What Happened to Republican Opposition to Big Government?

Paul Revere spreading the alarm, prior to
composition of the U.S. Constitution

Federalism does not give exclusive political power to a central government but divides power between national and state governments. The United States of America was designed as a federalist system. The 20th-century Republican Party (not to be confused with the 19th-century Republican Party), and especially its right wing, used to be very strong for noninterference by the federal government. Twentieth-century Republicans were against the Feds most of the time. They were all "Don't Tread On Me!" Funny (not really), but now that they are (I don’t say “firmly”) in the seat of federal power, they have changed their tune big-time and seem more than willing to go along with a L'état c'est moi! executive.

 

Look no further than the president’s war against “sanctuary cities” and his sending National Guard troops into cities with democratically elected Democratic mayors, against the wishes of both city mayors and state governors, even where Republican governors say the troops aren’t needed. Without search warrants, without probable cause, ICE troops—and make no mistake, they are definitely “troops,” too—are seizing individuals off the streets, out of their homes, from school and store parking lots, even from courthouses where they, the individuals seized, were showing up for court appointments in the legal pursuance of their paths to citizenship. The people thus abducted are not arrested, only “detained,” without lawyers, without court dates, in prison-like facilities often far from their homes (there is one in Baldwin, Michigan), where visits from family members are difficult when not impossible.  

 

It doesn’t stop with the deployment of the National Guard and with ICE seizures, either. Many states with reasonable questions about the role of so-called Artificial Intelligence are looking for ways to control that genie before it is completely out of the bottle (too late?), and now the president is raging against state attempts at control and has signed an order to override and invalidate states’ laws controlling AI. It's an issue that is only going to get larger, state by state, with big companies angling for land for huge data centers, e.g., 280 acres in Wayne County’s Van Buren Township; 172 acres in Ionia County’s Lyon Township; 250 acres in  Saline Township south of Ann Arbor; and more.

Water, energy, noise and light pollution are the immediate concerns as data centers “flock” to Michigan communities (and what protection do these communities have from billionaire-owned corporations backed by federal executive power?), but that doesn’t even begin to address the large possibility that these data centers constitute the largest financial investment bubble our country has ever seen. If you didn’t follow the link to watch this podcast in my recent Books in Northport post, please follow and watch and listen now. You don’t have to go through my blog. Here is the direct link. Know what’s at stake before you take a position, please, but don't wait to find out what's at stake!

 

Finally (and I say “finally” only because I’m stopping today with this item, not because it exhausts the list), the right-wing Heritage Foundation is now targeting ranked-choice voting as something to be shot down. The idea of increasing voter choice has been gaining momentum in Michigan through a petition drive, but eliminating ranked-choice voting is among the priorities for the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, a wish list of policies with the overall goal of taking power from individual voters and from states and handing it to a federal government with strong right-wing goals.  

 

(Was our federal system designed with states as incubators, so-called “laboratories of democracy,” or is that only myth? It's the rationale I've always heard for the limited independence of state governments. I found an interesting article online that argues against states as laboratories for democracy, but the argument seems to be that it is third-party groups within states that shake things up, not the state governments themselves, so how strong an argument is that? After all, those third-party groups are working through the state governments. What do you think?)

 

Washington is not dictating every single state law (yet), so when does the current administration think it’s okay for states to take an initiative? Banning abortion or restricting voting rights on a state-by-state basis seem permissible to Heritage-Washington. (I can only wish those vitally concerned with the lives of zygotes had at least equal concern for the lives of air-breathing children and adults.) Otherwise? The Great Father in Washington will decide for you. 

Are you on board with that? What kind of freedom is possible without community control and with state power overpowered?

America’s New Communists (not who you think they’d be)

A new, hideous, idiotic, and morally bankrupt philosophy has sprouted in the bosom of Western civilization, and the hydra-headed viper goes by the hideous, idiotic, ugly and awkward name ‘longtermism.’ 

 

Longtermism’s adherents rely on mathematical projections and sci-fi futurist imaginings, glommed onto old-fashioned utilitarianism (“the greatest good for the greatest number”), to argue that since projected future population numbers will be so much greater than the present-day population of earth, we should accept, even welcome, present human suffering for the sake of the happiness and flourishing of a much, much greater number of beings in the future beyond our own life spans. In this triumphal march of bean-counters (who calculate as if they know the future), wealthy trashers of the planet are elevated to the status of Utopian visionaries, seen to be hastening the glorious future, as I will get to in a moment.

 

But first it gets worse. 

 

Those “huge” numbers of future populations? They might not, probably won’t, even be human. They might be – they are imagined to be by longtermists – “transhumans,” or “posthumans,” even digital simulations. Imagine being asked to give up your place in a lifeboat, not for another human being, but for a digital simulation. To sacrifice your grandchildren’s happiness for such “beings.” Do you find this scenario appealing?

 

Traditional Native American reverence for the earth (a reverence those who insist on a sharp division between the Creator and the creation may consider “unchristian,” but let’s not pursue that now) has at its forefront the Seventh Generation Principle, which holds that we should live today so that our descendants seven generations into the future will still have access to earth and water and air and other natural resources equal to what we enjoy. Or better. (We have a lot of remediation to do!) The word ‘longtermism’ may suggest such a principle to your ear, but you would be deceived. Longtermism is diametrically and absolutely opposed to the Seventh Generation Principle. Longtermism advocates burning through earth’s resources as fast as we can in order to motivate space travel -- emigration from Mother Earth – and colonization of outer space. In the longtermist point of view, there is no obligation at all to care for our earthly environment: it is nothing but a launching pad to an extraplanetary future.

Longtermists are generally very wealthy or, if not wealthy themselves, sycophants of the wealthy, and you can readily see why. Longtermism involves no obligation to conservation of earth’s resources, no obligation to relieve human suffering, certainly no call to “live in the moment” and give thanks. Is it any wonder that American longtermists are flocking eagerly to today’s Republican Party? Longtermists and Republicans see eye to eye on quite a bit. They are natural bedfellows in their beliefs that greed is good, more is better, and environmentalism is contraindicated -- for countless reasons.

 

If you have ever read Ayn Rand’s We the Living, you’ll recognize a political party ready and willing to sacrifice today’s lives for those of the future, but did you in your wildest dreams imagine that the threat would come not from the Left but from the Right? I got over my youthful infatuation with Ayn Rand decades ago, but I’ll refer to her once again to remind you that in her tale of the post-Revolutionary Russian nightmare, Party loyalty was everything. At times the Party demanded the sacrifice of its principles for the sake of its principles – yes, a belief in contradictions was required – and those who questioned were shunned and purged. (Often, in her novel, they were driven to suicide, their idealism shattered.) Any recent examples (hint: RINOs) come to mind?

 

It is deeply ironic that the sacrifice of the living for the future and the placing of party loyalty above all other principles, Rand’s twin nemeses, should be joined today by what she saw as the solution to the nightmare. She saw selfishness as the answer, but today selfishness marches hand in hand with unquestioning party loyalty and disdain for present life.

 

Maybe you’ve feared Communism for decades, watched anxiously for Communists coming at you from the Left (“creeping socialism”), but take a good look around. While your attention was elsewhere, the danger was massing on the Right, behind your back. Today it’s the radical, hard-core, far-right Republicans and longtermists who most resemble the Communist Party of 20^th-century Bolshevism after the Russian Revolution.