The debt committee did not fail. In order to fail, something has to not do what it was intended to do, and I contend that the debt committee was intended to end in exactly the way it announced today. Essentially, it was a means to force Congress as a whole to finally admit that consensus on a debt reduction deal is unreachable in the current situation. Why is this admission another Tea Party victory? Well, let's recap what the various groups in Congress want and who they represent, and then examine the effects of the debt committee's success at failing on each group and its policy hopes.
The Keynesians
Despite their infinite bickering, mainstream Democrats and Republicans actually back the same economic model; a Keynesian model in which most of the economy is privately operated but its funding is essentially funneled through the Federal government. Providers of essential services like food, health care, and housing are private entrepreneurs, but service recipients are heavily funded by government-subsidized entitlements to pay for their services - such as Food Stamps, MediCal/Medicare, Agricultural Subsidies, HUD subsidized housing, and so forth. Industry, including both civil and defense manufacturing as well as retail and other forms of distribution, is also performed by private corporations, but these, too, are heavily subsidized by stimulus, corporate welfare in the form of "development grants", and frequent bailouts for failing megacorporations such as auto-industry giants and Wall Street banks, lauded as attempts to protect jobs and consumer security. Tax rates are largely irrelevant in this system. It has been proven time and again that the wealthy don't actually pay taxes - they dodge the majority of their obligations though loopholes and deductions, then get the rest of it back and thensome through corporate welfare, stimulus, and subsidies. The poor are virtually exempt from taxes altogether, except miniscule contributions to entitlement programs that they disproportionately rely on. The middle class, of course, does not come close to paying at the rates assigned to it either, but it does get stuck with an unfair share because it gets the fewest exemptions and the least tax-funded welfare. Without a detailed lecture on why this economic model is disastrous, the only REAL divide between mainstream Democrats and Republicans is where to direct the Keynesian benefits when they are in short supply, which is the inevitable result of Keynesianism's colossal inefficiency and the shortages created by multiple cycles of borrowing and rationing. Mainsteam Republicans - affiliated with special interests of industry and defense - favor cutting entitlement spending, whereas the Democrats - affiliated with special interests in banking and the variety of subsidized service providers (agriculture, energy, health care, housing), want to cut defense spending and reduce some of the direct corporate stimulus that benefits industrial corporations, such as the Bush-era "tax cuts". Tax rate increases, such as the sick joke called the "Millionaire tax," are almost entirely for show in the solutions proposed by both; they primarily pretend to levy heavier contributions on the wealthy who will dodge them, disadvantaging the upper middle class while producing negligilble revenue increases. Arguably, the two Keynesian factions could reach a compromise with each other with relative ease by dividing the costs between their special interests, but such a compromise would preserve the structural failure of the system by protecting the inefficient special interests who thrive off unfair tax loads on the middle class and overpriced, rationed services provided to the poor. The election of the fringes on both sides is arguably a rebellion against this false Keynesian dichotomy.
The Progressives
The growing fringe on the left, with ideas arguably sympathetic to the emerging Occupy movement, prefers a more socialism-like model. It is obstinately opposed to any real cuts to entitlement spending, but a redeeming factor is that it favors an honest attempt at forcing efficiency and accountability out of the tax-subsidized providers and banks or even the direct provision of their services by government agencies. As far as taxes, Progressives are less interested in rate hikes and moreso in the elimination of loopholes and stimulus to make the wealthy actually contribute their share. Unfortunately, this system is as impractical as it appears well-intentioned and fair. While it may provide more equality, it would destroy what little efficiency is left in the US economy. Actually forced to pay their taxes, the wealthy simply leave or move their money abroad - the disastrous experiment of the Eurozone is demonstrating this exact effect and the powerlessness of regulations to prevent it. Government forcing efficiency out of providers or providing efficiecy itself is also a fairy-tale as proven by every macro-socialized service model in history, and premium-free services guarantee over-consumption in which the poor would use them more and most of the middle class would become recipients. These combined effects result in even greater shortages than Keynesianism although they are more effectively rationed, essentiallu ensuring EVERYONE starves to death together, which of course results in famine-driven rebellion that breaks the system. Despite its disposition to an unrealistic utopia, this small fringe effectively refuses to sign on to any deal that cuts entitlements and does not include provisions to stop stimulus for the wealthy, a crucial piece of the equation that keeps the Keynesians from reaching a majority that overrules the larger fringe on the right.
The Tea Party
Largely favored by the middle class, this fringe is primarily opposed to smoke and mirrors fixes such as the raising of tax rates. Sure, a move from 15% to 20% would not actually force any middle class person to pay 20% of their income in taxes, but it may force them to go from paying 6% to paying 8%, which is a significant increase that does nothing to fix the economy, and keeps a flatrate of 0% taxes on the wealthy. This fringe is sympathetic to the Progressives' idea of eliminating loopholes and deductions in the tax code, but seeing as it represents people who actually PAY taxes, it wants this balances by reduced rates, because the inflated rates intended for the rich would be quite unaffordable for the middle class without any deductions. This fringe is equally opposed to continued borrowing to keep funding the unsustainable antics of wealthy Keynesian beneficiaries, because when the system inevitably breaks down as Europe's has, the middle class will carry most of the costs. This fringe loves spending cuts in all areas and is quite indifferent to how they are distributed as long as they are deep, permanent, and not balanced by tax hikes on the middle class that continue to exempt the rich. The Tea Party favors a non-interventionist foreign policy that does not require colossal defense budgets, it would love to see corporate stimulus go up in flames because that insulate its large business competition from market forces, and it sees entitlements as wasteful and inefficient and often as corporate subsidies, correctly emphasizing that without their inevitable effect of inflation and shortages, MOST recipients would be able to afford private services in a world that eliminated them as long as corporate stimulus was also axed. Hence, this fringe refuses to agree to any deal that raises tax rates or does not axe large amounts of government spending and intervention. While it does not hold a majority, the other 2-3 groups would have to come together without it to get one.
Political and Economic Implications
So, we've entered an age of indefinite stalemate and economic uncertainty, right? Not quite. The continued stalemate is beneficial almost exclusively to the Tea Party fringe. Stimulus is not actually enough to keep the corporations on both sides of Keynesianism alive, merely to insulate them from competition and drive investor certainty in their solvency. The consistent stalemate is very destructive to these special interests, as investors dump their stock like yesterday's garbage because they are famous for their inefficiency and it is no longer a given the government will assume their obligations if/when they fail. This is why they have instructed their pet politicians to give in to the Tea Party in the 2 budget stand-offs this year once the Tea Party made it clear it would not be deterred by the prospect of a shutdown - an event that cuts off the special interests' money supply and breaks investors' confidence in them. The blow of the debt committee deal may have been the final KO delivered to the Keynesians by the Tea Party. Undeterred even by the prospect of a default, they essentially forced the center to vote in this doomed-to-fail fix, and now the special interests involved face trigger-cuts that, while delayed, will be a consensus nightmare to repeal or redirect. Recalling that uncertainty and inconfidence, rather than direct lack of government subsidies, are the silver bullets for these monsters, you will realize that their bankruptcy is now a looming and realistic threat. As for the Progressive fringe, the effects of this stalemate on them are somewhat neutral. Their most sacred cows remain out of the crosshairs, specifically the government-operated Social Security, and may actually stand a chance of enduring the crisis if special-interest run entitlements bite the dust; while they like those entitlements, said special interests are their enemies too. However, the entitlement crunch will produce a period of constriction that will be difficult for the poor between the breaking of special interest providers and the emergence of affordable non-entitlement ones. While this is sad, it is an unavoidable cost as the existing system is simply unsustainable, and many of the Progressive politicians are professionals first and ideologists second, realizing that this is a better option for them than to empower the Keynesians against the Tea Party.
