I.
Back to the Future
George W. Bush, properly understood, represents
the third and most powerful wave in the right's
long-running assault on the governing order
created by twentieth-century liberalism. The
first wave was Ronald Reagan, whose election
in 1980 allowed movement conservatives finally
to attain governing power (their flame was
first lit by Barry Goldwater back in 1964).
Reagan unfurled many bold ideological banners
for right-wing reform and established the
political viability of enacting regressive
tax cuts, but he accomplished very little
reordering of government, much less shrinking
of it. The second wave was Newt Gingrich,
whose capture of the House majority in 1994
gave Republicans control of Congress for the
first time in two generations. Despite some
landmark victories like welfare reform, Gingrich
flamed out quickly, a zealous revolutionary
ineffective as legislative leader.
George Bush II may be as shallow as he appears,
but his presidency represents a far more formidable
challenge than either Reagan or Gingrich.
His potential does not emanate from an amiable
personality (Al Gore, remember, outpolled
him in 2000) or even the sky-high ratings
generated by 9/11 and war. Bush's governing
strength is anchored in the long, hard-driving
movement of the right that now owns all three
branches of the federal government. Its unified
ranks allow him to govern aggressively, despite
slender GOP majorities in the House and Senate
and the public's general indifference to the
right's domestic program.
The movement's grand ambition--one can no
longer say grandiose--is to roll back the
twentieth century, quite literally. That is,
defenestrate the federal government and reduce
its scale and powers to a level well below
what it was before the New Deal's centralization.
With that accomplished, movement conservatives
envision a restored society in which the prevailing
values and power relationships resemble the
America that existed around 1900, when William
McKinley was President. Governing authority
and resources are dispersed from Washington,
returned to local levels and also to individuals
and private institutions, most notably corporations
and religious organizations. The primacy of
private property rights is re-established
over the shared public priorities expressed
in government regulation. Above all, private
wealth--both enterprises and individuals with
higher incomes--are permanently insulated
from the progressive claims of the graduated
income tax.
These broad objectives may sound reactionary
and destructive (in historical terms they
are), but hard-right conservatives see themselves
as liberating reformers, not destroyers, who
are rescuing old American virtues of self-reliance
and individual autonomy from the clutches
of collective action and "statist" left-wingers.
They do not expect any of these far-reaching
goals to be fulfilled during Bush's tenure,
but they do assume that history is on their
side and that the next wave will come along
soon (not an unreasonable expectation, given
their great gains during the past thirty years).
Right-wingers--who once seemed frothy and
fratricidal--now understand that three steps
forward, two steps back still adds up to forward
progress. It's a long march, they say. Stick
together, because we are winning.
Many opponents and critics (myself included)
have found the right's historic vision so
improbable that we tend to guffaw and misjudge
the political potency of what it has put together.
We might ask ourselves: If these ideas are
so self-evidently cockeyed and reactionary,
why do they keep advancing? The right's unifying
idea--get the government out of our lives--has
broad popular appeal, at least on a sentimental
level, because it represents an authentic
core value in the American experience ("Don't
tread on me" was a slogan in the Revolution).
But the true source of its strength is the
movement's fluid architecture and durability
over time, not the passing personalities of
Reagan-Gingrich-Bush or even the big money
from business. The movement has a substantial
base that believes in its ideological vision--people
alarmed by cultural change or injured in some
way by government intrusions, coupled with
economic interests that have very strong reasons
to get government off their backs--and the
right has created the political mechanics
that allow these disparate elements to pull
together. Cosmopolitan corporate executives
hold their noses and go along with Christian
activists trying to stamp out "decadent" liberal
culture. Fed-up working-class conservatives
support business's assaults on their common
enemy, liberal government, even though they
may be personally injured when business objectives
triumph.
The right's power also feeds off the general
decay in the political system--the widely
shared and often justifiable resentments felt
toward big government, which no longer seems
to address the common concerns of ordinary
citizens.
I am not predicting that the right will win
the governing majority that could enact the
whole program, in a kind of right-wing New
Deal--and I will get to some reasons why I
expect their cause to fail eventually. The
farther they advance, however, the less inevitable
is their failure.
II.
The McKinley Blueprint
In the months after last November's elections,
the Bush Administration rattled progressive
sensibilities with shock and awe on the home
front--a barrage of audacious policy initiatives:
Allow churches to include sanctuaries of worship
in buildings financed by federal housing grants.
Slash hundreds of billions in domestic programs,
especially spending for the poor, even as
the Bush tax cuts kick in for the well-to-do.
At the behest of Big Pharma, begin prosecuting
those who help the elderly buy cheaper prescription
drugs in Canada. Compel the District of Columbia
to conduct federally financed school voucher
experiments (even though DC residents are
overwhelmingly opposed). Reform Medicaid by
handing it over to state governments, which
will be free to make their own rules, much
like welfare reform. Do the same for housing
aid, food stamps and other long-established
programs. Redefine "wetlands" and "wilderness"
so that millions of protected acres are opened
for development.
Liberal activists gasped at the variety and
dangerous implications (the public might have
been upset too but was preoccupied with war),
while conservatives understood that Bush was
laying the foundations, step by step, toward
their grand transformation of American life.
These are the concrete elements of their vision:
§
Eliminate federal taxation of private capital,
as the essential predicate for dismantling
the progressive income tax. This will require
a series of reform measures (one of them,
repeal of the estate tax, already accomplished).
Bush has proposed several others: elimination
of the tax on stock dividends and establishment
of new tax-sheltered personal savings accounts
for the growing "investor class." Congress
appears unwilling to swallow these, at least
this year, but their introduction advances
the education-agitation process. Future revenue
would be harvested from a single-rate flat
tax on wages or, better still, a stiff sales
tax on consumption. Either way, labor gets
taxed, but not capital. The 2003 Economic
Report of the President, prepared by the Council
of Economic Advisers, offers a primer on the
advantages of a consumption tax and how it
might work. Narrowing the tax base naturally
encourages smaller government.
§
Gradually phase out the pension-fund retirement
system as we know it, starting with Social
Security privatization but moving eventually
to breaking up the other large pools of retirement
savings, even huge public-employee funds,
and converting them into individualized accounts.
Individuals will be rewarded for taking personal
responsibility for their retirement with proposed
"lifetime savings" accounts where capital
is stored, forever tax-exempt. Unlike IRAs,
which provide a tax deduction for contributions,
wages are taxed upfront but permanently tax-sheltered
when deposited as "lifetime" capital savings,
including when the money is withdrawn and
spent. Thus this new format inevitably threatens
the present system, in which employers get
a tax deduction for financing pension funds
for their workers. The new alternative should
eventually lead to repeal of the corporate
tax deduction and thus relieve business enterprise
of any incentive to finance pensions for employees.
Everyone takes care of himself.
§
Withdraw the federal government from a direct
role in housing, healthcare, assistance to
the poor and many other long-established social
priorities, first by dispersing program management
to local and state governments or private
operators, then by steadily paring down the
federal government's financial commitment.
