Minority Rule
If you’re Republican, you vote to end democracy. The conservative authoritarian ‘salami tactic’ has sliced American democracy away one sliver at a time. Now the Christian Right SCOTUS has sliced off three giant tranches, 1st Amendment separation of church and state, 2nd Amendment well-regulated militia, and 14th Amendment right to privacy.
This incremental destruction of our Constitution is relatively recent. Reagan and Southern Baptist Republicans were pro-choice until Christian evangelicals weaponized the teachings of theologian Francis Schaeffer, who himself came to regret the irreversible damage he did. If you don’t like abortions, ignore them like you IGNORE school shootings.
But what Republicans IGNORE is the hypocrisy of granting states the right to deny a woman’s right to choose, while taking away states’ rights to legislate gun safety. For 217 years, the courts did not recognize the individual right to bear arms. It wasn’t until 2008 when SCOTUS was taken over by conservatives that the 2nd Amendment allowed a militant right-wing minority to hijack the law.
Imagine if Republicans put this much effort into helping Americans with universal healthcare, better public education, and gun safety? Instead, Republicans consistently vote to destroy democracy often to their own detriment. An AR-15 was recently used to horrifically decapitate 10-year-old children, and we live in fear of the next one. In vitro fertilization which aborts embryonic “life” would now be illegal in many states.
Republican politicians seeing the backlash over the reversal of Roe v. Wade are now pivoting – better known as LYING – with a new campaign message to “focus on the needs of mothers and children.” But if you’re a Republican, you only care about power. You favor minority rule, defying 65% of Americans who want gun safety, while supporting the 28% who wanted to overturn Roe v. Wade, all while forcing states to pay for private religious schools to indoctrinate more extremists.
I accuse Republicans of breaching the Constitutional Separation of Church and State. To paraphrase James Carville, it’s NOT the economy, stupid. We must reverse this dismantling of democracy. Vote Democrat up and down ballot this November.
Chicago native Lorraine Evanoff earned her degree in French from DePaul University then became a Certified Financial Manager. She worked as a finance exec in film production for seven years in Paris, then in Silicon Valley during the dot-com era, and later for various Hollywood production companies, notably as CFO of National Lampoon. She is currently living in Los Angeles with her husband.