Two Weekend Op-Eds Exemplify the Delusions of the Left and the Insights of Conservatives
All of this leads me to highly recommend that Professor Westen and everyone else read the important op-ed that appeared this same weekend in The Wall Street Journal by one of our most important conservative commentators, the Hoover Institute’s Peter Berkowitz. In his article, Berkowitz deals with what he calls “the panic of the progressive mind,” a panic that actually fits perfectly as a description for the assumptions of Emory’s Professor Westen. He notes first that Obama had in fact favored and enacted an $800 billion plus stimulus package, one that Congress passed in 2009 on a party line vote. Then in April he produced a $3.5 trillion budget, enacted without one Republican vote, “that contained across-the-board funding increases for federal departments and agencies.” In other words, contrary to Professor Westen, the president did favor and enact large federal programs that increased the deficit.
What Obama ignored is the message given to him by the voters. As Berkowitz writes:
The voters’ message was clear: Cut spending, compel the government to live within its means, and put Americans back to work. In short, the president and his party badly overreached in 2009 and 2010; and in 2011 the Republicans, to the extent their numbers in Congress allowed, have effectively pushed back.
These are the facts, which does not mean progressives understand what has happened. Rather than deal with them, they respond to events with hysteria and the kind of rant produced in the Times by Westen. Moreover, Berkowitz points out:
Progressive partisans also displayed economic illiteracy, refusing to recognize the respectability or even the existence of alternative economic views. Instead, they steadfastly insisted that a conservative obsession with reducing debt and curbing spending ignored the real issue, which was putting Americans back to work.
It’s almost as if Peter Berkowitz had read Prof. Westen’s article in advance, he so perfectly gets his mindset.
Of course, there is a connection between controlling the debt and producing jobs, something that progressives do not comprehend. Instead, they engage in name calling and the kind of vituperation about conservatives we see in Westen’s article. My favorite two paragraphs in Berkowitz’s article are the following:
The evident panic of the progressive mind stems from a paradox as old as progressivism in America. Progressives see themselves as the only legitimate representatives of ordinary people. Yet their vision of what democracy requires frequently conflicts with what majorities believe and how they choose to live.
Add to this the progressive belief that human beings can be perfected through the rule of experts, and you have a recipe—when the people make choices contrary to progressive dictates—for generating contempt among the experts for the people whose interests they claim to alone represent. And not just contempt, but even disgust at diversity of opinion, which from the progressive’s perspective distracts the people from the policies demanded by impartial reason.
Like any good leftist (or progressive — as leftists now dub themselves once again), anyone who has a policy view different from the one they subscribe to is seen as either ignorant, wrong, or purposefully serving the wealthy in order to make the poor worse off so they can become even more rich. I am sure that you, like me, know plenty of wealthy people on the political Left who live in the toniest neighborhoods, have homes worth a small fortune, and still think of themselves as representatives of the “real” people.
So Berkowitz’s conclusion, in which he expresses the hope that progressives “cultivate the enlightened virtues they publicly profess and free themselves from the dogmatic beliefs that undergird their political ambitions,” is a forlorn hope for the impossible.
They cannot change, without a serious reevaluation of the philosophy they espouse and the dogma they believe. And such a reevaluation, except in the rarest of cases, will not be coming soon. We may as well be waiting for the leopard to get rid of its spots. The future rests on what the intelligent citizenry does, and the hope that the “real people” will continue to vote as they did recently, and further make the progressive paradigm obsolete.
Bravo, yet again, Professor Radosh. Splendid piece. I am sure you are onto a major insight about the “evident panic of the progressive mind” to quote Peter Berkowitz. Interesting to read your piece along with this today: http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/08/raging_at_the_dying_of_their_light.html
Thanks for another great read.
To paraphrase the late Cathy Seipp, it’s easy to shock leftists. If you have a different opinion, they’re shocked.
Which is nothing compared to their mental state when reality consistently refuses to behave as their pet theories say it should.
This may explain their advocacy of drugs as a source of “consciousness expansion”. If I was constantly confronted by reality that I wanted to pretend didn’t exist, I’d probably think getting and staying stoned was a viable option, too.
(And I don’t even drink, or smoke, and never have.)
cheers
eon
I don’t care if the Left is “shocked and appalled”, as long as they are gone, spilled out on the ash-heap of history like yesterday’s garbage.
