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Ludwig von Mises,
economist-philosopher
Yaron Brook
Francis Fukuyama
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Barack Obama
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Once upon a time there were people who believed that an economy should be organized by the state for the sake of the working class. They believed that capitalism would destruct -- with help from an awakened working class. Time has erased most of this belief. Much or most of the so-called political left today believes in a degree of private ownership of the means of production and a degree of state regulation over the economy, plus automatic unemployment compensation during downturns in the economy -- such as even conservatives in some European countries, including Germany, support.
On the other side of the economic philosophy spectrum are those who believe in letting the market regulate itself, leaving the buyer to be wary and letting those who fail adjust. They believe that people should be responsible for themselves and family members, including their elderly. If people have not acquired a skill that makes them more useful to others, too bad. If they don't adjust in other ways to market realities, such as moving to a new location, too bad. If you bear children you cannot afford, you can look to the kindness of church organizations to stay alive. The state, they believe, is not to have an entrenched role in the economy, except perhaps to punish fraud and to rescue people should an earthquake, fire or other kind of episodic disaster appear.
Some want to go back to the economics that existed before World War I -- when Social Darwinism was more prevalent. Some adhere to the ideology of Ayn Rand. Dr. Yaron Brook, a professor of economics and executive director of the Ayn Rand institute, is not stupid. Intelligence does not necessarily determine where on the philosophic spectrum of political-economy one finds oneself. At the bottom of an economics debate is the question how to divide the wealth, with a connecting argument as to what is best in making an economy grow. At the bottom of the debate as to how to divide the wealth one finds a lot of numbers. But it is not a physics problem. There is no mathematical formula. Instead, one finds value judgments.
But also there are socio-economic dynamics that are objective -- in other words, outside an individual's head. And there is not universal agreement as to how those dynamics work and what should be employed to meet agreed to goals.
Regarding conflicts in economic and political philosophy, Francis Fukuyama pointed out in 1989 in an article entitled "The End of History," that in the 20th century there were two major challenges to liberalism: fascism and communism. Fukuyama wrote:
The former [fascism] saw the political weakness, materialism, anomie, and lack of community of the West as fundamental contradictions in liberal societies that could only be resolved by a strong state that forged a new "people" on the basis of national exclusiveness.
As for Communism, in his "End of History" article Fukuyama detailed the decline in appeal of the Soviet Union's brand of socialism -- a couple of years before the Soviet Union collapsed. And he wrote of the decline of collectivism in China. He wrote of China's Communist Party in 1978 deciding to decollectivize agriculture, reducing the role of the state in agriculture "to that of a tax collector." China had been taking what Mao derisively called the "capitalist road," and China began collaborating with international capitalism in trade and accepting investments within its borders -- a major shift in the Communist Party's view of the world.
As Fukuyama wrote in 1989, "ideological grounds for major conflict between nations" were passing away. Fukuyama had in mind the ideology of Karl Marx, which embodied a history of struggle between economic classes culminating in a classless society -- an end of history of sorts. Fukuyama saw a different end of a history: the triumph ideologically of economic liberalism and democracy.
In Europe were welfare states that were essentially capitalist. Germany had recovered from World War II and was united. Japan had recovered economically and was a democracy, and democracy and the capitalist model were pursued by most other Asian nations. Going into the 21st century, a belief in democracy, the rule of law and the tolerance that allowed order was overwhelmingly dominant in the world.
Nobody in power was speaking against democracy, including the five Communist powers that remained: China, Vietnam, Laos, North Korea, Cuba. Democracy had been a part of the political ideology of Marxist-Leninists, as reflected in the use of "democracy" in the official title of communist states: the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, for example, and the German Democratic Republic (GDR).
And monarchical or dictatorial authoritarianism was passé. Authoritarian rulers remained -- in Burma, Iraq and Africa. There were rulers who were pretending to be democratic, and states that were far from being mature democracies, but authoritarian rule, and empire, had become dirty words across the globe -- empire because it was authoritarian.
Going into the 21st century, political contests were divided on a number of issues, and a prominent issue was how much and whom to tax. In the U.S., during his campaign for the presidency in 2000, George W. Bush promised to "reduce taxes for everyone in every bracket" and to "abolish" the estate tax. Bush was looking forward to businessmen investing more in jobs. He wanted the middle class to help the economy by spending their money as they saw fit. President Bush had his eye on economic growth and reasonably full employment, boasting often of the strength of the U.S. economy.
