Confronting the Challenge of Hyper-Partisan Illiberalism

For this first Tidings column of 2023, I offer descriptions of three recent exemplars of the state of what passes for conservatism in the United States today and suggest their implications for our nation’s ongoing governance and policymaking, and for the Institute.

        On December 14, 2022, the Brunswick Times-Gazette, the weekly newspaper for that Virginia county and surrounding area, published an opinion column by that region’s state senator, Frank Ruff, with the headline: “Our Children’s Future.”¹ Ruff offers his constituents his views in each issue. In this commentary, he expressed grave concern that educators were “confusing young minds” in elementary schools regarding gender and that “what is currently happening at some of the most prestigious medical centers in the nation is that fortunes are being made mutilating kids, risking physical and often mental problems for the rest of their lives.”² Ruff went on to contend,

Too many of our school systems have allowed Critical Race Theory and Woke thinking into the classroom. Some teachers are more focused on radicalizing young people than teaching them the basics needed for a successful future.³

        Finally, having introduced this supposed crisis of an apparently radicalized cadre of school teachers, Ruff offered a solution, predicated on what “parents learned” from the COVID crisis:

In summary, if there was an upside to Covid, it was that, because of Zoom, parents are now understanding that, while much is good in our education, there are also those that have their own agenda. Because of this, parents need to monitor what is happening with their children.⁴

        In his view, parents must take action to prevent these usurpations of their children by teachers allegedly more interested in pressing ugly, unspecified values on their youngsters instead of helping students learn. Exactly what action may be needed, other than outrage and monitoring, remains unclear.

        On December 22, 2022, roughly one week following publication of Ruff’s column, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky visited the United States, addressed a historic joint session of Congress and met with President Joe Biden and other American officials. Zelensky came to the U.S., despite the obvious dangers implicit in his choice to do so, to thank our nation for its strong assistance as his country continues to defend itself against an unprovoked and continued effort to annex it by Russia against its will, and in the face of all settled international law and practice. He also sought to bolster that support for the future, as his nation remains enmeshed in that war.

        His visit was met with a fusillade of ugly commentary from nominal conservatives. Fox’s Tucker Carlson opined that Zelensky “dressed like the manager of a strip club,” when the Ukrainian president appeared in his normal daily dress of fatigues; Donald Trump Jr. labeled the leader an “international welfare queen;” and Turning Point USA President Charlie Kirk suggested that Zelensky was “the perfect person for D.C. Barely can speak English, an actor and totally corrupt.”⁵ Remarkably, this vitriol was aimed at the president of a free and sovereign nation seeking to preserve that status for his people in the face of a brutal invasion by one of our nation’s most significant geo-political foes led by a ruthless autocrat. Moreover, there is no evidence he is corrupt, nor for the suggestion that seeking assistance to aid his nation in its fight against Russian imperialism makes him a “welfare queen.”  I do not comment on Carlson’s sartorial “outrage.”

        Finally, on Christmas Eve day former President Donald Trump shared the following message:

Merry Christmas to EVERYONE, including the Radical Left Marxists that are trying to destroy our Country, the Federal Bureau of Investigation that is illegally coercing & paying Social and Lame Stream Media to push for a mentally disabled Democrat over the Brilliant, Clairvoyant, and USA LOVING Donald J. Trump, and, of course, The Department of Injustice, which appointed a Special ‘Prosecutor’ who, together with his wife and family, HATES ‘Trump’ more than any other person on earth. LOVE TO ALL!⁶

        First, there is no evidence of a group of “Radical Left Marxists”—a label Trump often gives the Democratic Party—trying to destroy the United States. There also is no evidence that the media is uniformly biased against Trump as he suggests or that President Biden suffers from a mental disability. Finally, there is no evidence whatsoever that the Special Prosecutor named to investigate Trump’s activities as president has a personal vendetta against him. I leave it to readers to judge Trump’s comments about his own personal capacities. His other assertions are patent lies designed, apparently, foremost to enflame.

        What connects the rhetoric of these individuals is their invocation of partisanship and the demonization of those whom they contend are working to enact policies to destroy the United States. Each is contemptuous of anyone adopting the positions they argue now obtain among those they regard not as fellow citizens or leaders of democratic nations, but as enemies.

