Sunday, August 03, 2008

Anarcho-Libertarianism - the core idea of the Reagan Coalition and of movement conservatism

First, I consider Anarcho-Libertarianism to be a philosophy that combines the Anarchistic concept that rule by hierarchy is inherently illegitimate with the similar Libertarian concept that no hierarchy is legitimate unless it is established by a formal contract between the leader and his followers. Libertarians generally reject the theory that government is based on an implied contract between the people and government since that means accepting a decision made by others. Implied in Libertarianism is also the Free Market idea that government regulation of private enterprise is inherently illegitimate and inefficient. Both ideas reject compulsory obedience to authority and the right of government to enforce such authority though for slightly different reasons. They agree that government is inherently authoritarian and illegitimate.

This is not a nuanced description of Anarcho-Libertarianism. It extracts core principles, but the result is one that many Anarchists and Libertarians will take issue with. Still, the ideas are at the base of most conservative government and political policies. Those ideas are behind much of the set of philosophies that express movement conservatism, Goldwater conservatism, and the Reagan Revolution. The Bush administration has seen the most consistent application of the ideas that represent movement conservatism and the Reagan Revolution to modern American government. After eight years of this, the Bush administration has also been the most spectacularly failed Presidency in American history, and it is primarily through the effort to apply these ideas and force reality to bend to the ideology.

As the failed Bush administration ends, we can see where teh practitioners of these ideas are going next. Digby describes how the conservative oppositional Republican Party is preparing the political ground for the total Republican obstructionism and ongoing character assassination they will practice against President Obama beginning 12:01 pm January 20, 2009. It’s clear that the conservatives/Republicans cannot govern. But they are brilliantly organized and led to obstruct government. They don’t solve problems, they stop government efforts to identify and solve them. It’s what they do and they do it superbly. These are the ideas that have held the Reagan Coalition together for the last three decades.

The conservatives have built an institution of obstructionism. It is frequently called the right-wing noise machine, or sometimes “the right wing Wurlitzer.” The current project is to create the image of Obama as “a phony, messianic, presumptuous, vapid, anorexic starlet who ruthlessly plays the race card.”

These themes all work together to delegitimize their target, Democratic leader. The process works against the presumed legitimization that winning an election supposed to give to the winner.

The power of democracy is the legitimization that elections give to government by the winner and which allows the winner the presumption that their efforts to identify and solve large social problems. This is the great strength of a democracy. Government leaders who are legitimized by elections are in direct contrast to the older process of government leaders legitimized because of the presumed superiority of their social class.

But it seems unlikely that the practitioners of the politics of delegitimization want to substitute democratic government by a presumed legitimate social class for government by leaders legitimated by popular vote. More likely the Anarcho-Libertarianism of movement conservatives is an expression of the absolute rejection of government and hierarchy that is characteristic of both Anarchism and Libertarianism. It is this world view that motivates the efforts to totally obstruct government functions while making effective use of government almost a total impossibility when they get into control of it.

The philosophy of Anarcho-Libertarianism would explain conservative corruption in government. Since the conservative movement Anarcho-Libertarians do not consider government a legitimate function in the first place (except for the military, and for limited police functions to protect Natural Law Property Rights from burglary and such low-level theft) they consider that each individual has the Natural Right to possess any property they can get control of from any source whatsoever. They see nothing illegitimate or immoral about considering the (illegitimate) government to be nothing more than a giant ATM which their personal success at gaining access (getting government office) allows them to plunder at will.

The shared acceptance of an Anarcho-Libertarian world view would also provide a unifying theme between the major branches of the Reagan coalition. Big business and big banks reject as illegitimate any government regulation in their property-gathering activities, as do Libertarians of all stripes. The social conservatives agree with the free marketers and Libertarian efforts to delegitimize government, but they don’t accept the part that considers hierarchical government itself inherently illegitimate. They want secular government delegitimized because they to replace it with a government legitimized to enforce laws established by God.

This unifying theme of Anarcho-Libertarianism would explain one puzzling apparent inconsistency in conservatism. Why do members of the conservative movement reject government control by government hierarchy yet proudly support the identical authoritarian hierarchy operated within business organizations?

I think the difference is that conservatives consider the authoritarianism in business to be an expression of property rights which are (supposedly) based on individual negotiation as opposed to the kind of authoritarian hierarchy based on the legitimate functions of government. Both free marketers and Libertarians consider property rights to be at the level of an individual Natural Right and transfer of property rights to naturally occur in markets through negotiation.

Another element of movement conservative control of government that is clear in the Bush administration is their ability to ignore the Rule of Law. If movement conservatives consider government and its hierarchy illegitimate, then they also consider the government’s hierarchical function of enforcing laws illegitimate. That's why we see them simply ignoring the Rule of Law. Laws themselves are OK, but an illegitimate government has no Right to enforce them. Enforcement of laws should be conducted only on the basis of formal contracts between individuals. Social conservatives disagree here. Social conservatives simply reject laws based on democracy and popular sovereignty. They are happy to delegitimize secular government. But they want to replace it with a government that enforces laws which are based on the Word of God. [This may be a characteristic of all kinds of religious fundamentalists, regardless of religion.]

If these are the ideas at the core of the Reagan coalition, then why did the Reagan coalition fall apart in the effort to nominate a Presidential candidate in 2008?

It wasn't from lack of agreement on the illegitimacy of most government. It was based on the clear failure of all the candidates to express a theme that could lead to winning the Presidency in 2008 in the face of an economy that is going bad, a current President with unprecedented low approval ratings and the continuing failure to win the highly unpopular war in Iraq. The coalition failed to coalesce around a single Presidential candidate because none of the groups thought the candidates from the others were offering to apply the shared conservative principles in ways they could all agree with.

That collapse in the Republican Presidential Primary is summed up in the often heard claim "Conservatism hasn't failed. There is simply no candidate who is sufficiently conservative to make it work." The old policies of "No new Taxes. Small government. Strong military. Anti-Abortion. Anti government regulation." have each been shown to have failed according to a majority of the voters, and conservative politicians have not been able to field test new policies with similar power to attract voters.

The result is the McCain campaign for President. He goes around expressing all the old conservative polices in a disjointed and highly inconsistent way. The inconsistent presentation is not important to conservatives. Unfortunately McCain cannot find new and powerful messages he can use to rebuild the Reagan coalition. But the Republican Party is still trying to win the Presidency because without it they will suffer a severe setback in organizing when they lose the patronage powers of the White House. Much of the strength of the Bush administration has been based on those patronage power combined with strong enforcement of the conservative ideology.

So we are seeing the first post-Reagan Coalition Republican Presidential candidate, McCain, who has no effective strategy for winning other than painting Obama as "an illegitimate leader, unworthy of the presidency, a fluke, a phony (and a fascist."

So the Republicans expect to lose the Presidency in November. But they have a fall-back position, one that Digby points to. It is the strategy they used effectively against the Democrats beginning January 20, 1993. They are going to mau-mau Obama from day one as an illegitimate President who stole the election.

Who cares if the conservatives cannot organize and operate an effective government. They don't want one anyway, except as a source of political patronage and as a magical ATM machine that takes tax money from average Americans and hands it off to the most wealthy Americans. The conservatives will, once removed from the White House, revert to what they do best - they will obstruct every effort of Democrats to solve national problems and they will do their best to delegitimize Obama as President.

Why not? It worked against Clinton in the 1990's.

No comments: