The Republican party has argued for decades against government freebies, and justified or not, this theme carries weight with virtually all red voters and many purple ones. Historically, Republicans have lauded the wealthy as taxpayers, just as they have vilified the poor as welfare queens. They have long favored cutting (or privatizing) Social Security, they tried and tried to assassinate Obamacare, and they howled about the side effects of prolonging unemployment benefits.
Blue thinkers certainly have numerous (humane) arguments against these assaults on America’s social safety net, but perhaps now is the time to turn this argument back on Republicans at all levels of government. Stop looting our rights and stop mooching on Constitutional freebies!
The Declaration enshrines life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness as unalienable rights, and the Constitution lays out the framework for how government is empowered to protect them. But protecting rights of individuals bears no logical relationship to protecting (or inventing) rights of a faction or political party. As the deceased darling of conservatism, Ayn Rand once said,
Do not be misled by sloppy expressions such as “A murderer commits a crime against society.” It is not society that a murderer murders, but an individual man. It is not a social right that he breaks, but an individual right. He is not punished for hurting a collective—he has not hurt a whole collective—he has hurt one man. If a criminal robs ten men—it is still not “society” that he has robbed, but ten individuals. There are no “crimes against society”—all crimes are committed against specific men, against individuals. And it is precisely the duty of a proper social system and of a proper government to protect an individual against criminal attack—against force.
By this logic, Republicans, being the minority party by all measures (votes cast, voters represented per one senator, party membership) should not be given any special rights — because they are a group, not an individual. They might howl, but they can’t have their cake and eat it too.
For example, in Presidential elections, red states should stop mooching on presidential elections via the mathematics of the electoral college. Every anti-hypocrite in those states should rise up and demand their legislators join the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact to do away with a freebie that only is grabbed by Republicans.
In the upper house of our bicameral legislature, representatives of red states should stop mooching off the Constitution’s framers (who already gave a huge gift to small-population states by giving Wyoming’s two senators as much voting power as California’s two senators). Constituents in small states should implore their senators to do the honorable thing by getting rid of the filibuster, which recently magnified the small state advantage by allowing a very small minority of Senators (34 out of 89 voting) to block a bipartisan commission to investigate January 6.
Republicans didn’t earn those protections — they just received them as a gift (the “Great Compromise”) given by a collective we call the founding fathers. Did Patrick Henry really say “Give me the Electoral College or give me death?” To paraphrase James Carville, “It’s the life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness, stupid!”
Ayn Rand also provides a good way to distinguish moochers from looters:
Money is not the tool of the moochers, who claim your product by tears, or of the looters, who take it from you by force. Money is made possible only by the men who produce.
Are Texas Republicans producing good laws when they devise schemes to make ballot-casting harder for poor voters, transient voters, and voters of color? Hell no — they are looting those rights just as surely as the capitol rioters defaced and burglarized the halls of Congress.
Are Georgia Republicans ensuring all votes will be counted when they pass laws that gives themselves power over the administration of elections in large blue cities and counties? No, they they are looting the voting rights of some citizens by concocting a “legal” right for themselves to nullify votes they don’t like.
Blue politicians and pundits should get on board with naming and shaming Republicans for practicing the opposite of what they are preaching. Calling them out for being the worst kind of moochers and looters is a good start.