The Dark Side of Faith

Lash wrote:

I prefer democracy to oligarchy.

That's not anti-intellectual, it's anti-tyranny.

Not surprised at who supports it, though.

Fight tyranny and those who support it!!

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You have a very homely face...lol.

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No time to read the whole thread so apologies for being out of sync, but this is what I was getting at earlier in this thread. It isn't religion / the religious. That's too simple an explanation and not proven. I found this, which elaborates on what is happening, and which ties in with the claim I made earlier that just because they say they claim the religious vote, doesn't make it so. But, it is a nice simple way of misleading the masses and making those that claim to be Christians not want to be out of step with other Christians. That makes it politics. Not facts. The facts are complicated, intertwined and downright dirty.

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2005/0510.hayes.html

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dlowan wrote:

Hmmm...speaking of anti-intellectualism......perfect illustrations. That and the thinking by slogan.

LOL "No ****!", as we say up in Canada. This is Wilkerson's bio, from the State Department site...

Quote:

Lawrence B. Wilkerson
Chief of Staff,
Term of Appointment: 08/01/2002 to 01/26/2005

Colonel, U.S. Army (Retired) Larry Wilkerson joined General Colin L. Powell in March 1989 at the U.S. Army's Forces Command in Atlanta, Georgia as his Deputy Executive Officer. He followed the General to his next position as Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, serving as his special assistant. Upon Powell's retirement from active service in 1993, Colonel Wilkerson served as the Deputy Director and Director of the U.S. Marine Corps War College at Quantico, Virginia. Upon Wilkerson's retirement from active service in 1997, he began working for General Powell in a private capacity as a consultant and advisor.

In December 2000, Secretary of State-designate Powell asked Wilkerson to join him in the Transition Office at the U.S. State Department and, later, upon his confirmation as Secretary of State, Secretary Powell moved Wilkerson to his Policy Planning Staff with responsibilities for East Asia and the Pacific, and legislative and political-military affairs. In June of 2002, the Director for Policy Planning, Ambassador Richard Haass, made Wilkerson the associate director. In August of 2002, Secretary Powell moved Wilkerson to the position of Chief of Staff of the Department.

Wilkerson is a veteran of the Vietnam war as well as a U.S. Army "Pacific hand," having served in Korea, Japan, and Hawaii and participated in military exercises throughout the Pacific. Moreover, Wilkerson was Executive Assistant to US Navy Admiral Stewart A. Ring, Director for Strategy and Policy (J5) USCINCPAC, from 1984-87. Wilkerson also served on the faculty of the U.S. Naval War College at Newport, RI and holds two advanced degrees, one in International Relations and the other in National Security Studies. He has written extensively on military and national security affairs-especially for college-level curricula--and been published in a number of professional journals, including the Naval Institute's Proceedings, The Naval War College Review, Military Review, and Joint Force Quarterly (JFQ).

Now, what could be more appropriate - more obvious - than to conclude that the biographies of JustGiggles and Lash suggest knowledge and experience of these matters which is far superior to Wilkerson's.

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dlowan asked:

Quote:

And is there somewhere the arguments are spelled out on the net, without having to buy the book? [Richard Hofstadter's "Anti-Intellectualism in American Life"

deb

I'm actually not sure what you'll find online, but likely a fair bit given the fellow's position as one of the most well-read and respected historians of America in the last century. But I'd really advise ordering the book...you can get it for about 13 bucks new, or even less for a used paperback.

ps...he's a wonderful writer and reading him is a pleasure.

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Wilkerson also predicted (forget when, but I'll look it up first chance) that N. Korea would test a nuke this year. He didn't just predict it, he said he was SURE of it.

I think my and Lash's only crime here is one of being able to recognize a member of the tin-foil hat brigade.

Oooooooooooh. A cabal!!!

