More Translation of Republicanese “small government values”

Re: Anti-War Activist Mounts GOP Campaign for Congress « The Washington Independent

The article is about a McCain heckler and an anti-war protester turned Libertarian candidate stating that, “He’s a candidate for Congress in New Mexico’s 3rd district, looking like the Republican front-runner just one short year after he crashed the convention”.

Kokesh’s move into electoral politics–he is 27 years old, and this is his first stab at campaigning–unifies two trends that have made the GOP that will fight the midterm elections dramatically different than the one Kokesh used to protest. The first is the rise of Ron Paul’s libertarianism. After years of obscurity, Paul came out of the 2008 elections with a national fundraising base and new respect for his ideas about war and economics among Republican activists and voters. The second trend is the Tea Party movement. After feeling ignored by George W. Bush’s Republicans, the conservative base has come together to demand commitment to the Constitution, commitment to small government values, and guarantees of national and state sovereignty.

Whenever I read words like “small government values” and “guarantees of national and state sovereignty”  – words written to propel truisms – my very acute sense of hearing kicks in and I hear the very distinct sound of dog whistles.

Let me enlighten you with the English translation of this Republicanese statement. “Small government values” is Repblicanese for “less is the new more”. What do they want less of? Well, if you can think of a government program that gives money to the underprivileged, then you are on the right track.

Take public welfare for example. The right wing wants it stamped out entirely. The biggest hit on welfare, specifically the Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) program which had been in effect since 1935, came with the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 signed into law by President Bill Clinton, after the Democrats became the minority in Congress. This law destroyed one of the vital safety nets set up during the Great Depression that could help millions of people stay in their homes today. By killing welfare, the Republicans made government smaller.

The Republicans/Libertarians believe in a small government that stays out of the way of business. If they had their way, there would be no Department of Labor. They would instead call it the Department of Business. If the Libertarians had their way, there would be mass privatization of public schools, no college Pell grants, no Social Security that you would recognize, no national forests that you would recognize, no regulatory agencies in the government to protect consumers, no minimum wages, no Medicare, and no social safety nets of any kind. This is the smaller government you would have under unrestricted right-wing rule.

The translation of “guarantees of national and state sovereignty” is a dog whistle for “the Bush doctrine” and “the South shall rise again” and all that connotes. This means that Idaho could make it real easy for separatists to thrive in the backwoods. States could eliminate the minimum wage completely and deny state aid to single pregnant women. We could declare war on whoever we want for whatever reason. It would be a apocalyptic horror you only see in the movies.

Libertarians vehemently believe that there shall be no government whatsoever except to enforce business contract law and to provide a robust/dominating military. They read “Atlas Shrugged” and strictly adhere to Friedman economics which advocates the free market to the extent of violent overthrow of government. See The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein.

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