Source: David Friedman’s Substack
by David Friedman
“It is a familiar observation that political parties are coalitions containing a variety of ideologies and interest groups. It is less obvious that ideologies too are coalitions. Consider the American conservative movement of the fifties and sixties. It was made up of at least three distinct groups: Traditionalist conservatives, classical liberals/libertarians, and southern conservatives, in large part populist. … the ideology can fracture, as happened with the split between libertarian and traditionalists in the late 1960s. A similar split on the left divided traditional liberals from progressives, a division made clearer recently by conflicting attitudes to the Israeli-Hamas war and demonstrations against it. The current Trumpist right is also a coalition, united mostly by common enemies on the left.” (06/19/24)