The Clare Spark Blog

August 3, 2017

Getting my goat

Filed under: Uncategorized — clarelspark @ 5:49 pm
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Two “liberals” appearing to “balance” Tucker Carlson on Fox News have prompted this irate blog. One is Canadian born and trained Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett, now a University Professor at (liberal) Northeastern University, the other is Minnesotan Ethan Bearman, a Bay Area up and coming talk show host.

Dr. Barrett avers that potential speakers must promote “debate,” but not indulge in “hate speech,” while Bearman stated that “historically disadvantaged groups should get preferential treatment.” (That means that if your ancestors were “oppressed,” quota systems are okay, even if they discriminate against “white people,” Jews, and Asians.)

Neither guests emphasized the search for truth, for they echo the allegations of postmodernists/liberals. Discarding the search for (empirical) truth, signifies the ever-more pervasive lack of standards, and opens the door to the less obvious forms of racism, and the acquiescence to pseudo-moderation and the collectivist discourses/groupiness imposed by Big Government.

Which brings me to the “populism” admired by Fox News Channel. It is no accident that the American populists (identified by FNC with the President), were antisemitic (in their rage against all banks), but the current avatars of populism pretend to speak for “the People” against “elites.” I understand that many populists today resent Big Government, but it pretends to be a meritocracy that establishes “standards” of truth/rationality, creditworthiness, and of correct grammar and style, but it is not.

Whereas progressives like Barrett and Bearman embrace the collectivist discourses of the Left, disallowing individualistic (?) merit. Thus Dr. Barrett ignores the (hyper-individualistic) search for truth that may silence her version of debate, while Bearman in his present-minded zeal to repair the policies of the past, promotes one type of reparations.

I thought that  David Horowitz tried to discredit the “reparations” tactic years ago, for which he has gotten much grief from the Left (and more indirectly by epigeneticists and “Ancestry”-type websites).

July 16, 2017

What does 21st Century “Americanism” mean to you?

Filed under: Uncategorized — clarelspark @ 7:08 pm
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reddit.com

We are currently polarized around the question of nationalism vs. globalization. With the football season only a few months away, the fate of the now unemployed quarterback Colin Kaepernick has now generated some discussion of “patriotism” that many associate with “nationalism.”

Indeed, in high school we were taught that “nationalism, militarism, and imperialism” caused the rise of fascism after World War One. No mention of the Progressive or “Middle Way” response to industrialization that Hitler lauded in the Table Talk. The point was not to take patriotism to “extremes” as did the dictators.

Doesn’t Hitler sound like a “moderate” progressive here, lauding elites, collectivizing “the people,” and lauding “balance”?

[Hitler, 1942]:] “The English have to settle certain social problems which are ripe to be settled. At present these problems can still be solved from above, in a reasonable manner. I tremble for them if they don’t do it now. For if it’s left to the people to take the initiative, the road is open to madness and destruction. Men like Mosley would have had no difficulty in solving the problem, by finding a compromise between Conservatism and Socialism, by opening the road to the masses but without depriving the élite of their rights. Class prejudices can’t be maintained in a socially advanced State like ours, in which the proletariat produces men of such superiority. Every reasonably conducted organization is bound to favour the development of beings of worth. It has been my wish that the educative organisations of the Party should enable the poorest child to lay claim to the highest functions, if he has enough talent. The Party must see to it, on the other hand, that society is not compartmentalized so that everyone can quickly assert his gifts. Otherwise discontent raises its head, and the Jew finds himself in just the right situation to exploit it. It’s essential that a balance should be struck, in such a way that dyed-in-the-wool Conservatives may be abolished as well as Jewish and Bolshevik anarchists….”(Jan. 27, 1942, p. 253).

I have been reading Felix Gilbert’s The End of the European Era, 1890 To The Present (Norton, 1970) and like other social democrats, he describes the Russian Revolution of 1905 as a “socialist revolution.” Of course it was not, as the tsar remained in power and only modest reforms were achieved. But the lead up to 1905 was worth reviewing, for autocratic Russia was beginning to be industrialized, which opened the way to liberal reformism, and ultimately to Revisionism (the Menshevik road to socialism).

But what did 1930s Stalinists mean by the claim that “Communism is “20th Century Americanism”? I had always assumed that Reds were pulling the wool over American eyes, but I now wonder if they meant that for traditional Americans (loyal to the Constitution) they expected that “Americanism” would be adapted to a modicum of free speech and “good” labor unions, i.e., progressivism and the Third Way.

