Politics in a nutshell

kw: book reviews, nonfiction, politics, textbooks

As the 2020 general election approached, I found myself reading about political science, and getting confused. As one proverb has it, the two major American political parties "switched sides" a half-century ago. I found this isn't strictly true. I knew already that the Republican Party was originally liberal, with "liberal" referring to personal liberty for individuals, and that from that stance, slaves were individuals who deserved liberty. The Democratic Party of the time was considered conservative, focusing on "conserve" what is and don't change it.

Then I learned that classical liberals stood for several critical matters, principally:

• Individual Liberty
• Personal Responsibility
• Small Government
• Low Taxes

Furthermore, classical liberalism was most prevalent in England in the 1600's, and came to America where it became American conservatism over the next century or so. The four matters listed above are considered "conservative" by modern commentators.

So did the R's and the D's really switch sides? No, in the post-WW2 period, when the civil rights movement began to prevail, leading Democrats were against integration of society and defended the Jim Crow legislation that subjugated the Blacks. But after about 1970, the D's changed. The earlier tension during anti-war (anti-Vietnam war) demonstrations, between "America, love it or leave it!" and "America, change it or lose it!", led to the "change it" folks going to law school and running for office. These neoliberals—they avoid the term "radicals"—have since taken over the Democratic Party and embraced the label "liberal", seeing that the Republican Party had settled into being called "conservatives". Classically, the R's have actually remained liberal, as the term is properly defined, while the D's jumped two spaces to the left to become radicals. As I write this we are awaiting the outcome of the election, with little clear direction as to what will emerge.

To help myself think through these things I got a couple of books about politics and political science. The first is The Politics Book, published by DK, a Random House imprint, with a host of contributors and editors. As with other The X Book volumes by DK, the subtitle is "Big ideas simply explained."

I included the book cover, something I seldom do, to show the style of the illustrations within. I call this "brutal chic", and it reminds me of Soviet poster art of the 1950's. Inside, each major era is prefaced by a two-page spread of gigantic black text on stunning red. I wonder if the editors know that a red/black banner symbolizes Anarcho-Syndicalism?

According to the book's glossary, Syndicalism is a relatively new ideology, less than 100 years, described thus:

"An early 20th-century ideology that emerged as an alternative to capitalism and socialism. …it advocated the seizure of a nation's means of production—and the overthrow of its government—in a general strike by workers' unions, and the organization of production through federation of local syndicates."

Based on that description, the more recent prefix "Anarcho-" is redundant. The ideology is popular in Europe. May it stay there!

The book has articles between one and six pages in length based on the writings and ideas of 102 major political figures and philosophers, from Confucius to Robert Pape, plus short items (~100 words) on another 37 persons.

Based just on the quantity of coverage, the compilers are most sympathetic to liberal and neoliberal and socialist ideologies. I was hoping for better explanation of conservatism, but the handful of items are sloppy and uninformative. Of course, I understand that the English conservatism of the 1600's and 1700's didn't migrate to America, or rather, Toryism died away after 1776. But the shift from classical liberalism to American conservatism is unmentioned in this book.

I read the book carefully, realizing its bias, as an exercise in "know your enemy." I retain my orientation to classical liberalism, while adding that I strongly support conservative foreign policy and a strong defense. Both R's and D's have allowed the Federal government to get too big and too intrusive. I call it creeping totalitarianism. If it can be rolled back without bloodshed, that's good. I fear it cannot.