Auld Lang Syne for American Pluralism? Examining Project 2025's Vision
Given the latest craze that is sweeping across the US, the required posting of religious texts in public school classrooms, I thought to myself … what might Scotland’s Bard have to say about this?
Here’s what I’ve come up with, it’s nae for the faint of heart:
O hear ye now, ye holy men,
Who preach from lofty towers,
Yet break the very laws ye ken,
In your most private hours.
Ye claim the Decalogue’s yer guide,
But what of all the rest?
Six hundred more ye cast aside,
While beating on yer chest.
From Exodus to Deuteronomy,
The laws pile high and deep,
Yet public figures, oh so phony,
Pick which ones to keep.
Ye rail against the Sabbath breakers,
But what of mixed-thread clothes?
Ye point at others, the lawmakers,
While yer own sin list grows.
So let us hold a mirror high,
To those who’d rule our schools,
And ask them, with a knowing eye,
Which commandments make them fools?
For every verse they’d have us post,
Let’s find one they’ve transgressed,
And call out loud, from coast to coast,
How they’ve failed the Bible's test.
O Scotland’s bard would have a field day,
With hypocrites so grand,
Who’d force their faith in such a bield way,
While sin runs through the land.
So gather round, ye lads and lasses,
Let’s study every rule,
And judge those sitting on high passes,
By their own golden rule.
But seriously …
Aye, let’s begin with our Burns-inspired verse, a clarion call against hypocrisy:
O hear ye now, ye holy men,
Who preach from lofty towers,
Yet break the very laws ye ken,
In your most private hours.
This poetic jab at those who’d impose their faith whilst flouting its tenets leads us to a grave matter indeed: Project 2025. ‘Tis a grand scheme, my friends, cooked up by the Heritage Foundation, a think tank of considerable conservative clout.
Project 2025 is no mere flight of fancy, but a comprehensive blueprint for reshaping America’s government, should a Republican claim the White House in 2025. It’s a massive undertaking, aiming to overhaul every nook and cranny of federal policy and staffing.
The Heritage Foundation, long a bastion of far-right thought, leads this charge. They’ve rallied a host of conservative groups, each contributing their vision for a transformed America. Their goal? To hit the ground running, armed with ready-made policies and a veritable army of like-minded individuals poised to fill thousands of government positions.
The scope of Project 2025 is breathtaking, touching every aspect of governance from education and healthcare to foreign policy and judicial appointments. It’s a roadmap for swift, sweeping change, designed to entrench conservative values and reshape American society from the top down.
For those of us who cherish diversity, inclusivity, and the separation of church and state, Project 2025 looms as a storm on the horizon, threatening to wash away hard-won progress and impose a narrow vision of America at odds with our pluralistic reality.
Key Components of Project 2025
Project 2025 isn’t just a vague wish list; it’s a meticulously crafted battle plan for conservative dominion. At its core are three key components that threaten to reshape America in ways that would make our Burns-inspired verse seem tame by comparison.
First, we have the comprehensive policy proposals. These aren’t your run-of-the-mill campaign promises, but detailed blueprints for every federal agency. From dismantling environmental protections to ‘overhauling’ education, no stone is left unturned. The recent push to display the Ten Commandments in schools? That’s but a wee trial balloon, floating in friendly states to test the waters. It’s a harbinger of the broader ‘Christian nationalist’ agenda embedded in these proposals.
Second, there’s the identification of potential government appointees. Project 2025 aims to have thousands of vetted, conservative candidates ready to step into roles across all levels of government. This isn’t just about filling top cabinet positions; it’s about ensuring ideological alignment from the highest office down to the rank-and-file bureaucrats.
Third, and perhaps most critically, is the laser focus on conservative values and ideology. This isn’t conservatism of the old school, mind you. It’s a radical vision that seeks to fundamentally alter the relationship between government and citizen, church and state.
The recent Supreme Court decisions overturning Roe v. Wade and effectively criminalising homelessness are just the opening salvos. These rulings align perfectly with Project 2025’s vision of a nation where personal freedoms are curtailed in favor of a narrow, religiously-influenced interpretation of morality and social order.
What we’re witnessing is the groundwork for a transformation that goes far beyond putting religious texts in classrooms. It’s a comprehensive plan to reshape America’s legal, social, and cultural landscape. From reproductive rights to social welfare, from environmental policy to education, the changes envisioned by Project 2025 would touch every aspect of American life.
For those of us who value diversity, individual liberty, and the separation of church and state, Project 2025 represents a clear and present danger to the pluralistic society we’ve strived to build. It’s a reminder that the struggle for a more inclusive America is far from over, and that vigilance is the price of liberty.
Potential Impacts on Marginalised Communities
Indeed, let’s examine how Project 2025’s grand design threatens to upend the lives of marginalised communities, all whilst serving as a vehicle for a particularly insidious form of domestic neoliberalism:
Project 2025’s vision, if realised, would strike a devastating blow to marginalised communities, with autistic individuals, trans people, and supporters of communal and matristic cultures standing to lose the most. This isn’t mere collateral damage; it’s a calculated dismantling of hard-won protections and support systems.
