08-01-2016, 02:54 PM
Perhaps even more significantly, Democrats may have redefined what conservatism means.The new conservatism emerging at the Democratic National Convention this year will likely arise from middle-income groups that have rejected the GOP for its anti-intellectualism and ethnocentrism. Immigrants and their recent descendants comprise much of the petite-bourgeoisie of small-business owners in America. The new conservatism will respect rationality and learning, practices that the right wing of the contemporary GOP deride.
Republicans used to get a reliably high proportion of small-scale entrepreneurs, but their tax policies have basically established a flat tax on business income. People cashing out on giant fortunes, people getting gigantic bonuses, or people getting high salaries for treating subordinates badly effectively pay the same tax as a family owning a modestly-successful mom-and-pop restaurant.
Should the Republican Party wither during the latter years of this Crisis Era with the Democratic Party becoming an unwieldy (but still literally democratic -- think of the African National Congress in South Africa) single party, then it will split. Such happened after the Federalists and Whigs faded into oblivion. One Party may become a coalition of libertarians and religious believers while the other becomes a coalition of supporters of an activist government. Maybe we will end up with "Christian Democrats" and "Social Democrats".
America will get a narrow window for major reforms of the political order (closing the seams in our Constitutional system of government) and our culture (especially in education). Figure that the government might heavily subsidize either technical or vocational education or a prescribed course of liberal arts (the assumption, of course, that such can improve its students) while offering little for any other schooling. The watered-down grad school that is the Multiversity will have to go; it has churned out too many cold-hearted narcissists.
We will likely see high marginal taxes on large unearned incomes and very high salaries.
Republicans used to get a reliably high proportion of small-scale entrepreneurs, but their tax policies have basically established a flat tax on business income. People cashing out on giant fortunes, people getting gigantic bonuses, or people getting high salaries for treating subordinates badly effectively pay the same tax as a family owning a modestly-successful mom-and-pop restaurant.
Should the Republican Party wither during the latter years of this Crisis Era with the Democratic Party becoming an unwieldy (but still literally democratic -- think of the African National Congress in South Africa) single party, then it will split. Such happened after the Federalists and Whigs faded into oblivion. One Party may become a coalition of libertarians and religious believers while the other becomes a coalition of supporters of an activist government. Maybe we will end up with "Christian Democrats" and "Social Democrats".
America will get a narrow window for major reforms of the political order (closing the seams in our Constitutional system of government) and our culture (especially in education). Figure that the government might heavily subsidize either technical or vocational education or a prescribed course of liberal arts (the assumption, of course, that such can improve its students) while offering little for any other schooling. The watered-down grad school that is the Multiversity will have to go; it has churned out too many cold-hearted narcissists.
We will likely see high marginal taxes on large unearned incomes and very high salaries.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.