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And yet there are people who still believe in "intellegent design".
Well, Jacob Bronowski said that science can go wherever it goes, it doesn't have to stay in the United States. The sad thing is that the majority of Christians don't have any problem with science, it's the cult of fundamentalists and, more so, the oligarchs who are destroying science education in the United States. Starving public education to better rule a hoard of ignorant, superstitious and frightened serfs.
This will not get better until education is taken out of the hands of local school boards, ironically enough. And until the public education in the United States is funded equally across the country, not dependent on local taxes.
all rules must apply to all people, no pluralism
I don't really understand what this means, because it sounds alright to me. What's so bad about all rules appying to all people? It's certainly better than all rules applying to some people. Or some rules applying to all people. Or whatever.
Wow! You might be on to something...
(Try googling "Bill Kristol", "Weekly Standard", "Paul Wolfowitz", "Richard Perle" "NATIONAL GREATNESS"...these terms-- all together
(take a look...)
We're talking about religious fundamentalists. It means that theirs are the only rules. If you're a hindu or an atheist, tough shit.
Oh yeah, right. Duh. Thanks, Digby.
This is what I mean. You guys are totally unfamiliar with anything but the most stereotypical aspects of the right.
I'm sure you guys have heard of those ole evil neocons but have you bothered to read up and understand their philosophy of "national greatness conservatism" which has operated on just the same...eh... "meme"...
Cecelia,
Who knew? I'm kinda dumb and uninformed as you, of all people, know so very well.
Those national greatness conservatives were on to something, for sure (although I do draw the line at building monuments to Reagan in every town in America.)
Too bad Dubya sold the party's soul to the fundamentalist preachers --- it ran Marshall Wittman right out of the Party. McCain has been marginalized to gadfly and Kristol and Wolfowitz have always been neocons --- which uses certain aspects of national greatness to justify military dominance. It's now a dead idea in the GOP.
Left us quite an opening, didn't it?
:D
Here's an idea, Digby... a new Democratic/liberal slogan, a pledge we could say at public meetings:
"We the people WILL form a more perfect union, establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity."
Someone suggested that on DailyKos almost two years ago, and I've thought ever since that the idea kicks enormous amounts of ass.
It strikes me that the strategy you propose is PRECISELY the one FDR used throughout his presidency, particularly in the famous "Five Freedoms" speech. He basically tied the liberal (D)emocratic agenda to the anti-Nazi struggle (obvious enough) and identified Americanism with liberalism:
freedom of information, freedom of religion,
freedom of speech, freedom from fear, and freedom from want
There was a lot more of this energy back then simply because the enemy WAS fascism.
I think you're absolutely right that this approach can be effective--it's essentially the founding strategy of the modern Democratic party.
Digby,
Kick-ass entry. I think you've really hit the nail on the head here. Now, please call Herry Reid and the rest of the clan and get them on board.
Truly, between Bull Moose, Liberal Oasis, Marshal, you, etc. I've seen some really great ideas on the web. I hope some Congressional staffers are reading the blogs.
Digby,
Interesting comment in light of Bush's election victory despite Iraq being a FUBAR and an appeal to "the sacred symbols and rhetoric of traditionalism" certainly applies to those ole Puritanical mores...
What were the two biggie issues in exit polls?... terrorism (nationalism) and... "moral values"....
I'm not an admirer of "national greatness conservatism" and you guys are welcomed to have a go at your version of it, its utopian aspects are well-suited to liberalism.
However, you'll have to get beyond grievance-group-identity power struggles and that's not been an easy thing for the left.
Cecelia, Theory is the easy part, as thousands of Iraqis and our military are finding out on the ground today.
It's so easy for the neo-conmen to come up with garbage, so hard for the real world to accomodate them. Guess the markets were all out of rose water the day they "liberated" the city.
Come back when your brilliant theorists have ended the three-or-more-way civil war they've started in Iraq and the regional war that will almost certainly spring from it. Then we can talk about whether they don't have their heads up their asses.
Perhaps if they went over to explain to the Iraqis how it's SUPPOSED to all work?
grievance-group-identity
I'd suggest reading Ellen Goodman's column in today's Boston Globe re: Jeff Jacoby's recent recycling of his "the University is mean to conservatives" "meme".
EPT,
Some extemely cynical people might aruge that it worked by keeping a Republican in the White House and the House and Senate in Republican hands.
Well, why aren't they in Iraq telling they why their country needed to be invaded. You'd almost think that what happened to little Wolfie last summer has got them all too chicken to put their own sweet fat where their fat mouths are.
I would add that not everyone's genetic encoding is the same, since man surely didn't evolve in just one way. Dick Cheney, for example, is a paranoid predator. Bill Clinton gets his high when people feel good. Arnold Schwarzenegger can't live without adulation. Mother Teresa sacrificed everything for the general good.
So the distinction I've come to, which I think fits what you've been saying about tribal identity, and also fits with the linked article, is that the current crop of Republican / conservatives are narcissistic predators. Their primary locus for all decisions is 'self', and their instinct is to hunt and kill. [more]
The Democrat/progressives, on the other hand, are distinct in a few ways. There's plenty of narcissism on this side too, but I think the decision locus is oriented differently. Progressives look outward with empathy toward others, and see an obligation to society as a whole. They seek ways to accommodate the uniqueness of each individual and the variety of existing cultures.
Facing a threat, a progressive believes an organized coalition can defeat an enemy much more efficiently than tanks and bombs. Look at how the world's institutions neutered Saddam Hussein by forcing him to give up his weapons of mass destruction by, what was the official report, the mid-90s? So there we had a case where military invasion wasn't necess... what? We went to war anyway? Predators. Case closed. [more]
Bringing this back to your thesis, I think it is very much about tribal identity and always has been. This is good old American marketing, which you've noted more than once. But we have to have a top dog who can articulate a vision much in the way Kennedy and King did. I think Barack Obama is our man.
We need the branding touted by Oliver Willis, but we also have to unbrand the opposition. That's why it's so important to label them narcissistic predators, since that's what they are, and since their behavior can be traced to those characteristics. They want a singular, homogenous society, which makes us all targets of their predatory instincts. Gays, liberals, non-believers, you name it. Us against them. Again, their frame of reference in all cases is 'self', not as in individual, but as in selfish. [done]
Excellent post, and echoes certain things I've felt for a long time. For example, we should never let the other side claim that only they deserve to wave the flag. We love this country as strongly as they do.
This country was founded on one prinicple: MYOB. We are indeed a Christian nation, that was founded by christians who wanted the privacy to practice their religion as they wished with no outside interference. Which the founding fathers, in their great wisdom, enshrined into law.
The other guiding principle in this country is : Fair Play. A level playing field. This is the nation of Second Chances, but that is only true if everyone gets an equal chance. The meritocracy that runs this nation, and led to our becoming a superpower is a few hundred years, only works if ALL Americans get an equal chance.
Rant continued:
The Declaration of Independence begins with the phrase: "We hold these truths to be self-evident". Jefferson uses the words of a poet in the service of an argument that has the cold precision of a geometrical proof. This is a country founded, build and sustained by REASON, for only Reason will protect your right to practice your Faith. When you are sick, do you care whether the doctor has had an affair, or whether he received straight A's in Med School. When you drive over a bridge, does it matter what the personal thoughts of the engineer were? When NASA engineers, not wishing to delay the launch of the Challenger space shuttle had faith that the freezing temperatures would not affect the elasticity of the rubber O-rings, they were proven wrong. Nature does not care what we believe, and facts are stubborn things. In the 11th century Faith governed all life, but in the 21st century, Reason has set us free.
This concludes the rant.
"This Land Is Your Land"? That's OK, but there's a much, much better example:
We need to make the Declaration of Independance and the Preamble to the Constitution *our* sacred texts, and by constantly using them, show people why *we* are right. Those are words that are drilled into anyone's head by the time they get to high school. As long as *we* show them what phrases like "Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness" mean, we can save our country.
The flip side, that Dibgy describes very well, is to cast the Fundamenalists as The Other. Personally, I like the phrase "American Taliban", but I think it would take some work to get it to resonate. Actually, I think "Republican Taliban" would work much better, since it stains all Republicans with the accusation that they're like the Taliban.
And that, my friends, is the true name of the game: Make the word "Republican" a dirty, dirty word. Try it out, you'll like it!
Digby says, "We have to start thinking in terms of how to communicate our ideals and our vision in symbolic terms. Go for the gut, not the head.
As a person who considers himself to be rational and views the world in a rational manner, I am forced to, sadly, agree.
Here's the secret.
You must inflate people's self-importance beyond any rational expectations. You must offer them a chance, even a slim chance, at super-humanity. You must make people think that being a Liberal is like being a god, or something close to it.
Agreed, the first Democrat/liberal to address our agenda in nationalistic/Christian terms will rule the world.
Alex
Since the election, I've thought that Dems must become the Constitution Party and revisit the sacred texts of our democracy--particularly the 1st Amendment--to make them new again. I see nothing wrong with national greatness when hitched to the liberal cart.
The Thugs saw a longing for pride and group identity while Dems appealed to guilt about wrongs to be redressed. Most people would rather feel pride. It explains why economic arguments were not enough in this election.
In Iraq it's futile to say the Pentagon and the occupation are evil--even if true. Better to say un-American, unworthy of our greatness. This was Bush's defensive position about bad apples. It's should be our offense.
For a brief moment after 9/11 we were united as a people. Bush's sin is that he squandered that by harnessing our finest instincts to a greedy, vile partisan agenda. We must grab that back for the Dems.