And, in regards to shocking a Left, besides the intellectual approach, I suggest a cattle-prod. It works on one of the dumbest beasts of Nature, so why not its human counterpart, the Liberal/Leftist.
“Progressives see themselves as the only legitimate representatives of ordinary people. Yet their vision of what democracy requires frequently conflicts with what majorities believe and how they choose to live.”
Sounds like what’s going on in Israel right now vis a vis our “social revolution.” Protesters are demanding through street theater what they failed to achieve through the ballot box. My greatest fear is that the elected (right-wing) government will cave in to protesters’ populist demands.
First place winner and keynote speaker, ‘Dinner for Schmucks’. Good job, Drew, now finish your Kibbles.
“He notes first that Obama had in fact favored and enacted an $800 billion plus stimulus package, one that Congress passed in 2009 on a party line vote. Then in April he produced a $3.5 trillion budget, enacted without one Republican vote, “that contained across-the-board funding increases for federal departments and agencies.”
People tend to forget about the $3.5 trillion budget and only remember the “stimulus.” What makes the budget even worse is that new baselines have been created for Federal budgets. So if we try to simply bring the baselines for all of these Federal programs down to where they were before Obama came into office, it will be considered by the far left as being a huge budget cut, when in reality you’re just getting rid of the increases that Obama stuffed into the budgets. That was Obama’s game from the beginning. Increase the budgets to sky-high levels so that it would be politically impossible to reduce them to 2008 levels.
But he was wrong. The next conservative administration in 2012 will do just that. It’s the only way our government can survive. Just by bringing spending down to 2008 levels we could probably save about a trillion dollars over a few years. But that solution probably seems too simple for the Democrats. Obama’s first budget was a tribute to pork and a vast payback to his union buddies.
It’s time to stop it. Now. In 2012, pull the budget down to 2008 levels and you will see how much we save.
Professor Westen is a nearly perfect example of the way the modern academic environment produces “experts” who simply refuse to see reality as it is. Obama’s behavior is typical in the halls of academe’ today; Westen apparently expected Obama to remake the government, and then the entire world, in that academic mould. Unfortunately, what works in the protected oligarchy of the faculty lounge tends to fail catastrophically once beyond the campus.
The idea that President Obama has “a deep-seated aversion to conflict” is laughable. This President came into office with a chip on his shoulder the size of the National Debt, to quote Rod Serling, and has been enlarging the chip and the debt ever since. The fact that in doing so, he has utterly failed to create jobs, which he claimed he was doing, makes Westen’s statement that he should have worked harder to create jobs equally nonsensical.
The reason, of course, is that the government can only “create jobs” in government. This fact has not only escaped Westen, and Obama, but also most progressives since Woodrow Wilson. (I except Henry Morganthau and Daniel Patrick Moynihan from this generalization.)
As for his belief that Obama has been “corrupted” by his high office, during the campaign The One stated that he expected to “corrupted”, but believed that he could still “do good” while being so. Of course, he would be the one defining what constitutes “good”- as we have seen.
What we should have is the progressives’ “best of all possible worlds”- with them in absolute power, forever. The fact that it hasn’t turned out that way would strongly indicate that their dogmas are of questionable utility, at best. The progressives’ response is, of course, to blame the rest of us.
This is well in keeping with Obama’s narcissism, which handily explains the behavior Westen can’t quite figure out. As Colin Wilson said of Nero, The One finds himself endlessly fascinating. His entire psyche is a massive personality cult, with himself as both its object of adoration and its only member.
Professor Westen should worry less about Obama not being “confrontational enough”, and more about what the real world is likely to do next. Hint; it will probably not be according to his pet theories.
clear ether
eon
He can’t be “confrontational”–he didn’t grow up under a winning “father-figure”–his life long, he had to learn how to “fit in”, . . .
Maybe, but once he came under the influence of Alinsky, he became the ultimate passive aggressive narcisssistic psychopath.
I doubt that Alinsky would have had any respect for Obama.
Alinsky was many things, but passive-aggressive was not one of them.
“Progressives see themselves as the only legitimate representatives of ordinary people. Yet their vision of what democracy requires frequently conflicts with what majorities believe and how they choose to live.”
Hence the indoctrination in the schools.
