Conservatives and Consumption

thebrasstack (A Friend of the Blog who still doesn’t have her place on the blog roll. I apologize, I’m lazy.) offers her thoughts on Sarah Palin’s ridiculous Washington Post op-ed:

In fact, Palin makes no mention of climate change in the whole editorial. It’s as though she were railing against tax dollars going to the NIH with no mention that, you know, the idea is to pay for medical research that cures diseases. She isn’t making an argument that climate change is too expensive to address, or that its effects will be mild. She’s completely ignoring the issue. Cap and trade will make us use less! Isn’t that bad? [Emphasis mine]

This actually reminds me of something I’ve wanted to discuss for awhile now: when Sarah Palin gave her (not-really-that-memorable) debut speech at the Republican National Convention last year, I remember hearing conservatives describe her as the true heir to Ronald Reagan (as they are wont to do when it comes to a particular kind of socially conservative Republican politician).  Of course, as we found out shortly after her debut, Palin is almost nothing like Reagan; she doesn’t have the rhetorical deftness or even the personal charm of Ronald Reagan.

There is, however, one way in which she is very much a reflection of the Gipper, and that’s in her complete and total disregard for limits.  Andrew Bacevich, in his most recent book The Limits of Power, argues (correctly, I think) that Ronald Reagan represents not only a repudiation of Carter’s politics, but also of Carter’s appreciation for the limits of America’s power.  Where Carter asked us to conserve, Reagan asked us to consume.  And where Carter spoke of a “crisis that strikes at the very heart and soul and spirit of our national will,” Reagan proclaimed that it is “morning in America.”  Rhetorically at least, Reagan set America on the path towards unending conspicuous consumption, of which we are now seeing the results.

Moreover, this ethos of consumption seeped into the conservative movement, and eventually, came to define it.  You can find examples of it everywhere: it was at the forefront of the Republican program of the past eight years, and it informs Republican attacks on climate legislation.  Hell, it was the main theme of President Bush’s post-9/11 message, when he urged Americans to shop (which, economics aside, was not what the country was looking for).  I think it’s fair to say that for an impressive swath of the mainstream Right, the mere notion of sacrifice is wildly irresponsible, if not outright treasonous.  Sarah Palin’s editorial then, isn’t really anything special; if anything, it’s depressingly typical of the conservative movement.