If states choose to kill an aid program rather
than pay for it themselves, that confirms
that the program will not be missed. Any slack
can be taken up by the private sector, philanthropy
and especially religious institutions that
teach social values grounded in faith.
§
Restore churches, families and private education
to a more influential role in the nation's
cultural life by giving them a significant
new base of income--public money. When "school
choice" tuitions are fully available to families,
all taxpayers will be compelled to help pay
for private school systems, both secular and
religious, including Catholic parochial schools.
As a result, public schools will likely lose
some of their financial support, but their
enrollments are expected to shrink anyway,
as some families opt out. Although the core
of Bush's "faith-based initiative" stalled
in Congress, he is advancing it through new
administrative rules. The voucher strategy
faces many political hurdles, but the Supreme
Court is out ahead, clearing away the constitutional
objections.
§
Strengthen the hand of business enterprise
against burdensome regulatory obligations,
especially environmental protection, by introducing
voluntary goals and "market-driven" solutions.
These will locate the decision-making on how
much progress is achievable within corporate
managements rather than enforcement agencies
(an approach also championed in this year's
Economic Report). Down the road, when a more
aggressive right-wing majority is secured
for the Supreme Court, conservatives expect
to throw a permanent collar around the regulatory
state by enshrining a radical new constitutional
doctrine. It would require government to compensate
private property owners, including businesses,
for new regulations that impose costs on them
or injure their profitability, a formulation
sure to guarantee far fewer regulations [see
Greider, "The Right and US Trade Law," October
15, 2001].
§
Smash organized labor. Though unions have
lost considerable influence, they remain a
major obstacle to achieving the right's vision.
Public-employee unions are formidable opponents
on issues like privatization and school vouchers.
Even the declining industrial unions still
have the resources to mobilize a meaningful
counterforce in politics. Above all, the labor
movement embodies the progressives' instrument
of power: collective action. The mobilizations
of citizens in behalf of broad social demands
are inimical to the right's vision of autonomous
individuals, in charge of their own affairs
and acting alone. Unions may be taken down
by a thousand small cuts, like stripping "homeland
security" workers of union protection. They
will be more gravely weakened if pension funds,
an enduring locus of labor power, are privatized.
Looking back over this list, one sees many
of the old peevish conservative resentments--Social
Security, the income tax, regulation of business,
labor unions, big government centralized in
Washington--that represent the great battles
that conservatives lost during early decades
of the twentieth century. That is why the
McKinley era represents a lost Eden the right
has set out to restore. Grover Norquist, president
of Americans for Tax Reform and a pivotal
leader in the movement's inside-outside politics,
confirms this observation. "Yes, the McKinley
era, absent the protectionism," he agrees,
is the goal. "You're looking at the history
of the country for the first 120 years, up
until Teddy Roosevelt, when the socialists
took over. The income tax, the death tax,
regulation, all that." (In foreign policy,
at least, the Bush Administration could fairly
be said to have already restored the spirit
of that earlier age. Justifying the annexation
of the Philippines, McKinley famously explained
America's purpose in the world: "There was
nothing left for us to do but to take them
all, and to educate the Filipinos, and uplift
and civilize and Christianize them, and by
God's grace do the very best we could by them,
as our fellow men for whom Christ also died.")
But the right employs a highly selective memory.
McKinley Republicans, aligned with the newly
emergent industrial titans, did indeed hold
off the Progressive advocates of a federal
income tax and other reforms, while its high
tariffs were the equivalent of a stiff consumption
tax. And its conservative Supreme Court blocked
regulatory laws designed to protect society
and workers as unconstitutional intrusions
on private property rights.
But the truth is that McKinley's conservatism
broke down not because of socialists but because
a deeply troubled nation was awash in social
and economic conflicts, inequities generated
by industrialization and the awesome power
consolidating in the behemoth industrial corporations
(struggles not resolved until economic crisis
spawned the New Deal). Reacting to popular
demands, Teddy Roosevelt enacted landmark
Progressive reforms like the first federal
regulations protecting public health and safety
and a ban on corporate campaign contributions.
Both Roosevelt and his successor, Republican
William Howard Taft, endorsed the concept
of a progressive income tax and other un-Republican
measures later enacted under Woodrow Wilson.
George W. Bush does not of course ever speak
of the glories of the McKinley era or acknowledge
his party's retrograde objectives (Ari Fleischer
would bat down any suggestions to the contrary).
Conservatives learned, especially from Gingrich's
implosion, to avoid flamboyant ideological
proclamations. Instead, the broader outlines
are only hinted at in various official texts.
But there's nothing really secretive about
their intentions. Right-wing activists and
think tanks have been openly articulating
the goals for years. Some of their ideas that
once sounded loopy are now law.
III.
The Ecumenical Right
The movement "is moving with the speed of
a glacier," explains Martin Anderson, a senior
fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution who
served as Reagan's house intellectual, the
keeper of the flame, and was among the early
academics counseling George W. Bush. "It moves
very slowly, stops sometimes, even retreats,
but then it moves forward again. Sometimes,
it comes up against a tree and seems stuck,
then the tree snaps and people say, 'My gosh,
it's a revolution.'" To continue the metaphor,
Anderson thinks this glacier will run up against
some big boulders that do not yield, that
the right will eventually be stopped short
of grand objectives like small government
or elimination of the income tax. But they've
made impressive progress so far.
For the first time since the 1920s, Congress,
the White House and the Supreme Court are
all singing from same hymnal and generally
reinforcing one another. The Court's right-wing
majority acts to shrink federal authority,
block citizen challenges of important institutions
and hack away at the liberal precedents on
civil rights, regulatory law and many other
matters (it even decides an election for its
side, when necessary).
Bush, meanwhile, has what Reagan lacked--a
Reaganite majority in Congress. When the Gipper
won in 1980, most Republicans in Congress
were still traditional conservatives, not
radical reformers. The majority of House Republicans
tipped over to the Reaganite identity in 1984,
a majority of GOP senators not until 1994.
The ranks of the unconverted--Republicans
who refuse to sign Norquist's pledge not to
raise taxes--are now, by his count, down to
5 percent in the House caucus, 15 percent
in the Senate.
This ideological solidarity is a central element
in Bush's governing strength. So long as he
can manage the flow of issues in accord with
the big blueprint, the right doesn't shoot
at him when he makes politically sensitive
deviations (import quotas for steel or the
lavish new farm-subsidy bill). It also helps
that, especially in the House, the GOP leaders
impose Stalinist discipline on their troops.
Bush also reassures the far right by making
it clear that he is one of them. Reagan used
to stroke the Christian right with strong
rhetoric on social issues but gave them very
little else (the man was from Hollywood, after
all). Bush is a true believer, a devout Christian
and exceedingly public about it. Bush's principal
innovation--a page taken from Bill Clinton's
playbook--is to confuse the opposition's issues
by offering his own compassion-lite alternatives,
co-opting or smothering Democratic initiatives.