Clarification: I had to edit due to Haloscan limitations. When I say "we are a Christian nation", I am advocating ju-jitsu on the right. Rather than deny the role of religion in this country, argue that only Reason and Fairness will safeguard this religion. Who doesn't want to protect their right to practice their faith (personally I'm a devote agnostic, but that's irrelevant to my point). We don't want to appear anti-christian, or anti-religion. The other side, by accepting the dictates of a few religous demogagues, is anti-American, because a true American , not wanting to be told what to think and do, doesn't require this of others either.
I've long thought that the major emotional impact of 9/11 was to shock the nation into generalized tribal thinking. Clearly the territorial violation led to directly to circling the wagons, so to speak, and drawing a bright boundary between "us" and "them". It also made that notion of the alpha male much more important, as evidenced by the rhetoric of this past election. Basically, the rhetoric centered on whose was bigger, but that concept was a stand-in for who would most aggressively defend the tribe. Since the contest for alpha male position is usually a life-or-death struggle, it's no wonder the election was so nasty. [more]
The thing that interests me is that this evolutionarily less-evolved way to approach human relationships has been in competition for thousands of years with what is (in my view) a more evolved approach, represented by several great religious thinkers, including, notably and ironically, Jesus Christ. In that view, all humans are members of our tribe, and we owe care and consideration to them all. Some of the best aspects of the American political system (e.g., the Bill of Rights) are derived from that approach, and of course those are the first to be tossed when something like 9/11 happens.
d'oh. sorry about the second post, folks; I did a "reload" to look at the new messages, and forgot that that would cause my message to be posted a second time.
I can see this very clearly, it ties into a theory about religion and ethics. I think that religion is quite often used to lend justification to the status quo of material wealth and social position.
Think Calvanism and Compassionate Conservatism. I like to call it Selective Darwinism.
poputonian said: "I would add that not everyone's genetic encoding is the same, since man surely didn't evolve in just one way. Dick Cheney, for example, is a paranoid predator. Bill Clinton gets his high when people feel good. Arnold Schwarzenegger can't live without adulation. Mother Teresa sacrificed everything for the general good."
wow. radical naturism. what, no nuture? how everyone's, including other animal's, genetic encoding did evolve in one way was for behavior to be selected by it's consequences. ahnold was not born unable to live without adulation. evolution does not operate at the level of the individual. it operates at the species level. so, evolutionarily speaking, yes, every human did evolve in the same way.
Victor,
I admire your passion but I wouldn't be too quick to equate nature with reason And the founders certainly didn't make such a comparision either. They did not conclude rights came out the reasoning ability of man or the law of the jungle (nature). They argued that it was self-evident for men to conclude that our most basic rights were endowed to us by our maker.
I'm highly skeptical of evolutionary psychologists' claims.
That said, those five commonalities are giving me a lot to think about.
I don't think that fundamentalism/fascism is the "natural" or "default" setting for humans--rather, I think many people believe it to be and want it to be the natural setting, and conservatives can exploit that. Liberals are stuck appealing to the "better angels" of people's natures, while conservatives can appeal to the desire for order and might-makes-right and Big Daddy-type protectors who smash anyone who gets in their way.
I think your suggestions about making this about fundamentalists vs. America are great. I know I'll be mulling over this topic for at least a week...
Right, smiley. That's why everyone has blonde hair and blue eyes.
mamayaga,
You've just provided a brilliant illustration of the post's thesis. World religions, at least in their liberal forms, perform precisely the same maneuver: by making all humanity ones "tribe," they keep one foot rooted in tribalism while moving the other foot forward.
We humans seem to forget that, evolutionary speaking, we only just emerged from caves. It's a lot easier to go back to what we only just were than it is to move forward. It is only by stepwise enlightenment that we can continue our advance.
poputonian,
Most people have two arms and two legs. Likewise, tribalism is probably part of how we're all wired -- it's not a superficial characteristic. That's not to say that inherited temperament combined with environment lead to large differences in how that tendency is manifest.
"Evolutionary psychologists" may go overboard a bit in tying behavior to universally inherited traits. And I think most would admit that there is a whole lot more going on than us acting our our genetic destinies. But it's a different way of looking at some of the commonalities among people that, say, Jung looked at (and with its own set of flaws, to be sure).
That's not to say that inherited temperament combined with environment doesn't lead to large differences...
[Damn, I wish haloscan had preview!]
I've long thought the Repubs were appealing to reptilian hates and fears in their campaigns. Moving up the evolutionary tree to the "social animal" stage, Dems might reclaim some of those souls, i.e. the Sermon on the Mount - feed my sheep - pray not in public Jesus, same rights for everyone, nobody goes hungry or is turned away. The appeal to using the Constitution and the Declaration sounds like a good way to go.
No worries Modus. I actually read the doesn't into it anyway. That said, I'm either not understanding the nuance of your point, or I'm not seeing how my point is being interpreted. I'm not saying that man didn't evolve from tribal units. What I'm saying is that the way in which individual behavior evolved surely varied from region to region. Take a hypothetical: If food was scarce in one region perhaps aggression was rewarded (evolutionarily speaking) over the generations. In another region, perhaps food was plentiful, so cooperation was rewarded. The characteristics then, of the individual leaders of the tribes, and the methods with which they defended the tribes, would be different. You call them inherited characteristics. That's all I'm saying. Some people today have predatory instincts, while others solve problems in other ways.
There's a problem with this strategy; unless you are extraordinarily careful, it's going to play as ugly American triumphialism overseas. There are countries that see themselves as more liberal, more humane and more dedicated to human rights than the US - and you may need their help.
Victor von Doomic
'Credit where credit's due' historical correction:
From Walter Isaacson, author of “Benjamin Franklin: An American Life:”
On June 21, after he had finished a draft and incorporated some changes from Adams, Jefferson had a copy delivered to Franklin, with a cover note far more polite than editors generally receive today. “Will Doctor Franklin be so good as to peruse it,” he wrote, “and suggest such alterations as his more enlarged view of the subject will dictate?”
Franklin made only a few small changes, but one of them was resounding. Using heavy backslashes, he crossed out the last three words of Jefferson’s phrase, “We hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable” and changed it to read: “We hold these truths to be self-evident.”
Fascism and fundementalism are both authoritarian. It isn't suprising they they would have similiar pathologies.
ontinued:
The concept of “self-evident” truths came less from Jefferson’s favored philosopher, Locke, than from the scientific determinism of Isaac Newton and the analytic empiricism of Franklin’s close friend David Hume. Hume had distinguished between “synthetic” truths that describe matters of fact (such as “London is bigger than Philadelphia”) and “analytic” truths that are self-evident by virtue of reason and definition. ( “The angles of a triangle equal 180 degrees” or “All bachelors are unmarried.”) When he chose the word “sacred,” Jefferson had suggested intentionally or unintentionally that the principle in question—the equality of men and their endowment by their creator with inalienable rights—was an assertion of religion. By changing it to “self-evident,” Franklin made it an assertion of rationality.
Is it just me, or were these guys thinking their ASSES off?!?
It's not just you, jexter. Let's just say that George W. Bush would not have been invited to the party.
Phoenecian --- I agree, but it's less problematic than the hyperpower hegemonic crap we are seeing today. I think it would be quite easy to join with "others who believe as we do." However, there is no way in hell that Americans are ever going to admit -- or even believe -- that there is any country on earth that is "better" than we are. They just don't think that way. The best you can hope for is that we will allow that you foreign bastards are sort of ok too.
Hey, it's better than global military domination...
jexter and Cecelia:
I stand corrected. My only defense, since my own calculations were perfect, is that it must have been more of the insufferable meddling from that infernal Richards!
Richaaaaaaards!!!!!
Almost makes you nostalgic for the Cold War, don't it? That puppy, it seems to me, absorbed much of the energy of the anti-moderns, wherever they were - it was global, it subsumed local conflicts of culture and politics in a grander East/West conflict, it was territorially clear. Very much an over-simplification (think 3rd world, or proxy wars), but that simplicity seems to have a strong appeal to the fundamentalist mind.
I really don't think it's accidental that the wingnut Right got really hot after the Berlin Wall fell, and began to focus its attention on Enemies Within (e.g., the Clintons, the Culture War). The attempts to bring Joe McCarthy back from the dead are quite serious; the liberals=commies formula is shrouded in longing - "If only they were...then they must be"
Fundies love those leaps of faith. [more]
it places us with, as the author says, "one foot solidly in our deep territorial impulses with the other foot free to push the margin, to expand the definition of those who belong in “our” territory." ...
I am concluding more and more that we are dealing with a pre-modern political situation in a post modern world. It's not about issues, it's about tribal identity.
This is exactly my view. Expanding the borders of the tribe is the essential liberal project. This is why I've maintained that community is a great buzzword for us to use: because it is scaleable. We can evoke warm fuzzy images of town-meeting style community, and scale the concept to fit our foreign policy. We can use it to suggest the comfortably familiar, our literal neighbors, while expanding it to protect the strange out-group, our symbolic neighbors.
poputonian,
I don't think we're necessarily disagreeing, here. Different perceptions of "tribe" fit different situations. Cooperation and even altruism within ones tribe is probably universal. The innate part is how we tend to deal with those we feel are within our tribe versus those we feel fall outside it. Perhaps for truly enlightened people the latter is the null-set. But for most of us, the "us" vs. "them" duality is going to underpin a lot of our feeling and behavior toward others. Like sexuality, there is infinite variation on the tribal theme, but also like sexuality, it is an innate force that is not easily denied.
It was the misfortune of the Carter admin to get blindsided by the Iranian Revolution, which did not fit the mold, but all that clarity was breaking up elsewhere - Poland, Afghanistan, the Yugo fragmentation. Reagan's simplicity was very consoling, but it also masked how unstable the familiar bipolar world had become. Without the Evil Empire, the Axis of Evil post-9/11 was a lavish gift, a whole new world of enemies that seemed to justify the need for "American Greatness." Thing is, the Right was LOOKING for just such a defining threat, and the Left was not. We got caught with our pants down by not recognizing how vital those ur-territoriality needs were.
