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Blog Against Theocracy Part III: God’s Law, Never Man’s

by tristero

Excerpts from Joseph Morecraft’s book, With Liberty & Justice for All: Christian Politics Made Simple. In these passages, Morecraft explicitly argues for theocracy. He claims that all governments are inherently religious. The only question is whether the state religion will be “humanism” or Christianity. Civil authority must practice God’s law which are laid out in the Bible, and the state has no right to add to or deviate from it. He claims that the primary function of a civil government is extremely limited. Its primary purpose is to punish and “terrorize” those who fail to follow the laws of God. He blames the miseries of a state – both manmade and natural- on the absence of theocracy.

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All forms of human governments draw their authority, power, and jurisdiction from God, not from the will of the people nor the consent of the governed, because governments do not originate with the people, but with God. The voice of the people is NOT the voice of God. (p. 15ff) [NOTE: THIS DIRECTLY CONTRADICTS THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. THE ARGUMENT IS SIMILAR TO THE REASONING OF SCALIA. NOTE ALSO THE LESS PROVOCATIVE ECHO ES OF THIS IDEA IN THE FREQUENT CHRISTIANIST ATTACKS ON “HUMANISM,” “SECULAR HUMANISM,” “TOLERANCE” AND “MATERIALISM.”]…

The U.S. Constitution reflects this basic premise in its establishment of a republic under God rather than a democracy. The two are not synonymous. A democracy is a nation governed by the majority; and a republic is a nation governed by law….(p. 16)

People living in a Christian Republic experience true freedom while those under the “mob rule” of democracies become slaves because democracies soon degenerate into socialist states and dictatorships…(p.17-18)

The citizen, Christian and non-Christian, must be in subjection to the civil government and must respect it, remembering that he is submitting to it for the sake of Christ and that his loyalty to Christ supercedes his loyalty to the state…(p.19 ff)

He who resists authority has opposed the ordinance of God…Since political powers are established by God, we must gladly submit to their authority…Notice what happens if we do not submit to the political ordinance of God: They who resist authority…will receive condemnation upon themselves…(p. 21)

The individual’s duty is clear: he must submit to the powers that be. The state’s duty is equally clear: it must submit to Almighty God. (p. 23)

We may never break the law of God in order to obey the law of the state (p. 27)

…we have a clear statement in the New Testament [Romans 13:3-4] of the God-appointed function of the civil government: to terrorize evildoers. (p. 30)

…let us consider what functions God did not assign to civil government. Notice there is no mention in [Romans 13:3-4] about the responsibility for health, education, or welfare…

The same is true of education [except for, according to the Old Testament] the specific demands, prohibitions and sanctions of civil law (II Chronicles 17:9)….

And the same is true of welfare. (p. 30 -31)

The Constitution of the United States reflects this biblical political order. (p. 31)

God has not given the state the responsibility to plan, regulate, and control people, property, contracts, schools, Churches , businesses and industry. The very idea that the state has this power …implies that if there is no such planning by the state, there is no plan and no order at all in society. The state must become the predestining state, because there is no predestination, no order outside the state. This view of politics is an atheistic one.(p. 32)

Imagine how small the budget of the civil government would be if it carried out this one and only biblical function! Imagine how small our tax bill would be! Imagine how safe we would be! (p. 33)

If a state does not terrorize evil-doers by the enforcement of God’s law, the state and society will be terrorized by evil-doers, as we have today. (p. 34) (NOTE THE ECHO IN FALWELL’S AND ROBERTSON’S REMARKS IMMEDIATELY POST 9/11. NOTE ALSO THE PARALLEL TO DINESH D’SOUZA. HOWEVER, D’SOUZA ARGUES IN A SUBSTANTIALLY MORE SECULAR MANNER. )

Vengeance belongs to God, but to a godly state God has given the authority to administer His vengeance. [p. 37]

…the state is the “servant” and “minister” of God, representing Him and His moral order.