For autistic individuals, the threat looms large in education and social support. We’re looking at potential rollbacks of inclusive education practices, cuts to specialised support programs, and a shift towards a one-size-fits-all approach that could leave neurodivergent students floundering. The emphasis on “traditional” values could lead to a de-prioritisation of accommodations and inclusivity efforts, effectively pushing autistic individuals to the margins of society.
Trans individuals face an even more dire prospect. The LGBTQ+ rights and protections that have been painstakingly established over decades could be swept away in a tide of regressive policies. We’re not just talking about bathroom bills here; we’re looking at the very real possibility of losing access to gender-affirming healthcare, employment protections, and basic human rights. The proposed policies threaten to erase trans identities from public life, forcing many back into the closet or worse.
For those of us who value communal and matristic cultures, Project 2025 represents a reinforcement of the worst aspects of individualism and patriarchy. The plan’s emphasis on “traditional family values” is a thinly veiled attempt to entrench a narrow, patriarchal worldview at the expense of diverse family structures and community-oriented values.
But here’s the kicker: whilst Project 2025 wraps itself in the flag of traditional conservatism, it's actually a trojan horse for a particularly vicious strain of domestic neoliberalism. Where previous neoliberal policies focused on exploiting resources and labour abroad, Project 2025 turns this predatory gaze inward.
This isn’t just about cultural wars; it’s about a massive transfer of wealth and resources from the public to private hands. The proposed dismantling of public services and social safety nets isn’t about fiscal responsibility – it’s a looting of the public purse on a grand scale. The only beneficiaries of this scheme are the hedge funds, banks, and corporate interests that stand to profit from the privatisation of public goods and services.
In essence, Project 2025 is austerity on steroids, applied domestically with a veneer of conservative values. It threatens to strip away the supports and protections that marginalised communities rely on, all while funneling public resources into private coffers. The result? A more divided, less equal, and ultimately poorer America for the vast majority of its citizens.
Clash with indigenous Cultures
Through the lens of indigenous culture (perhaps mine, Gaelic), Project 2025 appears not just misguided, but antithetical to the very essence of community and interconnectedness that has sustained our people for millennia.
In the Gaelic worldview, the community is the cornerstone of existence. Our traditions emphasise mutual support, shared resources, and a deep connection to the land and our ancestors. This stands in stark contrast to the rugged individualism and winner-takes-all mentality embedded in Project 2025’s vision.
The project’s implicit support for modern imperialism – both economic and cultural – threatens to further erode alternative cultural perspectives like ours. It’s a continuation of the historical suppression of indigenous cultures, but now cloaked in the language of “traditional values” and “economic efficiency.”
By using a Gaelic lens to examine Project 2025, we avoid the tired labels of “Marxist” or “communist” that often derail meaningful critique. Instead, we offer a perspective rooted in ancient wisdom and communal living – a mirror that reflects the proposal’s flaws without triggering knee-jerk reactions.
Interestingly, this approach echoes Marx’s method of critiquing capitalism through the lens of cultures it affected, providing a rich, nuanced understanding of its impacts beyond mere economics.
Specific Areas of Concern
Let’s delve into the specific areas of concern within Project 2025, areas where the insatiable appetite of Wetiko - that greedy mind virus of endless accumulation - becomes glaringly apparent:
In education, we see a two-pronged assault on public schooling. First, there’s the push for increased religious influence, exemplified by the Ten Commandments initiative. This isn’t just about hanging tablets on walls; it’s a trojan horse for injecting specific religious ideologies into the curriculum, potentially at the expense of scientific education and critical thinking. Secondly, the looting of public education manifests in the likely dismantling of inclusive education practices. Special education programmes, accommodations for neurodivergent students, and diversity initiatives could all fall victim to budget cuts and ideological opposition, effectively pillaging the educational opportunities of our most vulnerable students.
Healthcare policy under Project 2025 threatens to be a feeding frenzy for private interests at the expense of public health. For autistic individuals, access to specialised care could become a luxury rather than a right, with support services privatised or eliminated under the guise of cost-cutting (we’re already seeing a bit of this in Special Education as special day classes are cut and high-support-needs students pushed into Inclusion classes). The assault on trans healthcare is even more direct, with gender-affirming treatments potentially outlawed or made prohibitively expensive. This isn’t just discrimination; it’s a calculated looting of trans people’s right to exist authentically in public spaces.
In social policy, we see the Wetiko mentality at its most insidious. The emphasis on traditional family structures isn’t just about promoting a certain lifestyle; it’s about creating a system that funnels resources and support to a narrow definition of family while marginalising all others. Non-conforming lifestyles - be they queer families, communal living arrangements, or single-parent households - stand to lose legal protections, tax benefits, and social acceptance. This is a looting of the very concept of diversity, an attempt to hoard social capital for a select few while leaving the rest in a cultural poverty.
Throughout these policies, we see the Wetiko mind virus at work, an unquenchable greed that seeks to accumulate not just wealth, but power, cultural dominance, and control over personal freedoms. It’s a mindset that views public goods as untapped resources to be exploited, and diverse lifestyles as threats to be eliminated rather than variations to be celebrated.