Smile

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squinney wrote:

No time to read the whole thread so apologies for being out of sync, but this is what I was getting at earlier in this thread. It isn't religion / the religious. That's too simple an explanation and not proven. I found this, which elaborates on what is happening, and which ties in with the claim I made earlier that just because they say they claim the religious vote, doesn't make it so. But, it is a nice simple way of misleading the masses and making those that claim to be Christians not want to be out of step with other Christians. That makes it politics. Not facts. The facts are complicated, intertwined and downright dirty.

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2005/0510.hayes.html

DO they claim "the religious vote"?

I know they GET the extreme religious right vote, but do they claim the votes of all christians?

As I said, I would see that as a contradiction in terms for many christians, with a commitment to societal compassion etc.

I am reading your article, and I agree with it, but I see little about the religious, just American opinion generally.

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Also...just out of interest...does "religious" in the US get taken to mean christian?

It seemed to do so in your posts, Squinney, and, it seems so also, in the original article?

Is this common in the US, not to consider other religions as part of that term?

I cannot imagine Bush is popular, eg, with Buddhists, since Iraq.

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squinney wrote:

No time to read the whole thread so apologies for being out of sync, but this is what I was getting at earlier in this thread. It isn't religion / the religious. That's too simple an explanation and not proven. I found this, which elaborates on what is happening, and which ties in with the claim I made earlier that just because they say they claim the religious vote, doesn't make it so. But, it is a nice simple way of misleading the masses and making those that claim to be Christians not want to be out of step with other Christians. That makes it politics. Not facts. The facts are complicated, intertwined and downright dirty.

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2005/0510.hayes.html

squinney

I meant to get back to your earlier questions (and deb's) but just didn't have time.

That's a very astute piece you've linked above and I think it is right on the money. It is a very complex picture and no simple formulation will capture what has gone on over the last three or four decades in American politics. Then there is the problem of whether even a complex analysis gets the story right.

You asked, if I recall correctly, whether religion/values actually play an significant part in present Republican power...whether the "Religious Right" truly constitute a significant electoral factor. I'd argue that they do, but there is more than one way to think about this.

First, let's acknowledge that Rove is one smart fellow, if amoral beyond words. He has for a long time now very assiduously courted this vote. He thinks it very important. It not only constitutes an electoral body which is fairly dependable in terms of stimulus-response, but it is also a very well-organized and motivated group. Ten serious evangelicals will produce, likely, more than just ten votes. Further, as alluded to in your article, they have instituted strategies and plans and organizational networks which move them into positions of power from the bottom up...school boards, hospital boards, local Republican committees, university politics, state governments, farm boards...you name it, they are there.

Consider also how close most elections are. If one can get a distinct group out to vote and helping with organization and general goal achievement, then that group may well be enough to tip an election. That is why Rove and company were (god, it is nice to use the past tense there) also implementing strategies to capture the Jewish vote (policies regarding Israel, linking up with the more radical theological corners of Judaism on topics like homosexuality) and to capture the Catholic vote (homosexuality, abortion, ties between the more conservative Catholic bishops and Vatican people with evangelicals (a wonderful piece on this by Garry Wills HERE but now archived), and to capture more of the black vote (again, homosexuality, abortion, putting black faces up front on the RNC website and during election time, etc.

It is certainly the case that if, through some unimaginable shift, the Religious Right began to vote Democrat en masse, the Republican voter base would be insufficient at all levels. So, I think, those are the ways in which this voter block is very important to Republican power. But of course, it isn't so large or unified that it alone will determine electoral outcomes.

We should add here though that because of the way this block has managed to insert itself into power in the Republican party, and into civic live generally (often quite covertly and disengenuously, as the article points out) and because a significant portion of this block (though certainly not all) is truly extreme - effectively anti-democratic, anti-science, and oppressively proscriptive for a free society, they pose a particular sort of danger in that extremism.

The article you've posted here speaks to a greater problem than the evangelicals for Democrats regaining power, I think. That is the propaganda machine which has been established over the last thirty to forty years in the US by folks who really don't like the idea of an engaged, politically educated and activist citizenry very much at all. Your article points here.

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dlowan wrote:

Also...just out of interest...does "religious" in the US get taken to mean christian?

