God, Greed, and Government

The roots of today’s extremist conservative movement can be traced back to 1971, when Lewis Powell, months before his appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court, grew alarmed by what he perceived as a rising assault on the American free enterprise system. He saw danger in the anti-capitalist movements on college campuses, in critical television and print media, and in labor groups challenging corporate dominance. At that time, the nation was undergoing a profound moral reckoning. The Vietnam War had eroded public trust in the military, while the military-industrial complex profited from the deaths of tens of thousands of Americans and over a million Vietnamese. The 1960s had unleashed a tide of social progress, including the Civil Rights Movement, the women’s movement, and the Equal Rights Amendment. The assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Bobby Kennedy still haunted the public conscience. American society was striving, however imperfectly, to align with its founding promise of liberty and justice for all. But for those who had long enjoyed capitalism’s privileges, this shift was an existential threat. To Powell, action was urgent. Liberal ideas were spreading, and he feared they would lead the nation to ruin.

It was in this climate that Powell authored what became known as the Powell Memo. It was a strategic call to arms addressed to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Titled Attack on American Free Enterprise System, the memo justified corporate fear and laid out a comprehensive plan to counter what Powell described as a broad ideological attack.

The Powell Memo proposed a multi-pronged strategy to reshape American institutions in favor of corporate power:

• Revise education policy to promote pro-business ideology over individual rights, including reshaping curricula, replacing faculty, and inserting corporate guest speakers.

• Undermine the media’s credibility while pressuring news and entertainment outlets to promote business-friendly narratives.

• Saturate the public sphere with pro-business publications, including books, journals, and magazines, until the message becomes unavoidable.

• Infiltrate government through aggressive lobbying and funding of pro-business candidates.

• Influence the judiciary by supporting judges who would prioritize corporate interests over public welfare.

Powell’s message was simple: stop cooperating with public demands and start shaping public opinion. Business, he argued, was the backbone of the American way of life, and it should therefore control it.

Fifty years later, Powell’s vision has not only materialized; it has metastasized. Today, we can trace a direct ideological line from the Powell Memo to Project 2025 and to the authoritarian direction our government is now taking. Consider the modern wealth gap, which has ballooned to historic proportions. Of the roughly $160 trillion in household wealth, the top 1% controls nearly one-third, and the top 0.1% holds 15%. Meanwhile, the bottom half of Americans are left with just 2.5%, or roughly $4 trillion, fighting over the scraps. Powell couldn’t have asked for a more lopsided victory.

Not long after the memo circulated, conservative think tanks surfaced like earthworms after a rainstorm. Institutions such as the Heritage Foundation, the American Enterprise Institute, and Americans for Prosperity may not have been direct descendants of Powell’s plan, but they shared its DNA. With wealthy donors fueling their rise, these organizations poured resources into reshaping education, media, governance, and the legal system. The goal wasn’t to argue with the public; the goal was to reprogram it.

Money talks. And in America, that means it dominates. Powell encouraged corporate spending to drown out public-interest advocacy. Corporations, flush with cash, easily outspent labor unions and social movements. Over time, union membership was cut in half. “Right to Work” laws spread like wildfire, weakening collective bargaining and further disempowering workers, who found themselves scavenging for the crumbs left behind.

At the same time, the Religious Right entered the scene. It saw in corporate conservatism a convenient and lucrative partner. The “Prosperity Gospel” emerged. It was a twisted theology that cherry-picked scripture to claim wealth as a divine and earthly reward. Televangelists like Oral Roberts, Kenneth Hagin, Kenneth Copeland, and Joel Osteen amassed grotesque wealth while preaching to Americans struggling to pay rent. Together, corporations and religious leaders sold the public a cruel illusion: that economic hardship was a spiritual test, and that prosperity—if not in this life, then in the next—would come to those who obeyed. Even as workers gave up on their own dreams of prosperity, they clung to the false promise that it was just around the corner.

Now, with Project 2025, Powell’s vision reaches its authoritarian crescendo. The plan is no longer just about protecting business; it’s about total control. Religion, business, and government have fused into a singular force. Millions are convinced that this new fusion will benefit them somehow; if not directly, then by punishing the people they’ve been conditioned to hate: immigrants, LGBTQ, people of color, and anyone outside their narrow vision of White Christian Nationalist America. The result is not only a revival of economic hierarchy but also a reawakening of racial and cultural bigotry, once whispered in the shadows but now shouted in broad daylight.

Why does this history matter? Because it informs us that Donald Trump is not the architect of our crisis; he’s just the carnival barker. He’s a product of decades of calculated strategy, carried out by elites who traded democracy for dominance. If we focus only on the performers, we’ll miss the puppeteers.

The conflict between the wealthy elite and the working class isn’t a polite debate. It’s a street fight for the American dream we once cherished. And it’s time we started acting like it.

We still have tools in our democratic toolbox. It’s still legal to organize, protest, and resist. But time is short; the window of freedom and democracy is closing rapidly. Congress won’t save us. The courts won’t save us. We have to save each other. That means resisting loudly. Pushing back relentlessly. And showing up wherever our presence disrupts the machinery of authoritarianism.

We are the majority. And it’s time we start fighting like it.

United we stand. There is no other way.

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