As for political impact, please don't buy into the hype that this stalemate will be hanged disproprotionately by voters around the neck of one party or the other. Yes, the Republicans have lost some of their popularity in the last year, but their numbers had nowhere to go but down, if you recall their electoral sweep in 2010 and the fact that they went from an almost irrelevant minority to a powerful player. The Democrats, on the other hand, are even LESS popular now than they were when they had a triumverate and supermajorities in both houses, even Bush Jr. didn't have the incompetence to accomplish THAT. Every political prognosis based on quantitative statistics rather than the unrepresentative ranting lunacy of biased voters in forums and media does NOT predict significant changes in the balance of power in either House of Congress. Republicans MAY take the Senate because more Democrats are up for re-election, and Senate Democrats are more unpopular, but their majority would be as insignificant as the current Democratic one, maybe 1-2 seats. Democrats are likely to make some gains in the House, but not remotely enough to take control of it. The Presidential election is still WAY too early to call as the Republican nomination is anybody's ball game and the possibility of a far-left challenge to Obama is not completely out of the question. A lack of power shift coupled with the extreme unpopulartity of both parties means the real change will occur within each party, namely a magnified 2010 effect of incumbents and establishment candidates for open safe party seats dropping like flies in the primaries, for a combined shrinking Keynesian center and embellished power of both fringes. The days of this party system and its accompanying economic insanity are numbered, and their end can't possibly come fast enough.
Showing posts with label Republican. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Republican. Show all posts
Monday, November 21, 2011
Thursday, December 23, 2010
Its Not "Bi-Partisanship", Its Tyranny By the Center.
For those of you as "thrilled" with the Lame Duck Session managing to pull together and pass the majority of its rotten agenda as I am, let me explain to you why this isn't a cause for concern.
Lame Duck Sessions have a well-deserved reputation for un-accountable and corrupt policies pushed through by retiring or ousted politicians serving their special interests, especially in years when control of one or both houses will shift once the new Congress is sworn in. They are an opportunity for the defeated majority to engage in all the "midnight legislation" voters don't approve of, based on the philosophy of "they didn't re-elect us anyway". However, THIS Lame Duck Session has been very peculiar and illustrates a trend that both party leaderships continue to pretend not to notice, but that will hit them right between the eyes the day the new Congress is sworn in. I realize the term "bi-partisanship" is a fairly recent invention, but I think the level of inter-party cooperation we've seen in this Lame Duck Session is almost unprecedented in the history of Congress as a whole, much less in Lame Duck Sessions which tend to see very unilateral movement.
Obama may have peddled "bi-partisanship" for the last two years like it was going out of style, but in practice the Democrats did almost everything unilaterally: stimulus bills, Obamacare, climate change treaties - hardly any of this got a single Republican vote and most of it had significant revolts from the fringe left, but the supermajorities allowed the establishment Dems to ignore these conditions while chanting "bipartisanship" like groupies on LSD. Well, it would appear the midterm election instantly brought everyone back from the 1960s Collectivist trip. I remind you that its called a Lame Duck session because it is still the old Congress, not the one we elected in November, and yet NOW, despite one of the most unilaterally operating compositions in history, NOTHING is passing without massive inter-party compromise. The stimulus and unemployment extension that this same Congress passed unilaterally on multiple occasions died in Lame Duck Session TWICE. The Republican hostage-holding of the Lame Duck Session was bad for other reasons, but don't be fooled by the insipid rhetoric that Democrats HAD to compromise to keep the under 250k tax cut. The House passed it and the Senate was blocked from voting on it rather than poised to fail it, the new Senate could have voted on it the day it took power, and despite Republicans having gained a net of 6 seats, it would have passed just fine; I'll discuss why in a moment. It was a similar story with the rotten-to-the-core-as-usual budget bill, START, and the drowning of the one decent economic proposal of the session in the DREAM Act - each of these votes saw 0 party unity on either side of aisle. Obama's party still has super majorities in both Houses, and he's had to compromise and woo a large number of Republican votes to pass his Lame Duck session agenda, known historically to contain the most unaccountable and unpopular one-sided policies.
The reason for this is very simple. The Democrats were obviously punished in this election by voters for their assinine unilateralism in an economic meltdown, but no matter what John Boehner or Mitch McConnell says, the Republican establishment got a thrashing, not a "mandate". Unfortunately for them, Democrat unilateralism came too soon after the unapologetic and wanton tyranny of Bush Jr. and his Republican Congress, and the memories of those days are still too fresh even in the minds of the uninvolved and ignorant American electorate. THIS is why Republican establishment candidates dropped like flies in their own primaries; if we gave the GOP any kind of mandate, it was a mandate toward austerity, NOT compromise. The fact that Boehner, who once spearheaded the doomed austerity campaigns against Obamacare and the stimulus packages, is now as willing to sell his testicles to Obama as Obama is to McConnell and he is absolutely unsurprising. But what is heartening is that Boehner and McConnell are as unpopular among Republicans as Obama and Reid among Democrats despite having gained significantly on paper. In this Lame Duck Session, their sudden enamorment with bi-partisanship has only succeeded in giving Obama enough votes to make up for his revolting fringe, and pissing off their own base ever more while they're at it.
This trend is about to become exponentially worse. The Republicans may have gained a net of 63 seats in the House and 6 in the Senate, but the change in composition is a lot more than this. The 63 is a NET number because Republicans actually picked up 69 or 70 new seats in the House, but lost 6 or 7 to Democrats, adding up to a total of almost 80 district take-overs from one party to the other. And neither the House nor Senate net accounts for the dozens more seats picked up by new legislators who have replaced retiring members from the same parties. These new legislators had to win a primary with no incumbent within their own party to get to the general election, and while the media was obsessed with reporting on incumbents losing primaries, it grossly under-reported just how badly non-incumbent establishment candidates got slaughtered in open seat primaries across the entire country; and this refers to BOTH parties, not just Tea Party vs establishment Republicans. Seeing as the old Congress with mostly establishment legislators has already begun to revolt against party leadership in light of this election, come January we are going to see the kind of austerity this country hasn't experienced since the late 1930s and the derailing of the New Deal.
In short, the short-lived "bi-partisaship" we have seen in this Lame Duck session is nothing more than the death throws of the obsolete corporate and special interest cronyism of both party establishments; cronyism that we've had to choose the lesser evil of for decades but that is now having to join forces against the country's ever-growing disgust with it - not "compromise" - to get things done. Once the new Congress takes power, these establishment proposals will get equal amounts of votes from both sides of the aisle and STILL not have enough to pass, now THAT will be entertaining to say the least. I have this crazy theory that for any kind of representative government to work, it has to be made up of multiple factions that strongly disagree on everything rather than loosely defined party lines that are identical with the exception of the special interest that holds their leash. I'm not saying any of these are saints, but we are finally approaching an age in which Congress will be fragmented between at least 4 dramatically different factions - Progressives, the stalwart social conservative and civil libertarian factions that the Tea Party will almost invariably split into - who will still come together for economic votes, and the remnants of both party establishments that may as well merge into a faction called "the old corrupt luddites". Of course there will be alignments and alliances on various issues, but the 3 former factions agree in that they absolutely detest the 4th, and whether or not it declares any sort of formal unity, it will continue to take electoral beatings until it is reduced to insignifcance. Its not a mandate for either party, its a mandate to get rid of both. Viva the re-alignment, its about damn time.
