Harper Regime: The Ideology
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Neoconservativism (Neo-con):
- PERSPECTIVES Vol. 7, No. 2 (June 2006): 99-103 MA Modern Conservatism and the Neoconservatives
Ying MA [pdf]: INTRODUCTION
Thanks very much for having me. It’s quite an honor to speak to you today about modern conservatism and the neoconservatives. I want to thank Wentong Zheng for extending me the invitation and the Overseas Young Chinese Forum, the DC China Society and CAST-DC for hosting me.I consider myself a conservative and have done so since college. I currently work for the American Enterprise Institute and feel that I was nurtured by the conservative movement. I was born in Guangzhou and immigrated to the United States with my family at age ten. Often, when people find out that I’m a first generation immigrant, they are very baffled as to why a Cantonese girl is such a staunch conservative. Surely, she did not learn to do so in China.I became interested in conservatism because it offered some of the most fascinating, profound and influential ideas of our day. If there is anything that I hope you will take away from my talk today, it is that the modern conservative movement really is about ideas, ideas that have consequences and ideas that are so exciting that they have captured this country’s politics and policy.
Any casual observer of American politics today can see the enormous influence that conservatism wields on the American political system and policymaking. We have a President who is an avowed conservative, a Republican dominated Congress that pays heed to conservative principles, and a Supreme Court where five out of nine of the Justices abide by a conservative judicial philosophy.
Modern conservatism did not become the dominant political ideology or philosophy in America overnight. Today, I will describe its historical rise, its core values, and some of its key intellectual leaders. I will focus on neoconservatism, a major subgroup within modern conservatism, and talk about where it came from, who the neoconservatives are, and their inordinate influence on the foreign policy debate in the post-9/11 era.
http://www.oycf.org/Perspectives2/33_06302006/Ma_Ying_Conservatism.pd - Multiculturalism vs. Neoconservatism Reading Social and Cultural Thoughts in Contemporary America and 2004 American Presidential Election [pdf]:
Abstract: From the late 1960s and early 1970s onwards, there have been two currents of cultural thoughts, namely, multiculturalism and neoconservatism, emerged in American intellectual and cultural community. They engaged in an intensive and frontal debate which evoked the so-called “culture war” encompassing the social cultures of the American traditional values, education reform, lifestyle, sexuality, equal rights of minorities, rights of women and so on. This paper examined their origins, evolution and focuses, and concluded that the multiculturalism and neoconservatism had defined the two principal legacies of social and cultural thoughts in contemporary America, whose polemic had characterized the conflict of the American values. Therefore, the 2004 US presidential election can well be conceived as “election of cultural values”. Key Words: Multiculturalism, neoconservatism, culture war, US presidential election About the Author: Professor, Center of the American Studies at Shanghai International Studies University
http://www.siis.org.cn/Sh_Yj_Cms/Mgz/200501/2008724232121KFO9.PDF [pdf] - Neoconservatism: Imperialism and secrecy:
John McGowan, professor of humanities at the University of North Carolina, states, after an extensive review of neoconservative literature and theory, that neoconservatives are attempting to build an American Empire, seen as successor to the British Empire, its aim being to perpetuate a Pax Americana. As imperialism is largely seen as unacceptable by the American public, neoconservatives do not articulate their ideas and goals in a frank manner in public discourse. McGowan states,[61]Frank neoconservatives like Robert Kaplan and Niall Ferguson recognize that they are proposing imperialism as the alternative to liberal internationalism. Yet both Kaplan and Ferguson also understand that imperialism runs so counter to American’s liberal tradition that it must… remain a foreign policy that dare not speak its name… While Ferguson, the Brit, laments that Americans cannot just openly shoulder the white man’s burden, Kaplan the American, tells us that “only through stealth and anxious foresight” can the United States continue to pursue the “imperial reality [that] already dominates our foreign policy”, but must be disavowed in light of “our anti-imperial traditions, and… the fact that imperialism is delegitimized in public discourse”… The Bush administration, justifying all of its actions by an appeal to “national security”, has kept as many of those actions as it can secret and has scorned all limitations to executive power by other branches of government or international law.
