Neoliberal Language Lessons
How right-wing power—along with freemarket ideas—shifted from conservative
Christians to the Tea Party
In his book A Brief History of Neoliberalism, political
geographer David Harvey traces the triumph of neoliberalism
back to a “revolutionary turning-point” in the late
1970s.[1] Figures across the world, including Deng Xiaoping
in China and Margaret Thatcher in the United Kingdom, began
to implement ideas and policies that favored property
rights and market exchanges over public investment and
government intervention.
In the United States, Harvey notes, Ronald Reagan
participated in this early neoliberal wave when he “brought
to life the minority tradition that stretched back within
the Republican Party to Barry Goldwater in the early
1960s.”[2] This tradition had emphasized not only
libertarian economics but also social traditionalism since
at least the post-war period. But over the course of the
1970s, it was transformed into a political alliance between
wealthy, neoliberal-friendly elites and a grassroots more
interested in curtailing women’s bodily autonomy and
promoting “family values”—the so-called Christian Right.
Why has this latter group, comprised mostly of evangelical
conservatives, acted as regular, if not always docile,
allies in the Republican Party’s active role in the
neoliberal project?
Political analyst Thomas Frank, famously, thought the
answer was clear: they were being hoodwinked.[3] According
to Frank, Republicans talk about abortion and other social
issues but do not actually provide much policy action. Yet
while their supporters are distracted, Republican officials
can erode the social safety net and promote unfettered,
free-market capitalism. Still, Frank’s analysis has been
criticized for suggesting that grassroots Christians are
rubes.[4] In fact, social issues are not just distractions,
but rather legitimate concerns for evangelical Christians.
Liberalism and feminism are indeed threats to their way of
life, or at least to the conservative, patriarchal social
structures that their political and religious leaders
promote as “natural.”
There also are concrete policy actions that Republicans
provide to make neoliberalism “real” for evangelicals.
Faith-based initiatives are a key feature of the
“compassionate conservatism” so favored by George W.
Bush.[5] These policies outsource and privatize welfare by
providing grants to religious organizations, creating a
kind of “market” where churches compete to provide
voluntary support for the poor. (Frederick Clarkson covers
this phenomenon extensively in his essay for this issue of
The Public Eye.)
Churches remain eligible for federal
dollars without having to conform to any prohibitions on
discrimination or proselytization, while the neoliberal
shrinking of the state proceeds. As both economic elites
and evangelical leaders promote their alternative to a
supposedly pervasive culture of “welfare dependency,”
faith-based initiatives help cement Christian Right support
for neoliberalism. As geographer Jason Hackworth notes,
“The rationality of replacing secular welfare with
religiously delivered welfare has helped to bond together
elements of the American Right throughout the past thirtyfive years.”[6]
Faith-based initiatives also have helped neoliberals by
softening the image of their poverty policies; they’re not
eliminating aid to poor families and children, but
replacing it with a better alternative. (Forget that no
evidence exists that these policies produce better results,
or that they might actively undermine a democratic civil
society.[7])
But Christian conservatives have come to neoliberalism for
more than just welfare. Some scholars argue that
evangelicals are naturally predisposed toward free markets.
Sociologist Max Weber famously tied the rise of capitalism
to the Protestant work ethic. More recently, historian Mark
A. Noll has argued that the rise of evangelicalism in the
early United States likely fostered acceptance of freemarket principles among religious believers: having largely
rejected regulation and authority in religious life,
evangelicals were then ready to accept a similar economic
program.[8] Sociologist Fred Block has even suggested that
a shared commitment to “market fundamentalism” helps unite
business elites and Christian conservatives; this latter
group is particularly “reassured by its moral
absolutism.”[9]
It may be true that evangelicals have an affinity for free
markets, but Christian doctrine has also been aligned with
social welfare liberalism, as with Catholics and the Social
Gospel, or rights liberalism, as with the Black Church and
the Civil Rights Movement. The missing step is politics—a
political force that activates Christian conservatives’
affinity for neoliberalism and transforms it into political
action. And this is just what some savvy political
operatives within Republican networks have done.
