Republican Liberty Is A Nightmare

     "Give me economic liberty or give me death," Patrick Henry never said at the Second Virginia Convention in 1775. However, beginning in the mid-1950s and continuing and escalating to now, and with hundreds of millions of dollars from Charles Koch, Republicans are intent on delivering economic liberty to everyone. Except that Republicans are really Libertarians who hold that the federal government should maintain civil order and provide military defense -- and nothing else. And even though everyone would have economic liberty, it would exclusively benefit the Republican's favorite minority -- rich white men -- because economic liberty, when fully implemented, would allow them to profit at will without government interference and without regulation.
     What follows is a summary of Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right's Stealth Plan for America, by Nancy MacLean, a professor of history and public policy at Duke University. The book details the Right's stealth plan to return America to the early 20th century where there was no health care, social security, environmental protections, and other rights for members of a civilized society.
     In the 1950s, a little-know economist, James M. Buchanan, developed, without empirical data or research, a branch of economics known as Public Choice Theory to refine the implementation of the bait, economic liberty. Buchanan based his theory on a 1896 paper by Knut Wicksell, a Swedish economist, who argued that tax policy and government spending should be arrived at through unanimous consent. Wicksell argued that people shouldn't be forced to pay for projects and policies that don't benefit them. Wicksell, however, was arguing for disenfranchised workers who had no vote, and Buchanan misapplied his logic to an functioning democracy. Basically, Public Choice Theory described how the majority would elect leaders who would enact policies for the benefit of all and then levy taxes to pay for them. However, since rich white men would always be a minority and are adverse to paying for anything that benefits others, various methods would have to be stealthy introduced so that an ideologically driven rich white Libertarian male minority can determine the course of government and overrule the majority.
     Buchanan's theories required control of state legislatures because states can keep local wages low, disable anti-discrimination ordinances, suppress voting with unnecessary and harsh voter-ID laws, unfairly skew voting districts (gerrymander), weaken unions, and override local governments. He knew that voters are mostly interested in federal and local politics, but much less so at the state level thus allowing for easier entrenchment. State control increases the probability of federal control and the ability to weaken federal power.
     The GOP has used Buchanan's theories to get their supporters to vote against their own best interests. Voting for economic liberty seems reasonable until one realizes that it requires that the conditions for civil society -- items like social security, health care, public education, equal rights, consumer protection, representative unions, a clean environment, uncontaminated food, fair elections, safe roads and bridges -- would not be available because rich white men don't need them. Most Republican voters are not rich white men, yet they support their party because economic liberty sounds great until you find that none of the conditions listed above would be available unless you pay for them yourself or you buy them from an unregulated private company that may or may not be qualified to deliver the service, but would profit greatly anyway. Unregulated predatory capitalism is not compatible with democracy.
     Republicans have always known that tax cuts for the rich don't pay for themselves. This has been repeatedly demonstrated by Reagan, both Bushes, Trump, and several states, including Kansas, Wisconsin, and Oklahoma. They use these tax cuts as a gift (bribe) to their "minority" and as a ploy to deliberately devastate budgets to force further cuts until either the majority rebels, or they achieve their ultimate goal of a true Libertarian country with economic liberty but no political democracy.
     In 1980, Augusto Pinochet's military dictatorship in Chile consulted with Buchanan to write a new constitution using economic liberty to enable him to remain in power while feigning democracy. Amid the torture and killings, Buchanan advised to: privatize health care, social security, and education; disband unions, student groups, and farmer's groups;  and end all regulation. The economy collapsed in 1982.
     Republicans are trying to turn the United States into Pinochet's land of economic liberty, an Eden for rich white men, and a nightmare for everyone else. 

John L. Ferri

"Libertarians are not going to get what they want through the political system unless they use subterfuge, because most Americans don’t agree with those policies." - Michael Kazin, Georgetown University, historian of American politics and social movements.

References:
Democracy in Chains, Nancy MacLean
A New History of the Right Has Become an Intellectual Flashpoint
Democracy's Critics