Lame Duck Sessions have a well-deserved reputation for un-accountable and corrupt policies pushed through by retiring or ousted politicians serving their special interests, especially in years when control of one or both houses will shift once the new Congress is sworn in. They are an opportunity for the defeated majority to engage in all the "midnight legislation" voters don't approve of, based on the philosophy of "they didn't re-elect us anyway". However, THIS Lame Duck Session has been very peculiar and illustrates a trend that both party leaderships continue to pretend not to notice, but that will hit them right between the eyes the day the new Congress is sworn in. I realize the term "bi-partisanship" is a fairly recent invention, but I think the level of inter-party cooperation we've seen in this Lame Duck Session is almost unprecedented in the history of Congress as a whole, much less in Lame Duck Sessions which tend to see very unilateral movement.
Obama may have peddled "bi-partisanship" for the last two years like it was going out of style, but in practice the Democrats did almost everything unilaterally: stimulus bills, Obamacare, climate change treaties - hardly any of this got a single Republican vote and most of it had significant revolts from the fringe left, but the supermajorities allowed the establishment Dems to ignore these conditions while chanting "bipartisanship" like groupies on LSD. Well, it would appear the midterm election instantly brought everyone back from the 1960s Collectivist trip. I remind you that its called a Lame Duck session because it is still the old Congress, not the one we elected in November, and yet NOW, despite one of the most unilaterally operating compositions in history, NOTHING is passing without massive inter-party compromise. The stimulus and unemployment extension that this same Congress passed unilaterally on multiple occasions died in Lame Duck Session TWICE. The Republican hostage-holding of the Lame Duck Session was bad for other reasons, but don't be fooled by the insipid rhetoric that Democrats HAD to compromise to keep the under 250k tax cut. The House passed it and the Senate was blocked from voting on it rather than poised to fail it, the new Senate could have voted on it the day it took power, and despite Republicans having gained a net of 6 seats, it would have passed just fine; I'll discuss why in a moment. It was a similar story with the rotten-to-the-core-as-usual budget bill, START, and the drowning of the one decent economic proposal of the session in the DREAM Act - each of these votes saw 0 party unity on either side of aisle. Obama's party still has super majorities in both Houses, and he's had to compromise and woo a large number of Republican votes to pass his Lame Duck session agenda, known historically to contain the most unaccountable and unpopular one-sided policies.
The reason for this is very simple. The Democrats were obviously punished in this election by voters for their assinine unilateralism in an economic meltdown, but no matter what John Boehner or Mitch McConnell says, the Republican establishment got a thrashing, not a "mandate". Unfortunately for them, Democrat unilateralism came too soon after the unapologetic and wanton tyranny of Bush Jr. and his Republican Congress, and the memories of those days are still too fresh even in the minds of the uninvolved and ignorant American electorate. THIS is why Republican establishment candidates dropped like flies in their own primaries; if we gave the GOP any kind of mandate, it was a mandate toward austerity, NOT compromise. The fact that Boehner, who once spearheaded the doomed austerity campaigns against Obamacare and the stimulus packages, is now as willing to sell his testicles to Obama as Obama is to McConnell and he is absolutely unsurprising. But what is heartening is that Boehner and McConnell are as unpopular among Republicans as Obama and Reid among Democrats despite having gained significantly on paper. In this Lame Duck Session, their sudden enamorment with bi-partisanship has only succeeded in giving Obama enough votes to make up for his revolting fringe, and pissing off their own base ever more while they're at it.
This trend is about to become exponentially worse. The Republicans may have gained a net of 63 seats in the House and 6 in the Senate, but the change in composition is a lot more than this. The 63 is a NET number because Republicans actually picked up 69 or 70 new seats in the House, but lost 6 or 7 to Democrats, adding up to a total of almost 80 district take-overs from one party to the other. And neither the House nor Senate net accounts for the dozens more seats picked up by new legislators who have replaced retiring members from the same parties. These new legislators had to win a primary with no incumbent within their own party to get to the general election, and while the media was obsessed with reporting on incumbents losing primaries, it grossly under-reported just how badly non-incumbent establishment candidates got slaughtered in open seat primaries across the entire country; and this refers to BOTH parties, not just Tea Party vs establishment Republicans. Seeing as the old Congress with mostly establishment legislators has already begun to revolt against party leadership in light of this election, come January we are going to see the kind of austerity this country hasn't experienced since the late 1930s and the derailing of the New Deal.
In short, the short-lived "bi-partisaship" we have seen in this Lame Duck session is nothing more than the death throws of the obsolete corporate and special interest cronyism of both party establishments; cronyism that we've had to choose the lesser evil of for decades but that is now having to join forces against the country's ever-growing disgust with it - not "compromise" - to get things done. Once the new Congress takes power, these establishment proposals will get equal amounts of votes from both sides of the aisle and STILL not have enough to pass, now THAT will be entertaining to say the least. I have this crazy theory that for any kind of representative government to work, it has to be made up of multiple factions that strongly disagree on everything rather than loosely defined party lines that are identical with the exception of the special interest that holds their leash. I'm not saying any of these are saints, but we are finally approaching an age in which Congress will be fragmented between at least 4 dramatically different factions - Progressives, the stalwart social conservative and civil libertarian factions that the Tea Party will almost invariably split into - who will still come together for economic votes, and the remnants of both party establishments that may as well merge into a faction called "the old corrupt luddites". Of course there will be alignments and alliances on various issues, but the 3 former factions agree in that they absolutely detest the 4th, and whether or not it declares any sort of formal unity, it will continue to take electoral beatings until it is reduced to insignifcance. Its not a mandate for either party, its a mandate to get rid of both. Viva the re-alignment, its about damn time.
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
Historical Revisionism Series: The American "Revolution"
The more I delve into political discussions, particularly with my classmates in my graduate program, the more I realize that barriers to a scientific approach to politics, including the nurturing of reality-divorced ideologies, has as a primary culprit a fundamental and widespread ignorance of history. My impression is that this epidemic is the result of two trends in American society: an education system that is very weak and vague in terms of history, political science, and civics; and the filling in of factual gaps in this knowledge being commonly left to politicians, media pundits, and various special interests who have a vested interest in misleading public opinion. I am not advocating any kooky conspiracy theory. The educational system is way too complex to be the work of any one hidden hand. As for misleading by political campaigns of various kinds, these usually limit themselves to misquotation and abuse of statistics rather than flat out lies, and each misleading piece of information is relatively harmless by itself, disseminated to get support for a politician or policy, but their aggregate effect is a frightening misunderstanding of history by the majority of Americans, which creates in them a faith in policies that have evidently failed for decades if not centuries. I am not singling out Americans as particularly ignorant either, I am simply focusing on our ignorance of history and the results on our society without comparing it to others. Constantly running up against this barrier, I have decided to embark on a number of political analyses of historical events very relevant to modern politics and debunk the many ridiculous myths surrounding them that are used as justification for insipid modern policies. Today's post, the first in this series, will focus on an event most Americans consider sacred but are hopelessly confused about, the event we refer to as "The American Revolution".
Let's get the really shocking statement out of the way. The American Revolution, by historical and political science standards, does not qualify for the term "revolution". The term "revolution" refers to a regime change within a political unit that preserves its geographical boundaries or at least the majority of them. The French, Russian, German, Mexican, Cuban revolutions all meet this standard. The American "Revolution" was in fact a war of colonial independence, classified as a dependent territory or group of territories becoming autonomous and independent from a greater political unit, which in this case would refer to the 13 colonies that formed the original United States and the British Empire which occupied close to 1/3 of the world at the time, respectively. As a war of colonial independence, this event is comparable to every other independence conflict, particularly in the greater American continent in which almost every political unit has experienced a similar event - the Hispanosphere from Spain, the Carribean States from Britain and France, and so forth. NOT ONE of these modern states refers to their independence conflict as a revolution to the best of my knowledge, and many of them have experienced one or multiple subsequent internal revolutions. IN FACT, few Americans referred to our conflict as a "revolution" until well into the 1790s, when the Anti-Federalist Party began to use the term retroactively to refer to it as a propaganda tool to rouse support for their sentiment which favored the French Revolutionaries, whereas the Federalist Party was more moderate in their approach to the same conflict and more pro-monarchy when it came to France.