Considering that the Founders were advocates of limited, Constitutional government, those of us who want a return to those concepts are the American mainstream, and not extremists.
Who is an extremist is determined by what one means by “moderation.” The authors of the Federalist papers considered themselves moderates, but would not be recognized as such today. Instead we get populist polarization, which I wrote about here: http://clarespark.com/2009/12/16/perceptions-of-the-enemy-the-left-looks-at-the-right-and-vice-versa/. It should be kept in mind that “Publius” (Hamilton, Madison, and Jay) recognized that there must be a safety net lest the more numerous “many” rebelled against their constituted representatives. But since the protection of property and the expansion of wealth for everyone was the entire point of establishing a national government with the power to tax, establish a standing army, and regulate commerce, the confiscation of property advocated by today’s “progressives” is a joke.
If the Times were honest, it would be named the Democratic Party Opinion and News Daily. They are doubling down on failure, and I am giving them the attention they deserve.
Well, “Pravda” and “Tass” are already taken, as is “Granma”.
They could call themselves “The Daily Worker”, as the Manchester Guardian is no longer using it.
cheers
eon
When ObaMao leaves office, the U.S. will be in the worst shape under any president, ever. No doubt about it.
The latest criticism was received WITH WARNING; And was found to be “defective” in it’s calculations! And this by an administration full of cronies and felons that can’t even get their own tax forms filled out right, and adjust the numbers on every aspect of the economy at least once after publication.
The only proper response to such a negative assessment of these criminals, is for these criminals to create their own agency to rate the economy with their preferred and bloated conclusion that the economy is better off than expected.
Joe Biden could command just such an agency, and give the credentials necessary for these IDIOTS to garner respect.
And their logo could be three interlocking rings for the three ring circus it already is.
“An intriguing op-ed by Drew Westen…”
Intriguing if you enjoy reading through four pages of fact-free, leftist drivel, maybe.
I can’t stand to slog through it all. I’d bet, though, that nowhere in those four pages is an acknowledgment that this is what the evil righties were saying all along. (Somehow it’s racist when we say it, though.)
In 2008, I voted Rep for the first time in my life.All Oblahma’s faults were there had anyone really bothered to look.
I didn’t like McCain/Palin “Drill, baby, drill! Too simplistic. On the other hand, it took courage for McCain to stand in front of Iowans and explain to them that the corn-alcohol industry was a rip-off to the nation, Obama, in contrast, won the nomination basically by outpandering Clinton. And the Dems, in all honesty, seemed totally clueless on defense issues.
I think off-shore oil and gas extraction should be halted, in favor of shale oil and shale gas extraction. Deepwater fields take upwards of a decade to prepare for extraction–much too long for a world that is giving every sign of going to Hell in a handbasket. In contrast, shale oil has numerous advantage. The main extraction points are in the states of Colorado, Wyoming, and utah–right on the Continental Divide. It must be seen as an enormous advantage to be able to pipe millions of tons of product mostly with rather than against, the force of gravity
The smallest estimate of shale oil I have seen is 400 million barrels. This is at least several times the estimate for deepwater drilling; if deeepwater is clearly of minimal importance. Note that Israel is in the same situation, having just discovered large fields offfshore, and over 200 million barrels o
of shale oil, which dwarfs the offshore finds.
The private sector in a free market would probably do exactly as you suggest if left alone and simply held accountable for minimal environmental impact within reason. Why would they go to all the expense and trouble of drilling safely in deep water if there were better alternatives to satisfy market demand?
Harry Reid stopped every House budget measure from making it to the Senate floor for a vote. Funny how there is that omission. I guess we will have to wait on history to repair the damage of the fanciful media. I guess the voters of Nevada and Las Vegas will remain the progressive steam engine of our national economy. 15% unemployment and 20% mortgage defaults for all I say.
The only way for an economy to grow is for people to create products that other people value more than the goods they have today. Everything else is shuffling wealth around.
Governments are shrewd about pretending what they do grows an economy. Their primary lie is that GDP is a metric of growth, which is ludicrous. They like GDP because by borrowing money and “spending” it on their cronies today, they can increase GDP. That is exactly what has happened for the last 3 years. We borrowed 5 trillion dollars, which doesn’t get subtracted from GDP as it should, so GDP has been artifically high by 5 trillion. Every penny of the so-call ‘growth’ is a lie. Growth has been negative. And we aren’t in a recession, we are in a depression.
