The Koch’s come to Virginia bearing conservative gifts and elite conservative ideas to boot

David and Charles Koch love the concept of freedom so much that they are more than willing to browbeat you at every conceivable turn with their brand of libertarian politics. And so, the recent opening of an Americans for Prosperity office at Keagy Villiage in Roanoke County is only the latest move by the Koch brothers to subtly coerce Virginians to see the world through the Ayn Randian (you know, the Russian who REALLY wanted to be an American philosopher) lenses that they prescribe to.

Americans for Prosperity is a conservative organization with national reach that primarily focuses on decreasing government regulation and cutting taxes. The irony of billionaires complaining about too many taxes and government regulations is stupendous.

The conservative group has been graciously supported by the Koch brothers and is just one of many such groups that the Koch brothers fund to support their vision of what America should look like.

According to Dave Schwartz, Americans for Prosperity’s Virginia director, the organization will seek to “step up” its brainwashing tactics in southwest Virginia, focusing specifically on energy issues like coal and, of course, taxes and government regulation. What would a good Koch brother funded group be without the inevitable focus on government evils like taxation and regulations?

The political vision of the Koch brothers is, at its root, a vision meant to benefit those already well off in society. And by well off, I mean somewhere in the millionaire economic range for wealth.

Why? Because if the Koch brothers had their way by cutting government regulations and taxes it would be the wealthy individuals and corporations of America who would be in a disproportionately advantageous position to take advantage, on the whole, of this newfound ‘freedom’. For instance, if the government were to scale back anti-competition legislation, would small businesses benefit or large businesses?

The world of Koch has already been attempted in the U.S. with dismal failures on many different fronts (social, economic, political). A U.S. with little or no government regulations in particular would haul America back to the age of Robber Barons, the Great Depression, rampant political corruption, and so on.

In other words, the world, as the Koch brothers see it, would be a new Gilded Age where private businesses are the most feared players in the social game, not the government. That is, we’d be trading one Leviathan for another.