Nancy MacLean testifies from the text of her acclaimed “Democracy in Chains The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America”
MacLean: ”..the utterly chilling story of the ideological origins of the single most powerful and least understood threat to democracy today: the attempt by the billionaire-backed radical right to undo democratic governance. For what becomes clear as the story moves forward decade by decade is..a stealth bid to reverse-engineer all of America, at both the state and..national levels, back to the political economy and oligarchic governance of midcentury Virginia, minus the segregation.”
..”it wasn’t until the early 2010s..the rest of us began to sense..something extraordinarily troubling had..entered American politics..every so often, but with growing frequency and in far-flung locations, an action would be taken by governmental figures on the radical right that went well beyond typical party politics, beyond even..extreme partisanship…Wisconsin in 2011..in New Jersey..several GOP-controlled state legislatures to inflict flesh-wounding cuts in public education..also took aim at state universities..Then came a surge of synchronized proposals to suppress voter turnout..all-out campaign to defeat the Affordable Care Act..
”Numerous independent observers described such stonewalling, vicious partisanship, and attempts to bring..normal functioning of government to a halt as ‘unprecedented..William Cronin[‘s]..investigations convinced him..what had happened in Wisconsin did not begin in the state. ’What we’ve witnessed is part of a ‘well-planned and well-
coordinated national campaign..he suggested others look into..the American Legislative Exchange Council..producing hundreds of ‘model laws’ each year for Republican legislators..to enact..Alongside laws to devastate labor unions..others would rewrite tax codes, undo environmental protections, privatize many public resources, and require police to take action against undocumented immigrants.”
MacLean: In a January, 1997, speech at George Mason University, “Charles Koch signaled his desire for the work he funded to be conducted behind the backs of the majority. ”Since we are greatly outnumbered,’ Koch conceded to the assembled team, the movement could not win simply by persuasion. Instead, the cause’s insiders had to use their knowledge of ‘the rules of the game’ – that game being how modern democratic governance works – ‘to create winning strategies.’..Koch warned, ‘The failure to use our superior technology ensures failure.” Translation: the American people would not support their plans, so to win they had to work behind the scenes, using a covert strategy instead of open declaration of what they really wanted.”
MacLean: ”..what exactly constituted that ‘free society’ where ‘liberty of the individual’ was preserved? Buchanan found it in an earlier time when government was unusually weak. there were, consequently, few rules to constrain how a man might get wealthy, and great restraints on..government in asking for some part of that wealth..’ “What animated Buchanan..was the seemingly unfettered ability of an increasingly more powerful federal government to force individuals with wealth to pay for a growing number of public goods and social programs they had no personal say in approving..To Buchanan, what others described as taxation to advance social justice or the common good was nothing more than a modern version of mob attempts to take by force what the takers had no moral right to: the fruits of another person’s efforts. In his mind, to protect wealth was to protect the individual against a form of legally sanctioned gangsterism.”
“The goal of the causer, Buchanan announced..[was].. no longer who writes..The focus must shift from who writes the rules to changing the rules. For liberty to thrive..the cause must figure out how to put legal ..constitutional – shackles on public officials, shackles so powerful..they would no longer have the ability to respond to those who used their numbers to get government to do their bidding. There was a second, more diabolical aspect..one that..influenced Koch’s own thinking. Once these shackles were in place, they had to be binding and permanent. the only way to ensure the will of the majority could no longer influence representative government on core maters of political economy was through what he called “constitutional revolution.'”
MacLean: “A similar cynicism ruled Koch’s decisions to make peace – at least in the short term – with the religious right..the organizers who mobilized white evangelicals for political action..were entrepreneurs..so common cause could be made..religious entrepreneurs were happy to sell libertarian economics to to their flocks – above all, opposition to public schooling and calls for reliance on family provision or charity in place of government assistance..ther Koch team learn[ed] how to leverage wider corporate backing..”
MacLean: “The Koch team’s most important stealth move..the one that proved most critical to success, was to wrest control over the machinery of the Republican Party, beginning in the late 1990s and with sharply escalating determination after 2008..while these radicals of the right operate within the Republican Party and use that party as a delivery vehicle..the cadre’s loyalty is..to their revolutionary cause.”
MacLean: “..what this cause really seeks is a return to oligarchy..to reinstate the..political economy that prevailed in America at the opening of the twentieth century, when..mass disenfranchisement of voters and the legal treatment of labor unions as illegitimate enabled large corporations and wealthy individuals to dominate Congress and most state governments..and feel secure..the nation’s courts would not interfere with their reign.”
With Justice For All 