Contributing to a political philosophy similar to that of President Bush was an influential conservative and foremost anti-tax crusader, Grover Norquist. He was past executive director (1978 to 1982) of the National Taxpayers Union and a Republican Party organizer who had helped propel Bush from Governor of Texas to the presidency. Norquist's position on taxes appeared in the title of his book, published in March, 2008: Leave Us Alone: Getting the Government's Hands Off Our Money, Our Guns, Our Lives. Norquist think-alikes, adhering to a similar individualism, spoke of "nanny" governments in Europe.
Conservatives in the U.S. spoke of wanting to avoid "Europeanizing" their country, and Denmark was one of the European countries they had in mind. The political philosophy of many Danes was such that they supported their government taxing 50 percent of their income -- for benefits such as free university education, birth to death social insurance, and health care.
In Europe, welfare states had arisen in response to the Great Depression of the early 1930s. The Great Depression had created a popular demand for governmental intervention to maintain well being, including an adequate level of employment -- as in the United States with the presidency of Franklin Roosevelt. Europe had its Social Democrat Parties, which were close to the labor movement but at odds with Marxist-Leninist socialists. And in Britain was the Labor Party. With political power these parties abandoned low taxation in favor of higher taxes in times of prosperity in order to provide social services.
Europe had its conservatives -- beyond throne and altar conservatism of the 1800s. Among them was Margaret Thatcher of Britain, who had been prime minister from 1979 to 1990. She belonged to a school of economic thought had belonged to the economic and political philosophies of Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek. She championed mass freedom to innovate over bureaucratic economic planning. She believed as von Mises and Hayek did that a few bureaucrats trying to constrict economic development into a plan of their making -- no matter how bright -- were not superior to a society-wide freedom to innovate, to allocate resources and consumers to spend their money as they please. She believed in letting capitalism work as little fettered by regulation as possible. She wrote that "every regulation represents a restriction of liberty, every regulation has a cost."
Thatcher wanted reduced state intervention, free markets and more entrepreneurialism. She has been described as having a mandate to reverse the UK's economic decline. And she did increase Britain's economic growth, but like Eisenhower vis-a-vis Roosevelt's New Deal, she left institutions created by her reformer predecessors in place. This included Britain's health care system, which she tried to modify. But she left office in 1990 with Britain's healthcare system in tact. She disliked the nationalization of railways and had refused to ride trains, but she left office with railways remaining "nationalized."
Thatcher's government was followed into the 20th century by Labor governments. Rather than campaigning to create a healthcare system close to what then existed in the United States, by 2008, Britain's out-of-office Conservative Party was talking about creating a commission to convince people to take better care of themselves. "The Labor government" said conservative Andrew Lansley, "has failed to make public health a priority. Existing strategies are fragmented and contradictory." Also, the Conservative Party had adamantly turned green and its members were being described as tree-huggers. Britain's conservatives were supporting more rail rather than more airline flights, because rail was economically and environmentally better.
Europe had other conservative leaders. There was Silvio Berlusconi of Italy, a successful businessman and prime minister in his third term in 2008. He has been anti-Left and anti-Communist and leader of a center-right coalition. His concern has been improving Italy's economy, reducing the public debt and reducing Italy's tax burden, aiming at an income tax-rate of 33 percent, down from 43 percent. And Berlusconi was supportive of the Bush administration's foreign policy agenda.
Another conservative in 2008 was France's President Nicolas Sarkozy. He was the leader of a center-right political party called the Union for a Popular Movement (UPM), founded in 2002, a party joined by former Gaullist party members and other conservatives. Sarkozy ran for office in early 2007, emphasizing law and order. He favored shifting the treatment of criminals from "solicitude" to punishment. In office he supported an $18 billion tax cut to spur economic growth, and he favored increasing economic competitiveness by reducing state intervention in economic matters.