Friction with paleoconservatism
Main article: Neoconservatism and paleoconservatismStarting in the 1980s, disputes over Israel and public policy contributed to a sharp conflict with paleoconservatives, who argue that neoconservatives are an illegitimate addition to the conservative movement. For example, Pat Buchanan calls neoconservatism “a globalist, interventionist, open borders ideology.”[91] The open rift is often traced back to a 1981 dispute over Ronald Reagan’s nomination of Mel Bradford, a Southerner, to run the National Endowment for the Humanities. Bradford withdrew after neoconservatives complained that he had criticized Abraham Lincoln; the paleoconservatives supported Bradford.
Neoconservatism in other countries
This section requires expansion. (June 2011)
The movement has been influential in other countries. Variants of neoconservatism can be found in the Czech Republic, the United Kingdom and Japan.
Notable figures connected to neoconservatism
The list includes public figures identified as personally a neoconservative at an important time or a high official with numerous neoconservative advisors, such as George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. Some are dead, or are ex-neoconservatives.
PoliticiansPoliticians
- George W. Bush—President of the United States 2001-9; numerous neocon advisors[92][93]
- Dick Cheney—Vice President 2001-9; numerous neocon advisors[94][95][96][97]
- Lindsey Graham Senator from South Carolina
- Henry M. Jackson—Democratic Senator from Washington State
- Joe Lieberman—Independent Senator from Connecticut
- Richard Lugar Republican Senator from Indiana
- John McCain Republican Senator from Arizona; numerous neocon advisors
- Daniel Patrick Moynihan—Democratic Senator from New York
- Colin Powell Secretary of State
- Condoleezza Rice Secretary of State
- Donald Rumsfeld—Secretary of Defense; numerous neocon advisors[94][95][97]
- Stephen Harper—Prime Minister of Canada 2006–present
Government officials
- Paul Wolfowitz—State and Defense Department official
- R. James Woolsey, Jr. —Director of Central Intelligence, Under Secretary of the Navy, green energy lobbyist.
- Richard Perle—Assistant Secretary of Defense, lobbyist.
- Jeane Kirkpatrick—Ambassador to the United Nations
- Scooter Libby—Chief-of-Staff to Cheney
- Condoleezza Rice—Secretary of State
- Richard Armitage—Defense Department official
- Zalmay Khalilzad—State and Defense Department official
- Elliot Abrams—Republican foreign policy adviser.
- William G. Boykin—Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence
- Frank Gaffney—Defense Department official, founder of the Center for Security Policy
- John R. Bolton—Ambassador to the United Nations
- Eliot A. Cohen—US State Department Counselor 2007-2009, now Robert E. Osgood Professor of Strategic Studies at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at the Johns Hopkins University.
Academics
- Robert Kagan—Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, Historian, founder of the Yale Political Monthly, adviser to Republican political campaigns.
- Francis Fukuyama—Senior Fellow at the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law at Stanford, former-neoconservative, political scientist, political economist, and author.
- Victor Davis Hanson—Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, columnist and author.
- Michael Ledeen—Freedom Scholar chair at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, former US government consultant, author, columnist.
- Sidney Hook—Political philosopher; called himself a social democrat and rejected the “neoconservative” label; nonetheless, he has been listed by a historian[98]
- Nathan Glazer—Professor of sociology, columnist, author.
- Harvey Mansfield—William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Government at Harvard University, author.
- Bernard Lewis—Cleveland E. Dodge Professor Emeritus of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University, author.
Public intellectuals
- Irving Kristol—Publisher, journalist, columnist.
- William Kristol—Founder and editor of The Weekly Standard, professor of political philosophy and American politics, political adviser.
- Norman Podhoretz—Editor-in-Chief of Commentary.
- John Podhoretz—Editor-in-Chief of Commentary, presidential speech writer, author.
