the REPUBLICAN ANARCHY COLLECTIVE (or the end of civilization as we need it

By Brad Parker

This iteration of the Republican Party should rightly be known as the "Republican Anarchy Collective". How it transformed itself and to what ends is a complex story.

by Brad Parker

Now is the soporific summer of the Republican's Ronald Reagan-Howard Jarvis disconnect made acrid winter by the son of Bush, the bumbling buffoon from Crawford, land of the kooky Texas millionaires - as Eisenhower so affectionately referred to them. The year was 2004 and the culmination of decades of prefabrication, plotting and deception had at last born fruit. Republicans were obstinately in control of all branches of the federal government. "Make way for the Conservative millennium" they chortled.

From the first days of their arrival, in 1994, bandying the bogus "contract" about the capitol steps, there was something about this particular confederation of extreme right-wingers that seemed queasily malevolent; something that didn't smack of politics as usual. Now it's 2005 and their once great expectations, pummeled by recent setbacks have given way to reveal some of the backroom operations behind this gang of provocateurs. Even so, many questions remain to be answered. Why would they want to become the government when their enmity for it drives them to, as they have said, "drown it in a bathtub"? What ominous rumination has been smuggled into Washington DC inside of their baggage? Who are these people?

For the answers we must look beneath the thin veneer of equivocation proffered by the Republican spin machine, beyond the mocking tirades of the talk jocks. As we examine this cabal, remind yourself that not all political partisans are operating under the same rules or after the same ends. For radicals like this bunch the opposite of logic and rational thought, or rules, is more suited to their purposes especially when their inherited delusions seem to them to be the rules. Anything goes for this crowd.

This iteration of the Republican Party should rightly be known as the "Republican Anarchy Collective". How it transformed itself and to what ends is a complex story. But before an explanation of the RAC and its motives is offered, two definitions should be considered to guide our examination:

Anarchy Noun: A state of lawlessness and disorder (usually resulting from a failure of government) [syn: lawlessness] - Absence of any form of political authority - Political disorder and confusion.

Civilization Noun: An advanced state of intellectual, cultural, and material development in human society, marked by progress in the arts and sciences, the extensive use of record-keeping, including writing, and the appearance of complex political and social institutions.

Armed with only these two simple definitions we can begin to see where the Republican Anarchy Collective is taking America: a very Roman brand of "anarchy" and an end to "civilization" as we need it. Hence, where as to the Democratic, Liberal and Progressive majority of citizens the RAC seems to be unhinged from principle, they are in fact following a precisely laid out plan formed over 70 years: a plan to dismantle the government except for the military and behavior police, civilization for the few and anarchy for the many.

The New Deal

Franklin Delano Roosevelt was a politician with bold transformative ideas. Even though he was a member of the privileged coterie, he consciously fractured their traditions when he set out to establish a more perfect union. His generation of Democrats changed the very purpose of government in America. The New Deal ushered in "civilization" for the broad working class. Franklin took the progressive achievements of his cousin Theodore to new heights with the Social Security Act, the Fair Labor Standards Act, the National Labor Relations Act, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the Public Works Administration, the National Recovery Act, the Securities Act of 1933, the Federal Emergency Relief Administration and so many more audacious legislative initiatives.

As momentous as these programs proved to be for the majority of Americans used to being drowned in the changing seas of economic turmoil they were not cherished by many of the sons and daughters of industrial wealth. As soon as they became law, a long-term plan was set in motion to turn back the clock to the anarchy of the "Gilded Age of the Robber Barons". Wealthy patrons of the Republican Party were determined to regain control of the destiny of the nation and put the riff-raff back where they belonged, in the gutter.

The Wilderness

From 1932 through 1964 the Conservative Republicans suffered under the emergence of the middle class. Thrashing about against the dangers of sin and lefties among us they alternately created momentary lapses of national ethics and lasting injustices aimed at the citizens they despised - anyone without lots of money or of a different ethnicity. In the Sixties and Seventies, no longer just a bunch of rich kooks from Texas, they forged a new alliance, a collective, with the radical religious and sociopathic right.

Ultra right-wing activists like Robert Welch and Phyllis Schlafly as well as John Stormer from the John Birch Society became principal players in the Goldwater Presidential campaign of 1964, carrying with them the "new conservative" torch. They, among others, provided the delusional paranoia of all things "liberal" that was tempered into the Republican Party platform. William F. Buckley Jr. put an intellectual patina on the corrosive creed that was veering away from mere "no taxes" to "no government" (except for the beau monde). Liberal Republicans like Nelson Rockefeller, Lowell Weicker, John Lindsay and Earl Warren were no longer welcome in the Grand Old party of Abraham Lincoln (are there any true Republicans of Lincoln left?). To the waggish glee of the RAC, the emergence of the counter-culture in the Sixties pushed the Republicans further out of the mainstream. With the flourishing of the counter culture, and the animus coming from the far right to it, the seeds were sown for a paradigm shift within the Republican Party.

Thick face, Black heart (Neo-Cons and the ghosts of Stalin, Mao, and Trotsky)

During the Seventies the trifecta of the conservative Republican industrialists, religious fanatics and sociopathic underdogs fused into what we now know as the Republican Anarchy Collective. Each had their particular need and each thought it was getting the best end of the bargain. Industrialists wanted a roll back of the New Deal and a wide-open unregulated market. Fundamentalists wanted a Christian nation based on their spectacularly intolerant and medieval version of what they claim the Bible says. Sociopaths wanted, well, any outcome that would exact revenge upon all of the citizens they reviled. Down at the crossroads their deal with the devil was struck and all they needed was a plan. In the newly dubbed "neo-con" movement they all found what they were looking for.

The RAC wanted to dismantle the government, except for the military. Neo-cons led by Grover Norquist, Paul Wolfowitz, Natan Sharansky, Richard Perle, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Irving Kristol, Norman Podhoretz, Jeanne Kirkpatrick, William Kristol, John Podhoretz, Max Boot, William Bennet, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Robert Novak, Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, James Dobson, Ralph Reed, Paul Weyrich, Tim LaHaye and others provided them with the ideological impetus to get the job done. These chattering-class officios and pseudo-religious grifters also provided an over-arching strategy, which they had perversely found the basis for in the ashes of Communism.

Deriving specious intellectual legitimacy from the writings of Max Shachtman, Leo Strauss and James Burnham, many Neo-cons had drifted from the hard left of the Marxist-Leninist politics of their youth to the hard right of Goldwater and Reagan. Like other neo-cons, Jeanne Kirkpatrick was far to the left and a member of the Youth section of the American Socialist Party in the Sixties. She, along with Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle were members of "Social Democrats USA" in the early Seventies. They were all followers of ex-Trotskyite Max Schachtman. Along with Shachtman they decried the inevitable results of the Bolshevik revolutions. Socialism and communism had failed to live up to their utopian vision.

However, even though they had become disillusioned by the harsh reality of the Soviet Union of Stalin and Communist China of Mao, their disdain did not disavow them of their concrete belief in control of the state by a strong central government under the control of one leader (the old Hobbesian Emperor with new clothes). In fact they were convinced that "orthodoxy" must be strictly enforced in political thought and that "free-thinking" was anathema to the cohesion of the state. Dissent was to them the greatest liability of the "liberal ideal" and encouraged moral weakness.

In their febrile reasoning, top-down Stalinist-style state control would combine with the military to achieve new global objectives. Corporations would become the state. Markets would be opened and maintained by the military masking itself as Democracy Liberator. "Free Enterprise" would be their new mantra of political progress. The political objectives changed but the strategy remained the same. Hence, aggressive corporatism and oligarchic democracy, given birth by conflict, were to be the new hegemony. With riotous evangelical fervor the RAC set out to lead the new "perpetual revolution". Old left had become new right.

Paradox or Paradise?

Alexander Hamilton's eloquent arguments in favor of a durable government include this cautionary passage from the Federalist Papers No. 1, "On the other hand, it will be equally forgotten that the vigor of government is essential to the security of liberty; that, in the contemplation of a sound and well-informed judgment, their interest can never be separated; and that a dangerous ambition more often lurks behind the specious mask of zeal for the rights of the people than under the forbidden appearance of zeal for the firmness and efficiency of government. History will teach us that the former has been found a much more certain road to the introduction of despotism than the latter, and that of those men who have overturned the liberties of republicans, the greatest number have begun their career by paying an obsequious court to the people; commencing demagogues, and ending tyrants."

And so it is with the RAC as their crusade has taken them from obscurity to near complete control of the federal and most state governments. It all began with Reagan (former Democrat and president of a union) and the Sagebrush Rebellion, promising to return the government to the people, end over-taxation and democratize the world. Using the specter of the Soviet boogeyman they pumped the public with a delirious fear of the impending nuclear apocalypse. The agitated crowd ate it up and slowly voted RAC acolytes into office at every level of government. Timorous Democrats, goaded by Elaine Kamarck and William Galston's apologist broadside, "The Politics of Evasion", capitulated to the swaggering RAC by ditching the "Liberal" wing of the party and forming the Democratic Leadership Council, funded by corporations, promising to make America safe for business again and ending welfare as we know it.

