Reply #167: I've seen you post several times about "Bush brand of ultra-conservatism"

[AntiFascist]

but I wonder how much you know about neo-conservative politics? The primary distinction between the Reagan-era conservatism and what began under his vice-President is that once the Cold War ended, paleo-conservatives were comfortable rolling back military deployment: many military bases were eventually scaled down or shutdown, and people were looking forward to a peace-dividend. What began later with Rumsfeld and his cohorts, on the other hand, was a desire to extend the military further and to dominate the world, bringing Americanism to areas like the Middle East where global corporations could flourish. This is all spelled out fairly clearly in the neoconservative Project for the New American Century. This certainly is not "rolling back the state as far as possible." Bush may have started out his first term making noises along the lines of supporting states rights over the Federal government, but, as he even said, 9-11 changed everything, and at that point we began military spending as if there was no end in sight. This is really also what differentiates true political paleo-conservatism from the militaristic machinations which are in fact characteristic of fascist governments.

We may have an artificially "healthy" economy for the corporocrats, but this may largely be the result of government war spending and manipulations in the price of oil and energy.