The Religious Right and Contemporary American Politics

Instead of community arising as a byproduct of rigid belief, people will return to religious belief
because of their desire for community. In other words, people will return to religious tradition not
necessarily because they accept the truth of revelation, but because the absence of community and
the transience of social ties in the secular world makes them hungry for ritual and cultural tradition.
They will help the poor or their neighbors not because doctrine tells them they must, but rather
because they want to serve their communities and find that faith-based organizations are the most
effective ways of doing so. They will repeat ancient prayers and reenact age-old rituals not because
they believe they were handed down by God, but rather because they want their children to have
proper values, and because they want to enjoy the comfort of ritual and the sense of shared
experience it brings. In a sense they will not be taking religion seriously on its own terms. Religion
becomes a source of ritual in a society that has been stripped bare of ceremony, and thus a
reasonable extension of the natural desire for social relatedness with which all human beings are born

You could be right. I vaguely remembered that we had a dispute about this, but didn't remember the details. So I went to Britannica.com and looked up their entry on the United Fruit Company. I was redirected to the entry on the United Brands Company, which the United Fruit Company merged into in 1970. I wouldn't describe the article as "probably written by a leftist". I also wouldn't describe it as documenting a "bit of ugly anti-democratic American History". Either Encyclopedia Britannica can't agree with itself what to make of the United Fruit Company, or they have changed their entry in a direction favorable to my politics, and unfavorable to yours. Here is the Encyclopedia Britannica article in full length:...

See? It doesn't say that there was an ugly bit of anti-democratic politics. Only that popular opinion in Latin America often disliked the United Fruit Company. The article takes no position on whether public opinion was correct.

The United Fruit Company owned vast tracts of land in Central America, and sometimes the Company was said to be the real power in control of those nations, the national governments doing the Company's bidding. The Company several times overthrew governments which they considered insufficiently compliant to Company will. For example, in 1910 a ship of armed hired thugs was sent from New Orleans to Honduras to install a new president by force when the incumbent failed to grant the Fruit Company tax breaks. The newly installed Honduran president granted the Company a waiver from paying any taxes for 25 years.

The Company had a mixed record of encouraging and discouraging development in the nations it was involved in. For example, in Guatemala the Company built schools for the people who lived and worked on Company land, while at the same time for many years prevented the Guatemalan government from building highways, because this would lessen the profitable transportation monopoly of the railroads, which were owned by United Fruit. A popular name for the company was Mamá Yunay ("Mommy United").

In order to administer its far-flung operations, United Fruit became a major developer of radio technology, which it later pooled with other companies to form the Radio Corporation of America.

The Guatemalan government of Colonel Jacobo Arbenz Guzman was toppled by covert action by the United States government in 1954 at the behest of United Fruit because of Arbenz Guzman's plans to redistribute uncultivated land owned by the United Fruit Company among Indian peasants. The UFC and the bankers that supported it convinced the CIA and President Dwight Eisenhower that this was the first sign of a Communist takeover in Central America. The US Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, was a determined anti-Communist whose law firm had represented United Fruit. His brother Allen Dulles was the director of the CIA. The brother of the Assistant Secretary of State for InterAmerican Affairs, John Moors Cabot, had once been president of United Fruit. Guzman's government was overthrown by Guatemalan army officers invading from Honduras. As many as 100,000 people may have died in the ensuing civil war.

blatham wrote:
Like foxfyre in her defence of pragmatic torture, it becomes hard to imagine what set of circumstances might encourage thomas to acknowledge that what is maybe ain't what ought to be - and WHY it ought not to be.

Purely as a matter of logic, I don't see why it is my fault if your arguments fail to persuade me. Sorry. I fail to see why the Religious Right oughtn't buy into radio stations and have a wide audience tune in. I fail to see why Rupert Murdoch oughtn't start up a rabidly conservative TV network and bring it to success. And I fail to see how the alternative you propose -- the FCC decides who gets to run TV stations, and your political convictions guide the the FCC's decisions -- can be expected to yield a more attractive outcome. I believe that reflects the weakness of your arguments. If you prefer to believe it merely reflects my pig-headedness, be my guest.

blatham wrote:
1984 or Animal Farm have as their singular strength the quality of 'entertainment'? Do you think it so?

