The Theology of American Empire
American foreign policy is built on a deep foundation of Christian theology. Some of the people who make our foreign policy may understand that foundation. Most probably aren’t even aware of it. But foundations are hidden underground. You can stand above them, and even take a strong stand upon them, without knowing they are there. When it comes to foreign policy, we are all influenced by theological foundations that we rarely see.
For example, few Americans have read the work of Reinhold Niebuhr, the most influential American theologian of the 20th century. Many have never even heard the name. Yet Niebuhr’s thought affects us all. In the 1930s, he launched an attack on the liberal Christianity of the Social Gospel, a movement that powerfully influenced U.S. foreign policy in the first third of the 20th century. The liberals were starry-eyed fools, Niebuhr charged, because they trusted people to be reasonable enough to resolve international conflicts peacefully. They forgot the harsh reality of original sin.
Niebuhr wrapped that traditional notion of sin in a new intellectual package and sold it successfully, not only to theologians but to the foreign policy elite. Since the 1940s, foreign policy has largely been reduced to an endless round of debates about how to apply Niebuhr’s “realism.” Policymakers who still tried to follow the Social Gospel path have been marginalized and stigmatized with the harshest epithet a Niebuhrian can hurl: “unrealistic.”
It’s a Jungle Out There
Many policymakers, like much of the public at large, have come to find a strange comfort in the world as Niebuhr described it. They see a jungle where evildoers, who are all around, must be hunted down and destroyed. Though frightening, this world can easily become the stage for simplistic dramas of good against evil. And the moral certainty of being on the side of good — the side of God — can provide a sense of security that more than makes up for the constant terror. That was not what Niebuhr had in mind. But as he found out so painfully, once you let ideas loose in the world, you can’t control what others do with them.
Niebuhr would have been pained to see what the neoconservatives have done with his ideas. Their theory starts out from his own premise: All people are born naturally selfish and impulsive. The godfather of neoconservatism, Irving Kristol, was (like most of the early neocons) an intellectual — a teacher, writer, and editor — and (like many of the early neocons) a Jew. But he turned to Christian theology to describe his Niebuhrian view of human nature: “Original sin was one way of saying this, and I had no problem with that doctrine.”1 Selfish impulses, when they get out of control, can tear society apart, he warned. To preserve social order we need a fixed moral order. We therefore need a clear sense of the absolute difference between good and bad, strict rules that tell us what is good, and powerful institutions that can get people to obey those rules.
According to this worldview, organized religion has been the most effective institution to promote moral absolutes and self-control. Religion now needs to be strengthened to stave off a rising tide of moral relativism that, along with secular humanism, is breaking down the bulwarks of social order and threatening to release a flood of selfish impulse to drown us all in chaos. A favorite neoconservative columnist, Charles Krauthammer, complains that American mass culture, dominated by skepticism and pleasure, is an “engine of social breakdown.” The best antidote would be a “self-abnegating religious revival.” Since that is not likely to happen, Krauthammer admits, the best place to recover moral discipline and will power is in foreign affairs: America must find the will to exercise its strength and become “confident enough to define international morality in its own, American terms.”2
Original Sin Goes Global
When neoconservatives apply their views to international relations, they deviate from Niebuhr’s teaching. All people may be sinners, they imply, but not all nations. They assume an (often vaguely defined) hierarchy of nations. At the bottom are the enemies of America, consistently described as chaotic, irrational monsters who are incapable of self-control and bent on provoking instability and evil for its own sake. Above them are neutral nations and then U.S. allies near the top of the pyramid. At the top is the United States, in a class by itself because its national motives are good and pure, somehow untainted by original sin.
