Us the People: Project 2025’s Anti-Democratic Agenda

Project 2025 talks a great game about power to the people, government minding its business, and direct democracy. Right up until the people do something right-wingers (they’re not conservatives, stop calling them that) don’t like (looking at you, Ohio).

Project 2025 is a 920-page Christian Nationalist manifesto and policy platform with all the rage-bait terms you’d expect, but the most fundamental hypocrisy is the repeated assertions that Americans “have a right to rule ourselves.” The mass firings and hundreds of policies they’re proposing suggest otherwise.  

Nowhere is this hypocrisy more evident than in reproductive rights. When Ohio voters went to the polls and voted in favor of a Constitutional Amendment to protect the right to an abortion, Republicans vowed it was their “God-given right” to stop the will of the people.  I guess the will of the people only means the will of the right kind of people.

This is the kind of hypocrisy we’ve all come to expect of the mainstream (formerly known as fringe) Republican Party. But it showcases such a glaring disgust for women, families, democracy, and fundamental American principles, that it’s hard to believe anyone buys this. But they do.

For too long my liberal friends have assumed that abortion was just a political talking point to turn out the votes. The number of “I [expletive] told you so” texts I had to send after Dobbs just shows how little many Americans understand about the threat before us. Project 2025 is scary because they mean it. Not as a smokescreen for their lousy economic policies (though also that), but because they believe they are God’s chosen people and the rest of us should comply or die (literally if you’re a woman).

Sure, when the Right decided to turn to social issues because they were losing on economic and policy issues, abortion was just a talking point. The Religious Right joined in to make it a lightning rod.

But as more Americans have been radicalized towards Christian Nationalism, they are not just coming for abortion (or birth control or gay people) as a saber rattle in campaign speech. They’re coming to reshape American politics in their God-given vision even if it means overturning the will of the voters.

Patriarchal Headship on Stilts. Or Steroids.

These are the same people who want to “celebrate” the overturning of Roe v Wade and call for the Congress to go even further. They acknowledge that mothers will die, but don’t worry they respect the “heroism of every choice to be a mother.” I imagine that’s cold comfort to rape victims or dead people, but hey, if we wanted rights we shouldn’t have been born women.

Over half of doctors say overturning Roe will continue to have a devastating effect on maternal mortality. But I guess the American Medical Association should have thought of that before they donated to Republican candidates 2-1 in the 2016 election.

I want to walk you through more on the new legal phase of the fascist movement, but that’s later in the week. For now, just remember that women’s rights are human rights and abortion can be lifesaving medical care.