While others have searched for the true meaning of Christmas, I, as you may know, have been searching for the true meaning of neoliberalism. It's a cheeky, full-bodied little term that nevertheless has always evaded my senses. But thanks to the New Republic's Ganesh Sitaraman, a Vanderbilt University law professor, the meaning of neoliberalism is no longer a mystery.
In brief, neoliberalism is the cause of everything that has gone wrong in the last few decades, writes Sitaraman, which also means that Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and Margaret Thatcher were neoliberals. You name it, from deregulation to W.'s neoconservatism to the Great Recession, it was neoliberalism at the helm — no doubt about it.
Happily for the virtuously progressive Sitaraman, such intellectual wackiness allows him to bundle President Obama with the right-wing loonies of the 1980s, thereby progressively denying that Obama ever did anything right, which seems a particularly appealing bugaboo among the self-righteous left.
Go ahead. Read Sitarman's article for yourself. But I warn you, you'll be emotionally and intellectually exhausted before finishing it.
Can’t say you didn’t warn us. I am no wiser as regards a workable definition of neoliberalism for having read it. Apparently it is the root cause of everything that has gone badly for at least three decades. And the author of the piece is not entirely sure what it means either. But that is understandable because he is a lawyer. A lawyer lacking a working knowledge of everything outside of his own limited field. Therefore neoliberalism is both something to do with deregulation and also technical solutions and technocrats in various fields are also neo liberally wrong even though what they mostly produce are regulations. The solution proposed, if you want to call it that, is a brave new world of something or other that he cannot himself quite explain or merely did not get around to doing. It is the Vision Thing. That will somehow result in a unified sense of civic something or other.
Ironically he seems to be a senior advisor of the Warren campaign. Ironic because she is without a doubt the most technocratic fiddler in the whole Democratic Party field. He somehow also managed to note that humanity, after the last three decades, is by and large in better shape than it has ever been. More humans on this planet now have better access to clean potable water, food security, education, transportation, communications and, of course health care than at any time since humans stepped out of Africa. Which, no doubt, is attributable to anything but neoliberalism.
Posted by: Peter G | December 30, 2019 at 08:06 AM
That should have been, obviously, failed to note.
Posted by: Peter G | December 30, 2019 at 08:29 AM