The Tide of History

(Image: “American Trinity” by KBW—kennethbwalshart.com)

In the grand narrative of American history, two Supreme Court decisions—Roe v. Wade in 1973 and Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission in 2010—stand as monumental inflection points, each a fulcrum upon which the nation’s moral, political, and social trajectories pivoted. These rulings not merely legal precedents but archetypal moments that reveal the deeper currents of collective consciousness, where the struggle between individual autonomy and systemic power, principle and pragmatism, plays out. These events, interwoven with the rise of a transactional alliance between the Religious Right and the billionaire class, illuminate a recurring tension in the American experiment: the vulnerability of democracy to the forces of wealth, ideology, and moral absolutism.

Roe v. Wade (1973) was a landmark assertion of personal sovereignty, a moment when the Supreme Court ruled that the Constitution protected a woman’s right to abortion prior to fetal viability. This decision, grounded in the right to privacy, struck down a web of restrictive state laws, affirming bodily autonomy as a cornerstone of individual liberty. Emerging from the cultural ferment of the 1960s, where the feminist movement, civil rights struggles, and a broader rejection of patriarchal norms reshaped societal expectations, Roe was both a triumph and a flashpoint. It galvanized a counter-movement among religious conservatives, particularly evangelical Christians and conservative Catholics, who viewed abortion as a moral abomination. This ruling set the stage for a decades-long cultural and political war, where the question of life’s sanctity collided with the principle of personal freedom, creating a schism that would define American politics.

Citizens United (2010), by contrast, reshaped the architecture of power itself. The Supreme Court’s decision to strike down restrictions on corporate and union political spending, citing the First Amendment’s free speech protections, unleashed a flood of unregulated wealth into the democratic process. What was framed as a defense of expression became, in practice, a coronation of money as the loudest voice in governance. Political campaigns, once measured in millions, ballooned into billion-dollar spectacles, and the line between advocacy and legalized bribery blurred. The decision empowered a new aristocracy of influence, where corporations, unions, and wealthy individuals could amplify their agendas with unprecedented force. The consequences were immediate and profound: elections became battlegrounds of financial might, and public policy tilted toward the interests of the few, undermining the democratic ideal of equal representation.

The convergence of these two rulings—Roe’s assertion of individual rights and Citizens United’s empowerment of collective wealth—created a volatile alchemy, one that birthed a transactional alliance between the Christian Right and the billionaire class. This pact, rooted in mutual self-interest, mirrored the Faustian bargains of historical lore, where moral compromises are struck for temporal gain. The wealthy sought deregulation—of environmental protections, voting rights, campaign finance laws, and consumer safeguards—while the Religious Right, particularly evangelical Christians, pursued a singular obsession: the abolition of Roe v. Wade. To achieve this, they needed resources, and the billionaire class provided them in abundance, often through “dark money” channels that obscured the origins of their influence.

At the heart of this alliance stood figures like Leonard Leo, a conservative Catholic lawyer whose belief that life begins before conception aligned seamlessly with evangelical zeal. Leo’s role was strategic and surgical: he orchestrated the funding of campaigns to place anti-abortion justices on the Supreme Court, leveraging vast sums to shape the judiciary. Beyond mere appointments, Leo and his allies cultivated personal relationships with justices, offering lavish gifts, expensive trips, and friendships that subtly shifted their perspectives toward a pro-corporate, anti-abortion worldview. The Court’s subsequent decisions, from upholding deregulatory policies to overturning Roe in 2022, bore the imprint of this influence, revealing a judiciary increasingly aligned with the interests of wealth and ideology.

The story of the Reverend Bob Schenck, a former titan of the anti-abortion movement, offers a poignant lens through which to view this era’s moral complexities. Schenck’s early career was defined by fervent activism: he trained thousands to blockade abortion clinics, confronted political figures like Bill Clinton with shocking displays—such as presenting an illegally procured fetus in 1992—and vilified providers like Dr. Barnett Slepian, whom he accused of “killing unborn children.” Schenck’s tactics were uncompromising, rooted in a moral certainty that positioned his movement as the sole arbiter of righteousness. Yet, the 1998 murder of Slepian, whose name appeared on the anti-abortion movement’s chilling “Nuremberg Files,” marked a turning point. The violence, coupled with a later encounter in jail where Schenck heard a pregnant woman’s anguished cries for her children, began to unravel his convictions. These moments, resonant with the psychological process of confronting one’s shadow, forced Schenck to question the human cost of his crusade.