- Irwin Stelzer—International economics and business columnist, editor at The Weekly Standard, Oxford fellow.
- Charles Krauthammer—Pulitzer Prize winner, columnist, physician.
- Daniel Pipes—Journalist and writer
- David Brooks—Journalist, columnist, culture critic.[99][100][101]
- David Frum—Journalist, Republican speech writer, columnist.[102]
- Andrew Sullivan—Journalist, Editor in Chief of The New Republican. From 2000 when supported George Bush for Presidency in the US, he had been thought as a Neo-Conservative, but in February 2009 distanced himself from that movement, in a well documented controversy[103]
- Max Boot—Military historian, columnist, author.
- Christopher Hitchens—Journalist, columnist, writer, considered by some a neoconservative.[104]
- Oriana Fallaci—Italian – U.S.permanent resident journalist and writer.
Related publications and institutions
Institutions
- Bradley Foundation
- Ethics and Public Policy Center
- Foundation for Defense of Democracies
- Henry Jackson Society
- Hudson Institute
- Manhattan Institute
- Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs
- Project for the New American Century
- American Enterprise Institute
- Hoover Institution
- Center for Security Policy
- Heritage Foundation
Publications
- Commentary
- Front Page Magazine
- Policy Review
- The National Interest
- The Public Interest
- The Weekly Standard
See also
- Factions in the Republican Party (United States)
- Globalization
- Neoconservatism and paleoconservatism
- Neoconservatism in Japan
- Paleoconservatism
- Project for a New American Century
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoconservatism#Imperialism_and_secrecy
Salafism/Wahhabism:
- Salafists urge ultraconservative Islam on post-Arab Spring governments:
CAIRO — The elections that followed the Arab uprisings elevated Islamists out of decades of repression and into the region’s most powerful posts. Here in Egypt, a former prisoner became president.But to Salafists, adherents of a puritanical form of Islam who have embraced the country’s new freedoms with gusto, the emerging Islamist order has a serious flaw: It isn’t nearly Islamist enough.“They say that the people do not want sharia,” said Gamel Saber, a back-slapping Salafist activist who said he dreams of a day when his country’s courts will fully implement Islamic law. “But that is not true. They are ready.”Saber’s dream is shared by millions of allies across North Africa, and that reality is proving to be the most serious challenge yet for the months-old governments struggling to find their feet in Egypt, Libya and Tunisia.
As moderate Islamist leaders in all three countries begin to craft post-revolutionary constitutions, the Salafists in their midst are pushing — sometimes at the ballot box, sometimes at the point of a gun — to create societies that more closely mirror their ultraconservative religious beliefs and lifestyles.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/after-arab-spring-salafists-are-building-influence–at-polls-and-at-gunpoint/2012/10/06/a3590e48-0e10-11e2-bd1a-b868e65d57eb_story.html - The Taliban, Salafi ideology: Learning from history:
Salafism is the inspiration for the Taliban ideology, and both have manifested themselves in the battlegrounds of Afghanistan and Pakistan.October 7 marked the eleventh year of the Afghanistan war, and American casualties reached 2,000, while many more thousands of Afghans have been killed or maimed by conflict-related casualties as well as terrorist suicide attacks. As US and coalition forces prepare for the 2014 pullout, the International Crisis Group just released a report warning that the Afghan government could collapse, precipitating a civil war.Most likely that is what the Taliban and fellow insurgents are counting on, allowing history to repeat itself once again. If we were to pull one thread from today’s situation in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region, we would see it woven into an ideological fabric that goes back to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan era. Very little has changed in the militants’ worldview and strategies since the 1980s. In fact, that very thread is also connected in many respects to the post-Arab Awakening environments in North Africa, where Salafists are asserting themselves in the most unsavory ways.The Washington Post (October 6) describes the Salafists’ tactics in Tunisia, Libya and Egypt: “As moderate Islamist leaders in all three countries begin to craft post-revolutionary constitutions, the Salafists in their midst are pushing – sometimes at the ballot box, sometimes at the point of a gun – to create societies that more closely mirror their ultraconservative religious beliefs and lifestyles.”