What do you think?

Hatsune flag posted by a libertarian nationalist

 

June 24, 2017

Elitism in the Democratic Party

Filed under: Uncategorized — clarelspark @ 7:04 pm
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Abstract: Disappearance of class interest as an organizing category in favor of “race” and gender, hence focus on “white male supremacy” and demonizing Republicans; forgetting that Progressives were class conscious Republicans/Mugwumps co-opting radical movements, leaving themselves in charge. The outcome: Big Government programs designed to take the edge off of capitalism (i.e., the money power).

The most stunning development in the recent Democratic Party soul-searching in the wake of the unforeseen victory of political newcomer Trump over the progressive stalwart Hillary Clinton has been the disappearance of class interest as a salient consideration in the formulation of conflict. Thus we see, more and more, the emergence of “white supremacy” in the argot of (pseudo-liberals). One would never guess that the political party of “the working man” was all at sea over how to proceed. A predilection for aristocratic control (corporatist liberalism) will do that to you. https://clarespark.com/2009/09/19/populism-progressivism-and-corporatist-liberalism-in-the-nation-1919/. (“Class,” like gender, is an objective category that should not be discarded, no matter how pro-free market, we might be. See https://clarespark.com/2011/03/26/race-class-and-gender/.)

Readers of this blog will remember that the Popular Front politics of the New Deal are to blame for the literal erasure of class interest even though New Leftists focused on the Gilded Age as the heyday of labor and farmer unrest. https://clarespark.com/2015/04/17/the-ongoing-appeal-of-the-leftist-dominated-popular-front-against-fascism/.

But the civil rights movement changed all that, for the martyrs du jour were not “racist” white male workers, but rather Southern blacks (and later women) who had been in motion for decades (as it turns out). It was only the Old Left who made the connection between race and class, emphasizing imperialism in the West. And feminists (before they were co-opted by “liberals”) had also focused on “internal colonialism.”

It became unfashionable to recall that progressivism came out of the “Mugwump” strain in the Republican Party, let alone such prior famous figures as pro-black Charles Sumner and Thaddeus Stevens. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mugwumps.

If we believe in “progress” we had better sign up for the party that implicitly co-opted“ the common man,” with collectivist Big Government programs even as FDR criticized “economic royalists” to his Right.

The “Left,” like the moderate Republicans,  is populated by elitist Big Government social democrats these days.

March 23, 2017

Multiculturalism and the London terror attack

Filed under: Uncategorized — clarelspark @ 8:03 pm
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Khalid Masood london attackerThe London terror attack was perpetrated by Khalid Masood, an Islamic jihadist. Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s new essay http://www.hoover.org/research/how-counter-political-islam) raises  the question of multiculturalism: a project advanced by German Romantics (especially Herder) and their followers in the progressive movement. Multiculturalism is explicitly reactionary with respect to the (French) Enlightenment with its enlightened advocacy of science, “materialism,” and the individual’s search for truth. Whereas Herder and his followers promoted “unity” and a collectivist discourse in order to quell any such “leveling” as science (or the recovery of a hidden history) implied.

galileo-A

So the misnamed “progressives,” fearing an abundance of free thought among “ordinary” people, came up with a plausible set of substitutes for the questing individual—“toleration,” (group) “identity,” and “diversity” in the interest of the particular types of stability and cohesion that would further their pseudo-democratic rule. We may note the “progressive” predilection for Big Government as opposed to the unpredictable “marketplace of ideas.” Upwardly mobile intellectuals (with few exceptions) went along with the masque, reaching back in history for a respectable family tree, one that was distinctly counter-revolutionary. Locke (like Hobbes) was denigrated as a “possessive individualist.” (Hip historians now link John Locke to the racism they ostensibly reject, so “bourgeois”/atomizing historians should take note.)

Multiculturalism (displacing dangerously enlightened intellectual diversity) is touted as the corrective to such “bourgeois” missteps. In our zeal to correct the errors of the past, are we rehabilitating the notion of “race” but under the rubric of cultural nationalism, which we are expected to “tolerate” in the name of diversity? https://clarespark.com/2013/09/26/cultural-pluralism-vs-multiculturalism/.

multiculturalism-australia

Given the hegemony of progressivism today, it is worth emphasizing the origin and establishment of multiculturalism, over and over. Although its advocates will deny it, MC has nothing to do with tolerance, mental health, immigration, or human rights. Like the (almost) invisible Herder’s reach into current day terrorism, Multiculturalism is a reactionary protocol. (See https://clarespark.com/2013/01/02/culture-warriors-and-the-enlightenment/, or from an entirely different angle, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_multiculturalism).

