Neo Liberalism: a Last Word on an Evil System

The Crash of 2008 might have been a bit more than the conservatives of 1952, 1980 or 2000 wanted, but like the story of the boy who kept asking for “Creamed Angleworms on Toast”—and finally was served it for dinner—it’s what they kept asking for. They wanted to starve the governmental beast, and it keeled over, nearly taking everything with it.
To a very real extent, they may well have what they say they wanted—less government and vastly reduced public services. They are already cutting back snow plowing and police in my neck of the woods. Michigan Medicaid has eliminated dental care and podiatry for all adults. Can Medicare be far behind?
A parking sticker at the local suburban high school has just gone up from five to twenty dollars. The district didn’t have enough reams of paper on hand to print all the exams last spring. You can point to a calendar and show the dates when Social Security and Medicare will go broke.
The New Deal will never be repealed—but it may be driven into insolvency and allow some of its programs to slide into Chapter 7 (liquidation). That will be a triumph for Neo-liberal ideology. So will the defeat of health care reform.
Neo-liberalism is a cruel political philosophy. As a conservative Republican friend of mine (his uncle was a conservative senator), said to me decades ago, “if you cannot afford health insurance, you should die.” This is why 47 million uninsured Americans do not concern them.
Do not appeal to their heart or their pity. At best they will merely fail to understand what you are talking about. I gained a real insight into their thinking when I borrowed a text from my son who is studying to be an urban planner. “The Neoliberal City, Governance, Ideology, and Development in American Urbanism.” By Jason Hackworth, Cornell U Press.
He studies the impact of Neo-liberalism or classical liberalism just on our inner cities. (The study is eye-opening.) He defines Neo-liberalism as “an ideological rejection of egalitarian liberalism [people like Ted Kennedy and Obama] … and the Keynesian welfare state” [think New Deal or LBJ}. P. 9.
Neo-liberals, he says, are very concerned that government not interfere with the market place (a rule broken by Bush Jr. when he didn’t let ALL of Wall Street go broke last fall). Hackworth also points out that after Thatcher and Reagan, Neo-liberalism and Neo-conservatism came to be identified as one and the same thing in Britain and America.
The affect on American cities has been, he notes, to withdraw federal resources from cities in the guise of allowing them the “freedom” to go their own way. The American worker was, please note, given the same “freedom” with his retirement plans and there was a real effort to give him similar “freedom” with his or her Social Security.
“I’m giving you your freedom, son. You are no longer permitted to eat and sleep in this house. Nor can you expect any more allowance or assistance. You are free to make your own way.” You can die of that kind of freedom. I am not and will not be this kind of Republican. I leave it to men like Jefferson, Jackson, Hoover and Bush Jr. I remain one of that dying breed, an Eisenhower Republican or a Teddy Roosevelt Republican. (My dad admitted to voting for FDR in 1936. Shhhh.)
When I think of “Christians” who still identify with a Darwinian, Reaganesque society at its most vicious, I am tempted to remind them of what the Biblical writer, St. Paul, says in Second Timothy, vv 1-5. He could almost have been writing about last fall.
“1 But know this, that in the last days perilous times will come: 2 For men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, 3 unloving, unforgiving, slanderers, without self-control, brutal, despisers of good, 4 traitors, headstrong, haughty, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, 5 having a form of godliness but denying its power.
He ends with the suggestion, “And from such people turn away!”