Theocon Fantasies

Fire of Liberty

If you've watched the cable networks or have tuned into NPR of late, you've probably heard about Kevin Phillips and his wild eyed writings within his new book "American Theocracy" that claims that President Bush and his friends of the religious right are pushing for our republican government to be replace by a conservative theocracy. Now if our government starts moving in the direction of the clerics in Iran or Saudi Arabia in which our religious leaders start making policy and enacting laws I'd be worried but from what I see we're a heck of a long way from creating some grand theocratic cabal that Phillips claims is occurring or will happen in the near future.

I'd say his claims will fall on deaf ears within this country due to the fact that since the founding of this nation our leaders have always referenced G-d as an inspiration and guiding force behind the founding and the continued success of this nation.(Such generally happens in a nation that's 84% Christian) Just look at Washington's and other president's speeches as well as their writings and you'll see that Phillips is way off base. While I haven't had time to delve into Phillips "grassy knoll" theories about where this nation's government is heading, Bloomberg columnist Andrew Ferguson has barred the burden of reading the book and seems to have taken down Phillip's arguments in his most recent column. Here's a sample of Ferguson's masterful takedown of "American Theocracy":

Phillips worries that Bush believes God has called him to do what he does as president. That's probably true.

After all, most religious believers, whether they're politicians or stevedores, believe that their relationship with God informs how they do their work; this is one of the things that make them religious.

And it's not as though Bush tried to hide this element in his thinking from voters. Few presidential campaigners have been so open -- indeed, so tiresomely and compulsively self-exposing -- about their religious beliefs.

At times, Phillips's fretting inflates into comical paranoia. You can almost see the eyes dart and bulge, the upper lip moisten and quiver, when Phillips says that Bush is ``double-coding'' his public statements -- speaking words that are ``only mildly religious on the surface, but beneath that full of allusions to biblical passages and Christian hymns.'' Abraham Lincoln did that too, you know, and look what happened to him.

Inherent Danger

Phillips's implicit theme is that the confluence of religion and democratic politics is inherently anti-democratic. This will be news to anyone who admires the abolition movement of the 19th century or the civil rights movement of the 20th, both of which were promoted and led by religious personages using religious reasoning and religious rhetoric.

One might be tempted to say that Phillips is really advocating a kind of reverse (and unconstitutional) ``religious test'' for politicians: Orthodox believers should stay out of politics altogether.

One might be tempted to say this, but one should resist the temptation, lest one become like Phillips himself. He is a paragon of today's degenerate political debate, in which each side insists, hysterically, that the other is not merely wrong but dangerous. The U.S. constitutional system is designed precisely to stymie extremists -- yet professional polemicists claim that their political opposites have an open field to tyranny.

Well done Mr. Ferguson, I couldn't have said it better myself. For me I prefer to read books which shows that our leaders do have a sense of our foundings and how G-d has played a special role in doing so. To learn more on this check out the following books:

On Two Wings - By Michael Novak
Washington's G-d - By Michael Novak
American Gospel - By Jon Meacham
Separation of Church and State (Not an modern day ACLU friendly book) by Philip Hamburger