I had activated comments on Hellie's reply to critics, but it began filling up with various irrelevant comments and just plain garbage; I'm retrieving here some of the better comments that seem to advance the issue.
First up (more to follow) Marcus Stanley, who begins by quoting Hellie:
"Here's the world as Marcus imagines it: 'We're going to destroy Social Security and distribute your property taxes to the colossally wealthy'; 'please sir may I have another'. Right, Marcus."
Stanley replies:
"Yes, if conservatives explicitly badmouth their own policies and act like cartoon villains then people will not like them. But they are not likely to do that; if they saw the world that way then they would be liberals. Try this framing instead: 'we are fighting for a tax system that rewards the entrepreneurs who actually create wealth, instead of punishing them. The progressive tax system is a form of class warfare on the people who really make this nation grow.' Then redistribute payroll taxes to the wealthy through income tax cuts. This kind of language has had surprising success. Do you really think that success is unrelated to the fact that people have a strong tendency to identify with valorized authority figures in a hierarchy (in this case, 'entrepreneurs' and the wealthy), even at the expense of their own direct interests? That identification then affects the way they think about and see the world. See de Tocqueville for the role of wealth in American ideological life.
"By the way, I do think that the Bush agenda in particular relies on direct dishonesty about some issues -- in particular fuzzing up the relationship between tax cuts for the rich, massive deficits, and retirement funding for the baby boom. This is Krugman's point. Bush more or less explicitly lied about this in 2000. But conservative ideology in general does not depend on this kind of direct lying; there are plenty of libertarians out there who will trash social security straightforwardly and directly. They would have a hard time winning an election directly, but their ideology has had a big effect on the discourse nonetheless."
Reader DB:
"Now consider left-wing policies: which, just for fun, I will take to be coextensive with the policies of the previous Administration concerning taxation, entitlements, health care, the environment, science, and foreign affairs. (*) For all of these policies, there are obvious alternatives which obviously support the interests of the majority rather than harming them. Thus, those who supported the Clinton Administration and its policies either for money or love are likely to have intellectual vices which make them unreliable.
"The only empirical claims here are the initial supposition and (*): the rest is a priori. Since (*) is so obvious as to be no longer in need of dispute, I will say no more.
"Is that not also correct? If not why not? If it's because Clinton isn't enough of a leftist for you, the argument should be just as valid for Carter, Johnson, or Roosevelt."
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