Wednesday, January 04, 2012

Today's Shallow Echidne Thought



You know how people say that someone in the Republican Party is running or speaking just to pull the conversation more to the right? Or move the party itself to the right?

What would a move to the right for the current American conservatives mean? They already want what essentially amounts to no government except for a large military force and prisons (privatized ones, preferably). They already want public education demolished, civil rights removed, firms not to be taxed at all and so on.

So what would the next step be? A theocracy somewhat like Saudi Arabia, though in the fundamentalist Christian mold? Or an explicitly corporate state? (Yes, I know that has another name, too.)

My point is that the Republican Party is so different from its fairly recent past that Richard Nixon comes across as a liberal now. To speak about pulling the conversation to the right makes no sense.