Why Corporations Cannot Govern

The collapse of the Bush presidency, in other words, is not just due to Bush's incompetence (although his administration has been incompetent beyond belief). Nor is it a response to the president's principled lack of intellectual curiosity and pitbull refusal to admit mistakes (although those character flaws are certainly real enough). And the orgy of bribery and special-interest dispensation in Congress is not the result of Tom DeLay's ruthlessness, as impressive a bully as he was. This conservative presidency and Congress imploded, not despite their conservatism, but because of it.



Contemporary conservatism is first and foremost about shrinking the size and reach of the federal government. This mission, let us be clear, is an ideological one. It does not emerge out of an attempt to solve real-world problems, such as managing increasing deficits or finding revenue to pay for entitlements built into the structure of federal legislation. It stems, rather, from the libertarian conviction, repeated endlessly by George W. Bush, that the money government collects in order to carry out its business properly belongs to the people themselves. One thought, and one thought only, guided Bush and his Republican allies since they assumed power in the wake of Bush vs. Gore: taxes must be cut, and the more they are cut--especially in ways benefiting the rich--the better.
...
Unable to shrink government but unwilling to improve it, conservatives attempt to split the difference, expanding government for political gain, but always in ways that validate their disregard for the very thing they are expanding. The end result is not just bigger government, but more incompetent government.


"Ideas," a distinguished conservative named Richard Weaver once wrote, "have consequences." Americans have learned something about the consequences of conservative ideas during the Bush years that they never had to confront in the more amiable Reagan period. (Well I will not say that applies to OUR community who suffered through the AIDS epidemic while the Christian right spewed hatred of our community. Over 50,000 DIED before Reagan realized gay people are human beings).
As a way of governing, conservatism is another name for disaster. And the disasters will continue, year after year, as long as conservatives, whose political tactics are frequently as brilliant as their policy-making is inept, find ways to perpetuate their power.

...
The United States, as the political scientist Louis Hartz argued in the 1950s, was born liberal. We fought for our independence against Great Britain and the conservatism that flourished there. In Europe, a conservative was someone who defended the traditions of the monarchy, justified the privileges of the nobility, and welcomed the intervention of a state-affiliated clergy in politics. But all those things would be tossed out by the revolutionaries who led the war for independence and then wrote the Constitution. We chose to have an elected president, not an anointed monarch. Our Constitution prohibited the granting of titles of nobility. We separated church and state.

If government is necessary, bad government, at least for conservatives, is inevitable, and conservatives have been exceptionally good at showing just how bad it can be. Hence the truth revealed by the Bush years: Bad government--indeed, bloated, inefficient, corrupt, and unfair government--is the only kind of conservative government there is. Conservatives cannot govern well for the same reason that vegetarians cannot prepare a world-class boeuf bourguignon: If you believe that what you are called upon to do is wrong, you are not likely to do it very well.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2006/0607.wolfe.html
An excerpt on Why Conservatives Cannot Govern.

When American "democracy" teaches a full history that shows a student the material in the U. S. National Archives detailing U.S. corporate involvement in arming, and funding of Nazi Germany, and even profiting from Nazi slave camps, the hiring of Nazi Gestapo officers for the American CIA and the direct connection to the Bush family in the funding of Nazi Germany - one can gain a firm grasp of exactly why (and how long) American corporations have attempted to inflict their will on the world. Afterall fascism is simply corporatism run amok.

We have only to look to the Phillipines and see the people digging in garbage (still) to see how well American corporate democracy works. Everywhere the USA has been, a brutal dictator who caters to corporations follows (a fixed election). Chile suffered through thirty years of Pinochet (nail pulling dictator placed by the US corporate state), thus it was with considerable irony that I watched the USA hang Saddam Hussein (largely to distract from Bush's latest blunder).

Corporations and conservatives cannot govern because their basic belief is treasonous to the democratic state. They set out to destroy the government of the United States of America and by God (more appropriately GAWD) they have succeeded. Isn't that terror, isn't that treason?