Underlying this market worship is the idea that individual liberty is paramount and that nations are merely aggregations of individuals all pursuing self-interest without regard to others. The idea of community is lost. Government is seen as restricting individual liberty rather than working to achieve our shared goals. Why such an ideology finds resonance among those who claim to revere an itinerant teacher who urged his followers to love others as themselves is beyond me.(emphasis added)
For a quarter century or more "freedom", "equality", even "citizenship" have lost their inherent social, civil, and political meanings in our public discourse and been taken over (one almost hesitates to say "stolen") by a rhetoric that understands all these terms solely as a function of economics, of the pursuit of wealth and survival. I have always felt that these folks, strident anti-communists to a person, are merely "turning Marx on his head" (to coin a phrase they would not find apt). They would seem to agree with Marx that human beings are driven primarily by a desire for the satisfaction of certain desires, and that history itself is nothing less nor more than the unfolding of this struggle to fashion a system whereby the greatest satisfaction of the greatest number of these desires can be achieved for the greatest number of people. They would only quibble with Marx over the details, it would seem. In that sense, they are nothing more nor less than right-wing Marxists, just as Marx himself was nothing more nor less than a left-wing Hegelian. We are stuck, then, in a sterile debate between the descendants of two long-dead German philosophers. Pretty depressing.
As I wrote in the post on which DL comments, at the heart of Friedman's (and, by extension, his followers') folly is an ahistorical assumption that governments are not necessary by-products of human interaction, but rather optional aggregates that can be embraced or discarded at will. By ignoring the realities that governments exist of necessity (I do not here want to discuss the root of that necessity; it just is), Friedman can spin all sorts of fantastic theories about what is possible for free markets. By ignoring the real human consequences of actually doing what Friedman says, however, we find ourselves in the position we are now - and we have much work to do to repair the damage wrought in Friedman's name.
In essence, the radical individualism of this world-view is the philosophy of the rich, secure, and independent individual. Of course, those whose financial and economic position is relatively safe (although that safety is guaranteed through all sorts of government mechanisms, but that is never mentioned) can day-dream about lower taxes, about government getting out of the way of actually accumulating more stuff, and of freeing one from the burden of association with those not like oneself. Alas, the rest of society actually pays more supporting these individuals (as we are discovering) and so Friedman's vision, shared by a prostrate class, of a world without all the messiness of real-world government action, is a world where the rich get richer, the poor get poorer, and society itself feels the bonds of cohesion start to strain. In the nineteenth century, those who thought like Friedman were labeled social parasites, and to my mind, I see no reason why the label shouldn't be revived. Whether it is Paris Hilton or Donald Trump, one wonders what, exactly these people contribute or own that should force the rest of us to support them. Yet, Friedman's theories are based on exactly this notion - the leisure class, wealth, etc., need not apologize for success, because social and economic success are winning arguments in and of themselves.
As for the relationship between the ultra-individualism of our market fundamentalists and the supposed orthodoxy of the Christian fundamentalists, this is a conundrum without an answer, DL, and something I have pondered. All I can say is that we all have inconsistencies in our personal philosophies; in this case, however, these people's inconsistencies rule our world.
