[lbo-talk] The Military, the Church, and the Police

[snitilicious at tampabay.rr.com]

At 12:07 PM 2/25/2005, Doug Henwood wrote:
>DSR wrote:
>
>>America is choking off the need by Leftists to understand where
>>common ground can be found, e.g., Yoshie's citations regarding
>>similar economic concerns among evangelicals and leftists.
>
>A lot of which may be reflecting the opinions of black evangelicals - but 
>that aside, while there may be common ground on "economic concerns," the 
>solutions are likely to be different: church/private charity vs. state 
>action. As Esther Kaplan wrote in her study of the Christian right, to 
>that crowd, big government is part of the modernity they hate (and 
>competition for their own church-based welfare programs).

Big time. I wished I hadn't misplaced it, but I was handed an issue of 
Awake! outside *gasp!* Barnes and Nobles. The cover story was a massive 
pitch against government programs. They don't come out and say that's why, 
but it's sure not hard to assume that an important motivation is the desire 
to keep the secular left out of its bailiwick or, rather, to regain that 
balliwick for itself. It's where they recruit and compete for adherents, 
after all.

"We live under the Confederacy.
We're a podunk bunch of swaggering
pious hicks."

                --Bruce Sterling