Two Vocabulary Questions

1. Why has the word “militant” only been used to describe workers and unions and never to describe employers, even when they've used armed force against unarmed workers?

2. Why is the word “conservative” used to describe right wing groups seeking to break down long-established and necessary institutions?

Niall Ferguson is Nasty, Brutish and Tall

Niall Ferguson believes that Keynes didn't care about future generations because he was gay and didn't have children. That's the reporting from Tom Kostigan from the Altegris Conference in Carlsbad, California.

"[I]n front of a group of more than 500 investors, Ferguson responded to a question about Keynes' famous philosophy of self-interest versus the economic philosophy of Edmund Burke, who believed there was a social contract among the living, as well as the dead. Ferguson asked the audience how many children Keynes had. He explained that Keynes had none because he was a homosexual and was married to a ballerina, with whom he likely talked of "poetry" rather than procreated. The audience went quiet at the remark. Some attendees later said they found the remarks offensive. ...

"Ferguson, who is the Laurence A. Tisch Professor of History at Harvard University, and author of The Great Degeneration: How Institutions Decay and Economies Die, says it's only logical that Keynes would take this selfish worldview because he was an "effete" member of society. Apparently, in Ferguson's world, if you are gay or childless, you cannot care about future generations nor society."

Meanwhile Ferguson's heroes have spent the past 30 years stealing the livelihoods from working people and beggaring their children... Why are right wing pundits such nasty, selfish, self-serving, ill-informed bigots? And what does it say of their "moral" universe? That it ends at their property line, perhaps. That it's as large as the inside of their safe deposit box on Grand Cayman. Among today's investor class there is very little regard for Burke's social contract ideas, so why did Ferguson make the comparison?

Speaking of swinish right wing punditry... There is a useful summation of the bully boy world of the late Andrew Breitbart by James Wolcott in the new Vanity Fair. The title of the piece is apt. The right wing in this country has all the human kindness of a Roman emperor watching Lions vs. Christians at the Coliseum.

The Fairy Tales of the Business Press

Brad Delong does a pretty thorough job of dissecting the inconsistencies in the so-called "conservative" economic line, the anti-Keynesian, austerity, drown-it-in-the-bathtub anti-government side of the economic argument we've been stuck in for three years. Why isn't the conservative side subjected to any logical analysis by the business press?

Is it just too complicated for business readers? Even for those "superheroes" who are supposed to know more than ordinary workers and citizens? Come on. Superheroes are capable of digesting this, even if they are busy. They ought to find time to think.

Or is it just too embarrassing for business readers? Businesspeople are worshipped as "job creators." Is it wrong to question their beliefs? Is it heresy to doubt the prevailing business thinking––which says that only private sector spending is holy?

Is it only heresy to doubt business orthodoxy if it endangers ad pages and TV air those businesspeople tend to buy as business owners?

How is it that conservatives, who seem to believe in an invisible hand of the market, who believe our economy is magically protected by fairies and elves (no government regulation required), are allowed to call Keynesian economics "a fairy tale" without being challenged about their own magical thinking?

Keynes, who was no liberal, had a fully rounded theory that was borne out by sustained prosperity and growth (and the absence of panics) during the best forty year period in the history of our country––and the planet.

The problem believers in unfettered capitalism had with Keynes was that he advised behaving more like ants than grasshoppers (to borrow from a cautionary fable. Keynesians prefer fables to fairy tales.) That we be prudent and save for rainy days, that we rein in our appetites during up times (with regulation and fair taxation) and support a flagging economy by spending and building during down times. Which is pretty middle-of-the-road stuff, economicswise. Or was Eisenhower a Communist?

The nagging suspicion that I keep having is that these so-called business conservatives, in order to help their Republican operatives, have been sitting on their capital for three years, not spending it, not hiring, not lending, blocking stimulus packages through their elected proxies, keeping the economy down, hoping to hang a bad economy around President Obama's neck like a burning tire. They hoped it might put a Republican regime back in the White House.

(It would be interesting to read the Republican emails with their corporate and banking clients, hoping and planning to foil Obama's recovery efforts. I don't doubt they exist. Airing them would be a good thing. It'd only be fair, considering the Republicans in Congress surreptitiously read the Democrats' emails for over a year in '03 and '04.)

The business sector wants Republicans back in full control. Oh how they want it. But we all know how clever the last Republican regime was. Taking a record surplus and making into a record deficit. Their energy policy resulted soaring fuel prices. Their laissez faire economic policy set up economic collapse. But that Republican president was a businessman. A failed businessman several times over, but a member of the club.

Deadbeats, Radicals, Vandals, Anarchists, Republicans

It's getting pretty difficult to think of Republicans as conservative, considering all that they're trying to tear down. Conservatives don't play chicken with the U.S. economy. They don't conduct off-the-books wars or lie us into them. Real conservatives don't max out the national credit card and leave the next president with a bankrupt economy. So what are these new Republicans? News organizations and prominent journalists from here to Australia are trying to figure that out. Follow the links to today's must-reads.

Republicans are Deadbeats who don't fulfill agreements or honor contracts.

Republicans are Radicals, eager to undo every functioning institution.

Republicans are Anarchists, who want no government at all so they can run amok.

Republicans are Vandals, looking for opportunities to burn, loot and pillage.

Today's Republicans are not conservatives because they don't want to preserve what works. They want to tear down programs and institutions that have worked efficiently and well for the best part of fifty years, the most prosperous and stable period in American history.