Neoconservatives insist on this hierarchy, with its dramatic contrast between the good United States and its evil enemies, because it gives them the sense of moral clarity and certainty that they rely on to hold back the relativism they fear. They bolster their sense of certainty by reducing international affairs to simplistic myths: black-and-white tales of absolute good versus absolute evil. (Here I use the word “myth” in its religious sense of a narrative story that expresses a community’s worldview and basic values.) George W. Bush tapped into this mythic world when he said that the war on terrorism is “a monumental struggle between good and evil. But good will prevail.” The outcome is certain, according to Bush, because “we all know that this is one nation, under God.” But Americans must do their world-ordering job pretty much alone, since other nations and international institutions are too selfish to be trusted. The United States must rely primarily on military might, since the only language that the sinful evildoers understand is force.
The neoconservatives did not invent this myth. It goes back to the Puritan belief in “the new Israel” and Americans as God’s chosen people, with the special privilege and responsibility of bringing order to a sinful, chaotic world. Most Americans are still likely to see their nation as the global hero fulfilling that sacred task. Only the United States, they believe in a great leap of faith, is moved by an unselfish desire to serve the good of all humanity by spreading ordered liberty.
Throughout the Cold War era, across the political spectrum, there was no doubting the name of the threatening evil: Communism. After a decade of drift and uncertainty in the 1990s, the September 11 attacks, despite their horror, allowed the nation to breathe easier, at least in terms of the theology of foreign policy. Once again, it seemed that everyone agreed on the name of the monstrous sinners, the source of instability. Rudolph Giuliani could have been speaking for most Americans when he explained that the cultural payoff of the war on terrorism was moral stability: “The era of moral relativism…must end. Moral relativism does not have a place in this discussion.” That crusading tone of certainty gave Bush and the neoconservatives a very free hand in the early post-September 11 days, when they launched the invasion of Afghanistan. The administration then invaded Iraq with the approval of 75% of the U.S. public and nearly all the foreign policy elite.
Iraq War
The myth of U.S. moral and global supremacy - Americans as the world’s chosen people - went largely unchallenged until the U.S. venture in Iraq went sour. The myth says that the good guys are supposed to win every time, because they are good. When the myth does not get played out in reality, people start to complain. If you look at the current debate about Iraq from the standpoint of myth and theology, the complainers fall into three broad groups.
First there is the mainstream of the foreign policy elite, made up of Democrats and more moderate Republicans. They complain that the Bush administration is pursuing the right goals but using the wrong tactics. That’s because the elite still hold on to some shreds of the old Social Gospel view. They give most of the world a bit more credit for rationality; they fear the impulses of original sin a bit less. So they see military strength as one of several ways to secure America’s global hegemony. They are more willing to take a multilateral approach and use the carrot as well as the stick - to pull diplomatic and economic levers before calling out the troops.
But these differences, though they can be very important, are largely ones of degree and tactics. Across the board, members of the foreign policy establishment, even the liberal Democrats, still give a very respectful (sometimes slavish) hearing to the great theologian Niebuhr. But they apply his “realistic” view of original sin only to other nations. The liberals among the elite, too, want their sense of moral clarity and certainty reassured by seeing it played out in a global drama of good against evil. So they make a huge exception for the supposedly pure and innocent motives of their own nation, the chosen people. They believe that the U.S. has a higher moral standing, which gives us the right and duty to rule. That’s how they can justify the most ruthless policies against anyone who stands in their way.
The bipartisan elite may not value the display of American strength as an end in itself, the way neoconservatives do. They are willing to risk a short-term appearance of weakness in one place in order to bolster long-term U.S. strength everywhere else. But long-term strength (including a long-term military presence in Iraq) is still crucial, because they feel a sacred calling to enforce “stability” - their favorite code word for a single global order that protects U.S. interests - everywhere and forever.
The second group of war critics is on the right. A growing number of traditional conservatives criticize the administration and the bipartisan establishment for betraying genuine Niebuhrian “realism.” These hard-core “realists” want the United States to recognize that it too is a sinful nation, limited in its goodness as well as its resources, all too likely to overreach and eventually destroy itself if it doesn’t scale back its hubristic dream of enduring empire.
