Tentacles of Rage

A full week later, George Bush's vision of an "ownership society" (as proposed in the acceptance speech) is seeming more and more like a strange oasis of semi-coherence in the intellectual desert of Republican Party "ideology". Really, the best way to democratize the rich-get-richer idea is to create a philosophy of ownership and self-direction, which can be expanded so that things like Social Security and health insurance can be "owned" by you, the People, and let the godlike Market provide for the fittest. (See the new Get Your War On for more information)

Lewis Lapham's latest, Tentacles of Rage, gives us an engaging history of how the Republican Party's parasitic ideology -- including the latest "ownership" manifestation -- became triumphant. It's hard to improve on the following paragraph:

How does one reconcile the demand for small government with the desire for an imperial army, apply the phrases "personal initiative" and "self-reliance" to corporation presidents utterly dependent on the federal subsidies to the banking, communications, and weapons industries, square the talk of "civility" with the strong-arm methods of Kenneth Starr and Tom DeLay, match the warmhearted currencies of "conservative compassion" with the cold cruelty of "the unfettered free market," know that human life must be saved from abortionists in Boston but not from cruise missiles in Baghdad? In the glut of paper I could find no unifying or fundamental principle except a certain belief that money was good for rich people and bad for poor people. It was the only point on which all the authorities agreed, and no matter where the words were coming from (a report on federal housing, an essay on the payment of Social Security, articles on the sorrow of the slums or the wonder of the U.S. Navy) the authors invariably found the same abiding lesson in the tale—money ennobles rich people, making them strong as well as wise; money corrupts poor people, making them stupid as well as weak.

I'm not sure whether money would corrupt me or not, how about let's give it a try? Cut my payroll taxes and watch that Desrosiers kish-kash fly real fast into the bartender's till...

In discussing the neocon birth throes during the Age of Aquarius, Lapham cites a curious and influential document, Confidential memo: Attack on American Free Enterprise System by (future Supreme Court Justice) Lewis Powell. Dated August 23, 1971, the memo's recommendations included mass re-education for a pro-market philosophy (including the review and revision of school textbooks), promoting a general free-market-ideologue infiltration of academia, and suggesting a direct connection between capitalism and individual freedom. I think we can see the origins of the "ownership society" pretty clearly...