A Conundrum?

Why is it that at one and the same time our society has had the largest religious revival in over two hundred years and has at the same time the most bellicose, corrupt and ideologically rigid government in its history? It is generally assumed that religion and morality are intimately connected such that, for example, any group given the task of investigating social morality almost always includes a member of the clergy. I suggest this congruity is not coincidental.

The extent of religious enthusiasm is not only greater than the Great Awakening of the 1730’s it is, especially considering the vastly extended range of human knowledge and awareness of other societies, more deliberately ant-intellectual as evidenced by creationism and its efforts to suborn science with politics amply illustrate. It is, like its 18^th century predecessor essentially a fundamentalist movement. As such it:

· is suing the University of California to require that institution to give credit for its courses. The new 25 million dollar Creation Museum in Kentucky recently opened to overflowing crowds.

· is more bellicose in its willingness to unleash the world’s largest military establishment on the citizens of small nations. One of its favorite hymns, Onward Christian Soldiers, expresses the latent militarism in Christianity. It has not shied form the slaughter of thousands of innocent civilians and their children.

· has, through its political leaders, for the first time in American history, formally espoused and practiced heinous forms of torture.

· has instigated and tolerated the destruction of our fundamental liberties and rights.

· has engendered the largest per capita prison population of any developed country in the world, largely due to its paranoia about and punishment response to drug use. One wonders per Karl Marx, if religion sees competition from drugs.

· has used millions of taxpayer funds to enrich itself.

· has corrupted the language that our society depends upon for communication with the intent to delude our citizens. Notice how they have conflated the common meaning of the word theory with the rigorous use of that term in science.

· would demolish abortion and birth control in spite of a human population growth that now threatens human survival, not to mention a decent quality of life.

In short they care nothing for mankind, except to dominate it. Note the Christian Dominionism movement, that volatile mix of religion and politics, which can so easily end in Fascism.

To the above charges, and there are many more, some may say that I am myself conflating fundamentalism with other kinds of religion. My reply is that when an institution puts reason first, rather than faith, belief or spiritualism, I shall cease calling it a religion. Faith has no inherent test for relevance and hence can be attached to anything – and that is where the trouble begins.

One of the fundamental reasons religion can have such deleterious consequences is that it deals in certainties when regarding the natural world and absolutes when dealing with morality. Because the natural world is highly variable and less than adequately known, reality defeats religion’s certainty repeatedly, often with disastrous results as exemplified by the refusal to treat AIDS as a disease rather than God’s punishment of evil doers. Similarly, because humans are very complex entities dealing with a complex reality and other complex humans, the rigidity that religion’s absolutes introduce into human value systems not infrequently leads to catastrophic results. People are currently being slaughtered by the thousands because of the inability of Islam’s various factions to accept each other’s humanity, not to mention G. W. Bush’s declared guidance from his god and the slaughter that has entailed.

Thus it is that when mankind feels most certain of its moral bearings it commits its most horrendous crimes. When will we demand of religion that, like science, it realize its own limitations and allow mankind to approach the natural world and each other with the same tentative, evidence searching, posture?

Bob Newhard

Impending American fascism

While I have written on this subject before, the recent purchase of the Wall Street Journal by Rupert Murdoch and his intention to establish a new business TV channel in October 2007 lend additional urgency to this issue.

A brief review of the salient facts about the Bush presidency:

Project for a New American Century written by Dick Cheney et alia in 1992 outlines the purpose and road to American empire.

Bush rushes to declare a war in response to a terrorist attack. Terrorism cannot be fought as a war because there is no defined enemy or geographic area of encounter between the supposed forces. The point in declaring a war was to institutionalize this amorphous and endless conflict so that it could be made a military undertaking and so that an indefinite state of emergency could be created. Such a state, as George Orwell so aptly described is necessary to the continuous control of a society by the few “protectors.”

Bush demands and gets the USA Patriot Act giving the presidency many earmarks of fascism, including the ability to declare protest an act of terrorism. John Ashcroft declared that protest against the President in time of “war” is tantamount to treason.

Loss of habeus corpus.

Appointment of a Right Wing Supreme Court majority.

The use of “signings” to countermand legislation he does not like, without the transparency that a veto would provide.

