The Republican Party of Wisconsin, a private organization, is conducting a daring attack* on behalf of its benefactors and co-conspirators. Their target is not a budget line item or an unfunded mandate but the legitimacy of public resources.
Theirs is but the most recent campaign in an ongoing effort to undermine the ideology at the heart of the American experiment: equal representation. That is, the existence of a public body diverse enough to deliberate and powerful enough to carry out the will of the people.
It’s been over 200 years since the American Tories or Loyalists advocated on behalf of the superior authority of inherited wealth and power, concentrated in the hands of a noble and allegedly blessed few. But their cause has been taken up, repeatedly, by political groups and, even, by elected officials**.
The war for American Independence was fought not because colonials were disgruntled over the quantity of taxation but rather the quality of their representation. No tax break can take the place of having a direct say in the affairs of government. You can’t buy greater freedom unless representation is for sale.
Yet such a bargain is precisely what the right wing coalition is currently offering the American people – or, rather, the small minority of eligible voters who have not given up on our politics. In exchange for the promise of wealth, voters are asked to reject the legitimacy of a democratic government.
We’re told that government is the problem, that the private sector is the answer, that public employees and state workers are not to be trusted, that private groups and individuals alone have the nation’s best interests at heart.
The logical response to any such claims should be more obvious and widespread: for whom is government the problem?
The right wing has masterfully appropriated the rage seething under the surface of American society; a rage fueled indirectly by a growing disparity in economic outcomes but principally by the political inequity that tolerates – if not promotes – this reduction in the set of practical choices available to the citizen of median means.
Thus, the right wing propaganda claims that government is the enemy of the common man. That government laws and regulations circumscribe his or her earning potential.
In fact, the unequivocal effect of legislation in the U.S.A. over the last two centuries has been to provide the median income family more opportunity, whether via easier access to capital (FDIC), labor markets or education (public schools).
The wealth generated by this nation in the wake of World War II, the degree to which our economy is now driven by consumer spending, is testament to the generative power of a democratic government working at the behest of the mass, of a vast middle class, rather than any elite.
To counter this process of democratization, the right wing seeks to divorce cause from effect with propaganda that insists: government is too big. It is a ingenious new cover for age-old elitism. Surely, a smaller government would be easier to manage for a small cabal. But we are a nation of hundreds of millions of free men and women.
What is the appropriate size of a government that will represent, fairly and efficiently, so large and diverse a people? Again and again we must ask: for whom is government a problem?
*Part of the GOP’s tactical brilliance in Wisconsin is their use of asymmetric warfare: e.g., private parties are not bound by the same rules as public employees.
**When fewer citizens vote, elites have a greater influence in electoral outcomes. It’s currently cheaper to dissuade millions from voting than persuading half as many to vote one way or another. Yet the public’s desire for choice has never been greater. A simple change to the status quo, such as making election days into federal holidays, would do much to protect the democratic process from becoming a hollow shell for the tyranny of the wealthy few.