Editor’s note: This commentary is by Bob Hawk, of Walden, who is a retired organic farmer and ecologist and still active homesteader. He is a founding member and 10-year board member of Northern Rivers Land Trust.
[A]merican politics seemed to undergo a dramatic shift at the end of the first decade of the 21st century. A concerted national effort was underway to disempower labor unions, undo environmental protection rules, suppress voter turnout, rewrite tax codes, and privatize many public resources such as public education. Those actions appeared to focus on reducing the authority and reach of government and limit the ability of the electorate to protect their rights.
In her book, “Democracy in Chains,” Nancy MacLean asserts that the aggressive shift in libertarian activism was the result of a stealth movement to “save capitalism from democracy” that began in the ’50s and ’60s. It was a secret campaign that was quietly funded by millions of dollars from the Koch brothers and a large network of wealthy donors, including the Cato Institute, the Heritage Foundation, Citizens for a Sound Economy, Americans for Prosperity, the Club for Growth, and many more. The book documents the origins and rise of the Radical Right whose agenda was to change and lock up the rules of government so that the majority, the “takers,” could no longer dictate policies that adversely affected the power and privilege of the minority, the “makers.” The Koch network believed that 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.
During the ’70s the network’s focus was to convert people of power in domains that mattered: politics, business, the media, and the courts, and to mobilize corporate America to transform law and politics to ensure that the protection of and enhancement of corporate profits and private wealth become the cornerstones of our legal system. Those efforts were funded by many corporate donors as well as by the Olin, Scaife, and Smith Richardson foundations.
By the 1980s, the strategy became a long game of “a kind of crab walk, even if it required advancing misleading claims in order to take terrain bit by bit, in a manner that cumulatively, yet quietly, could begin to radically alter the power relations of American society.” This included a media campaign of generating mistrust and misinformation among the public in the viability of Social Security, the effectiveness of government, the “job-killing” effect of environmental regulations, the failure of public education, “socialized” medicine fear mongering, and tactics of divide and conquer. The buzzwords became individual savings accounts, single-rate flat tax, right-to-work laws, and school vouchers.
To what extent has the Koch libertarian movement been successful in decimating our foundational notion of government being of, by and for the people? Koch-funded and sometimes Koch-staffed state-level think-and-do tanks exist in all 50 states and are affiliated with the state policy network to coordinate efforts to prevent state governments from responding to the demands of the “takers.” Tea Party activists are pushing to pass the legislative agenda of Americans for Prosperity and Freedom-Works. Right-to-work laws have been passed in four former free states between 2012 and 2016: Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin and West Virginia. Mandatory arbitration agreements are restricting citizens’ constitutional rights to sue in court, a quasi-privatization of the justice system. GOP-controlled states have passed “preemption laws” denying local governments the right to adopt policies that depart from the model being imposed by the libertarian network-dominated state legislatures, such as Florida’s ban on enacting sensible gun laws, or, in other states, raise local minimum wages, or protect LGBTQ citizens. Gerrymander districts are creating a supermajority of reliably controlled states needed to hold a constitutional convention to lock in forever the rules that would give dominance to the privilege and power of the takers. “In the two years after Republican candidates swept the 2010 midterm elections, ALEC-backed (American Legislative Exchange Council, funded by Koch and other corporate donors) legislators in forty-one states introduced more than 180 bills to restrict who could vote and how (to) reduce the political influence of low-income voters and young people.”
In truth, the Radical Right have already successfully achieved many of their goals. The Supreme Court has ruled that corporations are to be regarded as citizens (Citizens United) and therefore able to contribute to political campaigns. Mitch McConnell suspended the Senate rules to pack the Supreme Court with a candidate compatible with the right’s interpretation of the Constitution. Inexperienced but right-wing ideologues are being confirmed at a rapid pace into judicial positions. The Republican majority passed the biggest tax cut to corporations in history. Betsy Devos, secretary of education, pushes her agenda of vouchers and privatization of schools. David Schulkin, secretary of veterans affairs, under pressure from the Koch-backed Concerned Veterans for America, is fired because of his opposition to privatizing the VA. Scott Pruitt’s goal is to systematically decimate the EPA, trashing rules and regulations that limit corporations’ ability to maximize profits at the expense of the Commons. And Trump is regularly calling for the end of the 60 percent rule in the Senate to enable quicker passage of the right’s agenda.
This week the Koch brothers’ network of billionaires, “nonprofit” think tanks, and corporations is now on the verge of accomplishing their goal: locking up the political system to advance their ultra-conservative agenda. The nomination of Brett Kavanaugh, a pro-business advocate, will be the final capstone in their 50-year stealth campaign, cementing a conservative Supreme Court for decades to come. That court will be the final arbiter of all future legal challenges to their plan to destroy democracy as we know it.
