The lack of an organized Republican response to the anarchy at the Federal Capital Building helped to bring this into focus.

While reading outside the CB&TL this morning, I overheard a Republican witnessing that he believed that “people should be free to do what they want.”

The GoP has invested money in demonizing the word “socialist,” and wields it as a tool to attack any program that attempts to protect people from the consequences of irresponsible choices by others.

For example, if your co-worker contracts COVID and continues to come to work, and you catch COVID, should you be responsible for your ICU bill? Or should they be forced to pay? Isn’t that why we have insurance, because often serious accidents can be traced to the choices made by others? For example, to drive drunk, or install slippery surfaces at entrances that are highly trafficked on rainy days, or employ unskilled labor to construct buildings, or to pay exorbitant executive salaries that destabilize corporate finances leading to collapse and loss of jobs.

It is time to call a spade a spade: most Republicans are not “conservative” in the sense that they believe in preserving institutions that serve the common welfare. Rather, they are anarchists. I would encourage Democratic policy-makers to wield that word in like a knife in policy debates. The endpoint of libertarian politics, as financed by the Koch brothers and implemented by Reagan, Rove, DeVos, and Trump, is anarchy. Resistance to common-sense social policy measures should be labelled as anarchist, and those such as Hawley, Cruz and McConnell should be tarred with that epithet.