WHAT HAPPENS NOW. THE GREAT UNANSWERED QUESTION

Austerity promoted by modern conservative leaders is destroying this country. Their kind of austerity is a misinterpretation of what the goal of conservatism should actually be. Conservatism should deal with controlling spending and not try to stop all spending. In the tipsy trivia political world of today the conservatives and liberals have migrated into on or the other political party rather that form wings of the party. The conservatives are amassed in the Republican party and the liberals are amassed in the Democratic party. Thus, the modern Republican Party appears to have taken an extreme position, which happens because they lack the moderating liberal points of view from within that party. The position they have taken would have been the expected position of what in the past would have been an extreme point of view for an entire party. What is happening is that the party is not trying to make government better, as political parties did in the past, but are working to completely destroy it, which is obviously an unacceptable extreme . . . one half of the body politic trying to destroy their reason for existence. It makes no sense. What is most disconcerting about the movement is that it seems to be worldwide. Several governments in the Europe Union have recently elected extreme rightwing government leaders. Austria seems on the verge of following suite. This seems dangerous to me; however, I have to admit that I am puzzled where this is going to lead. It seems counter to the usual conservative fear of loss of national sovereignty. In the past in individual countries it has led to dictators of one kind or another, which has led to tyrannies of one political party or, in the case of communism, it led to tyranny of the majority. The tyranny of royalty was the most common form of tyranny and replacing it with democracy was the result. Perhaps it will be multinational corporations left to take the reins of leadership. Of course, tyranny is tyranny. Of course, this movement to the right is receiving a disproportionate amount of support because individuality is something we all want and are willing to fight to get; it seems to be in our genes. Also, experience in the material world has taught us that we should ask for more than we actually want. I am a great believer in the idea that conservatism is driven by greed, which is an individual thing, in contrast with liberalism, which is driven by empathy. Obviously, empathy is a judgement of a group. We cannot survive without greed. The result in a free society, which is the hall mark of democracy is that we routinely fight for more than our share. This means democracy has an innate built in conflict; we ask for and expect to receive more than our Fair share. We as a society have reached that point. The question is it this happening at the country level or is it happening at the world level and if it is what is the final result. Where is our society going? We as a species have been around for about 100,000 years. Have we reach or are we approaching some sort of utopia? I find interesting is that many including some of the best minds down through the ages have tried but no one has ever been able to describe or even come close to describing what that might be. My point is that it seems as if are we are about to find out the hard way? The next one hundred years is bound to be interesting. URL: firetreepub.blogspot.com Comments Invited and not moderated