What is the relationship between the current Salafist trends and tactics in North Africa and the Taliban in Afghanistan? Although both consist of degrees of conservatism in the ideological spectrum, in general the militants are violently and theologically totalitarian, and both combine their religious ideologies with politics and militarism, or “jihadism.” Everything they view is through their narrow religious lens, according to their literalist, ultra-conservative interpretation of Sharia, Islamic law.
http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Op-EdContributors/Article.aspx?id=287164 - Britain and the Rise of Wahhabism and the House of Saud Dr. Abdullah Mohammad Sindi[pdf]:
INTRODUCTION: One of the most rigid and reactionary sects in all of Islam today is Wahhabism. It is the official and dominant sect in Saudi Arabia whose sole constitution is the Holy Qur’an. Wahhabism and Saudi Arabia’s ruling House of Saud have been intimately and permanently intertwined sincetheir births.
Wahhabism created the Saudi monarchy, and the House of Saud spread Wahhabism. One could not have existed without the other. Wahhabism gives the House of Saud legitimacy, and the House of Saud protectsand promotes Wahhabism. The two are inseparable because each supports the other and depends on it for survival.Unlike Islam in other Muslim countries, however, Wahhabism treats women as third class citizens, imposes the veil on them, and denies them basic human rights such as: driving cars; the freedom of traveling within the country or leaving it without permission or Mahram (“a relative male chaperon”); the interaction with men who are not related to them in order to maintain a complete separation of the sexes; and until a few decades ago denied them public education and banned them from Radio and Television.
In addition, unlike other Islamic sects, Wahhabism outlaws the celebration of Almoulid (Prophet Mohammad’s Birthday); forbids religious freedom, opposes political freedom of expression by constantly admonishing Saudis to obey their leaders (who are not even elected); bans movie theaters; forces the public and businesses to observe prayers; cows the masses by publicly using the harshest Islamic punishments (applied mostly to the poor, like all other punishments) such as the beheading for convicted killers and the hand-amputation for thieves; denies the Saudi citizenship to non-Muslims; and condoned slavery until the 1960s.
Wahhabism also abhors smoking, singing, and dancing. To ensure full compliance of its stern ordinances, the Wahhabi “Committee for the Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice” with its religious police keeps a watchful eye on the Saudi public.
Wahhabism is highly self-centered and extremely intolerant of progressive ideologies, other religions, and other Islamic sects such as Shiism and Sufism. It despises Arab Nationalism with a great deal of passion, yet it promotes “Saudi” nationalism, despite the fact that any nationalism is considered a violation of Islamic theology due to the concept of Islamic Ummah (“nation”). Wahhabism considers itself to be the only correct way in all of Islam, and any Muslim who opposes it as heretic or non-believer.