That's not what I think, and that's not what I said. I said that books of authors like Orwell sell copies on their strength in supplying entertaining fiction. I stand by that statement.

Oh, yeah - and what some perceive as an assault on civil rights others perceive as defending against short-sighted, self-serving, socially irresponsible, morally, ethically, logically, and functionally bankrupt feel-good permissiveness. I am not at all distressed at the growing legislative representation bein' gained through the electoral efforts of the proponents of the latter point of view.

It's a culture war and those of us who value civil rights are losing. Those who believe coercion is a valid method are in control.

"Victory through demography" is the premise behind Teixeira and Judis's The Emerging Democratic Majority. The premise rests on two key facts. First, the Democratic party has done historically well among certain segments of the American population: Hispanics, college-educated women, and secularists. Second, these are the population segments that are growing the fastest--and will, in time, overwhelm Republican constituencies.

Is it true? The authors present a compelling case: The country's fastest growing ethnic group is Hispanics, who account for two-fifths of the country's annual population increase. In 2000, Hispanics voted for Al Gore over George W. Bush 62 percent to 35. The country's fastest-growing education group is women with college degrees. According to the Census Bureau, the percent-age of women with at least a bachelor's has leaped from an asterisk at mid-century to over a quarter today. In 2000, college-educated women voted for Gore over Bush 57 percent to 39. And what about the third group, secularists? They're the country's fastest-grow-ing religious identification when defined as those who rarely or never attend church. According to the National Opinion Research Center, they've jumped from 18 to 30 percent of the population in 25 years. Secularists supported Gore by double-digit margins.

These statistics are very depressing for rank-and-file Republicans. But there is one final piece of nasty demo-graphic news that must be shared. The country's fastest-growing economic class--professionals--is also swinging to the Democratic party. The professionals are white-collar, highly trained, credentialed people such as teachers, engineers, architects, computer analysts, and physicians. They're more than one-fifth of the electorate. They're highly educated, financially successful, and they used to be Republicans. But there's no sign they're coming back.

In sum, the message of The Emerging Democratic Majority to the Republican party is: Your cause is doomed! Our Harvard Law School grads and Latino landscapers will swamp your Fox News viewers and Federalist Society members!

Timber wrote:

Quote:

Oh, yeah - and what some perceive as an assault on civil rights others perceive as defending against short-sighted, self-serving, socially irresponsible, morally, ethically, logically, and functionally bankrupt feel-good permissiveness. I am not at all distressed at the growing legislative representation bein' gained through the electoral efforts of the proponents of the latter point of view.

nothing conservtive there...no economy of language whatsoever...If I was in a band "Assault on Civil Rights" would be much easier to get on a drum head.... :wink:

For goodness sakes, thomas. I'll forgive you your crappy memory and I'll forgive myself for being too lazy to find this previous discussion we had. But I don't think I'll forgive the rather shallow attempt to sort out the history here.

With certain caveats, I think your principle deeply counter-factual and one that serves the selfish or amoral and the powerful - at the cost of much suffering to those not in such a priviledged and aristocratic category - far too often to be morally acceptable. The UFC case is a paradigm. Another such contemporary case is suggested in the big winners for bucks in Iraq...Boeing and Northrup/Grumman (fuk the uncivilized colored people with the false god...there's big bucks to be made from war...

Well then, it's not terribly clear what you are saying or why you bothered to say it.

After they wipe out right wing Christians, Neocons, most U.S. corporations, and (presumably) the Republican Party, what next?

acknowledging the zealotry of some religious right, but noting that it is often no worse than other ubiquitous sources of that commodity

I wonder why you don't seem to get the message. Going dull on us in your old age? Or is it that you're a one trick pony?

If by "the history here" you mean the history of the United Fruit Company, you may be relieved to hear that I have just ordered a copy of Banana Wars: Power, Production, and History in the Americas, edited by Steve Striffler and Mark Morberg. Unlike any of the sources you and I have provided so far, it comes from researchers who have a reputation to lose in the field, and it has been peer-reviewed. I'll let you know what they say in a few weeks.

