Harpers Magazine

By Thomas Frank



The following from democraticunderground.com]:



(A subscription is required for access to this piece; however, I found this excerpt from Ann Calhoun’s blog.)



As the Fannie Maes sink in the west, and the banks close, and the taxpayer gets stuck again bailing out more failed institutions and stock market manipulations, time to contemplate a recent essay in the latest Harpers, an excerpt from his forthcoming book: “The Wrecking Crew, How a gang of right-wing con men destroyed Washington and made a killing,” by Thomas Frank. Frank, as you recall, wrote “What’s the Matter with Kansas.” Well, what’s the matter with Kansas is now, what’s the matter with America.

Yes, it’s old Reagan, Abramoff, Norquist, Reed. Rove, Bush & Co, and all the associated neocon free-marketer, privatize-it-all, We Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Government Regulation Gang. As Frank concludes, “Take a step back, reader, and see what they have wrought.”

An excerpt:

“Fantastic mis-government is not an accident, nor is it the work of a few bad individuals. It is the consequence of triumph by a particular philosophy of government, by a movement that understands the liberal state as a perversions and considers the market the ideal nexus of human society. This movement is friendly to industry not just by force of campaign contributions but by conviction; it believes in entrepeneurship not merely in commerce but in politics, and the inevitable results of the ascendance are, first, the capture of the state by business and, second, what follows from that: incompetence, graft, and all the other wretched flotsam that we’ve come to expect from Washington.

The correct diagnosis is the “bad apple” thesis turned upside down. There are plenty of good conservative individuals, honorable folks who would never participate in the sort of corruption we have watched unfold for the past few years. Hang around with grassroots conservative voters in Kansas, and in the main you will find them to be honest, hardworking people.

But put conservatism in charge of the state, and it behaves very differently. Now the “values” that rightist politicians eulogize on the stump disappear, and in their place we can discern an entirely different set of priorities ““ priorities that reveal more about the unchanging historical essence of American conservatism than do its fleeting campaigns against gay marriage or secular humanism. The conservatism that speaks to us through its actions in Washington is institutionally opposed to those baseline good intentions we learned about in elementary school. Its leaders laugh off the idea of the public interest as airy-fairy nonsense; they caution against bringing top-notch talent into government service; they declare war on public workers. They have made a cult of outsourcing and privatizing, they have wrecked established federal operations because they disagree with them, and they have deliberately pile up an Everest of debt in order to force the government into crisis. The ruination they have wrought has been thorough; it has been a professional job. Repairing it will require years of political action.”

Read it and weep.

Behold the endgame of the 30-year corrosive war on America, by the dogmatists of conservative ideology.

There’s really nothing left to say..

…Except that now, it is time to take action for its permanent eradication.

(Entire article access requires subscription to Harper’s so pick one up. It is an incredibly informative read)