It seemed to do so in your posts, Squinney, and, it seems so also, in the original article?

Is this common in the US, not to consider other religions as part of that term?

I cannot imagine Bush is popular, eg, with Buddhists, since Iraq.

deb

I think you are hearing echoes of a somewhat unique aspect to American culture. By all sorts of polls, it registers as the most "religious" country in the Western world. And that religiosity goes back a long ways and much of it is colored as we see it today...Buddhism doesn't really count as a religion (not the one true faith, a false faith) for many evangelicals, and some Catholics too. This is, for example, the position of Billy Grapham's son (though not Grapham senior), Falwell, Robertson, Dobson, etc etc.

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I crossed paths with Col Wilkerson several times - while he worksd for OPNAV & Adm. Ring, and later at the Naval War College. Bright guy - a fairly prominent member of that tribe of military officers who specialize in staff positions, occasionally getting their "tickets punched" in brief tours with the operating forces. I didn't read his piece, but am confident I know the contents well. My earlier characterization was based on the general behavior of such staff assistants (or "horseholders") who are generally the great man's key actors in the interagency bureaucratic wars that so infect government. Generally such types represent even more partisan viewpoints than do their bosses.

blatham wrote:

It is certainly the case that if, through some unimaginable shift, the Religious Right began to vote Democrat en masse, the Republican voter base would be insufficient at all levels. So, I think, those are the ways in which this voter block is very important to Republican power. But of course, it isn't so large or unified that it alone will determine electoral outcomes.

We should add here though that because of the way this block has managed to insert itself into power in the Republican party, and into civic live generally (often quite covertly and disengenuously, as the article points out) and because a significant portion of this block (though certainly not all) is truly extreme - effectively anti-democratic, anti-science, and oppressively proscriptive for a free society, they pose a particular sort of danger in that extremism.

Is this really true? Are they really anti-democratic? One of the chief political issues involving them is what they perceive as an unwarranted extention of the constitution that denys legislatures at the state and national levels the right to regulate matters such as abortion. In this case it is their secular opponents who have been rather proscriptive in enforcing their viewpoints, both directly in applications of Roe vs. Wade and in peripherally related issues including some bypassing parental rights over minor children. It is the religious right that wants to see these issues addressed by legislatures and their secular opponents who work hard to prevent that possibility.

I am not trying to defend all that the so-called Religious Right does or seeks to attain - because I don't agree with it all. However, as I see it, the liberal secular forces have been every bit as doctrinaire and anti democratic as have their opponents in these matters.

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george asks:

Quote:

Is this really true? Are they really anti-democratic? One of the chief political issues involving them is what they perceive as an unwarranted extention of the constitution that denys legislatures at the state and national levels the right to regulate matters such as abortion. In this case it is their secular opponents who have been rather proscriptive in enforcing their viewpoints, both directly in applications of Roe vs. Wade and in peripherally related issues including some bypassing parental rights over minor children. It is the religious right that wants to see these issues addressed by legislatures and their secular opponents who work hard to prevent that possibility.

I am not trying to defend all that the so-called Religious Right does or seeks to attain - because I don't agree with it all. However, as I see it, the liberal secular forces have been every bit as doctrinaire and anti democratic as have their opponents in these matters.

george

We've talked about this previously. And yes, I've seen you argue my position where certain extremist tendencies from the Christian Right are detailed. So, how many of them are there, are they really that nutty, and how influential can we understand them to be.

I think we can mostly agree to include as extremist the Dominionists, who are explicitly working to achieve a state structure where laws are derived from, or gain any and all authority out of, a biblical provenance. Or we could agree even that biblical literalism is itself an extremism (eg age of earth, etc) which cannot serve the modern community well (eg science education, refraining from contact with women while in mensus or sanctioning selling one's daughter(s) into slavery, etc). Or we'd probably see eye to eye on the "end times" theological movement where funds get sent over to Israel with the hope that these dollars will speed along god's plan to set the world alight in maniacal punishment. We'd likely agree that political office ought not to be restricted to christians or theists. And think the same agreement would follow if I said there really ought not to be a theological litmus test for the judiciary. You, like I, would not go through our daughters' libraries and toss out those imaginative books (Tolkein, Harry Potter) thinking that they fostered Satanism in the world (not to mention restricting viewing of cartoons where some character's gender is unclear). Neither of us would likely describe Muhammed as a "terrorist" (Falwell) or insist that "Islam is a religion in which God requires you to send your son to die for Him" (Ashcroft).

