Following the inauguration of Presidency of D. Trump, global politics has undergone significant changes. Similarly, the internal situation of the United States has undergone changes resulting from the authoritarian shift in the presidency. Recent events, including the deployment of the National Guard in California to disperse demonstrations and the measures taken against Harvard University, demonstrate that Trump’s presidency has challenged the liberal democratic principles enshrined in the U.S. Constitution. The purpose of this blog, though, is to examine the concept of democracy that underlies Trump’s policies. The objective is to show continuities and disruption between the discourse about democracy between the Neoliberalism in the Post-II-World War period and religion conservatism or Christian Nationalism, which is a social movement behind the US-Presidency of D. Trump using the writing of Any Rand and Ludwig von Mises as references for neoliberal thinking, and the Project 2025 as reference for the actual political programme inspired in the Christian nationalism.
Any Rand was neoliberal novelist and philosopher with considerable influence in the United States in the 1960s and 1970 [1]. The Rand foundation, which promotes here philosophy of Objectivism, is very active to promote neoliberal thoughts worldwide. L. von Mises was an economist on the line of the Austrian school and was member of the Mont Pèlerin Society [2]. The Mises foundation, which promotes his neoliberal thinking, but also anarcho-capitalist ideas, is as the Rand Foundation very active in promoting neoliberal thoughts.
The Project 2025 [3] is a kind of manual to guide a second conservative ‘revolution’ similar to the ‘first conservative revolution’ of the US-Presidency of R. Reagan, for which the Heritage Foundation elaborates a similar document called ‘Mandate of Leadership’ published January 1981. According to the own foundation, this document had a strong influence on the politics of the Presidency of R. Reagan. The comparison of the neoliberal thought of Rand and Mises with the Project 2025 and the measures taken by the actual US Presidency shows the differences between neoliberalism and Christian nationalism regard democracy and the role of the state.
The Project 2025 proposes a radical reduction of the state bureaucracy, while maintaining a strong state to defend the core values of the capitalist order. In the line of the thoughts of Ayn Rand, the project 2025 considers the need to go back to the principles of the original American constitution to limit the power of the state. Rand called this constitutional republic considering the USA as an example of such a republic. This echoed in the Project 2025 stating defending the individuals’ rights to live their best life without the interference of the state.
Although a first look at the Project 2025 seems to indicate that it shares positions of the neoliberalism on society and the role of the liberal democratic state, a deeper analysis shows a considerable difference. A common position is the reducing the functions of the government to protect the capitalist order and not to interfere in the use of individual property. The difference lies in the fact that the Project 2025 linked the capitalist order to religious inspired values and norms. The defence of the capitalist order is the defence of Christianity. In defence of their idea of a religious America, the project 2025 conceives their strategy as a strategy of war against internal enemies – the wokeism – and external enemies, particularly China.
This expressed the difference between the neoliberal thought of Rand and Mises and the agenda of the Project 2025. While Rand and also Mises defends the idea of a liberal democratic state or in Rands word the republican constitutionalism rejecting a wider influence of the state in the exercise of the individual rights, the ultraconservative project only proposed to eliminate those function of the state, which could counter its ultraconservative agenda to reinforce orthodox Christian values and norms and to protect the traditional family. In this sense the ultraconservative project advocates for a strong state centralised in the executive figure of the President to defend their idea of America advocating for a more authoritarian regime
Still in the 1960’s and 1970’s the radical rationalist individualism of Rand, which reject the religious inspired altruism and limited religion to a personal affair, was combated by religious inspired political movements. Also the neoliberalism, defended by Mises reject any religious grounded argument in favour of capitalism and individual rights as it claims for by the Christian nationalist movements. The reference to Rand and Mises evidence a difference between the neoliberal movements and the religious nationalist movement, which inspired the politics of the actual Presidency of D. Trump.
Although the actual foreign policy of the US-President Trump calls more the attention of the international debate, the real awareness should be focused on the internal policies, which is oriented to change the idiosyncrasy of the US political system towards a religious state imposing Christian values and norms in the society under the leadership of an authoritarian president. Similar movement of religious nationalisms are observable in Europe in form of different extreme right-wing parties, but also other parts of the world as e.g. in Indian with the actual government of Modi Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
A more detailed analysis can be consulted in the DEMOCRAT Working paper.
[1] A. Rand became famous in the 1960s, for her bestseller novel “Atlas Shrugged” first published in 1957. She defended a radical rational and ethical egoism as opposed to altruism and hedonism.
[2] The Mont Pelerin Society was founded in 1947 by academics, intellectuals and politicians to promote neoliberal ideas, especially in the field of economic governance. Prominent members were Nobel prize winner in economics F. Hayek, M. Friedman, G. Stigler or G. Becker, other accademics as K. Popper but also politicians as Ludwig Erhard (minster of economic affairs from 1949 to 1963 and later Chancellor of the German Federal Republic from 1963 to 1966) or Václav Klaus (Szech president from 2003 to 2013), intellectuals as the nobel prize of literature Vargas Llosa or entrepreneurs as P. Thiele.
[3] https://static.heritage.org/project2025/2025_MandateForLeadership_FULL.pdf
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