Liberal vs Neoliberal

Here’s the basic, conceptual difference between classic “liberalism” and “neoliberalism.” The original liberals just wanted the government to leave them alone and let them do their thing. Neoliberals, on the other hand, believe the state has to take action to organize a free market economy. They recognized that it was a political problem and that “the state must be re-engineered to support the free market on an ongoing basis.” That re-engineering gained traction in the 1980s with Reagan and Thatcher.

This article tells the story of the ascendence of neoliberalism as the post-WWII struggle between the ideas of John Maynard Keynes and Friedrich Hayek… Prior to WWII “even the most rightwing economist thought of the market as a means to a limited end, to the efficient allocation of scarce resources… [but they accepted that] the ultimate ends of society and of life were established in the non-economic sphere.”

In 1936, Friedrich Hayek was “an obscure Austrian technocrat… an academic without a portfolio and with no obvious future.” But he had an idea. For Hayek, “the market didn’t just facilitate trade in goods and services; it revealed truth… He thought he was solving the problem of modernity: the problem of objective knowledge… Hayek’s was a total worldview: a way of structuring all reality on the model of economic competition… Hayek built into neoliberalism the assumption that the market provides all necessary protection against the one real political danger: totalitarianism. To prevent this, the state need only keep the market free.”

“It isn’t only that the free market produces a tiny cadre of winners and an enormous army of losers – and the losers, looking for revenge, have turned to Brexit and Trump. There was, from the beginning, an inevitable relationship between the utopian ideal of the free market and the dystopian present in which we find ourselves; between the market as unique discloser of value and guardian of liberty, and our current descent into post-truth and illiberalism.” Read the article to see how the author supports this claim. And don’t call me a “liberal”!!

(All quotes from the article linked in the first comment, "Neoliberalism: the idea that swallowed the world," by Stephen Metcalf.)

What does "Neoliberal" mean?

"Neoliberal" is a very confusing term. It suggests a historical continuity with the term "liberal." But we have lots of liberals right now, so they aren't just historical curiosities. And it's a good thing to be unless you're a Repugnican, in which case you really don't get a say in what's good or bad until you suck it up and do your job by dealing with Tantrum Donny and getting him the fuck out of the Oval Office. Mostly liberals are different than people called neoliberals, which most everybody considers a bad thing to be, though for very different reasons. So, what's up? This is very broad brush, but here goes:

"Neoliberal" does not equal "Liberal" as we now use the term. Back in the days before capitalism (18th and 19th centuries) some proto-capitalists thought it would be a good idea to grab all the means of production for themselves, turn all the peasants who had been producing stuff on their land (or land they had rights to) into landless workers for their factories so they could make a bunch of stuff to sell and not have to share so much of the profit. In order to do this they had to deal with the monarchy, which controlled everything and generated income by levying taxes the proto-capitalists didn't want to pay (sound familiar?). So, these early capitalists were the oppositional bad boys, the rebels who were fighting for progress against entrenched conservatives in order to liberate society/themselves from the oppressive control of the monarchy. From a certain owning class male perspective it kinda made sense. They were called Liberals, as opposed to the conservatives who supported the monarchy and the way it had always been done.

So, fast forward to the 20th and 21st centuries, now the capitalists have become the conservatives and capitalism has become the way it's "always" been done. But they’ve still got these pesky governments who want them to contribute and these workers who want some degree of control over their productive work lives. So, like the guy who keeps getting into relationships with women who are his nagging mother, the former bad boy capitalist liberal fancies himself, in sustained paroxysms of narcissistic nostalgia, the once and future bad boy capitalist neoliberal still battling the forces of oppression (mommy, monarchy, democracy). This new bad boy capitalist rebel is the neoliberal. [Gender note: The original liberals were all guys (as far as I know) - today’s neoliberal are only predominantly male. Just so you know I know.]

Meanwhile, those of us who want something else besides unbridled laissez faire capitalism (wherever we are on the spectrum from reform to revolution) get called liberals, cuz we’re also fighting against the forces of oppressive conservatism. Only we think those forces are made up of entrenched capitalists and the conservative values that keep them in power. Everybody wants to be a rebel.

Personally, I hate being called a liberal for the historical reasons noted above. I used to fancy myself a radical, but now I mostly prefer "progressive," even though it has its own problems. I would like a term that says: Advocate for economic, political, and cultural social justice. I would like a label that says: Yes, economic health in balance with environmental and human health. I would like a label that says I simultaneously value evidence-based decision making, human caring and compassion, and the realm of the spirit. And this term should unequivocally denote full celebration of human difference and a just and equitable place at the table for everyone.

