Saturday 10 April 2010

Agriculture and Commerce

Sean Scallon bemoans the Republican candidacy in Tennessee of a subsidised farmer who will also doubtless continue to vote for the largesse of the Tennessee Valley Authority.

Well, Sean, which matters more? Agriculture and everything that it supports (national sovereignty, family life, strong communities, local variation, religion, and so on), or minimal government supported by ever-lower levels of personal taxation? Conservatism, or capitalism? You cannot have both.

The conservative party that created the Tennessee Valley Authority understood that, and the conservative farmers of Tennessee duly voted for it, as much to the benefit of their black workers as to their own benefit, and creating the momentum that led to Civil Rights. Bring back that party. In fact, the signs are that, slowly but surely, it is coming back.

2 comments:

  1. Exactly right. Mr. Lindsay. Scallon's article is typical of the misplaced idealism of so many libertarian conservatives. Most people, if really confronted with the reality of returning to laissez-faire capitalism, reject it, which makes complete sense given the history of that type of system.

    I mean, its not like we haven't tried it before, and those libertarians who say that capitalism is an untested ideal end up sounding a lot like unreconstructed communists, to be honest.

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  2. Your last point is hugely important, and I never tire of making it to them. It makes them really - and I mean really - angry, precisely because it is so obviously the truth.

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