Thom Hartmann: Libertarians are pushing us over a cliff
The author says we'll get sensible financial regulation, but not until conservative "predators" destroy the economy
Thom Hartmann talked to Salon about how conservative “predators” got out of control, Enron’s ugly legacy and why he’s optimistic. Gluttons for punishment can find an excerpt from the book here.
This interview has been edited for space and clarity.
What is the plot to destroy America? There have been lots of them.
From the beginning of our republic there has been this debate. There have been these dueling visions of what America should be. In some ways it’s an analogue of what ended up being the Whig Federalist vs. the Democratic Republican debates, which is should we have a country that is governed by a wise few, because the masses can’t really be trusted or should we have a country that is governed from the bottom up. This debate has taken a lot of different forms and morphed into a variety of political positions, but that’s the essential battle.
That’s the plot, as it were, on the one hand a group of ideologues concerned that you can’t trust the masses and on the other hand you have the kind of Rooseveltian notion that society should be for all the people and all the people should be able to participate in the society whether it’s through a union or with the democratic process.
There’s two groups that are driving this thing that I describe as the plot. First is the [conservative] ideologues but then there’s also a group of predators who use that rhetoric and that ideology to set up a situation where they can enrich themselves at the expense of everyone else. So the rhetoric has been used to deconstruct the protections for our economy and our middle class that kept our nation stable from the 40s through the 80s.
Alex Halperin is news editor at Salon. You can follow him on Twitter @alexhalperin.
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