And like in the Great Depression, every penny borrowed and spent digs the hole deeper. That time, WWII solved the problem. But it wasn’t because it put people back to work; that was also artificial, since it was all financed by borrowing. But when we won the war, the rest of the world was flattened, and American goods and services suddenly became much more valuable than before, and that caused a multi-decade boom that allowed us to pay off the massive debt and still grow so enormously that a country that was at near poverty levels before WWII became the wealthiest country that has ever existed by about 1970.
What can solve the problem this time? Frankly, I hate to be pessimistic about it, but the answer is probably that the best we can do going forward is to overcome the deep hole that marxists have put us in. If 20 years from now people live as well as they do today, it will be a minor miracle.
I am not sure we paid off the debt from WWII yet. I read somewhere that we have not yet paid off the cost of building the archaic planes we lost at the Battle of Midway. The good news is that Coolidge did pay off the cost of WWI. After that, who’s to say?
Convert the gov’t bonds, I say, to stock in new factories to be built by gov’t to sell the world the goods they need at cheap cost. No employment contracts. The factories are owned 51% by the workers and managers, equally, and 49% by the former bond holders. No labor cost we could compete throughout the world but we would have to lend the workers money til their profits started to hit, but at low interest rates, and they would not have to pay taxes until those profits hit. Stock in profit making factories does not pay interest. Bonds do. Think of the money and enhanced revenues the gov’t would save and make from a bunch of new, “union labor free” factories, marketed internationally, all without raising taxes, and ultimately government could forget about taxes and live exclusively on profits. Profits you see convert into hard money. Taxes = consumption = a loss of money, as does theft, charity, waste, and borrowing that is not paid back. The key to Keynes what the stimulus is spent on: producing profit from market goods – GOOD and the real money supply grows and everyone becomes richer as in the 19th Century in the capitalist countries. Spend the consumption on theft, fraud and consumption — Bad. Everyone gets poorer and the debts do not get paid in an ever downward spiral, which intentionally sought-after downward spiral is what we are in now. God help us all. (And the real solution is so easy and obvious, and written so plainly in our History. That is what’s so frustrating).
You are correct that the WWII debt has never been paid.
This link shows that the occasional surplusses since WWII are less than the debt accumulated during the war:
http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxfacts/displayafact.cfm?Docid=200
Your idea is interesting, but I would have to see the economics modelled to buy into it. My basic feeling is that the cost of living in in the US is so much higher here than in China and India that even reducing the cost of equipment to zero won’t make US manufactured goods competitive. As a nation, we have to depend on innovation, not production as the engine of future growth.
If I’m right that innovation is the key to future success, it’s even more worrisome, because almost everything the government does inhibits innovation, and because academia has been captured by marxists.
But since you are a smart guy, here is something else to think about. China’s and India’s cost of labor advantages are temporary. They are like Japan was in the 1950′s. As their economies grow, their labor costs will rise. And since it doesn’t appear that Africa or the Middle East has any chance to enter the modern world, in some finite number of decades, China and India will reach approximate parity with the west on labor costs and the entire effective world will be at parity. Ultimately then, other factors will come into play; and that is when the US’s underlying strengths ought to again emerge, if we haven’t been driven into abject poverty by the marxists. Strengths like the entrepreneurial spirit that genuine freedom encourages, and the strength of the English language (since non-western writing systems are a boat anchor on their education systems). So, I could easly see a multi-decade period of gradual decline for the US followed by a resurgence. Whether the country has the patience for it, or whether other events will change everything is another matter and probably more likely.
Reference the quaint cottages of Roosevelt and Obama.
http://www.nps.gov/hofr/index.htm
http://www.zillow.com/blog/2008-09-17/barack-obamas-chicago-house/
Yes, the rich hate them in the much the same manner that Obama’s earnings above #250,000 are only to provide a meager existence for Sasha and Malia.
There’s a point where you’ve made enough money, but you have to think about the children.
Ronnie: believe it or not I agree with Westin (but necessarily with your respondants.
