The confounding and contradictory alliance that makes up the current GOP coalition (gun zealots, Christo-fascists, hate tribes, and corporate freeloaders) may at first seem a discrepant set of characters. They do not appear to have an organic connection of shared aims, and yet beneath the surface, there is one uniting principle that propels them forward, fanatically and cult-like, toward a democracy crushing endgame. Simply, they have adopted a misplaced definition of freedom to which they cling, espouse, and mythologize with a doctrinal belief. It is worth examining why this idea of freedom is so confused, dangerous, and entrenched because it stands as the master driver behind the breaking of a functional America.
In the murky eons before city-states, humankind roamed the wide world, hunter-gatherer tribes, lawless, freely marauding, uneasy in caves and temporary shelters should encroaching strangers come to kill, rape, and plunder. When agriculture anchored the tribes to land, city-states emerged and with them came laws, the foundation of civilization, to govern interactions of its citizens with each other, to set the terms for transgression and of obligation to the state, its peoples, and its rulers. Codes and laws were set down as limiting factors on conduct. Just as civilization created boundaries by settling humankind, so did law reflect those boundaries between citizens. No longer could anarchy rule the planet for in civilization freedom was redefined from anarchy. It came with limits codified as laws. Freedom came with responsibility.
From the start, we had two broad conceptualizations of freedom, pre-civilized anarchy versus freedom within the boundaries of civilization. Freedom without limits on behavior (anarchy) versus civilized freedom attached to responsibility. We are concerned here with the generalized concepts and will not adjudicate the justness of various laws and codes. The intent is to establish that civilization creates laws as boundary conditions on anarchy and in doing so provides an architecture for freedom within a city-state. These are fundamental distinctions for they reveal that the freedom of anarchy is actually the mortal enemy of civilization and stands in direct opposition to the limits of responsibility.
When the modern gun lobby sloganeers over “freedom” they are inserting themselves into the very conflict between the two definitions of freedom. It is the Second Amendment itself that provides them both the foundation of their argument and the cover to their assertions. Curiously, the amendment reads as a law prohibiting laws, in itself a contradiction and in conflict with the limiting necessity of a civilized world. Neighbors abut neighbors abut companies abut facilities abut government. There are not only physical property boundaries but boundaries of conduct (assault, theft, rape, destruction, etc.) and of pollution (water, air, noise, etc.) that cross both property boundaries and affects the health of whole communities. Proximity creates the potential for infringement on the rights of others. Freedom to do whatever one wants (anarchy) versus freedom from unregulated behavior. That potential requires laws. A law that prohibits laws that encroach upon the life and liberty of others violates the boundaries of civilization.
Further, the 2nd amendment was a concession to Southern states who were outnumbered by their own slaves and fearful of a slave uprising, so much so that they employed slave militias whose job it was to enter and search slave quarters for contraband weapons similar to prison guards searching inmate cells today. Slave Militias The 2nd amendment did not apply to blacks. It was that corruption of justice (the stripping of freedom from human beings) that laid the groundwork for the perversion of freedom we see today. Rather than ditching the 2nd amendment with the abolition of slavery, it was allowed to fester ready to infect civilization like an untreated wound.
The gun lobby’s manipulation was to take this law against laws and then radically conflate anarchy with freedom, literally proclaiming a state of lawlessness as a definition of freedom. Such a notion of anarchy as freedom applies to no other principle, even freedom of speech has notable limits in a civilized world. The conflict between anarchy and freedom in the gun lobby’s proclamation is so stark that its anarchic freedom is targeted directly to so-called government tyranny. The instrument of civilization, the repository of law, is the enemy.
Laid bare, this posture becomes a war on the architecture of civilization itself. That conflation has produced an insidious bug in the works that by its very nature threatens to cripple civilization. It has crafted a generational deep anti-government mindset lurching in resentment and anger at laws that set boundary conditions, that tell them what they cannot do. To them, freedom means no laws, anarchy the mortal enemy of civilization has taken root, and it produces Oklahoma City, the unibomber, the Olympic Park bomber, and most horrifically the Insurrection, a direct attack on the government, citizens shouting “Don’t Tread on Me” as they set out to tread on all. Citizens convicted in righteous revolt because they have been brought to believe that anarchy is freedom.
Is it freedom to be unable to walk into a store without fear of being shot and murdered by an unregulated gun? Or a mall? Or a gas station? Or a theater? A night club? A concert? A Church? A school? A parade? Freedom comes with responsibility in a civilized state, and yet that responsibility to one’s neighbor, one’s community, one’s state and nation that the gun lobby has jettisoned, leaving but an ex post facto consequence to the perpetrator, the damage done not only to the victims but cumulatively to civilization. It quakes and teeters and fear foments among the people just as pre-civilized humans huddled in caves fearing the marauding strangers. The circular riddle self-perpetuates and is weaponized further. Destroy them before they destroy us. Arm yourselves, o tribe. Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, white supremacists, new militias, as the world crumbles. Freedom is anarchy.
The anti-government rhetoric as a reaction to laws within gun culture is a pivot. The response embraces authoritarian aggression. If you try to regulate us or limit our access to guns in any way, we will become violent. We have the guns and therefore the ability to intimidate you and tell you what you cannot do. This is why violent threat echoes within the other quadrants of right wing politics and mirrors authoritarianism. Gun culture embraces support from corporate hegemony and is adapted by Christo-fascists and tribal hate groups. The braying threats of violent insurrection and secession spring from the resentment of freedom attached to responsibility.
