How a Child-Killer Set the Stage for Today's Republicans to Revel in Cruelty

"It turns out this is not just politics; the roots of this brutal movement in today’s GOP run from a 1927 child murderer, through a greedy real-estate lobbying group, to Ronald Reagan putting both of their philosophies into actual practice and bringing morbidly rich right-wing billionaires into the GOP fold.

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In 1980, billionaire David Koch ran for vice president on the newly formed Libertarian Party ticket. His platform included calls to privatize the Post Office, end all public schools, give Medicare and Medicaid to big insurance companies, end all taxation of the morbidly rich, terminate food and housing support and all other forms of “welfare,” deregulate all corporate oversight while shutting down the EPA and FDA, and selling off much of the federal government’s land and other assets to billionaires and big corporations.

Reagan, who won that 1980 election, embraced this view in his inaugural address, saying, “[G]overnment is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.” He then doubled down on the idea by beginning the systematic process of gutting and crippling governmental institutions that historically had supported working people and the middle class.

The child-killer who inspired a movement

Reagan wasn’t just echoing the Libertarian vision; he was also endorsing Ayn Rand’s “objectivist” view of the world, which traces its roots to a murderous sociopath in 1927."

 

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