Lawrence Davidson — Right-Wing Ideology Run Wild

More on the rise of the Tea Party, the GOP civil war, and the economic consequences.

Ideology is a form of debilitating shortsightedness. It replaces reality with an idealized version that usually has too little to do with the real world to be workable. The economic aspect of radical conservative ideology is fatally anachronistic.

Earlier, in the Nineteenth Century, it led to devastating business cycles of boom and bust and left much of the population without basic services. The Great Depression should have been its death knell.

As to the size of government and range of its activities, we must keep in mind that there are nearly 317 million people in the United States. Going back to a pre-Great Depression government – much less one sized for Eighteenth Century needs – would undermine social stability by withdrawing all the protections that keep destitution at bay and unleashing all the prejudices that current federal law discourages.

Ignore these facts and eventually you will have real revolution on your hands. The radical conservatives are stubbornly blind to these problems because this reality calls into doubt their “principles.”

Consortiumnews.com
Right-Wing Ideology Run Wild
Lawrence Davidson | Professor of History, West Chester University

Increasingly, non-Tea Party Republicans are being called "moderates." Actually, the moderates were purged long ago. The so-called moderates now are the traditional arch-conservatives that are not extreme enough for the fanatical base.