GROVER NORQUIST AND MCLINTOCK

“My ideal citizen is the self-employed, homeschooling, IRA-owning guy with a concealed carry permit. Because that person doesn’t need the goddam government for anything.”
Grover Norquist

McLintock had the makings of a fairly good western, but John Wayne insisted on preaching his hard right philosophy throughout. Apparently the scenery and the plot were no guarantee that the audience would get it: self-made rugged individualist builds empire and gets the girl (she even lets him spank her), while government regulators and do-gooders make complete fools of themselves. Grover Norquist was seven years old when the movie came out—a very impressionable age for a boy. At the same age, my hero was Davy Crockett (the Fess Parker Davy), which reveals my age. Boys will be boys, but eventually we grow up.
Right?
John Wayne’s character, McLintock, fits Norquist’s ideal citizen. Ruling a huge patch of Western desert by strength of character, he talks, acts, and shoots straight. He has a town named after him, and his word is law. Concerning education, in his world riding, roping, branding, and of course shooting, are all a man need know. All these skills can be taught and learned at home. The existence of the outside world is a matter of useless and pointless knowledge, and it interferes with a man’s doing what needs to be done. Science, beyond making whisky and bullets, and mathematics past counting head of cattle, are equally unnecessary. As a concession to the modern world, Norquist recommends an IRA, since many people nowadays outlive their productive years and should prepare for that day, without asking the government for help. Equally modern is the concealed carry permit, which no one in McLintock’s halcyon days needed, since everyone went openly armed as a matter of course.
Government is the problem, having brought in farmers who want to squat on McLintock’s open range, unaware of the impossibility of farming at six thousand feet. How McClintock knows the elevation is never discussed, but government surveyors probably had something to do with it. McLintock hires workers and pays them what they earn. No unions or minimum wage laws interfere with the personal contracts between boss and employee. And of course the boss is fair. He’s John Wayne.
We know McLlintock is a movie, and we hope Grover Norquist does too. Still, the movie character and Norquist’s ideal citizen are strikingly similar. And the similarities can be disturbing when we recall that Grover Norquist exercises considerable influence over how the “goddam government” actually governs. He is influential because he holds important posts on several political action committees, organizations that distribute campaign funds to mostly Republican politicians. He has demanded, and he has gotten, them all to pledge not to vote to increase taxes in any way, or under any circumstances, with the oft-repeated goal of “starving the beast.” We need to remember, though, that Norquist does not dole out his own money. He distributes it on behalf of corporate donors, who are very much interested in maintaining strong, right wing government to serve the interests of plutocracy.
Norquist knows this.
Americans value independence, and whenever possible, we aspire to the ideal of honest pay in return for honest work. Concerning Norquist’s ideal, we would love that total freedom. But we live in a real world, one in which all of us are inter-connected to each other always. Not even Western ranchers can escape the global village, and in such a situation a social contract makes life livable for us all. Even self-employed rugged individualists need to use roads, sewers, and electrical grids. And if we’re all out there getting into constant gunfights, business can suffer.
Life is not a movie. We run into enormous hazards when we seek to live otherwise, be it western, romance, musical, drama, whatever. Movies are entertaining, fun to watch, because they are removed from reality. Why would we want to watch our own lives? Obviously, there is no way of knowing whether Grover Norquist really imagines himself as McLintock or any other movie hero. But his ideal citizen does resemble a stock movie character, and John Wayne’s character fits the bill. Outside of Hollywood, Norquist has managed to strongarm virtually half the nation’s political elite (the Republican Party) into backing his vision. Republicans have to toe the party line according to Norquist, whether or not they really believe it. And if the ideal ever does collide with reality, which is looking more and more possible, then America is in for a lot of pain. Just as John Wayne’s proselytizing detracted from the quality of his movie, so Norquist’s insistence on Republicans’ obedience to him invalidates his argument. An iconic American, an ideal citizen, would lead by example, needing neither to preach nor coerce.
Grover Norquist has up till now been relatively hidden from public scrutiny, but this is all changing. In a democracy, shedding light is always beneficial.