Apr 5, 2019
Welcome to Finance and Fury, the Furious Friday edition
Today we will be talking about conservatives and why they are not conserving anything anymore. In particular, the new form of conservatives the neo-con conservatives and the noble lie or the big lie.
Remember the Occupy Wall St movements? And the population protesting the 1%? Some perspective is you were likely in the world’s 1%. The anger should have been directed towards the political systems that facilitated the behaviour that led to the GFC.
Wrap up:
- Neocon Political ideology is framing policy to influence banking
- GFC initiated by past policies, like the Housing Urban Development Act in 1992
- Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corp (Freddie Mac) loans 30% of loans to low income households
- Glass Steagall episode link
- Clinton Cash book
Why am I talking about all this?
- Clear up some conceptions, which is the point of Friday episodes
- When people talk about today’s conservative politicians, there is a good chance they are neoconservatives
What is conservatism?
- Political philosophy promotion traditional institutions in the context of culture and civilisation
- Who was Quinton Hogg?
- “Conservatism is not so much a philosophy as an attitude, a constant force, performing a timeless function in the development of a free society, and corresponding to a deep and permanent requirement of human nature itself"
- Conservatives morphed out of classical liberalism
- Neocon is named appropriately – the new con
- Trotsky and Stalin’s relationship and how communism operated in Russia
- The bitter infighting between socialists and communists
- Revolutions in feudal countries lead to capitalism
- What did Leo Strauss write in regards to Plato and the noble lie
- Plato turned the mythologies into a class system
- Introduce the neoconservatives in the 1960s, Irving Kristol the godfather of neoconservatism
- How does this change conservative values?
What are the 2 Major Concerns?
- The neocapitalist and interventionalist foreign policy
- Neocapitalism – characterized by correcting the excesses by means of application of measures that guard over social well-being. This is part of the big lie
- High representation of Keynesian economists around politics
- What is Irving Kristol take on capitalism?
- It becomes a state monopoly capitalism – more money in politics means more influence in politics
- This policy just creates a concentration of companies resulting in monopolies
- There used to be 50 companies (1960s) that determined the distribution of information, now there are only 6
- Interventionalist approach with international policy and war
- Permanent revolutions and pre-emptive war to achieve desired ends
- Protection of currency – the petrodollar episode link
- Occupation of other nations through military might and bases – this opposes neutrality
History is a struggle for power:
- Any political organization the pursuit of power is the priority
- Principals of the party soon give way to principals of power
- Social life cannot dispense without organization
- In terms of representative democracy – how much participation do you have in the laws going into place?
- What is the totalitarian mill?
- Only power restrains power
It seems like the power dynamic is increasing over time. The representative political system gives the people an illusion of control.
This has been an explanation as to why supposed conservatives don’t act like it or use supply side economics.
We will touch on this again next week when I cover Brexit, where the conservative party keeps pushing the British independence off.
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Resources:
Irving Kristol’s Neoconservatism - https://archive.org/stream/IRVINGKRISTOLTHEAMERICANREVOLUTIONASASUCCESSFULREVOLUTION28/Neoconservative%20Persuasion%20S%20e%20l%20e%20c%20t%20e%20d%20%20E%20s%20s%20a%20y%20s%20%2C%20%201%209%204%202%20-%202%200%200%209%20by%20Irving%20Kristol-42_djvu.txt