Instapundit » Blog Archive » CHANGE: Teen sex and drug use at lowest rates in decades, CDC finds…. It will not look like the old conservativism, but it will seem radically different from the current leftist progressivism. This conservatism will look more libertarian or perhaps classically liberal. The old progressivism which was profoundly anti-liberal is slowly being dismantled and will be gone before 2025. More below. America has gone through many small socio-economic-political shifts since the formation of the nation. But it has gone through only two stark, primary transformations the first was the nation operating in an environment of low wealth and resulted in the adoption of a first-way socio-economic model. The first way was defined by rugged individualism, bare-bones free market capitalism with few capital formation features and tightly limited government which seldom regulated anything and never regulated business or individual. The first way did not income tax individuals; there were no sales taxes, or other regulations imposing the government's designs on individuals, entities, or the economy.
During the early 1800s, industrialization began to trigger a pushback by the upper middle class and the wealthy when they started to see the human results of the industrial machine. Farming was no better, although the deaths and injuries in farming were different. But the farm was remote from the city, and the wealthier individuals did not have to observe the suffering of the far. Industry, however, was in the cities, where the wealthy lived, and so they were forced to see the problems of industrialization first hand. The result was the progressive movement which the wealthy intended to 1. perfect the poor making them the perfect man, this was to be accomplished through eugenics, and 2. protect the unperfected man until he could be perfected through government regulation and the creation of huge entities designed to "balance" the power of big business. This was to be accomplished through the bigs, which were big business, big banking/finance, big government, big unions. Other bigs would slowly grow over time into the progressive space. The progressive movement faltered nearly right out of the box with the eugenics movement which proved to be more destructive than beneficial. The progressive movement also continued the segregation movement which designed some men less human than others, another falter right out of the box. The progressive movement accomplished its remaining, and mostly salutary goals by the mid-1960s. It was out of ideas by 1972 resulting in the political listlessness of the 1970s. While Reagan provided new direction and attempted to resolve the problems of the progressive movement by reforming the tax code, and deregulating, these changes could not alter the fact that the movement had no further strategic goals. Presidents Bush pere, Clinton, Bush fils, Obama all tried to breathe life into the walking zombie that is the progressive movement, without success. Trump has taken a different tactic; he has decided that it is time for the zombie to go. It is time for a new socio-economic model. Prediction: No one knows what the new model will look like, but it will not be more socialism, we have run that vein out, there is no more "gold" in them thar hills. The political slider accordingly will need to move back towards the first way, which means American society will need to turn to more personal liberty, more individual responsibility, more self-control, more entrepreneurship, and far less government involvement in the private lives of individuals and the functioning of entities. Taxes will need to decrease substantially, regulations will need to be reduced exponentially, and the government will need to allow people to make their own decisions and keep more of their money. This is not likely to mean we will go all of the ways back to the full-on first-way, we are not yet ready for that autonomy, but that is the likely goal. Instead, we are likely to step back towards the first way while maintaining some but fewer and less intrusive second-way government protections. Big government programs like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, even welfare are likely to be changed into mostly personal accounts of one form or another. To the extent government will help, the needy will be means tested, required to work or offer some value to society. The nihilism of socialism/progressivism will be eliminated and replaced with a return to religion and spirituality. These will be heady times.
Comments
|
AuthorMaddog Categories
All
|