The Slavers Vision for the US held by Republicans

The philosophy being promoted by party leaders like Donald Trump and JD Vance is the same as those who fought for slavery in the United States

Jul 29, 2024

(John C Calhoun by Mathew Brady, 1849)

One of the things I was struck by as I was reading “South To Freedom: Runaway Slaves to Mexico and the Road to the Civil War” by Alice L. Baumgartner was the striking parallels in thinking between the leading proponents of slavery then and the increasing explicit thinking of the current Republican Party.1 Today’s reporting on the gang of racist thought leaders in the conservative movement who contributed to Project 2025 by USA Today raises the salience2, as well as commentators', attempt to grapple with the self-described “isolationist” foreign policy views of conservatives. Especially in describing how these two currents are intertwined.3

As the reporting in USA Today shows, the current Republican Party is up to its neck in white supremacist thinking. Running a candidate who describes eugenicist Richard Hanania as an “interesting thinker” and a “friend” while an open promoter of antisemitic thinking proclaims they’ll be able to get “their guys” into power with him in office makes it impossible to deny.45 The Heritage Foundation openly collaborating with this set as they draw up their plans for the future only further strengthens the case. What’s less remarked upon is how these conservative thinkers are drawing upon their counterparts from the past.

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When Vance announces in his convention speech that the United States is a “nation” of particular people that allows others to exist here on “their terms,” he echoes the words and thoughts of former Vice President John C. Calhoun. Calhoun argued slavery was essential to the “peace and safety” of the Southern states in his defense of annexing Texas and rebuffing the British demand slavery be abolished for Texas to gain recognition as a country.6 This defense of the subjugation at home enrolled in the argument for foreign domination abroad was key to those looking to protect slavery here.

The believers of slave domination understood they needed to expand their influence, and they needed to control more territory to do so. This compelled arguments based on umbrage at any perceived interference from abroad while saber rattling for war in the same breath we see in Calhoun’s writing. It is not mere irony then that we see the same rhetorical two-step from the current GOP, who describe themselves as “isolationists” concerned most with preserving order here at home while also demanding a right to deploy armed forces to Mexico and other Latin American countries.7

Baumgartner, when read in conjunction with other authors like Gerald Horne, makes evident in their research and writing the pursuit of white supremacist goals drove foreign policy from the origin of the United States to the antebellum period and beyond.8 Much like the conquest of Florida and efforts to acquire Texas flowed from the desire to acquire more influence for white supremacy, today’s conservatives hope to leverage the military to continue to deny people the right to asylum in their bid to preserve the racial character of what they imagine as the rightful “nation.”

Instead of being isolationist, as often described today, conservatives would see a pivot to a foreign policy of explicit service to a vision of the country that holds people in a hierarchy of people.9 Vance, in particular, made this explicit in his discussion with the Quincy Institute, which argued for a foreign policy that privileges the concerns of a subset of Christians in making moral judgments on where the US intervenes.10 It is important to note that in this speech, Vance makes a case for protecting Christians and avoiding the death of Christians as a metric for intervention choices, while he at the same time advocating for the military to invade nations directly to our south, which are also primarily Christian and Catholic in particular. This contradiction disappears when you understand that he only considers a particular type of Christian his co-religionist. Even though he’s a converted Catholic himself, causing the unnecessary death of Christians in Latin America is not a problem for him.

We can again turn to John C. Calhoun to gain an understanding of this position. In his treatise “A Disquisition on Government,” the former Vice President expounds on the different levels of “liberty” and “power” necessary for different communities.11 It is then, again, no coincidence that the inheritors of his philosophy have appointed themselves the final judges of where people in the modern day should sit on the hierarchy of freedom.

The Slavers Vision for the US held by Republicans

The philosophy being promoted by party leaders like Donald Trump and JD Vance is the same as those who fought for slavery in the United States

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