PART I
Political Compass Points:
True Left and True Right
Ask most people what single characteristic defines the difference between republicans and democrats today and they will say that republicans favor small government and democrats prefer large. But this difference, though prevalent recently, is much more a symptom of the politics of the times than a fundamental of enduring distinction between the two parties. The real difference between them, the only one that has remained constant from the beginning of the republic to now, is the method, means, acquisition and disbursement of the resources of the nation as it pertains to the government’s management of taxes and expenditures and natural resources. In other words, it is about the nation’s money and who gets it.
All the contentious social and regional and ethical issues are generally just cover and tactical ornamentation for the core debate at the center of our politics. Obviously with an impending financial collapse at hand the money divide has been pushed ever more obviously into the forefront of our political debate.
The money divide between the two parties may be most distinctly seen, historically, by comparing the presidency of Andrew Jackson with the presidency of Ronald Reagan.
Both these presidents were for small government as the central tenet of their presidency, strict constructionists it would be termed today. Both were martial in attitude and somewhat sharp and bellicose in their opinions – Jackson, of course, was a military man, and Reagan merely military by inclination. Neither cared too much for minorities, Jackson a slave holder and Indian fighter; Reagan, an opponent of affirmative action and “special” rights for minorities, used the residual resentment of racial integration as a base of political support. Neither was an intellectual, both average men of the people who had a rare capacity of understanding and communicating with the common mean of society. Both were larger than life characters, tall, who looked good on a horse. Both exuded the ideal of rugged individualism. Both had nicknames, “Old Hickory” and “the Gipper.” Each was not only successful in his own presidency but founded a movement larger than themselves on which their names were bestowed. Thus you had Jackson democrats and Reagan republicans.
For two politicians elected a century and a half apart the basis of their popularity was remarkably similar in its makeup and their appeal to the public mind was especially strong at the time, only to diminish later. It was not an idealized or remote democracy they preached but down to earth, pragmatic, limited democracy with all the hopes, prejudices and independence of spirit that Americans saw in themselves factored in. It was small government “of” the people more than it was by or for them.
Yet for all their similarities of style and policy no one would ever confuse Jackson with a republican or Reagan with a democrat. Why?
Money. Jackson sought to disenfranchise the Bank of the United States, the crudely instituted, privately held precursor of the Federal Reserve founded by Hamilton, the original republican, and opposed by Jefferson, the original democrat. On the other hand, Reagan’s first act in office was to rewrite the tax code to unabashedly favor the rich and restore the true hierarchical nature of society back to its traditional order.
Some might disagree with this characterization of Jackson and Reagan and say that the real lesson to be drawn from their legacies is that government is never right and can never be trusted and must always be opposed when we have the proper people in place to do so. But this is to misread the comparison for Jackson and Reagan saw government as an evil from their perspective for exactly opposite reasons. Jackson resented government’s becoming an enabler of big money’s consolidation into too few hands. Reagan saw government as evil precisely because it had become a meddlesome impediment to this same consolidation.
In addition, another democrat, Franklin Roosevelt, later used big (for its time) government exactly counter the record of Jackson to achieve the same result – the establishment of a counterweight strong enough to rein in overbearing and entrenched financial institutions which were threatening democratic freedoms and equalities.
Therefore, in their past, as it suited their purposes we see that both parties have at one time or another embraced the concept of lean government and both have been the representative and upholder of fat government. Reagan’s election also reoriented his party and extended its axis to incorporate political domination to an area of the country in which it had never been previously accepted, the south. Driven away from its traditional bastion in the South the democrats inherited the historically republican stronghold of the Northeast as compensation.
Though in general republicans have been more overtly moral and straight-laced, and the democrats have attracted the live and let live set, it is inarguable that both parties are religious in their own ways. In religion then conservatives are the church militant; liberals turn the other cheek type believers. In this respect the South used to be less rigid than the Northeast in its religious practices but that tendency has reversed along with its political orientation.
To this end, conservatives are proponents of the hardware of dogma, they are law enforcers, who, from the Puritans to the fundamentalists of today, from burning witches to prohibition to anti-abortion laws, seek to have their beliefs ensconced into law whether or not they are universally shared. Liberals traditionally concern themselves more with the software of theology, concern for the meek, generosity, tolerance, economic fairness, etc., and write their laws accordingly. In this regard both parties have been for tighter morality and both have been for laxer when it is appropriate to their other current beliefs.
Democrats today are generally more forward leaning and problem solving (although they weren’t in the Jackson era) and progressive in their attitudes, while republicans see themselves as conservators of some older and sometimes highly idealized established order. With the exception of matters of money, where these tendencies are exactly reversed, republicans like to regulate behavior where democrats prefer to allow freedoms to expand on their own.
