I can recall a friend of mine making the comment that a New Jersey Republican is a Virginian Democrat. A statement of the changing political principles as you moved further south from the North Eastern United States. I can recall talking to local Democrats in Virginia who were all fiscally conservative, I am not quite sure how Cato came up with approximately 15% of Americans falling into that category. I would have suspected it to be much higher.
There is not really that many that I know of in the US how are protectionist, it is a free-market nation that is aghast at prolifigate public spending.
There has also been a large migration of the populations of the coastal cities into the south and interior. Northern Virginia for instance is all immigrants from other part of the United States who have carried their political values with them. It is a large purple area that is politically distinct from central and southern Virginia, enough that they go by the acronyms NoVA and RoVA where the RO condescendingly stands for the 'rest of' Virginia.
The electoral college is an electoral system which was chosen to amplify the federal character (as opposed to national) of the system. This gives the smaller inland and southern states larger influence than it would in a purely national electoral system.
But if we look at George Bush's performance in 2000 and 2004; neither was a strong and resounding win. He got over the line with the help of the Supreme Court in one, and did not have a dominating win in the second. It could be argued that Bush's wins were anomalies and that the southern strategy has been waning for a considerable time.
Then again governance has been so bad under the Republican Party in the US that there is no way it could be expected that the party would win the executive or a majority in either house of congress under a democratic system in 2008. (reply)
The purpose of globalization is the free-flow of goods, capital, communication, ideas and innovations through national borders. Globalization is incomplete without the free-flow of labor. As someone who is part of the global workforce and has worked in Australia and the United States this is an unshocking and completely humdrum conclusion to come to.
The political borders of nationalism are what stops the flow of goods, capital, labor and services and worse; it is becoming harder and harder for labor to compete in the labor market they want to. People are artificially held at home, and artificially excluded from labor markets by nationalism.
Chris Berg argues that the liberal position on immigration is that it is moral to enable and promote the free-flow of immigration.
This is not merely apologetics. I suggest that not only is immigration practically beneficial, but we have a moral obligation to accept into our borders those who want to come. For individuals born in under-developed countries, simply crossing into the developed world can dramatically increase their potential salary, as well as allow them to experience the historically unprecedented living standards that we already enjoy. The objections to expanded immigration seem nationalistic or economically illiterate at best, and immoral at worst.There are real issues in the absorbing of large numbers of immigrants into a country in a short time period but not in the manner of 'Fortress Australia' which becomes the politics of isolationism, cultural weakness (Australian culture has to be protected politically through nationalism) and xenophobia. If anything, Australia, is an outstanding example of the absorption of immigrants and the positives that an increasingly open labor market brings. (reply)
Mead argues that the democratic nature of American foreign policy has been superior to the isolated genius' behind continentalist policy (ie Bismarck or Kissinger). Mead writes:
The [democratic policy making] system is stable because it is homeostatic; although interest groups perceive themselves in a constant struggle, the net effect of all those struggles is to keep society constantly seeking the point at which dissatisfaction is minimised.A very succinct description of the liberal republican process. (reply)
This is why modern conservatism is incompatible with republicanism and liberalism. It is also what I was expressing in the article on the evangelical polity. Sullivan writes:
What matters is cultural and religious identity, rather than policy. Again this is a result of the sectarianization of [American] Republican politics.It removes merit entirely from the equation. Merit works in republicanism because all individuals are equal and free. The differentiation comes from merit, and that includes past performance as well as vision/scope/policy for the future. Huckabee has all sorts of bad governance, corruption and ethical scandals following him from his time as Governor of Arkansas, but that does not matter when you choose on identity and not merit. (more)
The Super Hornet debacle perpetuated by Brendan Nelson when he was defence minister gives good insight into how he would govern. It would be executive whim, without deliberation or oversight. In other words Schmittian conservatism. Robert Merkel writes:
The decision was then rushed through cabinet without following the usual defence procurement procedure, possibly with the aid of a slide show to cabinet directly put together by Boeing. ... The thing that makes this particularly farcical is that if a capability gap exists, its origins allegedly lie in Howard's decision to commit to the Joint Strike Fighter back in 2002, after being sweet-talked by the salespeople at Lockheed Martin while on a visit to the United States, bypassing - you guessed it - the defence bureauracy's evaluation process.And Robert again three months later:
If this is true, we've just spent six billion dollars, without a tender process (and thus quite possibly bought a dud), to replace an aircraft that was still serviceable - or, at least, wasn't going to fail because of the faulty wings Nelson was spouting to his Cabinet colleagues and the public.Nelson would govern as Howard did. In my opinion this was the main reason the Howard Government was voted out - because of its poor governance that was dominated by emergency, exception, whim, executive imposition, executive rule and ignoring the constitutional boundaries of federalism and limited government. Brendan Nelson is a Schmittian conservative not a liberal. (more)
Gary Sauer-Thompson has found on interesting article where, "Andreas Kalyvas and Ira Katznelsons argue that the relationship between republicanism and liberalism has emerged as a central issue for students of political thought."
I must admit see republicanism as being the political science of liberalism rather than schism in doctrine that the article records as being a historical tension between republicanism and liberalism. I consider the US republic both the end and high point of the enlightenment, where all the aspects of increasing liberal theory came together in practice. (more)
The Australian Democrats usually get pidgeon-holed as a 'lefty' party, but if you look at their Senate performance and speeches they are by far the most liberal and republican party in the Australian system. They actually practice a relatively pure style of liberal democracy which is based around deliberation, debate, competition over policy and then majority support. (more)
One of the results of an exception being created is that the politics become unitary. Essentially the politics around the exception or emergency become the executive and executive's alone. The health of liberal democracy is dependent upon political competition, discussion and deliberation. Removed of its liberal component democracy is reduced to the mechanical action of voting. (more)
The Australian Democrats are the most interesting Australian political party of modern times and are celebrating their thirtieth birthday. It is a good time to look at the resignation speech by Don Chipp [pdf] where he pondered in parliament whether there wasn't room for a 'third political force' in Australian politics. (more)
The current conservative philosophy for governance is well described by Paul Kelly in a recent op-ed titled: At war over the law. This is the new brand of conservatism which is now competing with liberalism as the basis for governance. Forget left-right, that is gone as a binary distinction and the only use for it is to construct strawmen. Conservatism is based on executive dominance where the interests of the state trump individual rights. This is the opposite to republicanism and liberal democracy. (more)
