critical theory with slavoj zizek: From the normal perspective of the enlightened rational pursuit of self-interest, the inconsistency of this ideological stance is obvious: the populist conservatives are literally voting themselves into economic ruin. Less taxation and deregulation means more freedom for the big companies that are driving the impoverished farmers out of business; less state intervention means less federal help to small farmers; and so on. In the eyes of the US evangelical populists, the state stands for an alien power and, together with the UN, is an agent of the Antichrist: it takes away the liberty of the Christian believer, relieving him of the moral responsibility of stewardship, and thus undermines the individualistic morality that makes each of us the architect of our own salvation – how do we combine this with the unprecedented explosion of state apparatuses under Bush? No wonder large corporations are delighted to accept such evangelical attacks on the state, when the state tries to regulate media mergers, to put strictures on energy companies, to strengthen air pollution regulations, to protect wildlife and limit logging in national parks, and so forth. It is the ultimate irony of history that radical individualism serves as the ideological justification of the unfettered power of what the large majority of individuals experience as a vast anonymous entity which, without any democratic public control, regulates their lives.