November 13, 2016

Apocalypse now

Filed under: Uncategorized — clarelspark @ 7:50 pm
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Apocalypse Kingofwallpapers.com

Apocalypse: Kingofwallpapers.com

This blog is about the requirement to understand the socially-induced misconceptions of the protesters, including the destructive anarchists among them.

I have changed my mind about the election blog I would write, partly because I have seen the conservative responses written by many of my Facebook friends, which roundly criticize the protesters.

Indeed, my first response was to post a message from Jenny, one of my daughters: “I know many are mourning, crying, and panicked over the election results, a reaction to which I honestly cannot relate, but let people feel their feelings, I say. I cannot understand and find totally irresponsible, however, parents who have demonized the president elect, making their children believe he is a bad man and will hurt them and our world. Children need to feel secure and confident in order to grow into happy and successful adults. Shame on parents who feed their children unfounded ideas which then make them feel unsafe. This country is home to citizens and their families with a vast spectrum of valid values and beliefs. We can’t get our way all of the time. Liberals had eight years to get it right and now it’s time to take a different approach. Let us not put our children in the crossfire while battling different opinions. Oh, I’ve got an idea. Why don’t we all act like grownups—inform ourselves, work to make ourselves and the world better, and be an example to the children of how to move forward in a constructive, generous, and faithful way. Let us leave tantrums to the two-year- olds.”(end of Jenny’s post-election comment.)

I agree with this analysis, but I also see the results of a partisan education outside the family, that has thwarted the political education of the youthful protesters, even the violent ones among them. This partisan education is also a form of child abuse that should be more widely recognized. (And Jenny concurs, noting that her comment was only one thread among many.)

The protesters (including the anarchists) are a product of an education that has left them terrified. In no particular order, these are the deficiencies that have fueled their panic (this fear of annihilation was brought to my attention by my daughter Rachel). In no particular order:

  1. The notion that the Democrat Party is left-wing. It is common for many conservatives to view “the Left” as if they are all communists, ignoring the obvious fact that Democrats/progressives have co-opted and neutralized the demands of revolutionary socialists: i.e., the radical demands of the 19th and early 20th century labor movements for worker control of production.
  2. The notion that identity politics/multiculturalism is a radical innovation, and is similarly communist-inspired. Indeed, it is another example of co-optation and neutralization, substituting “race” and “ethnicity” for class interest. Here came the notion of “political correctness” that Trump appears to have violated, leaving the masses unprotected from “racist” and “sexist” conservatives.
  3. The notion that the Constitution protected “white supremacy.” Again, this is context-ignoring factor. It is true that the Constitution was a compromise between Northern and Southern slaveholding elites, but that was dramatically changed by the Civil War and the social movements it spawned. Again, the progressives were aristocratic and racist, though this is too obvious a distinction for the “tenured radicals” controlling education today. Although progressives claim the mantle of science, balance, and enlightenment for themselves, in their zeal for the social relationships of the medieval period (e.g., deference to the Good King), they may be said to have dumbed down our population by denying the sharp tools of history.

This website has been devoted the misconceptions of our socialization. The media have always been partisan, but the 1960s movements developed a cadre of activists claiming the mantle of social justice, while trashing opponents as fascists, while some conservatives, just as foolishly, equated communism and fascism. (Both forms of social organization are statist and repressive, but fascism was a counter-revolution to the Soviet coup of 1917, not its structural twin.)

Is it any wonder that our young folk are in the streets? In their own eyes, they are doing the right thing by averting apocalypse now!

3-14-16, demo outside GOP headquarters. CBS News/AP

3-14-16, demo outside GOP headquarters. CBS News/AP

August 27, 2016

“Trump can’t win”

Filed under: Uncategorized — clarelspark @ 7:10 pm
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Viking gods tattoos
Viking gods tattoos

There are people who understand the ins and outs of “politics.”Though I try, don’t expect me to match the expertise of those glued to the ever changing map of party politics. On the other hand, since I started to focus on the big picture (such as the uneven transition from pre-capitalist societies to more developed ones, or the rise of fascism and/or progressivism in the interwar period and even before that), certain patterns became evident. This blog is about the issues in the 2016 political campaign that may be too obvious for the more attentive and practiced in “political” analysis.