What are the implications of this seemingly insignificant inconsistency of terminology? Well, if we divide modern American political approaches very roughly into mainstream conservative and mainstream liberal, both fall apart in their attempts to fall back on supposed associated facts with this consideration in mind.
Conservative Arguments
Conservatives, particularly in what are modernly dubbed "conservative-dominated" historical eras, have had a disturbing tendency to claim that they are fulfilling the legacy of the Founding Fathers while pushing policies that are likely making every Founding Father spin in his grave. The laughable argument made by Bill O'Reilly or Glen Beck that "America was founded by right wing extremists" is only the tip of the iceberg, as these pundits are typically dismissed as extremely biased, sometimes even by their patrons. What I, as a scientist, find disturbing are the references of actual politicians like Ronald Reagan or George W. Bush to the writings of Thomas Jefferson or John Locke in defense of policies that blatantly shield various corporate and other upper-class economic actors from the rigors of free-market competition. Ronald Reagan's inauguration speech may have highlighted the merits of Jeffersonian economics and the efficiency of the free market, but his actual economic policies were little more than a shift from social welfare to corporate welfare, cutting programs that distributed tax money to the poor and social services and instead giving that same money to military contractors and other large corporate profiteers. George W. Bush's economic stimulus for large earners in the form of slashing capital gains taxes was just that - STIMULUS, the government favoring anyone in giving out money is not free market, EVER; his own extravagant military expenditures are probably fresh in everyone's minds as well. Comparing these "conservatives'" foreign policy to that of the Founding Fathers is even more laughable. Remember Thomas Jefferson's infamous quote "good relations with all nations, entangling alliances with none"? Somehow I don't think military bases in 3/4 of the world's other countries and the military actions in Nicaragua, Grenada, Iraq I and II, and Afganistan are what Jefferson meant, regardless of how much John McCain alludes to it being a "different world". Jefferson's world was a patchwork of theocratic European empires and their conflicting claims to the colonized lands of other continents and their enslaved and dehumanized populations - hardly more pleasant than modern Iraq or Afganistan. Jefferson implied that meddling in his contemporary petty squabbles would bring more harm than good to the US, and our modern foreign policy has demonstrated EXACTLY what he was trying to avoid. As discussed in an earlier post, imperialist foreign policy was a liberal rather than conservative advent until recent decades, but the economic failures of past times attributed to free-market policies are equally the fault of those politicians' misuse of that term. Henry Clay openly admitted that his American System - the insane economic protectionism of the early 19th century that spawned the odius corporate monopolies of the post-Civil War era - was a necessary departure from free-market ideals to grow American industry. However, this did not stop the various corporate barons who dominated the US decades after his death from referencing "free-market capitalism" as their politician allies outlawed labor unions and unleashed the military on worker sit-ins and attempts to unionize, took away people's land under The Eminent Domain Act of 1880 to save the railroad money on its expansion, and turned a blind eye to their hired thugs' harassing those who stood up against them in the developing west. THIS kind of policy was exactly what the American "Revolution" did away with on the part of British mercantilism and other assinine attempts by the London government to protect the colonial assets of the detached and declining aristocracy, it is laughable to believe that any of the Founding Fathers would have been less than repulsed by it.
If right wing extremism - a very arbitrary term - meant free market policies, then the argument that the Founding Fathers were "right wing extremists" would hold some value. But mainstream conservatives in recent decades have backed such assinine big-government feudalism and labeled it "free-market capitalism" that few people realize the gargantuan difference between the two. Washington may have established the concept of a standing army for the United States, but if he were a general in the modern US military - Bush and Reaganesque imperialism and our long, drawn-out, unwinnable wars with no evident benefit other than to defense contractors who eat up a third of the budget would have likely driven him to institute a military coup! John Adams may have been in favor of tariffs to protect the infant American industry, although not even to the extent of Henry Clay's policies in the 1810s, but repetitive bailouts and pandering to corporations that consistently fail to live up to market demands such as AIG or the automakers would horrify him. Hamilton's idea for a National Bank - which never went anywhere - was an idea for a government-run centralised bank, a very progressive idea by modern standards and hardly comparable to the disgusting corporate cartel of the Federal Reserve. As for the true capitalist Jefferson, or the conservative-at-first-glance Southern Founding Fathers like Rutledge and Hall, it is hardly an overstatement to say their response to the blithering idiocy of modern conservative politicians and pundits would bait an instant invitation to a duel, especially if the latter credited the former with their ideas.
Liberal Arguments
In light of the blatant misquotations and misattributions above, the counter-ignorance of liberal arguments regarding the American "Revolution" is not surprising, but this does not make it less destructive. As it is now "trendy" to equate modern corporate elitism to "free-market capitalism," liberals turn to blaming the latter for the failures of the former, and even more importantly to assinine and ridiculous accusations against the Founding Fathers, calling them "racist white men" for failing to do away with slavery, and citing the economic system they put in place (as if it hadn't changed in the 110 years between the 'Revolution' and before the first modern liberal policies) for the inequities and injustice that "necessitate" and "excuse" the creeping of government into every facet of the economy.
I will address the slavery-related rhetoric first, as frankly, the widespread belief in this idiocy gives me the creeps. What the average American does not know is that the 3 primary Founding Fathers just about every American can name - Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson - were EMPHATIC slavery abolitionists. Check any credible biographical source if you don't believe me, this isn't any kind of secret. I cannot claim to know their personal attitudes and whether or not they were in fact "racist," but the fact that all 3 owned slaves themselves does not disqualify them from aggressively pursuing a policy of abolition which would require them to free their own slaves. It may seem hypocritical, but so is the comparable political behavior of every modern politician and activist - the economy is a complex non-zero-sum structure and it is not easy for anyone to give up their dependence on economic institutions they disagree with to remain competitive. The non-abolitionist Founding Fathers made their share of contributions, but history rarely emphasizes their names. How many of you, my readers, have ever heard of Edward Rutledge or Dr. Lyman Hall? Franklin, Adams, and Jefferson believed their "all men" clause included the slave population and argued vehemently against leaving the institution intact in the new state to be created. They had to leave it intact because the main conflict both at the 2nd Continental Congress and at the Constitutional Convention was NOT over slavery but over independence from the British Empire and over joining into a single nation state, respectively. Both conventions encountered fierce opposition from the loyalists and confederalists, respectively, and in both cases the Southern delegacies that were predominantly pro-slavery proved to hold the deciding vote and had to be won over by leaving slavery intact.
