"But those who objected to the liberal consensus rejected the idea that the government had any role to play in the economy or in social welfare and made no distinction between the liberal consensus and international communism. They insisted that the country was made up of “liberals,” who were pushing the nation toward socialism, and “conservatives” like themselves, who were standing alone against the Democrats and Republicans who made up a majority of the country and liked the new business regulations, safety net, infrastructure, and protection of civil rights.
That reactionary mindset came to dominate the Republican Party after Ronald Reagan’s election in 1980. Republicans began to insist that anyone who embraced the liberal consensus of the past several decades was un-American and had no right to govern, no matter how many Americans supported that ideology. And now, forty-five years later, we are watching as a group of reactionaries dismantle the government that serves the needs of ordinary Americans and work, once again, to concentrate wealth and power in the hands of an elite.
The idea of a small government that serves the needs of a few wealthy people, Lincoln warned in his era, is “the same old serpent that says you work and I eat, you toil and I will enjoy the fruits of it. Turn in whatever way you will—whether it come from the mouth of a King, an excuse for enslaving the people of his country, or from the mouth of men of one race as a reason for enslaving the men of another race, it is all the same old serpent.”