Saturday, February 28, 2009

Funhouse Musing #106

Repartee over tea, in response to Comrade Stuck's essay's on Conservatism and it's pending demise.

I’ve said it before on this blog and others, sometimes mocked a little (not here) that the GOP now under control of southern ideologues are operating out a mindset that says, I don’t accept your liberal constitution and many of it’s basic tenets. Such as separation of church/state, individual civil liberties, and a whole array of notions of fairness and restricting government power. It is often a subtle and maybe even an un conscious (though less so with each passing day it seems) drive toward a type of authoritarianism grounded in centuries of the southern aristocratic lifestyle and ideology thought to be previously conquered with the Civil War and subsequent apartheid era, that only was thwarted 30 or 40 years ago. Read it in the rebellion talk growing on the right, whipping themselves into a state of mind of "hell no we won’t go". Add to that the political Fait Compli of the southern strategy with national elected offices split amongst two parties largely along the old Mason Dixon line and you have a setup for real secession overtones, not just culturally, but throughout our governing bodies at the national level. The bulk of the country has firmly turned against the beliefs and policies of the old south currently embodied in the GOP. And are turning toward the traditional polices of the democratic party, the ones calling for fairness for average people and restoration of the middle class. Only a complete failure of dems to fix the destruction wrought by 30 years of RW policies can change the direction now set. And if that happens, we may be in for the era of guns and knives.