Unlike Clinton, Bush does not mollify his
political base with empty gestures. Their
program is his program.
"Reagan
talked a good game on the domestic side but
he actually didn't push for much," says Paul
Weyrich, leader of the Free Congress Foundation
and a movement pioneer. "Likewise, the Gingrich
era was a lot of rhetoric. This Administration
is far more serious and disciplined.... they
have better outreach than any with which I
have dealt. These people have figured out
how to communicate regularly with their base,
make sure it understands what they're doing.
When they have to go against their base, they
know how to inoculate themselves against what
might happen."
Norquist's ambition is that building on its
current strength, the right can cut government
by half over the next twenty-five years to
"get it down to the size where we can drown
it in the bathtub" [see Robert Dreyfuss, "Grover
Norquist: 'Field Marshal' of the Bush Tax
Plan," May 14, 2001]. The federal government
would shrink from 20 percent of GDP to 10
percent, state and local government from 12
to 6 percent. When vouchers become universally
available, he expects public schools to shrink
from 6 to 3 percent of GDP. "And we'll have
better schools," he assures. People like Norquist
play the role of constantly pushing the boundaries
of the possible. "I'm lining up support to
abolish the alternative minimum tax," he says.
"Has Bush spoken to this? No. I want to run
ahead, put our guys on the record for it.
So I will be out in front of the Bush Administration,
not attacking the Bush Administration. Will
he do everything we want? No, but you know
what? I don't care."
Americans for Tax Reform serves as a kind
of "action central" for a galaxy of conservative
interests, with support from corporate names
like Microsoft, Pfizer, AOL Time Warner, R.J.
Reynolds and the liquor industry. "The issue
that brings people to politics is what they
want from government," Norquist explains.
"All our people want to be left alone by government.
To be in this coalition, you only need to
have your foot in the circle on one issue.
You don't need a Weltanschauung, you
don't have to agree with every other issue,
so long as the coalition is right on yours.
That's why we don't have the expected war
within the center-right coalition. That's
why we can win."
One of the right's political accomplishments
is bringing together diverse, once-hostile
sectarians. "The Republican Party used to
be based in the Protestant mainline and aggressively
kept its distance from other religions," Norquist
observes. "Now we've got observant Catholics,
the people who go to mass every Sunday, evangelical
Christians, Mormons, orthodox Jews, Muslims."
How did it happen? "The secular left has created
an ecumenical right," he says. This new tolerance,
including on race, may represent meaningful
social change, but of course the right also
still feeds on intolerance too, demonizing
those whose values or lifestyle or place of
birth does not conform to their idea of "American."
This tendency, Norquist acknowledges, is a
vulnerability. The swelling ranks of Latino
and Asian immigrants could become a transforming
force in American politics, once these millions
of new citizens become confident enough to
participate in election politics (just as
European immigrants became a vital force for
liberal reform in the early twentieth century).
So Bush labors to change the party's anti-immigrant
profile (and had some success with Mexican-Americans
in Texas).
Norquist prefers to focus on other demographic
trends that he believes insure the right's
eventual triumph: As the children of the New
Deal die off, he asserts, they will be replaced
by young "leave me alone" conservatives. Anderson,
the former Reagan adviser, is less certain.
"Most of the people like what government is
doing," he observes. "So long as it isn't
overintrusive and so forth, they're happy
with it."
IV.
Show Me the Money
Ideology may provide the unifying umbrella,
but the real glue of this movement is its
iron rule for practical politics: Every measure
it enacts, every half-step it takes toward
the grand vision, must deliver concrete rewards
to one constituency or another, often several--and
right now, not in the distant future. Usually
the reward is money. There is nothing unusual
or illegitimate about that, but it sounds
like raw hypocrisy considering that the right
devotes enormous energy to denouncing "special-interest
politics" on the left (schoolteachers, labor
unions, bureaucrats, Hollywood). The right's
interest groups, issue by issue, bring their
muscle to the cause. Bush's "lifetime savings"
accounts constitute a vast new product line
for the securities industry, which is naturally
enthused about marketing and managing these
accounts. The terms especially benefit the
well-to-do, since a family of four will be
able to shelter up to $45,000 annually (that's
more than most families earn in a year). The
White House has enlisted Fortune 500 companies
to spread the good news to the investor class
in their regular mailings to shareholders.
Bush's "market-friendly" reforms for healthcare
would reward two business sectors that many
consumers regard as the problem--drug companies
and HMOs. Big Pharma would get the best of
all worlds: a federal subsidy for prescription
drug purchases by the elderly, but without
any limits on the prices. The insurance industry
is invited to set up a privatized version
of Medicare that would compete with the government-run
system (assuming there are enough senior citizens
willing to take that risk).
Some rewards are not about money. Bush has
already provided a victory for "pro-lifers"
with the ban on late-term abortions. The antiabortionists
are realists now and no longer badger the
GOP for a constitutional amendment, but perhaps
a future Supreme Court, top-heavy with right-wing
appointees, will deliver for them. Republicans
are spoiling for a fight over guns in 2004,
when the federal ban on assault rifles is
due to expire. Liberals, they hope, will try
to renew the law so the GOP can deliver a
visible election-year reward by blocking it.
(Gun-control advocates are thinking of forcing
Bush to choose between the gun lobby and public
opinion.)
The biggest rewards, of course, are about
taxation, and the internal self-discipline
is impressive. When Reagan proposed his huge
tax-rate cuts in 1981, the K Street corporate
lobbyists piled on with their own list of
goodies and the White House lost control;
Reagan's tax cuts wound up much larger than
he intended. This time around, business behaved
itself when Bush proposed a tax package in
2001 in which its wish list was left out.
"They supported the 2001 tax cuts because
they knew there was going to be another tax
cut every year and, if you don't support this
year's, you go to the end of the line next
time," Norquist says. Their patience has already
been rewarded. The antitax movement follows
a well-defined script for advancing step by
step to the ultimate goal. Norquist has organized
five caucuses to agitate and sign up Congressional
supporters on five separate issues: estate-tax
repeal (already enacted but still vulnerable
to reversal); retirement-savings reforms;
elimination of the alternative minimum tax;
immediate business deductions for capital
investment expenses (instead of a multiyear
depreciation schedule); and zero taxation
of capital gains. "If we do all of these things,
there is no tax on capital and we are very
close to a flat tax," Norquist exclaims.
The road ahead is far more difficult than
he makes it sound, because along the way a
lot of people will discover that they are
to be the losers. In fact, the McKinley vision
requires vast sectors of society to pay dearly,
and from their own pockets. Martin Anderson
has worked through the flat-tax arithmetic
many times, and it always comes out a political
loser. "The conservatives all want to revolutionize
the tax system, frankly because they haven't
thought it through," Anderson says. "It means
people from zero to $35,000 income pay no
tax and anyone over $150,000 is going to get
a tax cut. The people in between get a tax
increase, unless you cut federal spending.
That's not going to happen."
