Populism has had an interesting tradition in the United States.  Theodore Roosevelt found support among the American public with his populist appeals.  In the 1968 Presidential election, George Wallace, a 4 term governor of Alabama won over 13% of the popular vote running on a populist platform.  Even Ross Perot and Ralf Nader, two familiar names in contemporary American politics, have both benefitted from populist appeals — despite their very different ideological principles.

Most surprisingly, Sarah Palin has been credited as re-kindling a populist streak in the American psyche.  But unlike her predecessors, who’s rhetoric has been aimed at large corporations and the injustice of economic inequality, Palin’s rhetoric has largely been aimed at the excesses of government… and the danger its size and power pose to the American people.

This shift in the popuist movement has not gone un-noticed.  Matt Bai, writing for the New York Times, has an interesting piece discussing the evolution of American populism — and has arrived with some surprising conclusions.  According to Bai, there is an undoubtable “underlying shift” in the meaning of American Populism:

Most Democrats, after all, persist in embracing populism as it existed in the early part of the last century — that is, strictly as a function of economic inequality. In this worldview, the oppressed are the poor, and the oppressors are the corporate interests who exploit them. That made sense 75 years ago, when a relatively small number of corporations — oil and coal companies, steel producers, car makers — controlled a vast segment of the work force and when government was a comparatively anemic enterprise. In recent decades, however, as technology has reshaped the economy, more and more Americans have gone to work for smaller or more decentralized employers, or even for themselves, while government has exploded in size and influence.

As the economy changed, and as the corporate entity exercised less influence on the life of the individual, the need for political opposition also decreased.  Even so, Bai does not view this as symptomatic of a philosophical detour.  Although the target of populism is not the same as it once was, the principles and ideals driving the movement continue to be rooted in a certain animosity towards institutions that have become too powerful or too reckless with the lives of the public at large.

[T]oday’s only viable brand of populism… is not principally about the struggling worker versus his corporate master. It is about the individual versus the institution…

You do not have to be working for the minimum wage, after all, to seethe about the effects of the Wall Street meltdown on your retirement savings or the spilled oil creeping toward your shores. You simply have to fear that large institutions generally exercise too much power and too little responsibility in society.

This new American populism is why the federal deficit has emerged as a chief concern for voters, as it did in Mr. Perot’s era — not because it presents an imminent crisis of its own, necessarily, but because it signifies a kind of institutional recklessness, a disconnectedness from the reality of daily life.

Bai makes some other interesting points; if you wish to read the rest of his piece in its entirety, you can do so here: NYTimes.com.

I’ll leave you with this closing question: if anti-trust legislation is needed to prevent private corporations from exercising too much power over the american public, shouldn’t we have an anti-trust system to break up government when it gets too big?

Given the recent international outrage over the Israeli flotilla raid, the question of “proportionality” (particularly with regard to Israel’s military actions against Hamas) has once again become a topic of serious discussion.  Unfortunately, the ‘doctrine’ (and I loosely refer to it as such) of proportionality is actually a much more complex doctrine than many acknowledge.

For those of you interested in reading more about the subject, I want to recommend an article I found on “The New Atlantis” titled “Proportionality in Warfare”.   The author makes some excellent points; but I must warn you… this is a thorough discussion.  Here is an interesting snippet to whet your appetite:

Many clerics, journalists, and professors, however, have invented a wholly different interpretation and use, making the theory more and more stringent, particularly with regard to civilian deaths. In fact, they have reinterpreted it to a point where it is pretty much impossible to find a war or conflict that can be justified. Historically, just war theory was meant to be an alternative to Christian pacifism; now, for some of its advocates, it is pacifism’s functional equivalent — a kind of cover for people who are not prepared to admit that there are no wars they will support.

via The New Atlantis » Proportionality in Warfare.