The former senator isn't just the head of the right's premier think tank -- he's now running the Republican Party
...what’s most striking about DeMint is his boundless optimism. He’s not only utterly convinced that there’s a silent majority of conservatives dotting the American landscape, but he also believes that Republicans’ failures in 2008 and 2012 were the product of the party not being conservative enough....
... a lot about the way Jim DeMint sees the world that would strike many as odd. He’s not so sure gay people or sexually active unmarried women should be allowed to teach. He’s convinced that the Republican Party can win on cutting social insurance programs like Medicare and Social Security. He thinks Obama is turning the U.S. into a country of “national socialism.” His chosen method of political persuasion is to inflict “pain.”
For most folks outside of the GOP base, this is a bizarre and unfortunate combination of right-wing libertarianism and an authoritarian spirit....Some would say that being a libertarian and being an authoritarian are incompatible and that a libertarian authoritarian is an oxymoron. However, that depends. Classical liberalism had a conservative side holding that while all are created naturally equal, only some deserve to be free through their meritorious action evidence in worldly power and success. Social liberalism was only added decades later.
Social liberalism was never adopted by many classical liberals. Nor was it by neoclassical liberals, who see liberalism in terms of free markets and utility maximization. Free markets means no government "intrusion" since exchange is "natural," and "utility" maximization signifies acquisition of power and property as being "rational." The best from of government is "meritocracy" as shown by acquisition of power and wealth. The privilege of political power (authoritarianism) and economic freedom (libertarianism) is hard won and deserved and therefore should be inheritable.
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