Hank
Westen identifies himself as a “messaging consultant to non-profit groups and Democratic leaders”. He says that “the average American had no idea what the Democrats were trying to accomplish by deficit spending because no one had bothered to explain it to them with the repetition and evocative imagery that our brains require to make an idea, particularly a paradoxical one, ‘stick’”. No one adequately explained what Obamacare was supposed to do, or credit card reform, or bailing out the banks. “All Americans knew, and all they know today, is that they’re still unemployed, they’re still worried about how they’re going to pay their bills at the end of the month and their kids still can’t get a job.”
If you can’t see the condescension in that argument, have your vision checked. The average American saw that the federal deficit had gone sky-high with no evident effect on unemployment, that Obamacare passed over the objections of the public and Obama’s administration has now exempted hundreds of favored groups from it but not the average American, and that Obama’s soak-the-rich rhetoric has neither soaked the rich or helped the poor. Obama’s loss of popularity and defeat in 2010 wasn’t a result of bad PR, it was a result of bad policy. This is obvious to the average American, invisible to psychology profesors.
Qualifications to your analysis. First the fact that Obama did not publish during the years he taught constitutional law is irrelevant. He was, I believe, an adjunct, not a full-time faculty member, and adjuncts usually fill in or teach courses or sections full-time faculty have no time for, and thus publication is not required. The only thing his lack of publication proves is that he does not have the interests of a research scholar, something that does not disqualify him for a political career.
Second, you refer critically to “the rule of experts.” Yet your own view that reducing the deficit will increase employment is not a matter of simple common sense but a (controversial) view of economic experts and requires a complex analysis beyond the capacity of the average voter to justify. Given the enormous size of the economy, its complexity, competing economic theories all of which have some evidence in their favor, it is impossible to identify a non-controversial policy to cure our ills. See Hayek’s great Nobel Prize lecture “The pretence of knowledge”.
Welcome to the climate debate Ron, where one side are concerned scientists, and the other side are denialist stooges for the oil companies. And this kind of language is routinely used in what are supposed to be academic scientific journals.
On one side are the leaders in science as well as 30,000 scientists who signed a petition expressing their scepticism about this improbable theory. On the other side are those in the pay and debt of government grants who have so little confidence in their theory that they manipulate data and hide their findings for fear that the river of funding will run dry if the government sponsored mania of AGW dies. Anyone who uses the word denier to refer to those sceptical of an unproven theory is a snorking moron.
Westen: “…chose to ignore some disquieting aspects of his biography: that he had accomplished very little before he ran for president, having never run a business or a state; that he had a singularly unremarkable career as a law professor…; and that, before joining the United States Senate, he had voted “present” … dodging difficult issues.”
There’s an old Jewish saying:
“Don’t marry a man hoping you can change him.”
In politics, this would read:
“Don’t support a candidate hoping that he will overcome his flaws after he gets into office.”
And that’s a cautionary note for us conservatives as well:
Romney has a reputation as a flip-flopper.
If he becomes President, don’t expect him to stop flip-flopping.
Westen: “…chose to ignore some disquieting aspects of his biography: that he had accomplished very little before he ran for president, having never run a business or a state; that he had a singularly unremarkable career as a law professor…; and that, before joining the United States Senate, he had voted “present” … dodging difficult issues.”
Why do people pretend not to know the difference in recognized learning between a professor and a mere lecturer. And Obama didn’t write that book either. He delivered his notes and tapes to Ayers. He finishes nothing – except a round of golf.
Completely off-topic: Thank you for your series of articles about leftists in music. And the one about the progressivist summer camp. Those articles answered some questions I didn’t even know how to formulate or answer. I am very grateful to you.
Most of the comments were excellent, which is why I keep coming back to PJM. (For contrast, try reading “townhall” comments.) Often, the readers’ comments are as good or better than the articles.
“Progressives see themselves as the only legitimate representatives of ordinary people. Yet their vision of what democracy requires frequently conflicts with what majorities believe and how they choose to live.”
And yet while a large majority of Americans favored a combination of cuts and tax increases, right wing fanaticism brought us to the brink of default. Even when Obama proposed huge cuts – cuts that would have satisfied the rating agencies – wingnut dogma prevailed because the proposal also called for closing certain loopholes.
“right wing fanaticism brought us to the brink of default”
Are you kidding me? Do you even hold open the possibility that as it is now, the government gets way more money than is necessary to “govern” properly.