Thus the right-wing “realists” become strange bedfellows with the third group of war critics, the left-wingers, who, starting from very different principles, arrive at the same anti-imperialist conclusions. Though most of them don’t know it, what makes leftists leftist is that they still champion many of the basic values of the Social Gospel movement. They do not accept the doctrine of original sin; they don’t think people are inherently doomed to be selfish and unreasonable. They assume that the vast majority of people, if treated decently and given decent living conditions, will respond by being decent people. For the left, order and stability are not as important as human growth, creativity, and transformation. The key to a better world is not strength and dominance, but sharing and cooperation. And leftists often assume - or at least hope - that the long-term trend of history is leading to that better world, a view that is rooted in the biblical hope for redemption.
In Middle America
Leftists who are consistent extend their Social Gospel view to its logical conclusion: There are no monsters - no inherently bad people — only bad conditions. So the good guys versus bad guys myth always distorts reality. But a surprising number of leftists sacrifice logical consistency for the emotional pleasure of the traditional myth. For them, of course, the monsters are the Bush administration, the neoconservatives, sometimes the mainstream Democrats too, and always, above all, the corporate elite whose hand they see behind every gesture of U.S. imperialism.
This left-wing version of the myth does not play very well in middle America, or even on the coasts apart from a few ultra-liberal enclaves. The hardcore “realist” view may get slightly higher ratings, but not much. Most Americans still demand a heavy dose of moral idealism in their foreign policy. They want to continue believing in the myth of American innocence. They won’t give in to a full-blown Niebuhrian pessimism about human nature - at least not when it comes to American humans. And they don’t want to believe that the economic and political leaders of their nation are utterly cynical “realists,” devoid of ideals, caring only about money and power.
So the mass of the citizenry, sick and tired of losing in Iraq, swing in line behind the only critical voice they can support: the foreign policy elite. The public criticizes the administration for its inept effort in Iraq. But most citizens don’t raise any questions about the long-term goals or the theological premises underlying them.
Only when something looks broken do people think about fixing it. The last time the U.S. foreign policy system broke down was when the United States suffered defeat in Vietnam. However, after a short period of radical questioning, a powerful reaction set in, fueled by the deep and widespread need for idealism and moral certainty. The neoconservatives got control of the public conversation in the late 1970s because they recognized that need and offered a Cold War myth that satisfied it.
The same need for moral clarity arose after September 11, but it’s been bitterly betrayed by the failure in Iraq. How can we avoid a similar neoconservative reaction as we question the underpinnings of U.S. foreign policy in the years to come? And if the Iraq debacle boots the neoconservatives out of power for good, how can we use this window of opportunity to challenge the most powerful alternative view, the bipartisan establishment consensus? From the outset it won’t help to scorn the average citizen’s idealistic view of America. That’s like wishing away the Rocky Mountains. Claiming that this worldview is unrealistic would be caving in to a simplistic Niebuhrian “realism.” After all, we on the left believe in our own idealism. We are happy to hear right-wing “realists” argue that Americans are no more idealistic than anyone else. But we forget that Americans are no less idealistic either. That includes even the most powerful leaders of the nation. Rather than demonizing them and dismissing their claim to good intentions outright, we would do better to look for common values that we can all agree on and then find progressive programs that can put those values into practice.
Different Moral Certainties
Just about all Americans, from Bush and Cheney and the CEOs of Exxon and Lockheed-Martin on down, sincerely want the nation to be secure. As long as our notions of security are built on the myth of well-meaning Americans versus ever-threatening evildoers who embody original sin, we can never dispense with the evildoers. They are as necessary in U.S. foreign policy as sin is in Niebuhr’s theology. They always have to be out there threatening us, in our imaginations at least, in order for our pursuit of national security to make any sense at all.
