religious crackpots in public life, was Re: The heart of a leftist

[Charles Brown]

This reminds of Ronald Reagan running as a government "outsider", or the Confederacy as "rebels" in the U.S. Civil War. Perhaps the American ruling class specializes in repression disguised as rebellion, in the sham counter-cultures, in systematically pre-empting revolution with sham rebellion.

CB


>>> kenneth.mackendrick at utoronto.ca 07/07/00 08:04PM >>>


> Any hypotheses as to why the U.S. should be so uniquely plagued by 
religiosity?

I wouldn't say uniquely, but certainly the US, in general, is one of the more 
fundamentalist nations around. It probably has to do with the split face of the 
democratic ethos that serves as the constitutional ground. Religion is 
assumed to be true, with full authorial powers and legitimacy, but at the same 
time no legislation may be passed with direct appeal to "religious" reasoning 
(at least according to the books). So one the one hand you have the truth of 
God, on the other, you can't proclaim this truth from the white house. The 
result: religion becomes a primary vehicle for the establishing of 
counter-cultrual discourses ("the return of the repressed"). There would likely 
be less religious "crackpots" if the church and state were re-united because 
then no one would take the theocracy seriously... and the grounds for 
counter-culture ("transgression") would change. Which is better? I dunno.

ken