First, some history for perspective. (Stick with me. I promise this will be worth it).
Nineteenth-century American society was a patriarchy: a social hierarchy with White men at the top and Black women at the bottom.
Laws reflect cultural values. As the culture changes, laws change. Laws in the 19th century reinforced the patriarchy.
Example: A court in North Carolina in 1868 refused to convict a man for beating his wife because the wounds he inflicted were not serious. (61 N.C. 453.) The court said that unless severe injury resulted, it wasn’t the business of the courts or the government to interfere in family life. The idea was that a man was entitled to rule his family as he saw fit.
Laws allowed for racial segregation.
Laws outlawing abortion and making birth control difficult also reinforced the patriarchy by keeping women dependent on men.
Rape laws traditionally reinforced the patriarchy: For much of world history, rape was a property crime. An unmarried girl was her father’s property. A married woman was her husband’s property. If a virgin was raped, the property damage was to her father. If she was married, the damage was to her husband.
If she wasn’t a virgin and wasn’t married, there was no crime (because the property was already damaged). A man couldn’t rape his wife (his own property) and rape of enslaved women wasn’t a crime.
Sexual assault (meaning the act wasn’t completed) wasn’t a crime because there was no actual property damage.
Rapes were evaluated within the context of the hierarchy. A powerful White man accused of rape was of course treated differently from a Black man. It also mattered who was raped. The laws were designed to protect [White] men from false accusations. They weren’t designed to protect women from attack.
The way we’ve been getting out of the patriarchy is by changing the laws governing things like racial discrimination and the legal status of women (which includes rape laws and access to abortion).
The laws put in place since the New Deal and Civil Rights movement are dismantling the patriarchy. These are the laws that Republicans hate. The regulatory agencies that create and enforce these regulations are what they call the Deep State.
In 2018, Trump said: “All our laws are so corrupt and stupid” What he meant, of course, was that he doesn’t like the laws that get in his way.
Another theory of Republican lawbreaking is that, back when the frontier was open, there was a place lawbreakers could go. People who didn’t like to live by society’s rules had a place to go.
Now there is no more frontier, so such people are stuck with the rest of us.
Republicans Are Shielding the Insurrectionists Because Republicans, too, Are Anti-Federal Government
We have a long history in this country of a sizable group of Americans being anti-federal government.
The Confederacy was anti-federal government because they knew that the federal government, if given the chance, would abolish slavery.
Segregationalists were anti-federal government because they knew the federal government would outlaw segregation. (And in fact, it was the federal government that ended racial segregation.)
The federal government gave us the Civil Rights Act (1964) and the Voting Rights Act (1965) which helped enable members of minority communities to vote and move into positions of power.
People who want to get rich by cheating want to dismantle the regulatory agencies of the federal government so they can cheat the way they did in the 19th century.
Yesterday I quoted from the Patriot Front white supremacy militia’s manifestos:
“The time of the Republic has passed in America as the system grows too weak to perform its duty. … The damage done to this nation and its people will not be fixed if every issue requires the approval and blessing from the dysfunctional American democratic system. Democracy has failed in this once great nation.”
— Patriot Front manifesto.
“The American Identity was something uniquely forged in the struggle that our ancestors waged to survive in this new continent. … To be an American is to realize this identity and take up the national struggle upon one’s shoulders. Not simply by birth is one granted this title but by the degree to which he works and fulfills the potential of his birth.”
— Patriot Front manifesto.
“An African, for example, may have lived, worked, and even been classed as a citizen in America for centuries, yet he is not American. He is, as he likely prefers to be labeled, an African in America. The same rule applies to others who are not of the founding stock of our people as well as to those who do not share the common unconscious that permeates throughout our greater civilization, and the European diaspora.”
— Patriot Front manifesto.
Such people want to destroy the federal government because of a “crisis of legitimacy” which happens when people don’t think the government governs on their behalf. See: “The Authentic Appeal of the Lying Demagogue.”
They think the “political establishment” is favoring new groups over “real” Americans. Exactly what Laura Ingraham explained here when she said:
If you want to dismantle the federal government, you can do it slowly or you can bring in a wrecking ball.
Trump was a wrecking ball. These guys are wrecking balls:
Republicans have to defend insurrectionists because these are their voters. Without their votes, they cannot achieve electoral majorities.
