A Practical Critique of the US Government and Political Party Philosophy

Reverse the Reagan Revolution! End the Oligarchy. End trickle down economics. Fight for a government that delivers competitive open markets! Fight to realize your own self-interest. Fight for Liberty!

Sep 02, 2024

We have been living under the shadow of the Reagan Revolution for nearly 45 years. That Republican revolution was a straight up attack on the idea that government can ever do any good. The concurrent cultural revolution that greed is good, especially when it rewards white men with power, has helped those very same men attain a level of power that hurts the rest of the citizenry.

That the citizenry bought the revolution of Trickle Down Economics and became its foot soldiers is bad on us. We pay the price everyday. For better or worse, the foot soldiers are fickle and I think are getting ready for the counter-revolution.

My hypothesis is that every President since Reagan, and both of the leading candidates in this election, are still playing within the rubric set out by the Reagan Revolution. Kamala Harris’ platform, so much as it is the current Democratic Party platform, lives very much within the contours of Tax and Budget policy going back to the Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981.

What’s my evidence? Well, Democrats are simply arguing at the margins. Don’t get me wrong, taxing the wealth of the wealthiest amongst us is the number one issue of our time. Doing it by simply raising rates and adding more tax credits is playing by the rules set down by Reagan. It’s not trying to end Trickle Down Economics, which has resulted in the wealth of the bottom 90% being transferred directly to the top 10%, but rather attempting to slow down the upward transfer of wealth.

While the two parties have their many differences, at the end of the day, neither is working to actually break the hand of the Oligarchs off of our politics, culture or economy. The Republican Party is actively working to strengthen the Oligarch’s hand, while the Democratic Party is simply working to not allow that grip to become any tighter.

The Republican Party, since 1964 and solidified in 1968, has become the party of ethno-fascism and, in the last decade, totalitarianism in the form of longing for an actual fascist dictator. On the road to fascism is the oligarchy and oligopoly that the Reagan Revolutoin delivered for the wealthiest of the wealthy. Today’s Republican Party stands for white supremacy, nationalism in place of authentic patriotism, and a belief in whiteness and that power should only be wielded by a select few to benefit the (social construct of a) white race.

What 2024 Republicans represent is not anything particularly new in the United States. This strand of white supremacy has existed since the country’s founding, and has certainly had its times over the last 250 years when it was ascendant. The best evidence for this is our Constitution as originally designed.

The Democratic Party is not about to tear down the oligopoly or do any real harm to the oligarchs. The reason is simple, they are not about to bite the hand that feeds them. A cynic would take up Adam Smith’s argument that the Democratic Party represents the Oligarchs who know if they go too far, the people will absolutely revolt and not only bite off that hand, but also cut off that head (it’s like Smith knew the French Revolution was around the corner at the time of the publishing of The Wealth of Nations).

Today’s Democrats offer a coalition of white, non-white and non-Christian citizens, a version of corporate populism that protects oligarchs and oligopoly while providing the rest of us limited rights and limited representation. Sure, Blacks and gays can exist, and maybe not have to fear too much from the police, and yeah, they’’ll give 15 people who qualify a targeted tax credit while arguing for further incremental change, but they’ll never actually demand true Liberalism, they’ll never actually center the individual over the corporation, and they’ll never demand an ethical commercial society and functioning market economy.

The counter-revolution will not be led by the Republicans nor the Democrats, and it will be fought tooth and nail by our oligarchs. This counter-revolution will require we the people to act independently and in our own self-interest, recognizing as Smith did that achieving your personal self-interest requires making sure everyone around you can pursue their own interests.

We have been gifted a government of the highest ideals, to ensure our individual life, liberty and happiness, by people, who for their time and ours, proved to lead lives that were less than ideal. They never came close to practicing the ideals. That doesn’t mean the ideals aren’t worth fighting for, nor does it make the ideals false. They have simply not been fully recognized yet.

For me, Frederick Douglas stands as the guiding Liberal light, for he makes clear that it will take all of us to turn the ideal into a reality. I think the time for Liberal Revolution is now.