Republicans rediscovering that the free market is a liberal idea is fairly amusing to see in real time.

One of the reasons American conservatism has degenerated into fascism is because of its generations-old intellectual fraud of repackaging liberal ideas—a free market, individual rights, the sanctity of contracts, democratic governance, the American Revolution—as conservative.

Because the United States has never had a Big Throne or Big Altar for a homegrown conservative movement to rally around, those political tendencies were diffused and congregated around local magnates, hence the historical deference to preachers, planters, and assorted plutocrats.

The paradox of American conservatism is that it ostensibly seeks to conserve the values of a liberal bourgeois revolution.

Granted, there were plenty of conservative—if not downright reactionary—elements and aspects of that revolution, but that doesn't make the task much easier.

Once one successfully strips American conservatism of its liberal accretions, the most potent political forces left are religiosity, social conservatism, and support for a racial caste system.

And all of those belief systems have near-circular overlaps.

I actually forgot the fourth political force which is left over, and it's probably the most potent after support for a racial caste system: social Darwinism.

In fact, much of the conservative support for laissez-faire policies come cloaked in the language of social Darwinism.

The free market comes to be seen as the vessel of Providential blessing and a substitute for premortem justice, rewarding the righteous and punishing the unvirtuous as God wants.

Hence the emergence of solipsistic power-worshipping tendencies like the Prosperity Gospel.