The bipartisan consensus on U.S. foreign policy calls for us to be powerful enough to dominate them. But every step we take to dominate only antagonizes more people and makes some of them really want to harm us. As long as we keep on this self-defeating road, we are not a national security state. We are a national insecurity state. So, we need to redefine national security in a way that meets people’s need for a second value that so many of us share: moral certainty. This involves a faith in some rock-bottom kind of goodness in the world, which many Americans believe has a special home here in the United States.
There is a special kind of goodness, rooted in a special kind of theology, that does have an old and honored home here — the goodness of nonviolence. There have always been Christians who were certain that the only moral way to treat others, even enemies, is with love, not violence. They knew it because Jesus said it, right there in the Bible. In 19th-century America, the abolitionists and Thoreau turned the theology of nonviolence into a homegrown strategy for political change.
Martin Luther King, Jr. took this strategy a crucial step further. He preached that it’s the government’s role to help bring all people together in what he called “the beloved community” (something very much like what the Social Gospel called the Kingdom of God). Every government policy should promote “the mutually cooperative and voluntary venture of man to assume a semblance of responsibility for his brother [and sister]” — the responsibility to help every person fulfill their God-given potential.
In King’s words, no matter how bad a person’s behavior, “the image of God is never totally gone.” So, government must serve everyone, everywhere. No one can be written off as a monstrous evildoer, sinful beyond redemption. That was a moral certainty for King, an essential foundation of his religious faith. King knew all about moral clarity and certainty. He was willing to die for the truths he believed in so firmly. But he was not willing to kill.
A Different Narrative
With King as our guide, we could have a distinctly American foreign policy based on the conviction of absolute moral certainty we find in the Social Gospel and nonviolence traditions.. Our goal would always be to move the world one step closer to becoming a universal beloved community. We would no longer act out the myth of good versus evil. We would not demonize a bin Laden or Saddam — or a Bush or Cheney. We would recognize that when people do bad things, their actions grow out of a global network of forces that we ourselves have helped to create. King said it most eloquently: “We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.”
We can never stand outside the network of mutuality, as if we were the Lone Ranger arriving on the scene to destroy an evil we played no part in creating. Just as Bush is tied to Osama, so each of us is tied to all those who do things that outrage us. We cannot simply destroy them and think that the outrages have been erased. To right the wrongs of the world, we must start by recognizing our own responsibility for helping to spawn those wrongs. Indeed, fixing our own part in the wrongs we see all over the world may be all that we can do.
But in the case of the United States in 2007, that alone would be more than a full time job for our foreign policy. We would have to, among other things:
- end the occupation that creates a breeding ground for violent jihadis in Iraq and Afghanistan;
- reverse the policy of supporting authoritarian regimes in the Middle East;
- stop participating in the mad rush for power and resources in Africa, which breeds disasters like Rwanda and Darfur;
- withdraw support for the corporations and financiers who would strangle the emerging popular democracies in Latin America;
- and treat everyone as our brothers and sisters, even the leaders of North Korea and Cuba and Iran.
In short, we would have to create a new notion of “national interest” based on the moral certainty that we are all threads in a network of mutuality that is the foundation of our national as well as individual life. Since our foundation is infinite and eternal, no one can threaten to destroy it, or us. Embracing that principle as the basis of foreign policy could set us on the road to a radically new way of thinking about genuine national security.
If that’s not something all Americans can agree on, at least it’s a program that gets the debate down to our most basic assumptions. This is a democracy. If the people want a religion-laden foreign policy based on the doctrine of original sin and the myth of good against evil, it’s what we should have. But at least we should all talk about it together, openly and honestly.
Notes
1. Irving Kristol, Neoconservatism: The Autobiography of an Idea (New York: Free Press, 1995), p. 5.
2. Charles Krauthammer, “When to Intervene,” The New Republic, May 6, 1985, p. 10.
Ira Chernus is Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder and author of Monsters To Destroy: The Neoconservative War on Terror and Sin. Email: chernus@colorado.edu
To summarize: most of the US electorate is nationalistic and will not question the underlying motivations for war. Their support for war is, however, diminished when the US cannot demonstrate that it is winning a war.