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Dominionism:
- Dominionism:
For the past several decades the political Left has focused attention on the Christian Right’s political activism in America. Particularly, the Left has been highly critical of a select group of dominionists called Reconstructionists, whose aggressive verbiage, extreme Calvinist theologies, and religious political agendas have made it an ideal target for outrage. But, as Leftist researcher Sara Diamond has astutely observed, “the Reconstructionists’ religion of Calvinism. . . makes them unlikely to appeal to most evangelicals.”4 Indeed, few Reconstructionists would consider themselves to be evangelicals. Nevertheless, their influence has been considerable over the much larger group of patriotic evangelicals.There are two other dominionist sects within evangelicalism that have escaped in-depth scrutiny from the Left. These dominionists have been able to function virtually incognito for several reasons: 1) They have been deeply embedded within the evangelical subculture; 2) They cloaked their dominionism with new terminologies and doctrines over a period of thirty years; and 3) They figured out how to package dominionism using sophisticated mass marketing techniques. Also noteworthy: these two other dominionist camps have been operating in a dialectical fashion – while one group appealed to the TBN charismatics with all of its emotional excesses, the other group carefully managed its more intellectual public image to conform to traditional evangelical standards.This paper is a brief overview of the three main dominionist movements operating inside evangelicaldom and examines how all three of these sects are now converging around a global “kingdom” agenda. This paper is not a treatise on doctrine, nor is it an historical record, nor is it a thorough analysis of the multifarious streams of evangelical dominionism. This paper does not cover the broader issue of dominionist sects within other world religions, except for a few brief noteworthy mentions. To examine the totality of the individuals, the organizations, and their cross-linkages would require an exhaustive study which is beyond the scope of this brief synopsis. Even so, every point made in this paper could be validated by dozens, sometimes hundreds, of pieces of documentation. The inquiring reader may check out the footnotes and references.Only a small handful of Christian discernment and apologetics ministries, of which this writer is a part, have been paying attention to the intersection of the dominionist streams. The apologetic ministries fulfill a Scriptural role to examine and expose false doctrines and teachers, and to warn other believers of heresies (Jude 3, 2 Peter 2:1). Increasingly, over the past two decades, many apologists have become seduced by dominionism, blunting their ability to critically examine the roots and fruits of this rapidly rising new church era.
http://www.discernment-ministries.org/ChristianImperialism.htm
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Anglo-American Waspism
- God and Gold: Mead Explores History of “Anglo-American Wasps” and “Waspophobes” in New Book:
October 9, 2007— This provocative new book, God and Gold: Britain, America, and the Making of the Modern World, by Walter Russell Mead, Henry A. Kissinger senior fellow for U.S. foreign policy, argues that the main event in modern history is the long war between the Anglo-American Wasps and their rivals. For more than 300 years, first the British and then the Americans, have been busy building a global system of politics, power, investment, and trade. The Waspophobes—those who hate and fear Anglo-American capitalism, liberalism, arrogance, religion, and power—keep fighting back.From Oliver Cromwell to George W. Bush, Wasp leaders have described their enemies as an axis of evil who hate liberty and God, seek world domination, care nothing for morality, will do anything to win, and rely on a fifth column of traitors within.Waspophobes, from Louis XIV on, thought pretty much the same things about the Wasps, but no matter who is right, for more than 300 years the Wasps have been winning. While they have lost small wars here and there, they have won big conflicts, the great power wars that shape the world. So far.
What are these conflicts about? Why do the Wasps keep on winning? Why, despite all their victories, do the Wasps never succeed in establishing the peaceful world they keep dreaming about? Why did Bush, Blair, and the neoconservatives fail so badly in the Middle East? What has Wasp power meant for world history, and where are the Wasps headed next?
Drawing on sources from Lewis Carroll and Monty Python to Osama bin Laden and Tony Blair, God and Gold weaves history, literature, philosophy, and religion together into a dazzling, vivid picture of the world we live in and our tumultuous times.
More Advance Praise for God and Gold
- Bush Gog and Magog:
Here’s a story we should all be ashamed of missing: George W Bush attempted to sell the invasion of Iraqto Jacques Chirac using biblical prophecy.In the winter of 2003, when George Bush and Tony Blair were frantically gathering support for their planned invasion, Professor Thomas Römer, an Old Testament expert at the university of Lausanne, was rung up by the Protestant Federation of France. They asked him to supply them with a summary of the legends surrounding Gog and Magog and as the conversation progressed, he realised that this had originally come, from the highest reaches of the French government.President Jacques Chirac wanted to know what the hell President Bush had been on about in their last conversation. Bush had then said that when he looked at the Middle East, he saw “Gog and Magog at work” and the biblical prophecies unfolding. But who the hell were Gog and Magog? Neither Chirac nor his office had any idea. But they knew Bush was an evangelical Christian, so they asked the French Federation of Protestants, who in turn asked Professor Römer.
