The 60-Year Republican Scheme to Undermine American Democracy | Opinion

In a Daily Take here on Hartmann Report I brought up Russell Kirk and how he influenced the modern far-right wing of the Republican Party. Some respondents asked who he was, while others expressed disbelief at the idea that Republicans genuinely thought the middle class, established through Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal, wasn’t beneficial. bad So, let me share with you the background story of what I previously talked about.

In 1964, I was 13 years old when my father, who was an active member of the Republican Party, handed me a copy of John Stormer’s book “ No One Dares Call It Treason The Goldwater campaign had forwarded this material to him, and its assertion that the State Department was brimming with communists aiming to hand America over to the Soviet Union had his friends abuzz.

Paradoxically, Stormer’s publication and the movement it sparked within the Republican Party have significantly contributed to that political group now teetering on the edge of completely embracing fascism over democracy in America.

And it began with extremely wealthy men (all men at the time) who aimed to leverage the specter of a "communist threat" to weaken the labor union movement, thereby boosting their personal corporate earnings and CEO compensation.

The core principle of the contemporary conservative movement can be traced back a generation prior to Stormer’s publication to a prominent Republican thinker named Russell Kirk. He presented this idea in his 1951 work. The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Eliot , as I detail in The Hidden History of American Oligarchy .

Kirk contended that the middle class posed a danger to America because they threatened the established social order. He feared that without distinct classes and clear hierarchies—particularly with the extremely wealthy not having total dominion over all aspects of life—the nation might descend into disorder.

The first chapter of his book focused on Edmund Burke, the Irish conservative who wrote In 1790, it was decided that hairdressers and candle makers were ineligible to hold political offices or even cast votes.

The profession of a barber or a laborious candle maker should not be considered honorable for anyone—let alone numerous other demeaning occupations. These individuals should not face persecution from the government; however, the government itself endures mistreatment when people from these professions, whether separately or together, are allowed to govern. You believe you're fighting against biases, yet you're challenging what is natural...

In 1951, Kirk and his supporters basically foretold that should today’s "barbers and laborers" -- including college students, women, members of the working class, and people of color -- come anywhere near achieving the same degree of social and political influence as affluent white males, it would result in an almost inevitable communist revolution in America, leading us into the hands of Stalin and his government.

(Consider that at the time, racial segregation was legally mandated and harshly implemented, the voting age was set at 21, college campuses were nearly exclusively male-only, abortion and contraception remained illegal in most states, and women were unable to open checking accounts or obtain credit cards unless they had their husband’s, brother’s, or father’s authorization.)

During the 1950s, Kirk and his assertions about the risks posed by an assertive middle class garnered a modest group of supporters; among them were notable figures such as William F. Buckley Jr. and Barry Goldwater. However, the majority of Republicans viewed him as somewhat eccentric.

But when the birth-control pill was legalized in 1961 and the Vietnam War heated up a few years later, those marginalized groups Kirk had warned his wealthy white male followers about began to rise up in protest.

Children were torching their draft cards, women were setting aside their bras, and Martin Luther King Jr. was spearheading a campaign for civil rights that authorities within the white establishment claimed incited riots across U.S. urban centers. Simultaneously, gay liberation was making significant strides during this period of social upheaval.

At the same time, the oil embargoes from the 1970s ignited an inflationary firestorm, prompting unionized workers across America to go on strike demanding higher wages to cope with escalating living costs.

Affluent conservative individuals were alarmed as the extremely wealthy propagated the notion that America was undergoing a "moral decay," which they believed could only be resolved by dismantling labor unions and other "progressive" initiatives sharing similar grassroots objectives with these unions.

They started believing that they were witnessing Kirk’s prophecy unfolding nightly on their TV screens: the so-called " communists" — which included assertive racial minorities, women who had abandoned what was perceived as their proper societal role, students protesting against the Vietnam War, unionized laborers, and individuals from various genders not conforming to traditional norms — seemed close to "dominating" America.

The simultaneous arrival of these five movements captured the interest of conservatives and Republicans who had once dismissed or mocked Kirk during the 1950s. As a result, prominent American conservative figures—such as William F. Buckley Jr.—began urging their Republican counterparts to recognize that Russell Kirk was truly prophetic.

They had at last discovered a politically palatable "justification" to dismantle the prosperity of working-class individuals and shift trillions into their personal coffers: the fear of communism along with a predicted societal decline fueled by an assertive middle class.

The Republican/Conservative approach to addressing the "crisis" posed by those five movements became evident in 1981 with Ronald Reagan’s inauguration. The ultra-wealthy white males backing what came to be known as the Reagan Revolution aimed to diminish the influence of the middle class, aiming to quell the demonstrations from the ‘60s and ‘70s, reinstate "social stability," and boost corporate profits.

Their plan was to declare war on labor unions so wages could slide back down again, end free college across the nation so students would live in fear rather than be willing to protest, and increase the penalties Nixon had already put on drugs so they could use those laws against their scapegoats, particularly the hippy antiwar protesters and Black people demanding an end to police killings. They also wanted to outlaw abortion, to put women “back in their place.”

Therefore, Reagan significantly reduced taxes for wealthy individuals and increased taxes on working-class citizens on 11 occasions. For instance, he imposed income taxes on Social Security benefits and unemployment compensation, and implemented a system to monitor and levy taxes on tip earnings, all of which were formerly exempt from taxation but primarily utilized by members of the middle class.

He ended the tax deductibility On credit card, auto loan, and student debt interests, which predominantly affect working-class individuals, he imposed burdens. Concurrently, he reduced the highest income tax rate for millionaires and billionaires from 74% to 25%. Back then, there were just a few billionaires in America due largely to earlier tax policies; however, today’s alarming surge in billionaire numbers came after the substantial tax reductions for wealthy individuals implemented by Reagan, Bush, and Trump.