If by "the history here", you mean the history of our debate, I'm not trying to "sort it out". I believe that you posted a more condemning article, and that I believe you that I have labeled it as 'probably written by a leftist'. But the article I "pulled up" is the article in the current Encyclopedia Britannica about the United Fruit company -- which I feel is the appropriate article to consult. If you posted an earlier version of the same article, this may well mean that the editors of Britannica themselves found the history described in your version inaccurate, and felt it would improve their article if they "sorted out their history". Your grudge may well be with your own source, not with me.

blatham wrote:
With certain caveats, I think your principle deeply counter-factual and one that serves the selfish or amoral and the powerful - at the cost of much suffering to those not in such a priviledged and aristocratic category - far too often to be morally acceptable. The UFC case is a paradigm. Another such contemporary case is suggested in the big winners for bucks in Iraq...Boeing and Northrup/Grumman (fuk the uncivilized colored people with the false god...there's big bucks to be made from war...

Strangely enough, I have exactly the same feelings about your views in this matter. American 20th century examples of why I feel this way include the throwing of firebombs on a Philadelphia slum ordered by the major of Philadelphia in the 1980s. The harrassment of the civil rights movement by various state governments -- including the repeated imprisonment of Martin Luther King. The coercion of unwilling bus company owners to segregate their buses. The testing in the 1950s of the effects of radioactive fallout on unsuspecting Nevada citizens who had the misfortune of living downwind from a testing ground for atomic bombs. The deliberate infection of poor blacks with lethal infectious diseases for the purpose of clinically testing antidotes in their experimental stage, which also happened in the 1950s. The attempted shutting up of the New York Times who wanted to tell how the Vietnam War really started. The criminalization of homosexuality, and of interracial marriage. The War on Drugs. The PATRIOT Act. The Defense of Marriage Act. Do we agree that these cases provide arguments against your position that more government is generally the solution, not the problem, or do you need more?

blatham wrote:
Well then, it's not terribly clear what you are saying or why you bothered to say it.

Okay, let me try again. In my opinion, "1984" and "Animal farm" were both good descriptions of what it's like to live under, or be part of, a totalitarian government. But 1984 was not good prophecy of how the Britain of 1984 would actually look like. "Animal Farm" avoids this problem by moving the story from the real world into the realm of a fable. They are both thoughtful and entertaining to read, which I think is the reason they were bestsellers. But neither of them has much interesting to say what causes governments to go totalitarian, and what steps might be taken to avoid it. For that, I much prefer The Road to Serfdom, published around the same time by Friedrich Hayek, an economist. Sorry, I can't think of any accountants who contributed outstanding work on the question. (And needless to say, I'm happy we can read both Hayek and Orwell, so don't actually have to decide between them)

Lola wrote:

Quote:

I wonder why you don't seem to get the message. Going dull on us in your old age? Or is it that you're a one trick pony?

I'll leave it to George to answer the specifics of your question. But as a general observation I've made as a debater, people rarely go ad hominem with their opponents unless they are losing trust in the merits of their case. I find find it reassuring that you just did.

You're either arguing from an ignorant position or you're evil and stupid....I prefer to think the former.

Lola chides others for the constancy of their responses to her own unvarying claims that there is a dangerous conspiracy of Christian religious zealots, presumably mostly evangelicals, who, in alliance with another amorphous group of "new Right" Neocons are out to very bad things - though it is sometimes hard to figure out just what.

Blatham is fixed on the evils of corporations and Republican government in the United States. (Perhaps the Canadian - or French -- versions of both are beyond reproach.) He trots out the standard litany of left-wing diatribes against the United Fruit Company and the evils done by it and the U.S. government to the hapless peasants of Guatemala (who, left to themselves, were clearly on the verge of creating a prosperous democratic paradise), as evidence of the need to suppress such evils through the adoption of more powers in the hands of government which he presumably would populate with Platonic philosopher kings.