He explained that Gog and Magog were, to use theological jargon, crazy talk. They appear twice in the Old Testament, once as a name, and once in a truly strange prophecy in the book of Ezekiel:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/andrewbrown/2009/aug/10/religion-george-bush
- Number of Evangelicals worldwide:
Evangelicalism is a dynamic Christian force in the world today. From the onset of Evangelicalism in Great Britain in the 1730s to the United States in the nineteenth century and now as a global phenomenon, Evangelicals have had great influence in many spheres, most notably religion and politics. Throughout the twentieth century a series of gatherings and movements converged into the Lausanne Movement and the World Evangelical Alliance, arguably the two most active global bodies of Evangelicals today. All of this leads to two important questions: what exactly defines a Christian as an Evangelical, and how many are there in the world today? The issue is multifaceted, requiring much more than just a cursory tally of adherents. Our analysis will detail two working definitions of the term found in the World Christian Database and Operation World,and specify how these definitions result in differing estimates.World Christian DatabaseThe World Christian Database (WCD) is an online resource based on the World Christian Encyclopedia (1982, 2001) and World Christian Trends (2001). Data for the WCD are constantly gathered, analyzed, and updated by full-time staff at the Center for the Study of Global Christianity at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary.
The WCD, building on the methodology of the World Christian Encyclopedia, uses a “structural” approach in defining evangelicals. The methodology is slightly complex, differentiating between the terms “evangelical” (lower-case “e”; also called Great Commission Christians[1]) and “Evangelical” (capital “E”). Although the distinction may at first appear minor, these terms represent two distinct groups of Christians within what is broadly global Christianity. First, an evangelical (lower-case “e”) is any church member (therefore, on a church roll) who believes in or embraces seven key components:
- New Generation, New Evangelicalism:
The single biggest mistake of the neo-evangelical coalition, and here I’m thinking of the late 70s through the 80s and into the 90s, was its decision to glue itself to the Republican Party. Led by the architects — Francis Schaeffer, James Kennedy, Jerry Falwell, and James Dobson — neo-evangelicalism lost its single-minded evangelical focus. Instead, it was intoxicated with the potential power in winning the culture war, and nothing represented its hope more than overturning Roe v. Wade. (That never happened, as you know.)In 1981 I showed up at the University of Nottingham, and in one of my first sessions with my professor, Jimmy Dunn, he observed to me that what was going on in the culture wars in the USA was a huge mistake for the evangelical movement. He further observed that politics has its swings — now GOP soon Dem and back and forth — and that when it swung the other way, it would be the church — not the Republicans — that would lose.The evangelical movement lost its Faustian bargain. It is everywhere evident. It has been scolded, shamed, and it has tried to recover.Will it learn that it cannot sustain the confidence of the public if it aligns itself politically? Will it learn that the way to change culture is through faithful witness and not through the grasping at power? Will it learn that the church — I mean a gospel shaped church, and by gospel I mean the Jesus and apostolic gospel — is a politic? A different politic? Not one marked by power, but by the cross and resurrection and where we follow the enthroned Lord of all?
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/jesuscreed/2012/05/14/new-generation-new-evangelicalism/
Zionism:
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Zionism:
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Christian Zionism:
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Socialist Zionism:
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Revisionist Zionism:
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General Zionism:
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Messianic Zionism:
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Theology:
- Dogmatic Theology:
Dogmatic theology is that part of theology which treats of the theoretical truths of faith concerning God and His works (dogmata fidei), whereas moral theology has for its subject-matter the practical truths of morality (dogmata morum). At times, apologetics or fundamental theology is called general dogmatic theology, dogmatic theology proper being distinguished from it as special dogmatic theology. However, according to present-day usage, apologetics is no longer treated as part of dogmatic theology but has attained the rank of an independent science, being generally regarded as the introduction to and foundation of dogmatic theology. The present article shall deal first with those questions which are fundamental to dogmatic theology and then briefly review its historical development due to the acumen and indefatigable industry with which the theologians of every civilized country and of every century have cultivated and promoted this science.