Reagan declared war on labor unions, crushed PATCO in less than a week, and over the next decade the result of his war on labor was that union membership went from about a third of the American workforce when he came into office to around 10% at the end of the Reagan/Bush presidencies. It’s just now beginning to recover from its low of 6% of the private workforce.

He and Bush also husbanded the moribund 1947 General Agreement on Tariffs and Trades (GATT, which let Clinton help create the WTO) and negotiated NAFTA, which Clinton signed and thus opened a floodgate for American companies to move manufacturing overseas, leaving American workers underemployed while radically cutting corporate labor costs and union membership.

Indeed, Reagan’s assault on labor led to a significant reduction in both the average real minimum wage and median income over a few decades—more so than at any time since the GOP-induced Great Depression of the 1920s and '30s.

The millionaire's strategy to bring the middle class down a notch was succeeding beyond expectations.

If Reagan hadn't dismantled the country's labor unions, the typical American household might now earn well above $100,000 annually, and those working at minimum wage could potentially enjoy significantly higher incomes. family income For an income of $86,000 annually, a person with just one breadwinner could manage to purchase a home, afford a vehicle, cover their children’s higher education expenses, and secure a comfortable retirement—much like what my father achieved after three decades in a union position at a tool-and-die facility.

Rather, CEOs nowadays pocket all that cash for themselves and their investors.

And under Reagan’s policies, the soaring costs of college education have resulted in an accumulated student debt exceeding $1.5 trillion for an entire generation. As anticipated, numerous students are hesitant to risk their investments by engaging in protests or activism on campus grounds.

The strategy for promoting this campaign aimed at economic decline involved convincing Americans that such measures would benefit the wealthy elite. This was achieved by framing worker protections, educational subsidies, gender equality, and enforcement of civil rights as elements of "socialism." Conservatives argued that embracing these socialist principles could lead to governance akin to that under the Soviet Union, thereby discouraging their adoption in the U.S.

As Reagan informed us during his first inauguration, government "socialistic" initiatives were not the answer to our issues, but rather were the problem itself .

He mocked the once-honorable concept of serving one's nation and quipped that there weren’t truly any decent individuals remaining in public office since those who were talented or skilled would opt to work in the private sector where the pay was much higher.

He went so far as to say that the nine scariest words in the English language are, "I'm from the government, and I'm here to assist."

Following Lewis Powell’s 1971 memo , throughout the 1970s and 1980s Republican billionaires built a massive infrastructure of think tanks and media outlets to promote and amplify Reagan’s message that government supports of any sort for poor or working-class people were simply gateway drugs to socialism and, inevitably, communism.

It so completely swept America that by the 1990s even President Bill Clinton was saying things like, “The era of big government is over,” and “This is the end of welfare as we know it.” Limbaugh, Hannity and other right-wing radio talkers were getting millions annually in subsidies from organizations backed by billionaires such as the Heritage Foundation . The billionaire-controlled Fox "News" continues this legacy today.

It was quite an effective scheme for the wealthy individuals who controlled the GOP and aimed, during the 1950s, to halt the labor union movements demanding profit sharing from business owners with their employees.

Initially, they scared Americans regarding communism and socialism, later persuading roughly half of us that these ideologies stemmed directly from "liberal" social and economic initiatives.

Labor unions, women's liberation, LGBTQ+ inclusivity, civil rights advancements, raises in the minimum wage, and even restrictions on how corporations operate were all predicted by them to result in a system akin to Soviet despotism.

Therefore, to rescue America from itself, Reagan weakened the American middle class, redistributing wealth over $50 trillion from the pockets of working-class individuals to the vaults of the extremely wealthy.

By 2016, Americans began realizing they'd been taken advantage of—and that Bill Clinton, Hillary's spouse, was complicit by endorsing Reagan's strategies and intensifying support for free trade—leading them to vocally call for transformation.

Amidst this turmoil stepped Donald Trump, who declared himself the nation’s rescuer. During the Republican primaries, he highlighted the corruption of his rivals, notably Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio, systematically dismantling each one in turn.

For the general election in 2016, he changed his tune and ran on what was traditionally a Democratic platform, saying he was going to bring jobs home, end so-called “free trade” policies, raise taxes on the rich so much that “my friends won’t talk to me anymore,” and make sure every American had free or low-cost healthcare and access to an affordable college education.

They were all lies — something Trump had become adept at during his business career — but they worked and sucked in disaffected workers who knew they’d been screwed but weren’t sure who did it to them or why.

So here we are.

We currently have a president who openly supports fascism and appears to be friends with authoritarian Russia. This individual was found guilty by a jury of 34 felony charges and has also faced convictions for sexual assault, which a judge described as "rape," along with fraudulent activities.

He's implementing strategies and regulations that might transform America into an autocratic state similar to Russia or Hungary. Additionally, he seems intent on shifting U.S. allegiance away from NATO and the European Union towards alliances with countries such as Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea.

We are essentially witnessing the authoritarian future that John Stormer cautioned us about way back in 1964. Instead of "Communists" within the State Department as he feared, we now have a billionaire president whose stated aim is to abolish union rights and suppress dissenters—potentially through incarceration or even employing armed military forces against protesters.

It all stems from affluent conservatives financing an initiative in the 1960s aimed at frightening Americans about socialism and communism, thereby halting the rise in wages fueled by unions which was eroding their profit margins.

Maybe nobody dares to call it treason, but I will.

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