Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, bearing a set of ideas about how to fix the world. Over the next three decades, most of their policies were tried. Many worked. Others didn't, but in any event, time passed and the world changed profoundly. Today, as Frum writes, "after three decades of tax cutting, most Americans no longer pay very much income tax." Inflation has been tamed, the economy does not seem overregulated to most, and crime is not at the forefront of people's consciousness. The culture has proved robust, and has in fact been enriched and broadened by its diversity. Abroad, the cold war is won and America sits atop an increasingly capitalist world. Whatever our problems, an even bigger military and more unilateralism are not seen as the solution.

Today's world has a different set of problems. A robust economy has not lifted the median wages of Americans by much. Most workers are insecure about health care, and most corporations are unnerved by its rising costs. Globalization is seen as a threat, bringing fierce competition from dozens of countries. The danger of Islamic militancy remains real and lasting, but few Americans believe they understand the phenomenon or know how best to combat it. They see our addiction to oil and the degradation of the environment as real dangers to a stable and successful future. Most crucially, Americans' views of the state are shifting. They don't want bigger government—a poll last year found that a majority (57 percent) still believe that government makes it harder for people to get ahead in life—but they do want a smarter government, one that can help them be safe, secure and well prepared for political and economic challenges. In this context, conservative slogans sound weirdly anachronistic, like watching an old TV show from ... well, from the 1970s.

You can read the whole thing here.

Broadly speaking, I agree with his contentions. I also wonder what the heck ever happened to conservative skepticism of large corporations, which used to be one of their defining traits.

Dean's link to Zakaria's piece about the death of conservatism inspired me to blog about how I make a distinction between ultra-left "progressivism" (eg. Counterpunch) and mainstream liberalism (eg. DailyKos). The same essay was well-received at Daily Kos, I might add - look a the poll results.

Somewhat along the same theme, willem left a rather interesting comment on Dean's post which I reprint in full:

I think Zakarias is describing "provincialism" when he attempts to describe conservatism. The proto-marxist meme of conservative vs liberal is assinine to begin with. Provincialism is the dominant remnant of the preceeding Victorian Era. We have remnants of the Victorian era all around us. What passes for "conservative" usually falls into one of these three camps; 1) a genuinely Jeffersonian originalism; 2) Father Knows Best/Leave it to Beaver fabulists; and, 3) neo-Victorian provincialists reacting badly to a changing age.

As a nation we need to get back to our Jeffersonian roots. Neither Stalin, FDR or Nixon will take us there. As long as we're rhetorically and conceptually trapped by false prophets preaching the false meme of "liberal/conservative" the orthodoxy that controls things will continue to put government and government employees first, and the rest of us, an increasingly distant second.

Food for thought, grist for debate...