We seem to be living in a time when there is a political divide between those who want equality and equity—Democrats—and those who focus on hierarchy and authority—Republicans.
Understanding the differences between the two approaches was a problem for my students when I taught high school social studies. Some students had a hard time understanding the differences when it came to dealing with authority figures like teachers. Were students equal to the teacher, or were students to be submissive and under their authority?
If you look at political parties today, Democrats are really interested and concerned with diversity, equity, and inclusion. Race, gender, and sexual orientation are big topics. For Republicans, it’s a move toward authority and hierarchy.
There have been attempts on the part of Republicans, based upon Project 2025 and the recent SCOTUS presidential immunity decision, that strongly increase the power of the president in relation to the other branches.
Here is a quotation about Project 2025 from Snopes, a non-partisan fact-checking organization:
“Under the leadership of the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, Project 2025 is indeed a real, all-encompassing initiative to transform the American bureaucracy if, or when, a conservative president takes over the White House. Project leaders are hoping to put it into motion as early as November 2024 if voters elect former President Donald Trump.”
Presidential candidate Donald J. Trump has claimed not to know about Project 2025. Yet, approximately 80% of those who helped create the nearly 1000-page document were part of his administration.
Yes, “Snopes confirmed the legitimacy of footage captured on April 21, 2022, at a Heritage Foundation event [that] showed Trump praising the formation of plans for Project 2025. In the video, Trump referred to The Heritage Foundation’s plans as a ‘colossal mandate’ and said it would ‘lay the groundwork for exactly what our movement will do’ in order to ‘save America’”.
Let’s look first at the stated goals of Project 2025, officially titled: “Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise” in regard to hierarchy and authority.
Changing how the FBI operates: “This entails stopping investigations that are supposedly ‘unlawful or contrary to the national interest’” (ending the felony trials against former President Trump). Term limits would be eliminated for the FBI director. The director would now report directly to the president.
Restricting access to abortion: Under Project 2025, the Center for Disease Control would stop promoting abortion as a method of health care. The FDA would also “stop promoting, and approving, requests for manufacturing abortion pills” .
Eliminating the Department of Education: Part of this proposal would ban “Critical Race Theory” and gender ideology lessons in public schools. “Teachers who share these materials would be required to register as sex offenders and be imprisoned”.
“Reversing Biden-era policies attempting to reduce climate change. The document’s authors call for increasing the country’s reliance on fossil fuels.
Turning up to 50,000 (merit-based) civil service jobs into political appointments. Currently, approximately 4,000 jobs are political appointments.
“Overall, critics including legal experts and former government employees have zeroed in on Project 2025’s goal to give the executive branch more power, describing it as a precursor to authoritarianism”.
Six of the nine SCOTUS justices (the conservatives) increased the power of the president with their July 1, 2024 decision in the Trump immunity case by dividing presidential immunity into three categories: Absolute immunity for official actions, presumptive immunity for decisions on the edge of official actions, and no immunity for personal actions.
This decision was revolutionary in that it overturned 233 years of Constitutional precedent by increasing the power of the executive branch and upsetting the checks and balances created by the founders to avoid the tyranny of a presidential King George III.
SCOTUS then delegated to federal judge Tanya Chutkan the responsibility of making sense of such a convoluted decision. She is presiding over the Washington D.C. January 6th 2021 trial of Donald Trump.
It’s clear that conservatives are trying to convert the national government into one that is more authoritarian and less democratic. It’s clear that it isn’t just my former high school students who have trouble balancing between the concepts of equality and equity versus the need for authority. It’s time for Republicans to turn away from dictatorship and back to representative democracy.
We need authority (but not to the point of autocracy) and we need equality. How do we develop the maturity to live in the tension between these competing and often contradictory concepts? We’ll find out in November when “We the People” make our decision.