By 2019, Schenck’s transformation was complete. In a New York Times op-ed, he publicly renounced his anti-abortion past, embracing Roe v. Wade and decrying the evangelical movement’s descent into political idolatry. His journey—from zealot to skeptic—reflects a profound moral awakening, one that acknowledges the limits of male perspective in the deeply personal realm of pregnancy. Schenck’s admission that “as a man, I can’t understand what it means to be pregnant” underscores a humility absent from his earlier activism. His shift also extended beyond abortion: he labeled guns a “theological disaster,” advocating for tighter firearm regulations, and questioned the very label of “evangelical,” aligning himself instead with the compassionate ethos of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German theologian who resisted Nazi tyranny.

This alliance between the Religious Right and oligarchic wealth found its ultimate champion in Donald Trump, a figure whose personal conduct—marked by vanity, corruption, and misogyny—stood in stark contrast to Christian ideals. Yet, Trump recognized the evangelical vote as a lever of power (as the Republican party has recognized since 1980). By waving a list of anti-abortion judges, curated by Leonard Leo, and promising their appointment, Trump secured the Religious Right’s unwavering support. As one evangelical minister confided to Schenck, Trump was a means to an end: “He’ll get us the Court we need.” The 2022 Dobbs decision, which overturned Roe, was the culmination of this strategy, a triumph for Schenck’s former allies but a devastating blow to the principle of bodily autonomy.

Historically, this moment echoes the warnings of the Founding Fathers, who grappled with the perennial threats of tyranny: warlord kings, oligarchic wealth, and theocratic rule. Thomas Jefferson, in his 1787 letter to Edward Carrington, decried the “general prey of the rich on the poor,” warning that human nature often devours its own kind. John Adams, writing to Jefferson in 1813, lamented the corruption of elections as the harbinger of artificial aristocracy, where wealth and power become hereditary through legal and political institutions. The Founders’ antidote was a constitutionally limited democratic republic, designed to check these forces through the will of the people. Yet, the post-Citizens United era has seen this vision erode, as wealth and theocratic ambition intertwined to capture the levers of governance.

The Gilded Age of the late 19th century, the Roaring Twenties, and now the post-2010 era stand as recurring cycles of oligarchic dominance. By 2024, evangelical and Pentecostal voters, a significant portion of the 41% of white Christian voters, propelled Trump to victory with 81% support, underscoring the enduring power of the Religious Right’s alliance with wealth. Trump’s presidency, with its echoes of divine-right proclamations and executive overreach, threatens to cement a neofascist blend of warlord, oligarch, and theocrat—a fate that has befallen nations like Russia, Hungary, and Turkey, where democratic institutions have crumbled under similar pressures.

Yet, history also offers hope. Schenck’s moral evolution, driven by empathy for the marginalized, reflects the potential for transformation even within rigid ideologies. His story is a microcosm of the broader struggle: the confrontation with moral certainties, the acknowledgment of human complexity, and the courage to change. The challenge for 2025 is to reclaim the republic through civic resistance. Overturning Citizens United, curbing dark money, and restoring transparency to the political process are essential steps to dismantling the oligarchic-theocratic capture of governance. Grassroots action—protests, engagement with local and state officials, and demands for accountability at school boards, city councils, and county commissions—can reassert the people’s voice.

The Founders, drawing on Enlightenment thinkers like Jean-Jacques Rousseau, placed their faith in the people, not the rich or the righteous, as the bulwark of freedom. Rousseau’s warning that artificial aristocracies arise when wealth and power are entrenched by law resonates today, as does Jefferson’s insistence that the people are the guarantors of liberty. The American experiment, though imperfect—marked in the beginning by the exclusion of women, people of color, and the enslaved—has progressed through struggle and sacrifice. The choice in 2025 is as stark as it was in 1776: to resist the archetypes of tyranny and renew the commitment to self-governance, or to succumb to the warlord-oligarch-theocratic capture that threatens to unravel 240 years of democratic aspiration. The path forward lies in collective action, moral clarity, and an unwavering belief in the republic’s capacity to endure.