This derives from a recent email:
Neoliberalism is the economic agenda of both the Neoconservatives and the Liberal Elite. The liberal elite is another name for the congressional democrats and their allies outside of congress, more or less. Hence using the American economy to dominate and repress others through such agencies as the International Monetary Fund, for example, is supported by both the Neocons and Liberals.
The “old-fashioned liberal beliefs” you speak of I suppose to be “open-mindedness” or “tolerance” and are related only to some extent to, let’s say, Barack Obama’s or Hillary Clinton’s beliefs. They are related insofar as tolerance encourages commerce, and commerce (per the free market) favors whoever is in the better bargaining position, which in turn depends on relationships of power. This is one reason why even the old-fashioned liberal beliefs were corrupt, and also leads to liberals believing they are superior to those people who are “close-minded”, and this superior feeling in turn leads to aggression, which turns out favorably due to the power disparity, and in turn subjugates the victim and again allows for “tolerance”. The one thing a liberal never tolerates is intolerance, and that’s the logic behind it.
Or look at it another way – modern human history is dominated by commerce and war. Liberals love commerce (because due to the power disparity they profit from it) and hate threats to commerce (such as communist systems with their closed-off economies). Harry Truman got the Cold War going and liberals like John F. Kennedy were particularly passionate about it, arguably even more so than Reagan. What happened to “tolerance” toward the Soviets? Oh wait, they threatened commerce due to their “intolerance of the West”. Time to bring out the guns! Time to bring out the nukes! Time to bring out the threat to human existence! All because one (albeit powerful) country denied commerce with the West!
Or look at it like this – people who favor peace profit from peace. Bill Gates loves peace and only loves war if he makes sure Microsoft gets a piece of the pie. The entire mythology of America being a “nation that loves peace” is not just false from an empirical standpoint (given all the wars of aggression they fight) but it’s false from a moral standpoint – America only loves peace because America profits from it. Bin Laden doesn’t hate the West for it’s freedom – he hates the West for it’s economic and military domination. Bin Laden doesn’t want war with the West because he loves war – he wants war with the West because the alternative for Islam (as he sees it) is a slow, grinding, economic death – a death caused by peace. The same death that 20,000 people each day receive, many in “peaceful” countries, of starvation and/or disease caused by the poverty created by the “peaceful American economic system”. He believes that to be the future for Islam (and Muslim countries if they continue in something resembling their current identity) unless war (which is always a wild card) is instigated. Whether a Muslim joins Al Qaeda or does not has little to do with his religion but has much to do with how he sees the future of the world – it’s a matter of vision and worldview, not politics, ideology, or religion.
Or look at it like this – what does a shopkeeper want you to do when you enter his shop? He wants you to buy something. Why? Because he profits from it. If you go into his shop and refuse to buy anything, he gets angry. Eventually, he calls the guns (the police). Does any of this seem familiar to someone like you who is familiar with the Cold War? What is America if not a shopkeeper of the world? Buy, buy, buy!
It’s not quite true that the business of America is business. The business of America is profit. The business of America is power. Any threat to that profit and power is exterminated. The American elite is currently deciding whether Iran is such a threat. Hopefully for Iran as well as the American people they will decide negatively. Hopefully for justice and freedom Iran will not have to subjugate itself in order for the American elite to reach that decision.
Hopefully one day we will exterminate the American elite. The real enemy to all of us exists in Washington D.C. and to a lesser extent scattered about in other places around the world.
We're in Our World Now 