A Colony in a Nation

by Chris Hayes

Nixon’s genius in 1968 was to reach back to the Founders and somehow find in that revolutionary generation a call for order. “The American Revolution was and is dedicated to progress, but our founders recognized that the first requisite of progress is order,” he said. “Now, there is no quarrel between progress and order—because neither can exist without the other.” In fact, “the first civil right of every American is to be free from domestic violence, and that right must be guaranteed in this country.” This rhetoric and framing would become the template to justify forty years of escalating incarceration: Order is necessary for liberty to flourish. If we do not have order, we can have no other rights. It would dominate the politics of both parties over the next three decades, as crime continued to climb. Fear for one’s own body against a violent predator, for the sanctity and safety of one’s hearth against incursions by the depraved—these kinds of political issues operate far below the frontal cortex, deep beneath the dry talk of policy or tax rates. They are primal and primary. And in America, when the state cultivates such fear among relatively empowered white voters, it is enriching uranium for a political nuclear weapon.