The question posed in the title of this post is a legitimate one. We’ve seen a steady degradation of Republican thought patterns since the days of Nixon. As corrupt as his administration was, somehow the country still paradoxically got something useful, i.e., the EPA, out of that era. But the cancerous corruption of corporate interests over those of the population at large was already running deep and metastasizing.

Sure Nixon finally bit the bullet and ended the travesty of the Vietnam War, but it was because his hand had been forced by the revelations of the Pentagon Papers scandal, not by any sense of sanity. Two years earlier the CIA under Nixon staged a successful coup d’état in Chile overthrowing the popular elected president Allende and installing the brutal dictator Pinochet—who later killed or disappeared thousands who opposed him.

Then of course we moved on to the “cowboy,” Reagan whose “revolution” began what has become the 40-years war against the middle class of America and the entrenched enrichment of the billionaire class. The inherent racism and division installed by Reagan has only magnified today with far-right candidates in the Republican Party openiy courting the most extreme racist, white supremacist, antisemitic, anti-government and anti-LBGTQ voters possible.

Today’s Republican Party stands firmly in favor of issues like banning books, destruction of government institutions (especially law-enforcement organizations that they fear might legitimately investigate their crimes), degrading women’s rights, bringing back Jim Crow style laws, etc. And their play is being driven and financed by billionaires who would love to see an impoverished middle class, willing to accept any kind of a job at whatever pittance they were willing to pay.

The problem these folks have is that the Constitution and our government is not built to their specifications. The Preamble to the Constitution makes the case quite clearly:

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

It says “We the people…” not “We the shareholders…”

But we’ve always had a problem with the super rich trying to grab an unfair advantage and try to make it a more “perfect union” for themselves. Thus laws were passed like the Sherman Anti-Trust Act which outlawed monopolistic business practices. The New Deal laws pushed through by F.D.R.’s administration. The Voting RIghts Act under Johnson. Even the establishment of the EPA by Nixon. These and many other acts sought to level the playing field so that individuals were not crushed by either the weight of the government or corporations.

Today, all of these mechanisms of individual rights and safety are under attack by interests who seek to protect their profits over all opposition. And if that opposition happens to be bound in established and settled law, well it appears Supreme Court justices can be bought and manipulated as well.

American economist Milton Friedman developed a theory of business ethics that states that “an entity’s greatest responsibility lies in the satisfaction of the shareholders.” Therefore, the business should always endeavor to maximize its revenues to increase returns for the shareholders.

Friedman’s “shareholders über ales” datum has been used to excuse a vast array of crimes by providing companies and their billionaire owners a ready justification to bulldoze anything out of the path of profits. Things like ethics, individual rights, the environment, even the very lives of consumers of their products.

Also on the chopping block—if it gets in the way of those shareholder returns—is our government, our Constitution and its attendant Bill of RIghts. So, under any future Republican administration—as has been demonstrated by history and campaign statements—rights will belong to shareholders. And woe betide anyone who doesn’t own enough shares of the right kind of stock.

No one should still be laboring under the delusion that any Republican candidate for any office—backed by the financial might of people who want our government torn down to protect their wallets—has anything other than anarchy in mind.