HAYEK SAW THIS COMING
An even more trenchant warning came from Friedrich Hayek, the Austrian-born economist and classical liberal who played such a central role in the emergence of American free-market conservativism. He had a keen understanding of the temptations of authoritarianism, writing that “‘Emergencies’ have always been the pretext on which the safeguards of individual liberty have been eroded.” In his chapter on “Why the Worst Get on Top” in his classic work The Road to Serfdom, Hayek diagnosed the populist impulse that would lead to the demand for ceding power to a “man of action.”* This is “the position which precedes the suppression of democratic institutions and the creation of a totalitarian regime.”16
At some point in a political or economic crisis, there “is the general demand for quick and determined government action that is the dominating element in the situation, dissatisfaction with the slow and cumbersome course of democratic procedure which makes action for action’s sake the goal. It is then the man or the party who seems strong and resolute enough ‘to get things done’ who exercises the greatest appeal.…”
Hayek knew that it was the nature of free societies for people to become dissatisfied “with the ineffectiveness of parliamentary majorities,” so they turn to “somebody with such solid support as to inspire confidence that he can carry out whatever he wants.”
Hayek then lays out the preconditions for the rise of a demagogic dictator: a dumbed-down populace, a gullible electorate, and a common enemy or group or scapegoats upon which to focus public enmity and anger. The more educated a society is, Hayek says, the more diverse their tastes and values will be, “and the less likely they are to agree on a particular hierarchy of values.” The flip side is that “if we wish to find a high degree of uniformity and similarity of outlook, we have to descend to the regions of lower moral and intellectual standards where the more primitive and ‘common’ instincts and tastes prevail.” But in a modern society, potential dictators might be able to rely on there being enough of “those whose uncomplicated and primitive instincts” to support their efforts. As a result, Hayek said, he “will have to increase their numbers by converting more to the same simple creed.”
Here is where propaganda comes into play. The “man of action,” Hayek wrote, “will be able to obtain the support of all the docile and gullible, who have no strong convictions of their own but are prepared to accept a ready-made system of values if it is only drummed into their ears sufficiently loudly and frequently.” Slogans should be simple and relentless. “It will be those whose vague and imperfectly formed ideas are easily swayed and whose passions and emotions are readily aroused who will thus swell the ranks of the totalitarian party,” Hayek predicted.
This led to what Hayek called the third and most important element of the demagogue’s program: in order to “weld together a closely coherent and homogeneous body of supporters,” he needed to find an enemy.
It seems to be almost a law of human nature that it is easier for people to agree on a negative programme, on the hatred of an enemy, on the envy of those better off, than on any positive task. The contrast between the “we” and the “they,” the common fight against those outside the group, seems to be an essential ingredient in any creed which will solidly knit together a group for common action. It is consequently always employed by those who seek, not merely support of a policy, but the unreserved allegiance of huge masses.17
The identification of scapegoats had numerous advantages, not the least of which was that it gave the leader far more leeway than a positive agenda for which he might be held accountable.
The enemy, whether he be internal like the “Jew” or the “Kulak,” or external, seems to be an indispensable requisite in the armoury of a totalitarian leader.
Immigrants, foreigners, refugees, “elites,” “international bankers,” the Chinese, or the Davoisie oligarchy would work equally as well. For students of history, the “air of populist demagoguery and menace,” around the Trump campaign as Roger Kimball put it, was deeply troubling because it seemed to be giving shape to precisely what Hayek had warned against. It was not a path to restored “greatness.” It was, in Hayek’s terms, the road to serfdom.
And it was a radical rejection of values that are central to the conservative tradition.
CHAPTER 15
WHAT HAPPENED TO THE CHRISTIANS?
THE REMARKABLE THING ABOUT the Christian Right in 2016 was not its support of Donald Trump in the general election; it was the genuinely stunning transformation of its value system, and even its core standards of personal conduct.
For decades, a bedrock principle of the Christian Right was that character mattered and that personal morality and ethics were essential requirements of political leadership. Evangelical leaders were especially insistent on this point during the presidency of Bill Clinton, when they argued vigorously that Clinton’s conduct and perjury disqualified him from the presidency. Richard John Neuhaus spoke for many Christian leaders when he warned about the damage that would be caused by the national acceptance of a public loss of character. As evangelical theologian Russell Moore would note, “Neuhaus was not alone.”
