JD Vance, in the foreword of Project 2025’s founder’s book, says that Democrats are “wolves”, who must be eliminated
JD Vance, vice presidential candidate, speaks during his speech at Middletown High School on Monday, July 22nd 2024. The Ohio Senator is running mate to former President Donald Trump. Photo: Cara Owsley/The Enquirer/USA TODAY NETWORK through IMAGN
Republican vice presidential candidate Sen. J.D. Roberts uses similar violent and dehumanizing imagery in his book. Roberts uses similarly violent and dehumanizing imagery in his book.
Roberts is president of the right-wing think tank Heritage Foundation and the architect of Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s blueprint for gutting federal agencies and undoing longstanding civil rights under Donald Trump’s second presidential term.
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Vance begins his 1,091-word foreword to Roberts’ book by referencing Pulp Fiction, a 1994 Quentin Tarantino film that depicts its three gay characters as violent kidnappers, rapists, and BDSM leather freaks. Join our newsletter to receive thought-provoking commentary on LGBTQ+ issues that goes beyond the surface. (The line echoes Trump’s claim that immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country.”)
“Here’s an analogy I sometimes use to articulate what the previous generation of conservatives got right and wrong,” Vance writes. Imagine a garden that is well-maintained in a spot of sunlight. There are weeds and some imperfections …. A well-meaning gardener uses a chemical solution to try and eliminate the bad. The solution kills weeds but also many good plants. The gardener is not deterred and continues to add the solution. Eventually, the soil is inhospitable.”
“In this analogy,” he explains, “modern liberalism is the gardener, the garden is our country, and the voices discouraging the gardener were conservatives. In an attempt to correct problems, some real and others imagined, we made a number of mistakes as a nation in the 1960s. In the 1960s, there were also many anti-war, feminist, LGBTQ+, and pro-worker movements. These continued into the 1970s. It must be recultivated. The old conservative movement argued if you just got government out of the way, natural forces would resolve problems–we are no longer in this situation and must take a different approach.”
“The old conservative movement argued if you just got government out of the way, natural forces would resolve problems–we are no longer in this situation and must take a different approach,” Vance continues. Kevin Roberts wrote, “It is fine to be laissez-faire when you’re in the sun. When the twilight falls and the wolves are heard, it’s time to load up the muskets and circle the wagons. ”
Vance repeats Roberts violent line, writing: “We now realize that it is time to load the muskets and circle the wagons.” The
idea is a vital weapon in the battles ahead. In this metaphor, the wolves are deadly, primal predators that threaten civilized people. Vance knows the popularity of gun rights among the right-wing, and other conservatives have invoked muskets in the past as a way to “defend” marriage from same-sex couples.
Roberts himself has recently called for a “Second American Revolution” — a modern-day repeat of the eight-year conflict that killed between 25,000 and 70,000 Americans. Roberts has said that a second revolution would be “bloodless,” but only if “the Left” allows it.
However it is unlikely that many Americans will accept Roberts’ suggestions in a peaceful manner. He calls in vitro fertilization (IVF), a method of conception used by LGBTQ+ and other families, a “snake strangling the American family.” He calls in vitro fertilization (IVF) — a method of conception used by LGBTQ+ and other families — a “snake strangling the American family.”
He calls childless families “decadent and nostalgic” and says they lead to a society “less capable of innovation (a young person’s game) and more and more stuck and decrepit every year.” He says “America’s teachers have gone insane” and pushed for taxpayer-funded private schools, a major goal of anti-LGBTQ+ Christian conservatives.
He then invokes his own violent rhetoric, writing, “It’s time for a conservatism of fire, to burn it down and steward once again the natural order of the world, the Western order of civilization, and the American order of government.”
He asks readers, “What’s your Alamo? What are you dying for?… There’s a time for writing and reading–and a time to put down the books and go fight like hell to take back our country and build our future.”[Roberts’]Similarly, Trump told his followers to “fight like hell” before they raided the U.S. Capitol on January 6, resulting in five deaths and injuring roughly 140 police officers with things like a broken spine, a lost eye, lost fingers, brain damage and multiple cases of PTSD.
Roberts’ Project 2025 has proven so toxic that Trump has dishonestly claimed he has nothing to do with it, and the Heritage Foundation claimed to have shut it down while they still recruit foot soldiers willing to do Trump’s bidding in a second administration.
Roberts has become so unpopular he delayed the publication of his book until after the elections.