        The Bulwark writer Cathy Young has recently suggested that this sort of positioning and poisonous rhetoric is a form of partisanship joined to a distaste for individual freedom and equality before the law:

Partly, it’s simply partisanship: If the libs are for it, we’re against it, and the more offensively the better. (And if the pre-Trump Republican establishment is also for it, then we’re even more against it). Partly, it’s the belief that Ukrainian democracy is a Biden/Obama/Hillary Clinton/ ‘Deep State’ project, all the more suspect because it’s related to Trump’s first impeachment. Partly, it’s the ‘national conservative’ distaste for liberalism—not only in its American progressive iteration, but in the more fundamental sense that includes conservatives like Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher: the outlook based on individual freedom and personal autonomy, equality before the law, limited government, and an international order rooted in those values.⁷

        Writing in The Atlantic, conservative political writer David French has argued that this partisan polarization is born of raw hatred and therefore offers few or no clear policy goals:

Simply put, it’s not about Ukraine. It’s about you. A key reason why the new right hates Zelensky is that the new right hates you. You are the real enemy, and anything or anyone you like, they will hate. And, to be clear, I’m not just talking about polarization between Republicans and Democrats. … This is about polarization against the Democrats, against the Republican establishment, and against traditional Reagan conservatives like me—a coalition the new right calls the “uniparty.” What the alleged uniparty supports, the new right opposes, and it doesn’t just oppose positions; it opposes the people within the alleged uniparty with an almost primal ferocity. Just watch a typical Carlson monologue. It’s peppered with schoolyard insults and juvenile name-calling. I’ve written about right-wing contrarianism before, but it’s important to identify each time it arises. And it’s important to identify the sheer amount of hatred that animates new-right discourse. You don’t compare foreign leaders to strip-club owners, call them leeches or welfare queens, or fantasize about punching them if you’re simply holding a different opinion about a complex and difficult point of policy.⁸

        For his part, Trump seems not only to embody this empty animus, but also argues that it is others who, on partisan and personal grounds, regard he and other “true Americans” with the vicious cruelty he presses against those vaguely defined groups. This projection appears to some degree in all three examples of the rage-laden partisan rhetoric provided here. All these examples also share another characteristic; they deal in falsehoods while contending they represent reality. Ruff, for example, implied, without any explanation, that critical race theory was now available in Virginia’s K-12 schools, where it has never been taught and is not now being offered. He argued, again offering no evidence to support his assertion, that teachers in Virginia and elsewhere have suddenly elected to care more about confusing youngsters about their gender and “Woking” them (never defined) than about helping them to learn. Finally, Ruff’s assertion that surgeons and other medical doctors in “elite” hospitals have suddenly and as a class cast their individual and collective professionalism, ethics and integrity aside to “make money” on the infinitesimal number of cases to which he refers, was also asserted on no evidence. Indeed, there is none.

        In short, those who attack liberal values and the international order such values have sought to create and maintain, appear to be offering rhetoric comprised of three principal characteristics rooted in an equal number of assumptions. First, all three examples provided here suggest individuals and elected officials desirous of mobilizing citizens not by harnessing their collective will to positive action to promote freedom and equality, but instead by false claims suggesting that hated others are conspiratorially out to undermine their way of life. Second, this rhetoric openly attacks individual freedom and equality while praising illiberal autocracy. Last, as French has suggested, these claims are not aimed at explaining policy disagreements or outlining new directions for the same, but rather, at vilifying those perceived as others, including millions of Americans who may disagree with the stances taken by those offering these assertions, as concerning President Zelensky and Ukraine, for example. 

        In turn, these characteristics appear to arise from three assumptions. First, that illiberal values and inequality are preferable, for largely unarticulated reasons, to those that encourage and preserve freedom, equality and self-governance. Second, that politics is solely about the pursuit of power and that fact justifies any assertion and position, however outrageous or false, if it motivates those targeted to support it. Finally, that the values and assumptions its proponents have adopted justify a rage against any who may disagree with their proffered views, whatever those may be at any moment. As French has noted, that stance in turn blinds this group, “to the truth, renders them vulnerable to conspiracies, and tempts them into dehumanizing their opponents.”⁹ And, of course, many Republican party leaders and core supporters have supported precisely these tendencies during the last several years.