Thomas responds, noting the mixed bag of good and evil done at the hands of both government and corporations, acknowledging the zealotry of some religious right, but noting that it is often no worse than other ubiquitous sources of that commodity. In various ways, he suggests that he rejects formulaic authoritarian answers and prefers instead the free markets of individual choice in economic and political life: even though they too create or tolerate some undesirable things, they do so generally less than the alternatives. George, silently applauds (OK, not silently).

Neither Blatham nor Lola has offered any reliable - or believable - means to the achievement of the ends implied in their criticisms. After they wipe out right wing Christians, Neocons, most U.S. corporations, and (presumably) the Republican Party, what next? Will crime, conflict, and suffering cease? Will the authoritarian structures required in accomplishing all this, themselves, remain immune to bad action or intent? Surely Aesop had something to say about this.
.

I am very skeptical of anyone who advocates increased authority to government to stamp out such contrary thought or political action. In my view government is more often the problem than the solution.

"an America … where the separation of church and state is absolute … where no Catholic prelate would tell the President, should he be Catholic, how to act and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote … and where no man is denied public office merely because his religion differs from the President who might appoint him and the people who might elect him."

As to thomas' intellectual objectivity and resiliency, as compared to my rigidity, I'll simply note that the commonality of your and his ideas paints your objectivity in much the same colors as that of an East German figure-skating judge.

I'm generally not very taken by the endless taxonomies that often pass for analysis among commentators of the political scene, and was pleased to see that the authors didn't try to make too much of the distinctions they are making.

However, the desire and intent of installing democracy in parts of the world that, unaltered, will remain hostile to us, while not exactly libertarian, is hardly of the same Platonic ilk as those liberals (in the American sense of that word)) of a more totalitarian bent. They would tell us how to live, what traditions can be retained and which must be altered; provide new words that must be used to describe old things; erase meaningful distinctions between things in areas in which they decree that no distinctions will be permitted; use government to regulate more and more areas of our lives and economic activity. I believe there is an enormous difference between the two in the degree to which a "Platonic" label can be affixed to their actions & beliefs.

However, the desire and intent of installing democracy in parts of the world that, unaltered, will remain hostile to us, while not exactly libertarian, is hardly of the same Platonic ilk as those liberals (in the American sense of that word)) of a more totalitarian bent. They would tell us how to live, what traditions can be retained and which must be altered; provide new words that must be used to describe old things; erase meaningful distinctions between things in areas in which they decree that no distinctions will be permitted; use government to regulate more and more areas of our lives and economic activity. I believe there is an enormous difference between the two in the degree to which a "Platonic" label can be affixed to their actions & beliefs.

those liberals (in the American sense of that word)) of a more totalitarian bent. They would tell us how to live, what traditions can be retained and which must be altered; provide new words that must be used to describe old things; erase meaningful distinctions between things in areas in which they decree that no distinctions will be permitted; use government to regulate more and more areas of our lives and economic activity.

THE RELIGIOUS RIGHT WANTS AMERICA
By John M. Swomley


Pat Robertson and his "Christian Coalition" have declared war on a large array of organizations deemed by them to be "irreligious" or "liberal." The list of the embattled, which the ACLU heads, includes the American Jewish Congress, People for the American Way, the National Organization for Women and several churches.

Many people, noting the Coalition's agenda against homosexuality, abortion, separation of church and state, and women's rights, regard Robertson-and-company as a disruptive element on the American political scene, but one that is temporary and ultimately bound to fail. That interpretation is simplistic.

The Christian Coalition is the largest of many right wing religious groups whose members want to reorder United States political affairs under the authority of a "Christian" government. Their overarching philosophy, alternately called "Christian Reconstruction" and "Dominion Theology," was first articulated in 1973 by Rousas John Rushdoony in Institutes of Biblical Law. That philosophy is nurtured by the Coalition on Revival (COR), a secretive inner circle whose steering committee includes most of the nation's right wing Christian leaders. This hard core, which promotes the unifying ideology of the Christian right, is led by Dr. Jay Grimstead.

