April 28, 2005
Sullivan and atheocracy
Another thread of discussion I've been following on Mr. Sullivan's blog is the growing accusations of theocracy on the part of the Republican majority. This is an argument where he and I tend to be in agreement: the Right is increasingly attempting to assert their own particular interpretation of proper social order - an interpretation dictated almost entirely by conservative/fundamentalist Christian mores - across the entire political landscape. He thinks this is happening, and I tend to agree.
I also tend to agree that this isn't an entirely good thing (though I have fewer objections than he does for obvious reasons). We don't want to go restricting the materials available in public libraries. We don't want to start restricting the kinds of activities that mature adults can do in their leisure time. I'm even deeply suspicious about controlling various interesting substances intended for consumption.
But I think there's some history here that he's overlooking. For the past forty years, religious people in this country have been under constant assault by a triumphant secularist, atheistic culture. Religion's place in the public space had, by the middle of the last decade, been almost entirely eliminated, to the point that when it became apparent that the president of the country was an amoral philanderer, there was no coherent sense of dismay or disgust. Religion has been removed from public schools (I'm okay with this) and replaced with the dogma of atheistic postmodernism (not okay with this). There is an ongoing attempt to remove religious symbols from all manner of public spaces. And all of this has been done in a ruthlessly Machiavellian, underhanded fashion that uses character assassination and strong-arm tactics as a matter of course.
Is it any surprise then, that as the postmodern project starts to come apart at the seams (more on this in a few hours - still gathering my thoughts here) that religious forces might have learned a few things and be responding with exactly the same kind of vitriol and ruthlessness that have been used against us for half a century? This isn't an attempt at a justification, but it should go a long way towards an explanation. The tactics that have been used to solidify the ascendency of Leftist thinking in academia are now being used in an attempt to tear down that hegemony. Same goes for things like the Shiavo case and the gay marriage issue. It was the Left that decided to play politics with society, and now that it turns out that they don't have a core to their political apparatus - much less a coherent narrative upon which to build a functional political machien - they're getting whiny.
Screw 'em. Progress here isn't going to be made by listening to the old Left. It's going to be made by growing divides in the Right, between people driven by ideology and people driven by pragmatism. Because while the Left seems to be driven almost entirely by the former, the Right comprises both motivations. And as the idealogues become more and more hysterical and deranged, it is only a matter of time before sensible people start to realize that rigorous enforcement of ideology almost always winds up compromising the very ideals in question.