This characteristic is not unique to the US. I lived in Germany during the 1970’s and found that while some Germans condemned Hitler’s atrocities, far more Germans condemned him for not winning World War II.
The U.S. would do best to view itself as having no special role in international affairs, and to arrange it’s internal affairs, including military spending accordingly.
capitalism seems to require the belief in Original Sin, does it not? talk to any capitalist about how screwed up their world is and in 5 seconds you’ll get to “human nature” for why we are all killing, raping, and pillaging one another. the only cooperation and social solidarity that capitalists can agree to (beyond your nuclear family, that is; can’t kill mom & pop or rape your sister) is when they get the nation to go to war to restore the “moral order” (docility, unity, obedience) capitalism incessantly destroys. then we are all in it together, it’s a fight for civilization, etc., etc.
good article, but clearly the capitalists are willing to kill tons & tons of people to protect their property. doesn’t that render non-violence a failure as a strategy? [just a question you ted kaczyinskis and fbi out there!]
What an enlightened - and enlightening - article! Most of us live our lives unaware of the essential myths that define the way we perceive and interact with the world. The greatest among us have always grasped those myths and frequently redefined them, hopefully - but not always - for the better. It seems to me that the message of Jesus was clearly to redefine human morality away from the law and toward individual “right action.” Perhaps this is the essence of Teilhard de Chardin’s “Christic Conciousness.” Yet, two mellinea later, the old myth of original sin, the essentail depravity of humanity, and the “eye for an eye” rules of a vengeful, inhumane God still informs much of the world. But will it always be thus? Personally, “i am constantly awaiting a rebirth of wonder” which can lead us to create myths more in line with what the world may really be like - relavistic rather than absolute.
Niebuhr combined with Lord Acton (”Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely”) applied to nations provides an ordering the reverse of that of the neocons, with the US of today and the other most powerful nations in history being expected to be the most evil. That does appear to fit the facts much better than the neocons’ ordering.
Good article! It’s sure helpful to understand the myths we live (and die) by.
As a general rule I have noticed that whenever I start to feel smug and self-righteous then I know I’m in error.
Neither our personal nor our national EGOs belong at the center of the universe. I must reject the myth of original sin because it requires a defective creater to make defective creatures. Even the struggle between Good and Evil is a Persian Myth.
I never understood this “moral relativism” argument thrown at the left. I’m quite opposed to the relative application of moral principles on others, and fully support moral consistency. It is the right that is morally relative.
Is it not the height of “moral relativism” to exempt oneself from moral rules (like unprovoked attacks on other nations, possession of N-arms) that one forcibly insists others follow?
Isn’t the Golden Rule, which the left follows on principle and the right breaches on principle, the most consistent, un-relative moral rule of all?
Am I missing something?
Wow Niebor, Teilard, MLK, Acton, what a mix,,,and the breadth and width of reader knowledge, OMG,,,sounds like headucation is working on the few who read…to bad those that need to read…DON’T
The theology that drives the US does not date from the 20th century, but from the 17th, from the founding of North American colonies.
The brief infusion of Enlightenment thought that so influenced the generation that separated the colonies from England was quickly abandoned in favor of America as the Chosen Nation, the new Israel, and the US’s imperial expansion has never been anything but the realization of this belief that “biblical” Christian civilization must march on pagans and the old world and subjugate and abolish all other governments.
Chernus’ reflections are as useless as AntiWar.com’s complaints that neoconservatism comes from the Trotskyite past of Irving Kristol & company.
The evil is in the very beginnings of the United States, it is engraved in the colonies, and expressed in the nation. Everything else is, in the worst sense, academic fiddling.
