Scott Weese: GOP has finally gone too far

I resign from the Republican Party.

I’ve hung in there for a while, and I’ve hoped that the current spate of crazy was just the normal primary nonsense. But at this point I really see nothing of what I believe in any of the viable candidates. The front-runner’s campaign slogan of “Heil Trump” is simply the last straw.

I believe in limited government. Not no government. Government intervention is generally deeply inefficient and creates the very real risk of dependency. It should be a measure of last resort. It should step in to correct broken or fundamentally noncompetitive markets through reasoned and restrained regulation. Markets are better at allocating resources than individuals and bureaucracy, though I recognize that they also create winners and losers that limited government will not help. The GOP no longer believes in limited government. It believes the government must step in to achieve optimal social engineering, preferably along white, male, and Christian lines.

I believe in individual rights. Not group rights. I recognize that certain people need protection because of historical and current systemic discrimination. But I believe that such protection must flow from recognizing that individuals need a level playing field to make the same personal choices as everyone else. My rights are fundamentally mine, to assert and exercise and enjoy. They are not the largess of governmental actions, and they are not the abstract claim of semi-coherent creeds. The GOP no longer believes in individual rights. They believe that the government grants exemptions based on faith, and that faith is opposed to law.

I believe that the purpose of our country is to form a “more perfect union.” Not perfection. “Alloys are stronger.” Alloys of race, religion, sex, age, socioeconomic class. Compromise is not anathema to principle, it IS our principle. And it is built on the principle of democracy that all of us together can make better choices than any of us separately. But for that to work, we must all listen to each other. We must all recognize that all human beings are people. The GOP no longer believes in union, more or less perfect. It believes in tantrums, bigotry, inaction, and platitudes.

I believe in pragmatism. Not principle or abstraction. Principle certainly guides pragmatism, but when an idea or ideal does not work, the ideas must change. There are so many poor people in this country who need help. Conservative ideals can help them, if only we would return to them: a basic income to replace complex and inefficient social spending, eliminating barriers to entry into markets, and making capital available to places the market does not reach, actively opposing monopolistic control over infrastructure. The GOP no longer believes in pragmatism. It has become the party of “No.” No ideas, no plans, no goals, no facts.

I believe in our Constitution. The words we’ve written, not the wishes we ascribe to it. Ours is a government of limited powers granted by us, the people, to a corporate entity that we direct through collective action and compromise. At a time when liberal impulses are to treat the Constitution as a drunk treats a lamp-post, the conservative call should be one of simple return to orderly government. The GOP no longer believes in the Constitution. It speaks of setting aside fundamental rights, out of fear of the other, out of fear of the choices women and men make with their bodies, out of fear that bad guys will get away with things. The Constitution makes us free, not safe.

I am ashamed of my former party. I can understand the isolationist impulse to deny entry to refugees. I can understand it, though I think it is wrong morally and practically. I think it is an assault on the very meaning of “American” to not welcome people who flee oppression, religious persecution, and failed government-controlled economies. But I cannot understand how anyone can threaten the rights of anyone on the basis of their religion. To threaten to intimidate them for their worship, to threaten to single them out with special laws. I cannot understand how, in the face of such unconstitutional, evil, shameful ideas, the GOP has not banished these troglodytes from our party. The tent is not big enough for the resurrection of Fascism, and for me.

Scott Weese first posted this column on Facebook. He’s a lawyer with Wood LLP in San Francisco, focused on tax audit defense. He has completed internships with the U.S. Tax Court, National Whistleblower Center, and worked with the Loyola University Chicago School of Law Low Income Federal Taxpayer Clinic.  He graduated from the College of the University of Chicago with a degree in History in 2006, and the Yeshiva University Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in 2009. In 2010, he completed his LL.M. degree in taxation at the New York University School of law. From 2012 to 2014, he worked in the area of corporate tax incentives, particularly the research and development tax credit. The views expressed in this editorial are of the author’s alone, and not of Wood LLP or any other party. Column courtesy of Context Florida.