Sweden and Norway had conservative political parties, as did Denmark. These parties were in and out of power as their societies wrestled with the degree to which they wanted to preserve incentives and individualism. General elections in Sweden gave "conservatives" enough votes to form governments in 1976, 1979, 1991, and in 2006. The new government in 2006 was led by Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt, 41. (Like Britain, Sweden was a monarchy.) Reinfeldt headed a coalition with a narrow majority in parliament. He was critical of Sweden's welfare state. He argued for a "neo-liberal" society, described in Wikipedia as entailing "individual liberty, freedom of choice, free markets, free trade, and decentralized decision-making." In 2008 Reinfeldt's liberal-conservative Moderate Party was supporting tax cuts for low and middle income groups. He was also supporting a reduction in unemployment benefits as an incentive to encourage people to return to work.
Asia had its political moderates and economic pragmatists. Pragmatists in power built emerging economies using a combination of free entrepreneurship and government programs. Lee Kuan Yew, prime minister of Singapore from 1959 to 1990, made Singapore into as an "economic tiger." He described his youthful political beginnings as a "beer-swilling bourgeois." He had aligned himself with communists because that was where the people were at that time before the British gave Singapore its independence. In 1961, Lee put Singapore on the path of industrialization and moved to attract foreign investment -- before China moved in this direction. He offered tax incentives and managed employer-employee relationships that satisfied workers to the extent that major strike activity ended. His government was involved in the creation of infrastructure such as the country's airport, port, roads, and other communications networks. His government was active in the promotion of tourism and the suppression of corruption and crime, including an indiscriminate disposing of chewing gum. Chewing gum was banned in Singapore beginning in 1992.
South Korea's economic success came after the Korean War ended in 1953. Economic development was spurred by government intervention in the economy under the authoritarian government of Park Chung-hee. Since his assassination in 1979, South Korea has had its democrats and reformers who might be classified as a little left-of-center. But in 2008 a businessman-conservative was elected president: Lee Myung-bak, 58, member of the Grand National Party and former Hyundai CEO. As president in 2008 he aimed at creating a 7 percent annual economic growth and making South Korea the world's seventh largest economy, and he had a plan for a grand canal from Pusan to Seoul. He also favored tax cuts, and in October, 2008, during the global financial crisis, he announced plans for further tax cuts and a reduction of government spending.
Pragmatism was also inspiring China's Communist Party. Marxism was supposed to be empirical, or scientific, and Party leaders looking at objective circumstances were concerned with well-functioning free markets, incentives, economic growth and the global economic stability and cooperation needed to achieve continued economic success. China’s Communist Party allowed a lot of free enterprise and learned that it had to address abuses. It increased regulations for example to combat corruptions to milk and the manufacture of toys with dangerous levels of lead. A major area where China's Communist Party differed in opinion from much of the rest of the world was political rather than economic: its single party political system. It held that at this time in China's history competing political parties would be detrimental to China's interest, which they saw as one and the same as their interest. China's Communist Party was mindful of China's recent history of political chaos. It held to view that civic-minded people could join their Party and contend there with competing ideas -- within the context of support for the 20th century revolutions against the old ways that had preceded the coming to power of the Party.
And, of course, there was Japan, which in per capita GDP in 2007 ranked just ahead of the European Union and France and was ahead of the United States in health as measured in infant mortality and life-expectancy. Japan was led by its Liberal Democratic Party, a conservative party compared to the party to its left, the Democratic Party, but these were the conservatives who had initiated government partnership with industry, through the Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) and continued to maintain birth to death social insurance and welfare. In 2005 Japan's government was spending an estimated 3.5 percent of the country's GDP on education compared to 5.3 percent for the United States and spending less on health care. Japan in 2007 was plowing back into its economy an investment that was 23.2 percent of its GDP, compared to 15.5 percent for the United States. Japan was running up a large trade surpluses, while the U.S. was running up large deficits. Japan was also running up a huge gross public debt: in 2008 around 180 percent of GDP compared to something like 74 percent by the administration of George W. Bush. But income distriubution in Japan was more equitable. According to 2007 estimates, in Japan the top 10 percent of earners were earning 21.7 percent of total incomes, compared to 30 percent for the United States. And the bottom 10 percent in Japan were earning 4.8 percent of the total, compared to 2 percent for the United States.