In no particular order:

Race and racism. While in graduate school, I occasionally confronted liberal/red faculty with the (insulting?) question: Where is structural racism in current institutions? By the time I got up the nerve to ask, the faculty apparently knew to ignore me with silence and changing the subject. (The pro-union faculty should have mentioned at least the inner city treatment of minority children, but sectarianism precluded such an obvious answer, apparent to me now but not then, despite the UCLA History Department’s public emphasis on unequal treatment: they were all in for criticizing “white supremacy,” but mostly silent about any unsavory aspect of “the labor movement.”)

So it is hardly surprising that attacking the Democrat stranglehold on “the minority vote” should meet with resistance on the part of liberals. This last week was topped off by “trading insults” by cable news (including an indignant Fox), as if the Democrat Party was not threatened by the move of Republicans to court black and brown votes in the working class. Forget the ideology of progressivism that has sought to uplift individuals and discourses  in order to pacify and co-opt ex-slaves and immigrant masses, hence the shock that Trump would correctly label the Democrat candidate in impolite lingo.

Multiculturalism. Which brings me to the all too obvious fact that both political parties indulge in collectivist discourses built on an imaginary national unity in diversity: e pluribus unum. What has happened to the dissenting individual in this mish-mash of ideologies, indulged in by “moderates” of all stripes?

patriotic tattoo/pinterest
patriotic tattoo/pinterest

The moderate men. My proudest achievement in the study of modern history was the subject of quiet repression by the ever so “fair and balanced” moderates (who would never undermine what passes for “democracy.”) Enter Fox News Channel, the “moderate” answer to media monopoly by progressives. For Fox, “fair and balanced” seems to mean gaining the maximum number of eyeballs, while seemingly not taking sides. Since the guiding men of Fox cannot be too explicit in their bogus theory of balance (what has happened to the Enlightenment project of investigating and possibly clarifying disputed facts? Oh, I remember now, the French Revolution/science inevitably lead to communism (https://clarespark.com/2010/11/06/moderate-men-falling-down/).

Though more conservatives inhabit Fox than in the competition (network television, CNN, MSNBC) Fox must not be too obviously one-sided. I have been watching their election coverage with the eyes of a skeptical historian,  and wonder if their “moderate” alternative is to allege that Trump has only the slimmest chance of winning the Presidency.

I expect this trend (at alt-Fox) to intensify between now and November 8, 2016 unless Trump should take the lead decisively.

deathtattoo

July 6, 2016

James Comey: the best (moderate) man

Filed under: Uncategorized — clarelspark @ 6:47 pm
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moderation-veranstaltungen-604x442In all the wrathful outpourings from politicians, pundits, and ordinary people since FBI Director James Comey’s announcement yesterday July 5, 2016 (declining to prosecute Hillary Clinton) no one, to my knowledge, has noted that “moderation” is the quality most admired by advocates of the “neutral state,” conflict-resolution/peace studies, and other pacifiers who keep our all-too-independent polity on the “strait” and “narrow” (quoting Matthew 7.14 in the New Testament, King James version).

Here is a partial list of prior blogs on the barely concealed violence in the discourses of “moderation.”

https://clarespark.com/2011/12/10/before-saul-alinsky-rules-for-democratic-politicians/, https://clarespark.com/2015/04/07/who-are-the-moderate-men/, https://clarespark.com/2010/06/15/the-classics-as-antidote-to-science-education/, https://clarespark.com/2009/09/15/making-mobs-with-bad-words-and-concepts/.

But there is more to say about the indignant responses to Director Comey’s apparent exoneration of Hillary Clinton. Lawyers, trained to be rational (when it suits them), can’t dissect the term “moderate” because lawyers are supposed to be disinterested parties to “the rule of law”—a notion that has been constantly reiterated since yesterday’s “bombshell” announcement.

It is not too difficult to demonstrate that it is scattered Independents and Constitutional conservatives who respect the advanced notion that there is one set of rules for rich and poor alike, but all that changed with the Progressive movement (and perhaps before “the living Constitution” became the battle cry for the compassionate elect.

