Project 2025: A Blueprint for Authoritarianism

By Madeleine Kando

During Biden’s State of the Union address, the President referenced a speech given by President Franklin Roosevelt almost a century ago. Roosevelt’s purpose was to wake up Congress and alert the American people that his were no ordinary times. ‘Freedom and democracy were under assault in the world’.

Biden continued: ‘Now it is we who face an unprecedented moment in the history of the Union. Freedom and democracy are under attack again, both at home and overseas’.

These words are no longer alarmist rhetoric. While France becomes the first country to enshrine abortion rights in its constitution, the United States is barreling its way in the opposite direction. The Far Right is now ready ‘to battle anti-American “woke” forces’ and enshrine white Christian patriarchal values in our government. 

Project 2025 *

In case of a Republican victory in the 2024, the far right is planning to implement an authoritarian takeover of the America Government. They call it ‘Project 2025’. Published by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, Project 2025 is a clear threat to our democracy, and we must treat it as such.

It wants the President to have direct control of all the departments in the Executive branch, so it can gut them at will (including the DOJ and the FBI) and reform others, such as the Department of Education, by funneling tax money into religious charter schools, instead of public schools. It calls the DOE a “one-stop shop for the 'woke' education cartel” and plans to close it down altogether and return all responsibility for education to the states.

An illegal instrument called "Schedule F" would allow the President to fire and replace thousands of civil servants who are now shielded from political manipulation. The entire Executive branch will become politicized.

The lengthy document covers all departments in great detail. It wants to give a President (Trump is their favorite candidate) complete control over Education, Health Care, Defense, the Press and even Finances.

It is frighteningly candid in its goals for the future of the country.

What Comes After the American Century?

By Thomas Kando 

There is today a widespread sense that America is in decline. On the right, there is MAGA and the Trumpites. On the left, many young people and not-so-young people feel that America is doing everything wrong. Overseas our adversaries, like Putin, wishfully predict America’s downfall. And many people in countries friendly to us also talk about our (allegedly growing) weaknesses. Whether you care about America or not, pessimism about our country is widespread. 

What is one to make of all this? 

To me, it is not clear that America is in decline. I have heard this refrain my whole life. Over the decades, there have been many predictions of the imminent end of what has been called the American century. Each crisis has produced predictions of precipitous American decline. During the Vietnam war many people were convinced that the US was declining. In the sixties Nikita Khrushchev said “we shall bury you,” and many western intellectuals believed him. After 9/11 some European pundits said that America’s pre-eminent position in the world was coming to an end. 

When we hear the term “American century.” the implication is often that this is coming to an end. 

For the past eighty years, those of us of a certain age - including the baby boomers - have lived lives of stability, world peace, prosperity, progress and democracy. By and large anyway, and granted, mostly so in the western world. 

This can be attributed to the Pax Americana during that period of time. Thanks to American help, the American economy and American military might, the devastated world (including our former enemies) was rebuilt and kept free and prosperous. 

I’ll skip the debate as to whether the Pax Americana was self-serving for the US or altruistic. 

America’s dominance was enormous right after the end of World War Two, when its economy was half that of the world. This huge advantage was bound to decline, as the rest of the world rebuilt itself. Eventually the US settled at one fourth of the world’s economy, and this has pretty much remained so for many years.