        All of this is of continuing concern for American policy and politics because the GOP, now controlled by this relatively small but vocal faction, seems to be uninterested in governing or in enhancing freedom or equality, here or abroad. Instead, this group appears intent on establishing a regime that enshrines specific forms of inequality and the abridgment of human and civil rights for targeted groups, including, especially, blacks and other traditional minorities, gay individuals, immigrants and women.  The aims of a coterie that expresses rage and fulminates against the efforts of others rather than itself seeking to govern, are always difficult to gauge, because they are propelled by no discernible purpose other than rancor. As Robert Reich has argued,

A political party is nothing more than a shell – fundraising machinery, state and local apparatus, and elected officials, along with a dedicated base of volunteers and activists. That base gives fuels a party, giving it purpose and meaning. Today’s Republican base is fueling hate. It is the epicenter of an emerging anti-democracy movement.¹⁰

        Importantly, this trend toward illiberalism in today’s Republican Party is hardly the first time in U.S. history that a party has taken a wrong turn on human and civil rights or embraced hatred as its principal mobilization strategy. The Democratic Party supported Jim Crow in the south for decades and its officials surely deserve no praise for the ugly tactics they embraced in doing so. In short, pointing up the moral and democratic bankruptcy of the dominant faction in today’s GOP is not simply to engage in partisan “he said, she said” and doing so cannot be countered with a variation of a “what about ism” argument. It is instead to highlight a real and present danger to U.S. democratic governance. At the Institute, we shall do our best to report our country’s political and policy situation as accurately and truthfully as we can and will not be cowed either by other’s lies or by those who, projecting their own partisanship, claim that calling those engaged in the sort of hyper-partisan illiberalism framed by unalloyed lies outlined here to account, is itself partisan. It is not. It is rather, a good faith and continuing effort to protect the fundaments of democracy and the Institute is, and will continue to be, animated by that aim. Freedom cannot be sustained without morality and ethical claim.

Notes

¹ Ruff, Frank. “From the Desk of Senator Frank Ruff: Our Children’s Future,” Brunswick Times-Gazette, December 14, 2022, https://www.brunswicktimes-gazette.com/opinion/article_2f71e0ba-7af5-11ed-a0c7-6f8daaffb2ad.html, Accessed December 18, 2022. 

² Ruff, “Our Children’s Future.”

³ Ruff, “Our Children’s Future.”

⁴ Ruff, “Our Children’s Future.”

⁵ As quoted in French, David. “The Oddly Intense Anger Against Zelensky, Explained,” The Atlantic: The Third Rail, December 23, 2022, https://newsletters.theatlantic.com/the-third-rail/63a5e158b9e06100378ecce9/ukraine-aid-right-wing-republican-anger/, Accessed December 23, 2022.

⁶ Trump, Donald. @real DonaldTrump. December 24, 2022, https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/109571188060799356. Accessed December 24, 2022.  

⁷ Young, Cathy. “Putin’s Useful Idiots: Right Wingers Lose It Over Zelensky Visit,” The Bulwark, December 22, 2022, https://www.thebulwark.com/putins-useful-idiots-right-wingers-lose-it-over-zelensky-visit/?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email. Accessed December 24, 2022. 

⁸ French, David. “The Oddly Intense Anger Against Zelensky, Explained,” The Atlantic: The Third Rail, December 23, 2022, https://newsletters.theatlantic.com/the-third-rail/63a5e158b9e06100378ecce9/ukraine-aid-right-wing-republican-anger/, Accessed December 23, 2022.

⁹ French, “The Oddly Intense Anger Against Zelensky, Explained.”

¹⁰ Reich, Robert. “The Party’s Over: RIP, GOP,” Robert Reich: Substack, January 3, 2022, https://robertreich.substack.com/p/what-the-hell-is-the-republican-party?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email. Accessed January 3, 2023.