This is going to be straight from the hip. I founded my blog to have a place where I could ruminate, and perhaps occasionally discuss, topics other than politics; particularly literature and religion. But when politics enters the sphere of religion, as it has with the campaign of Mike Huckabee, then politics becomes fair game here. My concern with this topic was awakened again this morning, when I went to the NY Times online to read the Sunday Book Review section, which is a Saturday morning ritual with me. On the front page, I found this. (File under: "Things That Make You Go 'Hmmmm'...")
I have noted elsewhere my uneasiness with the following statement made in a recent stump speech given in Warren, Michigan:
I believe it’s a lot easier to change the Constitution than it would be to change the word of the living God,” Huckabee said Monday night in Warren, Mich. “And that’s what we need to do, is to amend the Constitution so it’s in God’s standards, rather than try to change God’s standards.
While that statement may, or may not, have been specifically in reference to abortion law, my uneasiness prompted me to do a little googling in an effort to find out just what kind of Christians Huck hangs out with when the cameras aren't on him and he needs a bit of baksheesh to pay the bills at the Ramada Inn. I will be the first one to affirm a strong belief that we all could use a little more--hell, a lot more--religion in our daily lives. But, that said, I am also (God help me!) a strict constructionist where it comes to the Establishment Clause and the existence of a firewall between sectarian religion and government as guided by secular law. So when Huckabee came out with the above, I flinched. Does Huckabee have connections to folks who call themselves Dominionistists, or to the Christian Reconstructionist movement?
In politics it's always a matter of share-shay the friggin' moolah, am I right? While it's clear that the MSM has not yet become interested in this story, there are quite a few bloggers out there who are. Some of them are just anti-Christian bigots. But some of them treat the topic with a bit of even-handedness and intelligence. This one was particularly disturbing.
I don't know about you, but I do not want a POTUS, or even a Veep, who is beholden to people whose project is to "reconstruct" the United States of America as a theocracy. If that's what you want, grow a beard and go to any one of several available Muslim utopias. I pride myself on being unreconstructed, thank you very much.
Showing posts with label Dominionism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Dominionism. Show all posts
Saturday, January 19, 2008
Sunday, January 6, 2008
Reflections: Let Me Count the Ways
When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying the cross. - Sinclair Lewis, It Can’t Happen Here
I have been pleasantly surprised to find that when one assiduously seeks information and knowledge, in the service of wisdom, knowledge and information will often meet one half-way. This kind of convergence of knowledge and mind, which I take to be a form of synchronicity, occurred for me just the other day.
I had been in the stacks of the university library, looking for a book that turned out not to be on the shelf. As I made my way through the maze of shelves toward the elevator bank, empty-handed, the book American Fascists by Chris Hedges, practically leapt off the shelf, into my hand.
This event partook of the kind of synchronicity I mentioned above, because it promised to provide some answers to a challenge thrown down by skeptical reader, William R. Barker, in the comments section of my post of December 30, 2007. In response to my conjectures concerning a cabal of right-wingers, determined to subvert the freedoms guaranteed by the constitution, in order to take power in America, Mr. Barker wrote: “I wait with baited (sic) breath for you to unmask the conspirators!”
This is easier said than done. As Hedges shows in his book, the conspirators are veritable “wolves in sheep’s clothing,” subverting the national thought patterns in ways which are both subtle and seemingly harmless, if not positive, at the surface level. In expounding upon this theme, Hedges quotes Hitler’s propaganda chief: “As Joseph Goebbels wrote: “The best propaganda is that which, as it were, works invisibly, penetrates the whole of life without the public having any knowledge of the propagandistic initiative.” (American Fascists, p.17)
Hedges prefaces his book with an excerpt from the writer and essayist, Umberto Eco, entitled Fourteen Ways of Looking at a Blackshirt. In this piece, Eco examines 14 items, some of which, in various combinations, will be fundamental to every fascist movement. I have reconfigured Eco’s list slightly in order to include it here:
Common Elements of Eternal Fascism:
1. The cult of tradition
2. The rejection of modernism
3. The cult of action for action’s sake
4. Making distinctions is a sign of modernism; disagreement is treason
5. Disagreement is a sign of diversity, diversity is evil (racism)
6. Fascism derives from individual or social frustration
7. The only privilege is that of being born in the same country
8. Humiliation at the power and material privileges of their enemies
9. Life is lived for struggle
10. Elitist contempt for the weak
11. Everybody is educated to become a hero
12. Transference of the will to power to sexual matters (patriarchal machismo)
13. Selective populism
14. Fascism speaks Newspeak
Eco’s original piece, which expands upon these items, can be read here. Eco’s title is a play on the title of a famous poem by Wallace Stevens, Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird. Another interesting example of convergence is that sometime between 1991 and 1994, I used the title and format of the same Stevens poem as the basis of a poem of my own entitled Thirteen Ways of Looking at an Oligarch, the content of which can be seen as a bridge between Stevens and Eco.
