<== Site of the Week for 2009-12-14 ==>

The Conservative Nanny State

The Conservative Nanny State by Dean Baker provides insight into the system that is systematically strangling and destroying the American economic and political system.

The full text of the book is online. You can buy a hard copy of this book online through Amazon.com.

Sadly, the book is fundamentally flawed. However, one can gain deep insight into a society by understanding the nature of the flaw. The flaw can be seen in the thesis of the book:

"The key flaw in the stance that most progressives have taken on economic issues is that they have accepted a framing whereby conservatives are assumed to support market outcomes, while progressives want to rely on the government."

Anyone familar with the methodology of Lakoff should be able to see the flaw. This process of framing is the central methodology to modern progressivism. Modern progressivism came from a split in the Socialist movement. Marxists believe that the path to socialism was a violent overthrow of the existing order. Progressives believe that intellectuals could corral a free society into a communist state through a progression of steps.

The way modern society works is that our intellectuals frame the debates in ways with predetermined results. This is clearly seen in the health care debate where progressives only gives people the choice between state run health care and private insurance. So, a half century ago, progressives argued for insurance and villified conservatives who favored self-financed care saying insurance would lead to corruption and expand the gap between rich and poor.

In the current debate, progressives conveniently forget that they were the architects of the status quo and frame the debate as a case of the evil insurance companies against enlightened state control of medicine.

Anyone who mentions an alternative to insurance (like the Medical Savings and Loan), will be drummed out of the room by progressives.

The framing of the debate is almost always controlled by progressives. We know this for fact because progressives control both the schools and the media where the framing takes place.

As the progressives control the framing of the debate, one realizes that the big government conservatives that Baker rails against are the de facto creation of the progressives.

The people labeled "conservatives" live in a world of frames set by the elite in academia and the media. Conservatives must understand the traps set for them. The bulk of people labeled "conservatives" are people who strongly believe in the free market and the limited government delimited in the Constitution. These people are best called "classical liberals."

The people who hold to this tradition should be wary of the "conservative" label as there is a large segment of the leadership of the conservative movement that actually holds to the view of conservativism as framed by Baker.

Glenn Beck tries to explain this phenomena by pointing out that the leadership of both the Republican and Democratic Parties are rife with progressives. Beck loves to rail on Teddy Roosevelt and Herbert Hoover.

Notice that the primary achievements of the Bush Administration were all major progressive causes. The No Child Left Behind act set up the federal government as the primary influence on developing the academic curriculum in public schools. The Bush administration dramatically expanded government control in health care through prescription drug coverage and a massive expansion of the CHIPS program. Above all, Bush invaded Iraq with the idea that overthrowing Iraq would be a shortcut to progress in the Middle East.

The Bush administration was infiltrated by a group called the NeoCons. These were Progressives who intentionally allied themselves with the Republican party with a belief that they would be better position to achieve their goals of social engineering through the Republican party.

Progessivism is a method where intellectuals (like Dean Baker) define the conflicts of society (Notice Bakers preoccupation with the word framing!!!!!!!) with the idea that properly framed debate will lead to socialism.

Dean Baker openly lies and is an evil manipulator when he projects the progressive methodology onto the whole conservative movement.

The classical liberal side of conservatism doesn't frame debates. The classical liberal of the Conservative movement is doing all that it can to defend the American Constitution with its tradition of limited government.

Framing is a creation of the progressives. The way one frames an argument is by projecting an image onto the opposition. For classical liberal side of the conservative movement to succeed in defending the liberties granted the American people by its founders, classical liberals must understand how progressivism works and that many leaders of the conservative party are in fact big government progressives.

If you understand that Baker is trying to project the methodology of the progressive movement, then this book provides great insight into the metholody.