In the United States a conservative opposition to Franklin Roosevelt's response to the Great Depression, his New Deal, arose in the 1950s. The Republican Party's Senator Robert Taft of Ohio was called "Mr. Conservative." He stood apart from the more liberal wing of the Republican Party, including President Dwight Eisenhower, who had accepted New Deal reforms and didn't support repeal of the top income tax rate (a rate at 91 percent).
Republicans, and Margaret Thatcher in Britain, accepted and found comfort in the ideas of Milton Fiedman, who in the 1970s was become a well known economist. Friedman focused on the role of money supply in inflation. He described the market as a self-correcting, and to quote Kevin Phillips, "that government interference with the operation of the market was ill-advised and doomed to failure." And Phillips describes Friedman as defending speculators and greed. [note].
Senator Goldwater succeeded Taft as a leader of the new Conservatism, and William F. Buckley and others gave the conservative movement focus with the new magazine the National Review. Goldwater lost his bid for the presidency in 1964, and Goldwater's supporters turned to a good speechmaker among them, Ronald Reagan, who won the presidency in 1980.
Reagan had his contradictions. He remembered President Roosevelt with fondness and respect, but he also said "Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem." Reagan was an opponent of the progressive income tax and high taxes instituted by the Roosevelt administration. Progressive taxation had taken a large chunk of the incomes of the most wealthy of Americans, including industrialists and less wealthy movie stars like himself. Ronald Reagan claimed that he had been "in the ninety-four percent tax bracket" [note].
Conservatives and the Reagan administration embraced "supply-side economics," a phrase coined in 1975 by a journalist that referred to the ideas of economists Robert Mundell and Arthur Laffer. Basically this was a belief that reducing the taxes would encourage people to produce more goods and services. And this, they believed, would allow the economy to grow without paying for that growth with rising inflation. It was seen as an alternative to a Keynesian approach to restoring the economy: money into the hands of common people, increasing the demand for products.
With the supply-side theory was the Laffer Curve, which was supposed to demonstrate that higher taxes reduced incentive to pursue wealth. At the high end of the curve, of course, were taxes so high that entrepreneurship would be non-existent.
Some who preferred the Keynesian approach called supply-side economics "trickle down economics," meaning that wealth that went to producers of goods and services would eventually trickle down to the masses.
President Reagan believed that with supply-side economics his government could maintain expenditures, cut tax rates, and balance the budget. His presidency benefited from the policy of the chairman of the Federal Reserve, Paul Volcker, a Democrat who had been appointed by Reagan predecessor, Jimmy Carter. The Federal Reserve shrank the money supply, with the approval of Reagan. Supply-side theory held that cutting taxes alone was sufficient to grow the economy. Volcker, at any rate, squeezed inflation from the economy while causing pain of a recession that was short-lived. With inflation down, interest rates were lowered, the economy benefited and unemployment fell.
Economic growth did not produce enough in tax revenues to balance the budget. The Reagan administration had inherited a budget deficit was that was 2.5 percent of the economy, with an interest payment rate on the national debt (defined) at $69 billion. When Reagan left office in 1989 the budget deficit had increased to 5 percent of the economy, and budget deficits had contributed to a larger national debt. Interest payments on the national debt had increased to $169 billion.
Before becoming Reagan's vice-president, George Herbert Walker Bush had called Reagan's economics, "voodoo economics." As Reagan's vice president he was a good Republican team player, and when he accepted the Party's nomination for president in 1988 he told the delegates "Read my lips: no new taxes." Recession arose during his administration. The deficit grew and Bush felt obliged to raise taxes. Many ideological Republicans were outraged, including Grover Norquist and House Whip Newt Gingrich. Gingrich claimed that Bush having raised taxes destroyed for years to come the Republican Party's most potent election plank.
President G. H. W. Bush came close to a balanced budget, but he did not raise taxes enough to successfully combat a rising national debt. When he left office in January 1993, the national debt as a percentage of GDP was higher than when Reagan left office. Some of the money involved in the nation debt was owed to foreign governments. The United States was suffering from its buying more from abroad than it was selling. Businesses and the Reagan and Bush administrations were looking toward economic help from consumers. Consumers in the U.S. were being encouraged to buy rather than save and practice frugality.
