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Monday, September 14, 2020

They're All Center-Right "Conservatives"

The Future of Freedom Foundation's Jacob G. Hornberger loves to point out the similarities between Republicans/Democrats and "conservatives"/"progressives," and he's right to do so.

I think there's one thing he's missing about major party politicians, though: They're all conservatives.

There is no "left/right" divide between the two major parties, their most prominent political office-holders, and their front-running presidential candidates.

The divide between Donald Trump and Joe Biden (or, had things gone differently, Bernie Sanders), Mitch McConnell and Elizabeth Warren, Kevin McCarthy and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, et al. is a divide between center-rightists.

After three full generations of the New Deal and two of the Great Society, none of these politicians is talking about how to move away from those programs. The arguments are over how to "save" them and whether (or how much) to expand them.

All of the major parties' prominent politicians want to conserve nearly a century of establishment practice.

Yes, even (maybe especially) the ones who call themselves "socialists." Notice how quickly they piled on to force Uber drivers away from classic socialism -- worker ownership of the means of production -- and back onto the (traditional, long-standing, conservative) medallion cab plantation.

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