Do you understand that if they raise tax rates there is a very high probability that this will actually reduce revenue?
Do you understand that in a free market (the only kind that actually works and delivers your accustomed standard of living), taxes on businesses are simply passed on to the consumer and, depending on the product, it is a very regressive form of taxation?
Do you think that absent the need to please voluntary customers and make a profit, any organization (read: government) can ever do anything efficiently and free of waste and fraud?
Mix in some critical thinking instead of parroting the Progressive’s weak defensive statements regarding the mess they have made by enabling government to dominate our markets and our society.
“the panic of the progressive mind”
Cute. But apropos The Wall Street Journal, the only ones panicking are members of the New Corps Board of Directors, who are having an emergency meeting, Tuesday, Aug. 9. From The Daily Beast:
“Tuesday’s meeting will determine whether the control Murdoch exerts over his board is still total, or whether the company’s independent directors will push for change. On July 19, those nine directors announced that they had retained lawyers with expertise in criminal law and the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which applies to American companies that break laws overseas.”
Yeah, yeah! We all know the mantra by heart now. (David Axelrod was pumping it out over the weekend and the lapdog press ate it up.) “Obama holds no responsibility for anything involving the economy and it’s all the fault of the “wingnuts” who keep making this an issue.” (Is “wingnut” today’s perjorative slander of choice?) Oh and it’s also all the fault of Fox News and the evil right-wing media. How dare any news organization give airtime to views that aren’t pro-administration! It’s positively un-American! Everyone should be watching MSNBC because they are so “fair and reasonable.”
I know I speak for a lot of conservatives who would have gladly supported tax increases in this emergency except for one thing. Nobody trusts this administration with any new sources of income. The administration’s failure to present anything resembling a plan on specific cuts and the Democrats general failure to even produce a budget over the last two years has left both the administration and the Democratic party with zero credibility in matters of fiscal reform. Even with the financial house coming down around their ears the Dems are rabidly hungry for a new “stimulus” and other payouts intended to reward their base.
You have perfectly illustrated what their strategy will be. Blame the conservative media for being “extremist”, blame the Tea Party for the rating downgrade, avoid any specifics in terms of budget cuts and pillory the GOP as the party ready to push granny and gramps into a wood chipper. Trust me – It’s already been done to death.
‘You have perfectly illustrated what their strategy will be. Blame the conservative media for being “extremist”….’
Hey chambers, I don’t have a strategy. You must be thinking of the News Corp Board. They’re the ones who’ve hired a criminal attorney.
All right I’ll bite. And all of this gets us just “where” exactly in the larger scope of things? You must be one of those “War on Fox” types who would be glad to see the entire nation collapse into a fiery wreck as long as such a collapse takes Fox with it. It’s what Winston Churchill said about this type of thinking….”A fanatic is one who can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject.”
Well I hope Media Matters is at least paying you a minimum wage.
the writers statements might have some crediblity if he had not just several days ago chastised the TEA Party for not getting in line for this horrid debt “deal” which has caused us to be downgraded, the only bigger fool than Mr. Radosh himself is anyone who gives an ounce of credence to anything he says.
I thought he made a lot of sense but based on your reasoned and articulate post I now realize that we are all fools here at PJMedia.
Soros in his own words.
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/open-society-soro…
“Happiness and moral duty are inseparably connected.” George Washington
The 2012 Republican Presidential Primary Candidates
One of the trends I find “exceptional” about the USA today is the number of religious sects and cults participating directly in the electoral process. The leading contender for the Republican nomination for President, Gov. Mitt Romney, is a Mormon, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church), a religion considered heretical by many mainstream Christians like nearly all mainstream Protestant Churches and the Catholic Church.
Gov. Rick Perry of Texas began his Presidential campaign by organizing a “Christian only” evangelical, and “dominionist” prayer meeting called “The Response: a call to prayer for a nation in crisis.” “Dominionism” is the belief that holds the Holy Bible as dominant over laws made by man. For an examination of the relationship between Gov. Perry and the controversial “New Apostolic Reformation” movement, see the Texas Observer’s article “Rick Perry’s Army of God” http://www.texasobserver.org/cover-story/rick-perrys-army-of-god. “The Response” was a gathering of the different tribes of American fundamentalism – Christian Zionists, prayer warriors, apostolic and prophetic types, etc. – under the umbrella of political and spiritual revival, see Rachael Maddow’s special report: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908//vp/44098787#44098787
Like Governor Perry, Congresswoman Michele Bachmann espouses a “dominionist” religious perspective and spent her student years in law school studying the “dominionist” approach to society, law and government, see John Chait’s article in the New Republic: http://www.tnr.com/blog/jonathan-chait/90014/michelle-bachmanns-worldview.