Conservative rule was interrupted in 1993 following the election of Bill Clinton. Clinton and his economic advisors were not fans of supplyside economics. Clinton signed into law one income tax increase, in 1993. It created tax rates of 36 percent and 39.6 for individuals and a 35 percent income tax rate for corporations. A booming economy, produced in part by the new demand for computers increased tax revenues substantially, and by 1997 there was a budget surplus of less than one percent of GDP.
Clinton left office with a budget surplus of 2.4 percent of GDP -- after having cut military spending by that same amount. And the National Debt during the Clinton administration dropped. Clinton's successor, George W. Bush, began his first term believing in supply-side economics and that free markets provided the greatest possible equity and prosperity. He adhered to the economic philosophy of the new conservative movement that any interference with the market process decreased social well being. Bush believed in voluntary regulation, and he and his fellow conservatives believed that unregulated free markets corrected themselves. For them there was no such thing as a bubble in an economy; free markets would maintain an equilibrium hostile to bubbles.
Government spending on publicly owned projects -- roads, ports, bridges, was to be kept at a minimum or left to local governments, except for military projects for the sake of national security. As president, Bush was to ask no sacrifices from the upper or middle class for the wars the U.S. was engaged in. Shopping at the mall was to reign while war was pursued.
In May 2003 President Bush signed into law a tax plan designed to reduce taxes and stimulate economic growth. The act reduced the long-term individual income tax rate on capital gains to 15 percent, and it significantly reduced the amount of tax paid by investors on dividends and capital gains. A statement signed by 450 economists, including 10 Nobel Prize Laureates, opposed the bill. Two economists called the tax cuts a reverse government redistribution of wealth. The liberal economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman claimed that the great bulk of the tax cuts would benefit the top 2 percent of the population and a full 42 percent of the tax cuts would benefit people making more than $300,000. More than 50 million taxpayers, he claimed, would receive no tax cut at all. The supply-side economist and pundit, Larry Kudlow, credited President Bush's supply-side economics and tax cut of 2003 with having triggered an "economic boom." In 2005 he called it the "Bush boom."
The budget deficit returned. By late October, 2008, it was around 2.7 percent of GDP. Military spending was a little more than 4 percent of GDP. Interest on the national debt for 2008 was rising to more than $500 billion. Military expenditures for the year were to be a little more than $600 billion, and health and human services a little more than 700 billion. By September 2008 the national debt had risen to around 70 percent of GDP.
One of the world's most successful financiers, George Soros, was speaking of over-investing rather than markets self-correcting. In his book The Crisis of Global Capitalism, published in 1998, Soros described the view of markets adhered to by some in the United States as "market fundamentalism." Some predictions by Soros did not happen. But by October 2008 a large bubble burst. The greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression occurred.
In the U.S. the regulatory system was described as not having caught up with new financial structures. And Washington Post columnist David Ignatius described hedge fund managers who had "fooled themselves" into believing they had engineered highly leveraged investments without risk. Ignatius wrote that their "make-believe world" began to crash in August 2007. They had created paper assets out of pools of mortgages, and in a falling market nobody knew what they were worth. A crisis of confidence and a banking crisis developed. Lenders across the globe were part of the credit crisis.
President Bush joined other world leaders in trying to keep the economy working by bailing out financial institutions -- lending money being a necessary grease that kept the economic machine functioning. A few conservatives in the U.S. stuck to their commitment to free market capitalism and opposed government bailouts, but their opposition went nowhere.
There were economists who complained that across the decades there had been too much credit buying. Fareed Zakaria wrote that "Household debt [had] ballooned from $680 billion in 1974 to $14 trillion today." He described every city, county and state wanting to preserve its proliferating operations without raising taxes, and doing so by borrowing. He described Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan as having "refused to inflict pain."
The U.S. was described as entering a new era. There had been decades of trade imbalance, with China among others buying up U.S. assets and sitting on piles of U.S. currency.
