Guest Posts on County 10 are provided by contributors and the opinions, thoughts, and comments within are their own and may not necessarily reflect those of County 10.
They’re in a hurry. They should be. It’s only seven months to the Republican Primary and their actions won’t fare well at the polls, at least if the voters of Wyoming are paying attention.
The “Freedom Caucus” is a classic Orwellian name. For those of you unfamiliar with the great George Orwell, maybe you’ll recognize his greatest work, the fictional (yet lately eerily accurate) classic, “1984.”
Orwell introduces us to the term “doublespeak.” Doublespeak is the deliberate use of contradictory terms to hide your true intent. The idea is to hide your insidious, harmful intentions behind a term that is the polar opposite of what you intend.
The “Freedom” in Freedom Caucus is exactly that. They have no intention of increasing freedom. Their goal is exactly the opposite.
Freedom means opportunity, opportunity comes from preparation, preparation comes from education. These people hate education.
They are at war with your local school district, with the community college system, and as of late have taken aim at the University of Wyoming.
They see the conservative Wyoming campus in Laramie as a bastion of liberalism. Their out-of-state handlers, funded heavily by dark money, would make the most conservative state in the nation even more so, to the point that only retirees will live here alongside uneducated minimum wage workers.
Their vision is one of a dystopian wasteland where the proud, independent people of Wyoming once created the wonderful place we’ve all enjoyed for so long.
They make the claim they’re fiscally concerned, centering on the myth of high taxation in Wyoming. We don’t pay high taxes in comparison to other states. We never have, and thanks to the writers of the Wyoming State Constitution, we’re not going to have to ever worry about a state income tax unless major amendments to the Constitution are made. Don’t count on that.
Governor Mark Gordon’s budget, which he presented recently to the legislature, isn’t balanced. It has a surplus of almost a quarter of a billion dollars. You read that right, a surplus. It flies in the face of the Freedom Caucus’s myopic desire to cut Wyoming back to the Stone Age.
They fear “liberal” causes a bit too much. To their eternally frightened members, there is a communist or worse, a socialist, hiding behind every sagebrush. I’d say tree, but we don’t have enough of those to cover the Freedom Caucus’s collective paranoia.
Who is the Freedom Caucus? Well, if you don’t know, they won’t tell you. It is a secretive group with membership by invitation only, yet they want to destroy your child’s education, limit health care options, and cut services to the point where young families will simply leave the state forever.
I’ve written about the diaspora of the Great Plains and Northern Rockies. That’s a fancy term for children leaving once they graduate from high school and never coming back.
One of my favorite songs is “Small Town Saturday Night” by the late Hal Ketchum. The telling lyric in this classic country tune is this:
Bobby told Lucy, “The world ain’t round.
Drops off sharp at the edge of town
Lucy, you know the world must be flat
‘Cause when people leave town, they never come back”
Inadequate health care is something everyone in rural America is facing. So is the eternal boom-and-bust we ride in Wyoming. Despite the economic upheaval of the last couple of years, we’re not in a bad place economically as a state government.
Does cutting music, art, physical education, extra-curricular activities, and standardizing teacher salaries at the lowest level possible while removing teacher qualifications make sense to you? How about ending entire programs at community colleges and the university because some manipulator living in another state doesn’t think they’re valid? Is that what you want?
The Freedom Caucus can’t stand that. There must be a mastermind behind the entire movement since the few adherents brave enough to step forward would never qualify for Jeopardy.
I’d like to say that this is a unique situation in our history, but it is not.
The Know Nothings, a political movement of the 1850s, tried it first. They were anti-Catholic, anti-government, anti-tax, and anti-immigrant. They were as secretive as the Freedom Caucus as well. When they were challenged about their beliefs, they were told to say, “I know nothing,” hence the name.
Jim Crow Laws, McCarthyism, and the rise of the Second Ku Klux Klan in the 1910s and 20s mastered double speak decades before Orwell wrote 1984.
Here is an ad printed in the Park County Herald on Christmas Eve, 1925.
The Knights of the Ku Klux Klan Believe In and Stand For:
- The tenants of the Christian religion.
- White supremacy.
- Protection of our womanhood, and the sanctity of the home.
- Just laws and lawful liberty.
- Closer relationship of true Americanism.
- The upholding of the constitution of these United States.
- The sovereignty of our state rights.
- The separation of church and state.
- Closer relationship between capital and American labor.
- Preventing the causes of mob violence and lynchings.
- The limitation of foreign immigration.
- Whole hearted support of the American public school.
- Promotion of respect for law and order.
- The much needed local reforms.
The KKK didn’t stand for any of these things (save for white supremacy). They hated Catholics, abused women, were criminals, and hated public schools. But their public speech said the exact opposite.
Thankfully, the Freedom Caucus doesn’t exhibit the racist extremism of the Klan, but, they remain masters of double-speak on the subjects they purport to support, when in actuality they intend the exact opposite, particularly in terms of education.
Living in a state without quality schools, roads, healthcare, libraries, colleges, and a university might appeal to some, but the majority of us know that a civilized, cultured society has to be funded by all of us.
If the Freedom Caucus wants to go after something that drains the economy, how about the welfare state? Not the single mom with hungry children, but the real parasites. Here are the top 10 corporate welfare queens and the amounts they get each year.
Boeing — ~$15.8 billion
Intel — ~$8.4 billion
Ford Motor Company — ~$7.7 billion
General Motors — ~$7.5 billion
Micron Technology — ~$6.8 billion
Amazon — ~$5.9 billion
Alcoa — ~$5.7 billion
Cheniere Energy — ~$5.6 billion
Foxconn — ~$4.8 billion
Venture Global LNG — ~$4.3 billion
Oil companies receive $35 billion combined in federal subsidies. If you want to protest the welfare state, you might start there, not at your local elementary school.
Enough is enough. The Freedom Caucus doesn’t like you to know who is and isn’t a member, but it’s not hard to tell.
When the primary rolls around this summer, just vote against anyone who supports their position and legislation. It’s that easy.
Don’t worry about the general election, it doesn’t matter in Wyoming. Whoever wins the Republican primary wins the general. The race is in August. Make sure you’re at the finish line.