>Nathan's point that I underestimate the importance of religion is
>well-taken. But really, now much power do Christian fundamenalists have
over
>U.S. foreign policy? Right Wing Christians also supported aparteid in South
>Africa and continue to support Ian Paisley types in Northern Ireland, yet
>this doesn't seem to weigh on US foreign policy as much as Israel does.
How much power do Christian fundamentalists have over US foreign power? According to Bush, he is one of them. And remember Reagan's rumination about the coming apocolypse? Maybe both have just bull-shitted their supporters, but there is a whole circle of folks from the religious right swarming around the foreign policy establishment on these issues.
As for South Africa, it was never the top priority of the Right, so the passion of the left on the issue won out. As for Northern Ireland, any strength of the religious right on the issue is overwhelmed by the Catholic vote in the US-- and since many religious protestants have been trying to woo Catholics in recent years, they were unlikely to make support for Paisley a litmus test.
-- Nathan Newman
> ----------
> From: Nathan Newman
>
> Abortion and gay rights are just sidelights for many fundamentalist
> Christians compared to the second coming of Christ-- do you ever watch the
> 700 Club? Pilgrimages to Jerusalem and the "Holy Land" and constant.
> Polls have shown that support for Israel is about twenty percentage points
> higher in the deep South than in any other region.
>
> There is a tick of secularists that they never take the religious
> seriously
> on direct religious issues-- while many issues led to the breakdown of the
> Oslo negotiations, one of the touchest, most irresolvable issues was the
> Temple Mouth issue, since neither side wanted to tell their people that
> they
> had traded away God's holy site for anything else.
>
> Leftists may want to reduce Israel to colonialism and imperialism, but for
> a
> bunch of religious folks, it's all about a creche and death penalty
> imposed
> 2000 years ago.
>
> -- Nathan Newman
>
>