Likewise, any substantial consumption tax
does severe injury to another broad class
of Americans--the elderly. They were already
taxed when they were young and earning and
saving their money, but a new consumption
tax would now tax their money again as they
spend it. Lawrence Lindsey, Bush's former
economic adviser, has advocated a consumption-based
flat tax that would probably require a rate
of 21 percent on consumer purchases (like
a draconian sales tax). He concedes, "It would
be hitting the current generation of elderly
twice. So it would be a hard sell."
"School
choice" is also essentially a money issue,
though this fact has been obscured by the
years of Republican rhetoric demonizing the
public schools and their teachers. Under tuition
vouchers, the redistribution of income will
flow from all taxpayers to the minority of
American families who send their children
to private schools, religious and secular.
Those children are less than 10 percent of
the 52 million children enrolled in K-12.
You wouldn't know it from reading about the
voucher debate, but the market share of private
schools actually declined slightly during
the past decade. The Catholic parochial system
stands to gain the most from public financing,
because its enrollment has declined by half
since the 1960s (to 2.6 million). Though there
was some growth during the 1990s, it was in
the suburbs, not cities. Other private schools,
especially religious schools in the South,
grew more during the past decade (by about
400,000), but public schools expanded far
faster, by 6 million. The point is, the right's
constituency for "school choice" remains a
small though fervent minority.
Conservatives have cleverly transformed the
voucher question into an issue of racial equality--arguing
that they are the best way to liberate impoverished
black children from bad schools in slum surroundings.
But educational quality notwithstanding, it
is not self-evident that private schools,
including the Catholic parochial system, are
disposed to solve the problem of minority
education, since they are highly segregated
themselves. Catholic schools enroll only 2.5
percent of black students nationwide and,
more telling, only 3.8 percent of Hispanic
children, most of whom are Catholic. In the
South hundreds of private schools originated
to escape integration and were supported at
first by state tuition grants (later ruled
unconstitutional). "School choice," in short,
might very well finance greater racial separation--the
choice of whites to stick with their own kind--and
at public expense.
The right's assault on environmental regulation
has a similar profile. Taking the lead are
small landowners or Western farmers who make
appealing pleas to be left alone to enjoy
their property and take care of it conscientiously.
Riding alongside are developers and major
industrial sectors (and polluters) eager to
win the same rights, if not from Congress
then the Supreme Court. But there's one problem:
The overwhelming majority of Americans want
stronger environmental standards and more
vigorous enforcement.
V.
Are They Right About America?
"Leave
me alone" is an appealing slogan, but the
right regularly violates its own guiding principle.
The antiabortion folks intend to use government
power to force their own moral values on the
private lives of others. Free-market right-wingers
fall silent when Bush and Congress intrude
to bail out airlines, insurance companies,
banks--whatever sector finds itself in desperate
need. The hard-right conservatives are downright
enthusiastic when the Supreme Court and Bush's
Justice Department hack away at our civil
liberties. The "school choice" movement seeks
not smaller government but a vast expansion
of taxpayer obligations. Maybe what the right
is really seeking is not so much to be left
alone by government but to use government
to reorganize society in its own right-wing
image. All in all, the right's agenda promises
a reordering that will drive the country toward
greater separation and segmentation of its
many social elements--higher walls and more
distance for those who wish to protect themselves
from messy diversity. The trend of social
disintegration, including the slow breakup
of the broad middle class, has been under
way for several decades--fissures generated
by growing inequalities of status and well-being.
The right proposes to legitimize and encourage
these deep social changes in the name of greater
autonomy. Dismantle the common assets of society,
give people back their tax money and let everyone
fend for himself.
Is this the country Americans want for their
grandchildren or great-grandchildren? If one
puts aside Republican nostalgia for McKinley's
gaslight era, it was actually a dark and troubled
time for many Americans and society as a whole,
riven as it was by harsh economic conflict
and social neglect of everyday brutalities.
Autonomy can be lonely and chilly, as millions
of Americans have learned in recent years
when the company canceled their pensions or
the stock market swallowed their savings or
industrial interests destroyed their surroundings.
For most Americans, there is no redress without
common action, collective efforts based on
mutual trust and shared responsibilities.
In other words, I do not believe that most
Americans want what the right wants. But I
also think many cannot see the choices clearly
or grasp the long-term implications for the
country.
This is a failure of left-liberal politics.
Constructing an effective response requires
a politics that goes right at the ideology,
translates the meaning of Bush's governing
agenda, lays out the implications for society
and argues unabashedly for a more positive,
inclusive, forward-looking vision. No need
for scaremongering attacks; stick to the well-known
facts. Pose some big questions: Do Americans
want to get rid of the income tax altogether
and its longstanding premise that the affluent
should pay higher rates than the humble? For
that matter, do Americans think capital incomes
should be excused completely from taxation
while labor incomes are taxed more heavily,
perhaps through a stiff national sales tax?
Do people want to give up on the concept of
the "common school"--one of America's distinctive
achievements? Should property rights be given
precedence over human rights or society's
need to protect nature? The recent battles
over Social Security privatization are instructive:
When the labor-left mounted a serious ideological
rebuttal, well documented in fact and reason,
Republicans scurried away from the issue (though
they will doubtless try again).
To make this case convincing, however, the
opposition must first have a coherent vision
of its own. The Democratic Party, alas, is
accustomed to playing defense and has become
wary of "the vision thing," as Dubya's father
called it. Most elected Democrats, I think,
now see their role as managerial rather than
big reform, and fear that even talking about
ideology will stick them with the right's
demon label: "liberal." If a new understanding
of progressive purpose does get formed, one
that connects to social reality and describes
a more promising future, the vision will not
originate in Washington but among those who
see realities up close and are struggling
now to change things on the ground. We are
a very wealthy (and brutally powerful) nation,
so why do people experience so much stress
and confinement in their lives, a sense of
loss and failure? The answers, I suggest,
will lead to a new formulation of what progressives
want.
The first place to inquire is not the failures
of government but the malformed power relationships
of American capitalism--the terms of employment
that reduce many workers to powerless digits,
the closely held decisions of finance capital
that shape our society, the waste and destruction
embedded in our system of mass consumption
and production. The goal is, like the right's,
to create greater self-fulfillment but as
broadly as possible. Self-reliance and individualism
can be made meaningful for all only by first
reviving the power of collective action.
My own conviction is that a lot of Americans
are ready to take up these questions and many
others. Some are actually old questions--issues
of power that were not resolved in the great
reform eras of the past. They await a new
generation bold enough to ask if our prosperous
society is really as free and satisfied as
it claims to be. When conscientious people
find ideas and remedies that resonate with
the real experiences of Americans, then they
will have their vision, and perhaps the true
answer to the right wing.
National
affairs correspondent William Greider has
been a political journalist for more than
thirty-five years. A former Rolling Stone
and Washington Post editor, he is the
author of the national bestsellers One
World, Ready or Not, Secrets of the
Temple and Who Will Tell The People.
Copyright
© 2003 The Nation I.
