Jan 31, 2015 2 min read

In Paul Krugman’s Jan. 22 “facts don’t matter”commentary, on the emotional denial of environmental, health, and economic realities by the right, he says Republican rage is “bound up with rejecting any role for government that serves the public interest.” Fear and ignorance of socialism is indeed fueling the irrational hatred of self-government.

Socialism, secular government in the public interest, begins with the American Revolution, followed by the French and successive revolutions. One result: today, two of the world’s poorest nations, North Korea and Cuba, have universal education and health care, important components of governments that serve the public interest.

Contrast that with America where, shortly before assuming control of Congress, Republicans repealed the anti-bail-out Wall Street law and severely underfunded the Internal Revenue Service and Environmental Protection Agency, encouraging tax cheats and polluters to open businesses financed by New York bankers. The GOP will be more outraged than its base when the bill for this falls due, correctly blaming the federal government. Currently they are busy passing more anti-socialist legislation, and facts don’t matter, particularly the constitutional one spelled out for Congress in a Supreme Court decision in 1819, formally establishing the public interest as the guiding principle in making federal laws.

A basic assumption of the Founding Fathers, including Alexander Hamilton, whose twisted interpretation led to the Whiskey Rebellion, was that popular support for secular government serving the public interest replaced loyalty to British rule almost overnight through the pamphlets of Thomas Paine. But by 1819, the spirit of ’76 was so weak that the purpose of the revolutionary generation’s sacrifices needed to be codified in the Constitution, now mocked with every Republican’s oath of office and assault on the public interest. Not only facts don’t matter for them, history, cause and effect, common decency, international law and opinion, and human rights are all trumped by anti-socialism.

Jim Greenwood

Washington