I didn't begin to understand the Republican opposition to the welfare state or "socialism" as they often prefer to call it until I moved to Georgia, where Newt Gingrich hails from, in 1993. Republicans were not an issue in North Florida in the late '70s when fundamentalists were still trying to infiltrate the Democratic establishment and failing. They moved on to become Republicans and more successful later.

Anyway, Georgia turned out the be the very model of the socialist state with an abundance of public recreational facilities, parklands, public housing for mill workers and whole islands to "protect" the seashore from over-development--all acquired during an era when some segments of the population could legally be kept out of public facilities. In other words, the socialist state was fine as long as it only served the "proper" elements of society.

I don't know if Georgia was one of those states that shuttered its swimming pools, rather than agree to let dark skinned people in. By the time I arrived in 1993, the public recreational facilities all met the same standards but residential segregation was rather firmly in place and new developments touted their private facilities and utilities secured by electronic gates.

Just recently, the local Casino (for bridge, bingo and exercise, has been rebuilt on the same prime water-front location and the community actually has the sense to be incensed by the doubling of the cost of day passes to the pool instead of charging the same as the old. Not everyone is committed to the proposition that money is the key to keeping a stratified society in place.

I don't think that was the original intent. At first, it seemed the segregationist impulse was doomed, even as it was decided to make the egalitarians suffer by reducing the level of public services for all. Then, restricting access on the basis of ability to pay suggested itself as a less onerous "cut off your nose to spite your face" alternative and the equation of equality with economic success was born. That restricting people's acquisition of money is a lot easier and even more effective than restricting people from the premises only became apparent gradually, one suspects, and was never overtly mentioned.

Cutting taxes and reducing public spending can always be sold as good in themselves. Hardly anyone ever inquires into the alternatives, perhaps because there are actually many. In addition to the privatization of traditionally public functions (providing utilities, waste management, road maintenance, police protection) there's the option of relying on bonds (whose interest income sustains the inheriting class), fees to separate the haves from the have nots, and, as some New Hampshire residents are just discovering, the sale of public assets (resources and lands) to balance a stressed budget and create private wealth. That last has such a long history (remember railroad grants, drilling and timber rights, mineral leases, etc?) that the sale often goes unnoticed, except by those who are looking to buy something cheap and sell it "dear."

Someone asked on Bluehampshire thread why the state would purchase "sensitive" lands while selling off the parks. The answer is simple. What some people support out of environmental concerns, others see as a land-bank which takes some lands off the market to increase the value of what's left. We assume cause and effect are directly related, but more often there's triangulation at work. You starve the government beast to make the investment banker who buys up the notes richer.

That, btw, is what "trickle-down" actually refers to. When governments are prevented from taxing and collecting directly, they're forced to borrow and borrowing sends a steady trickle of income to the investing class--our moneyed elite, the new stars of the stratified society.

When Republicans refer to the democratic elite, they're not being snide. They're quite convinced that in relying on the accumulation of money to define social strata, they've arrived at the perfect democratic solution to the problem of making human society a mirror of the natural order. It's democratic because, in theory, every person has an equal chance to accumulate money. That there's a whole cadre dedicated to making sure that doesn't happen is somebody else's problem. You could even say that, as in nature there are vultures who thrive on what the predators leave behind, the financial vultures are necessary to maintain our society stratified.

How can you argue with man following the basic patterns of nature?