Hedges’ book focuses on a fundamentalist, evangelical, right-wing religious movement called Dominionism. In Hedges’ words:
Dominionism, born out of a theology known as Christian reconstructionism, seeks to politicize faith. It has, like all fascist movements, a belief in magic along with leadership adoration and a strident call for moral and physical supremacy of a master race, in this case American Christians. (Ibid., p.11)
In general terms:
Dominionists and their wealthy, right-wing sponsors speak in terms and phrases that are familiar and comforting to most Americans, but they no longer use words to mean what they meant in the past. (Ibid., p.14)
Among those comforting words whose meaning Hedges shows being subverted in this way are: Truth, wisdom, death, liberty, life, love…
Some of these “wealthy, right-wing sponsors” include:
Corporations such as Tyson Foods—which has placed 128 part-time chaplains, nearly all evangelicals or fundamentalists, in 78 plants across the country—along with Purdue, Wal-Mart, and Sam’s Wholesale, to name a few, are huge financial backers of the movement. (Ibid., p.22)
So, there you have it, Mr. Barker. This should provide you with enough of a road-map to find some answers to your own challenge, if you want to take the time to do a little digging of your own. To close, I might suggest that you spend some time lurking here, in order to observe the prediction of Sinclair Lewis at work in real-time today.
I have been pleasantly surprised to find that when one assiduously seeks information and knowledge, in the service of wisdom, knowledge and information will often meet one half-way. This kind of convergence of knowledge and mind, which I take to be a form of synchronicity, occurred for me just the other day.
I had been in the stacks of the university library, looking for a book that turned out not to be on the shelf. As I made my way through the maze of shelves toward the elevator bank, empty-handed, the book American Fascists by Chris Hedges, practically leapt off the shelf, into my hand.
This event partook of the kind of synchronicity I mentioned above, because it promised to provide some answers to a challenge thrown down by skeptical reader, William R. Barker, in the comments section of my post of December 30, 2007. In response to my conjectures concerning a cabal of right-wingers, determined to subvert the freedoms guaranteed by the constitution, in order to take power in America, Mr. Barker wrote: “I wait with baited (sic) breath for you to unmask the conspirators!”
This is easier said than done. As Hedges shows in his book, the conspirators are veritable “wolves in sheep’s clothing,” subverting the national thought patterns in ways which are both subtle and seemingly harmless, if not positive, at the surface level. In expounding upon this theme, Hedges quotes Hitler’s propaganda chief: “As Joseph Goebbels wrote: “The best propaganda is that which, as it were, works invisibly, penetrates the whole of life without the public having any knowledge of the propagandistic initiative.” (American Fascists, p.17)
Hedges prefaces his book with an excerpt from the writer and essayist, Umberto Eco, entitled Fourteen Ways of Looking at a Blackshirt. In this piece, Eco examines 14 items, some of which, in various combinations, will be fundamental to every fascist movement. I have reconfigured Eco’s list slightly in order to include it here:
Common Elements of Eternal Fascism:
1. The cult of tradition
2. The rejection of modernism
3. The cult of action for action’s sake
4. Making distinctions is a sign of modernism; disagreement is treason
5. Disagreement is a sign of diversity, diversity is evil (racism)
6. Fascism derives from individual or social frustration
7. The only privilege is that of being born in the same country
8. Humiliation at the power and material privileges of their enemies
9. Life is lived for struggle
10. Elitist contempt for the weak
11. Everybody is educated to become a hero
12. Transference of the will to power to sexual matters (patriarchal machismo)
13. Selective populism
14. Fascism speaks Newspeak
Eco’s original piece, which expands upon these items, can be read here. Eco’s title is a play on the title of a famous poem by Wallace Stevens, Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird. Another interesting example of convergence is that sometime between 1991 and 1994, I used the title and format of the same Stevens poem as the basis of a poem of my own entitled Thirteen Ways of Looking at an Oligarch, the content of which can be seen as a bridge between Stevens and Eco.
Hedges’ book focuses on a fundamentalist, evangelical, right-wing religious movement called Dominionism. In Hedges’ words:
Dominionism, born out of a theology known as Christian reconstructionism, seeks to politicize faith. It has, like all fascist movements, a belief in magic along with leadership adoration and a strident call for moral and physical supremacy of a master race, in this case American Christians. (Ibid., p.11)
In general terms:
Dominionists and their wealthy, right-wing sponsors speak in terms and phrases that are familiar and comforting to most Americans, but they no longer use words to mean what they meant in the past. (Ibid., p.14)
Among those comforting words whose meaning Hedges shows being subverted in this way are: Truth, wisdom, death, liberty, life, love…
Some of these “wealthy, right-wing sponsors” include:
Corporations such as Tyson Foods—which has placed 128 part-time chaplains, nearly all evangelicals or fundamentalists, in 78 plants across the country—along with Purdue, Wal-Mart, and Sam’s Wholesale, to name a few, are huge financial backers of the movement. (Ibid., p.22)
So, there you have it, Mr. Barker. This should provide you with enough of a road-map to find some answers to your own challenge, if you want to take the time to do a little digging of your own. To close, I might suggest that you spend some time lurking here, in order to observe the prediction of Sinclair Lewis at work in real-time today.
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