One prominent Congressional Republican and a leading member of its radical Freedom Caucus has told us what Republicans want for Americans. (I generalize about Republicans because most vote as a bloc; former New Mexico District 2 representative Yvette Herrell was a member of this caucus and would become one again if re-elected.) Addressing a Turning Point Action Conference in July 2023, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene had much to say, somewhat inelegantly, on three topics: “the Democrat Party … [as] the party of pedophiles” (she offered no fewer than 16 likely indicators), the Democratic Party as a socialist party, and the Democratic Party’s support of Ukraine as a precursor to a larger war (with side remarks about the threat to the nation from immigrants).
The middle of Rep. Greene’s speech is a muddle of partisan drivel. It attributes to Democrats a socialist philosophy of government. Her bizarre account of recent history to support this attribution jumbles and distorts selected facts out of context to attack the Democratic Party and its leaders since Roosevelt for being imbued with socialism.
Lyndon B. Johnson is very similar to Joe Biden. How are they the same? [“similar” ¹ “same”] They're both Democrat [sic] socialist. Lyndon B. Johnson was the majority leader in the Senate. Does that sound familiar? [Biden was never a Senate majority leader.] He was vice president to Kennedy. Joe was Vice President Obama [sic]. He was appointed [sic] as the president after JFK was assassinated, then he was elected. His big socialist programs were the Great Society. The Great Society were [sic] big government programs to address education, medical care, urban problems, rural poverty, transportation, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps and welfare, the Office of Economic Opportunity and big labor and labor unions. Now LBJ had the Great Society but Joe Biden had Build Back Better and he still is working on it. The largest public investment and social infrastructure and environmental programs that is [sic] actually finishing what FDR started, that LBJ expanded on, and Joe Biden is attempting to complete. Socialism.
The conceptual vacuity of Rep. Greene’s thesis is her equating socialism with social programs. Socialism is “a political and economic theory of social organization which advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole” (Oxford Languages). It is quite different from any one or more government programs intended to address societal concerns. In this technical but critically important sense—which Rep. Greene would claim is advanced by an elitist know-it-all who should be ignored for that reason—, she does not know what she is talking about.
Unwittingly, by eradicating from the federal government the purported evils of socialism—departments, agencies, administrations, and bureaus; and a wide variety of programs—, Rep. Greene would make America a dystopian society. Since she equates socialism and societal programs, it is fair to strip away the Democratic programs which she regards as “socialist” to see what remains for a non-socialist, Republican government. The “socialist” government programs … address education, medical care, urban problems, rural poverty, transportation, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps and welfare, [and] the Office of Economic Opportunity.” (Democrats supported “big labor and labor unions,” but no government program did so.) The mention of OEO implies her basic assumption that most of these programs provide relief largely, if not only, to people of color. Otherwise, she has little regard for those variously disadvantaged: students, the sick, the poorly housed or homeless, the poor in general, the commuting, the hungry. Her list, though confused (“welfare” would cover many of these items), is not complete, for other such programs would also meet with her disapproval. Presumably, she would strip away these and other programs in the name of an anti-“socialist” agenda which would, if executed, reduce the country to a condition worse than it was in, in the 1890s.
Rep. Greene would want to reduce or eliminate organizations responsible for “socialist” programs: departments of Education, Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development, Transportation; and Administration for Children and Families, and Food and Drug Administration. Also organizations which other Republicans have targeted for reduction or elimination: among many others, Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Internal Revenue Service, Social Security Administration (privatizing it would reduce account “security”), Environmental Protection Agency, Bureau of Land Management, and Bureau of Indian Affairs
Thus stripped down, the federal government would consist largely of the remnants of thirteen other organizations stripped of “socialist” programs. For instance, Department of Agriculture would lose its food stamp program. One question: if Republicans were to eliminate all such “socialist” programs, would their bigoted and resentful Republican followers be satisfied with the results? Would everybody else be satisfied?
The remaining organizations would address national defense and veterans’ affairs; international relations; business, finance, and resources; and research—a government concerned with security and business only. It would not be a government concerned with people. This Republican government would be indifferent to five of six purposes of the Constitution as they are defined by its Preamble:
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, 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.
Missing from a Republican, “socialism”-free government are any means to “establish Justice” or “insure domestic Tranquility” or “promote the general Welfare” or “secure the Blessing of Liberty.” Indeed, this “socialism-free” government not “of the people, by the people, for the people” would be either destabilized by people discontented with their oppressive, impoverishing living conditions or despotic by the coercion necessary to control and suppress discontented people. If the functions of this government were shared with the states, most Americans would be reduced to the status of indentured servants (whites) or slaves (people of color) to the oligarchs of industry and their lackeys and lickspittles in government. The United States would not be “a more perfect Union.”
The no-longer-covert Republican attack on the Constitution appears in Republican efforts to progressively constrict the electorate, to increasingly discredit the rule of law, and to systematically corrupt the Constitution itself; it is intended to weaken, then overthrow, democratic government. January 6, 2021, becomes Day One in the calendar of America’s dystopian future of Republican autocratic rule. Are you going to vote for your or your children’s and grandchildren’s future suppression and destitution? If so, vote Republican; vote for Yvette Herrell.
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