Context: As a default position, I reject political conspiracy theories as unfounded, unless the evidence looks solid. But sometimes there really is a political conspiracy. This is about a real conspiracy that is driving a social engineering experiment of massive proportions to completely change American democracy.
Nancy MacLean's 2017 book, Democracy In Chains: The Deep History Of The Radical Right's Stealth Plan For America, describes a vast radical right wing conspiracy theory that is true. MacLean is a historian who wound up with unfettered access to look at the original documents that (i) prove the origin and existence of the radical right conspiracy, and (ii) describe its goal. The goal is to completely remake American democracy with its strong central government into a central weak government that is unable to enforce equal protection and due process for average people.
In the radical right vision, power would flow from the central federal government to authoritarian, oligarchic state governments that are captured by wealthy, powerful capitalists and like-minded individuals. The goal of that form of government is to weaken and then destroy the ability of average citizens, especially minorities to work together to defend their interests using equal protection and due process as their main tool to exert influence. The ultimate goal is to elevate property rights above all other rights, including the rights of people to tax property or otherwise burden it in any way.
In other words, this cabal of capitalists and rich people want to have essentially all power and little or no responsibility toward society or the well-being of average people. This new authoritarian kleptocracy has now overpowered the republican party and with President Trump at the helm, it is gaining momentum. This effort just might lead to the end of the American experiment.
A few quotes from MacLean's book with some comments for context help describe what America is facing right now from the authoritarian radical right.
#1 - No compromise: Funding for the radical movement was initiated by Charles and David Koch. They knew that most Americans would oppose what they wanted to do, which included a refusal to compromise. Refusal to compromise is integral to what it is to be a tyrant or oligarch.
Koch never lied to himself about what he was doing. While some others in the movement called themselves conservatives, he know exactly how radical his cause was. Informed early on by one of his grantees that the playbook on revolutionary organization had been written by Vladimir Lenin dutifully recruited a trusted "cadre" of high-level operatives, just as Lenin had done, to build a movement that refused compromise as it devised savvy maneuvers to alter the political math in its favor.
#2 - Kill liberty: The key intellectual founder of this property absolutist movement, James McGill Buchanan (discussed here before), chairman of the economics department at the University of Virginia, saw an urgent need to curtail civil liberties as much as possible. Previously, Virginia had used state law to impose effective voter suppression, allowing the governor and legislature to maintain their high level of power and control over Virginia's residents. Neutering collective action by citizens, e.g., organized labor unions, was a high priority target for the absolutist authoritarians.
Compounding the problems Buchanan faced of elected officials who seemed like allies but, once in power failed to walk the walk, was the passage of the National Voter Registration Act of 1993. It began drawing into the electorate more poor people who, in Buchanan's eyes, were likely to support proposals for programs that cost yet more money [than desegregation of public schools was already costing]. . . . . Buchanan now argued, the cause must figure out how to put legal -- indeed constitutional -- shackles on public officials, shackles so powerful that no matter how sympathetic these officials might be to the will of majorities, no matter how concerned they were for their own re-elections, they would no longer have the ability to respond to those who used their numbers [citizens acting together] to get government to do their bidding. . . . . Once these shackles were put in place, they had to be binding and permanent. . . . . Their cause they say is liberty. But by that they mean the insulation of private property rights from the reach of government -- and the takeover of what was long public (schools, prisons, western lands, and much more) by corporations, a system that would radically reduce the freedom of the many. In a nutshell, they aim to hollow out democratic resistance. And by its own lights, the cause is nearing success.
#3 - Republican party takeover with ideologically cleansing RINO hunts: The radical movement knew the American people would reject its political goals and that some institution of political power would be needed to exert influence on a national scale. The radical right's quiet, relentless takeover of the republican party explains why the party now refuses to oppose Trump's moves to undermine democracy and the rule of law. The RHINO hunts effectively drove many (most?) real republicans from the party and replaced them with believers in the radical right's absolutist anti-democratic vision, e.g., the Tea Party. The absolutists play hardball and they play for keeps.
The Koch team's most important stealth move, and the one that proved critical to success, was to wrest control over the machinery of the Republican Party, beginning in the late 1990s with sharply escalating determination after 2008. From there, it was just a short step to lay claim to being the true representatives of the party, declaring all others RINOS. But while these radicals of the right operate within the Republican Party and use that party as a delivery vehicle, make no mistake about it: the cadre's loyalty is not to the Grand Old Party or its traditions or standard bearers. Their loyalty is to their revolutionary cause.
Republican Party veterans who believed they would be treated fairly because of their longtime service soon learned that, to their new masters, their history of Republicanism meant nothing. The new men in the wings respect only compliance; if they fail to get it, they respond with swift vengeance. The cadre targets for removal any old-time Republicans deemed a problem, throwing big money into their next primary race to unseat them and replace them with the cause's more "conservative" choices -- or at least teach them to heel.
The latter explains why a politician like Ronald Reagan would never have been accepted by the new radical republicans. They would have ousted him as a RINO. The propaganda tactics the radical absolutists employ were and still are devastatingly effective. That got tens of millions of rank and file republicans to effectively switch from old republican ideals, including at least some responsiveness to public opinion, to pure anti-democratic absolutism about property and intense hostility to civil rights.
B&B orig: 4/18/19
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