Bread and circuses, without the bread.
A quote from Greer, and thoughts on same.
"When the neoconservative movement burst on the American scene in the last years of the 20th century, some thinkers in the older and more, well, conservative ends of the American right noted with a good deal of disquiet that the "neocons" had very little in common with conservatism in any historically meaningful sense of that word. In the Anglo-American world, conservatism had its genesis in the writings of Edmund Burke (1729-1797), who argued for an organic concept of society, and saw social and political structures as phenomena evolving over time in response to the needs and possibilities of the real world. Burke objected, not to social change-he was a passionate supporter of the American Revolution, for instance-but to the notion, popular among revolutionary ideologues of his time (and of course since then as well), that it was possible to construct a perfect society according to somebody’s abstract plan, and existing social structures should therefore be overthrown so that this could be done.
By and large, Burke’s stance was the intellectual driving force behind Anglo-American conservatism from Burke’s own time until the late twentieth century, though of course-politics being what they are-it was no more exempt from being used as rhetorical camouflage for various crassly selfish projects than were the competing ideas on the other end of the political spectrum. Still, beginning in the 1920s, a radically different sense of what conservatism ought to be took shape on the fringes of the right wing in America and elsewhere, and moved slowly inward over the decades that followed. The rise to power of the neoconservatives in 2000 marked the completion of this trajectory.
This new version of conservatism stood in flat contradiction to Burke and the entire tradition descended from him. It postulated that a perfect society could indeed be brought into being, by following a set of ideological prescriptions set out by Ayn Rand and detailed by an assortment of economists, political scientists, and philosophers, of whom Leo Strauss was the most influential. It called for a grand crusade that would not only make over the United States in the image of its ideal, but spread the same system around the world by any means necessary. It argued that bourgeois sentimentality about human rights and the rule of law should not stand in the way of the glorious capitalist revolution, and went on to create a familiar landscape of prison camps, torture, and aggressive war waged under dubious pretexts. Neoconservatism, in other words, was not conservatism at all; it was to Communism precisely what Satanism is to Christianity, a straightforward inversion that adopted nearly every detail of the Third International’s philosophy, rhetoric and practice and simply reversed some of the value judgments."
http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/2011/11/choice-of-contemplations.html
It's difficult to imagine a better Soviet double-agent against capitalism than Ayn Rand, Norquist, et al.
By spreading the memes that laissez faire should be taken to absolute extremes instead of capitalism kept functioning with counterbalances, that the state should be 'drowned in a bathtub' and the 'beast starved' instead of used to advance the common good and the free flow of goods, services, and capital, the worst aspects and excesses of the capitalist system are emphasized with predictable catastrophic effect.
"Adam Smith himself is critical of government and officialdom, but is no champion of laissez-faire. He believes that the market economy he has described can function and deliver its benefits only when its rules are observed - when property is secure and contracts are honoured. The maintenance of justice and the rule of law is therefore vital. " http://www.adamsmith.org/the-wealth-of-nations/
More Smith:
http://www.adamsmith.org/adam-smith-quotes/
And here we are today.
Corporatocracy has usurped the Republic.
Corporations are considered people, my friend.
All branches of government are for sale to the highest bidder.
Mainstream media is owned by those very same bidders, bought and consolidated and un-accountable, with 'entertainment' put ahead of facts and analysis, leaving only propaganda.
As a capitalist, this is anathema to me.
As a citizen, this irresponsible experimenting with critical systems infuriates me.
As one who leans libertarian, the enshrining of power in money instead of the empowerment of the individual (in the name of big-L Libertarianism, no less, and funded so transparently by said big money interests) is a perversion.
"When the neoconservative movement burst on the American scene in the last years of the 20th century, some thinkers in the older and more, well, conservative ends of the American right noted with a good deal of disquiet that the "neocons" had very little in common with conservatism in any historically meaningful sense of that word. In the Anglo-American world, conservatism had its genesis in the writings of Edmund Burke (1729-1797), who argued for an organic concept of society, and saw social and political structures as phenomena evolving over time in response to the needs and possibilities of the real world. Burke objected, not to social change-he was a passionate supporter of the American Revolution, for instance-but to the notion, popular among revolutionary ideologues of his time (and of course since then as well), that it was possible to construct a perfect society according to somebody’s abstract plan, and existing social structures should therefore be overthrown so that this could be done.
By and large, Burke’s stance was the intellectual driving force behind Anglo-American conservatism from Burke’s own time until the late twentieth century, though of course-politics being what they are-it was no more exempt from being used as rhetorical camouflage for various crassly selfish projects than were the competing ideas on the other end of the political spectrum. Still, beginning in the 1920s, a radically different sense of what conservatism ought to be took shape on the fringes of the right wing in America and elsewhere, and moved slowly inward over the decades that followed. The rise to power of the neoconservatives in 2000 marked the completion of this trajectory.
This new version of conservatism stood in flat contradiction to Burke and the entire tradition descended from him. It postulated that a perfect society could indeed be brought into being, by following a set of ideological prescriptions set out by Ayn Rand and detailed by an assortment of economists, political scientists, and philosophers, of whom Leo Strauss was the most influential. It called for a grand crusade that would not only make over the United States in the image of its ideal, but spread the same system around the world by any means necessary. It argued that bourgeois sentimentality about human rights and the rule of law should not stand in the way of the glorious capitalist revolution, and went on to create a familiar landscape of prison camps, torture, and aggressive war waged under dubious pretexts. Neoconservatism, in other words, was not conservatism at all; it was to Communism precisely what Satanism is to Christianity, a straightforward inversion that adopted nearly every detail of the Third International’s philosophy, rhetoric and practice and simply reversed some of the value judgments."
http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/2011/11/choice-of-contemplations.html
It's difficult to imagine a better Soviet double-agent against capitalism than Ayn Rand, Norquist, et al.
By spreading the memes that laissez faire should be taken to absolute extremes instead of capitalism kept functioning with counterbalances, that the state should be 'drowned in a bathtub' and the 'beast starved' instead of used to advance the common good and the free flow of goods, services, and capital, the worst aspects and excesses of the capitalist system are emphasized with predictable catastrophic effect.
"Adam Smith himself is critical of government and officialdom, but is no champion of laissez-faire. He believes that the market economy he has described can function and deliver its benefits only when its rules are observed - when property is secure and contracts are honoured. The maintenance of justice and the rule of law is therefore vital. " http://www.adamsmith.org/the-wealth-of-nations/
More Smith:
http://www.adamsmith.org/adam-smith-quotes/
And here we are today.
Corporatocracy has usurped the Republic.
Corporations are considered people, my friend.
All branches of government are for sale to the highest bidder.
Mainstream media is owned by those very same bidders, bought and consolidated and un-accountable, with 'entertainment' put ahead of facts and analysis, leaving only propaganda.
As a capitalist, this is anathema to me.
As a citizen, this irresponsible experimenting with critical systems infuriates me.
As one who leans libertarian, the enshrining of power in money instead of the empowerment of the individual (in the name of big-L Libertarianism, no less, and funded so transparently by said big money interests) is a perversion.