Most Americans are confident that their nation will remain fundamentally unchanged forever and in part it is due to the once stable functioning government. However, as world leaders, political scholars, and economists have noted, America’s government has been, for all intents and purposes, brought to a standstill due to Republican denial they lost two presidential elections. There is a faction in this country made up of wealthy oligarchs, religious fanatics, and conservative extremists who have intimated in various ways their only raison d’être is to destroy America from within and transform it into a mirror image of a stone-age nation like Afghanistan under Taliban rule. The war for America has been in the planning stages for two decades, but when American voters elected (twice) an African American man as President the insurgency began enacting their plan to destroy the federal government and by extension the country itself.
The groups lusting to destroy America and transform it into a libertarian theocracy certainly know that their goal could never reach fruition if they announced they were actively seeking to eliminate the functioning government, so they use catch phrases such as the Koch brothers’ infamous “transforming America” to fit their lawless vision of a nation without rules and regulations. Their staunch ally, Grover Norquist has been forthcoming that his goal is to “shrink government down to a size he can drown in a bathtub,” but his goal, like the Koch brothers, is a nation steeped in anarchy where peasants are at the mercy of a few wealthy industrialists. Although the Kochs and Norquist wield inordinate power and influence over a major political party, they are not elected representatives and depend on dark money and loyalty oaths to control Republicans at the state and federal level to enact their anti-government agendas. Now they have a powerful ally in the U.S. Senate who controls Republicans in the House and Senate and last Sunday he let it slip that his ultimate goal is destroying America.
It is fairly well-known that Rafael “Ted” Cruz is running the Republican Party due to being anointed the evangelical conservative messiah, and that he publicly announced the recent government shutdown and debt crisis was only the first battle in a longer war. Cruz has been unapologetic that his destructive strategy is part of a plan to achieve his future policy goals that he readily admits are more than defunding the Affordable Care Act he claims is responsible for the nation’s sluggish economy. However, when he spoke to Fox News’ host Sean Hannity on Sunday, he revealed that in his “multi-stage extended battle” he discovered “a model that I think is the model going forward to,” among other things, “abolish the IRS.”
Cruz’s remark was a stunning revelation that his goal is defunding the entire United States government that will serve to hasten the Koch brothers’ agenda of a nation void of laws, regulatory agencies’ enforcement, education, Social Security, healthcare, and national defense. Abolishing the I.R.S. will also invalidate the U.S. Constitution’s Article I, Section 8, Clause 1 that gives the federal government of the United States its power of taxation to fund the nation’s government. Without revenue to fund the government, America as it exists now would become a lawless, uneducated, and dangerous fascist state controlled by the wealthy and policed by religious extremists imposing the bible as the de facto law of the land.
If the power of taxation is eliminated, the government may be able to function for a couple of years at best, but it would mean selling off all federal assets and raiding Social Security’s $2.8 trillion reserves just to fund this nation’s national defense and nothing more. All regulatory and consumer protection agencies would be eliminated, education funding would cease to exist, and domestic programs would come to a screeching halt. In fact, with no revenue, the entire federal government would disappear and with it all the benefits the people depend on whether it is safe food, safe medicine, disaster relief, clean water, infrastructure, and security the people are guaranteed in the U.S. Constitution. Actually, without a government, the Constitution itself will be obsolete and it would open the floodgates of regional morality laws under the purview of whichever religious group had the largest armory to enforce their edicts and transform America into Afghanistan under Taliban rule.
Without funding to operate, the US Congress, the executive branch, and judicial branch would be deemed unnecessary in a government-less state, and society would break down into little fiefdoms controlled by the wealthy and whoever they appoint to keep peasants in line. It is the ideal sought after by libertarians and 10th Amendment advocates who believe all power originates in individual states, but for Southern states wallowing in poverty and disrepair it will usher in anarchy and privatization that libertarians regard as a lifestyle improvement over living in a nation with a federal government. Wealthier states with natural resources and agricultural products to sell on the foreign market might maintain a semblance of order for a while, but the quality of life for the average American would be reduced to subsistence living without consumer, environmental, worker, healthcare, or law enforcement protections a functioning government ensures.
The only people who would survive in a nation without a government would be the extremely rich who could sequester themselves away in gated compounds patrolled by armed guards to keep out the starving peasants. In fact, the majority of Americans would fall into dire poverty because with no federal government there would be no minimum wage or workplace protections that will leave workers at the mercy of the rich who may give them work for food; if they were lucky.
The Founding Fathers were well aware that America could not survive without revenue to fund the government, but government survival is not the long term goal of the Koch brothers, Rafael Cruz, and Grover Norquist. The Koch brothers particularly welcome a nation without a federal government because they would be unshackled from any regulatory enforcement and give them the freedom to conduct their business unrestricted and untaxed with absolute power to install the dictator of their choosing to keep the peasantry in line.
America has never faced the existential threat posed by the Koch brothers and their acolytes in Congress and state legislatures, and it is likely there has never been a concerted effort to destroy the government that America faces today. It is true that Cruz does not have the people behind him like he thinks, but with the Koch brothers’ dirty money and Republican-controlled states restricting the right to vote, Cruz’s lack of popular support is not a guarantee his “multi-stage extended battle to abolish the IRS” will fail. If nothing else, Cruz has revealed that, like the Koch brothers and Grover Norquist, his goal is destroying the government by defunding it and it cements his place in America’s libertarian axis of evil that makes him a legitimate enemy of the state and the people who own it.
Born in the South, raised in the Mid-West and California for a well-rounded view of America; it doesn't look good.
Former minister, lifelong musician, Mahayana Zen-Buddhist.
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