Despite not being able to dismantle it, the founding the United States did significant and irreparable damage to the institution of slavery. The 3/5 Compromise that is so often cited as horribly dehumanizing was a HUGE victory for the slave population. This compromise, of course, refers to slaves in Southern States counting as 3/5 of a person for the purposes of congressional representation, and most modern Americans are SHOCKED when they find out the COMPROMISE was because the North wanted the slaves not to count at all and the South wanted them to count as one person! But wait, wasn't the North abolitionist and the South pro-slavery? Well, its not like the slaves could vote. Not counting them meant that since they are not considered equivalent citizens, the South gets less representatives. Counting them as one person, on the other hand, would essentially give their owners the power to elect representatives for themselves and their slaves with no actual input from the slaves, a practice widely popular in contemporary societies with slavery or serfdom that had any form of representation. In either scenario, the North or the South would have an instant majority in the House of Representatives and dominate the opposing region on any conflicting economic policies, which were by no means limited to slavery. The 3/5 compromise was instituted to maintain a delicate balance between the two regions that persisted until the Civil War, but penalizing the slave-owning population in terms of representation by not counting their slaves as full people was still a very novel practice for the 18th century. Giving each state the power to make up its own mind on the issue of slavery was also a novel idea, as much a victory for slaves as a concession to slave-owners as no contemporary state had anything short of a blanket federal policy, with no guarantee of it being one of abolition.
The ensuing political system of the post-founding era saw two political parties emerge: The Federalist Party and the Anti-Federalist Party which evolved almost instantly into the Democratic Republicans. Important Federalists included George Washington, John Adams, and Alexander Hamilton, the last 2 vehement abolitionists but also the US's earliest proponents of bigger government policies that resembled lighter versions of those of the Empire they'd recently overthrown. These included barriers to immigration (Adams' Alien and Sedition Acts), and tariffs on imports and the institution of a National Bank proposed by Hamilton, although these were largely rejected in the early days. These policies make sense as the Federalists largely represented the North with its industrial interests who now wanted a larger pet government to protect them from the jaws of competition pressures and worker rebellion. The Democratic Republicans, largely representing the interests of the agrarian South, favored a minimal role of government which in those infant days was very middle and lower-class friendly; No protection from competition and worker rebellions meant cheaper goods and no barriers to infant labor organizations demanding better pay and conditions. Jefferson led this party through the majority of the first 3 decades of the United States, and while many members were pro-slavery he remained an adamant abolitionist. In 1807, during HIS presidency, the importation of new slaves from abroad was successfully outlawed, striking another irreparable blow to the disgusting institution. The conflict over abolitionism continued to span party lines until the 1860s, with no one party taking a unison stance on the issue. These factual accounts hopefully illustrate, however, why Thomas Jefferson specifically deserves the pedestal free market advocates place him on and that the failure of the original United States to deliver the society he envisioned is largely due to many of his ideas never having been fully realized rather than failing. BUT, politics is about coalitions and this is understandable, its just ignorant to say his ideas were not practical based on this.
The idea of the original system failing to deliver equality and necessitating large government is hopefully illustrated by the aggregate of these two discussions. Slavery was left intact despite not only the wishes but the crusades against it by those modernly blamed for leaving it intact, and industrial-era inequality between laborers and corporate giants and other such gaps evolved as a result of nearly a century of destructive economic policies that were nonetheless implemented after any of the Founding Fathers were involved in politics and at the time of their implementation admittedly a departure from their ideas. The America of the late 18th century was almost entirely agrarian, and agrarian in terms of family-held farms, both subsistence and commercial, without the advent of agricultural mega-corporations. These farms used slave labor as I've discussed, but the impoverished ubran populations working and living under terrible conditions for the benefit of corporate moguls that modern liberals like to reference as victims were virtually non-existant in that society. In fact, Jefferson has been quoted as attributing the US's prosperity to its agrarian economy with plenty of land for almost anyone to own and its lack of dirty, crowded, disease-infested cities that were already commonplace in contemporary Europe and its fledgling industrial revolution. The America of the middle-to-late 19th century, of course, largely resembled this bleak image, but let's remember this came a full century AFTER the Revolution.
The implications of an independence conflict vs revolution are hopefully evident in this discussion. Very few of the successful independence conflicts in the Americas initially did away with slavery - consensus for independence required the compliance of economic elements that would not have agreed to this. The majority of these societies continue to trail the United States by decades in terms of racial equality despite subsequent revolutions. Most European Revolutions did do away with slavery as well as serfdom and many other lingering medieval inequality-preserving policies, but the slave population of European countries was a tiny fraction of the demographic compared to the colonial world and hence the institution had far less economic importance. More importantly, those revolutionary conflicts were specifically concerned with oppressive institutions of inequality as a primary source of conflict, the proponents of said institutions were viewed as the aggressors rather than as clearly necessary allies in the colonial conflicts against a common enemy.
It is also very relevant that with the exception of the initial French Revolution, most European revolutions occurred significantly later. Viewed as an independence conflict, the American founding can be loosely described as the emerging middle class purging old feudal oligarchies. This was already happening in the UK at the time of American Independence, just not fast enough for the colonists' liking. It also occurred slightly later in places like Austria-Hungary, Russia, and of course France in its tumultuous sequence of revolutions. In the colonial world, particularly the Americas, the original independence conflicts can be cited as this same occurence of forcing out the old oligarchies of Europe. Many of these conflicts had some semblance of a Jeffersonian streak in their ideology, but lacking the capacity to establish true equality and laissez-faire capitalism for the same reasons of needing the cooperation of dissenting elements, they for the most part evolved into the neo-feudal oligarchy of late 19th and early 20th century industrialism, that greatly expanded the mild concessions to statism made by John Adams or Edward Rutledge. I don't care if Karl Marx or late 19th century socialists referred to this system as "capitalism," in the sense of economic policy it had divorced itself from the definition of that term completely. What followed in the early and mid 20th century was a wave of violent revolutions true to the idea of internal regime change - Russia, Germany, Austria, Hungary, Italy, Spain, France, Mexico, Argentina, Cuba - with a pattern of far-left Statism coming to power by forcing out these feudal and industrialist elements, and in most of these places it has evolved since into a neo-liberalism that preserves representative democracy but maintains an extended government role in forced equality and distribution. In the United States, far-left Statism was appeased at several junctures but never purged the corporatists in a violent fashion. The progressives and the corporatists struck a deal in 1913 with the Frankenstein of the Federal Reserve. The United States arguably came close to having an actual revolution during the Great Depression - largely brought about by the inequity and meltdown caused by this same monstrous institution, but FDR managed to bridge that gap and preserve the existing system, reigning in the Federal Reserve with some regulations but neither abolishing it nor socializing it, one of which an actual revolution would almost definitely have done.
I'm not advocating violent far-left revolutions in the slightest, but what I'm pointing out is the Hegelian historical tendency of most oligarchy purges with eloquent scientific reasoning behind the new system to be eventually usurped by a new oligarchy that visibly - and sometimes admittedly - departs from the purge's ideals. When the new oligarchy becomes oppressive enough, it is usually purged in turn. It was Hegel, not Marx, that first introduced this theory of social evolution, Marx merely made laughably inaccurate predictions of evolutionary steps that would develop using this model. In a rough sense, the United States can be said to be 2 purges behind in this model - the purge of industrial feudalism that occurred in most comparable countries circa WWI that I have already discussed, and the purge of militant Statism that occurred either in WWII or in the decades following it. It is also notable that militant Statism was not purged with a full-on violent internal regime change in most comparable countries: Hitler and Mussolini were deposed by foreign powers, and the dictatorships of Stalin, Tito, Franco, Salazar, the PRI in Mexico, and a variety of others declined gradually into less restrictive and more representative systems, usually with the death of the central dictator. This explains their preservation of the state's role in the economy but relative lightening up of social totalitarianism. This second purge did, however, disenfranchise and sometimes violently eradicate the oligarchic elements that had benefited from it in various ways; examples would include Stalin's top KGB executives that were executed after his death, and the variety of profiteers, public and private, in other examples. Neo-liberal Statism has developed its own oligarchies, most importantly labor unions and various bureaucracies closely tied to government-funded projects, mega-banks that profit off deficit spending, and to a lesser degree corporate cartels that provide services deemed a "social responsibility," such as health care and environmentally clean energy providers. In the modern world, the European countries known to be the most progressive such as France and Sweden can be said to be going through a 3rd purge, the completely non-violent but hotly contested and controversial rollback of various social welfare policies that double as a gravy train for these latest oligarchies. Every such action is met with waves of riots, strikes, and protests, but nevertheless they consistently get passed with minimal violence and the citizens in those countries continue to elect - albeit by narrow margins - politicians that roll them back even further. Whether this infant purge can remain a post-violence political phenomenon remains to be seen, but let's compare it to the modern United States.