I see Murdoch’s acquisition of the Wall Street Journal and his imminent creation of a business TV channel as the latest steps in the corporate takeover of the United Sates and the institution of fascism. If one applies what Murdoch has done to the news, i.e. turn it into blatant propaganda, to what he will do with the Wall Street Journal and especially his business channel, this nation will be subjected to a continuous barrage of propaganda extolling the virtues of corporate capitalism and denouncing liberals, progressives and anybody arguing for social responsibility in our government and economy. They have already demonized the word liberal such that democrats like Hillary Clinton refuse to be identified as such. Remember Murdoch has held a fund raiser for Hillary. When resistance to this process becomes significant, which will probably occur, if not sooner, when the United States experiences the imminent depression, then the full impact of the USA Patriot Act will become evident. The intimate relationship between corporations and fascism was made explicit in Mussolini’s description of fascism as a corporate state. The potential for fascism in the United States is further shown by a relatively little known attempt to overthrow Franklin D. Roosevelt’s administration by force in the 1930’s by major bankers, financiers and industrialists concerned that he was taking the country to socialism. (A prominent view is that he actually saved the country for capitalism. My view is that he probably saved it from fascism.) Much of this effort was centered in the American Liberty League to which many of these men belonged and which had close connections to the American Legion. See the following web site on the League and the plot http://coat.ncf.ca/our_magazine/links/53/all-both.html.

In general the plot was to raise a private army of 500,000 men from the disgruntled veterans of World War I and take over the government by force. They made the mistake of choosing Marine General Smedly Butler to raise this army. Butler is the most decorated Marine General ever. He was popular with the troops because he openly identified with them in preference to the Washington brass. He was believed to be pro-corporation because he fought battles for corporate benefit in China, the Philippines and South and Central America. What they were unaware of was that Butler despised the corporations that generated the wars that killed his men. After his retirement he wrote War is a Racket, a book describing the corporate interests for whose benefit U. S. troops fought. Butler went along with the plot until he was able to identify those involved. He then informed Congress, which held hearings on the matter and condemned the plot, but suppressed the evidence they had gathered. There is still speculation as to why this evidence was suppressed. I have been unable to ascertain whether any of these financial bigwigs ever went to jail.

To sum up: The Bush administration by fiat of an imperial presidency and a Far Right Republican congress has taken this country far down the road toward complete corporate dominance of our society, it has implemented the legal mechanisms for suppressing dissent, it controls the major media, has established surveillance of the citizenry, has, with terrorism, established an interminable enemy and has implemented ingredient after ingredient of the corporate state. This country has seen the corporate elite attempt to stage a fascist coup before. At the beginning of his book When Corporations Rule the World David Korten has a quotation from George Soros as follows; “Perhaps the greatest threat to freedom and democracy in the world today comes from the formation of unholy alliances between government and business. This is not a new phenomenon. it used to be called fascism….The outward appearances of the democratic process are observed, but the powers of the state are diverted to the benefit of private interests.”

I do not see progressives addressing this imminent threat of fascism at all. While we get all excited about health care, education, etc., which are important, they and our civil liberties and rights are in grave jeopardy from incipient fascism. Are we afraid to call corporate control of our country by its proper name? Are we unable to see or unwilling to articulate how corporations have taken over this country and are in the process of doing so to the planet? Are we willing to see all human values reduced to monetary values? There was a time when progressives clearly and forcefully pointed out the threat to democracy that the corporations posed. The Progressive Party ran on an anti-corporate platform. William Cullen Bryant, their presidential candidate, portrayed corporations as crucifying the people on a cross of gold. The muckrakers were not afraid to lay out the greed of John D. Rockefeller. Upton Sinclair took the meat packing industry to task in The Jungle and Sinclair Lewis portrayed the insidious influence of the local Chamber of Commerce in his novel Babbit. Even the Republican President Theodore Roosevelt was outraged by corporate greed. To someone of my age it appears that the American populace and its culture have been seduced by the corporate media into believing that owning and enjoying more and more things is a civic virtue. Progressives need to get a grip before it is too late. To do that takes courage and the longer we wait the more courage it will take.

Additional reading on fascism in America, past and present may be found in:

It Can't Happen Here
by Sinclair Lewis, copyright 1935

This novel can be read today as prescient in its depiction of the rise of fascism from business interests.

Friendly Fascism: The New Face of Power in America
by Bertram Gross, copyright 1980

American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War On America
by Chris Hedges, copyright 2006

Bob Newhard