The Republican Party loves to talk about “personal responsibility.” Maybe not as much as it once did, when it successfully pressured Bill Clinton to adopt welfare reform in the 1990s, but it’s still a theme the GOP often mentions.

Safety-net programs are dismissed as “socialism,” and the party still rails against welfare for the poor while turning a blind eye to corporate welfare. Trickle-down economics remains a core principle for the party faithful.

So, it may seem surprising at first blush that Republicans are about as irresponsible as they come.

One obvious example: They claim to love balanced budgets and hate deficits, but they’ve run up bigger deficits than Democrats have.

But it goes deeper than that. At its core, Republican base voters are far less likely to think for themselves than others. Part of this may be because they tend to be less educated: White men who don’t have a college degree are among their most reliable voters. Another part of it, possibly related, is psychological — and seems wildly contradictory.

Despite all that Republican rhetoric, voters really don’t want to rely on their own work to “pull themselves up by their bootstraps.” They want their daddy to fix it for them.

Authoritarian attraction

Trump’s self-caricature as a “strongman” resonates with them. He boasts that only he can fix it, and his followers eat it up. They don’t tell him to shut up and let them fix it. They turn out in droves to vote for this defender of Christmas who acts like Santa Claus: making promises he seldom delivers on, then insisting that he has.

Experts began noticing long ago that one trait is shared by Trump voters more than any other. It has nothing to do with race, geography, gender, or income level. It’s that they’re drawn to authoritarianism. Just like white supremacists.

When struggling rural white voters “relate” to Trump, they’re not relating to a Manhattan billionaire playboy. Or a former casino owner who hosted a TV game show. They’re relating to a self-described tough guy who plays the victim and believes he’s always right because of his superior genes. If that doesn’t sound like most white supremacist out there, I don’t know what does.

They and others with authoritarian control issues live vicariously through Trump, desperate for him to “win” where they haven’t been able to. He’s their David in a losing battle against the Philistines’ Goliath, standing up for them as they sit on the sidelines. David not only slew Goliath, he became an authoritarian king in his own right, a messianic figure revered by fundamentalist Christians despite his moral failings. Sound familiar?

Dominionist devotion

There’s a movement among these evangelical Christian groups that doesn’t get a lot of press, but it drives much of their thinking.

Dominionists scoff at Jesus’ declaration that “my kingdom is not of this world,” and instead seek to establish the rule (dominion) of God on Earth. It’s an idea that goes all the way back to Augustine of Hippo (354-430), a North African bishop who advocated for a City of God that served as a template for medieval Christian Europe.

Augustine’s vision was realized as the Catholic Church withheld education from the masses, insisting that the Word of God (as they interpreted it) was the only form of knowledge worth having. Everything else was “of the world”: irrelevant at best, satanic at worst. This attitude is reflected in modern Dominionism — and Republican political views, which decry public education as a tool of “liberal elites.”

Their alternative? Private schools where they can amplify their own interpretation of Christian teachings and downplay or disparage science. You know, that nasty stuff that got Galileo thrown in prison for daring to suggest that the Earth revolved around the sun. Sacrilege! Again, it’s no accident that Trump himself disparages science, substituting his own conspiracy theories and suggesting that he knows better than the experts.

Dominionists are drawn to authoritarian models, and leaders, because they mirror the idea that the universe isn’t a democracy; it’s an autocracy under the absolute rulership of an all-knowing deity... and only he can fix it. Dominionists, therefore, are fundamentally opposed to the separation of church and state, and government by the people: principles on which this nation was founded.

It should be no surprise that Republicans following this template seek to suppress the vote. They don’t want a republic; they want a Christian empire on Earth — defined, of course, by their vision of Christianity. (Christian authoritarians lash out most violently against fellow Christians they view as “heretics” than they do against unbelievers, who they believe can still be “saved” or persuaded.)

Miracles, not work

A government based on divine rule isn’t a government of personal responsibility. It’s a government of a self-anointed elite class that decides what’s best for the people. Of course, this is actually just what’s best for the elite. It doesn’t even matter whether that elite follows the religious doctrines it espouses, any more than God is bound by morality. Bad things happen to good people because “the Lord works in mysterious ways.” If it’s OK for God to violate his own rules, it’s OK for his “chosen” rulers to do the same.

And, of course, his followers love it when God violates his own rules — as long as they think it benefits them. Those violations are called miracles, the carrot dangled in front of believers that can keep them from taking personal responsibility for their lives. Case in point: Trump’s insistence that COVID-19 will just “disappear... like a miracle.” So there’s no need to wear a mask.

Except it hasn’t worked out that way. People have died instead.

Why should people refuse to wear a mask? How is it more of a hardship to put a piece of cloth over your face than to spend several days on a respirator in the ICU (at a cost of thousands of dollars)? Of course, that won’t happen to them, because they’re special, chosen people. They’re “immune.” They don’t have to wear seat belts or condoms, either. It’s all such a terrible inconvenience.

But this isn’t really about personal freedom. It’s a repudiation of personal responsibility. It’s a reliance upon “miracles” instead of hard work — or even easy work, like putting on a mask.

No need to worry. Your daddy will fix it, and everything will be OK.

Just don’t call it welfare. Or socialism.

Featured photo: Church Avenue and State Street in Knoxville, Tenn., by Wyoming_Jackrabbit, Creative Commons 2.0