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<P>I watched the movie adaptation of Left Behind over a week ago. Now, it
feels like a prelude. Not for reasons of prophecy, but for reasons of
ideology. "Moral values" is another version of "family values," which
means American Protestant values. Very specific Protestant values, of
course. Certainly not the Protestant values of my Presbyterian
(PCUSA) mother, but enduring values nonetheless. She is among
the millions of American Christians who aren't theocratic, and are often
allies against the "religious right". That doesn't make those who are
any less real as a threat. The "fundamentalists", as Michael Pollak<A
href="http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/pipermail/lbo-talk/Week-of-Mon-20040405/007818.html"><FONT
color=#330066></FONT></A> reminded us, have essentially been against the UN
since before its inception, and Israeli nationalists before the modern nation of
Israel came into being.</P>
<P><A
href="http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/pipermail/lbo-talk/Week-of-Mon-20040405/007790.html">http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/pipermail/lbo-talk/Week-of-Mon-20040405/007790.html</A></P>
<DIV><A
href="http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/pipermail/lbo-talk/Week-of-Mon-20040405/007818.html">http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/pipermail/lbo-talk/Week-of-Mon-20040405/007818.html</A></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>I'm open to a fresh terminology for these theocrats. I appreciate
Chip's point, from a while back, that direct mail caricatures distort more than
they clarify. I'm agnostic on whether or not they are a latent populist
constituency. I'd like to believe so. Still, as a Texan, born and
raised, and having spent three years in a Church of Christ jr. high, their
_creed_ is, at base, authoritarian. When I hear some blue-staters speak, I
don't always hear that recognition.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Trying to make sense of the election, I looked back
over the debates through the prism of the wildly popular Left Behind
series. In Left Behind, the UN is the tool of the anti-Christ,
and Israel is one of God's most favored
nations. Applied to the debates, the candidates' respective
stances on the UN make Kerry look mad and Bush resolute. Beyond this
there is the administration's Likud support, for which the Christian
right provides the major popular base of the pro-Likud lobby in the
US. Furthermore, it suggests to me a fundamental divide, according to the
exit polls, between those who are practically (as in, part of the reality-based
community) concerned about the current state of Iraq, who favor Kerry, and those
who view the war on terror as a crusade, who came out for Bush.</DIV></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Scalia has claimed "democracy obscures the divine will." The more of
the tirades against "secular humanism" I heard over the years, the harder it
became to separate democracy from the ostensible targets. For them,
legitimacy does not come from the consent of the governed. Legitimacy
comes from God -- their God, as they define Him. (Hence active voter
suppression on their part causes no cognitive dissonance. Whether or not
you honestly win the election is secondary to whether or not God endorses
you.)</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Ditto individual rights; our rights flow from God. For sin (abortion,
homosexuality, unbelief), there are no rights. This may seem pedantic, but
I think it gets lost in much of this debate. That eleven out of
eleven states just pasted constitutional genital quotas for marriage
underscores this. (The marriage debate hasn't been exclusively about
homosexuality. Too quickly forgotten was the congressional push in the
'90s for outlawing divorce for all couples on anything but Biblical
grounds. Ireland's legalization of divorce not so long ago sounds
nauseatingly similar to the attacks on equal rights for marriage in America
today.) And, as always, their unyielding litmus test: state mandated
births for all fetuses. If you fail to support that, you forfeit any claim
to "morality." (The erosion of public support for abortion is a factor
Doug has noted, and may need more emphasis in broader debates. Kerry and
Edward's vote against banning "partial birth" abortions is a BFD for these
people. They never let this stray to far from their thoughts.)</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>If you think you're on the right side of the apocalypse, then hastening
it's approach is a source of affirmed righteousness. It could be that the
more Bush f---s up the world, the more right they believe themselves to
be. I have no idea how to crack this. But we'll have to correctly
discern the malady if we're to find a cure.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>-- Shane</DIV>
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