When asked by a reporter how she could believe in the Social Gospel in the face of original sin, that is, in a “fallen” world, Dorothy Day of the Catholic Worker Movement answered, “Because we as Christians believe that we live in a redeemed world.”
“Neoconservatives insist on this hierarchy because it gives them the sense of moral clarity and certainty that they rely on to hold back the relativism they fear.”
yes this is a very intellectual article. As this is a professor, I would like to ask, what commentary would you put in the margins?
for me this is far too overly complicated.
Neoconservatives are in most respects anti-intellectual and spend most of their time, thought, and energy defending their right to remain in this condition. they don’t want to have to think too deeply because when they do it depresses them because they’ve sacrificed their time on earth for a kind of living death and they don’t want to have to think about this. It’s easier to say that everyone else is evil and wrong, rather than to look inward and see that the fault also lies in their own selves and a kind of lassitude.
I’ve worked a little with neoconservatives, liberal and right wing, in a few exclusive communities and the one thing they will rarely if ever do is admit that they have erred. When god forbid you confess to a shortcoming in your own nature, that you have spent hours or years coming to terms with, they interpret this as a sign of weakness. An evil that is in you and not in them if you will, and look at you with disgust and contempt. It is their behavior that refuses to recognize its’ singularity with all of life on this earth, this garden. The plants, animals, and all other humans who live and breath here with them.
they do have to fight the enemy over there, because they know that if they don’t defeat the enemy over there they are surrounded by millions of people who know instinctively that they have no real strength, moral, physical, or otherwise. They’ve mostly been sitting around in easy chairs for the past 20 years since they got out of their college which is the time, when they were fornicating (or not fornicating) with a ferocity, that they look back on as the time when they were last truly alive. And which as they went to work in corporations quickly on the heels of getting our of the university, they have never learned any other kind of behavior but raping and pillaging in the time since.
Neoconservatives are nothing but what and who they can purchase. and if they lose over there, they will have no purchasing power left to them and will have to contemplate the horror, as Joseph Conrad would say. It is easier to call someone else evil than to have to face that.
But we have all done likewise at one time or another, have we not?????
IMHO, “moral relativism” as a term is framed in such a way as to create an untrue Cartesian duality, i.e., “moral relativism” versus “moral absolutism.” In our infancy, we follow rules, and define that as moral action. As we mature, hopefully we can understand the essence of the rules and come to understand that in some cases breaking the rule - by absolutist definition, an immoral choice - can be the moral choice. To me, that is what should be meant by moral relativism. An example comes to mind: when Jesus told the crowd “Let him among you who is without sin cast the first stone.” As far as we know, the woman was guilty of adultery. The mob was within their legal right (and perhaps, as they understood, under a moral obligation) to stone her to death. It seems to me Jesus interjected with a “relative” moral point: perhaps following the rules (absolutist morality) would be wrong.
To PJD: certainly the Golden Rule is a consistent way to treat others, but it sure ain’t easy! And it is in many ways incomplete; what about how we deal with our world in general. Perhaps Kant’s “categorical imperative” expands the idea some.
ZImmie,
“The mob was within their legal right (and perhaps, as they understood, under a moral obligation) to stone her to death. It seems to me Jesus interjected with a “relative” moral point: perhaps following the rules (absolutist morality) would be wrong.”
Thank you for this simple & eloquent analysis — a good way to counter those who say there are ‘non-negotiable absolutes’, by which they only mean abortion & contraception, never war.
“They’ve mostly been sitting around in easy chairs for the past 20 years since they got out of their college which is the time, when they were fornicating (or not fornicating) with a ferocity, that they look back on as the time when they were last truly alive. And which as they went to work in corporations quickly on the heels of getting our of the university, they have never learned any other kind of behavior but raping and pillaging in the time since.”
The most accurate description of the lives of neocons I’ve read. I knew one of the second or third-stringers back in college; after a decade or so of employment by one of the “think tanks”, he made early Limbaugh look anorexic.
