The Bush Second Term Agenda: Marginalization of Opposition

From Rob Salkowitz at Emphasis Added:

However, Movement Conservative hostility to the whole idea of government is only partially explained by rational objections to government inefficiency. Since the 1930s, "big government" has provided substantial, well-paid jobs to millions of ordinary Americans. Government provided a system for educated, upwardly-mobile people, including first- and second-generation Americans, minorities, and people who took advantage of the GI Bill and the expansion of state and city universities in the 1940s and 50s to advance into the ranks of the middle class without indoctrinating them into the conformist authority structure of corporate life or the petty-bourgeoise provincialism of the small businessman. It also provided a socially-sanctioned institutional platform from which they could exercise the authority of technocracy over the privileged and powerful, who resented (as always) having to answer for their often anti-social actions.

In other words, "big government" was not only wrong for exercising power over private interests, but also for putting that power in the hands of the "wrong" people - uppity middle-class professionals, overwhelmingly ethnic, urban, liberal and Democratic. For Movement Conservatives, opposition to "big government" is as much sociological and political as it is ideological and economic.

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Simply put, opposition to "big government" is opposition to democracy. One can imagine that if the wealthy class had a stronger grip on the federal bureaucracy, there would be no need for the anti-government conservative ideology that has haunted the United States for over thirty years. Thoroughly serving the needs of the economic elite, "big government" would be propagandized as good for the country. I'm reminded of the immediate flip-flop conservatives make on the issue of "state's rights" (another conservative rhetorical strategy for weakening the federal government) when states do something they don't like, medicinal marijuana for instance. The point is, and Salkowitz makes this extremely clear in his essay, that Movement Conservatives consciously concoct phony arguments in order to amass power. Clearly, they've been extremely successful with this.

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