This has led each party, in its past, to insist that their opponents were consistently misinterpreting the Constitution. Both sides have been in favor of the advancement (relatively) of blacks and minorities and both parties have been in favor of their suppression. In foreign affairs each party has at one time or another been rather more isolationistic than interventionist than the other and vice versa.
At their worst republicans are more accommodating of authoritarianism and class structures. Democrats when they are at their worst blur all distinctions between people to indiscernible chaos. This is because republicans tend to see America more programmatically, from the top down, through the prism of corporate structures, law enforcement agencies, the military services and large economic movements of capital; while democrats see the nation demographically, from the bottom up, as an accumulation of vast numbers of equals, with individual problems and concerns.
Republicans primarily regard our freedom as consisting of freedom from regulation, a type of social and economic laissez-faireism, which ensures the survival of the fittest and devil take the hindmost; while the democrats regard freedom as more of a delicate balance, as an organic whole, where the freedom of each can only be maintained when commensurate with the freedom of all. In this respect democrats regard a central role of government to be the protection of democracy, the regulation of its excesses and the alleviation of abuse and domination of the weaker and poorer by the stronger and richer. Republicans frequently recognize no such necessity and regard law only as the protector of capital, private property and civil order.
Naturally in addition to all of these tendencies both parties have large reservoirs of other self-interests veined in their beings. That’s unavoidable. Neither party is perfectly pure, that’s perfectly clear; nor always right, that’s forever true. It would be wild exaggeration to say that one party is the repository of all that’s good and the other the cesspool of all that’s wrong in the nation, though some would try. In its turn each party has been the party of reform and each party has been the party in need of reform. Each has been the party on the outside of power fighting against the entrenched power of the inside power of the other.
Obviously the republican party is not only composed of wealthy people nor the democrats only of the less well to do. The real roots of the differences between the two parties is far more complicated and deeply cross purposed and psychological than any single explanation of partisanship could ever provide. Science has even lately tried to prove that propensity toward one party or the other is embedded deep in the gene code of each individual.
However, among all the myriad shifts, nuances and changes between the two parties over time it is the one central affiliation of money that for each of them has never changed or altered. The republicans have always supported the interests of Wall Street and the democrats have always been more egalitarian in their pretensions and populist in their political orientation.
Put another way, republicans have always deferred and offered allegiance to the inevitable hierarchy of big money and become reactionary when it is curtailed. This invariably endears them to large religious and economic and political organizations which also require obedience to authority. The democrats have always been more likely to take to the streets to fight against these power structures when they unite and turn oppressive in order to reestablish a more humanist approach to democracy when they feel it is lacking.
This invariably pits democrats (when they are being true to their democratic heritage) against the moneyed interests because democrats – from Jefferson, to Madison, to Jackson, to Franklin Roosevelt, to Kennedy, to Obama - traditionally regard the accumulation of large centers of capital, much like standing armies or too much power in the executive, as a threat in itself to equality, democratic procedures and the ability of the voice of the individual to be heard over money’s deafening din. Great disparity between rich and poor and employer and employee is seen by them as a failure of democratic government to properly fulfill its function.
Republicans - from Hamilton, to Teddy Roosevelt, to Hoover, to Reagan, to Bush, to McCain – are more likely to accept the “natural” accretions and density of great wealth and power into the hands of fewer and fewer people and not only accept and honor that eventuality but often even attempt to expedite it. They tend to see conspicuous consumption and profound inequity as a successful and desirable summary of democracy rather than the visible sign of democracy’s materialistic injustice, corruption and decline.
In short, democrats consider the country only as strong as the weakest of its citizens; while republicans tend to consider the wealth of our strongest and most powerful members as our apotheosis. The pain of the poor is to be pitied more than alleviated.
Therefore, throughout our long political history it is this one salient fact of the distribution of wealth and its effects on the public well being and the operations of our government which has most clearly distinguished republicans from democrats.
And the distribution of money is one of the natural tensions which is meant to balance and meet somewhere in the middle of our political spectrum. In truth, for the country to work and progress properly, both these divergent tendencies must be acknowledged and respected by the other. When one party gets too much power and seeks to oppress and disenfranchise the other the balance is destroyed. For the public, an extreme right or left leaning government is like buying a car that only turns one way. This leads the country mainly in circles.
Unfortunately the balance is difficult to maintain as there is a natural animal temptation for each party to want to carry its tendencies and prejudices to a debilitating extreme when afforded the chance. The longer a party is in power the more peevish and perversely inbred its policies become. It develops hoary old aphorisms which continue to be repeated long after they have ceased being true. Yet, myopically, the possession of this lust for power may grow insidious until it becomes sinister and self-destructive of the very platitudes it continues to use to ensure its remaining in power.
