Goldwater to Ryan to what?
by digby
Elias Isquith has written a piece on Barry Goldwater and Paul Ryan that's filled with interesting insights. And he brings up something important which I don't think most people realize:
The treatise on what Ryan calls the "moral consequences" of the welfare state recalls nothing so much Goldwater's Conscience of a Conservative. In the surprise bestseller, he warned, "The effect of Welfarism on freedom will be felt later on -- after its beneficiaries have become its victims, after dependence on government has turned into bondage and it is too late to unlock the jail." Ryan's rhetoric is never quite so apocalyptic, but his frequent warnings that his country approaches a threshold "beyond which the Nation will be unable to change course ... [with] disastrous fiscal consequences, and an erosion of economic prosperity and the American character itself" come close.
The Republican Party's antipathy toward the welfare state is well known. Less appreciated is the fact that what really defined Goldwater in the public's eye was his comfort with, or even celebration of, the violence of the state.
Isquith goes on to discuss this in the context of Goldwater's anti-communism and points out that Ryan mouths all the same BS about "exceptionalism" and "not apologizing" on foreign policy and I think he's more than likely to be as bloodthristy as all right wingers when it comes to national security. But I also think Ryan believes in state violence domestically. He has never deviated from the standard authoritarian POV of the conservative mainstream, whether in terms of civil liberties of crime and punishment issues. Goldwater was anxious to kill off communism, but I never got the sense that he thought police violence and incarcerating large numbers of America citizens should be standard operating procedure. (There's not a lot of moral difference there, I grant you, but it does show a difference in scale.)
Isquith goes on to note the most glaring difference between the two avatars of economic freedom: the religious right. Goldwater didn't have any use for them while Ryan goes out of his way to ensure that his Randroid extremism can fit in with their worldview. And increasingly, it does. We've got plenty of Christian right leaders extolling the virtues of low taxes and agitating to end the welfare state these days.
I'm sure Old Barry would still have disliked their incessant desire to meddle in people's personal lives, but Ryan doesn't seem to mind at all. After all, to Goldwater, even the commies were still human beings. Does Ryan think that individual liberty applies to parasites?
In any case, read the whole piece. Let's just say these wingnuts aren't getting any saner with time.
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