A great deal of angst and analysis accompanies the apparently bottomless capacity of Republicans to excuse, absorb, justify or ignore President Donald Trump’s lawless and crude behavior. A step back gives perspective. Trump’s presidency is not an aberration. It is the apotheosis of a decades-long conservative crusade. Trump’s carnival show is just a convenient distraction. It is like staging a train wreck so that the entire town can be looted while sensation-seeking citizens flock to the scene of the crash.
A seemingly minor case in the long-term crusade is Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue, recently argued before the U.S. Supreme Court.
In simple terms, this case seems only a test of the establishment clause of the First Amendment, which prohibits government from favoring one religion over others. It is among many efforts by the religious right to affirm the constitutionality of taxpayer support for religious schools. But the overall strategy is more complex. The intent is to present “school choice” as a matter of individual liberty, then divert public dollars to private purposes, gradually deprive public education of oxygen, and end up with a patchwork of religious and for-profit schools.
Montana created a tax credit scholarship program, designed to give a $150 tax credit in return for contributions to a privately run scholarship program, ostensibly for-low income students. The Montana Department of Revenue at first refused to implement the program, citing the Blaine Amendment, a provision included in the constitutions of 37 states that forbids tax credits going to religious schools. The department then went forward, but excluded religious schools from the program. Kendra Espinoza and the other petitioners (the plaintiffs) objected to the exclusion, brought suit, lost and appealed to the Supreme Court. Their argument might be paraphrased, “Who’s the government to tell me how I can spend your money?”
These kinds of programs are an increasingly common way to funnel tax dollars to religious schools by creating a supposedly neutral “middle man.” The funds, religious freedom folks argue, are going to individuals, not religious institutions. That the individuals choose to spend them at a religious school is incidental.
The lawyers for Espinoza cite the recently decided Trinity Lutheran case, in which the Supreme Court ruled that it was constitutional for taxpayer funds to pay for a playground at a religious school, arguing that funding a playground did not “establish” religion. That domino fell and it seems nearly certain that the court will decide in favor of Espinoza, further eroding the wall between church and state. Trump nominees Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch and other members of the conservative majority never met an argument for religion in public life that they didn’t like.
Alas, the Espinoza case and other legal challenges to the establishment clause are just one front in the nationwide conservative crusade against government, secularity and the social contract.
This is among the reasons otherwise “normal” conservatives support an obviously unhinged president.
We are mistaken to believe that the real power behind the Trump debacle is goofballs with red hats. They are part of the sideshow, not the main event. It’s Mike Pence, Bill Barr, Mike Pompeo and other religious zealots who are in it for the long game. They wish for an implicitly Christian nation, where freedom of individual choice is worshipped in every realm except women’s reproductive health.
Trump is their extraordinarily useful idiot and they are more than happy to appeal to the rabid white nationalists and gun-toting zealots who rally to the cause without fully understanding what they’re doing.
This all began in earnest in 1980. School choice is just one manifestation of Ronald Reagan’s evocation of rugged individualism. In his spirit, a movement arose to create a nation of shining charter schools on the hill — a nation where equitable public education for all would drown in the bathtub along with most other government programs. As Reagan quipped in his folksy simplicity, “the most terrifying words in the English language are, ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help.’ ”
The persistent — and disingenuous — disparaging of the government is propaganda aimed at the gradual privatization of the republic. In the mythological world of conservative America, business people are brilliant and all government employees are doofuses. In this world, “government” schools are de facto lousy and school choice allows all children to soar. This is utterly false, but the propaganda is powerful. The movement to “reform” education is about abandoning the collective good and gradually turning education into another commodity to be traded on the open market.
Through judicial appointments and the starvation of government programs, conservatives are well along the path to a nation where we will have school choice, but no reproductive choice. Where every necessity of life, including education, health, safety, water and shelter, will depend on whether you can buy it from a well-branded vendor.
The conservative movement aims for a white majority, Christian-led country where you get what you deserve and deserve what you get. In service of that long-held goal, supporting a petty misfit like Donald Trump is a small price to pay.
Steve Nelson lives in Boulder, Colo., and Sharon. He can be reached at stevehutnelson@gmail.com.