[more]
I don't think it's necessary to assume that fundamentalists are "less evolved" in order to buy the scenario described here. Rather, fundamentalists and other authoritarians favor the strategy at which they already have a perceived advantage. If you are an authoritarian-leaning male, it's no wonder that you should feel threatened by things that might detract from your advantages - devaluing your status as a male, for instance, by increasing the relative status if females. You can see why you'd also have an interest in maintaining a state of sexual ignorance - If you're a woman, once you got babies, your economic leverage is decreased relative to men unless you enter into an arrangement like marriage. Postponing such alliances increases women's power with in them.
(cont'd)
I once heard a Republican describe their essential project as letting social coercion rather than legal or state coercion be the major organizing force in society. This strikes me as just right, and of course - people who perceive themselves as being safely within the ingroup (white, Christian, straight, etc) would tend to favor social coercion, because it's exactly where their advantage lies: in numbers.
Nice post, Digby.
I think we're primed for replacement as the dominant species on this planet.
You might argue that the post-modern progressive represents an entirely different sub species variant of Homo sapiens, if only because we have such very unusual definitions of self and tribe.
Speciation, though, requires physical isolation. So unless we get discovered by Vulcans or attacked by Kzinti anytime soon, we're stuck in the same gene pool as, for example, Strom Thurmond.
So we'd better figure out a way to placate the pre-historic among us, or continue to suffer the tough love of the alpha males.
this is great post, and will take some time for me to think through...
a couple of preliminary thoughts about human behavior.... and a question.
while i am willing to agree that there are likely some behaviors genetically "hard-wired", i think the authors are overstating the contribution of genetic evolution to the observations they've made about fundamentalisms.
i'd argue that the main characteristic of human behavior that is of genetic origin is the tremendous plasticity of behavior. as an example i'll use the issue of torture... most of us are quite capable of torturing someone, even to death, given the proper social structure (stanley milgram).... but, in our normal social structure we would probably never even consider it.
-continued...
- continuation...
so, while i think digby's ideas of how to describe our world view (americans against fundamentalism) could be of great help (modified to include our non-american friends who stand with us - thanks to a Phoenician in a time of Roma), i don't think this is enough.
we also need to think about the social stuctures that bring out the best in us - because the same people can be torturers or generous and kind... and the only thing that's changed is the social situation.
and finally, my question - can empathy be taught?
i should also say that it's quite possible i don't buy the genetic thesis because i don't want to think i'm so abnormal....
all the flag waving, blood lust and "united we stand" signs after 9/11 made my skin crawl.
One more thing: I've noticed that there's a knee-jerk disclaimer appended to practically every invokation of evolutionary psychology in another context (like politics) - especially among liberals.
The basic claim of evolutionary psychology -- that human behavior is shaped by adaptation just like the brain is -- is really uncontroversial among behavioral scientists. It's only specific predictions that can be "facile," but this is true of non-behavioral evolutionary arguments too. There's a strong tendency to misinterpret the idea of adaptive advantage so as to read every feature as somehow optimized by natural selection, but of course this is not so. This tendency, however, is part of all evolutionary arguments and protecting ourselves against it is what argumentation and peer-review is for.
What I'm saying is, don't throw the baby out with the bathwater.
More than one way to isolate -- we could become a subspecies if the females among us would elect not to reproduce with alpha-type males.
It strikes me that the seamless shift from Al-Q to Saddam - and the ease with which, as a really really flawed analysis, it took in so many liberals - stems from a conflation of Cold War habits of mind and mischaracterisation (and misunderstanding) of a globalized world. For every benefit of the breakdown of barriers, there was (and is) for many an equal threat to their identity - American fundies are scared shitless (beneath their postures of contempt) for an EU that disagrees with them. That Golden Age to be restored keeps receding further into the past with every snub.
[more]
"all the flag waving, blood lust and "united we stand" signs after 9/11 made my skin crawl."
Mine too, but there was another kind of unity displayed at that time. I'm thinking of crowds out on the streets leading to Ground Zero, cheering for rescue workers. Spontaneous demonstrations of grief and community. The world offering us sympathy and aid. Rescue workers from every state coming to New York--Sin City!--to help. The lines at blood banks. The outpouring of cash donations. The yearning to do something, anything, to help the nation. And Bush told us to go shopping.
I love the 'America vs. Fundamentalism' idea. Just one caveat. Don't mention the Christian fundamentalists. Don't even think about them. Just pretend they don't exist. Make it tribal. America vs. al Qaeda, defenders of liberty vs. the forces of tyranny. Freedom of religion vs. religious oppression. Fact-based education vs. religious indoctrination. Equality for all vs. sexual oppression.
When the 'Christians' talk about religion in schools and second-class citizenship for woman, act shocked, disbelieving. "But those are al Qaeda values, Taliban values. Surely you don't believe in that!"
We'll achieve two things by redrawing the us-them line this way: make fundy Christians 'them' and make non-fundy Muslims 'us'. Domestically rededicate ourselves to American ideals, and internationally take the wind out of the pan-Muslim jihad. Talk about win-win!
This is all vastly over-simplified, and for you and your readers probably just stating the obvious, but if the Left has dropped the ball on the "Safe" issue (and I am thinking more and more that that was the determinant in this Election), the answer for us will lie in wresting the definition of the world from the Right. (We are not now, and have never been, pussies!) No such definition, for political purposes, can be overly complicated, but it can at least be less thoroughly wrong, and dangerous, than what this govt is selling.
I agree with going back to the elements of the constitution for grounding. I would add that where the wheels started to come off our focus in America is when "we" allowed the motto to change from E Pluribus Unum or "Out of many, one" to "In God we trust". What a step backward...the founding fathers started spinning in their graves at this point.
Karen Armstrong gives a pretty good historical rundown of the parallels in the fundamentalists movements between the big three mono-theistic faiths in "The Battle for God".
The only way all fundamentalisms can have the same agenda is if the agenda preceded all the religions.
I think this is the key sentence from the article, as it demonstrates that for those who think in fundamentalist terms religion itself is a vehicle to achieve a secular agenda.
Hey selise,
"i should also say that it's quite possible i don't buy the genetic thesis because i don't want to think i'm so abnormal....
Not abnormal; you're actually just getting more mileage out of your neocortex than your brainstem (A.K.A. lizard-brain).
As for the flags: My wife and I thought it was a refinery fire across the river in Elisibeth, NJ. Turned out 13 members of our community died that day in the Towers. The flags gave the city tremendous comfort during those eary days, because the world was with us, and we should keep that in our hearts.
"Loyalty to the country always. Loyalty to the government when it deserves it."-Mark Twain
early days...
"Loyalty to the country always. Loyalty to the government when it deserves it." -Mark Twain
Got it, Modus. Thanks for the response. It's beyond me to differentiate when an ancient characteristic becomes innate, but I would think that man evolved under a multiplicity of conditions, and therefore a variety of responses to inter-tribe conflict, or threats, could have made its way into the DNA. In other words, I believe that even today one individual's DNA strand can show a gene for aggression, while another's might lack such a marker, and the two would show different evoked responses to the same external threat. Maybe it's like the fight or flight syndrome that some have purported is part of our ancient wiring. Whatever the case, I agree with most everyone here that tribal identity is why 60 million people voted for George Bush.
would someone please explain to poputonian the difference between the heritable propagation of traits versus evolution? i'm too tired. thanks. love,
smiley
I think this is the key sentence from the article, as it demonstrates that for those who think in fundamentalist terms religion itself is a vehicle to achieve a secular agenda.
Paul
The thing that unites all fundamentalists is the same thing that unites conservatives in general, the insistence that things be done their way. The center of the universe for all of these people is "ME". I've yet to hear any fundamentalist admit that they could possibly be mistaken or that someone else could be right. It's probably not a genetic trait but a failure to develop past the stage of fairly early childhood. I suspect it's a moral failure.
Karen Armstrong is an unusually clear thinker about religon. It is probably that though she is a good scholar she is, above all, practical and realistic. No -isms.
It doesn't matter smiley. I'll yield that you are better versed in the semantics, but the essence of my point remains the same.
I'm exhausted, so this is kind of rough, but: I think it's true that we have to talk to the lizard in people.
In advertising, you _never_ talk about the product or service, you instead show how the product/service will solve the consumer's problem.
And there are only three problems, basically: safety and comfort at home, sex, and death.
So a good ad says: if you buy this product/service you will
1) get laid
2) have a safe, pleasant home
3) you will never die
How to transform these ideas into strong branding and advertising for Liberalism?
The UCC ad campaign
http://www.stillspeaking.com
/default.htm
speaks to the safe and pleasant (and expanded, inclusive--safety in numbers, maybe?); it's very good and points in the right direction.
thanks jester... i spent many months wondering what insanity had come over my community (work, neighbors,...) or alternatively what insanity had come over me.
i'm glad the flags were a comfort to you and to many others.
i just wished for a comforting symbol that wasn't so easy to pervert into nationalistic desire to strike out with redirected agression. a symbol to represent the unity max wrote of:
"...crowds out on the streets leading to Ground Zero, cheering for rescue workers. Spontaneous demonstrations of grief and community. The world offering us sympathy and aid. Rescue workers from every state coming to New York--Sin City!--to help. The lines at blood banks. The outpouring of cash donations. The yearning to do something, anything, to help..."
