CANADIAN POLITICS/AMERICAN POLITICS:

CONSERVATIVE STATISM:

The following is from the Public Values website, and it points out an important fact-so-called conservatives are hardly the shining knights of freedom from government that their rhetoric would imply. What they actually are champions of another form of government interference, and they are just as vigorous in its pursuit as left wingers are in theirs. Molly doesn't necessarily agree with the "it's inevitable so lay back and enjoy it and pick a different partner" implications of the following, but it's important to note just how statist conservatives are.

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Deregulation? No such thing.:
The only question is, who benefits from government intervention?
by Dean Baker, Boston Review
The extraordinary financial collapse of recent months has been commonly described as a testament to the failure of deregulation. The events are indeed testament to a failure — a failure of public policy. Blaming deregulation is misleading.

In general, political debates over regulation have been wrongly cast as disputes over the extent of regulation, with conservatives assumed to prefer less regulation, while liberals prefer more. In fact conservatives do not necessarily desire less regulation, nor do liberals necessarily desire more. Conservatives support regulatory structures that cause income to flow upward, while liberals support regulatory structures that promote equality. "Less" regulation does not imply greater inequality, nor is the reverse true.

Framing regulation debates in terms of more and less is not only inaccurate; it hugely biases the argument toward conservative positions by characterizing an extremely intrusive structure of, for example, patent and copyright rules, as the free market. In the realm of insurance and finance over the last two decades, calls for deregulation have been cover for rules tilted starkly toward corporate interests. And the recent change in bankruptcy law, hailed by conservatives, requires much greater government involvement in the economy.

False ideological claims have circumscribed the public debate over regulation and blinded us to the wide range of choices we can make. Without these claims, what would guide regulatory policy? What kinds of choices would we have?
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Patent and copyright protection are good examples of government policies obscured in the debate. They are forms of regulation, not elements of a "free market.". . .
To read further. . .
Dean Baker is Co-Director of the Center for Economic and Policy Policy Research and author of The Conservative Nanny State.
Links and sources Free Market Myth, by Dean Baker, Boston Review, January 2009