Every week, another explanation of what drives this insane cult to lie, cheat, steal, and murder without compunction. It’s like the Serial Killer Movie genre - in the end, it’s always the same story: the killer is crazy and must be stopped.
Okay. Everyone gets it: we’re being held hostage by the scariest, craziest Domestic Enemies of our Constitution ever. It no longer matters WHY they have gone completely off the deep end, because they are beyond help. All that matters now is: how can they be stopped before more hell is unleashed?
‘Every government policy should promote “the mutually cooperative and voluntary venture of man to assume a semblance of responsibility for his brother [and sister]” — the responsibility to help every person fulfill their God-given potential.
How about all americans who think they live in a secular society! How about all Americans who are smart enough to have become atheists? How about women — without the brackets!
Hell no to this vision and to all other religious visions in which more than half the human race would still be sex-subjects. No matter how benign the vision. We evolved to cooperate through nature. We don’t need gods, masters or moral codes. We have them.
People need religion to feel a part of something meaningful. Guess what? You are. It’s called the human race and you’re alive to be in a position to help it survive– or perish under the weight of mass delusion.
Religion is over — if you want it.
Albert Weinberg’s 1935 Manifest Destiny: A Study of Nationalist Expansionism in American History highlights that the imperative was alived and well, nay, defining, in the 19th century.
Naked greed perhaps? But had it ever been any different? The Greeks and the Romans, the cultures on which civilisation is supposed to rest heavily, were no different. Blood and plunder as the raison d’etat.
All the rest is the ideological superstructure.
The thing about religions, and they are positive institutions in a secular government, is that they are authoritarian. God is the supreme leader, but is not seen and speaks through religous leaders whom interpret his words from books written by man, and dicate his rules to the followers. The followers must follow the rules that religous leaders tell us are Gods rule, or be punished by being denied access to heaven, and those deemed evil go to hell.
They tell the people to have faith, since there is no verifiable truth, just words. Those who question their leaders are told they are weak, and implored to have faith in their religion, which is the only religion God favours. Other religions worship false gods, or are not recognized by God, creating an environment of conflict in a world with diversity in religion.
Democracy and Religious Government are incompatable. Oil and Water. God was not elected, he is the Creator and Decider. Religous leaders say they are his educators and police. Religous leaders in government control his army. The military fights Wars against those who are Evil.
Those Dominionists who control our government today do not value Democracy. They see Democracy as an impediment to a New World Order where the world is dominated by the US. Today Democracy is hanging by a thread, might even have broke and we have yet to land. In any event, those in power control the money, the media and the politicians. It all over except the Fat Lady singing. God bless America.
I might feel differently if the media was not controlled, but most people still get their news from the boob tube. Land of the boob’ers, thats us.
The Day of reckoning.
On another thread Jim Glover writes:
‘What the USA will get is a scapegoat for the fall of the corporate War Machine Empire…that is right just like the Christian Zionists will turn on Israel for not converting to Jesus quickly enough…so will the Bush, British, and now French connections and will blame the Jews and everyone will follow because guilt by association is the core of modern political gamesmanship…. so at the scapegoat endgame phase they won’t mention the word “Israel”, but will blame it all on “The Jews”!’
Yes, what happens when the bottom falls out? What happens when middle America believes their children have been sacrificed for the ambitions of Israel through Zionists with dual citizenships setting foreign policy? Will it be all about the oil when America learns that their children’s education and healthcare are secondary to the billions in foreign aid chanelled to Israel to build illegal settlements? What happens when WASP oilmen are looking to deflect the blame and instead of burying stories of Israeli spies and Zionist connections, play them up? How about when lists of Jewish names in financial, media and corporate America appear as the influences that lied to and set up an agenda to drag this country down? What happens when the hideous truth of the Occupation is revealed in the starkest terms as crimes against humanity?