Meanwhile the division between conservative supply-siders and liberal economists continued. Reforms during the Roosevelt and Truman years had contributed to the development of the middle class beyond what it had been before the Great Depression -- through government actions as opposed to Reagan's comment that government was the problem. In his campaign for the presidency, Barack Obama spoke of helping the middle class. He advocated raising taxes on those earning more than $200,000 per year and bringing back the estate tax. He argued that the rate at which he taxed businesses and other wealthy people would be rolled back from President Bush's tax cuts. He spoke of the Bush administration's "trickle-down" policies and accused his opponent John McCain of having embraced this approach "for the last eight years." The election, wrote the Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne, was a referendum on "trickle down economics." [note]
McCain was campaigning with the slogan "country first," but he and his running mate ridiculed the notion that wealthy people paying taxes as a patriotic duty. McCain described Obama's position as "tax and spend," as "spreading the wealth" and as socialism. It was an historic conservatism. In 1935 some conservatives described Social Security as socialist. In 1965 some conservatives described Medicare as socialist. It was a point of view expressed in 2008 on the internet with the claim that in electing Obama the U.S. would have its first socialist government, socialism as practiced in Europe, a socialism that creates regulations concerning every aspect of our life and therefore less freedom.
John McCain described Obama as "the far left of American politics." Meanwhile candidate Obama was advocating belt tightening, eliminating government programs that do not work and increasing jobs by way of investment in infrastructure and new sources of energy, through government spending. And Obama was surrounding himself with establishment economic advisors. There was Laura Tyson, who had been in the Clinton administration, had been Dean of the London Business School and Dean of the London School of Economics and a director at Morgan Stanley, AT&T and Eastman Kodak. There was Paul Volcker the former chairman of the Federal Reserve, and Warren Buffett, who in early 2008 was ranked as the richest man in the world. There was Robert Rubin, Secretary of the Treasury for Bill Clinton and Chairman of Citigroup, Harvard Corporation, et cetera. And Lawrence Summers, former Clinton administration Secretary of Treasury and former Harvard University President. All of them have been considered by most interested parties as economic centrists, or moderates, but certainly not extremists.
Working against McCain and the Republicans was a substantial body of opinion that was displeased by the earnings of corporate executives. For example, the head of General Motors, a failing company, was making ten times what the head of Toyota Motors was making. The economist Paul Krugman pointed out that the distribution of wealth in the U.S. had returned to about what it was in 1920.
Obama was describing his economic plan as benefiting working people which, in turn, would benefit investors -- a trickle up theory of economics similar to Henry Ford's decision back in 1914 to increase the pay of his workers to $5 per hour. Other industrialists had hated Ford's idea, but Ford believed that more money to his workers would allow them to buy his cars. Believers in "trickle up" held that putting more money into the hands of common people helped capitalism work better.
Following their losses in the elections of 2008, conservatives in the United States spoke of standing by their principles in preparation for a comeback, and they attempted to define those principles.
The leading Republican in the House of Representatives, John Boehner of Ohio, spoke of the "principles of freedom, opportunity, security and individual liberty -- the principles upon which the GOP [Grand Ol' Party] was founded." This did not clarify the difference between his political philosophy and that of Democrats, who also believed in freedom, opportunity and individual liberty. But Perhaps Boehner believed that Republicans believed in these more strongly than did Democrats.
The website "Voters for Republican Values," presented a "Declaration of Principles." The first was "To humbly seek the Divine guidance of Almighty God, our Creator." Here is perhaps another difference with Democrats that might be a matter of degree. Conservatives are more intensely religious. Their politics is more religiously driven, as in two of the other principles listed: defending "all innocent life, the born and the unborn," and defending "marriage as the union of one man and one woman, the traditional family as the foundational building block of our society and recognizing parent’s God given rights, especially to direct their children’s education."
Other principles mentioned were similar to those of Democrats. This included defending the Bill of Rights, protecting private property rights and favoring a "market driven economic system." A difference with the Democrats would have been sharper with something like "opposing any form of government ownership of industry." The list did include an abhorrence of taxes: "All tax increases should be opposed until the tax burden is only what is required to support the government’s constitutional responsibilities." And there was the conservative's desire for a judiciary that does not legislate.
Back to religion, there is among U.S. conservatives more of an emphasis on the U.S. Constitution as having been created by God rather than by humans. The conservative commentator, Rush Limbaugh, joined in this, saying:
Don’t believe the conventional wisdom of our day that claims the Founding Fathers were anything but orthodox, Bible-believing Christians.