Our lack of an anti-industrialist purge spared us a Stalin or Hitler figure in our history and a period of militant Statism with KGB or Gistappo-resembling oligarchies - a very welcome aspect. However, it has also preserved the industrialist oligarchy to which modern Republicans pander under the advent of "free-market policies" which are in fact anything but. To appease statist tendencies, The Wilson, FDR/Truman and JFK/LBJ eras introduced a less all-encompassing but far more oligarchy-friendly welfare state, and with it far more powerful oligarchies that are associated with government infusions into the economy - government employee unions, the Federal Reserve, medical and clean energy cartels, etc. Arguably, the lack of a militant Statism period has contributed to our own welfare state being so much more prone to pandering to these special interests than those of Western Europe, but while this difference allowed Europe slightly better equity figures, their welfare states are currently proving no more sustainable than ours. The democratic party, in turn, panders to the insolent special interests associated with this welfare state under the pretense of caring progressivism, a sales pitch no less intelligence-insulting than calling industrial pandering "free-market capitalism", just newer and hence with a lot more people alive that still understand the difference. This aggregate lack of purges and the resulting presence of multiple, competing oligarchies makes it difficult for any real advocates of change to form a coalition that does not include one of the two, often leaving the only choice at the ballot box for most Americans to be which special interests their money should be flushed down the throats of. In Europe, the New Austerity elements have largely grown out of what were tiny parties only 10 years ago in opposition to the unilateral ruling coalitions of several decades. Some elements of the Tea Party movement show promise of resembling the European austerity politicians bulldozing the Statist gravy train - NJ's Chris Christie being an excellent example - but in order to oppose the Statist oligarchies they will have no choice but to form a coalition with industrialist panderers and in some cases already have. Similarly, there have been various elements in the democratic party in the last 50 years that resembled genuine progressivism, but they've had to caucus with the gravy-train apologists to take on the industrialists and been eclipsed every time.
It is difficult to make a suggestion or prediction in regard to this seemingly bleak situation, but the point of this post is to explain the reality of our two-party system and how it relates to the inception of this country and the twisting of facts related to it for its benefit. The takeaway point is that it is silly to compare the oppressive oligarchies and their pet politicians to the original purgers whose system they later usurped, and in most countries where the usurping oligarchy was in turn purged this is a very uncommon practice. Mexico, for example, retains the heroic statuses of Benito Juarez and Emiliano Zapata, but not the military dictatorships of Santa Ana, Diaz, and Obregon/Calles that came in their wake. The deposition of the German monarchy is also considered a triumphant event in that country's history, but Hitler apologism is very uncommon there. When idiots like Glen Beck or Michael Moore want to compare the Founding Fathers to Henry Clay, James K. Polk, Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush - whether in an attempt to apologize for these inept and crooked politicians or to tarnish the Founding Fathers' legacies because these politicians invoke them in their rhetoric - keep in mind the corresponding comparisons mentioned.
Let's get the really shocking statement out of the way. The American Revolution, by historical and political science standards, does not qualify for the term "revolution". The term "revolution" refers to a regime change within a political unit that preserves its geographical boundaries or at least the majority of them. The French, Russian, German, Mexican, Cuban revolutions all meet this standard. The American "Revolution" was in fact a war of colonial independence, classified as a dependent territory or group of territories becoming autonomous and independent from a greater political unit, which in this case would refer to the 13 colonies that formed the original United States and the British Empire which occupied close to 1/3 of the world at the time, respectively. As a war of colonial independence, this event is comparable to every other independence conflict, particularly in the greater American continent in which almost every political unit has experienced a similar event - the Hispanosphere from Spain, the Carribean States from Britain and France, and so forth. NOT ONE of these modern states refers to their independence conflict as a revolution to the best of my knowledge, and many of them have experienced one or multiple subsequent internal revolutions. IN FACT, few Americans referred to our conflict as a "revolution" until well into the 1790s, when the Anti-Federalist Party began to use the term retroactively to refer to it as a propaganda tool to rouse support for their sentiment which favored the French Revolutionaries, whereas the Federalist Party was more moderate in their approach to the same conflict and more pro-monarchy when it came to France.
What are the implications of this seemingly insignificant inconsistency of terminology? Well, if we divide modern American political approaches very roughly into mainstream conservative and mainstream liberal, both fall apart in their attempts to fall back on supposed associated facts with this consideration in mind.
Conservative Arguments
Conservatives, particularly in what are modernly dubbed "conservative-dominated" historical eras, have had a disturbing tendency to claim that they are fulfilling the legacy of the Founding Fathers while pushing policies that are likely making every Founding Father spin in his grave. The laughable argument made by Bill O'Reilly or Glen Beck that "America was founded by right wing extremists" is only the tip of the iceberg, as these pundits are typically dismissed as extremely biased, sometimes even by their patrons. What I, as a scientist, find disturbing are the references of actual politicians like Ronald Reagan or George W. Bush to the writings of Thomas Jefferson or John Locke in defense of policies that blatantly shield various corporate and other upper-class economic actors from the rigors of free-market competition. Ronald Reagan's inauguration speech may have highlighted the merits of Jeffersonian economics and the efficiency of the free market, but his actual economic policies were little more than a shift from social welfare to corporate welfare, cutting programs that distributed tax money to the poor and social services and instead giving that same money to military contractors and other large corporate profiteers. George W. Bush's economic stimulus for large earners in the form of slashing capital gains taxes was just that - STIMULUS, the government favoring anyone in giving out money is not free market, EVER; his own extravagant military expenditures are probably fresh in everyone's minds as well. Comparing these "conservatives'" foreign policy to that of the Founding Fathers is even more laughable. Remember Thomas Jefferson's infamous quote "good relations with all nations, entangling alliances with none"? Somehow I don't think military bases in 3/4 of the world's other countries and the military actions in Nicaragua, Grenada, Iraq I and II, and Afganistan are what Jefferson meant, regardless of how much John McCain alludes to it being a "different world". Jefferson's world was a patchwork of theocratic European empires and their conflicting claims to the colonized lands of other continents and their enslaved and dehumanized populations - hardly more pleasant than modern Iraq or Afganistan. Jefferson implied that meddling in his contemporary petty squabbles would bring more harm than good to the US, and our modern foreign policy has demonstrated EXACTLY what he was trying to avoid. As discussed in an earlier post, imperialist foreign policy was a liberal rather than conservative advent until recent decades, but the economic failures of past times attributed to free-market policies are equally the fault of those politicians' misuse of that term. Henry Clay openly admitted that his American System - the insane economic protectionism of the early 19th century that spawned the odius corporate monopolies of the post-Civil War era - was a necessary departure from free-market ideals to grow American industry. However, this did not stop the various corporate barons who dominated the US decades after his death from referencing "free-market capitalism" as their politician allies outlawed labor unions and unleashed the military on worker sit-ins and attempts to unionize, took away people's land under The Eminent Domain Act of 1880 to save the railroad money on its expansion, and turned a blind eye to their hired thugs' harassing those who stood up against them in the developing west. THIS kind of policy was exactly what the American "Revolution" did away with on the part of British mercantilism and other assinine attempts by the London government to protect the colonial assets of the detached and declining aristocracy, it is laughable to believe that any of the Founding Fathers would have been less than repulsed by it.
