What is the New Right?

You start to see patterns emerge as talking points come into focus, a phrase I have heard about 3 times in just the last week on various shows and op-ed pieces is (I paraphrase) “ the more you ask government to do the less well it will do everything.” This is a handy little phrase, it seems the intellectual level of America is such that (like in advertising) you need something short, bite sized and having some vague sense of veracity. Certainly the size of an organization can lead to inherent inefficiencies but there are innumerable large business entities, and indeed other countries that seem to accomplish a level of effectiveness that belies the above aphorism.


Our political leaders primary concern is the money needed to succeed in the next election cycle. The common good of our country and its people is ground under in this pursuit of cash. Any sense of what is best for our country as a whole has been lost as America’s overbearing sense of individualism has morphed into a narcissistic and selfish quest to satisfy our personal needs and desires. This political lust is fueled by right and left wing television & radio opinion that is presented as news and the fact that in today’s digital environment one can easily make sure that no contrary opinions, facts or thoughts ever cross our path. Lost is any sense of intellectual compromise as our political dialogue is debased to name calling and short term one-upmanship. The fact that the horrible tragedy of the oil spill in the gulf can become a political football of sorts is a perfect testament to this environment.

I have always felt that Ronald Regan’s thought that you “do not want the Government doing any more then it has to do” was spot on. Of course, the devil is in the details as to whether that cut off point is on the libertarian end of the spectrum or the progressive, but one thing is certain; if our government was focused more on the general public welfare instead of serving the interests of contributors it would be a more efficient entity.

One can clearly see the hand of moneyed interests in the recent twin travesties of the health care bill and the upcoming financial reform bill. In both cases the astonishing level of lobbing by the healthcare and financial services industries has made sure that (as Matt Taibbi put it in Rolling Stone when discussing the financial reform) there are “freeway-wide loopholes that screw any chance of meaningful change.” The public cries for more regulation are pathetic as any regulation passed is simply a sad dog and pony show that is designed at the outset to be ineffective.

So we are left with a government that is a perfect case of failure by design. In that light; Hurricane Katrina, the Gulf Oil spill, Wall Street bailouts, the mortgage debacle and the suffering of untold American citizens at the hands of a government whose goal should be their best interested make all too much sense.