AWOL Trends

AWOL Trends

Historians agree that we live in an age of irrationalism, oblivious to “traditional” notions of law and order. How to account for Hillary’s devoted following among women and young people? Although conservatives have been vocal in denouncing the “hyper-sexualization” of our post-feminist culture, such glorification of perpetual adolescence aided and abetted by malicious mischief in the mass media, I haven’t heard anyone attribute Hillary’s following to the widespread desire for conflict-free sex with as many partners as feasible, and without the possible consequences of pregnancy and child-rearing.

Indeed, for many intellectuals, Hillary is the “moderate” alternative to Dastardly Donald—the “extremist” who (secretly) hates the “man on the street.”

Moderation2

June 11, 2016

Are “the People” misguided? Is America “racist”?

Filed under: Uncategorized — clarelspark @ 8:26 pm
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establishmentThis blog is about the fecklessness of “the Republican establishment.” In prior blogs I have noticed that both major political parties cater to “the People” (a demagogic term never broken down into structural components, especially class or gender differences in needs and outlook: see https://clarespark.com/2016/06/04/multiculturalism-the-missing-term-in-the-trump-fiasco/ and https://clarespark.com/2016/06/09/sex-and-aggression-in-hillarys-following-in-either-gender/.)

Moreover, the “establishment” has refused to move away from Trump’s ostensibly “racist” remark about Judge Gonzalo Curiel, despite indications that the judge (like many lawyers) may indeed be tied to cultural nationalism, a.k.a. “identity politics”/multiculturalism, not to speak of an opposing law firm representing the plaintiffs tied to the Clinton campaign.

I include in my list of suspicious characters the obvious elitist Wall Street Journal and the more folksy Fox News Channel, both run by moderate men who do not diverge from Hillary Clinton’s fusing of workers and small businessmen.

Here is how to spot a moderate man: he or she uses the following key words: “compassion,” “teamwork”, “imagination,” “rainbow connection,” “a positive outlook,” “inclusiveness,” and “diversity”—-all in the service of “making the world a better place” “moving forward” and “health.” Let us recall that leading supporters of the New Deal/FDR called themselves “moderate conservatives” to distinguish themselves from Nazis and other upstart movements on either Left or Right that challenged their “centrist” (fair and balanced) leadership. FDR himself, that arch-moderate conservative, termed his opponents “economic royalists.”

PBS ad for Constitution series

PBS ad for Constitution series

Are Donald J. Trump and/or his followers among “the People” racists, as Paul Ryan and other top Republicans imply? Or does the “establishment” entirely misunderstand “racism,” forgetting its lineage?

We could answer this question if we knew more about the history of the Old Left versus the New Left. I was startled to discover that Marxist-Leninists came out against racism in the 1930s. True, some bashed the progressive bourgeoisie, but not so much after the Popular Front against fascism was declared in 1934-35.

It was the Leninist/Maoist and anti-imperialist New Left that changed all that hyping of the productive forces that would or should produce the revolutionary working class. I remember the tumultuous 1960s and 1970s very well; Amerikkka was now deemed to be classist, racist, sexist, and exploitative of Nature/Woman. Witness the popularity of Howard Zinn, Noam Chomsky, Ralph Nader, Gloria Steinem, Betty Friedan, and the nascent Green Party.

New Leftists pretending to be hard-hats

New Leftists pretending to be hard-hats

These “social justice” radicals went to graduate school and entered the professions, including teaching and show biz. Many formed a network of buddies, got their PhD’s and now control the humanities and mass media, the social democrats (and some communists) among them warning against white male heterosexual supremacy, going so far as to propose exterminating the literary greats of yesteryear (at Yale for instance).

After all, if Shakespeare and Milton were widely read by the slobs, they must be part of the paranoid “People” and we all know that “the People is an ass.” https://clarespark.com/2009/08/24/the-people-is-an-ass-or-a-herd/.

Our betters insist upon it.

January 6, 2016

Technophobia

Filed under: Uncategorized — clarelspark @ 6:53 pm
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Damian Gordon slideshow image

Damian Gordon slideshow image

(Update 1-8-16: This is NOT an anti-religion blog. My point is that secular, pluralistic societies are notorious for undermining the claims of particular religions.)

The agitated response to the claim by N. Korea that it had tested an H-Bomb reminded me of Eisenhower’s seminal 1961 farewell speech warning of a [godless] “military-industrial complex.” The heart of progressivism lies in this warning: that the Bomb unleashed powers that heretofore were reserved for the deity. The (moderate conservative) remedy is love in the service of international understanding, i.e., multiculturalism, cultural relativism, and the prophetic vision of Woodrow Wilson that eventuated in the United Nations (preceded by the League of Nations).