Back to the Future
George W. Bush, properly understood, represents
the third and most powerful wave in the right's
long-running assault on the governing order
created by twentieth-century liberalism. The
first wave was Ronald Reagan, whose election
in 1980 allowed movement conservatives finally
to attain governing power (their flame was
first lit by Barry Goldwater back in 1964).
Reagan unfurled many bold ideological banners
for right-wing reform and established the
political viability of enacting regressive
tax cuts, but he accomplished very little
reordering of government, much less shrinking
of it. The second wave was Newt Gingrich,
whose capture of the House majority in 1994
gave Republicans control of Congress for the
first time in two generations. Despite some
landmark victories like welfare reform, Gingrich
flamed out quickly, a zealous revolutionary
ineffective as legislative leader.
George Bush II may be as shallow as he appears,
but his presidency represents a far more formidable
challenge than either Reagan or Gingrich.
His potential does not emanate from an amiable
personality (Al Gore, remember, outpolled
him in 2000) or even the sky-high ratings
generated by 9/11 and war. Bush's governing
strength is anchored in the long, hard-driving
movement of the right that now owns all three
branches of the federal government. Its unified
ranks allow him to govern aggressively, despite
slender GOP majorities in the House and Senate
and the public's general indifference to the
right's domestic program.
The movement's grand ambition--one can no
longer say grandiose--is to roll back the
twentieth century, quite literally. That is,
defenestrate the federal government and reduce
its scale and powers to a level well below
what it was before the New Deal's centralization.
With that accomplished, movement conservatives
envision a restored society in which the prevailing
values and power relationships resemble the
America that existed around 1900, when William
McKinley was President. Governing authority
and resources are dispersed from Washington,
returned to local levels and also to individuals
and private institutions, most notably corporations
and religious organizations. The primacy of
private property rights is re-established
over the shared public priorities expressed
in government regulation. Above all, private
wealth--both enterprises and individuals with
higher incomes--are permanently insulated
from the progressive claims of the graduated
income tax.
These broad objectives may sound reactionary
and destructive (in historical terms they
are), but hard-right conservatives see themselves
as liberating reformers, not destroyers, who
are rescuing old American virtues of self-reliance
and individual autonomy from the clutches
of collective action and "statist" left-wingers.
They do not expect any of these far-reaching
goals to be fulfilled during Bush's tenure,
but they do assume that history is on their
side and that the next wave will come along
soon (not an unreasonable expectation, given
their great gains during the past thirty years).
Right-wingers--who once seemed frothy and
fratricidal--now understand that three steps
forward, two steps back still adds up to forward
progress. It's a long march, they say. Stick
together, because we are winning.
Many opponents and critics (myself included)
have found the right's historic vision so
improbable that we tend to guffaw and misjudge
the political potency of what it has put together.
We might ask ourselves: If these ideas are
so self-evidently cockeyed and reactionary,
why do they keep advancing? The right's unifying
idea--get the government out of our lives--has
broad popular appeal, at least on a sentimental
level, because it represents an authentic
core value in the American experience ("Don't
tread on me" was a slogan in the Revolution).
But the true source of its strength is the
movement's fluid architecture and durability
over time, not the passing personalities of
Reagan-Gingrich-Bush or even the big money
from business. The movement has a substantial
base that believes in its ideological vision--people
alarmed by cultural change or injured in some
way by government intrusions, coupled with
economic interests that have very strong reasons
to get government off their backs--and the
right has created the political mechanics
that allow these disparate elements to pull
together. Cosmopolitan corporate executives
hold their noses and go along with Christian
activists trying to stamp out "decadent" liberal
culture. Fed-up working-class conservatives
support business's assaults on their common
enemy, liberal government, even though they
may be personally injured when business objectives
triumph.
The right's power also feeds off the general
decay in the political system--the widely
shared and often justifiable resentments felt
toward big government, which no longer seems
to address the common concerns of ordinary
citizens.
I am not predicting that the right will win
the governing majority that could enact the
whole program, in a kind of right-wing New
Deal--and I will get to some reasons why I
expect their cause to fail eventually. The
farther they advance, however, the less inevitable
is their failure.
II.
The McKinley Blueprint
In the months after last November's elections,
the Bush Administration rattled progressive
sensibilities with shock and awe on the home
front--a barrage of audacious policy initiatives:
Allow churches to include sanctuaries of worship
in buildings financed by federal housing grants.
Slash hundreds of billions in domestic programs,
especially spending for the poor, even as
the Bush tax cuts kick in for the well-to-do.
At the behest of Big Pharma, begin prosecuting
those who help the elderly buy cheaper prescription
drugs in Canada. Compel the District of Columbia
to conduct federally financed school voucher
experiments (even though DC residents are
overwhelmingly opposed). Reform Medicaid by
handing it over to state governments, which
will be free to make their own rules, much
like welfare reform. Do the same for housing
aid, food stamps and other long-established
programs. Redefine "wetlands" and "wilderness"
so that millions of protected acres are opened
for development.
Liberal activists gasped at the variety and
dangerous implications (the public might have
been upset too but was preoccupied with war),
while conservatives understood that Bush was
laying the foundations, step by step, toward
their grand transformation of American life.
These are the concrete elements of their vision:
§
Eliminate federal taxation of private capital,
as the essential predicate for dismantling
the progressive income tax. This will require
a series of reform measures (one of them,
repeal of the estate tax, already accomplished).
Bush has proposed several others: elimination
of the tax on stock dividends and establishment
of new tax-sheltered personal savings accounts
for the growing "investor class." Congress
appears unwilling to swallow these, at least
this year, but their introduction advances
the education-agitation process. Future revenue
would be harvested from a single-rate flat
tax on wages or, better still, a stiff sales
tax on consumption. Either way, labor gets
taxed, but not capital. The 2003 Economic
Report of the President, prepared by the Council
of Economic Advisers, offers a primer on the
advantages of a consumption tax and how it
might work. Narrowing the tax base naturally
encourages smaller government.
§
Gradually phase out the pension-fund retirement
system as we know it, starting with Social
Security privatization but moving eventually
to breaking up the other large pools of retirement
savings, even huge public-employee funds,
and converting them into individualized accounts.
Individuals will be rewarded for taking personal
responsibility for their retirement with proposed
"lifetime savings" accounts where capital
is stored, forever tax-exempt. Unlike IRAs,
which provide a tax deduction for contributions,
wages are taxed upfront but permanently tax-sheltered
when deposited as "lifetime" capital savings,
including when the money is withdrawn and
spent. Thus this new format inevitably threatens
the present system, in which employers get
a tax deduction for financing pension funds
for their workers. The new alternative should
eventually lead to repeal of the corporate
tax deduction and thus relieve business enterprise
of any incentive to finance pensions for employees.
Everyone takes care of himself.
§
Withdraw the federal government from a direct
role in housing, healthcare, assistance to
the poor and many other long-established social
priorities, first by dispersing program management
to local and state governments or private
operators, then by steadily paring down the
federal government's financial commitment.