If right wing extremism - a very arbitrary term - meant free market policies, then the argument that the Founding Fathers were "right wing extremists" would hold some value. But mainstream conservatives in recent decades have backed such assinine big-government feudalism and labeled it "free-market capitalism" that few people realize the gargantuan difference between the two. Washington may have established the concept of a standing army for the United States, but if he were a general in the modern US military - Bush and Reaganesque imperialism and our long, drawn-out, unwinnable wars with no evident benefit other than to defense contractors who eat up a third of the budget would have likely driven him to institute a military coup! John Adams may have been in favor of tariffs to protect the infant American industry, although not even to the extent of Henry Clay's policies in the 1810s, but repetitive bailouts and pandering to corporations that consistently fail to live up to market demands such as AIG or the automakers would horrify him. Hamilton's idea for a National Bank - which never went anywhere - was an idea for a government-run centralised bank, a very progressive idea by modern standards and hardly comparable to the disgusting corporate cartel of the Federal Reserve. As for the true capitalist Jefferson, or the conservative-at-first-glance Southern Founding Fathers like Rutledge and Hall, it is hardly an overstatement to say their response to the blithering idiocy of modern conservative politicians and pundits would bait an instant invitation to a duel, especially if the latter credited the former with their ideas.
Liberal Arguments
In light of the blatant misquotations and misattributions above, the counter-ignorance of liberal arguments regarding the American "Revolution" is not surprising, but this does not make it less destructive. As it is now "trendy" to equate modern corporate elitism to "free-market capitalism," liberals turn to blaming the latter for the failures of the former, and even more importantly to assinine and ridiculous accusations against the Founding Fathers, calling them "racist white men" for failing to do away with slavery, and citing the economic system they put in place (as if it hadn't changed in the 110 years between the 'Revolution' and before the first modern liberal policies) for the inequities and injustice that "necessitate" and "excuse" the creeping of government into every facet of the economy.
I will address the slavery-related rhetoric first, as frankly, the widespread belief in this idiocy gives me the creeps. What the average American does not know is that the 3 primary Founding Fathers just about every American can name - Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson - were EMPHATIC slavery abolitionists. Check any credible biographical source if you don't believe me, this isn't any kind of secret. I cannot claim to know their personal attitudes and whether or not they were in fact "racist," but the fact that all 3 owned slaves themselves does not disqualify them from aggressively pursuing a policy of abolition which would require them to free their own slaves. It may seem hypocritical, but so is the comparable political behavior of every modern politician and activist - the economy is a complex non-zero-sum structure and it is not easy for anyone to give up their dependence on economic institutions they disagree with to remain competitive. The non-abolitionist Founding Fathers made their share of contributions, but history rarely emphasizes their names. How many of you, my readers, have ever heard of Edward Rutledge or Dr. Lyman Hall? Franklin, Adams, and Jefferson believed their "all men" clause included the slave population and argued vehemently against leaving the institution intact in the new state to be created. They had to leave it intact because the main conflict both at the 2nd Continental Congress and at the Constitutional Convention was NOT over slavery but over independence from the British Empire and over joining into a single nation state, respectively. Both conventions encountered fierce opposition from the loyalists and confederalists, respectively, and in both cases the Southern delegacies that were predominantly pro-slavery proved to hold the deciding vote and had to be won over by leaving slavery intact.
Despite not being able to dismantle it, the founding the United States did significant and irreparable damage to the institution of slavery. The 3/5 Compromise that is so often cited as horribly dehumanizing was a HUGE victory for the slave population. This compromise, of course, refers to slaves in Southern States counting as 3/5 of a person for the purposes of congressional representation, and most modern Americans are SHOCKED when they find out the COMPROMISE was because the North wanted the slaves not to count at all and the South wanted them to count as one person! But wait, wasn't the North abolitionist and the South pro-slavery? Well, its not like the slaves could vote. Not counting them meant that since they are not considered equivalent citizens, the South gets less representatives. Counting them as one person, on the other hand, would essentially give their owners the power to elect representatives for themselves and their slaves with no actual input from the slaves, a practice widely popular in contemporary societies with slavery or serfdom that had any form of representation. In either scenario, the North or the South would have an instant majority in the House of Representatives and dominate the opposing region on any conflicting economic policies, which were by no means limited to slavery. The 3/5 compromise was instituted to maintain a delicate balance between the two regions that persisted until the Civil War, but penalizing the slave-owning population in terms of representation by not counting their slaves as full people was still a very novel practice for the 18th century. Giving each state the power to make up its own mind on the issue of slavery was also a novel idea, as much a victory for slaves as a concession to slave-owners as no contemporary state had anything short of a blanket federal policy, with no guarantee of it being one of abolition.
The ensuing political system of the post-founding era saw two political parties emerge: The Federalist Party and the Anti-Federalist Party which evolved almost instantly into the Democratic Republicans. Important Federalists included George Washington, John Adams, and Alexander Hamilton, the last 2 vehement abolitionists but also the US's earliest proponents of bigger government policies that resembled lighter versions of those of the Empire they'd recently overthrown. These included barriers to immigration (Adams' Alien and Sedition Acts), and tariffs on imports and the institution of a National Bank proposed by Hamilton, although these were largely rejected in the early days. These policies make sense as the Federalists largely represented the North with its industrial interests who now wanted a larger pet government to protect them from the jaws of competition pressures and worker rebellion. The Democratic Republicans, largely representing the interests of the agrarian South, favored a minimal role of government which in those infant days was very middle and lower-class friendly; No protection from competition and worker rebellions meant cheaper goods and no barriers to infant labor organizations demanding better pay and conditions. Jefferson led this party through the majority of the first 3 decades of the United States, and while many members were pro-slavery he remained an adamant abolitionist. In 1807, during HIS presidency, the importation of new slaves from abroad was successfully outlawed, striking another irreparable blow to the disgusting institution. The conflict over abolitionism continued to span party lines until the 1860s, with no one party taking a unison stance on the issue. These factual accounts hopefully illustrate, however, why Thomas Jefferson specifically deserves the pedestal free market advocates place him on and that the failure of the original United States to deliver the society he envisioned is largely due to many of his ideas never having been fully realized rather than failing. BUT, politics is about coalitions and this is understandable, its just ignorant to say his ideas were not practical based on this.
The idea of the original system failing to deliver equality and necessitating large government is hopefully illustrated by the aggregate of these two discussions. Slavery was left intact despite not only the wishes but the crusades against it by those modernly blamed for leaving it intact, and industrial-era inequality between laborers and corporate giants and other such gaps evolved as a result of nearly a century of destructive economic policies that were nonetheless implemented after any of the Founding Fathers were involved in politics and at the time of their implementation admittedly a departure from their ideas. The America of the late 18th century was almost entirely agrarian, and agrarian in terms of family-held farms, both subsistence and commercial, without the advent of agricultural mega-corporations. These farms used slave labor as I've discussed, but the impoverished ubran populations working and living under terrible conditions for the benefit of corporate moguls that modern liberals like to reference as victims were virtually non-existant in that society. In fact, Jefferson has been quoted as attributing the US's prosperity to its agrarian economy with plenty of land for almost anyone to own and its lack of dirty, crowded, disease-infested cities that were already commonplace in contemporary Europe and its fledgling industrial revolution. The America of the middle-to-late 19th century, of course, largely resembled this bleak image, but let's remember this came a full century AFTER the Revolution.
