American Oligarchy

The kerfuffle around Indiana’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act this week has been a mess of ugly rhetoric and heat generated without creating a lot of light on the subject. The RFRA was passed by the Indiana legislature and signed by the governor, only to elicit massive outcry from corporate leaders who immediately did reactive things like restricting business travel to Indiana.

Joe Carter lamented thus on Twitter this morning:

He was quickly retweeted by, among others, Russell Moore, who is president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission for the Southern Baptist Convention.

The fact that American is (and has been, for some decades) functionally an oligarchy isn’t really breaking news. I find it interesting, though, that the religious wing of the GOP is suddenly this week finding it concerning.

More interesting is that, if you want to try to change things and eliminate that oligarchy, you’re going to have to take steps that the GOP opposes. (The obvious first one that comes to mind is restricting the amount of money that corporations can dump in to influence elections.)

Hmmm…