There have been 9 editions of the Mandate For Leadership book series by the conservative think-tank Heritage Foundation. The first eight editions were just typical American conservative fodder, except maybe the fifth edition, titled Mandate For Leadership 2000 were a collection of edited transcripts from a series of nonpartisan public discussions hosted by the Foundation. There were actually Democratic participants in that series, such as Leon Panetta, a veteran of the Clinton and Obama administrations and Zbigniew Brzezinski, Jimmy Carter’s national security adviser (and father of MSNBC host Mika Brzezinski). However, it is the ninth edition, known as Project 2025, that is epic in its batshittery.
Project 2025 goes beyond being a policy playbook of restructuring (and shrinking) the federal government; it is a treatise for inflicting a conservative, Christofascist worldview into various aspects of American society. It completely abandons the original belief of American conservatism, which was originally a defense of the narrow view of liberal theory that emerged during the Age of Enlightenment in Europe. An advocacy for a naked, partisan power grab of American institutions, Project 2025 not only illustrates how far off the deep end the American right has gone, but how dangerous the Republican Party has become.
The linguist, libertarian socialist, and political theorist Noam Chomsky called the Republican Party “the world’s most dangerous organization“; specifically, he was referring to the party’s rejection of climate change. However, in a 2018 interview with Democracy Now before the 2018 midterms, Chomsky doubled down on this, calling the party the “most dangerous organization in human history” and slighting the then-Trump administration for its oligarchic policies.
But this isn’t really a new development. The Republican Party has been batshit for years, with the party institutionalizing the lying and gaslighting their own voters. And to this day, with a cult surrounding Donald Trump, they’re still doing it—albeit differently.
This time, there is a more disciplined, thirsty right-wing intelligentsia that are using Trump for their own ends, just as Trump is using them for his. This time, these right-wing extremist Republicans want you to know that they are not lying about unfulfilled promises, but rather lying about how far they are willing to go to implement for a society that most Americans don’t even truly want. The lies that demonize Democrats for being power-hungry “communists” are cute projections for what these right-wing Republicans really want: a hierarchical society where government has rigid control of all aspects of culture; where there’s state-sponsored indoctrination of a toxic view of Christianity that goes against the actual words of their central figure; and liberal, progressive, and any other dissident or opponent to the right-wing superiority complex is divided and conquered into political flaccidity.
To be quite frank, the modern Republican Party is not too different than Eastern Bloc communism. The only real difference is that Republicans replace state atheism with dreams of a state religion; advocate for just as crackpot centralized economic planning, but only to instill a socioeconomic caste system; and operate under the pretext of democracy, but through restrictions and not expansion. Sadly, fake populists like Trump have convinced millions of Americans that this type of dystopia is a utopia; with many of them not realizing that they are not going to be immune to the consequences of a Christofascist state.
I wish I was being alarmist, but I am not. This is a playbook that is spelled out in Project 2025. It’s not conservative—and I say this as a staunch anti-conservative. I could understand a defense of classical liberalism under the guise of negative liberty—which is the freedom of interference from the state. However, that is not what the Republican Party is advocating for.
The Republican Party is pushing for a “freedom” that is socially Darwinist at best and an illiberal lie its worst. It’s a push for a hierarchical selfishness that will punish the most socioeconomically vulnerable. There’s no bounds to the collateral damage that this worldview would cause, including further damage to the climate, uncontrolled spread of diseases, and a cataclysmic fight for resources. Consequences that may not be felt immediately, but consequences that would eventually come in time.
The GOP is unspeakably dangerous. It is without question the most dangerous organization in the world. And what makes them dangerous is not just what they party aims for now—but how far the party is willing to go to achieve their crackpot goals.