Tom Tomorrow nailed it in these cartoons a couple of years back:
Strange bedfellows (06/24/02)
http://www.salon.com/comics/tomo...tomo/
index.html
War information council (10/22/01)
http://archive.salon.com/comics/...tomo/
index.html
Hmm. I've thought for some time that the many common, sacred roots of liberalism: safety, community, acceptance, reverence (for life even, canya believe that?), strength through respect, interconnectivity, etc etc, should all be aggressively established by Dems.
One easy way to do it would be to just wait for the righties to make noises about religion and have a value prepared to cut straight to. Do it a lot, build in progressions, all that.
>>when fundamentalists say they are obeying the word of God, they have severely understated the authority for their position
try again
"when fundamentalists say they are obeying the word of God, they have severely understated the authority for their position"
Of course they believe that authority is absolute.
Our opponents are very credulous. They BELIEVE. It may only be waving the flag or putting a ribbon on their car but they go to church and try to do the right thing.
We DEMS allow ourselves to be disqualified in many voter's minds due to a couple of issues like gay marriage and abortion. We need to fix those positions to keep the moderate message while vigorously opposing positions that are not morally defensible in the eyes of the middle-left 75%
We need to get beyond sarcastic intellectualism to a credulous optimism gounded in tradition along with the indignant heat that true belief fuels.
Great post.
selise, I read the flags as nonsensical nationalism too. If you read Norman Mailer's Why Are We At War?, he accentuated this point well, even though he seemed to drift in and out of sanity on some others.
The center of the universe for all of these people is "ME" -EPT
I keep coming to the same conclusion, although I'm still inclined to give the benefit of the doubt. Their (the fundamentalists) morality does seem to be ultimately self-serving and hypocritical.
Helluva post. I'll have to print it and read it more thoroughly. Standing out: American liberals must decry Muslim Fundamentalism while decrying its American counterpart. Yes, yes, and triple fucking yes.
Those fucks who flew airplanes into buildings full of thousands of people ARE REALLY BAD PEOPLE. The people willing to take a large knife in their very hands (put yourself right in their place now) and cut the heads off of living human beings (in the name of God) people ARE REALLY BAD PEOPLE.
We should decry them not as a tactic to gain some ground here in the U.S. but because it's fucking horrible human behavior. We should be decrying American Christian fanatics with their warped spirituality for their attempts to take over our country on the way to their goal of taking over the world—but spread the criticism out. Go after them all. They all deserve it.
In other words: "Yes, liberals stand up to fundamentalists—worldwide. We're all in this together." (Maybe they are
Lost the end on that last comment there, sorry—(Maybe they are too.)
Maybe the Bush doctrine of "things getting worse is a sign of things actually getting better because it proves that enemy is desperate" applies here.
Maybe fundamentalists of all stripes are getting desperate because fundamentalism is on its way out!
Oh shit, did I say, "...for their attempts to take over our country…"? Damn, that was dumb, wasn't it. I was thinking of the abstinence only crap, and "Intelligent design" ruse. Truth is, George Bush is a Christian fundamentalist, and it's Christian fundamentalism dropping bombs on Iraq right now, isn't it? Bringin' on the Rapture. Jesus, I'm depressed.
http://sciencepolitics.blogspot....of-
history.html
http://sciencepolitics.blogspot....and-
future.html
http://sciencepolitics.blogspot....-and-
manic.html
etc.
What makes this so hard to eradicate, is that you add the self-righteous business element to the self-righteous fundamentalism and you get Puritanism.
You guys are complicating matters and are far too pessimistic about your future take-over.
I think all it would take for you to have the citizenry by the balls would be to nationalize healthcare.
Not that health care is in the hands of consumers now, it’s the province of employers (usually corporations) and the government. However if it is taken entirely out public hands you’ll have a political football that will make tampering with Social Security look as trivial as a one cent tax hike via a bond referendum.
Well... let me qualify that too... with millions of aging baby boomers the future of Social Security is HUGE as well. That’s why it’s vital that Republicans make it less of a government program. But you put healthcare into politicians hands and it’s game over.
mg_65
"So a good ad says: if you buy this product/service you will
1) get laid
2) have a safe, pleasant home
3) you will never die
How to transform these ideas into strong branding and advertising for Liberalism?"
That might make for a whole new avenue for Martha Stewart, Inc contributions. Martha Stewart call- girl/faith healers!
It's a good thing... :D
This country is finished.
Do we understand that the internet and all this good talk is also soon to be finished? Do we understand that Karl Rove's plans call for another terrorist attack, which will conveniently involve the internet, and Atrios and Digby et al will be invited to shut down or go to Guantanamo? Do we understand that this country is finished?
Cheer up, Sharkbabe, we'll always have Paris...
sharkbabe - i'm not particulary liking the odds right now... but this country is NOT yet finished. we may yet lose... but, if we give up now we will CERTAINLY lose.
another thought... for all digby's excellent analysis - i see a roadblock ahead.
at the moment i don't see many dem political leaders that i trust worth a damn... other than to do what they think is in their own best self interest. indeed, in my more cynical moments i sometimes wonder if most of the dem political leadership don't have more loyalty to the repub policial leadership than they do to us.
i worry that our party may not, at this time, be capable of using these good ideas any analysis.
any ideas? i'm thinking that many of digby's ideas can be just as easily used by (hopefully) united progressive social movements.
Find the slender Peter Singer book published a few years ago, A Darwinian Left. It also looks at some hard wired behavior that are natural winners for liberals, such as willingness to cooperate for the common good. It does get back to tribe, though. I have always thought that there would be more support for many government programs if a lot of people didn't feel in their gut that they were giving someone in a different tribe a free ride.
More from Davidson Loehr here:
http://austinuu.org/sermons/
2004...derFascism.html
“This list will be familiar to students of political science. But it should be familiar to students of religion as well, for much of it mirrors the social and political agenda of religious fundamentalisms worldwide. It is both accurate and helpful for us to understand fundamentalism as religious fascism, and fascism as political fundamentalism. They both come from very primitive parts of us that have always been the default setting of our species: amity toward our in-group, enmity toward out-groups, hierarchical deference to alpha male figures, a powerful identification with our territory, and so forth. It is that brutal default setting that all civilizations have tried to raise us above, but it is always a fragile thing, civilization, and has to be achieved over and over and over again.
Continued:
Vice President Wallace's answer to those questions was published in The New York Times on April 9, 1944, at the height of the war against the Axis powers of Germany and Japan. See how much you think his statements apply to our society today.
“The really dangerous American fascist,” Wallace wrote, “… is the man who wants to do in the United States in an American way what Hitler did in Germany in a Prussian way. The American fascist would prefer not to use violence. His method is to poison the channels of public information. With a fascist the problem is never how best to present the truth to the public but how best to use the news to deceive the public into giving the fascist and his group more money or more power.”
Continued: In his strongest indictment of the tide of fascism he saw rising in America, Wallace added, “They claim to be super-patriots, but they would destroy every liberty guaranteed by the Constitution. They demand free enterprise, but are the spokesmen for monopoly and vested interest. Their final objective toward which all their deceit is directed is to capture political power so that, using the power of the state and the power of the market simultaneously, they may keep the common man in eternal subjection.” By these standards, a few of today’s weapons for keeping the common people in eternal subjection include NAFTA, the World Trade Organization, union-busting, cutting worker benefits while increasing CEO pay, elimination of worker benefits, security and pensions, rapacious credit card interest, and outsourcing of jobs — not to mention the largest prison system in the world.”
So we'd better figure out a way to placate the pre-historic among us, or continue to suffer the tough love of the alpha males.
Make the taking of LSD and psilocybin mushrooms mandatory around college graduation...
Those fucks who flew airplanes into buildings full of thousands of people ARE REALLY BAD PEOPLE. The people willing to take a large knife in their very hands (put yourself right in their place now) and cut the heads off of living human beings (in the name of God) people ARE REALLY BAD PEOPLE.
The people pointing guns at and laying bombs for occupying American troops and their Iraqi toadies are, however, not necessarily REALLY BAD PEOPLE - no more than the French Resistance against the Germans and Vichy governments.
A thought also struck me about these "slaughter houses" in Fallujah - were these just a case of these fundies enforcing their interpretation of Shariah law? Nasty and brutal, sure - but let's not forget that a certain US ally also publicly executes people based on teh same law...
Continued: easy surplus value says: Personally, I can’t see the Democratic Party, as it is presently composed, addressing any of the weapons for keeping the common people in eternal subjection. I would suggest that you worry about addressing and acting on substantive issues more than you worry about framing the issues. I will believe the democrats claim that they “Kick Ass” when I see them actually do something that works for the wage-dependent-slaves in this country.
and finally, my question - can empathy be taught?
I'd say no. You can educate a child to consider others feelings, but the natural instinct to empathize is something you're born with. IMO.
As for fundamentalism, you're exactly right on with your description. IMO, christian fundamentalism is worse than the islamic variety because of the stealth factor. The wider public is starting to get a peek at what they're up to, but they're not really taking them seriously yet. (cont.)
(the rest) Also, right on with the appeal to the constitution and declaration... But first we have to de-demonize ourselves. Right now they aren't going to hear what we say, no matter how inspired or sensible. We're damned you see, and there isn't anyway to overcome that (in their eyes, anyway).
As for the tribal thing, I had my own epiphany reading your post. No wonder I feel like such a fish out of water in modern america. I don't belong to any "tribe" in any emotional sense. Surely I'm not the only person out here who feels that way.
Ack. A depressing subject. Maybe we are doomed.
The people pointing guns at and laying bombs for occupying American troops and their Iraqi toadies are, however, not necessarily REALLY BAD PEOPLE - no more than the French Resistance against the Germans and Vichy governments.
Just so. Though even the media perpetuates that meme by always describing them as "the enemy."
