Attribution: Photo by Andriy Miyusov on Unsplash
By Geoff Carter
Ronald Reagan once said, “Government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem,” rearticulating the Republican dogma that governmental regulation inhibited American independence and freedom. He also stated, in his 1981 Inaugural Address, “It is no coincidence that our present troubles parallel and are proportionate to the intervention and intrusion in our lives that result from unnecessary and excessive growth of government.”
If Ronald Reagan were alive, he would no doubt be appalled and disgusted at what his message has ultimately brought to the United States of America. His contributions to the deliberate sowing of mistrust toward the engine of our democracy—our governmental institutions—may have ultimately resulted in its possible demise.
Today, government is indeed the problem, but not because of what Reagan said believed. It’s not because of regulations on business and industry, and not because his claim that government had become a “nanny state” watching over citizens’ private lives and dictating programs like public school curriculum or the EPA. No. Government is the problem because it has become the plaything of the rich, and the instrument one of the most malignant and hateful administrations in history. It is the problem because, ironically, it has “intervened and intruded” (to put it mildly) into the lives of Americans like a stampede of marauding rhinoceroses.
At the behest of the president, Federal ICE agents have stormed into cities all over country, arresting people without cause, detaining citizens without due process, destroying property, pulling victims from their cars and beating them, and—yes, it was only a matter of time—murdering them. And yes, a direct line can be drawn between the Reagan ideology and this political holocaust.
This devastation was not wholly the fault of Ronald Reagan, although he was a major (and perhaps unwitting) player in its implementation. Neoconservatism, the philosophy extolling small government, family values, and free-market economics as well as an assertive foreign policy designed to promote and preserve democracy preceded the Reagan presidency by a few years. President Trump’s version of neoconservative “nation-building” more closely resembles manifest destiny than the principles of the neocons, but that model is the modern forerunner of his foreign policy.
The anti-government ideology espoused by Reagan entered hand in hand with Christian nationalism, a movement that has its roots deeply embedded in the racist traditions of the Deep South and the belief that Christian values should be fused with civic involvement. Followers believe that Christian values should dominate all aspects of life, including education, entertainment, business, family, government, media, and religion—the Seven Mountains Mandate. According to The Star, “studies have associated Christian nationalism with xenophobia, homophobia, misogyny, political tolerance of racists, opposition to interracial unions, support for gun rights, pronatalism, and restricting the civil rights of those who fail to conform to traditional ideals of whiteness, citizenship, and Protestantism.” In other words, if you’re not a white man, take a step back.
Aspects of the Christian Nationalist philosophy have been creeping into our culture for decades. The advent of public-funded religious charter schools, attacks on reproductive rights and the LGBTQ community, denial of women’s rights, and the rise of hate groups (particularly white supremacists), and legislation encouraging voter suppression have been gaining traction as more and more Congressional representatives Christian nationalists have gained power. They even went so far as to put their ambitions into a plan, Project 2025, a brainchild of the Heritage Foundation, and partly authored by none other than Russell Vought, now an integral part of Trump’s presidential staff.
In their attempts to make America into a Christian nation (in their own, not God’s image), the nationalists glommed onto the Trump campaign in 2015, and, when he was somehow reelected in 2024, they sought to put that plan into action. Their ideology, especially as it pertains to family, is written all over it, and begs the question of why would a less intrusive government want to get involved in family?
According to the ACLU, “Project 2025 is a federal policy agenda and blueprint for a radical restructuring of the executive branch authored and published by former Trump administration officials in partnership with The Heritage Foundation… that opposes abortion and reproductive rights, LGBTQ rights, immigrants’ rights, and racial equity.”
As stated in Project 2025, part of the “conservative promise” is to “dismantle the administrative state and return self-governance to the American people (The Heritage Project).” We’ve seen them implementing the dismantling process, starting with DOGE and continuing with the literal dismantling of the East Wing of The White House—and everything in between. They have also conspired to increase the power of the Executive Branch so that the present administration will not be held accountable for crimes committed in its name.
So, what is happening to our country today did not come out of thin air. Contrary to popular belief, MAGA did not suddenly crawl out from under a rock. Maybe. It started in the late seventies, even before, and has slowly, like a cancer, metastasized into our corner of our government, culture, and institutions. Hillary was right.
Like Iago in Shakespeare’s Othello, Republicans have been whispering into the ears of Americans for years, sowing seeds of envy, hate, and mistrust against our government. Unlike Iago, whose motives to destroy Othello were unclear, the far-right knew exactly what they wanted: a Christian nationalist state dominated by white men serving the few at the expense of the many—in other words, a return to the antebellum South, present-day Afghanistan, or something like Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale.
There is a vast right-wing conspiracy—and it’s winning, except for the fact that the majority of Americans oppose it. They don’t like what they’ve been seeing so far from Trump 2.0. The American people oppose mass kidnappings and deportations by ICE. They oppose American imperialism in the Western hemisphere. They oppose tariffs. They oppose the persecution of minorities and the suspension of voting rights for any citizen. They support their own right to peacefully protest, and they have been exercising that right.
And as we’ve stood up for our rights, our beliefs, our neighbors, and our communities, we’ve seen how effective our actions can be. Our protests at Tesla dealerships forced Elon Musk and DOGE out of government. Our protests forced Avelo Airlines to terminate their contract with ICE to transport detainees. And we’ve only just begun. No one wants ICE, no one wants government taking control of our schools, our colleges, our churches, our children, or our families. And we’ve taken it to the streets, protesting peacefully all of the crimes committed by this administration.
The knowledge of what we’re facing might not help us now. It might be too late. Trump is threatening to invoke the Insurrection Act and call troops into our cities. We can take back our country, and perhaps, with a better understanding of the intricacies and complexities of the workings of our government, our dedication to the welfare of people everywhere, along with a new appreciation for the sacrifices of our public servants, we might not only get back to where we were but once again become the greatest nation on Earth.
Notes
- https://www.reaganlibrary.gov/archives/speech/inaugural-address-1981#:~:text=The%20economic%20ills%20we%20suffer,it%20crosses%20political%20party%20lines.
- https://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/pdf/catosletterv9n3.pdf
- https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803100228203
- https://www.thestar.com/news/investigations/covid-19-conspiracy-theories-are-spreading-online-like-a-virus-an-inside-look-at-a/article_466651b9-0471-56af-abb8-96b9b7349427.html
- https://www.aclu.org/project-2025-explained
- https://www.afge.org/article/project-2025-seeks-to-dismantle-agencies-terminate-up-to-1-million-federal-workers
- https://static.heritage.org/project2025/2025_MandateForLeadership_FULL.pdf