That is the overarching message of Carroll W. Pursell Jr.’s Readings in Technology and American Life (Oxford UP paperback, 1969).  The running theme in this solely “progressive” roundup of source readings was prefigured by historian Friedrich Meinecke’s explanation for the rise of Hitler: technology, unharnessed by the moderating power of religion, would raise a race of monster technicians from the lower orders, unimpressed by elite leadership. (The German historian’s analysis is found here: https://clarespark.com/2010/04/12/multiculturalismethnopluralism-in-the-mid-20th-century/.)

Make no mistake: Pursell is a devoted progressive, hence not hostile to the rule of experts (a salutary effect of professionalization in the applied sciences): experts who would be motivated by such dodgy and indefinite notions as a knowable “public interest,” the planning state, and “service” (a.k.a. “duty”). What Pursell is pitching is Conservative Enlightenment in the service of Big Government. (Radical Enlightenment leads to free market economics, not bureaucratic collectivism. See https://clarespark.com/2015/12/29/milton-friedmans-capitalism-and-freedom-1962/.)

Where would godless technology lead in a secularizing society? To the rule of robots with selected human features? If we feel ourselves turning into mindless machines, perhaps we should look to the apparent benefits of conformity to rules handed down by “experts,” not to advances in our particular understanding of the material world we inhabit.

robot_main

December 29, 2015

Milton Friedman’s Capitalism and Freedom (1962)

Filed under: Uncategorized — clarelspark @ 7:47 pm
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lassiz_faireI recently read Friedman’s magnum opus for the first time, and was surprised to see how far some current Republican, conservative and libertarian politics have conceded to the progressivism that many of them abhor as excessively statist and even communistic. The Wikipedia entry (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milton_Friedman) plays up Friedman’s divergence from Keynesian economics, which is true enough, but fails to note the novelty of his adherence to free market principles, given the domination of New Deal policies in postwar administrations, and in progressivism in general.

I have written before of the regression to medieval economics and culture, but now I must revise my old blogs, for Friedman’s big book made me realize that we have only partly emerged from the Late Middle Ages into modernity; that is how vanguard Friedman’s free market capitalism is, given his emphasis on equality of opportunity as opposed to equality of condition/outcomes.

In its first summary of his accomplishments, the Wiki condenses his contributions:

[Wiki:] “Friedman was an advisor to Republican U.S. President Ronald Reagan[12] and Conservative British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. His political philosophy extolled the virtues of a free market economic system with minimal intervention. He once stated that his role in eliminating U.S. conscription was his proudest accomplishment. In his 1962 book Capitalism and Freedom, Friedman advocated policies such as a volunteer military, freely floating exchange rates, abolition of medical licenses, a negative income tax, and school vouchers. His support for school choice led him to found the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice.” [End, Wikipedia excerpt]

[Clare:] A reader could have concluded that Friedman was an antagonist to Big Government, with its bloated bureaucracies, illegitimate claims to mandatory regulations, and obsession with “income inequality” and legislating minimum wages, but Wiki highlighted his most problematic view—that doctors were jacking up prices for medical care by monopolizing the field. (My sole objection to the abolition of licenses: before the market has done its work in expelling frauds, the patient may have suffered irreparable harm, even death. The same could be said with respect to harm to the environment: there is no room for trial and error when we entirely deregulate pollution, for instance. Indeed, Friedman declares that the case for deregulating medical care is the most difficult to allege.)

Wiki also downplays Friedman’s belief in both (limited) public and private sectors, instead (?) devoting much space to Friedman’s effects on the Chilean government after the Pinochet coup, perhaps a slap at classical liberalism tout court. But Wiki does acknowledge Friedman’s chief claim: that economic freedom is the necessary foundation of political freedom, and hence that Chile would eventually become more democratic.

To conclude, today’s Republicans, conservatives, and libertarians, while embracing many of Friedman’s advocacy of free market principles, have a long way to go in meeting up with his thoroughgoing classical liberalism. For instance, in the “debates” (https://clarespark.com/2015/12/21/debates-as-pseudo-events-with-pseudo-moderators/), no moderators or candidates are taking up the necessity for school choice, or, for that matter, choice in general.

Apparently, religious orthodoxy, not Friedman-esque economic freedom, controls the Right in this election season, at least for the influential “social conservative” wing of the Party.

laissez-faire

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