John Flynn, 1944:
"The enemy aggressor is always pursuing a course of larceny, murder, rapine and
barbarism. We are always moving forward with high mission, a destiny imposed by
the Deity to regenerate our victims while incidentally capturing their markets,
to civilise savage and senile and paranoid peoples while blundering accidentally
into their oil wells."
Good idea to attack Islamist FUNDAMENTALISM ... bad idea to try to connect the dots plainly that American FUNDAMENTALISM is the same thing.
The reason connecting the dots plainly between Islamic fundamentalism and Christian, or American, fundamentalism is that if you do that you get a severe backlash from the majority of Americans who do not want to hear that they and their church leaders are just al-Qaeda of a slightly different stripe.
So actually the whole idea is a bad idea, because liberals simply can't resist connecting dots plainly (this is as it should be, we are not conspiratorial folk, unlike conservatives, who are very capable of keeping mum about their hidden agenda and even eating their own when one of their own reveal it).
fourlegsgood said "No wonder I feel like such a fish out of water in modern america. I don't belong to any "tribe" in any emotional sense. Surely I'm not the only person out here who feels that way. "
yeah, me too. and you give me an idea - maybe that's why i keep fantasizing about moving to new zealand... i want a tribe to belong to... and i'm not so fond of the ones i see here.
fourlegsgood, selise you do belong to a tribe of sorts... this tribe that likes to read Digby, etc... and anyone who needs to can always come up to Toronto and camp out in my living room and plan a resistance if it comes to that!
Obviously we must deal with the fundamentalists the way we do any biological pests....Sterilization!
Now there is a fine conservative (fascistic) idea to be wrapped in liberal rhetoric.
It has always interested/repulsed me how fundamentalists selectively use religious texts to justify their bigoted/fascist world view. They get away with it for a number of reasons. For one, those of us on the Christian left allow the Fundies to be the only(or at least loudest) voice of Christianity in America. Also, those of us on the secular left are ignorant of the Biblical texts. This allows Falwell and Co. to spew out Bible quotes (or, as frequently happens, make up their own Bible quotes) without being challenged.
I hope we can remedy this situation. Some suggested reading: "Rescueing the Bible from Fundamentalism," & "Why Christianity Must Change or Die" both by John Shelby Spong, "Reading the Bible Again for the First Time" by Marcus Borg, "The Battle for God" by Karen Armstrong.
I
Here's a great cartoon (note the armbands).
http://www.guardian.co.uk/
cartoo...1367426,00.html
Seems the Repubs are way ahead of you and are already trying to steal the Declaration of Independance:
http://tinyurl.com/5kgkh
thanks dena!
Wisdom down from the mountain, in comic fantasy no less.
"It was so much easier to blame it on Them. It was bleakly derpressing to thing that they were Us. If it was Them, then nothing was anyone's fault. If it was Us, what did that make Me? After all, I'm one of Us. I must be. I've certainly never thought of myself as one of Them. No one ever thinks of themselves as one of Them. We're always one of Us. It's Them that do the bad things."
--Terry Pratchett, Jingo
Patrick stated: "those of us on the Christian left allow the Fundies to be the only(or at least loudest) voice of Christianity in America."
Don't blame the left. It all started with Reagan. His FCC deregulated the television industry which among other things, did away with the "free time for religious programming" rules for the broadcasters. Until that time, Sunday morning television was mainline protestantism.
These are the denominations which supported the civil rights movement and took issue with the war in Vietnam.
continued below...thekeez
Finishing up...
After the rule changes, the nets started charging for Sunday morning and the mainliners dropped out, leaving the barn door open for the Falwells, Robertsons, etc. who were more than happy to pay for it.
Now, the television face of Christianity is evangelical fundamentalism, and it follows that the dominant Christian force in politics is evangelical fundamentalism.
So, if you want to change the visible face of Christianity in the USA, you've got to come up with the money to get the mainline church back on the air. Very expensive prospect...thekeez
It is unfortunate that the Right was given another threatening external out-group (i.e. a worldwide Islamist insurgency) to rally the country after the fall of another external out-group (i.e. communism and the Soviet Union). There's not much we can do in the short-term provided we stop the neocons from keeping us in perpetual war. The Right is only successful if there's an enemy.
We are and will become an even more pluralistic country. Hence, we progressives must devise strategies that unite these disparate groups as Americans. I'm not sure why, but what is it that makes Canadians and northern Europeans willingly choose socialized reforms and safety nets that benefit the majority? I once heard a Canadian say that they believe in a greater collective responsibility toward other Canadians. Why is that lacking in our country? Are we still fighting the Civil War?
Cont'd: B/C we need to view ourselves as a pluralistic in-group and all in the same boat, I keep going back to economic themes that unite us and allow all of us a fair chance to succeed. And to themes of freedom, privacy (MYOB), and equality for all. I also think we need to reexamine our position on the cultural and moral values issues b/c the republicans have split the electorate on these wedges. We first need to get power back before we can effect other changes. Speaking of moral issues and saving babies, fight the fundies and anti-abortion crowd by shaming them about this country's unacceptable infant mortality rate (41st in the world).
Cont'd: I also think there are structural impediments in our form of government that perpetuate control by a powerful elite over the less powerful masses. Personally I believe parliamentary systems might actually be more democratic in that they assure a greater number of coalitions and representative voices (vice a winner take all in our electoral system). Is it a coincidence that all the industrial democracies that have universal health care are parliamentary systems? I also believe there are two republican parties (i.e. business parties) in this country. The democratic party is a business party and the respublican party even more so. We've really never had a true labor party in this country.
Gotta go...
Oh, I see! We need to become liberal fascists. Yeah, that's the ticket.
Man this is a good blog!!! Lots of great comments too. We do need to use these ideas in practical terms: it's the republican EXTREMISTS, the conservative FUNDAMENTALISTS, it's the christian EXTREMISTS,etc. We shouldn't refer to "9/11" but rather the "AlQuaida attacks". The use of the date makes the whole attack sort of transcendental but referring to as "attack" reminds us of the specifics. etc. When they talk about the "ownership society" we should say "responsibility society" That focuses on (perceived) individuality so important to Americans as well as a call to basic territoriality. We need a whole new vocabulary which Digby is pointing to.
I find this topic very interesting, and I think a good bit of this ties into the Psychological issues associated with conservatism in general.
Some time ago, there was a study done at Berkely and Stanford wherein conservatism was studied and certain features (symptoms, so to speak) were found to be common amongst conservatives. The study was criticised because some thought it treated conservatism as a disorder.
In any case, the study, "Political Conservatism as Motivated Social Cognition", found that certain common psychological factors are linked to policitical conservatism. These are:
-Fear and aggression
-Dogmatism and intolerance of ambiguity
-Uncertainty avoidance
-Need for cognitive closure
-Terror management
It seems to me that these are intertwined with this fundamentalism study. Certainly worth some thought.
Click homeplage for link to the study.
I once heard a Canadian say that they believe in a greater collective responsibility toward other Canadians. Why is that lacking in our country?
Because our system rewards private greed over public good.
what is it that makes Canadians and northern Europeans willingly choose socialized reforms and safety nets that benefit the majority?
As Digby has pointed out on more than one occasion, it's the fact that people in these countries are mostly the same color . . .
The biology is a bit more complicated. I studied primate biology just a little in college. There are group patterns, collections of group behaviors. They are common to various species of primates. In most species, the pattern is pretty well fixed. Baboons are hard-coded for the kind of pattern the article describes. Anyway, in observing human groups, you see patterns similar to those seen in other primates - the big difference being that human groups follow a variety of patterns. But human groups follow patterns, so when you find a characteristic behavior, you can predict other behaviors from the group.
(cont.)
(cont.)
Probably the simplest pair of patterns is centric and acentric. The most observable characteristic is that when there is a threat to a centric group, they move toward the alpha male. When there is a threat to an acentric group, they scatter and either vanish or attack the threat from all sides. But that's a marker for other behaviors - centrics tend to be more aggressive toward each other, for example, than acentrics. And sometimes the programming has weird consequences - centrics go to the leader even if he IS the threat.
The poet Robert Bly describes "leaping" poetry. Poetry that jumps around by association between the various human brains that we all have.
"Reptile" brain: cold, hard, paranoid, survival mode, revenge obsessed (that is, Fundamentalist Republicans).
"Mammal" brain: passions, emotions, warmth, community focused (that is, us).
"New" brain: images of light and halos, the transcendent, the spiritual and mystical (sages and saints like buddha, jesus, Francis of Assisi).
We need to acknowledge refute the reptile while we work at getting people to think of our view of America as that of the neo-cortex in order to implement our mammal goals.
For anyone who hasn't read it, I would like to recommend a book: "Nonzero, The Logic of Human Destiny", by Robert Wright. If it's already on your bookshelf, it's worth dusting off and going through again. I read it when it first came out four years ago. It's a fascinating look into how/why this cycle of fundamentalism keeps popping up and where we appear to be today -- at a Y in the road and what it may take to get us as a species to choose the right direction. Just my $.02 worth.
Eric, that link looks dead, so here's a summary with a link to the study.
http://www.awitness.org/journal/
...on_summary.html
I'm not surprised that this caused a stir, but it's a very interesting idea. Thanks for pointing to it!
Eric - Here's a link to the Stanford study. To defeat the enemy, one must know the enemy, eh.
Thanks for posting working links, maryh and Ricardo. I think the link was too long for the 'homepage'...