If states choose to kill an aid program rather
than pay for it themselves, that confirms
that the program will not be missed. Any slack
can be taken up by the private sector, philanthropy
and especially religious institutions that
teach social values grounded in faith.
§
Restore churches, families and private education
to a more influential role in the nation's
cultural life by giving them a significant
new base of income--public money. When "school
choice" tuitions are fully available to families,
all taxpayers will be compelled to help pay
for private school systems, both secular and
religious, including Catholic parochial schools.
As a result, public schools will likely lose
some of their financial support, but their
enrollments are expected to shrink anyway,
as some families opt out. Although the core
of Bush's "faith-based initiative" stalled
in Congress, he is advancing it through new
administrative rules. The voucher strategy
faces many political hurdles, but the Supreme
Court is out ahead, clearing away the constitutional
objections.
§
Strengthen the hand of business enterprise
against burdensome regulatory obligations,
especially environmental protection, by introducing
voluntary goals and "market-driven" solutions.
These will locate the decision-making on how
much progress is achievable within corporate
managements rather than enforcement agencies
(an approach also championed in this year's
Economic Report). Down the road, when a more
aggressive right-wing majority is secured
for the Supreme Court, conservatives expect
to throw a permanent collar around the regulatory
state by enshrining a radical new constitutional
doctrine. It would require government to compensate
private property owners, including businesses,
for new regulations that impose costs on them
or injure their profitability, a formulation
sure to guarantee far fewer regulations [see
Greider, "The Right and US Trade Law," October
15, 2001].
§
Smash organized labor. Though unions have
lost considerable influence, they remain a
major obstacle to achieving the right's vision.
Public-employee unions are formidable opponents
on issues like privatization and school vouchers.
Even the declining industrial unions still
have the resources to mobilize a meaningful
counterforce in politics. Above all, the labor
movement embodies the progressives' instrument
of power: collective action. The mobilizations
of citizens in behalf of broad social demands
are inimical to the right's vision of autonomous
individuals, in charge of their own affairs
and acting alone. Unions may be taken down
by a thousand small cuts, like stripping "homeland
security" workers of union protection. They
will be more gravely weakened if pension funds,
an enduring locus of labor power, are privatized.
Looking back over this list, one sees many
of the old peevish conservative resentments--Social
Security, the income tax, regulation of business,
labor unions, big government centralized in
Washington--that represent the great battles
that conservatives lost during early decades
of the twentieth century. That is why the
McKinley era represents a lost Eden the right
has set out to restore. Grover Norquist, president
of Americans for Tax Reform and a pivotal
leader in the movement's inside-outside politics,
confirms this observation. "Yes, the McKinley
era, absent the protectionism," he agrees,
is the goal. "You're looking at the history
of the country for the first 120 years, up
until Teddy Roosevelt, when the socialists
took over. The income tax, the death tax,
regulation, all that." (In foreign policy,
at least, the Bush Administration could fairly
be said to have already restored the spirit
of that earlier age. Justifying the annexation
of the Philippines, McKinley famously explained
America's purpose in the world: "There was
nothing left for us to do but to take them
all, and to educate the Filipinos, and uplift
and civilize and Christianize them, and by
God's grace do the very best we could by them,
as our fellow men for whom Christ also died.")
But the right employs a highly selective memory.
McKinley Republicans, aligned with the newly
emergent industrial titans, did indeed hold
off the Progressive advocates of a federal
income tax and other reforms, while its high
tariffs were the equivalent of a stiff consumption
tax. And its conservative Supreme Court blocked
regulatory laws designed to protect society
and workers as unconstitutional intrusions
on private property rights.
But the truth is that McKinley's conservatism
broke down not because of socialists but because
a deeply troubled nation was awash in social
and economic conflicts, inequities generated
by industrialization and the awesome power
consolidating in the behemoth industrial corporations
(struggles not resolved until economic crisis
spawned the New Deal). Reacting to popular
demands, Teddy Roosevelt enacted landmark
Progressive reforms like the first federal
regulations protecting public health and safety
and a ban on corporate campaign contributions.
Both Roosevelt and his successor, Republican
William Howard Taft, endorsed the concept
of a progressive income tax and other un-Republican
measures later enacted under Woodrow Wilson.
George W. Bush does not of course ever speak
of the glories of the McKinley era or acknowledge
his party's retrograde objectives (Ari Fleischer
would bat down any suggestions to the contrary).
Conservatives learned, especially from Gingrich's
implosion, to avoid flamboyant ideological
proclamations. Instead, the broader outlines
are only hinted at in various official texts.
But there's nothing really secretive about
their intentions. Right-wing activists and
think tanks have been openly articulating
the goals for years. Some of their ideas that
once sounded loopy are now law.
III.
The Ecumenical Right
The movement "is moving with the speed of
a glacier," explains Martin Anderson, a senior
fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution who
served as Reagan's house intellectual, the
keeper of the flame, and was among the early
academics counseling George W. Bush. "It moves
very slowly, stops sometimes, even retreats,
but then it moves forward again. Sometimes,
it comes up against a tree and seems stuck,
then the tree snaps and people say, 'My gosh,
it's a revolution.'" To continue the metaphor,
Anderson thinks this glacier will run up against
some big boulders that do not yield, that
the right will eventually be stopped short
of grand objectives like small government
or elimination of the income tax. But they've
made impressive progress so far.
For the first time since the 1920s, Congress,
the White House and the Supreme Court are
all singing from same hymnal and generally
reinforcing one another. The Court's right-wing
majority acts to shrink federal authority,
block citizen challenges of important institutions
and hack away at the liberal precedents on
civil rights, regulatory law and many other
matters (it even decides an election for its
side, when necessary).
Bush, meanwhile, has what Reagan lacked--a
Reaganite majority in Congress. When the Gipper
won in 1980, most Republicans in Congress
were still traditional conservatives, not
radical reformers. The majority of House Republicans
tipped over to the Reaganite identity in 1984,
a majority of GOP senators not until 1994.
The ranks of the unconverted--Republicans
who refuse to sign Norquist's pledge not to
raise taxes--are now, by his count, down to
5 percent in the House caucus, 15 percent
in the Senate.
This ideological solidarity is a central element
in Bush's governing strength. So long as he
can manage the flow of issues in accord with
the big blueprint, the right doesn't shoot
at him when he makes politically sensitive
deviations (import quotas for steel or the
lavish new farm-subsidy bill). It also helps
that, especially in the House, the GOP leaders
impose Stalinist discipline on their troops.
Bush also reassures the far right by making
it clear that he is one of them. Reagan used
to stroke the Christian right with strong
rhetoric on social issues but gave them very
little else (the man was from Hollywood, after
all). Bush is a true believer, a devout Christian
and exceedingly public about it. Bush's principal
innovation--a page taken from Bill Clinton's
playbook--is to confuse the opposition's issues
by offering his own compassion-lite alternatives,
co-opting or smothering Democratic initiatives.
