Fallacy and Disorientation
The Radicalization of the Republican Party
It is legitimate to extend the logical conclusions that follow from any concept, design, or principle, including its nuances and entirely novel judgments. However, if you continue to extend logic farther and farther from its originating source, the resulting conclusions will eventually become absurd. The forced extension breaks the logical connection, and the disconnected conclusions will become something entirely distinct, something different.
Governments derive their just power from the consent of the governed. It was as early as the 16th century that this principle was established, one of the classic examples in the development of international law. It opened the door to the fundamental concept on which democracy is based, as in the American Declaration of Independence.
The Spanish philosopher Francisco Suarez theorized for the first time that the source of governmental authority resides in the people rather than in the person of the king or, in his case, the queen. As a good Jesuit and a loyal son of Spain, he worked his way to this conclusion as justification for ridding Protestant England of the rule of Queen Elizabeth I.
Suarez rested his understanding of international law on the premise that the Pope can discern God’s law. It logically followed that the pontiff had the right to declare a ruler a heretic. The next step in the logical progression was to identify the subjects of Elizabeth I as the source of the nation’s governmental authority, thereby granting them the right to overthrow her as a heretic. Thus, since she would be subject to execution if overthrown by her people, this line of reasoning justified her assassination. Sympathizers of Spain, mostly spies and radical Jesuits, planned several assassination attempts. The most consequential effort was the Babington Plot to assassinate Queen Elizabeth by a Protestant and replace her with her cousin, Mary, Queen of Scots. It led instead to the execution of Mary.
This moment in Western history serves as an example of how logic can be abused through the steps taken by logical extension. Similarly, during the last two generations in the United States, the Republican Party followed a line of reasoning that began with its understanding of conservative government but gradually extended from conclusion to conclusion until it contradicted its original premise. The Republican Party is not conservative.
The path toward Trumpism began with the denial of the value, the legitimacy, and even the necessity of government. Newly declared as “the” conservative party, the administration leveraged the support of the economic establishment, giving it the opportunity to take advantage of an opening to influence politics through campaign contributions and lobbying.
Meanwhile, the religious arm of the cultural realm, organized as the Moral Majority, had entered the political fray in support of both the realm of political governance and the economic realm to enhance its political and financial importance. Yet this right-wing form of Christianity began to compete with government and economic policies, seeking to gain a position from which to push toward theocracy. This hope for domination gradually morphed into Christian Nationalism.
I began Democracy and Empire by questioning the use of the categories “right” and “left” or “liberal” and “conservative.” Using the spectrum and sliding certain degrees to the right or to the left, for one example, we will eventually discover how much they are alike in actuality. As each moves down the spectrum used to visualize increasingly liberal or increasingly conservative actions, the weight of those actions will increase.
At some point, the spectrum will begin to bend under the weight of action placed upon it, whether or not we can see it early enough to note what is happening. The spectrum will bend toward itself until the two ends ultimately meet. At that point, it becomes apparent that the two “distinctions” are really the same. You can see this in the examples of Hitler and Stalin. Call one a fascist and call the other a communist until it is revealed they are the same, possessing the same values, principles, methods, and goals. Is Trump a fascist or a communist? Take your pick.
How can any party openly identify its aim as radical change and yet call itself conservative? To a significant extent, the Republican Party has lost its connection to the political and philosophical foundations articulated by conservative luminaries such as British political philosopher Edmund Burke and the founder of the conservative movement Barry Goldwater. Serious conservatives have been jumping ship during the Republican Party’s movement toward the radical authoritarianism of Trumpism. The eminent conservative commentator George Will left the Republican Party in disgust. Bill Kristol, a leading thinker of the neo-conservative movement and an important party insider for 30 years, has reached the conclusion that it cannot save itself. The list is long.
Perhaps this only means that it is going to support one of the three realms, quite obviously the economic, limiting the governing class more and more to the will of the very wealthy and shaping the realm of political governance into its tool. Simultaneously, it would weaken the cultural realm until it too is shaped into little more than a tool. Yet while the legislative branch of political governance has been weakened beyond imagination and its judicial branch is both neutered and co-opted, the executive branch is awfully close to governing with the power of a dictator. Certainly, Trump is trying.
When all is said and done, the Republican Party has repeatedly found itself forced into a strategy of winning power without a majority vote. The tools of support and levers of power necessary for creating this dysfunctional imbalance between political governance, economic empowerment, and culture were established and utilized through policies supporting racism, money in politics, control of the judiciary, gun rights, and the protection of business from acknowledging global warming.
These and other policies were aimed at the frustrations and resentments of certain elements of the population and proved effective in causing them to grow exponentially. The policies and propagandized communications proved remarkably effective, so much so that the voting public still has not come to an adequate understanding of the actual situation.
It is doubtful that leaders from Reagan to the triumvirate of McConnell, Johnson, and Trump understood this clearly, instead just shucking and jiving on behalf of their narrow personal purposes.
Ideas like these are best explored together. Share your thoughts. I read and respond to every comment.
Good column. I was thinking about the New Yorker piece how the administration has removed all of the non partisan board members of the Commodities Futures Trading Commission except for its handpicked director who ended ongoing legal actions against American Bitcoin which Don Jr’s private equity fund partly owns. He’s co-opted the structures of government to pull the levers for his own corrupt agenda and wealth (like a slot machine). I don’t see how things return to the status quo of the pre Trump era. More likely we will need a ‘third constitution’ aimed specifically at corruption, the independence of the justice department, and reform of the Supreme Court with term limits among other things.