Several European governments responded to the financial crisis by applying austerity economics more rigorously than the U.S., and they have suffered for it. See “Where Austerity Really Hits Home” and “Austerity: Another ‘Policy Mistake’ Again“: “Europe’s three-year austerity program pushed its unemployment rate in February 2013 to 11.9 percent.” For recent political rifts in Britain, see “Vince Cable exposes coalition divisions over austerity.”

Krugman writes in “The Market Speaks” that the anti-tax, pro-austerity crowd keep predicting that “the market” will suffer if their advice isn’t heeded. And their advice has been consistently wrong.

So what the bad predictions tell us is that we are, in effect, dealing with priests who demand human sacrifices to appease their angry gods — but who actually have no insight whatsoever into what those gods actually want, and are simply projecting their own preferences onto the alleged mind of the market.

Right-wing ideology really is more like religion than political science. The real-world consequences of ideology are no longer important; what’s important is loyalty to the ideology for the sake of the ideology.