This is what is happening in the United States today. Few could successfully argue that big money isn’t out of control and hasn’t become an enemy of sound government and effective democracy. Elected officials of both parties have shown themselves quite willing to be influenced by the interests and wishes of capital, often to the exclusion of the interests of the country. There is no other single fact or issue which affects their decisions and opinions more. This is primarily due to the unhealthy domination of the republican party as it has come to be practiced.
The republican ideology of Reagan has been preeminent in America for 28 years. The point of its original purpose – the weaning of society off an overbearing influence of Washington – has long since achieved its purpose and yet has continued into the realm of fiscal irresponsibility and intellectual bankruptcy. Like a wind up doll it has continued to beat our heads into brick walls of incompetence, dissimulation, irresolution and wasteful and deficit spending.
Our government has been systematically looted by its protectors. We not only have seen no necessary investment in our infrastructure or support for existing valuable programs, but this group of politicians has actually overspent our budgets by nine trillion or so dollars over this period with no investment in our future to show for it. Their astonishing incompetence is escalating. They have actually doubled the nation’s entire deficit built up over our first two hundred plus years in the last eight years alone. They have effectively emptied out the country’s larder and redistributed it among themselves and their friends and only left the nation with a massive pile of IOUs to show for their belligerent stewardship.
The debit side of the nation’s ledger has been filled with no corollary benefit to weigh against it. We not only have accumulated enormous debt which must be paid down with interest but tremendous shortfalls which have gone begging and still must be paid for even as their costs continue to grow greater. This has been nothing short of the theft of our future for the ease of third rate politicians and the windfall profits of their handlers. The Vandals were more beneficial to Rome than the republicans have become to us today.
As our debt burden steadily increases through the incompetence and venality of our leaders and Wall Street, our status in the world, like a patient with the stink of death on them, continues to diminish, and our interior controls, from ethics, to safety, health, and the primary education of our citizenry deteriorates to an unfathomable bottom somewhere from where it may never be redeemed. Half of an entire generation may be left permanently lagging as a result of this indifference.
The improvident and destructive financialization of our economy has led to the gradual impoverishment and enervation of the nation’s core economic strength and well being. The republicans, (primarily, but often with the assistance of the democrats) have proudly presided over the de-industrialization of our economy. They have tried their best to dismantle our social services while insinuating the “invisible hand” of greed into the taxpayers’ purses and pockets. Showing no consciousness of guilt over these crimes, under any continuation of our current leadership, this malign influence is doomed to continue unabated.
Because when one side of the political debate has become so arrogant or greedy that in refusing to lose they reject all principles of honest democratic debate. And when, they consistently cheat and chisel and refuse to bow even to greater logic or greater public good to achieve equitable solutions to common problems they have clearly moved beyond point of repair.
There are elements of this infestation apparent in the republican party today.
For despite the manifold failures of their specific policies to achieve promised results, they have arrogantly come to believe that they are so right in general that any means justifies any end as long as it continues them in office.
The weapon of choice for the desperate is one of the most devious and destructive known to mankind. It is crime against truth and the war on meaning. It is moral relativism, the political equivalent of jury nullification and any means to an end. Any lie, any misdirection, misconstruction and artfully misapplied word or explanation will do. The only question is not whether it is true but whether it is believed. Perception is reality, reality is what you may convince others to believe.
This is pernicious but thoroughly on display throughout recent elections and prevalent as a tactic in the Bush administration. To them, the public, like the old joke, are like mushrooms, to be kept in the dark and fed manure.
They have acted as if they can willfully engage in any distortion, exaggeration, or dishonesty they are able to get away with, for as long as they can get away with it, until all our democratic procedures (or scientific method which it resembles) have been effectually undercut and rendered useless. They have even frequently rejected the basis of the Constitution’s aegis over their actions when it has suited their purposes.
In such an instance, the best ideas aren’t seized on, the bad ideas are promoted, the proofs are covered up or distorted, self interests become the only rule and means of measurement and objective truth becomes merely another fact to be manipulated and mutilated before it’s discarded. The soul of democracy and the common good that democracy is instituted among men to promote is in these instances fatally compromised.
The last eight years of government have been a laboratory in incompetence and dishonesty. The only thing we have learned is what not to do. Such people and their supporters should not be rewarded for their incompetence.
But here is the genius of the elasticity of democracy. As one party veers too far away from the center of the public good, democracy ideally, through the agency and leadership of the opposition party, like a pendulum, steadily builds pressure to yank it back toward equilibrium the farther it removes from the center. We have seen both parties guilty of overreach and self-aggrandizement like this in their pasts. Now we are engaged in a presidential election which will determine which party’s representative leads the country for the next four years. In our own past we have always risen above our differences and prejudices and limitations to find a greater glory in a higher good. It is yet to be determined whether we will succeed or fall short this time.