Evangelicals did not magically become Republicans in the
late 1970s; the marriage required matchmakers. New Right
operatives famously invited Christian evangelicals into the
GOP, most publicly with the creation of the Moral Majority
in 1979.[10] Since then, the wealthy elites who run the GOP
have spent years trying to convince the Christian Right to
go along with their economic agenda, and have used
religious-based discourse and coded language to do it. So
the estate tax, for example, became portrayed as a “family”
tax that disrupted the bonds of inheritance.[11] Similarly,
voucher advocates use the language of “school choice” to
enlist religious conservatives in neoliberal privatization
efforts.[12]
All of these maneuvers have led to the present moment,
when, at the grassroots level, the most active force within
the Republican Party is no longer the Christian Right but
the Tea Party. As polling by the Pew Research Center
confirms, Tea Party activists are also often Christian
evangelicals.[13] Tea Partiers may still love Jesus in
their hearts, but they are talking and acting like good
neoliberals.
It remains to be seen how much staying power the Tea Party
has, and whether its leaders are engaged in a zero-sum game
with the Christian Right in national politics. But their
success in driving the American political agenda towards
issues of deficits and the proper scope of government
cannot be denied. On one level, this is a tremendous
victory for economic (or corporate) conservatives. On the
other hand, grassroots activists are taking neoliberal
ideas to their logical conclusion, possibly damaging the
GOP’s political prospects by pushing for government
shutdowns and challenging incumbent Republican officials
who are insufficiently devoted to their principles.
The obvious Frankenstein parallels may not be lost on
today’s Republican elites. Still, Republican neoliberals
continue to have one thing in common with their evangelical
protégés; they are unlikely to waver in their faith.
[1] David Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism (New
York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 1.
[2] Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism, 9.
[3] Thomas Frank, What’s the Matter with Kansas? How
Conservatives Won the Heart of America (New York: Henry
Holt and Company, 2004), 6.
[4] Larry Bartels, “What’s the Matter with What’s the
Matter with Kansas?” Quarterly Journal of Political Science
1 (2006): 201-226. Frank’s analysis is generally more
subtle than his detractors let on; his analysis is less
about what voters think than about the kinds of discourses
they adopt (referring to an antagonistic “liberal elite,”
for example).
[5] Frederick Clarkson, “An Uncharitable Choice: The FaithBased Takeover of Federal Programs,” The Public Eye, Fall
2014. http://www.politicalresearch.org/2014/10/10/an-unchar
itable-choice-the-faith-based-takeover-of-federal-programs/
[6] Jason Hackworth, Faith Based: Religious Neoliberalism
and the Politics of Welfare in the United States (Athens,
GA: University of Georgia Press, 2012), 3.
[7] David Ashley and Ryan Sandefer, “Neoliberalism and the
Privatization of Welfare and Religious Organizations in the
United States of America,” in Religion in the Neoliberal
Age: Political Economy and Modes of Governance, ed.
François Gauthier and Tuomas Martikainen (Farnham, UK:
Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2013).
[8] Mark A. Noll, God and Mammon: Protestants, Money, and
the Market, 1790-1860 (New York: Oxford University Press,
2001). British historian Boyd Hilton suggests a similar
dynamic for the UK in the same period; see Boyd Hilton, The
Age of Atonement: The Influence of Evangelicalism on Social
and Economic Thought, 1785-1865 (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1986), viii.
[9] Fred Block, “Reframing the Political Battle: Market
Fundamentalism vs. Moral Economy,” Longview Institute, Jan.
30,
2007,
http://www.longviewinstitute.org/projects/moral/sorcerersap
prentice.
[10] Frances FitzGerald, “A Disciplined, Charging Army,”
The New Yorker, May 18, 1981.
[11] See Richard J. Meagher, “Tax Revolt as a Family Value:
How the Christian Right Is Becoming A Free Market
Champion,” The Public Eye, Vol. 21, No. 1 (Winter 2006).
Also see Richard J. Meagher, “Family Taxes: Conservatives
Frame Estate Tax Repeal,” Journal of Policy History, Vol.
26, No. 1 (Jan. 2014).
[12] “‘School Choice Week’: A Dose Of Facts Debunks Voucher
Propaganda,” Americans United for Separation of Church &
State, https://au.org/voucherFAIL.
[13] “The Tea Party and Religion,” Pew Research Religion &
Public
Life
Project,
Feb.
23,
2011,
http://www.pewforum.org/2011/02/23/tea-party-and-religion.