The Republican party deserves the trouncing it has been getting since the election. Its supposed free-market policies are being blamed for the financial mess we're in, when free-market policies were not its cause, and the Republicans have long deserted free-market capitalism, anyway. As John Lewis states in his excellent new article, the Republicans "have ceased to be Republican in anything other than name." The Republican party has turned into the Theocratic-Democratic party. There are very few essential differences between the two major parties (especially in the realm of economics). Nor can there be, since they share the same essential morality. From Lewis' article: The same Christian doctrine, far from differentiating Republicans from Democrats, is the basis for Republican agreement with Democrats about the welfare state. Republicans have anchored their “compassionate” welfare state in the ethics of Christianity. They have become fiscally indistinguishable from Democrats because Christianity and Marxism share the same moral premise: “give unto the poor” or “to each according to his need.” This premise, whether grounded in dialectical materialism or in biblical spiritualism, tells those who embrace it that they can be moral only by caring for “the least among us” through the sacrifice of others. The “compassionate conservatism” that has motivated Republicans to outspend Democrats in social programs is a search for moral goodness by the standard of altruism: the morality of self-sacrifice.The Republicans are worse than the Democrats because they co-oped the latter's economic policy while dropping its secularism, thus advocating "against abortion, for prayer in government schools, against embryonic stem-cell research, for religious icons in courthouses, against gay marriage, and for censorship of the media." All of which are incompatible with the political system of capitalism.
The time has come for the Republicans to repudiate any connection to capitalism on the grounds of false advertising. Capitalism is being blamed for the policies of a Republican government when the two have been divorced for decades. The divorce needs to be acknowledged with words, as it's been acknowledged with actions.