The obvious implication of this is that a civil government cannot be religiously neutral…

A state is an idolatrous state under divine judgment if it favors any other god than the triune God of the Bible, and any other religion than biblical Christianity.

We cannot escape our religion. Everyone has one. The question is, which religion does one hold – Christianity or Humanism, i.e. anti-Christianity? (pp. 38- 39)

The purpose of the First Amendment to the Constitution is not to secularize or de-Christianize the government of the United States…That was never the intent of the authors of that Amendment. This secular view is superimposed on the Constitution by those whose agenda is the de-Christianization of America’s civil and sociala institutions. U.S. Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story (1811-1845) refuted this secular approach to the First Amendment when he wrote:

…The real object of the amendment was not to countenance, much less to advance, Mahometanism, or Judaism, or infidelity, by prostrating Christianity; but to exclude all rivalry among Christian sectsx, and to prevent any ecclesiastical establishment which should give to a hierarchy the exclusive patronage of the national government. (pp 40-41.)

Humanism leads to the death of mankind…In a humanistic nation, millions of people die of disease, drought, abortions, euthanasia, infanticide, unjust wars, terrorism, murder and suicide in fulfillment of Deuteronomy 28 and Leviticus 26. (p. 41)

Work toward that great objective: the Christianization of every facet of American society and culture and the evangelization of every American citizen and family.

When that day comes, you and I will be able to spend all our days working hard in our callings, worshipping God with our families in our churches, earning what we deserve, keeping what we make, spending like we want, being able to tithe, doing on our property what we desire and what is pleasing to God, and educating our children in the way we think they should be educated. We would have a strong, secure, prosperous, free, just, and godly nation blessed by Almighty God. (p. 43)

[The state’s authority] is ministerial not legislative. God has not given it the right to create laws, legislation, and policies by fiat ex nihilio. It may not invent regulations based on the latest opinion poll or the most recent expert advice. The sate may administer and apply to our modern situation the laws it finds written in the Bible governing the civil sphere…

To say that we need additional, extra-biblical, or contra-biblical laws, to satisfy the needs of our modern age is to deny the Bible’s all-sufficient, eternal authority for all of life in all ages (Deuteronomy 4:1f; 8:12-32; 29:29). ..the Bible is not the word of man, nor the word of the state, it is the eternal Word of God written. (p. 48-49)

…it is the responsibility of the state to legislate biblical morality. We must not flinch at this point. For a nation to remain free and just, its civil government must enforce biblical law….[NOTE: SINCE “LEGISLATING MORALITY “ IS A COMMON ACCUSATION THROWN AT LIBERALS ,MORECRAFT IMMEDIATELY QUALIFIES THIS] If legislating morality refers to the effort to make people good by passing laws, then, of course, as Christians, we must take issue with that view….Only [Christ] can make people good.

Humanists, on the other hand, do believe that the state can make people good by passing laws. (p. 51).

…if God’s law does not remain at the foundation of a nation’s life, that nation will not last long…

If the federal government were to annul all of the laws legislated in the past one hundred years and pass into law the few hundred moral laws of the Bible, this country would have more freedom, strength, security, prosperity, justice, righteousness, love and happiness than it has ever had in its history. Of course, this won’t happen until the hearts of Americans are converted to Jesus Christ.

A Christian Republic has far fewer laws, far fewer government employees, and is far less expensive than any humanistic democracy, i.e., socialistic state (II Chronicles 12:8). (p. 53)

Tyranny is a political order wherein the final source of law, the final standard of right and wrong, is man or the political order itself. (p. 57)

Theocracy is a very proper description of a godly political order, when that word is defined correctly…A theocracy, in the biblical sense of the word, is a nation where God’s revealed law is supreme over all human laws, and is the source of all laws.