Jerry Falwell Sr. called for both President Clinton and New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani to step down from political office because their marital infidelities disqualified them from office and “lowered the moral bar for political officeholders in America.” We were told that we should not put practical considerations—as important as they may be—above objective moral, transcendent standards. “I don’t vote my pocketbook,” we were taught to say, “I vote my values.”1
As recently as 2011, only 30 percent of white evangelicals agreed that “an elected official who commits an immoral act in their personal life can still behave ethically and fulfill their duties in their public life and professional life.” But in the era of Trump, evangelical attitudes underwent a stunning, head-snapping transformation. A poll released in October 2016 found that fully 76 percent of white evangelicals had decided that a candidate’s morals were no longer that important. While other groups had also become more tolerant of personal immorality, no other group had moved so dramatically. Indeed, as one commentator noted, that “immense shift in opinion means that the same types who made up the former ‘Moral Majority’ now comprise the religious group most likely to agree that public and private morality can be separate.” [Emphasis added.]2
This followed the full-throated embrace of Trump by many of the best-known leaders of the Christian Right, including Pat Robertson; James Dobson, the founder of Family Talk Radio and Focus on the Family; Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council; Ralph Reed, chairman of the Faith and Freedom Coalition; evangelist Franklin Graham, Billy Graham’s son; and Jerry Falwell Jr., president of Liberty University and the son of Jerry Falwell Sr., who had cofounded the Moral Majority and famously called for Clinton’s resignation.
Falwell was a particularly interesting case. In a campaign replete with images of exquisite humiliations, one particular photograph stood out. Along with his wife, the evangelical leader posed for a thumbs-up picture with Trump in front of a wall of Trump memorabilia—including a cover of Playboy magazine featuring a younger Trump with a provocatively posed model. (At the time the picture was taken, the model in the picture was “in prison for participating in a scheme to transport cocaine from Los Angeles to Sydney—by hiding the drug in airplane toilets.”)3 The irony of the moment did not pass unremarked. “How perfect,” one blogger remarked. “The Evangelical community has whored itself out to Trump in exchange for the promise of power, so why not? Look how perfectly framed that is!! Almost as if it was done on purpose. Diabolical!!”4 Falwell responded to the online mockery by tweeting out a comparison of himself … to Jesus:
Honored for same hypocrites who accused Jesus of being a friend of publicans and sinners to be targeting me over a decades old mag cover! TY5
Falwell had endorsed Trump in January 2016, long before the campaign had become a bin
ary choice of Trump versus Clinton. Falwell explained his support for Trump by saying, “Look at the fruits of his life and … people he’s provided jobs … that’s the true test of somebody’s Christianity.” Conservative commentator Erick Erickson responded: “I did not know the truest test of somebody’s Christianity was being an employer. I thought humbling yourself, putting your needs behind those of others, and repenting of sin were more characteristics of faith than putting people on the payroll.”6
A QUESTION OF FORGIVENESS
The evangelical support for Trump was especially surprising given the evidence that Trump was either indifferent toward or ignorant of the basic tenets of the faith. When he was asked in 2015 at an Iowa Family Leadership Summit whether he had ever asked God for forgiveness, Trump answered: “I am not sure I have. I just go on and try to do a better job from there. I don’t think so. I think if I do something wrong, I think, I just try and make it right. I don’t bring God into that picture. I don’t.” He then discussed how he regarded Communion: “When I drink my little wine—which is about the only wine I drink—and have my little cracker, I guess that is a form of asking for forgiveness, and I do that as often as possible because I feel cleansed,” he said. “I think in terms of ‘Let’s go on and let’s make it right.’”7
In June 2016 he was asked by syndicated columnist and conservative Christian activist Cal Thomas: “You have said you never felt the need to ask for God’s forgiveness, and yet repentance for one’s sins is a precondition to salvation. I ask you the question Jesus asked of Peter: Who do you say He is?”
TRUMP: I will be asking for forgiveness, but hopefully I won’t have to be asking for much forgiveness.
THOMAS: Who do you say Jesus is?
TRUMP: Jesus to me is somebody I can think about for security and confidence. Somebody I can revere in terms of bravery and in terms of courage and, because I consider the Christian religion so important, somebody I can totally rely on in my own mind.8
Good enough, apparently, even for evangelicals who might have hoped that Trump would make some reference to his divinity. But none of this fazed his evangelical cheerleaders.
TRUMP AS KING DAVID
Even after a video surfaced showing Trump bragging about sexually assaulting women, Falwell and other Christian Right leaders stood by him. (“And when you’re a star they let you do it,” Trump says on the tape. “You can do anything.… Grab them by the p—y. You can do anything.”) The Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins declared: “My personal support for Donald Trump has never been based upon shared values, it is based upon shared concerns about issues…”; and then he listed Supreme Court appointments, the War on Terror, and religious liberty as more important than Trump’s conduct with women. Pat Robertson, who had famously called Bill Clinton “debauched, debased, and defamed,” dismissed Trump’s comments as simply “trying to look like he’s macho” and praised him for rising “like the phoenix” from the controversy.9
Jerry Falwell Jr. was particularly outspoken in Trump’s defense, which was not surprising, since he had been offering tortured defenses of Trump’s personal conduct for months, including comparing the Manhattan mogul to King David:
God called King David a man after God’s own heart even though he was an adulterer and a murderer. You have to choose the leader that would make the best king or president and not necessarily someone who would be a good pastor. We’re not voting for pastor-in-chief. It means sometimes we have to choose a person who has the qualities to lead and who can protect our country and bring us back to economic vitality, and it might not be the person we call when we need somebody to give us spiritual counsel.10
Wrote Erick Erickson: “That is flat out mocking God.” God had, in fact, punished David for his sins. He continues, “David had to cry out to God for forgiveness. Psalm 51,… is David crying out to God, ‘For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me.… Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. Cast me not away from your presence, and take not your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and uphold me with a willing spirit.’”11 Comparing Trump to David was beyond absurd, because Trump felt no need to repent or seek forgiveness.
