How the GOP ruined disaster relief

The one-two punch of hurricanes Helene and Milton to Florida’s Gulf Coast — along with the flooding and devastation in western North Carolina — have ignited partisan disagreement and outright misinformation about the scope and role of the federal government in disaster relief. Not long ago, appropriations for aid funding were among the least contentious bills in Congress, typically carried with unanimous bipartisan support. That helping citizens in their time of need has somehow become a contentious political issue reflects a more fundamental backsliding in the Republican Party to a premodern conception of government itself.

Social scientists often speak in terms of state-society relations: What is the role of the government and the society that it governs? The entire American political tradition is premised upon the uncontroversial notion that: “The Government is the servant of the people. It is organized to serve the people. The people are not the servants or slaves of the Government.” The Enlightenment notion of promoting “the common good” predates even the United States itself.

This is not simply a matter of the Republicans’ rightward drift into MAGA authoritarianism. More fundamentally, the Republican Party has uncoupled itself completely from the notion that the purpose of government is to promote the security, liberties and prosperity of the people it represents. Instead, it now views the state as a mechanism to exact retribution, discipline and punish members of that society.