The Scorched-Earth Politics of America’s Four Fundamentalisms - Truthdig

http://www.truthdig.com/report/page2/the_scorched-earth_politics_of_americas_four_fundamentalisms_20120307/

A number of powerful anti-democratic tendencies now threaten American
democracy and at least four of these are guaranteed to entail grave
social and economic consequences. The first is a market fundamentalism
that not only trivializes democratic values and public concerns, but
also enshrines a rabid individualism, an all-embracing quest for
profits and a social Darwinism in which misfortune is seen as a
weakness, and a Hobbesian "war of all against all" replaces any
vestige of shared responsibilities or compassion for others.
Free-market fundamentalists now wage a full-fledged attack on the
social contract, the welfare state, any notion of the common good and
those public spheres not yet defined by commercial interests. Within
neoliberal ideology, the market becomes the template for organizing
the rest of society. Everybody is now a customer or client, and every
relationship is ultimately judged in bottom-line, cost-effective
terms. Freedom is no longer about equality, social justice or the
public welfare, but about the trade in goods, financial capital and
commodities.
---SPSmith