Hate in America: An Updating List

From Slate.com - Hate in America: An Updating List

Since the election of [#45], news outlets and social media accounts have swelled with reports of swastikas at schools, racist taunts, and other hate-fueled attacks and acts of intimidation. The Southern Poverty Law Center.. has... cataloged 867 such incidents in the first three weeks [of the new administration]... Slate’s goal, in the feed below, is to present individual incidents of racism, misogyny, Islamophobia, homophobia, transphobia, anti-Semitism, and anti-immigrant sentiment as we see them reported. We will update this feed frequently...

#45 Day by Day

This is a site that tracks each day's Groper-in-Chief events and provides links to stories from credible news sources.
What The Fuck Just Happened Today? Logging the daily shock and awe

Congressional Commitees

List of current United States House of Representatives committees

List of current United States Senate committees

Tracking Congress In The Age Of Trump

Get Plugged In To Take Back Democracy: Four Emerging Projects

Several good initiatives have emerged in the electoral politics arena that are focused on substantially the same thing: 

• Flippable
• Swing Left
• Sister District Project
• Indivisible

What are the differences? I know you all have the Google machine at your fingertips, but here is a brief synopsis of each of these three projects:

Town Hall Meetings: Just Say NO! To the Republican Agenda

Find a Town Hall Meeting near you. Hold our Congressional leaders' feet to the fire.
Go to Town Hall Meetings, nationwide

From Bill Moyers: Your Guide to the Sprawling New Anti-Trump Resistance Movement

Your Guide to the Sprawling New Anti-Trump Resistance Movement

Senators Cantwell and Murray Tuesday Office Hours in Downtown Seattle

Meet with Washington Senators' Staff in Downtown Seattle

Senator Murray's office sent out an email today with info on tomorrow's open office times. They're encouraging folks to attend.

Jackson Federal Building, 915 2nd Ave, Seattle, WA 98104

Tues, Feb. 8 @ 12pm and again at 1pm

SwingLeft: Don't Despair - Mobilize

SwingLeft is a resource for focusing your organizing efforts. Enter your Zip Code to find the closest swing Congressional district. From the site:

"Control of the House in 2018 will be decided by a handful of Swing Districts, places where the last election was decided by a thin margin. Find your closest Swing District and join its team to learn about actionable opportunities to support progressives—and defeat Republicans—in that district, no matter where you live. We can stop Trump and the GOP agenda by working together NOW."

DRAFT - Elijah Wald on Berkeley Riots

Elijah Wald on the Berkeley Response to Milo Yiannopoulos

A lot of people are invoking the history of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement to decry the riots against right-wing writer Milo Yiannopoulos being invited to speak on the UC Berkeley campus, and the administration's cancellation of his talk.

Whatever one thinks of Yiannopoulos, this is a simple misreading of history. The Free Speech Movement started in response to the administration forbidding political groups to set up informational tables on the campus -- that is, protesters were demanding the same right to free speech on university grounds that they had in a public park or street corner.

If Yiannopoulos walked onto the campus and began handing out literature or giving an impromptu speech, and the university ordered campus police to remove him, that would be an analogous situation and I would be on his side -- for the simple reason that as a leftist I see nothing but danger in expanding the rights of powerful institutions to curtail the rights of individuals.

But -- at least as I understand it -- that's not what happened at Berkeley. What happened at Berkeley was that some students invited Yiannopoulos to give a talk at the university, sponsored and using the official UC facilities, and other students felt the university should not be sponsoring hate speech. They first protested in peaceful, dignified ways, and when that didn't work, they rioted.

Whether one approves of rioting is a separate question -- my own take is that I'm not wild about it in most cases, but we need to hold a strong line against use of the term "violence" to describe destruction of property. The rich and powerful always want to equate crimes against property with crimes against people, just as they want to equate the rights of corporations with the rights of people. In both cases, that equation serves their interests, not ours.

Likewise, it's a separate question whether I personally would have preferred that Yiannopoulos give his idiotic, hateful speech, with a crowd of students outside holding signs, chanting chants, and passing out literature explaining why he is a dangerous nut. If you're interested in the answer to that question: yes, I would have preferred that.