DOBSON’S CHOICE
James Dobson, another influential evangelical leader who backed Trump, did so even though he thought that Trump had been influenced by a decidedly nonmainstream Christian pastor. “I hear,” Dobson said, “that Paula White has known Trump for years and that she personally led him to Christ.”12
White, a thrice-married televangelist, is a controversial figure who has faced IRS investigations, a variety of personal scandals, and financial difficulties. She is best known for emphasizing her wealth in her preaching and for being associated with what is known as the “Prosperity Gospel,” which Politico described as a doctrine that “says God wants people to be rich—and that more traditional religious leaders frown upon.”13 Russell Moore, the Southern Baptist leader minced no words, calling her a “charlatan” and a “heretic.” Even Dobson seemed to express skepticism about the depth of Trump’s conversion, choosing instead to cast the election in binary terms: “If anything, this man is a baby Christian who doesn’t have a clue about how believers think, talk and act. All I can tell you is that we have only two choices, Hillary or Donald. Hillary scares me to death.”*
Dobson’s choice provides some insight into how the imperatives of binary choice played out in the evangelical community in ways that were perhaps not immediately apparent to outsiders. For years, some leaders of the religious Right, including Pat Roberston, had conditioned their audiences to apocalyptic visions of politics and to warnings about attempts to assault their faith. But political and legal developments had also sharpened the conviction among many evangelicals that the election was the ultimate binary choice: Christian conservatives were terrified of the outcome.
In an essay entitled, “The Uncomfortable Truth about Christian Support for Trump,” Jonathan Van Maren explained how so many Christians had come to surrender some of their most deeply held values.14
For eight long years, traditional Christians have fought with the Obama Administration as he tried to force Christian business-owners to pay for birth control and abortifacients, decreed that all schools had to bend to the knee to the brand-new transgender ideology or lose their funding, and began speaking of “freedom of worship” rather than “religious liberty.”
What makes Van Maren’s article notable is that he concedes every conceivable negative about Trump; he admits that Trump had been pro-abortion until “a very short time ago, and was so unfamiliar with the basic positions held by the pro-life movement that he suggested women be punished for having abortions.” He cited Trump’s multiple marriages, his infidelities, and his “extraordinary cruelty during the divorce proceedings.” Based on his refusal to answer the question, “It seems likely that he’s paid for abortions in the past.” He was indifferent to the debate over transgender bathrooms and “shockingly uninformed on many of the issues, as this week’s presidential debate highlighted. He’s also explosive, thin-skinned, and unable to ignore baiting by opponents.”
But, but, but … he was not Hillary. Her awfulness compelled even the most orthodox of believers to set aside their doubts. “The media doesn’t seem to realize just how loathed Hillary is, and don’t seem to recognize why,” Van Maren wrote, explaining that for many conservative Christians Clinton “poses a real and imminent threat to Christians who want to live their lives, run their own businesses, go to their own churches, and pass their values on to their children.… Hillary, to many Americans, is quite literally a destroyer of worlds.” Note the word “literally.”
In all likelihood, Maren also conceded, Trump did not care about religious liberty or even the right to life. “But Hillary would explicitly attack it.” Maren defined the choice:
At the end of the day, virtually every criticism of Trump is true. He’s a huckster. He doesn’t care about most, if any,
of the issues that are important to Christians. He’s probably just making promises to ensure that Christians show up and vote for him in November. But on the other hand, Hillary Clinton is passionate about these issues. She’s passionate about the ongoing destruction of human life by abortion, and she’s passionate about furthering the secular progressive agenda that has been backing Christians up against a wall for eight years. So when people point out that Donald Trump will probably do nothing, many Christians respond that yes, that’s the point. He probably won’t. She definitely will.
THE EVANGELICAL LANDSLIDE
This argument proved to be persuasive to the overwhelming majority of white evangelical voters. After Trump’s victory, Franklin Graham declared, “I believe it was God. God showed up. He answered the prayers of hundreds of thousands of people across this land who had been praying for this country.”15
Exit polls indicated that white evangelicals backed Trump by a staggering margin of 80 to 16 percent, eclipsing George W. Bush’s 2004 margin of 78 to 21 percent.16 The intense gravitational pull of partisanship explains much of the evangelical support for the GOP nominee. But the Christian support for Trump was not inevitable or a given. There were powerful voices from within the church opposing Trump, including the magazine Christianity Today, which published a scathing editorial comparing support for Trump to “idolatry.”
How the Right Lost Its Mind Page 19