All Democrats got was two terms for Clinton/Gore (they both exited to wealthy upwardly mobile lifestyles) and the loss of every branch of government on the federal level and most of the states as well. However, the DLC, having fallen into the trap baited by their own weakness (i.e. stand for nothing, don't offend anyone, lunge to the middle) did affirm the RAC theory of, "business knows best" and firmly placed corporations on the new alter of governance. The stage was now set for the final ascendancy of the RAC. Financed and directed by their main political action committee - the Council for National Policy - and tenaciously in control of the government they could now dismantle it without restraint. Having bought up, FOX-bludgeoned and castrated the major media there would be no voice of dissent or reporter reporting it.

As Hamilton had predicted, they promised reform and delivered it with a vengeance. However, every machine needs some mechanics and tools to keep it running and the RAC is no exception. To keep their contraption in action they've called on some of the darkest minds in the history of politics.

Tool Kit

How the RAC took over the government is first the result of tactics formulated and operated by Lee Atwater, Richard Viguerie, Roger Ailes, Frank Luntz, Grover Norquist, Karl Rove and their minions. These RAC consultants came together and over the last thirty years and with numerous dirty-trick campaigns succeeded where other misanthropes had failed. Through the clever and deceptive use of language, direct mail and TV ads they played upon the public's weaknesses, principally intolerance, racism, fear and greed, and delivered victory after victory to the RAC. Code words like "Sanctity of Marriage", "Secular Humanism", "No Quotas", "Faith Based", "Fair and Balanced", "Liberal Elites", Compassionate Conservative", "School Vouchers" and "Culture of Life" masked the true identity of the anti-civil rights, racist and intolerant initiatives they represented. California's infamous "Prop. 13" promise of "Lower Taxes" was the front for "No Taxes". With no taxes collected, social programs could be effectively eradicated along with public education and environmental protection. Budget deficits, exacerbated by tax cuts, are key to drying up the money available for social programs. "Starve the Beast" (i.e. the government) is right next to "in God We Trust" in the RAC lexicon.

Secondly, the RAC perpetual revolution is funded in a surreptitious and novel way by the "War on Drugs". This heinous military police action is a pet project of the RAC and various beguiled Democrats. Illegal drugs and the money derived from their unregulated and untaxed sale is the mother of all slush funds. Nations, police departments, politicians, judges, gangs and terrorists are in on the take. A lunatic game of cops and robbers has destabilized the entire world.

To the RAC this is manna from heaven. Only in an apparent state of anarchy could the government institute and maintain draconian laws invading personal property, privacy rights and political organizing. Plus, who knows how much of the ocean of black market money goes to RAC purposes like it did in the Iran-Contra scandal? We do know that it is the main source of funding for terrorists. Without radicals of every stripe blowing up the globe would a military-police action on every corner be acceptable? The so-called "War on Drugs" funds the swamp that breeds the terrorists, whose eradication funds the military police, a perfect hideous symmetry. Also, would the land of the free and the home of the brave have the highest per capita ratio of citizens in prison in the world without illegal drugs? Drug related offenders take up half of the room in American prisons, conveniently keeping hordes of young agitators off the streets and providing expansive pools of diverted public cash for contributions to RAC coffers from the prison guard's unions and prison operators.

Finally there is the clamor of "governmental religious intolerance". How deft the RAC has been at decrying the absence of God in the deliberations of the State. Putting the government into our bedrooms and out of our boardrooms, as well putting God back into the courtrooms has been the penultimate success of the RAC. Personal behavior has been demonized to better effectuate the frenzy of the new law and order. Bollixed believers have eagerly voted against themselves in the name of faith and piety. Meanwhile, the men and women behind the curtain giggle as they dispatch John Bolton to the U.N. not to burn it down but to blithely neuter it by promulgating the mold of obfuscation and vexation. Outside the masses are swarming in anger.

Why has the RAC gone to such extremes to trash the American liberal Ideal? Because, the mob, having been given torches and provocation, merrily marches to the castle and burns it down. Remember what Ronnie said, "government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem!"