The problem is that the more of these we stack up in a pile, and I could write out many other such, the more we begin to see that we are now referring to a lot of people holding a lot of extreme ideas born of their particular versions of faith.

Let's look at one area...the end times and thoughts about foreign policy related to the middle east. Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein, formerly of the Anti-Defamation League, started a group named the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews in the early eighties. "Now everywhere you go it's Jews and conservative Christians linked together...you have Ralph Reed addressing the ADL, Gary Bauer addressing AIPAC - these are major changes," he has said. He dismissed concerns that evangelical support was founded in the movement to convert Jews to Christ before the end times arrived and he commissioned a survey to prove his point. That survey found that 28% of conservative christians cited "reasons related to the end times" as their motivation for support of Israel. 59% supported Israel (you can read Likud if you want to, or not if you are a romantic) because of "the Biblical promise to bless Israel." According to another study by Pew, 63% of white evangelicals believe Israel fulfills the biblical prophesy about Jesus' 'second coming'.

So, how big is 63%? What metrics (to use Rumsfeld's favorite new word) do you wish to use to determiine there are (or show there are not) significant levels of 'extremism' and influence at work here?

I encourage you to Esther Kaplan's "With God on Their Side" (the data from the above paragraphs come from there) for some truly troubling information on how the physical sciences, for example, are under real assault by this element within the present administration.

But lastly, george, you've bought into an idea I would truly love to have you re-investigate...that secularism (or liberalism) is proscriptive on par with what is described earlier.

If I were to advocate, for example, the legalization of marijuana, in what way do I proscribe any individuals behavior? Likewise, if I advocate the legalization and availability of abortion, in what sense can I be said to be proscribing what any individual ought to do? Liberty is an individual matter, yes? We can be said to be free to the degree that our individual moral choices - how we decide to live our own individual lives on the basis of our own individual sense of morality - are unconstrained by other's (or the community's) perhaps conflicting notions of what constitutes a moral life. If I wish to put on women's clothing (for me, that is special occasions only; the anniversary of Nixon's resignation, at the full moon) I ought to enjoy a sphere of liberty such that no one else might constrain my doing so. Surely.

If, on the other hand, I were to advocate for a law such that everyone else in the community must adhere to my preferences and therefore must smoke dope, then of course I am moving outside of that sphere of my own individual liberty and am now coercing their individual choices and behaviors.

In terms of liberty thought of in this manner, what is the difference between banning whiskey and banning abortion? Obviously, the second is a considerably more complicated moral matter, but not completely so. It is entirely arguable that the world would be a better place (many fewer murders, many fewer auto accidents, etc) without easy access to alcohol. But we've decided that prohibition of it constitutes an unacceptable infringement by the community on our individual liberties. Clearly, in most of the world, we've come to the same conclusion regarding abortion, though not unanimously or anywhere near it.

So the question is...how can such a decision on liberty be seen as any kind of proscription which oppresses your individual liberty, george? The only way in which you are constrained (where abortions can be accessed within the community/nation where you live) is that you become constrained against constraining other's ability to access abortion. To define proscription in such a manner is to define black as white.

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georgeob1 wrote:

[...] [T]he liberal secular forces have been every bit as doctrinaire and anti democratic as have their opponents in these matters.

Exactly. Moreso. The Republicans are only trying to impede the votes of illegals. The elitist DC bureauocracy cabal wants everyone else shut out of the process.

Does Blatham think no one in Washington of another opinion can top Wilkerson's resume? Can he top....Bush's? Laughing

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Bernie -we can resume this in the Hofstadter thread which I will start tomorrow, when I will have finished this very interesting book.