Limbaugh went on to say:
A truism I’ve often proclaimed is: “Liberalism poisons the soul.” Originally, it may have sounded harsh to some, trite to others; scintillating to the politically astute. Today, I am convinced it is more on the mark than ever. Here’s what it really means to me: Modern-day liberalism is like a disease or an addiction that literally has the power to destroy the character of the person who falls under its spell. [note]
Among Republicans expressing the values they should cling to going forward from political defeat, there was some belief in humility and fairness. Candidate McCain had frequently spoken with humility. And the First Lady, Laura Bush, had spoken for civility. But, among other Republicans speaking of principles, little was said against bearing of false witness -- despite their professed Christianity. Republicans questioned Obama's patriotism. Sarah Palin described him as "palling around with terrorists." Senator Elizabeth Dole, who spoke of principles and values, tried to discredit her opponent by associating her with an atheist. Whether Palin and Dole realized the falsity in the "guilt by association" remains unknown. Republicans were concerned about their image, but, in expressing principles they should cling to for the sake of overcoming their recent defeats, they were not admitting that impressions of them as practitioners of slander and dirty tricks had any validity.
January 19: Paul Krugman writes in his New York Times column that "Old-fashioned voodoo economics — the belief in tax-cut magic — has been banished from civilized discourse. The supply-side cult has shrunk to the point that it contains only cranks, charlatans, and Republicans."
March 1: Canada's prime minsiter, Stephen Harper, leader of Canada’s Conservative Party, has been a believer in regulations of the banking industry. He has been prime minister since 2002. Under his leadership, Canada, according to Fareez Zakaria, who introduced him for a television interview, said that Canada has had no bank failures or bailouts.
Going into the 21st century, it was commonly accepted that ultimate political authority lay with the state, including the authority to employ violence. Religious denominations accepted the rule of law. If a group believed in human sacrifices, the forced marriages of children, polygamy or any other practice that was against state law, their right to worship as they pleased was legitimately over-ruled by the power of the state.
Belief in the separation of church and state was at times made into a political issue in the United States, but there and in Europe and elsewhere in the world the separation of church and state was common politics. This embodied the belief that government should not enforce religious beliefs upon its citizens, that regarding religious belief citizens were free to choose. In the U.S. this is expressed in the First Amendment to the Constitution, as follows:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.
The values that one drew from religion were to be applied through the democratic process. If one wanted to abolish abortion he could vote for legislators who were like-minded, or he could organize with like-minded persons to lobby legislators.
It was common political philosophy going into the 21st century that a nation-state should embody the values of its citizens in general.
Terror, like much other activity, is a political act. During 20th century, revolutionaries used terror against authoritarian societies with the idea that they were trying to win the minds and the support of others who were victims of authoritarian government. Terror was a useful tactic only where electoral politics was not an avenue of political change.
There were revolutionaries who were guided by a political philosophy, and the successful ones were Marxist and aiming at the creation of democracy from a Marxist perspective.
Every movement had those who put the aim of the movement above all else. There was in their political philosophy less philosophy and more impulse than in the outlook of others who shared the same goals. They were quick to see people who did not share their views as miscreants worthy of exclusion from their society in some form or other. In the Middle Ages this form of exclusion included burning at the stake. In the French Revolution it included being guillotined. During China's Cultural Revolution it included sending scholars to hard labor in the countryside or to prison, and in some instances execution. Beating people to death was a spontaneous act of a gang of individuals motivated to similar exclusions. This involved philosophy only so far its leaders of the movement approved or disapproved it enough to act against such spontaneity.
Into the 21st century a movement existed for the purpose of establishing what was perceived to be religious principles. Through civilization were people whose political philosophy was based on religion and who believed in terror as a means to their achieving their goals. Now this was al-Qaeda. They believed that they were acting on behalf of God and that God, therefore, was on their side. It was common conceit. They believed that they knew God better than others. And their political actions were unmitigated by respect for international or state laws. Al-Qaeda's terrorism intended to punish rather than to win the hearts and minds of the multitude where their terror was being committed. It was more impulse and faith driven than it was politically and economically philosophical, and this made it different from those movements that succeeded in the 20th century -- the civil rights movement in the U.S., led by Martin Luther King, among them. Success of a political movement often had an economic component and usually required political reasoning and strategy.
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