The New Anarchy

Anarchy from the right is not merely the left's knee-jerk nihilistic model of no government or personal property anarchy but a very special collection of control and lack of control that will breed a new population of cowered and impoverished masses easily manipulated by greed and fear and drugged by mindless infotainment. Society will be divided into three classes: owners, workers and military police. The only taxes will be on what the workers buy, a consumption tax for the have-nots. Wages will be reduced to as far as inhumanely possible. Education, healthcare, emergency services and all other civic responsibilities including clean water, air and land will be left up to the individual. Just like New Orleans after hurricane Katrina tore through, we will be on our own.

The only services provided will be for the owners or the have-gots. Military police will enforce order domestically and abroad without constraint. Dissent will not be tolerated and will be punished severely. No "right of privacy" will exist. Personal behavior decisions will be made by the state in the name of "public morality". Corporations and the landed aristocracy will not be regulated in any manner. Environmental regulations will be abolished, as the planet will only be seen as a vehicle for wealth creation for the owner caste. Rituals of religious obedience, compliance and observance will be enforced daily upon the worker class. The rights of the owners and their religious advisors will prevail in all cases brought before courts, set up merely to rubber stamp the policies necessary to further the aims of the state. As the last vestiges of the New Deal are given the bum's rush, anything valuable will be "privatized" (pick-pocketed). All American assets held in the "public trust" will be converted to "private interests".

The state will be inherited by succeeding generations of owners, clerics and military police to their sole benefit (Gaius Julius Caesar would have loved this setup!). Or perhaps the un-holy trinity of Jewish-Christian-Islamic militants has other plans for the world with their escalating Armageddon in the desert? Nonetheless, nightmares of the Twentieth Century, whether by Orwell, Huxley or Wells, will pale in comparison to the on-coming reality of the Twenty First. If you think this is an exaggeration then you only have to follow the hellish ooze of legal action flowing from the capitols of the nation to know that this is where the RAC juggernaut, with the aid of so-called moderate Democrats, is furiously careening.

Further?

Like the mythic Charles Foster Kane of Orson Welles famed "Citizen Kane", we might never know the motives of the menacing and delusional RAC. Perhaps it is as simple as an unhappy childhood, poor self-image or desperation to be listened to. More likely it is the rich getting richer, playing a dangerous round of roulette with the fate of humanity on the line; life as a casino with the upper crust pulling the strings, hoping no one notices that they are no better at operating the government than King George III and the Church of England were in 1776.

We have come full circle, back to a government of propertied families passing on the seal of state and the fire and brimstone church once again bellowing for its right to judge our very thoughts. It is as if the last three centuries of struggle were for naught. Madison Avenue hucksters, on behalf of the corporate CEO/RAC cartel, dominate the culture. Politics, entertainment, news, religion and sports are now entirely sold as the sizzle not the steak. In fact, there isn't even a steak behind the sizzle at this point. Life has been hollowed out, emptied of resonance, context and warmth and left the vertiginous public listless and fearful. Out of the fear has come blind contempt. Into that void has stepped the RAC. 1984 has finally arrived, only about twenty years late. While we were too busy to be bothered with government the Republican Anarchy Collective has stolen it with a mixture of guile, deceit, hard work, laziness on our part and brilliant Machiavellian cunning. Now that the mask has been removed from the RAC we can see who they are and what they are doing. All that remains to be asked is how will we respond?

DLC Democrats and their moderate knaves who continue to capitulate to the RAC should take a cue from the old Dixiecrats and join the RAC. They are of no use to the Democrats any longer. Liberals and Progressives who don't rise from the stupor of their endless quest for personal enlightenment and aggrandizement of wealth to participate in the civic life of the nation are equally dysfunctional.

There will be a special place in infamy not for the RAC but for us if we let this idea, a free nation, and a beacon to the world, founded upon principles, "We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America" + "a government for, by and of the people", perish from the face of the earth because we didn't have the time to engage ourselves in the government of the nation.

If we value civilization and reject anarchy of any kind we will wake up. We will organize. We will transform the Democratic Party. We will get Liberal and Progressive candidates elected to every office in the nation at every level of government and most importantly, hold them accountable. We will stop the RAC madness. It is our sacred duty to all those who came before us and to all those who will come after. In the words of Langston Hughes, "O, let America be America again + The land that never has been yet + And yet must be". We will rise to this serious challenge or die like Mr. Kane with no one left to explain why so much promise was so easily seduced and left to rot in an incandescent pool of self pity and clueless detachment.

Don't be deceived by the current setbacks the RAC is suffering. To the RAC this is a brawl to the death. Impeachment of Bush or any other loss would only impede their relentless fury not extinguish it. As they say in poker, they're all in. If you ever thought to yourself that you would like to have participated in a watershed moment in the history of humanity, you are in luck. Now is the time. This is the place.