Editor's Note: This series examines the MAGA effort to transform the government through a process called Project 2025. Lean to the Left writers CJ Waldron and V. Susan Hutchinson explore how allies of Donald Trump hope to increase the power of the presidency, eliminate career government positions, and cede regulatory responsibility to the individual states, ignoring the failed Articles of Confederation. It is critical for voters to understand key parts of this manifesto, in context with current and future GOP proposals, before voting in November. The statements in Project 25 are, at best, misleading with outright lies, twisted interpretations of the Constitution, and personal opinions sprinkled throughout.
The foreword to the Project 2025 was written by the president of the Heritage Foundation, Dr. Kevin Roberts. Yes, the very same Kevin Roberts who threatened a bloody coup if the Left didn’t simply roll over and accept what he called the Second American Revolution.
He begins by crediting the modern Conservative movement to Ronald Reagan 44 years ago, although many political scholars would attribute the modern movement to Barry Goldwater in 1964. However, it would be easier to accept the view of a winning candidate than one who was soundly trounced, and Nixon was definitely not an option, so he settled on Reagan.
After bashing Jimmy Carter, Roberts goes on the paint a version of Reagan’s America in the vein of his “shining city on a hill” reference, only to have his vision destroyed in the 1990s by the Radical Left during the Clinton era.
He spews the typical Christian Nationalist propaganda that pictures America as a morally bankrupt, crime-ridden, drug addicted nation that has lost its way and only they have the solution to fix whatever ills currently afflict our trouble nation. He claims that America can only be saved by adopting these four guiding principles that he calls the Conservative Promise:
Restore the family as the centerpiece of American life and protect our children.
Dismantle the administrative state and return self-governance to the American people.
Defend our nation’s sovereignty, borders, and bounty against global threats.
Secure our God-given individual rights to live freely—what our Constitution calls “the Blessings of Liberty.”
He devotes the rest of the foreword to detailing how the next Conservative president, Donald Trump, is to go about turning these principles into reality. It is a blueprint of the White Christian Nationalist agenda they have been spouting for years, yet this is the best opportunity they have had to creating the very nation they have been envisioning.
Save the Children
PROMISE #1: RESTORE THE FAMILY AS THE CENTERPIECE OF AMERICAN LIFE AND PROTECT OUR CHILDREN.
A consistent mantra of MAGA is the depiction of Democrats as a Satan-loving cabal of pedophiles. It’s a rehash of the anti-Semitic trope, Blood Libel that prevailed in Europe.
Because they do not study history, many MAGAs believe this to be something unique to Democrats. It was re-introduced into the American political landscape during the 2016 Presidential Election as Pizzagate, and has since been used to attack teachers who they allege are “grooming” students by presenting lessons aimed at sexualizing them, making them easy prey for pedophiles.
Of course, they have no evidence to support this outlandish accusation, but that hasn’t prevented numerous Republican-led legislatures from introducing measures designed to address this non-issue.
Roberts echoes the Christian Nationalist view of marriage as being between a man and a woman, rejecting any acceptance of same-sex marriages as being unnatural. He blames the acceptance of same-sex marriages as the reason for the moral decay of our American culture.
He further states that unwed mothers are another reason for the decline in our moral values. Roberts goes on to imply that 70 percent of all Black children are fatherless by lumping absentee dads with those who simply aren’t married. He claims this is the primary reason behind increased poverty rates, crime and drug abuse while trying to connect these ills to the Black population alone.
Roberts views the lack of participation in the church as progressive wokeism. He asserts that the Left is trying to reject churches’ tax-exempt status as a prime example of this. He ignores that the reason some churches have had their status questioned is their morphing into a political body rather than a religious one.
In a truly head-spinning twist of logic, Roberts demands that terms related to gender equity, race, sexual orientation and reproductive rights be removed from every federal document. The truly insane part of this demand is that he claims it is protecting our First Amendment rights!
So, taking away our freedom of speech is somehow protecting it?
The right has a disturbing obsession with pornography. They want people to believe that it is the central theme of “Woke” indoctrination of our children. As a result, they want to allow more parental control over what is being taught in the classroom, making banning books a central tenet of their approach to their child’s education as they seek to save the children.
*(Author’s Note: As an educator with almost 40 years’ experience in the classroom, I can attest to the fact that there are two types of parents:
1. Parents who are unconcerned with their child’s education. They do not attend school events or take part in teacher conferences. They will not address their child’s academic or behavioral issues and avoid contact with their child’s teachers
2. The “helicopter parent” who is overly involved with their child’s academic life. If their child isn’t getting the grades the parent expects, they will invariably blame the teacher and demand immediate changes.)
Another claim by the Right is that students are being indoctrinated to hate America as teachers saturate their curriculum with Critical Race Theory. While they are unable to define what it means, they have vowed to eliminate it from America’s classrooms. This is an easy fix since it has never been a part of any educational process, so the Right can claim victory for expunging something that was never there in the first place.
If nothing else, the Right is expert at assigning blame. Instead of taking responsibility for enabling their child by providing them with expensive electronics, they blame social media for its corruptive impact on their child’s life. They claim that the addictive qualities of these platforms is responsible for the marked increase in mental illness in children. All the while these same parents use these electronic babysitters to avoid interacting with their own children.
Roberts concludes that the breakdown of the American family can be directly attributed to a woman’s right to choose. He champions the Dobbs decision as something that will return America to the core family values it asserts the Conservative Promise is aimed at attaining.
Is this Part 1?