Behind it is the belief that everyone gets what they deserve, so if you’re wealthy it’s because you’re more deserving of wealth, and if you’re poor, unemployed and hungry it’s because you deserve poverty and hunger. American right-wingers will seldom admit that you can be unemployed or poor through no fault of your own. They don’t seem to allow themselves the concept of a systematic injustice, or even of economic forces causing people to become unemployed. Deep down perhaps they know it happens, but you won’t often catch them admitting it out loud.

This belief that the world rewards people according to their merits and deserts ties in nicely with evangelical Christianity, and the idea that God administers this global rewards system. Why help the poor if God put them there because they deserve to suffer? Might as well buy yourself some luxuries and enjoy your God-given wealth.

It’s not really a philosophy, of course. It’s basic selfishness and greed dressed up as a political philosophy. As a philosophy it obviously doesn’t hold up for five minutes: you can only fail to see the injustice in the world if your eyes are very firmly and resolutely shut. And you can’t believe in investing in the stock market unless you believe there’s an economy with booms and busts and people winding up unemployed due to forces beyond their control. But they won’t admit it.

Their behaviour proves that they don’t really hold principled beliefs, but are just improvising to make peace with their own selfishness. As soon as they themselves fall on hard times, their professed beliefs no longer apply and it’s everyone’s fault but theirs. As soon as they get a sniff of power, their professed love of guns to fight tyranny turns into an eagerness to use guns to impose tyranny. They live by no principle except craven selfishness.