Unlike Clinton, Bush does not mollify his
political base with empty gestures. Their
program is his program.
"Reagan
talked a good game on the domestic side but
he actually didn't push for much," says Paul
Weyrich, leader of the Free Congress Foundation
and a movement pioneer. "Likewise, the Gingrich
era was a lot of rhetoric. This Administration
is far more serious and disciplined.... they
have better outreach than any with which I
have dealt. These people have figured out
how to communicate regularly with their base,
make sure it understands what they're doing.
When they have to go against their base, they
know how to inoculate themselves against what
might happen."
Norquist's ambition is that building on its
current strength, the right can cut government
by half over the next twenty-five years to
"get it down to the size where we can drown
it in the bathtub" [see Robert Dreyfuss, "Grover
Norquist: 'Field Marshal' of the Bush Tax
Plan," May 14, 2001]. The federal government
would shrink from 20 percent of GDP to 10
percent, state and local government from 12
to 6 percent. When vouchers become universally
available, he expects public schools to shrink
from 6 to 3 percent of GDP. "And we'll have
better schools," he assures. People like Norquist
play the role of constantly pushing the boundaries
of the possible. "I'm lining up support to
abolish the alternative minimum tax," he says.
"Has Bush spoken to this? No. I want to run
ahead, put our guys on the record for it.
So I will be out in front of the Bush Administration,
not attacking the Bush Administration. Will
he do everything we want? No, but you know
what? I don't care."
Americans for Tax Reform serves as a kind
of "action central" for a galaxy of conservative
interests, with support from corporate names
like Microsoft, Pfizer, AOL Time Warner, R.J.
Reynolds and the liquor industry. "The issue
that brings people to politics is what they
want from government," Norquist explains.
"All our people want to be left alone by government.
To be in this coalition, you only need to
have your foot in the circle on one issue.
You don't need a Weltanschauung, you
don't have to agree with every other issue,
so long as the coalition is right on yours.
That's why we don't have the expected war
within the center-right coalition. That's
why we can win."
One of the right's political accomplishments
is bringing together diverse, once-hostile
sectarians. "The Republican Party used to
be based in the Protestant mainline and aggressively
kept its distance from other religions," Norquist
observes. "Now we've got observant Catholics,
the people who go to mass every Sunday, evangelical
Christians, Mormons, orthodox Jews, Muslims."
How did it happen? "The secular left has created
an ecumenical right," he says. This new tolerance,
including on race, may represent meaningful
social change, but of course the right also
still feeds on intolerance too, demonizing
those whose values or lifestyle or place of
birth does not conform to their idea of "American."
This tendency, Norquist acknowledges, is a
vulnerability. The swelling ranks of Latino
and Asian immigrants could become a transforming
force in American politics, once these millions
of new citizens become confident enough to
participate in election politics (just as
European immigrants became a vital force for
liberal reform in the early twentieth century).
So Bush labors to change the party's anti-immigrant
profile (and had some success with Mexican-Americans
in Texas).
Norquist prefers to focus on other demographic
trends that he believes insure the right's
eventual triumph: As the children of the New
Deal die off, he asserts, they will be replaced
by young "leave me alone" conservatives. Anderson,
the former Reagan adviser, is less certain.
"Most of the people like what government is
doing," he observes. "So long as it isn't
overintrusive and so forth, they're happy
with it."
IV.
Show Me the Money
Ideology may provide the unifying umbrella,
but the real glue of this movement is its
iron rule for practical politics: Every measure
it enacts, every half-step it takes toward
the grand vision, must deliver concrete rewards
to one constituency or another, often several--and
right now, not in the distant future. Usually
the reward is money. There is nothing unusual
or illegitimate about that, but it sounds
like raw hypocrisy considering that the right
devotes enormous energy to denouncing "special-interest
politics" on the left (schoolteachers, labor
unions, bureaucrats, Hollywood). The right's
interest groups, issue by issue, bring their
muscle to the cause. Bush's "lifetime savings"
accounts constitute a vast new product line
for the securities industry, which is naturally
enthused about marketing and managing these
accounts. The terms especially benefit the
well-to-do, since a family of four will be
able to shelter up to $45,000 annually (that's
more than most families earn in a year). The
White House has enlisted Fortune 500 companies
to spread the good news to the investor class
in their regular mailings to shareholders.
Bush's "market-friendly" reforms for healthcare
would reward two business sectors that many
consumers regard as the problem--drug companies
and HMOs. Big Pharma would get the best of
all worlds: a federal subsidy for prescription
drug purchases by the elderly, but without
any limits on the prices. The insurance industry
is invited to set up a privatized version
of Medicare that would compete with the government-run
system (assuming there are enough senior citizens
willing to take that risk).
Some rewards are not about money. Bush has
already provided a victory for "pro-lifers"
with the ban on late-term abortions. The antiabortionists
are realists now and no longer badger the
GOP for a constitutional amendment, but perhaps
a future Supreme Court, top-heavy with right-wing
appointees, will deliver for them. Republicans
are spoiling for a fight over guns in 2004,
when the federal ban on assault rifles is
due to expire. Liberals, they hope, will try
to renew the law so the GOP can deliver a
visible election-year reward by blocking it.
(Gun-control advocates are thinking of forcing
Bush to choose between the gun lobby and public
opinion.)
The biggest rewards, of course, are about
taxation, and the internal self-discipline
is impressive. When Reagan proposed his huge
tax-rate cuts in 1981, the K Street corporate
lobbyists piled on with their own list of
goodies and the White House lost control;
Reagan's tax cuts wound up much larger than
he intended. This time around, business behaved
itself when Bush proposed a tax package in
2001 in which its wish list was left out.
"They supported the 2001 tax cuts because
they knew there was going to be another tax
cut every year and, if you don't support this
year's, you go to the end of the line next
time," Norquist says. Their patience has already
been rewarded. The antitax movement follows
a well-defined script for advancing step by
step to the ultimate goal. Norquist has organized
five caucuses to agitate and sign up Congressional
supporters on five separate issues: estate-tax
repeal (already enacted but still vulnerable
to reversal); retirement-savings reforms;
elimination of the alternative minimum tax;
immediate business deductions for capital
investment expenses (instead of a multiyear
depreciation schedule); and zero taxation
of capital gains. "If we do all of these things,
there is no tax on capital and we are very
close to a flat tax," Norquist exclaims.
The road ahead is far more difficult than
he makes it sound, because along the way a
lot of people will discover that they are
to be the losers. In fact, the McKinley vision
requires vast sectors of society to pay dearly,
and from their own pockets. Martin Anderson
has worked through the flat-tax arithmetic
many times, and it always comes out a political
loser. "The conservatives all want to revolutionize
the tax system, frankly because they haven't
thought it through," Anderson says. "It means
people from zero to $35,000 income pay no
tax and anyone over $150,000 is going to get
a tax cut. The people in between get a tax
increase, unless you cut federal spending.
That's not going to happen."