Gov. Sarah Palin is a member of a “The Wasilla Assembly of God.” The “Wasilla Assembly” is a member of the Assemblies of God, a Pentecostal Christian denomination founded in 1914, in the United States. The ‘Four Core Beliefs’ of the Assemblies of God are Salvation, Baptism in the Holy Spirit, Divine Healing and the Second Coming of Christ. A dramatic insight into Pentecostalism is found in the 1997 film, The Apostle written, directed and starring Robert Duvall, as a charismatic “Pentecostal” preacher. Pentecostals are known to “speak in tongues:” see a clip from Duvall’s movie, The Apostle: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FwMu9WW_bg.
The Apostle’s main character” Sonny” is what social scientists once politely referred to as “Other Protestants.” Sonny was actually a preacher in the traditional holiness movement, distinct from the Pentecostal movement, which believes that the baptism in the Holy Spirit involves speaking in tongues. Many of the early Pentecostals were from the holiness movement, and to this day many “classical Pentecostals” maintain much of holiness doctrine and many of its devotional practices, according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holiness_movement.
Modern “dominionism” is largely unknown to most Americans. The list of unknown schismatic sects, cults, groups, exotic beliefs and churches, which the contenders for the Republican nomination belong to or are in agreement with, is “exceptional.” The religious fringe, it seems, has become the Protestant mainstream.
Today’s Republicans could be rebranded the “Christian Republican Party.” The center core of Protestant faith has migrated from “Liberal Protestantism” to an entrepreneurial-style, evangelist and fundamentalist faith, which votes heavily on the Republican Row. It was once believed that such sects originated mainly among the religiously neglected poor. Clearly, this is now no longer the case. It has been argued by social scientists that insecurity, differential status and anxiety characterize these religious movements. The effects of the Great Recession and the affects of geographic relocation and workplace displacement have contributed to a sense of anxiety and anomie among the American middle-class.
Ernst Troeltsch, the major historian of sectarian religion, has characterized the psychological appeal of fundamentalist religious sects in a way that might as appropriately be applied to extremist politics. A direct connection between the social roots of political and religious extremism has been observed in a number of countries. It was observed by the American sociologist S. M. Lipset, as early as the 1960s that, “the point here is that rigid fundamentalism and dogmatism are linked to the same underlying characteristics, attitudes, and predispositions which find another outlet in allegiance to extremist political movements.”
Many western democracies have “Christian Democratic Parties,” the US, because it is “exceptional,” has a “Christian Republican Party.” The candidates for the Republican nomination have made their religious views of scripture known, by degrees. To discover what these candidates deeply and sincerely believe requires the investigative work of a “large metropolitan newspaper.”
The ascendancy of the “nouveau fundamentalist Protestant elite” to high leadership positions in the Republican Party needs to be understood as a serious step toward a profound redefinition of church and state in America. The ascendancy of hard-core chronic “know-nothing-ism” and “anti-intellectualism,” so eloquently written about by Columbia historian Richard Hofstadter, and sectarian belief systems, is undoubtedly “exceptional” for a modern mass political party with governmental responsibilities. While it is argued that Europe is experiencing a “crisis of faith,” the United States is experiencing a revivalism parallel with the Second Great Awakening of the 1800s.
The decline of mainstream Methodists, Presbyterians, Congregationalists and Episcopalians as forces affecting the direction of the Republican Party, has been statistically significant, and the rise of “Other Protestants,” and sects, has marked a realignment of voting patterns and political commitment.
Is it possible to image Presidential candidate John F. Kennedy organizing a 30,000 person “Catholics only” prayer service as a campaign launch? One of the famous quotes from Kennedy’s address to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association, during the 1960 national election, was, “I am not the Catholic candidate for President. I am the Democratic Party’s candidate for President who also happens to be a Catholic. I do not speak for my Church on public matters — and the Church does not speak for me.”