Sunday 23 December 2007

Right has no idea

Political conservatives have lost their identity as their agenda has been ripped from under them, writes Peter Hartcher in the Sydney Morning Herald.

Downer says:

  • "There were all sorts of things I wanted to see happen in Australia in his 1985 maiden speech.
    "One was a more deregulated labour market, another was to get rid of tariffs, another was privatisation, another was a broadly based consumption tax; I wanted welfare to work, I wanted to give more substance and meaning to the American alliance and the American alliance in Asia.

    "Well, by the time I got to 2006, to our 10th anniversary, we'd done all those things. We didn't have the one big idea to crusade on in the 2007 election. We offered really just more of the same."

A US conservative philosophers, Francis Fukuyama, known for his book The End Of History - published as the Berlin Wall fell in 1989 - argues that the conservative movement in the US has reached a kind of exhaustion:

  • "Socially and politically, America is ripe for a broad historic shift to the Left," Fukuyama says. "It seems to be happening already.

    "The Republicans lost their majorities in both houses of Congress at the 2006 mid-term election, and now seem likely to lose the White House at the election next November.
    This is not just a protest against George Bush and the invasion of Iraq, Fukuyama says, but part of a deeper phenomenon.

    Speaking of the Thatcher-Reagan revolution, which put the market at the centre of public policy in a direct challenge to the statism of communism and socialism,

    "All the gains from that agenda have been realised. And probably it's gone too far, gone over the line, in terms of tax cuts. You end up with a pretty explosive social situation and the time is now ripe for a swing back" Fukuyama says.

    "The right is in a lot of trouble. We have rising inequality, bad health care and a failed foreign policy."
Read Peter Hartcher's full story.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I think we were all hosed on this last election.

Didn't Rudd & Company say they were going to "bring all the troops home"?

What is this crap about leaving troops in Afghanistan "for the long haul"? What the hell is this?

I voted to bring all the troops home NOW, not in some "long haul".

We've been screwed again, this time by the so-called left.

Anonymous said...

You clearly didn't read the small print of ALP policy, 'Rudd screws the public on the wars'

Instead you seemed to think it was what you hoped it might be.

Labor's official policy gives as much credence to the WoT as the Howard Government.

There was never an ALP pledge that I'm aware of to withdraw from Afghanistan, which 'western' countries all agree should be used for target practice for years to come.

I'll be disappointed if Rudd turns out to be even more of a vicious war-mongering partisan PM than Howard. I don't think he will.

But the idea that Australia elected a peace-leaning government in late November - a Government truly skeptical of the latest western war-fad - is fanciful, more's the pity.

When Peter Garrett joined the ALP, he was asked how this squared with his famous 'US bases (Out!)' stance of yore.

His reply? It was along the lines of "the US bases issue is old hat. The big thing now is the War on Terror'. I'm 100% behind that!"

So, even many 'progressives' in the ALP are are great believers in the ludicrous WoT.

This war-sustaining myth has while to run yet... indeed, it will probably last as long as a large majority of people who live within the ambit of the alavishly pro-Zionist 'American alliance' put more faith in the mass media than they have in their own basic intelligence.