“Dreams are the royal road to the unconscious,” Sigmund Freud wrote in 1899, over in Vienna, Austria.

The Republicans of Texas don’t have a lot of time for foreigners like Freud and foreign notions like psychoanalysis, although they do believe in therapy, as long as it’s “reparative.” Elsewhere on the psychiatric front, they are adamant that “minor mental-health diagnoses” are no reason to “infringe” anyone’s “God-given right” to own and to carry guns. More about the particulars in due course.

The thing is, the Republican Party of Texas has a dream. Lots of dreams: its platform, unveiled last week, has sixteen thousand words’ worth. The road it maps is anything but royal; these good people, after all, are republicans, albeit with a capital “R.” But the document does lead to the G.O.P.’s unconscious, or part of it: its fearsome, rampaging id.

The platform clears its throat with a preamble. “We STILL hold these truths to be self-evident,” it begins, with defensive all-caps truculence. Then comes an eleven-point statement of principles. Here’s principle No. 1:

Strict adherence to the original intent of the Declaration of Independence and United States and Texas Constitutions.

And here’s No. 11:

And we believe in “The laws of nature and nature’s God” as our Founding Fathers believed.

There’s juicier stuff ahead, but let’s linger on these for a moment.

On No. 1: When it comes to the Constitution, “original intent” is standard right-wing shorthand for “whatever Scalia says goes.” But how are we supposed to adhere to the original intent of the Declaration of Independence, whose insurrectionary provenance we’ll be reminded of regularly this week? By remaining ever vigilant against the iniquities of the British Crown and its allies, whom the Declaration refers to as “the merciless Indian savages”?

On No. 11: The attribution to the Founding Fathers papers over a small problem. “God” is nowhere to be found in the Constitution, a failure on the part of those Founders that, for certain ostentatiously pious Christian conservatives, among whom may be counted the authors of the Texas Republican platform, is a persistent embarrassment. The Texas Constitution, which begins by “humbly invoking the blessings of Almighty God,” cannot fully compensate for this omission.

“The Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God” is indeed a phrase found in the Declaration. Now, I may be thinking too much like an editor here, but could it be that the platform’s authors planted the Declaration in their opening principle—even though it makes no sense there—so that they could return to it, and its gratifying mention of God, in their closing one? Either way, they appear to be unaware that the Founding Fathers’ “nature’s God” is a reference, probably a pointed one, to their Deist conception of a strictly creator God, a detached deity that does not trouble itself with the outcomes of football games, illnesses, elections, or wars, including culture wars.

But enough theology. Let’s proceed to policy. In the next of its forty pages, the platform demands, among other things,

• That the Texas Legislature should nullify—indeed, “ignore, oppose, refuse, and nullify”—federal laws it doesn’t like. (Unmentioned is the fact that, beginning in 1809, the Supreme Court has steadfastedly rejected state nullification of federal laws.) • That when it comes to “unelected bureaucrats”—i.e., pretty much the entire federal work force above the janitorial level—Congress should “defund and abolish these positions.” • That the Seventeenth Amendment, which was adopted in 1913, be repealed, so that “the appointment of United States Senators” can again be made by state legislators, not by voters. (Admittedly, the Texas Legislature could hardly do worse.) • That all federal “enforcement activities” within the borders of Texas—including, presumably, the activities of F.B.I. agents, Justice Department prosecutors, air marshals, immigration officers, agricultural inspectors, and tax auditors—“must be conducted under the auspices of the county sheriff with jurisdiction in that county.”

This section of the platform, “Preserving American Freedom,” also features a syllogism:

Socialism breeds mediocrity. America is exceptional. Therefore, the Republican Party of Texas opposes socialism in all of its forms.

“Mediocrity” is not the first quality that springs to mind when one thinks of places like Denmark, the Netherlands, and the Federal Republic of Germany, to name three contemporary exemplars of what Texas Republicans abhor as “socialism.” But let that pass. Accepting the major and minor premises as true, wouldn’t the conclusion have to be, “Therefore, since America is exceptional, socialism in America would not breed mediocrity”?

Here is another syllogism of sorts, with the usual three-part structure, assembled by me. From page 6: