When
it comes to explaining complex political dynamics, the media tends to
adopt simple narratives rather than sophisticated commentary. This has
been particularly evident when examining coverage of the Republican
Party’s ongoing civil war.
The battle for the heart and
soul of the GOP is more than social conservatives parrying with
establishment Republicans. It is a pantomime that has many actors
performing on a number of stages, but with only one clown: libertarians.
Libertarians
are a funny bunch. By funny I mean ignorant not only of basic economics
but also the ride they’ve been taken on by the Christian Right and the
neo-Confederates within the Republican Party.
Nullification
is the common cause that drives this anti-establishment triumvirate.
Nullification of the federal government is now the weapon of choice for
theocrats, libertarians and white supremacists. Since 2010, state
legislatures have put forward nearly 200 bills challenging federal laws
its sponsors deem unconstitutional. Typically, laws the nullifiers
believe challenge “religious liberty,” the Affordable Care Act and gun
control.
Recently, Kansas signed into law the Second
Amendment Protection Act, which prohibits the enforcement of federal
laws regulating guns manufactured and used within the state. Missouri
put forward a bill that would have allowed for the arrest of federal
agents enforcing gun laws. Similar bills have been introduced in 37
other states.
Of course, the ACA has been a
high-priority target for the nullification movement with more than 20
bills introduced in state legislatures to nullify the president’s
healthcare law. The Hobby Lobby, with the backing of the right, is
attempting to nullify the Affordable Care Act’s contraceptive mandate in
the Supreme Court. A favorable ruling will mean privately owned
businesses are free to discriminate against gays, women and anyone else
on the basis of religious liberty.
A report published by
Political Research Associates says, “The nullification movement’s
ideology is rooted in reverence for states’ rights and a theocratic and
neo-Confederate interpretation of U.S. history. And Ron Paul, who is
often portrayed as a libertarian, is the engine behind the movement.”
Paul,
who has been called the father of the Tea Party, has long been tied
with reactionary neo-Confederate politics. The Southern Partisan, a blog
site for neo-Confederates, endorsed Paul’s 2008 presidential campaign
with the following: “Paul has given countless speeches in front of
Confederate flags for Southern Heritage groups and has never faltered
from his defense of Dixie.” In 2012, Paul declared secession to be a
“deeply American principle.”
While libertarianism comes
in many forms, its central tenet is that government should be confined
to looking after the military, national security and the judicial
system. David Boaz, who is the vice president of the Koch
brothers-funded think-tank, the Cato Institute, defines libertarianism
as “the view that each person has the right to live his life in any way
he chooses so long as he respects the equal rights of others.”
In reality, libertarianism means corporations having more equal rights than people.
Libertarians
are drawn to Ron Paul because he appeals to their anti-military and
anti-drug war sensibilities, but they’ve been duped. “Libertarian
elements of Paul’s political agenda derive primarily from his allegiance
to states’ rights, which is often mistaken as support for civil
liberties,” writes Rachel Tabachnick, a PRA research fellow and member
of the Public Eye editorial board.
“Paul
is far more transparent about his paleoconservative—rather than
libertarian—agenda when he speaks to audiences made up of social
conservatives…And he sponsored the ‘We the People Act,’ which proposed
stripping the federal courts of jurisdiction in cases related to
religion and privacy, freeing state legislatures to regulate sexual
acts, birth control, and religious matters,” she added.
The
South and the Christian Right is fixated on everything related to
controlling race, sex, religious practice, abortion laws, and the repeal
of every progressive law that has come out of the federal government.
Unwittingly, Ron Paul libertarians have been swept up in this
theocratic, Southern white power, nullification movement. This alliance
threatens to rip the Republican Party apart, as well as the Union
itself.
Ron Paul’s son, Rand Paul (R-KY), has now firmed
as one of a small handful of favorites to secure the 2016 GOP
presidential nomination given the scandals surrounding Chris Christie,
and also for the fact the Senator from Kentucky will inherit his
father’s vast nationwide political infrastructure. Moreover, while Rand
Paul shares his father’s despise of federal programs like Social
Security, Medicare, and unemployment insurance, he has crossover appeal
with libertarians on the left, who not only have trouble thinking, but
also hear only the anti-drone, anti-NSA, and anti-foreign war messaging.
In
a 2009 Gallup poll, 23 percent of Americans responded to questions
about the role of government in a way that categorizes them as
libertarian—up from 18 percent in 2000. If you pair that 23 percent with
the 35 percent who identify themselves as evangelicals, and couple that
number with the swathe of Americans who long for the South to rise
again, you can see how difficult it is for any progressive attempt to
deal intelligently with national problems, be they poverty, income
inequality, recession, healthcare, gun control, or the national debt,
given the nullification movement’s commitment to obstruction.
Libertarianism
and the nullification movement merge seamlessly with the Christian
Right, because the “sacralized ‘lost cause’ of the South is often
undergirded by Christian Reconstructionism,” writes Tabachnick.
Reconstructionism, or Dominionism, is an ideology that calls on
Christians to take over the federal government and then make the laws of
the nation “biblical.”
Chris Hedges, author of American Fascists,
writes, “It seeks to reduce government to organizing little more than
defense, internal security and the protection of property rights. It
fuses with the Christian religion the iconography and language of
American imperialism and nationalism, along with the cruelest aspects of
corporate capitalism.”
Reconstructionism merges
Christianity with laissez-faire capitalism to arrive at a vision of
government that endorses biblical law at the local level, alongside a
limited federal government. Essentially that makes it the perfect
philosophy for wedding theocrats in an unholy marriage with libertarians
and Old Dixie.
The fusing of evangelicals with the
neo-Confederacy is illustrated in a textbook used today by Christian
homeschooling and private school curricula. Titled America’s Providential History, it explains the Civil War, or what it calls the “War Between the States,” as follows:
“After
the war an ungodly Republican element gained control of the Congress.
They wanted to centralize power and shape the nation according to their
philosophy. In order to do this, they had to remove the force of
Calvinism in America, which was centered in the South at this time, and
rid the South, which was opposed to centralization, of its political
power. They used their post-war control of Congress to reconstruct the
South, pass the Fourteenth Amendment, and in many ways accomplish their
goals.”
Libertarians tend to have little
regard for applying their philosophy in the context of U.S. history,
whether Jim Crow laws, state-enforced slavery and sexism. Ron Paul
represented this tendency when he argued that the Civil Rights Act “led
to a massive violation of the rights of private property and contract,
which are the bedrocks of free society.” Bam, right there—Paul concedes
that in his mind, private ownership supersedes civil rights. Little
wonder neo-Confederates have so enthusiastically embraced libertarians.
Ultimately,
the Republican Party’s civil war will be long and protracted,
especially given the vast sums of money involved in determining a
winner. The Chamber of Commerce’s war chest and Karl Rove’s epic
fundraising will only go so far in overcoming a triumvirate that not
only has boots on the ground in the form of enthusiastic ballot box
lever pullers, but also the financial backing of America’s most
prominent libertarians: Charles and David Koch.
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