Quick points: We both share a distaste for the rhetoric, beliefs, and some of the political views of the loonie element of the evangelical Christian movement. THe differrence is that I see them as a fringe element that is no more influential or numerous today than at any time during the past century or so, while you apparently consider them the spokesmen for mainstream Christian believers.

My liberties have indeed been infringed by modern secular humanism. I am taxed to pay for schools over which I can exercise less and less local control, as a result of Federal and judicial enactments. A result is these scholls have thoroughly rid themselves of practices and moral elements which have been a part of their programs for generations. Worse parental rights over the environment and actions of their minor children have been significantly infringed by a host of related, mostly judicial, enactments. Increasingly we are subject to a steady indoctrination in the various sophistries of political correctitude - example; 'The bad behavior of any group styling itself as a minority can only be interpreted as a consequence of the oppression by the "traditional majority" (itself rapidly becoming a truly oppressed minority)'.

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george...family in town, so posting likely to be irregular. Until new thread open, I'll just make some comments here...

george said:

Quote:

We both share a distaste for the rhetoric, beliefs, and some of the political views of the loonie element of the evangelical Christian movement. THe differrence is that I see them as a fringe element that is no more influential or numerous today than at any time during the past century or so, while you apparently consider them the spokesmen for mainstream Christian believers.

You demand too little of yourself, george. There's no work at all involved in presuming that the modern situation is undifferentiatable from the past. And you won't bother to study the matter, possibly putting your presumption in jeopardy, so it seems somewhat futile to discuss this with you. I know of no one doing serious analyses of modern American politics or of the Republican Party who agrees with your presumption.

Quote:

My liberties have indeed been infringed by modern secular humanism. I am taxed to pay for schools over which I can exercise less and less local control, as a result of Federal and judicial enactments. A result is these scholls have thoroughly rid themselves of practices and moral elements which have been a part of their programs for generations.

Confused and incoherent arguments. I'm have trouble fathoming how you can allow youself to be so careless in thinking through these matters.

That a 'practice' or 'moral element' has been in place tells you nothing about what ought to be, it merely reports what has existed previously. Slavery was a 'practice' in place that had a bagful of supportive 'moral elements' (hundreds of historical quotes available on how the Bible supports slavery, for example).

Or think about it this way, for goodness sakes. If, 100 years from now, the secular trend continues, then some future a2k member could argue that education's long tradition is secular and therefore it would be a moral danger to alter THAT tradition because whatever is traditional is therefore good. It's a really dumb argument.

But so is this... "My liberties have indeed been infringed by modern secular humanism. I am taxed to pay for schools over which I can exercise less and less local control, as a result of Federal and judicial enactments."

Your personal liberty is infringed because georgeob (after paying some taxes) can't mandate faith elements (george's faith!) in the curricula of schools where all your (jewish, buddhist, scientology, muslim, hindu, agnostic, athiest, etc) neighbors' kids attend? Boy, that is some serious infringement on george's personal liberty.

Do you really think you ought to be free to mandate the inclusion of elements of your faith into the school system, george? Classroom prayer in the morning? Can the jews be allowed to cover their ears or stand in the hallway? Ought the morning prayer to be alternated between all the religions represented in the school population? Would it be appropriate for atheists have one morning too? Satanists?

Is this a freedom of thought/speech matter, george, or a matter of forwarding your favored faith with its accompanying moral notions?

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Faith means accepting things with a blindfold. Depending who is the giver the outcome is ambiguous. It is not a good idea generally. That is why people don't go for blind dates.

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Christine Todd Whitman, in her book "It's My Party Too", wrote that "social fundamentalists" had seized control of her party.

John Danforth wrote, in an op ed that, "Republicans have transformed our party into the political arm of conservative Christians." He held that the GOP has become "a party that has gone so far in adopting a sectarian agenda that it has become the political extension of a religious movement."

Such comments having been arising from moderates in the Republican Party for a long while.

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