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/14580a.htm
Key Players:
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Milton Friedman
- Who Was Milton Friedman?:
The history of economic thought in the twentieth century is a bit like the history of Christianity in the sixteenth century. Until John Maynard Keynes published The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money in 1936, economics—at least in the English-speaking world—was completely dominated by free-market orthodoxy. Heresies would occasionally pop up, but they were always suppressed. Classical economics, wrote Keynes in 1936, “conquered England as completely as the Holy Inquisition conquered Spain.” And classical economics said that the answer to almost all problems was to let the forces of supply and demand do their job.
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2007/feb/15/who-was-milton-friedman/?pagination=false - Was Milton Friedman a Secret Admirer of Keynes? Liberals misread the great free-market scholar in order to hijack his legacy.:
Despite his clarity, there are a handful of people whose inability or unwillingness to grasp Friedman’s arguments leads them to misrepresent his writings and policy recommendations.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390443687504577563013539649838.html - The Chicago question What would Milton Friedman do now?:
MILTON FRIEDMAN, who would have turned 100 on July 31st had he lived, remains as relevant now as he was during his long life. The Chicago economist was a critic of the over-mighty state (which has only got over-mightier since his death in 2006). He was a passionate critic of public-school monopolies (which remain as resistant to reform as ever). He was the quintessential engaged intellectual: he wrote fluently in the popular press (the closest modern equivalent is his ideological opposite, Paul Krugman); acted as an adviser, in the United States, to Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan, and, abroad to Margaret Thatcher and Augusto Pinochet, Chile’s dictator; and championed the legalisation of drugs and prostitution and the abolition of the draft.
http://www.economist.com/node/21559622
- Who Was Milton Friedman?:
Unsorted:
- Marta Harnecker: Conquering a new popular hegemony: “In recent years, and in increasingly more countries, growing multitudes have rebelled against the existing order and without a defined leadership have taken over plazas, streets, highways, towns, parliament, but, despite having mobilized hundreds of thousands of people, neither the magnitude of its size nor its combativeness have enabled these multitudes to go beyond simple popular revolts. They have brought down presidents, but they have not been capable of conquering power in order to begin a process of deep social transformation.” — Marta Harnecker.
By Marta Harnecker, translated by Federico Fuentes
This article seeks to reflect on the issues raised during the roundtable discussion, “State, revolution and the construction of hegemony”, that occurred at the VI International Forum on Philosophy, held between November 28 and December 2, 2011, in Maracaibo, Venezuela. Logically, here I once again repeat some ideas that I have expressed in other writings, but have ordered them differently, while further refining some of them. It was written in July 2012 and first published in English at Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal with permission.
http://links.org.au/node/3038
- WALL STREET AND THE BOLSHEVIK REVOLUTION: PREFACE
Since the early 1920s, numerous pamphlets and articles, even a few books, have sought to forge a link between “international bankers” and “Bolshevik revolutionaries.” Rarely have these attempts been supported by hard evidence, and never have such attempts been argued within the framework of a scientific methodology. Indeed, some of the “evidence” used in these efforts has been fraudulent, some has been irrelevant, much cannot be checked. Examination of the topic by academic writers has been studiously avoided; probably because the hypothesis offends the neat dichotomy of capitalists versus Communists (and everyone knows, of course, that these are bitter enemies). Moreover, because a great deal that has been written borders on the absurd, a sound academic reputation could easily be wrecked on the shoals of ridicule. Reason enough to avoid the topic.
Fortunately, the State Department Decimal File, particularly the 861.00 section, contains extensive documentation on the hypothesized link. When the evidence in these official papers is merged with nonofficial evidence from biographies, personal papers, and conventional histories, a truly fascinating story emerges.
We find there was a link between some New York international bankers and many revolutionaries, including Bolsheviks. These banking gentlemen — who are here identified — had a financial stake in, and were rooting for, the success of the Bolshevik Revolution.
Who, why — and for how much — is the story in this book.
Antony C. Sutton – March 1974
http://www.reformed-theology.org/html/books/bolshevik_revolution/index.html
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