Project 2025 isn't just a set of policy proposals; it’s a manifestation of this greed virus, threatening to devour the progress we’ve made in creating a more inclusive, equitable society. It seeks to loot not just our public institutions, but our very understanding of community, diversity, and human rights. The challenge we face is not just political; it’s a battle against a mentality that, if left unchecked, will consume everything in its path, leaving behind a homogenised, inequitable, and impoverished society.
The Broader Implications
Let’s now examine the broader implications of Project 2025, a plan that threatens to reshape America's cultural and political landscape in ways that many citizens, particularly non-Christians, might find deeply alarming.
Project 2025 represents a concerted effort to shift American governance towards a specific strain of evangelical Christian values, one that many mainstream Christians - including Catholics, Orthodox, LDS, and mainline Protestants - might find just as alarming as non-Christians do. This isn’t a broadly “Christian” initiative, but rather the vision of a particular subset of evangelical Christianity that often stands at odds with other Christian denominations.
Consider the diversity within Christianity itself: nearly 51% of Christians in the US are Protestants, 23% are Catholic, and there are significant Orthodox and other Christian communities. Many of these groups have profound theological and social disagreements with the evangelical worldview promoted by Project 2025.
The potential erosion of the separation between church and state is particularly concerning, not just for non-Christians, but for Christians who don't align with this specific evangelical ideology. This foundational principle of American democracy protects all faiths, including minority Christian sects, from domination by any single religious viewpoint.
Imagine if a fringe Catholic or Orthodox group proposed a similar project. How would evangelical Christians react to mandatory prayer to saints in schools, or the imposition of strict fasting rules in public institutions? The outcry would be immense - and rightly so. Yet this is analogous to what Project 2025 proposes, just from a different Christian perspective.
The challenges to diverse cultural expressions under such a regime would be profound, affecting not just non-Christian art and literature, but also Christian expressions that don’t conform to this narrow evangelical worldview. From Catholic iconography to Orthodox liturgical music, many Christian cultural expressions could face marginalisation.
Project 2025 isn’t just a political plan; it’s a blueprint for imposing a specific, narrow interpretation of Christianity on a pluralistic society. It’s a vision that seems to forget - or perhaps deliberately ignore - that America's strength has always come from its diversity, including the rich tapestry of Christian denominations and other faiths that call this country home. This plan doesn't represent Christianity as a whole, but a particular strain of evangelicalism that many Christians themselves would find deeply troubling if implemented.
Now, imagine if the shoe were on the other foot. How would Christian Americans react to a Hindu version of Project 2025? Picture a America where beef is banned in school cafeterias, where statues of Ganesh replace the Ten Commandments in courthouses, where Diwali is a federal holiday but Christmas is not. The outcry would be deafening - and justifiably so. Yet this is precisely the kind of cultural domination that Project 2025 seems to envision, just with a different religious flavour.
The challenges to diverse cultural expressions under such a regime would be profound. From art and literature to music and film, any expression that doesn’t align with a narrow interpretation of Christian values could face censorship or loss of funding. This isn’t just a threat to creative freedom; it’s an assault on the very multiculturalism that has long been America's strength.
Again, Project 2025 isn’t just a political plan; it’s a blueprint for a kind of soft theocracy, one that would fundamentally alter the character of American society. It’s a vision that seems to forget - or perhaps deliberately ignore - that America’s greatness has always stemmed from its diversity, its openness to different ideas and beliefs, and its constitutional commitment to religious freedom for all, not just for some.
Final thoughts …
As we draw our discussion to a close, let’s channel the spirit of Robert Burns, that fierce critic of hypocrisy and champion of the common folk. If he were alive today, surely he’d be penning verses as scathing as “A Parcel o’ Rogues” or “The Deil’s Awa wi’ th’ Exciseman” to lambast the architects of Project 2025.
We’ve seen how this initiative, far from being a broad Christian movement, represents the vision of a narrow evangelical faction. It threatens to reshape America’s governance, erode the separation of church and state, and marginalise diverse cultural expressions - including those of many Christians themselves. From education to healthcare, from social policy to cultural norms, its reach is vast and its potential impact profound.
The need for inclusivity and diversity in governance has never been more crucial. Just as Burns railed against the powerful who sold out Scotland’s interests, we must stand against those who would sell out America’s pluralistic ideals for a homogenised, exclusionary vision of society.
But where are the modern-day Burnses? Where are the voices using their talents to push back against this massive cultural shift with the wit, insight, and popular appeal that the Bard of Ayrshire wielded so effectively? Perhaps they’re out there, and it’s up to us to amplify their voices.
In the spirit of Burns, let us not be passive observers to this potential transformation of our society. Stay informed about Project 2025 and its implications. Engage in discussions, challenge assumptions, and use your voice - whether through vote, verse, or vigorous debate - to defend the diverse, inclusive America we cherish.
Remember, as Burns might say, the deil's nae awa’ wi’ the project planners yet. There’s still time to ensure that the rich tapestry of American life isn't unraveled by the narrow vision of a few. Let's honor Burns’ legacy by being as bold in our defense of inclusivity as he was in his criticism of power.