The metaphor of family as nation, which Lakoff places at the center of his analysis, should be called out as inappropriate to guiding moral decisions of a nation. The notions of affinity and boundaries that metaphor implies but never mentions does however need to be made visible. It is a truism that each person is at the center of a hopefully ever widening circle of affiliations and associated boundaries that go from self to family to community to state to nation to world to cosmos, and that some of those boundaries require extra efforts to monitor and defend. The discussion should be explicitly about affiliations and boundaries, and who's responsible for monitoring which ones. The metaphor of self as nation didn't work out so well in Germany in the 1930s, and the metaphor of family as nation here in the 2000s isn't working out so well either. No more metaphors. Run a nation as a nation, not as some smaller and simpler homolog.
from a Phoenician in a time of Roma:
The people pointing guns at and laying bombs for occupying American troops and their Iraqi toadies are, however, not necessarily REALLY BAD PEOPLE - no more than the French Resistance against the Germans and Vichy governments.
I mostly agree, and I didn't, for that reason include them in the group. I say mostly because some of them clearly are fire-spitting fundamentalists who are piggy-backing on a convenient movement.
then from fourlegsgood:
The people pointing guns at and laying bombs for occupying American troops and their Iraqi toadies are, however, not necessarily REALLY BAD PEOPLE - no more than the French Resistance against the Germans and Vichy governments.
Just so. Though even the media perpetuates that meme by always describing them as "the enemy."
Yup. Put em all together.
For many higher animal species (especially apes, elephants, lions, etc.) the "tribe" is a related group of females. Young males are ejected when they come of age, and they must fight it out among themselves to gain stature. So it is females that define the basic element of these society - males come and go and are pretty much interchangeable. The few males that stay with the tribe do not protect the tribe so much as fight off rival males.
Male-centric mating occurs when there are crowded conditions (e.g. herd animals). At rut the male defines a territory around whatever females happen to be there at the time. Again, this is just for mating - the males provide no special protection to the females at any other time.
So I think the analogies to nature cannot explain fundamentalism unless one takes into account the psychology of overcrowding. Males "provide" protection to females only when males of their own species are out of control.
AHHHHHHHHHHHHG!
I have seen, for myself, much too much of this:
The reason connecting the dots plainly between Islamic fundamentalism and Christian, or American, fundamentalism [is a bad idea] is that if you do that you get a severe backlash from the majority of Americans …
Again
AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHG!
I
DO
NOT
CARE
WHAT
THEY
THINK.
FUCK THEM AND THEIR BACKLASH.
(next post, outta room)
There was a severe backlash to attempts to end slavery.
There was a severe backlash to attempts to get blacks the vote.
There was a severe backlash to the anti-war movement of the 60s and 70s.
A SEVERE BACKLASH DOES NOT MAKE IT WRONG!
Fuck them. We have to not care about what it looks like, what might happen, what they might think or say or scream on AM radio. DO THE RIGHT THING. That's all we have to worry about.
This has been in many blogs, this worrying about "our image." It's bothering me. Hence my strong reaction, Demogenes Aristophanes, and I know it's not as simple as that from you, but I used your comment to say this. Thanks
Don't give up the word "liberal": the sacred documents and the founders themselves were liberal.
Resist the definition of liberalism as a form of marxism, a damned lie which must be opposed whether you are personally a marxist or not. When did Madison take a course in dialectics?
For more info on all the fundamentalisms infecting the world's religions, I highly recommend the book "The Battle for God" by Karen Armstrong.
In times of stress and uncertainty, people tend to seek reassurance from dogma learned in childhood. They want to hear that everything is going to be OK. The last thing they want to know is that we are on the verge of economic catastrophe, even if it is true. It is most difficult these days for a politician to be elected who tells the truth.
Ran across this post via Rob at Emphasis Added.
A large portion of the picture has been painted here, and the assessment about all fundamentalism being pretty much the same is dead-on. As I commented at Rob's blog:
>>...Humans manifest different stages of emergence across a spectrum, from the most primitive to most advanced, based on the conditions about them. If life is greatly threatened and fundamental security at risk, humans generally regress to a primal level, worrying only about the next meal and getting through to the next day alive. There is no room for dogma or theology.
When life is somewhat better but still risky, humans begin to concern themselves with more advanced concepts, like hierarchies and power structures, belief systems. These help coordinate and manage sporadic losses of resources or occasional and possibly cyclical threats to security.
(cont'd.) As food and other resources become abundant and security threats few and far between, humans tackle higher issues, including equity and justice.
Emergence is fluid; peoples can move backwards and forwards, as individuals and as societies depending on the level of environmental/situational threats. Humans within any one society will manifest levels of emergence across a distribution curve; there will be outliers at the edges and more than one group towards the median.
Americans lived through an assault on the psyche on 9/11 that pushed them back at least one level, although all Americans did not regress to the same level. It is this regression that has confused many folks at higher levels of emergence; they don't tend to react to psychic threats in the same way as folks at a lower level might. They might analyze and identify a cause and deal with it systemically, rather than retract and regroup.
(cont'd.) (See Orange level versus Blue or Red in Spiral Dynamics and Gravesian psychology*, keeping in mind that Orange may have regressed from Green to Orange, Orange to Blue, etc. Fundies are typically in the upper Red to lower Blue levels.) These different groups have completely different perceptions about any major threat, and therefore completely different vocabularies about the threat and their world view as well.
Unfortunately, as Ken Wilber has pointed out in his unified field theory of transpersonal psychology, upper levels can only emerge when they bring the lower levels with them.
(cont'd.) As angry-making as they are, we have to find a way to get across to them and bring them along if we are to find our own way back to where we were in 2000-2001. Hence the importance of framing per Lakoff; it's a matter of putting situations into a filter that a lower/regressed level can understand.
Our second challenge is learning to use these frames without actual falling backwards into the next level. It is the unarticulated threat we feel, that which shakes us to our core. How do we speak the native tongue without losing our way, losing ourselves?
There aren't exactly a lot of alternatives.
A day late and a dollar short to this thread, and will have to come back and read the no doubt stimulating comments, but I just have to thank you so much for this post! This crystallized for me some ideas I've had about our state of affairs, no where near so coherent. Great food for thought and I hope you will come back to this idea, it needs time to perc.(Also, you just write so beautifully, it's like a perfect pear).
Fundamentalism's conservative impulse wants stability in societies. Liberal impulses serve to give us not stability but civility: humanity. They do this by expanding the definitions of our inherited territorial categories. The essential job of liberals in human societies is to enlarge our understanding of who belongs in our in-group. This is the plot of virtually all "liberal advances."
So. basically, (per Peter Singer) anyone other than a vegan is no different than Hitler?
It reminds me of the time I heard Ann Coulter either on the tv or the radio say something to the effect "Except for the killing and beheading of innocents liberals normally hate all the things Islamic fundamentalists stand for". I'm not sure she really understood what was implicit in her over the top comment. Democrats are against all the things conservative republicans stand for for precisely the same reason we are against all the things Mullah Omar stands for. Lucky for us people like Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh are constrained by our society's civility.
Yowza
We should create a whole new blog just to keep this discussion going. Has this comment section set a record? Come on, let's keep it up, it's too good. So many people so much smarter then me, the inspiration far outweighs the insecurity. Woo Hoo!I think I'll write a book: "The Wisdom Hovering Above Insecurity." Or something.
Apologies if I'm repeating what someone else has said already:
I've got an addition to make to Digby's original excellent post and the points raised in the stuff he quotes therein.
Going by my admittedly limited experience with folks of committed fundamentalist Christian persuasion (all women, and all individuals who chose fundamentalism as adults, btw), there was a shared personality factor. They were what I would call anxious personalities. The universe in general was worrisome to them, as far as I could tell. It seemed clear to me that they chose rigid religion because it offers structure, which they need psychologically the way a person with attention deficit disorder needs a structured environment before he/she can begin a task..(more)
(pt. 2)...The dualism of fundamentalist Protestantism, complete with an active Evil principle, provides an "explanation" for the chronic unease these folks seemed to feel.
IMO, people with this kind of temperament will have a hard time with open-ended thought systems - - and there will always be a good chunk of any population who are more inclined to anxiety than to serenity. Thus there will always be a ready-made "audience" for fundamentalism.
I'm down with the group territoriality thesis put forward in Digby's quotes, but that doesn't explain why the popular appeal of fundamentalist/fascist ideologies seems to rise and ebb and rise again in modern history - - because the basic desire to ensure the security of one's home base is ALWAYS with us...
(pt.3)...IMO, we're drawn to relatively more absolutist "answers" when we're relatively more anxious about things in general.
A zoological/anthropological note: compared to our closest animal relatives, humans are not very sexually dimorphic. The average size and strength difference between men and women is far less marked than among other anthropoids.
There's primitive stuff at work here to be sure, but it's entangled with complexity, alas.
Digby:
There is something to this, but I don't think Loehr's way of formulating it is the right one. The only way Dr. King's words "could sound like the battle-cry of an American Taliban" is if they were different words.
If we approach this instrumentally, seeking to 'use' the emotions and symbols of American patriotism, without ourselves being obedient to them in some fundamental way, I think we will wind up getting all the accent marks wrong, and convincing no one that we are serious.
For an alternative way of envisioning and articulating a radical politics that taps into what I think you want to tap into, check out this piece by John Schaar. It's about 30 years old, and the version online is sadly incomplete, but it speaks in a voice we hear far too rarely on the left (Barak Obama's marvelous Keynote being the most powerful recent exception).
"We're talking about religious fundamentalists. It means that theirs are the only rules. If you're a hindu or an atheist, tough shit."
One could say the same thing about a Christian or Muslim living in India too. Having lived in India and the USA and having watched fundamentalists on both sides, this does not actually come as news to me. The next time one of you encounters bullshit about India's ancient glorious past, please remember this post.
Two years ago I had an interesting discussion with a strong supporter of the Patriot Act.
