WS says:
I am afraid that at the end of the day, right wing populist sentiments will prevail...
JG says:
Wojtek, resident expert on right-wing populism, please help me make sense of the following paradox.
Both libertarians and paleoconservatives draw from the right-wing populist well. On paper their political philosophies seem to be somewhat at odds with one another, but in the US context, not only do the two camps often get along, but sometimes the two standpoints seem to be welded together in the same persons and movements.
Since the two perspectives are mostly forms of anti-liberal (in the US sense) demagogy, rather than principled worldviews, it's not surprising that they can co-exist. Still, at a certain level, "cognitive dissonance" has to be overcome. How does this work? I have a proposal.
Right-wing populists rail against against government spending because it empowers elitist liberal politicians and bureaucrats, who get to decide how to spend "your hard-earned tax dollars" (rather than "you yourself" getting to decide). Libertarians focus on how resource allocation by elitist liberal politicians and bureaucrats distorts market efficiency and hampers economic growth. Paleoconservatives focus on how resource allocation by elitist liberal politicians and bureaucrats invariably showers largesse on the morally unworthy constituents and clients of said politicians and bureaucrats, like the "shiftless" non-white poor (the putative beneficiaries of sub-prime mortgages!) or agents of foreign interests bent on "subverting" the US (like the Chinese-Indonesian Lippos). But in the market-idolizing and national-narcissist US, the two worldviews tend to bleed into another.
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