(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Lessons from England for America, plus some quick thoughts on the math of freedom [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.', 'Backgroundurl Avatar_Large', 'Nickname', 'Joined', 'Created_At', 'Story Count', 'N_Stories', 'Comment Count', 'N_Comments', 'Popular Tags'] Date: 2023-04-27 Yeah, that's going to work really well. A cartoon metaphor for Brexit , and what has happened to England. If you want a look at what conservatism has done elsewhere, there’s a scathing indictment of the Tories in England in The NY Times by Samuel Earle, a journalist who writes about politics and culture and the author of “Tory Nation: How One Party Conquered Britain.” : Read it to see what permanent minority authoritarian rule looks like. ...After years of Tory misrule, the opinion of the British public seems clear: We’ve had enough. And with good reason. For over a decade, the Conservatives have ransacked the country they claim to love, unmooring it from its foundations and enriching their chums. While the wealth of the very richest rocketed, the party’s program of austerity, begun by David Cameron in 2010 and continued by each Conservative prime minister since, starved public services, created one of the most miserly welfare states in the developed world and contributed to the longest period of wage stagnation — for many, wage regression — since the Napoleonic Wars. Life expectancy is down, child poverty is up, and there are few signs of a reprieve on the horizon. Life under the Tories has become poorer, nastier, more brutish and shorter. If this sounds like the kind of vision that’s being pushed and pushed hard by Republicans, well, you’re not mistaken. But here’s the really distressing part. ...During this historic dominance, the Conservatives have created a nation in their image, ensuring a degree of Tory rule even when out of government. Antique poles of ruling-class power — the monarchy, the unelected House of Lords, public schools and Oxbridge — continue to dominate the political landscape. In the absence of a codified constitution or an elected second chamber, checks on the ruling party’s power are minimal. The first-past-the-post voting system remains distinctly undemocratic: Governments need claim only the support of about a quarter of the electorate to attain total executive control. The Tories are usually at the helm. The Conservatives cast these undemocratic anachronisms as quintessentially British, glamorous symbols of a timeless stability and splendor. But they are also convenient pillars of the Conservative cause. The House of Lords, where the Tories have long been dominant, is illustrative. The Lords ceased to be predominantly hereditary only in 1999, after a reform by the Labour government. Still unelected, the chamber now enables a kind of legitimatized corruption: A prime minister can give any ally — a fellow politician, a family member, a journalist, a press baron, a party donor — a job for life as a legislator, regardless of suitability, with full state approval. According to a recent analysis, one in 10 Tory peers has given more than 100,000 pounds, around $125,000, to the party. In any other context, we would know what to call such a practice. emphasis added Given that America is still enthralled by the Electoral College, the absurdity of the counter-democracy Senate, a judiciary that has been politicized, and a voting system under attack, we can’t congratulate ourselves as being that much better off. England at least doesn’t suffer from the kind of industrial evangelical complex that has infected American politics. The Tories grasp on effectively permanent minority rule is the dream of the GOP. The Republican Party is long past the point of being able to claim any legitimate policies or principles — or successful governance — to justify its participation as a legitimate partner in democracy. What they want is permanent control. Understanding why culture war is such an integral part of their strategy is key. It’s past time to engage Republicans on the culture war front which should be called what it is: the war on Freedom. Ignoring it away hasn’t worked. Trying to be conciliatory hasn’t worked. The fundamental reason Republicans are doubling down on their culture war offensive is simple: they have nothing else with which to appeal to voters . As they demonize government, they can’t turn around and promise to use government to help people. (But punishment? — it’s always on the table.) It’s why their idea of ‘helping’ people comes out as “getting government off people’s backs” — unless it’s about controlling women, punishing poor people, banning books, blocking healthcare, and so on. Republicans can’t point to a single thing they’ve made better in years, if ever. (But Republicans are not shy about taking credit for anything Democrats are able to deliver.) Instead they resort to distraction and division so people don’t realize how the race to the bottom is speeding up, how the rich are getting richer at their expense, and that they are being rendered irrelevant and expendable. Democrats in U.S. government are all too often are reluctant to confront Republican colleagues because — barring supermajorities and filibuster-proof arrangements — they need Republican cooperation to solve problems and get anything done. (Not to mention the media insistence that bipartisanship means Democrats must always be the ones to compromise.) And that’s the problem. Republicans don’t need to cooperate because they don’t want to get anything done or solve problems beyond their basic agenda: Hold onto power by any means they can get away with — racism, sexism, religious bigotry, xenophobia, homophobia, lies, corruption, etc. Make the rich richer; cut their taxes, and deregulate everything. Socialize the losses and privatize the gains. Use government for economic concentration — upwards. Destroy the faith of people in government, lest they demand accountability. Destroy faith in institutions like schools, science, etc., lest they get in the way of ignorance and prejudice. Replace it with a self-serving mythology about past glories and ‘traditional values.’ Keep democracy from breaking loose. It’s not just a war on freedom. It’s fight for human dignity and survival as a civilization. England and America may have different flavors of conservatism, but they both have a bitter aftertaste, no matter how attractively they try to package it. I wrote up a post on Biden’s reelection rationale the other day. This section seems relevant when it comes to confronting the GOP on culture war issues, as well as concerns people are expressing about the Biden-Harris ticket: To put it bluntly, how many people will not vote for Biden because they would rather have Trump back in the White House than risk a woman of Asian and African descent becoming president? It’s not a question that can be ignored, unfortunately, but it says more about what’s wrong with America than it does about Biden and Harris. You don’t defeat ageism, sexism, and racism by ignoring it or allowing it to set your limits. To quote another leader facing great challenges: “Fear only exists for one purpose — to be conquered.” To paraphrase General Grant, Republicans should be far more worried about what we are going to do to them, rather than us obsessing over what they will do. The choice has never been more stark, the differences never greater, not since the Civil War. The contrast in the record of accomplishment is clear. emphasis added If you want to see Biden fully engaged with the campaign on both economic accomplishments and the GOP MAGA threat, here’s the video of Biden’s half-hour speech to NABTU. He not only gives a rousing recital of his economic accomplishments, he also goes after the MAGA Republicans and lays out just how badly their plans will hurt the country. The mathematics of freedom depend on where you are starting from. The cliché that “Freedom isn’t free” would seem to be self-evident; everything comes with some kind of cost. However conservatives seem to approach freedom as a zero-sum game: they can only have more of it at the expense of someone else — and if someone is gaining it, it must be at their expense. For those of a liberal persuasion, freedom is something that multiplies as it is shared, and the costs of freedom become easier to bear when they are divided fairly among more and more people. note: this post is from an expanded comment on this diary. [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/4/27/2166252/-Lessons-from-England-for-America-plus-some-quick-thoughts-on-the-math-of-freedom Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/