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As many of my readers know, I am a very strong critic of populism. As such, one of the things I have dedicated myself to is researching these people, in order to truly damage its credibility.
However, over the course of this research I have found a really striking difference between populists of old and populists of new. Or, at least, populists during prosperity and populists during poverty. This brings me to what I call “good economy problems.”
If you’ve heard the phrase “first world problems,” it’s very similar to that. “Good economy problems,” are basically the problems people only seem to have during a time of economic prosperity. I don’t know why, but for some reason these issues just manage to disappear during times of recession.
Take one of the biggest populists of the Great Depression era, Senator Huey Long. That man was loved by the socialist-leaning working class, and many of them even wanted him to primary President Roosevelt and become President of the United States in 1936. This plan was ended, however, when Long died of a bullet wound in 1935.
Long was the chief populist, and you could say he only thought about the economy. Back in the day, the main social issue was race. Specifically, rather segregation was something that should be allowed in modern society.
How did Huey Long-the populist of the Great Depression-view race? Remember, he was from Louisiana, the southern state of southern states. Well, he really didn’t, all things considered. Never once in his entire political career did he give a speech on the topic of race, because social issues in general were irrelevant to him. After all, the country was falling apart and people were starving.
Long, in general, seemed to be truly colorblind. Many historians have noted that a large amount of his plans would actually help black people just as much-if not more-than they helped white people. He was worried about economics first and only, as he believed focusing on race was simply a distraction by the elites.
Compare that to American Conservative writer and best friend of Pat Buchanan Rod Dreher, who I talked about last time. In 2006, Dreher published the manifesto to what he called “Crunchy Cons.” The best way to describe them are Eisenhower Republicans who are open to various liberal ideas-vegetarianism and organ farming for instance-if they feel it helps them and their family. I have nothing against people being open-minded, but my issue with the Crunchy Cons is not that they’re vegetarian, but that they also want me to be.
There are nine principles of Crunchy Cons, however number four is the one I most want to talk about. That being “Culture is more important than politics and economics.”
This book came out just a few years before the economy crashed and the Great Recession began, and that might be the main reason most of you have not heard of that ideology. Could you imagine a politician saying that culture is more important than economics in 2009? Of course not! The 2008, 2010, and 2012 elections were all decided in large part by economics-especially after the crash. (Before then it was almost all about the War on Terror, foreign policy, and various other controversial acts of the Bush Administration)
In 2008, it was McCain’s free market economic program versus Obama’s government stimulus. In 2010, the Tea Party gained traction arguing that the TARP program was socialist as well as bad for the economy. This reached its peak in 2012, where the argument was based around if Barack Obama’s moderate recovery (the economy was in better shape, but that’s not saying much) was enough to justify a second term.
Only in 2016, when the economy was getting back on track, did social issues once again creep back into the political debate. And now that the economy is growing like never before, the economy just doesn’t matter anymore. Funny how that works out, isn’t it. I guess populists just can’t be populists sometimes. Mind you, libertarians can be libertarians at all times, but you know.
This is not to say social conservatives didn’t exist. However, people like Rick Santorum were commonly taken out of the debate in favor of more libertarian candidates.
This isn’t the only example. Think of the political era of Nixon vs. Carter. Nixon had a good economy for most of his administration, with things starting to tank near the end and getting bad in the last days of Ford. As such, issues were mostly based on the Vietnam War, corruption in politics, and smoking pot.
Carter had an awful economy to deal with. As such, he had to deal with inflation, high gas prices, and increasing unemployment (it should also be noted that for years it was taught in economics classes that unemployment and inflation rising at the same time-also known as stagflation-was thought to be impossible).
As such, topics during the Carter administration were more economic, unlike the more social Nixon administration. Notice how the issues magically changed because of the economy, despite the amount of pot smokers not really going down.
I do not believe the economy is the only thing in existence. Far from it. However, I would rather see scarifies in the area of social issues than economic ones. If the economy fails, we’ll all be unable to eat and all of a sudden the idea that gays might have a few too many rights won’t be the biggest concern of most Americans.
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Ephrom Josine is a libertarian political blogger/commentator, and a frequent contributor to The Liberty Hawk. In 2019, he published his first book Ramblings Of A Mad Man: Life As An Anarchist. You can find him on Twitter @EphromJosine1, writing near-daily on Medium @ephromjosine or weekly on Freedom First Blog.
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