On Crying Wolf

Among the various scare tactics used against Obama -- a candidate I personally find unremarkable, effectively running as the Generic Democrat that has been whooping the Generic Republican in the polls practically since dinosaurs walked the earth -- the one calling him a "socialist" amuses me in particular. With the rampant nationalization and government aided consolidation that's gone on, conservatives throwing around "socialist" has become so garbage that (as kaligula pointed out) even Hugo Chavez has standing to laugh. Yet, there's a deeper issue behind the much-deserved snark...

Anyone familiar with historic conservatism (read: longtime philosophical stances that would fly over the heads of the average Limbaugh listener) knows their number one stated value is Order. Yes, capital O. To the conservatives of those dusty history books, of the pre-mass media era, stability and calm are freakin' awesome, no matter what. That in mind, consider what has tended to happen when the balance of wealth in a nation has shot apart past a certain point. Think about it, picture the uprisings and outpourings of rage, the indiscriminate bloodying, just let them simmer in your head for a bit.

Now, contrary to popular belief among the right-wing, we were never close to a communist overthrow, ever. But I do recall a period in US history where people could get serious votes -- and even in some cases win office -- as self-described socialists. At the moment, well...there is Senator Bernie Sanders.

It has been argued by both liberal intellectuals and radical libertarians -- for different reasons -- that many of the shifts in approaching the economy by government around the New Deal era served to defuse more critical sentiment, "fixing" capitalism or even saving it outright. My own view on correcting such imbalance is more along the lines of crossing neo-Wobbly labor tactics with gradually dismantling the welfare that the wealthy enjoy, but say we humor the more common interpretation: the market faced a crisis, the State stepped in, people put down their pitchforks and went back to work, all was well.

If that's true, then a conservative denouncing a few percentage points on the top income tax bracket as a raging commie plot is, to put it bluntly, playing with fire. It speaks volumes about the modern right-wing that they'd deny history suggesting it could always be worse...

(cross-posted to Psychopolitik)

Added note: I should read your entire post before responding...

Now, contrary to popular belief among the right-wing, we were never close to a communist overthrow, ever.

I think there's a rather mainstream opinion (left, right, and otherwise) that the Great Depression created a substantial risk of a socialist-type rebellion (if it weren't first short circuted by socialist electoral victories). Democrats will sometime bring this up as an example of how great Roosevelt was -- he took the wind out of this movement with his New Deal.

Of course, that was in the 30's. I suspect you were referring to the prospect of some sort of coup in the 50's.

If that's true, then a conservative denouncing a few percentage points on the top income tax bracket as a raging commie plot...

Some conservatives think it's a "slip of the tounge" when Obama says something about "spreading the wealth around". The libertarian conservative school tends to see the wealth/income distribution as being a natural outcome of people acting in a system based on natural rights. An alternative to the "natural rights" school is the conventional school -- our economic system is something that we have made as a society, and the distribution of wealth arises from those rules. When Obama talks about "spreading the wealth around", I think he's using that "conventional" view of economic justice, which I think is actually a quite common view.

I've seen that "conventional" view in two specific places -- once, an economist wrote that he (and the economics profession as a whole) endorse policies that maximize GDP on the premise that if anyone "loses" due to that policy, wealth can simply be transferred from the "winners" to the "losers" such that nobody is worse-off, and some people are better off. This mindset is apparent in the Constitution of the USA, where Intellecutal Property is mentioned as a policy enacted by the state in order to promote the general welfare (not a natural right of the innovators). This attitude is also seen in all economic development policies (protective tarrifs, roads, incorporation, the banking system, etc.).

Once you accept that the government has a role in encouraging economic development, there really isn't any ground on which to object to government intervention to see that the benefits of this development are distributed equally (especially when government intervention may have contributed to the existing inequality). I suppose this is the attitude of the "liberal technocrat".

In a way, from there you could argue that the current US analog to the classic conservative stance is actually the technocratic liberal*. After all, it is largely a position of maintenance -- holding, strengthening, and/or tweaking the system put in place -- these days, argued as a force for calm. The current crop of "conservative" tends more towards a contradictory radicalism: pick and choose what features to tear down and which to leave be based on who they're intended to benefit.

(* - personally I suspect that's the reason behind some of the latest members of the Obamacon crowd. Not due to intricate policy detail, but rather McCain practically having "This Way Be Chaos" stamped on his head in comparison, and they want their Order however they can get it. What in MSM-horserace terms looks like defection is really a homecoming of sorts for such people.)

Oddly enough, I got a similar response from a self-described conservative over at Daily Kos (discussing economic/ecological sustainability):

I'm a conservative, so I don't advocate big changes. From my point of view, I'd like to minimize as much as possible the dire changes you outline above. I can't bring myself to just sit here and accept them. Presumably you have the same view.
We have a pretty good definition of the problem-- too many people, consuming too much in aggregate. I'll suggest some up-front rules for how we'll approach the problem: no genocide, no major wars, no slavery, and no sneaky loopholes that amount to being the functional equivalent of any of these.
Obviously, we can't go into book-length detail on what to do within that definition of the problem and that basic rule set. But the very short version starts with three things-- poverty eradication, education, and women's rights. The slightly longer version turns out to be virtually identical to the complete progressive policy agenda.

You may be interested in this essay discussing Powell's endorsement of Obama as the hope that obama can re-legitimize (or "sanctify") the establishment.