Strongly influenced by COR and its credo, Pat Robertson renamed his CBN (for Christian Broadcasting Network) University, Regent University, explaining that "a regent is one who governs in the absence of a sovereign." Someday, he said, "we will rule and reign along with our sovereign, Jesus Christ." Toward that day, Regent is training graduate students in education, religion, law and communications to build theological and political alliances of ready-to-rule folk. Robertson's more immediate goal, control of the Republican Party, is seen as a necessary step in pursuit of the ultimate prize: a "Christian" United States -- meaning his brand of Christianity. Robertson's writings and speeches reflect essentially theocratic models. In his 1991 book, The New World Order, he writes:

"The founders of America at Plymouth Rock and in the Massachusetts Colony felt that they were organizing a society based on the Ten Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount .... They tried their best to model their institutions of governmental order after the Bible."
Of course, the former clergyman romanticizes here. The early American leaders to whom he refers were people who burned "witches," hanged Quakers, slaughtered Native Americans, held Africans in bondage and taxed the populace to support religion.

Summarizing the colonial period, Robertson writes,

"... for almost two hundred years prior to our Constitution, all of the leadership of this nation had been steeped with biblical principles of the Old and New Testaments. Their new order was a nation founded squarely on concepts of the nature of God, the nature of man, the role of the family and the moral order as established by the God of Jacob."

What Robertson is extolling, among other things, is clerical control of politics. In colonial Massachusetts and Connecticut, reports William Warren Sweet in The Story of Religions in America, preachers' political influence was such that no one could be admitted to church membership without their consent, and voting in those colonies "was limited to church members." Sweet also describes a morals squad: "The tithing man ... was a township official who assisted the constable in watching over the morals of the community. There was one such official for every ten families, who ... was on the lookout for Sabbath breaking, tippling, gaming, and idleness."

Pat Robertson claims that "...the Supreme Court of the supposedly Christian United States guaranteed the moral collapse of this nation when it forbade children in the public schools to pray to the god of Jacob, to learn of His moral law or even to view in their classrooms the heart of the law, the Ten Commandments." Actually, the Supreme Court has never banned private prayer if performed silently in class or in the cafeteria over lunch. In 1962, in Engle v. Vitale, the court banned school-sponsored prayer; and in 1963, in the Pennsylvania case Abington Township v. Schempp, it banned Bible reading as worship. The Court has permitted objectively taught courses on the Bible as literature, on the philosophy or sociology of religion, and on comparative religion. It has also allowed religious clubs to meet after instructional hours if other extra-curricular clubs are permitted to meet. Moreover, many states did not even have school-sponsored prayers or Bible readings prior to 1962.

The Christian Coalition has become a force in American politics, providing the margin for Jesse Helms' re-election. Its Christian Broadcasting Network has 1,485 radio stations and 336 television stations (numbers as of 1989), with Robertson's "700 Club" -- annual income, about $140 million -- airing daily on TV. In close touch with Robertson are other groups like James Dobson's Focus on the Family, which employs about 1,000 people, publishes eight periodicals and broadcasts on more than 1,500 radio stations.

Although the bulk of Robertson's support comes from fundamentalist Protestants and Catholics, not all fundamentalists and evangelicals support his politics or his theology. Thus, the ACLU, in coalition with both religious and secular organizations, should strive to reach as many people as possible with its message of church-state separation and other civil liberties values.

Thomas wrote:

I fail to see why the Religious Right oughtn't buy into radio stations and have a wide audience tune in. I fail to see why Rupert Murdoch oughtn't start up a rabidly conservative TV network and bring it to success. And I fail to see how the alternative you propose -- the FCC decides who gets to run TV stations, and your political convictions guide the the FCC's decisions -- can be expected to yield a more attractive outcome. I believe that reflects the weakness of your arguments. If you prefer to believe it merely reflects my pig-headedness, be my guest.

Of course, I didn't use the term 'pigheaded'. I said you were 'dogmatic'. It's a charge you and I have leveled at each other (or, certainly, have both implied) a few times previously. You hold to a principle of governance which maintains that state 'interference' will most often produce effects that hurt the overall good more than they forward overall good. With certain caveats, I think your principle deeply counter-factual and one that serves the selfish or amoral and the powerful - at the cost of much suffering to those not in such a priviledged and aristocratic category - far too often to be morally acceptable.