I responded to his support by pointing out that various portions of the act were an assault on the things that identify us as Americans, the very things that make us Americans, that are part of the American soul. His birthright as an American.
I described civil rights and civil liberies as American rights and American liberties.
My antagonist couldn't respond. He sat there with his mouth open. He'd never thought of that act in that way.
My observation is that there are really about 3 religions:
Fundimentalism
Mysticism
Going with the crowd
The rest of it is a thin layer of paint.
I've been thinking a bit about this subject, and I think there's an additional way to take more of these fundamentalists out of the political equation.
Simply put, it's to make them feel safer. For whatever reason, there is a small but vocal minority that is convinced it is being persecuted. In my opinion this is largely an egotistical identification with the mythological Christ, as well as a mindset being excerbated by cynical demagogues (remember the "liberals are going to ban the Bible" ads).
Whatever its cause, this persecution complex can be dealt with not by ceding the liberal agenda, but by emphasising it in a slightly new way that replaces our favorite word, "freedom" with theirs, "security."
Thus we do not talk about the "freedom" to practice religion, but the "security" of the right to practice one's religion; not the "freedom" of speech, but the "security" of individual rights against a potentially tyranical government or majority.
As Digby's post contends, the fundamentalist urge is rooted deeply in the hunter-gatherer instinct. That instinct at its core is to make it through the day with getting killed or starving. It's a very basic and real human urge. We shouldn't sneer at it so readily. Liberals aren't mutant supermen who have evolved beyond all that stuff, after all.
And the fact is, we do believe in the security of freedom. We do believe in the right of this group and that group and the other group - and let's not forget, our own group - to be secure in the ability to live as each sees fit, as long as a few general rules are adhered to by all groups.
I think if we figure out how to persuade fundamentalists that evolutionary theory is knowledge given to us by God, and use religious/spiritual/biblical language to teach true scientific narrative, then we are 2/3ds there.
Hi,
I am way late to this post but it troubles me that the proposed solution is to attack exclusively Islamic fundamentalism and leave everyone to connect the dots and realize that it is a lot likd Christian fundamentalism. Muslims in the US already feel they are under seige and keep having to defend/explain their religion because it is diverse and we are not all fundamentalists. It seems that this will exacerbate the problems we face. There are upwards of 7 million Muslim americans. Many are liberal and would like to avoid being demonized by those who are supposed to be their friends. And when you attack Islamic fundamentalism most Americans who don't know much about Islam equate it with Islam as a whole.
My observation is that there are really about 3 religions:
Fundimentalism
Mysticism
Going with the crowd
The rest of it is a thin layer of paint.
Nax // 12.07.04 // 1:36 am
Best.
Comment.
In.
Great.
Thread.
And now it looks like it's time to go re-read Dune again...
beale:
"I think if we figure out how to persuade fundamentalists that evolutionary theory is knowledge given to us by God,"
google "the book of urantia" or go to www.urantia.org
jesus + aliens + human evolution = over two thousand pages of fun! seriously, it's a big weird fucking book.
Oh, and regarding the post dividing religion into 3, mysticism is a huge strain in Islam as well (one to which I personally subscribe) and this is another reason I am not so gung ho about yet another campaign built out of attacking Islam.
Li'l Innocent, you hit it on the head with the personality-type thing. I'm an EX-fundamentalist. My family, who is still very fundy, loves the order thang. My dad views my defection as teenage rebelliousness. I'm 42.
Digby, I'd love to know how you discovered Davidson's sermons. He's my minister. He received a spontaneous standing ovation when he delivered that sermon.
Anna in Cairo: I didn't read Digby's post or most of the comments as advocating an attack on Islam, or Christianity, for that matter. I see it rather as an attack on a repressive brand of fundamentalism that is antithetical to the values of American democracy as embodied in the Constitution.
The Constitution is our only bulwark against the aggression of such fundamentalists within this nation. It must be emphasized: The First Amendment protects us all, fundamentalist and secular humanist alike. (cont'd...)
Cont'd. from above:
Not long ago, Christian fundamentalists here were content to practice their religion in their group and were generally aloof from politics. As they perceived a growing threat of modernism affecting their young and crossing certain non-negotiable boundaries (e.g., abortion rights), they moved swiftly toward political activism with the help of the Republican party.
We are now at the point where the Christian Reconstructionists/Dominionists advocate the radical rewriting of American government at its core. In this, they profoundly misunderstand that the very Constitution they would destroy is their only protection here at home. (cont'd...)
and finally:
When an administration is infected by the same amnesia, we have the perverted crusades in Iraq that convince Muslims everywhere that America is attacking Islam.
For progressive Democrats, perhaps the most we can hope for in the short term is to halt the slide toward repressive fundamentalism among the more centrist Christians. If the Reconstructionists find their agenda will not gain broad acceptance, they might retreat from the public sphere once again.
I think all this fits perfectly into Lakoff's Moral Politics division of "strict father morality" and "nurturing morality."
It also feeds into that French psychologist who now contracts out his services to big corporations that wish to appeal to the "lizard part of our brains."
Simple rules. Know where you stand. Don't do a lot of ifs, thens, or buts. Make a declaration, stick to it, and the sheeple will follow. I'm not sure the liberal or progressive mindset can fit into this mold. People want simple answers to complex problems. But the world just doesn't work that way!
It's Island mentality. A whole country with Island mentality. Kind of what happens when you sleep with your relatives and the product of that incestuous relationship has extra toes, crossed eyes, low IQ and a strange sense of humor. And you named it America.
Digby - may I add that "they" need to be reminded or advised in "certain" terms that their economic stability depends on "US."
Another way to skin a cat: use the sharp edge of the ever shrinking dollar. Perhaps you'll need two dollars.
Today I received an extremely offensive email: it showed the Ramadan US Postal stamp accompanied by a series of anti-Muslim slurs that blamed them for infinite amount of ills against the USA. The email urged "patriotic Americans" to protest the hijacking of Christmas by the Muslims, and to demand that US tax dollars not be spent on such a thing.
It was someone I work with - on Long Island. Another redneck Bush lover. I warned her that this kind of email could be used by some hating-moron to cause the pain and suffering of some innocent Muslims. A hate crime needing an excuse to happen - a perfect email to spurn the act.
We need to address the economic side of the problem as well.
Not just religious fundamentalism but capitalism and consumerism depend on people regressing to the reptile brain level, thinking, as said above, about where their next meal is coming from, or about the psychological substitute for that meal, an iPod, car, house, whatever, and how am I going to pay for it.
This transference occurs in people who get more than enough to eat and it occurs in people who perpetually diet (often for consumerist reasons: to look good)
People thus stay stuck at Maslow's base level, no matter how many material possessions or money they have. They never get to higher aspirations or community.
Unless we address this, Democratic promises to provide economic security are inherently going to fall apart.
(more below)
FDR's "freedom from want" did not anticipate that people's wants might be unlimited; by the 1930s, enough people were really in want (homeless and starving) that the definition of "wants" was accepted as basic.
It would be tragic if we have to have a second Great Depression to enable the progressive movement to advance. It could as easily enable a Nazi-like Christian Fascist movement to advance.
I've been wondering, since finishing a book called Eco Homo (though this premise was nowhere explicitly stated in it)... Altruism and tribalism seem to both be adaptive strategies in the human species--altruism being here defined as "the ability to see nearly anyone as in one's 'in' group, and therefore be concerned about their welfare." Every one of us seems to have a certain mix of these two impulses, even though the impulses are often (usually?) conflicting. I would say that liberals as a group mainly consists of people who are more altuistic than they are tribal, where as conservatives are vice-versa. Maybe what we're seeing is an escalation of the evolutionary battle to see which adaptation best suits our environment, playing catch-up to the dramatic changes in that environment in the past 200 or so years.
Alsafi, I would use the word empathy over the word altruism to describe the phenomenon you mention. It does seem diametrically opposed to tribalism and fundamentalism does seem to encompass tribal thinking.
Max: I was not misreading Digby's intent. I don't have enough faith in Americans' ability to make the connection to make it worth the fact that a side effect of it would be that a lot of Americans would be just that much more convinced that Islam is a wicked evil religion and that "Nuke Mecca" is the ultimate answer. I know that is not the intended outcome but given the current state of understanding in the US re: the Islamic religion it is more likely than Digby's assumption that Americans would suddenly realize how evil ALL fundamentalism is and stop listening to or respecting Falwell and co.
I suppose this is too late for anyone to read, but there seems to be some misconception about the hunter-gatherer life, and correcting that view might be helpful.
Here's a bibliography:
Cohen, Mark Nathan. The Food Crisis in Prehistory: Overpopulation and the Origins of Agriculture. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977.
Diamond, Jared. Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies. New York: Norton, 1997.
"The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race." Discover Magazine. 1987. Pp. 117 ? 121.
Lee, Richard B. The Dobe Ju/?hoansi. Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1993.
Gould, Stephen Jay. "Darwinian Fundamentalism."
http://www.nybooks.com/
nyrev/WWWarchdisplay.cgi?19970612034F@p8
Shostak, Marjorie. Nisa The Life and Words of a !Kung Woman. New York: Vintage, 1981.
Thomas, Elizabeth Marshall. The Harmless People. New York: Knopf, 1965.
Wilkinson, Richard G. "The English Industrial Revolution." The Ends of the Earth. Ed. Donald Worster. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Long story short, the hunter-gatherer life was NOT "nasty, brutish and short," but was on the contrary healthy, egalitarian, enjoyable and lengthy. Many reasons for this--if you get a chance to read any of the above works, read Cohen's "The Food Crisis in Prehistory."
And the Diamond essay in Disover is a very good synopsis.