The corporate right buys this brand of autocracy through politics and the judiciary, but they are also supported in their authority by armed police snuffing out counter protests and the intervention of the military in wars over oil and influence. Tribal hate groups openly display the authority of their semiautomatic firepower as a means of intimidation toward minority groups, liberal protestors, and their backing politicians. Speak up and be prepared for death threats. They fear pluralism, the hallmark of a free society, and proclaim the gospel of anarchy as freedom against the state and seek its demise. As such, they have most recently been used as a tool in the January 6th insurrection. The ingrained conflation of tribal authoritarianism (anarchy) with freedom is most clearly expressed in the seeming contradiction of the same groups waving both the American stars and stripes, the Confederate stars and bars, and the Nazi flag all at the same events. It isn’t just authoritarianism on display; they are embracing the misplaced idea of freedom as a marauding tribal will.
Christo-fascists have a similar distillation of authoritarianism and have increasingly embraced gun culture as a result. It adds an intimidating swagger to their assertion of authority, resenting any brake to their religious imposition on a free society. Freedom to impose their beliefs upon other beliefs, genders, sexual orientations, and secularism. They seek ultimate authority over society under the guise of God’s ultimate authority, and reconfigure America’s freedom as freedom to dictate their beliefs upon their communities and the nation. That authoritarianism parallels the same assertion by the hate tribes but is particularly pernicious because unlike the pockets of hate groups, religion is widespread, not ostracized, and carries a message that enters through the Sunday morning pulpit. For these reasons, Christo-fascism represents the most dangerous threat to American democracy. Its agents are everywhere, elected, and in power locally, in the state house, and in Congress.
Suppose for instance that Roe is codified into law by a true majority in Congress. The red states who have criminalized abortion will see a federal government attempt to reopen abortion clinics in what they proclaim as their land. We dare you, they will say, claiming tribal authority to (anarchy as) freedom. Violence, secession, and possible civil war will threaten to fracture America all stemming from an emotional misplacement of freedom. As God is declared as the source of freedom, freedom from death and sin, God becomes the righteous face of Christo-fascist authoritarianism.
While the Christo-fascists are enraptured by the dystopian implosion of the civilized world, they project themselves as the authoritarian keepers of freedom. That is, freedom to dictate the scaffolding for everyone else. It isn’t enough to exist freely within the boundaries of civilization, free to practice their beliefs and convictions, they have been groomed by the culture of the new tribalism to declare themselves with god’s authority above the state. The state’s authority then becomes a corruption, false as Roman law and authority inflicted upon the early Christians, and something to be overthrown in order to regain their rightful place on the throne. Christo-fascists
Any law that conflicts with the imposition of their beliefs on secular society, prayer in schools, Ten Commandments in courthouses, same sex marriage, abortion, becomes tyranny. It is an obvious inversion for it is they who seek to usurp law and impose tyrannical beliefs upon the whole of society. Christo-fascism is exactly that, religion pivoted on a contentious and false idea of freedom to become the tyrant dictating law in the public square and gravitating the believers from personal change into an army demanding that societal change match their beliefs.
Not only is this a corruption of the founding secular principles that created a scaffolding for freedom of religion out of the horrific consequences of European religious wars, but it is also a stupefying abrogation of their own faith. It resets the idea of salvation as a personal act and dialogue between the individual and God that comes from within and attempts to save the world by imposing beliefs from without, from the outside by codifying literal beliefs into law on all. A state is not an individual to be saved; it is many individuals with differing views, religion, and non-religion, but that does not stop Christo-fascists from attempting to do just that. It is as if they don’t truly believe their own faith and by proxy seek to recreate God’s kingdom on Earth because their God is incapable.
It is not by accident that the idea of anarchic freedom existing without laws, constraints, boundaries, and responsibilities is also reflected in the practices of the far right business block. The de-regulation lobby that fetes political allies with capital to snuff out laws and allow them free roam of the land, waters, and skies. No responsibility to others, their workers, the community, or the nation as a whole. Any attempt at restraint within the boundaries of mutual responsibility is met with cries of oppression. In turn, they buy off politicians, jurists, and media to free themselves and maraud with impunity, to implant the idea of anarchy as freedom in the minds of men. See, we are the same, tribalists. Together we shall bring down the abomination of civilization, the very act of which dovetails with dystopian end times and therefore resonates with and cultivates right wing evangelical christianity.
Much of the right wing corporate block and by proxy their political allies have been indoctrinated in the faith of freedom without responsibility from the naive utopian libertarian block. Ayn Rand’s phallic skyscrapers of commerce act with impunity to drive civilization forward as long as they aren’t cock blocked by nasty meddlers trying to check their accountability. But of course it doesn’t function that way and never has. The price is polluted skies and lead in tap water and arsenic in ground water and chemical dumps and oceans filled with waste and drift netted free of life and forests razed and mountains strip mined and reservoirs wrung of their last drop of water and an atmosphere choked with CO2 bringing the entire planet to an unlivable state.
All of this based in an anarchic misrepresentation of freedom dissolved of responsibility except in lip service, directly in conflict with the transition of tribalism to civilization, leading the dumb, unstoppable march to extinguish the very core of civilization built upon the basic principle of freedom in dialogue with responsibility. The march must be halted. For humanity to survive just as schoolchildren looking into the barrel of an assault rifle, we must grasp the difference.