The implications of an independence conflict vs revolution are hopefully evident in this discussion. Very few of the successful independence conflicts in the Americas initially did away with slavery - consensus for independence required the compliance of economic elements that would not have agreed to this. The majority of these societies continue to trail the United States by decades in terms of racial equality despite subsequent revolutions. Most European Revolutions did do away with slavery as well as serfdom and many other lingering medieval inequality-preserving policies, but the slave population of European countries was a tiny fraction of the demographic compared to the colonial world and hence the institution had far less economic importance. More importantly, those revolutionary conflicts were specifically concerned with oppressive institutions of inequality as a primary source of conflict, the proponents of said institutions were viewed as the aggressors rather than as clearly necessary allies in the colonial conflicts against a common enemy.
It is also very relevant that with the exception of the initial French Revolution, most European revolutions occurred significantly later. Viewed as an independence conflict, the American founding can be loosely described as the emerging middle class purging old feudal oligarchies. This was already happening in the UK at the time of American Independence, just not fast enough for the colonists' liking. It also occurred slightly later in places like Austria-Hungary, Russia, and of course France in its tumultuous sequence of revolutions. In the colonial world, particularly the Americas, the original independence conflicts can be cited as this same occurence of forcing out the old oligarchies of Europe. Many of these conflicts had some semblance of a Jeffersonian streak in their ideology, but lacking the capacity to establish true equality and laissez-faire capitalism for the same reasons of needing the cooperation of dissenting elements, they for the most part evolved into the neo-feudal oligarchy of late 19th and early 20th century industrialism, that greatly expanded the mild concessions to statism made by John Adams or Edward Rutledge. I don't care if Karl Marx or late 19th century socialists referred to this system as "capitalism," in the sense of economic policy it had divorced itself from the definition of that term completely. What followed in the early and mid 20th century was a wave of violent revolutions true to the idea of internal regime change - Russia, Germany, Austria, Hungary, Italy, Spain, France, Mexico, Argentina, Cuba - with a pattern of far-left Statism coming to power by forcing out these feudal and industrialist elements, and in most of these places it has evolved since into a neo-liberalism that preserves representative democracy but maintains an extended government role in forced equality and distribution. In the United States, far-left Statism was appeased at several junctures but never purged the corporatists in a violent fashion. The progressives and the corporatists struck a deal in 1913 with the Frankenstein of the Federal Reserve. The United States arguably came close to having an actual revolution during the Great Depression - largely brought about by the inequity and meltdown caused by this same monstrous institution, but FDR managed to bridge that gap and preserve the existing system, reigning in the Federal Reserve with some regulations but neither abolishing it nor socializing it, one of which an actual revolution would almost definitely have done.
I'm not advocating violent far-left revolutions in the slightest, but what I'm pointing out is the Hegelian historical tendency of most oligarchy purges with eloquent scientific reasoning behind the new system to be eventually usurped by a new oligarchy that visibly - and sometimes admittedly - departs from the purge's ideals. When the new oligarchy becomes oppressive enough, it is usually purged in turn. It was Hegel, not Marx, that first introduced this theory of social evolution, Marx merely made laughably inaccurate predictions of evolutionary steps that would develop using this model. In a rough sense, the United States can be said to be 2 purges behind in this model - the purge of industrial feudalism that occurred in most comparable countries circa WWI that I have already discussed, and the purge of militant Statism that occurred either in WWII or in the decades following it. It is also notable that militant Statism was not purged with a full-on violent internal regime change in most comparable countries: Hitler and Mussolini were deposed by foreign powers, and the dictatorships of Stalin, Tito, Franco, Salazar, the PRI in Mexico, and a variety of others declined gradually into less restrictive and more representative systems, usually with the death of the central dictator. This explains their preservation of the state's role in the economy but relative lightening up of social totalitarianism. This second purge did, however, disenfranchise and sometimes violently eradicate the oligarchic elements that had benefited from it in various ways; examples would include Stalin's top KGB executives that were executed after his death, and the variety of profiteers, public and private, in other examples. Neo-liberal Statism has developed its own oligarchies, most importantly labor unions and various bureaucracies closely tied to government-funded projects, mega-banks that profit off deficit spending, and to a lesser degree corporate cartels that provide services deemed a "social responsibility," such as health care and environmentally clean energy providers. In the modern world, the European countries known to be the most progressive such as France and Sweden can be said to be going through a 3rd purge, the completely non-violent but hotly contested and controversial rollback of various social welfare policies that double as a gravy train for these latest oligarchies. Every such action is met with waves of riots, strikes, and protests, but nevertheless they consistently get passed with minimal violence and the citizens in those countries continue to elect - albeit by narrow margins - politicians that roll them back even further. Whether this infant purge can remain a post-violence political phenomenon remains to be seen, but let's compare it to the modern United States.
Our lack of an anti-industrialist purge spared us a Stalin or Hitler figure in our history and a period of militant Statism with KGB or Gistappo-resembling oligarchies - a very welcome aspect. However, it has also preserved the industrialist oligarchy to which modern Republicans pander under the advent of "free-market policies" which are in fact anything but. To appease statist tendencies, The Wilson, FDR/Truman and JFK/LBJ eras introduced a less all-encompassing but far more oligarchy-friendly welfare state, and with it far more powerful oligarchies that are associated with government infusions into the economy - government employee unions, the Federal Reserve, medical and clean energy cartels, etc. Arguably, the lack of a militant Statism period has contributed to our own welfare state being so much more prone to pandering to these special interests than those of Western Europe, but while this difference allowed Europe slightly better equity figures, their welfare states are currently proving no more sustainable than ours. The democratic party, in turn, panders to the insolent special interests associated with this welfare state under the pretense of caring progressivism, a sales pitch no less intelligence-insulting than calling industrial pandering "free-market capitalism", just newer and hence with a lot more people alive that still understand the difference. This aggregate lack of purges and the resulting presence of multiple, competing oligarchies makes it difficult for any real advocates of change to form a coalition that does not include one of the two, often leaving the only choice at the ballot box for most Americans to be which special interests their money should be flushed down the throats of. In Europe, the New Austerity elements have largely grown out of what were tiny parties only 10 years ago in opposition to the unilateral ruling coalitions of several decades. Some elements of the Tea Party movement show promise of resembling the European austerity politicians bulldozing the Statist gravy train - NJ's Chris Christie being an excellent example - but in order to oppose the Statist oligarchies they will have no choice but to form a coalition with industrialist panderers and in some cases already have. Similarly, there have been various elements in the democratic party in the last 50 years that resembled genuine progressivism, but they've had to caucus with the gravy-train apologists to take on the industrialists and been eclipsed every time.
It is difficult to make a suggestion or prediction in regard to this seemingly bleak situation, but the point of this post is to explain the reality of our two-party system and how it relates to the inception of this country and the twisting of facts related to it for its benefit. The takeaway point is that it is silly to compare the oppressive oligarchies and their pet politicians to the original purgers whose system they later usurped, and in most countries where the usurping oligarchy was in turn purged this is a very uncommon practice. Mexico, for example, retains the heroic statuses of Benito Juarez and Emiliano Zapata, but not the military dictatorships of Santa Ana, Diaz, and Obregon/Calles that came in their wake. The deposition of the German monarchy is also considered a triumphant event in that country's history, but Hitler apologism is very uncommon there. When idiots like Glen Beck or Michael Moore want to compare the Founding Fathers to Henry Clay, James K. Polk, Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush - whether in an attempt to apologize for these inept and crooked politicians or to tarnish the Founding Fathers' legacies because these politicians invoke them in their rhetoric - keep in mind the corresponding comparisons mentioned.
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