‘Ding Dong, the Witch is Dead’

By Letter to the Editor on November 27, 2020.

Dear editor,

As a casual observer of political systems, one line of questioning often occurred to me these last four years: Why does this American Senate, dominated by Republicans, do nothing to disarm and harness this runaway Frankenstein of a president? Is it not the constitutional duty of Congress to ‘check and balance’ the powers of the president? Why, instead, did this Congress cheer on his manic and destructive behaviour?

Nancy MacLean, an American historian, provides a shockingly clear answer to this question. Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Rights Stealth Plan for America” presents a thoroughly researched accounting of how the work of one Virginia economist, James Buchanan (1919-2013) established a strong philosophical defence of the rights of the wealthy in America.

Buchanan’s theory of Public Choice Economics argues that democracy is an enemy of capitalism, that taxation is theft, that no individual should be ‘forced’ to pay taxes to provide for the education of other people’s children, other people’s health care, other people’s economic safety nets.

This set of beliefs and policies attracted the attention of multi-billionaires like the Koch brothers who helped to finance libertarian think tanks and new right-leaning schools of economics and faculties of law in major universities. Thus armed, the ‘Radical Right’ became a formidable force in American Society and many other countries, Canada included (The Fraser Institute, The Manning Center, the UCP, the U of C economics faculty?).

It takes only two small leaps to entertain two conclusions:

1. Donald Trump was the perfect tool to begin the dismemberment of American Democracy. He was the clueless folk hero of the angry dispossessed, the destructive tool that was needed to move the legislative needle to the far right to protect the interest of the super wealthy.

2. The Republican Senators, ever open to the needed funding for re-election, sat on their hands, knowing full well that the original American Dream was moving ever closer to becoming an American Nightmare.

This book serves as a wake-up call for all defenders of democracy and respecters of capitalism: These two ideologies can and must co-exist. Economic fascism can and must be eliminated, but to do that we must first be able to see it. This book helps to clear our vision.

Peter Mueller

Medicine Hat

12
-11