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June 26, 2009
Guy Rundle at Crikey argues that the social conservative/economic liberal mix that has dominated politics is now coming apart. He says that until the late 1960s, no "mix" was needed -- as both political parties were socially conservative. The rise of the boomer generation, the spread of media and expanded education made left-liberal progressivism the dominant social philosophy for a generation -- dominant of the political class in anyway, less solidly so in whole areas of social life.The left-liberal progressive social policies is that they fit both economic liberalism (as freedom for the individual in all spheres) and social democracy (as the spread of equality, both economic and social).he adds:
But for Labor, rank-and-file support for -- or at least benign indifference to -- social progressivism was contingent on continued support for social democracy. When inequality began to rise under the Hawke government, and when Keating combined market-oriented policies with an elitist vision of History and Culture (represented as the "real" essence of the Australian people), Labor had achieved that miraculous thing -- the exact opposite of the correct formula.For John Howard and a few shadowy consiglieres like Peter Coleman and Tony Abbott, this classic mistake created a gap whereby a new version of the social-economic mix could be sold to people. Howard's argument -- a mangled and essentially reversed version of social theorists such as Christopher Lasch -- economic liberalism demanded state-enforced social conservatism. Howard was smart enough to realise -- as he noted in one or two vaguely theoretical writings -- that globalisation, neoliberalism etc pulls communities and life-worlds apart, renders people alienated and dispirited, ungrounds life.
His core argument is that social conservatism -- the imposition of limits -- was a necessary corollary to economic liberalism. For Lasch and others, the coercive state powers coming out of the "culture wars" were a standing condemnation of the neoliberal world -- it was so undermining of everyday life that it had people begging the state to put limits on them. For Howard et al this was a positive social policy, a formula. He adds:
Everyone adopted this. In the UK Major, Blair and Brown piled on the CCTVs, anti-social behaviour orders, pre-criminal targeting, binge drinking etc etc. In the US, 911 gave the opportunity for an end-run around the Constitution and eschewed the coercive public health campaigns for the simple expedient of jailing everyone. In Australia, it was more symbolic than real, but provided scope for an endless war against shadowy "multiculturalism", "postmodernist English teachers", "relativist history" etc etc. In France, which came late to this, Sarkozy is doing it with an attack on the burqa -- a substitute for his failure to reform France's sclerotic economy, because he's too scared to take on the unions.
It is coming apart for the Liberals since this mix was always a finely calibrated philosophy and it was to a near-total degree personified and projected by John Howard.
Abbott, for example, is more libertarian on some matters -- such as the alcopops thing -- and still more conservative on others, such as abortion, far beyond the middle-range set by Howard. Costello was republican and reconciliationist, Georgiou and others maintain the vestigial social liberalism of the party, and Turnbull is an easy pigeon for Labor to knock off, a Sydney lawyer with dirty Henson pix on his walls and a bunch of bohemian mates. Rural Liberals and the Nationals have become, via climate change, a rump of irrationalist reactionaries.The party is going in half a dozen different directions, and no-one in the leadership is willing to do even the minimal intellectual work that Howard did in the early 90s and work out what the philosophical basis for the party might be.
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