Likewise, any substantial consumption tax
does severe injury to another broad class
of Americans--the elderly. They were already
taxed when they were young and earning and
saving their money, but a new consumption
tax would now tax their money again as they
spend it. Lawrence Lindsey, Bush's former
economic adviser, has advocated a consumption-based
flat tax that would probably require a rate
of 21 percent on consumer purchases (like
a draconian sales tax). He concedes, "It would
be hitting the current generation of elderly
twice. So it would be a hard sell."
"School
choice" is also essentially a money issue,
though this fact has been obscured by the
years of Republican rhetoric demonizing the
public schools and their teachers. Under tuition
vouchers, the redistribution of income will
flow from all taxpayers to the minority of
American families who send their children
to private schools, religious and secular.
Those children are less than 10 percent of
the 52 million children enrolled in K-12.
You wouldn't know it from reading about the
voucher debate, but the market share of private
schools actually declined slightly during
the past decade. The Catholic parochial system
stands to gain the most from public financing,
because its enrollment has declined by half
since the 1960s (to 2.6 million). Though there
was some growth during the 1990s, it was in
the suburbs, not cities. Other private schools,
especially religious schools in the South,
grew more during the past decade (by about
400,000), but public schools expanded far
faster, by 6 million. The point is, the right's
constituency for "school choice" remains a
small though fervent minority.
Conservatives have cleverly transformed the
voucher question into an issue of racial equality--arguing
that they are the best way to liberate impoverished
black children from bad schools in slum surroundings.
But educational quality notwithstanding, it
is not self-evident that private schools,
including the Catholic parochial system, are
disposed to solve the problem of minority
education, since they are highly segregated
themselves. Catholic schools enroll only 2.5
percent of black students nationwide and,
more telling, only 3.8 percent of Hispanic
children, most of whom are Catholic. In the
South hundreds of private schools originated
to escape integration and were supported at
first by state tuition grants (later ruled
unconstitutional). "School choice," in short,
might very well finance greater racial separation--the
choice of whites to stick with their own kind--and
at public expense.
The right's assault on environmental regulation
has a similar profile. Taking the lead are
small landowners or Western farmers who make
appealing pleas to be left alone to enjoy
their property and take care of it conscientiously.
Riding alongside are developers and major
industrial sectors (and polluters) eager to
win the same rights, if not from Congress
then the Supreme Court. But there's one problem:
The overwhelming majority of Americans want
stronger environmental standards and more
vigorous enforcement.
V.
Are They Right About America?
"Leave
me alone" is an appealing slogan, but the
right regularly violates its own guiding principle.
The antiabortion folks intend to use government
power to force their own moral values on the
private lives of others. Free-market right-wingers
fall silent when Bush and Congress intrude
to bail out airlines, insurance companies,
banks--whatever sector finds itself in desperate
need. The hard-right conservatives are downright
enthusiastic when the Supreme Court and Bush's
Justice Department hack away at our civil
liberties. The "school choice" movement seeks
not smaller government but a vast expansion
of taxpayer obligations. Maybe what the right
is really seeking is not so much to be left
alone by government but to use government
to reorganize society in its own right-wing
image. All in all, the right's agenda promises
a reordering that will drive the country toward
greater separation and segmentation of its
many social elements--higher walls and more
distance for those who wish to protect themselves
from messy diversity. The trend of social
disintegration, including the slow breakup
of the broad middle class, has been under
way for several decades--fissures generated
by growing inequalities of status and well-being.
The right proposes to legitimize and encourage
these deep social changes in the name of greater
autonomy. Dismantle the common assets of society,
give people back their tax money and let everyone
fend for himself.
Is this the country Americans want for their
grandchildren or great-grandchildren? If one
puts aside Republican nostalgia for McKinley's
gaslight era, it was actually a dark and troubled
time for many Americans and society as a whole,
riven as it was by harsh economic conflict
and social neglect of everyday brutalities.
Autonomy can be lonely and chilly, as millions
of Americans have learned in recent years
when the company canceled their pensions or
the stock market swallowed their savings or
industrial interests destroyed their surroundings.
For most Americans, there is no redress without
common action, collective efforts based on
mutual trust and shared responsibilities.
In other words, I do not believe that most
Americans want what the right wants. But I
also think many cannot see the choices clearly
or grasp the long-term implications for the
country.
This is a failure of left-liberal politics.
Constructing an effective response requires
a politics that goes right at the ideology,
translates the meaning of Bush's governing
agenda, lays out the implications for society
and argues unabashedly for a more positive,
inclusive, forward-looking vision. No need
for scaremongering attacks; stick to the well-known
facts. Pose some big questions: Do Americans
want to get rid of the income tax altogether
and its longstanding premise that the affluent
should pay higher rates than the humble? For
that matter, do Americans think capital incomes
should be excused completely from taxation
while labor incomes are taxed more heavily,
perhaps through a stiff national sales tax?
Do people want to give up on the concept of
the "common school"--one of America's distinctive
achievements? Should property rights be given
precedence over human rights or society's
need to protect nature? The recent battles
over Social Security privatization are instructive:
When the labor-left mounted a serious ideological
rebuttal, well documented in fact and reason,
Republicans scurried away from the issue (though
they will doubtless try again).
To make this case convincing, however, the
opposition must first have a coherent vision
of its own. The Democratic Party, alas, is
accustomed to playing defense and has become
wary of "the vision thing," as Dubya's father
called it. Most elected Democrats, I think,
now see their role as managerial rather than
big reform, and fear that even talking about
ideology will stick them with the right's
demon label: "liberal." If a new understanding
of progressive purpose does get formed, one
that connects to social reality and describes
a more promising future, the vision will not
originate in Washington but among those who
see realities up close and are struggling
now to change things on the ground. We are
a very wealthy (and brutally powerful) nation,
so why do people experience so much stress
and confinement in their lives, a sense of
loss and failure? The answers, I suggest,
will lead to a new formulation of what progressives
want.
The first place to inquire is not the failures
of government but the malformed power relationships
of American capitalism--the terms of employment
that reduce many workers to powerless digits,
the closely held decisions of finance capital
that shape our society, the waste and destruction
embedded in our system of mass consumption
and production. The goal is, like the right's,
to create greater self-fulfillment but as
broadly as possible. Self-reliance and individualism
can be made meaningful for all only by first
reviving the power of collective action.
My own conviction is that a lot of Americans
are ready to take up these questions and many
others. Some are actually old questions--issues
of power that were not resolved in the great
reform eras of the past. They await a new
generation bold enough to ask if our prosperous
society is really as free and satisfied as
it claims to be. When conscientious people
find ideas and remedies that resonate with
the real experiences of Americans, then they
will have their vision, and perhaps the true
answer to the right wing.
National
affairs correspondent William Greider has
been a political journalist for more than
thirty-five years. A former Rolling Stone
and Washington Post editor, he is the
author of the national bestsellers One
World, Ready or Not, Secrets of the
Temple and Who Will Tell The People.
Copyright
© 2003 The Nation


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