Agreed, the first Democrat/liberal to address our agenda in nationalistic/Christian terms will rule the world.
Alex
If his head doesn't explode first.
Do you all believe that Dubya is a Fundie, or that he just used the Fundies?
Unfortunately, things may only change when the pressure becomes unbearable - boiling teapot.
Each and everyone of us wants happiness. Period. It's the way we go about achieving it that causes dis-equilibrium. When the hungry have tired of eating shit for the good of the privilege who eat only caviar, then the hungry will rise and knock the teeth out of the greedy bastards. That's it.
"World religions, at least in their liberal forms, perform precisely the same maneuver: by making all humanity ones "tribe," they keep one foot rooted in tribalism while moving the other foot forward." mondus potus wrote that many comments back.
I think there is a lot of wisdom in that statement. We live as members of a particular way of life, but it is in our potential to see our way of life as one among many. I think monotheism helped make that developmental growth more likely. Monotheism definitely has its conservative side- wanting all to bow down to the single truth as it has been revealed to me. But it does have this liberal core to it. It allows us to see everyone as our neighbor or sibling.
Here's a Stooge-centric take on the conservative/liberal dilemma:
http://www.essentialmedia.com/Sh...Shop/
Stang.html
It's slapdown time for the Moes!
Viva Curly!
you'll have to get beyond grievance-group-identity power struggles
No, we won't. The Republicans sure haven't. The whole point here is, that's what they've got. That's what's winning them elections.
The iranic thing in all of this is that their right wing is at war with our right wing. And we are victimized by both.
Fundamentalist uprisings are a sign that the liberals have failed to provide an adequate and balanced vision, that they have not found a vision that attracts enough people to become stable.
This sounds reasonable when read with fundamentalism in the US in mind. Possibly also Israel and India. But what about the fundamentalists trying to overthrow Mubarak in Egypt or the House of Saud? Are we defining Mubarak and the Saudis as "liberal"?
Fundamentalism is surging in nearly every, if not every, world religion, in every set of socio-economic conditions, and under every sort of regime imaginable at the same time. That tells me it's root cause is something about our time, though I can't really say what.
I would thus dispute the assertions that fundamentalism is "natural" and "ancient."
It's not about ideas, it's not about control, and it's surely not about politics, even though all these areas of my life are impacted. It is about faith and eternity. Everyone has faith, even aetheists, they just believe there is no God. Based on life experience, I am convinced that I am a spiritual being having a short term physical experience. I love the Lord Jesus Christ, and His Holy Spirit lives and works within me as an active participant in my life. I'm already living my eternity, and as crazy as this might sound to you, my prayer would be that God would bless you with a clear understanding of reality. Be Blessed
Anonymous,
I'm just wandering how we're experiencing a sudden "fundamentalist uprising" in this country.
What has shifted in our culture that it can be termed as that?
Prayer in school has always been a contentious issue since the late 1960's. There have been protests, boycotts, and crack-downs concerning movie content in the late 1930's and 1940's and also in the late '50's and '80's with tv content. Remember Tipper Gore with music and video games?
(cont)
(cont)
Presidents have always expressed religious faith. Almost thirty years ago, Jimmy Carter referred to himself as a "born-again Christian" and stated that his religious faith was the impetus for a foreign policy based on social justice. Other past presidents have used religion as a pretext for expansion into what is now the U.S. west and southwest.
Gay marriage has never been legal. The right to an abortion has always been controversial and there have been attempts to garner support to overturn or limit it since Roe vs Wade.
(cont)
(cont)
The only thing I can think that is different is that the U.S. has pre-emptively invaded and toppled governments in Afghanistan and Iraq. Yet according to the polls this was popular with a large segment of folks who can not to be labeled religous fundamentalists. Many of them are just blue-collar average joes who used to vote democratic.
Frankly, I think if there was a "fundamentalist uprising" the worst you'd get is America circa 1966. I'm not advocating that, I'm just suggesting that there's a great many folks hyperventilating here who simply need to breath into a bag and get some perspective.
Great read. Not the first time I heard the argument, but well framed. I do think this line of thinking will be the key to the next four years. The trick will be bringing the logic to the masses. We need to overcome the media blackout in interesting and visible ways. I believe it can only happen on the grass roots level with outreach to those inner sanctum red states. We need to learn not to confront the fundamentalist leaders on their own ground, but spread the logic, and let their own base canabalize them and dwindle. I don't think the argument will be hard to make though if we are careful with are language. As long as our statements are not directed towards the icons of the neo-con movement so we're seen as attacking and rejected, but more bend the logic towards a redefinition of traditional values it should be easy to regain control of the national dialogue.
Anna in Cairo, thanks for saying what I was thinking when I read this. I hope that everybody will read your comments and take them into account before jumping into this plan.
I think it would be better to speak up against Christian fundamentalism directly rather than using Islam as a proxy.
Also, given how many people in this country still believe that Iraq was behind 9/11 or had WMDs, I'm not all that confident about their ability to "connect the dots".
Wow. Incredible post. Thanks.
To Al-Muhaja-blah-blah:
Of course you would like to compare Islam extremism to some definition of extremism applied to some sect of Christianity, say Falwall and co.
The complete failure of your comparison is that you can not find any examples of Christian's sponsoring or committing acts of terrorism. You can not find videos of thousands (or hundreds or even tens) raging blathering idiots jumping like Zulus in the streets of a western civilization town calling for the death of the Muslim.
But you can find all the above in the Muslim camp, along with many apologists for such behaviour... apologists such as yourself. Oh covered one, you won't persuade anybody... you can blog till the drives are filled up, but you are just alienating more and more people, byte by byte. The fact is that Islam by and large is sponsoring violence against non-Islam.
I was inspired by the 12/5/04 blog on Fundamentalism and I have an idea.
Why not rally the forces behind "America--the Best!"? We could then prove that the US is the best place on earth to be by cleaning up the pollution, taking care of the homeless (which would require better mental health care because that's who's living out there), taking better care of foster children, etc.
JoeJoeJoeJoeJoe said:
"The complete failure of your comparison is that you can not find any examples of Christian's sponsoring or committing acts of terrorism."
No examples? George Bush is a Christian fundamentalist that started a preemptive war based on lies that at least 20,000 civilians have been killed in so far.
Starting a war based on lies is terrorism, Joe. You don't need a backpack when you use an army.
http://apnews.myway.com/article/.../
D86SUBAO0.html
This article details a study commissioned by the CDC that reports that teenage sex is down significantly.
You can't assume that this is solely because of abstinence based sex education and the argument that kids should not be given false information is valid.
But the study certainly takes a lot of wind out Barbara O'Brien's puffery.
These are fascinating thoughts, with many "ah-ha" moments. But never forget you are not looking at the species under a microscope. You are a product of all these genetic forces even if you CAN think about it. Beware of arrogance. Nothing ties up quite as neatly as we would all like.
j
The complete failure of your comparison is that you can not find any examples of Christian's sponsoring or committing acts of terrorism.
Maybe you can't, but I certainly can:
1. Assassinations of abortion providers.
2. Bombings of abortion clinics.
3. Bombings of gay clubs.
4. Attacks on homosexuals.
5. Attacks on 'Arabs' (i.e. people who looked Middle Eastern)
6. Arson attacks and bombings of American mosques
7. The Atlanta Olympics bombing
8. The Oklahoma City bombing
All of these acts were committed by Christians, many of them in the the name of some warped version of Christianity.
Certainly militant Christian fundamentalism isn't as widespread or powerful as the Muslim variety, but I suspect we have the Western tradition liberalism and not some special virtue of Christianity to thank for that.
Same rules for everyone = paralyzing fear of dissenters. Dissent is unholy or, for our GOP, unpatriotic. It must be excised.
Chuck,
"We DEMS allow ourselves to be disqualified in many voter's minds due to a couple of issues like gay marriage and abortion. We need to fix those positions to keep the moderate message while vigorously opposing positions that are not morally defensible in the eyes of the middle-left 75%"
Couldn't have said it better myself.
These issues should not have been politicized in the first place, they are moral issues, they cannot be solved in the political arena, they have practically destroyed the political arena for any real politics.
(continued)
Combining religion and politics destroys both. Fundamentalism, though it looks like religion, is really fascism. Lliberalism really is a lot more coercive thatn liberals think when it goes against other folks' religious beliefs. Many conservatives approach politics as a matter of faith. But so do nonreligious liberals tend to believe in politically nonviable "litmus" positions AS IF they were religious dogmas.
A spiritual perspective worthy of the name isn't defined by superficial, simplistic, and often historically accidental left-right dichotomies. Granted evolution is true, how ridiculous to attribute to yourself the moral highground because you're supposedly on the evolutionary "highway" rather than the evolutionary "backroad". Not only is that a kind of social darwinism, it's just a lot of crap because from our short-term perspective we cannot have any real knowledge where evolution is going and it's not an appropriate way to think about either ethics o
(Haloscan cut me off again)
..or politics. Religion perspective should deepen political discourse, not vice-versa as it does today.
I question male dominance as our cultural default setting. Check out the Orestia trilogy. Maybe the primal state fundamentalism harks back to is not actual ancient clan structure but what Engels called the "world historical defeat of women". If that world historical defeat were really, really reversed, all of our cultures would change massively in ways that I frankly don't think any men besides John Stolenberg would entirely welcome. Not because the changes would be bad for men or women - they wouldn't - but because I really think men don't realize how deep and pervasive and subtle male dominance is and how quickly even the most liberal among you would rally to revert to the old paradigm if you really started to think women were about to achieve real global cultural identity and economic automony.
I hope I'm wrong about this. I also hope I'm wrong about Bush. And before the Christian Coalition sprang into ugly existence, I thought Mary Daly was too alarmist.
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