Heather Digby Parton — The GOP’s Scientology strategy: How Charles Murray’s perverse anti-government agenda has won over the American right

The man most famous for the deeply racist "The Bell Curve" has found a solution to Big Government: Sue it to death. 

It’s important to note here that the right’s loathing of the federal government is actually quite narrowly focused on certain areas of interest. They are fully behind the neoconservatives’ imperial project — flag waving and martial strutting are fundamental to American conservatism. (Small government is a very imprecise term; they have no problem with a big military and police apparatus. In fact, those bureaucracies have a blank check.) But within that narrow anti-government focus of low taxes is their extreme hostility to government regulations....

Murray has a new book coming out that is poised to take the conservative and libertarian world by storm. It’s called “By the People: Rebuilding Liberty Without Permission,” and in it Murray proclaims, “the government cannot enforce its mountain of laws and regulations without voluntary compliance.” His book proposes to create “a private-sector counterweight that pulls back the curtain and exposes the Wizard’s weakness.” The private sector counterweight, in this case, will be a billionaire-funded institution that will bankroll thousands of lawsuits against the government, which Murray fatuously names “The Madison Institute.”

If conservatives follow the Scientology strategy to the letter, they will file lawsuits against individual federal employees as well, making their lives miserable and putting them into personal financial jeopardy....

Of course, if a Republican becomes president, the whole idea becomes moot. The billionaires would withdraw to their counting rooms to add up their profits while the GOP executive makes their job unnecessary. The fact that they are contemplating this assault through the legal system is an admission that they don’t really believe they’ll have the political power to do this any time soon.

Salon
The GOP’s Scientology strategy: How Charles Murray’s perverse anti-government agenda has won over the American right

Heather Digby Parton, Hullabaloo