But that's not what happened, and if I have to take sides in what actually happened rather than a theoretical construct, I'm with the rioters -- because we are living in very nasty times, and when the times get nasty enough it is appropriate to react by breaking stuff. I would only urge the rioters to think about what they are breaking -- smashing relevant windows sends a clearer message than smashing random ones.

(Elijah Wald, 2/3/17 -- feel free to paste and share if so inclined)

Presterity: A One-Stop, Crowd-Sourced Site for Tracking All Things #45

Presterity is a very impressive new resource put together by volunteers from "across the political spectrum." The only requirement to be a contributor is that you are "alarmed by Trump and his actions."

Evaluating Credibility: Some Resources

The University of the Sciences in Philadelphia has added a page on Fake News, Hoaxes, and Media Bias to their research resources site. They briefly explain what each site does. This is valuable because, for instance, Politifact and Snopes and Media Bias/Fact Check all have different missions. We need to understand the tools that we are using.

DeVos Senate Confirmation: Key Senators and their Phone #s

Action Item for today

SAY 'NO' to DeVos

Here’s a list I cobbled together of Republican Senators who’ve been targeted for calls to reject Betsy DeVos for Secretary of Education. I’ve added a few more names and phone numbers. It’s important to call your Senators whether or not they are on this list!

Resource for Taming the Chaos: CredoAction Site

CredoAction: Winning Together has packaged the overwhelming deluge of critical issues into a collection of campaigns. Go to this page and peruse the campaigns. Each campaign page has a petition to sign, a succinct discussion of the issue, and a list of credible sources (with links) where you can learn more. This looks like a valuable resource for taming the chaos and quickly getting up to speed on the issues. Yes, we've all been advised to focus on the issues that matter most to us, but we neglect the big picture at our peril.

This link was sent to me by Martha Jackson. Keep 'em coming.

Spreadsheet: Senators' Stances, Statement, Email

Spreadsheet of all Senators with their stances, statements, phone numbers, addresses (email, physical)

Advice from a former Congressional Staffer

Great advice if you decide to call your Senators or Representative (from Mark Jahnke):
Friends! As some of you know, I used to work on Capitol Hill as the person in charge of all the incoming phone calls to my Senator's office. I have some insider tips to make calling your reps easier and quicker.

Bannon Senate Confirmation

Action Item for today
[reposted 2-2-17, originator of post unknown]

TO DO TODAY: There is some disagreement as to whether or not Bannon needs confirmation from the Senate Committee on Homeland Security to actually be appointed to the National Security Council (I have read that he has been appointed to positions that are formally "advisory" although that doesn't make a lot of sense to me). 

In any event, the committee is taking comments right now at this line: 202-224-4751

Call and register your protest. It takes seconds. The calls are coming so quickly there is a recorded voice asking for name, number and brief message. 

Here's what to do:

• Call 202-224-4751. Wait until you hear something...don't hang up.
• The mailbox is full. If you get a recorded greeting, hang up and try again. Took me 3 tries.
• If you get through,  

say... "DO NOT ALLOW Steve Bannon to be on the National Security Council!!" 

say... that you are asking for a senate hearing on Bannon's appointment (Just because the law says that there needs to be a hearing doesn't mean there will be one.)

say... 2) that you'd like to protest his appointment.

If you can't get through, go to the Homeland Security Website and leave a comment. This is possibly the most important thing we can do to turn the tide toward sanity. Bannon is hoping to capture DHS loyalty such that the DHS is willing to defy the federal courts for him as they did on the immigration issue. If that happens, rule of law means nothing and Bannon/Trump are dictators. This is not hyperbole.

Shock Event - from Heather Richardson

Richardson's post:

I don't like to talk about politics on Facebook-- political history is my job, after all, and you are my friends-- but there is an important non-partisan point to make today.

What Bannon is doing, most dramatically with last night's ban on immigration from seven predominantly Muslim countries-- is creating what is known as a "shock event."

DeVos Nomination - who to call/email

From W.B. Reid:

IMHO, this is the most important issue today. Aside from the fact that she's a terrible nominee for the job, this would be a major defeat for Trump and a serious momentum changer. Please e-mail your senators.

Report on Joint Office Hours with Washington's Senators: Cantwell and Murray

Office Hours was a national thing - The resistance is evolving (from the Daily Kos)

From Marianne Tatom (posted on FaceBook):

Today (Tuesday, Jan. 31) I walked downtown from Capitol Hill for a scheduled 1pm meeting with the staffers of Senators Murray and Cantwell. I got there just before 1, and there was a long line at security.