Do you think the glory days will last where the levers of power are controlled and certain truths are suppressed and spun? It won’t last forever–it never does. Until all Jews recognize that “Never Again” applies to all humanity rather than license to act as brutes so Jews are never victims again, they’re setting themselves up for the eventual blame. Again. What happens when it is all blamed on the Jewish NeoCon with allegiance to Israel over the USA?
Be forewarned.
Do the right thing. Now.
Ira Chernus publishes articles that always charge us to reach out. My liberal friends constantly bad mouth my conservative neighbors. In the end, we are all humans. My flag worshipping neighbors have children, parents, and grandparents just like me and they cherish them as much as I cherish my own. What makes them different is their framework of thought and what they idealise the world should be like. At the basic foundation, it all goes back to a wanting a decent life, and Irna has pointed out, this can be reached very easily through a common cause.
Great article, very thought provoking.
War, religion and the killing of our fellow humans are a phenomenon that is extremely difficult to comprehend.
Apparently it is part of the human characteristic to go to war on a regular basis.
I suppose this barbaric form of social intercourse is a big part of natures overall plan to keep the human population from expanding geometrically and overburdening the planet?
To me religion is a big part of the problem as to why humans find it necessary to constantly do battle with our neighbors.
But I am sure it is more than just - my god is better than your god - type of behavior.
The reality is that humans are programmed somehow deep within our DNA to start a war with fellow humans on a regular basis.
Since recorded history and way back before then humans have been killing each other for one reason or another as predictably as the sun rising and setting.
Unfortunately this weird phenomenon is now threatening the end of civilization, as we know it.
No longer will we determine the outcome of a battle by pitting David against Goliath or have the biblical Sampson fight off the philistines with the jawbone of an ass.
Regrettably we are moving way beyond doing battle with primitive weapons, throughout history people thought that the newest weapon to come on the market would surely act as a deterrent and put an end to war. Not.
It is difficult to answer Rodney Kings question of – why can’t we all just get along?
It is sad as an American to realize that at least 50% of the country is constantly clamoring for a war.
Before we unleash a Nuclear nightmare upon each other maybe we can isolate the gene within the human genome that cries out to kill our neighbors so I can have more of the planets resources or some other important justification.
The last six years of complete world turmoil led by this phony theological administration and his religious followers has jaded me against the major religions and there hypocrisy of preaching love and peace on Saturday and Sunday and their call to bloody violent war on Monday, this dichotomy has left me in a comatose state of bewilderment.
As my mamma said: Christians pray on their knees on Sunday, and their neighbors the rest of the week.
As someone from Holland, I feel the need to respond to those Americans who condones all actions Israel does to its neighbors, and who believe it is fine.
Why is it morally sound for those who believe that the state of Israel is justified for everything it does? Let me guess - Jews are the “chosen people” or the favored “culture of God.” Says who? THEIR GOD? Talk about genius logic! Yet, many Americans believe it - as your nation is predominately Christian but what most Christians in America are unaware of is that the Persians had more impact on the formation of Christianity as a religion than Judaism has. Yet, your government wants to invade Iran for Christ.
Do Americans understand that Adolf Hitler himself predicted these unfolding consequences in the early twentieth century that are happening in the present day? He warned the world to never give the Jewish people the control of Palestine, as the consequences would be as he in retrospect rightly predicted.
deep and thoughtful article.
to geoff29: very good post. that old reality twist.
It is interesting to think about the possibility of altering the foundational myths of our political culture. However, I think Chernus is right on in claiming that as leftist reformers the best we can hope to do is embrace the already existing myths but emphasize the more progressive trends latent in these very traditions. I’m sure many of us have had the frustrating experience of trying to explain to many Bush supporters out there WHY some of his policies are so morally atrocious. It would be much easier to get these people listening if we can talk about past American republican presidents (Lincoln, etc.) and about Christ’s sermon on the mount, rather than mentioning abstract principles like justice, human rights, habeas corpus and so forth.