A label describing such an order that could be substituted for theocracy is Christian Republic. (p. 57)

Has the federal government of the United States become the enemy of its godly citizens? It has become a “terrorist state” against its citizens by threatening our liberty, prosperity, security, and our very lives; because it has clearly turned its back on its accountability to the supremacy of Almighty God. (p. 60)

In Deuteronomy God tells his people, in figurative terms, to put His law on their foreheads, hands, doorposts, mouths, and hearts (Deuteronomy 6:8f) (P. 61)

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Some brief comments. Anyone who knows the first thing about American history and the founding documents knows that Morecraft’s arguments against the consent of the governed are a contradiction of core American civic values. This highlights Rushdooony’s point in the first sentence of his introduction, that since the founding of the United States, the theology of politics has been neglected. There are many ways to look at this. American democrats – you and I – see this as a good thing but both Rushdoony and Morecraft don’t. It’s not that they are arguing for a return of George III, let alone the Holy Roman Empire. Rather, the point here is that these founding documents, and their intent, have been systematically misunderstood from 1776 onwards, and as a result the US has mutated from the Christian Republic the Founders intended into a cauldron of humanistic perversion.

Obviously, Morecraft’s argument is, to be kind, bizarre and wrong. The point of reproducing it here is not so much to encourage arguing with it – it doesn’t rise to the level of serious debate – but rather to give you an opportunity to examine how Morecraft structures his argument to justify theocracy. You will find, albeit much watered-down, the exact same argument advanced by nearly everyone on the religious right arguing for a larger role for religion in government.

What Morecraft’s blunt advocacy of theocracy makes clear is that the call for a Christian Republic is in no sense a religious argument, but solely a political one. It is about claiming the right to utterly dominate the United States. No matter how mild the rhetoric might be -“the federal office of faith-based initiatives can really do a world of good” – this is the intent.

The last excerpt, on page 61 is, I think, very telling. It clearly is Morecraft’s interpretation that the wearing of God’s law is “figurative.” The purpose of his interpretation is to exempt “Christians” from obeying what many jews believe is a very literal commandment. This is a clear-cut example of an interpretation which contradicts the “literal” meaning of the words in the Bible. A closer examination of Morecraft’s claims – that the Bible clearly mandates a theocratic state – will uncover an elaborate web of idiosyncratic readings – interpretation – of biblical passages, all calculated to make the Bible read like a political manifesto.

Walking On Broken Glass Houses

by digby

They don’t call him “bold” for nothing.

The White House on Friday denounced Iran’s treatment of 15 British sailors after the former captives said they were threatened with prison if they did not admit to straying into Iranian waters.

The British sailors told a news conference in Britain on Friday that they were blindfolded, bound, kept in isolation and warned that they faced up to seven years in prison.

White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe told reporters near President George W. Bush’s Texas ranch the Iranians did not seem to engage in appropriate behavior in dealing with the sailors who were seized in the Gulf two weeks ago.

“It’s unfortunate that the Iranians ever detained the sailors to begin with, considering they were operating under a UN mandate in Iraqi waters. So what the sailors said this morning – it’s unfortunate and extremely disappointing they were treated inappropriately in any way,” Johndroe said.

I find it a bit quaint actually.

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GOP Voting Integrity

by digby

…a contradiction in terms.

With the news from Steve Benen coming out of Wisconsin and from Christy about Minnesota, regarding a couple more of those “Good Bushies” in the Justice Department, I thought it might be a good time to bring up a little something I found the other day on the blog Wot Is It Good 4. A commenter there pointed to this very interesting paper (pdf) presented to the Center For Voting Rights just before the 2004 election on the issue of voter suppression.

I was surprised to see that the Republican National Lawyers Association (where Rove delivered his speech last spring in which, among other things, he mentioned as “problems” those states from which the targeted US Attorneys hail) was pretty much formed for the express and exclusive purpose of training and deploying lawyers on matters of purported voter fraud (aka minority vote suppression.) Neither did I know before that they played a pivotal role in the Florida Recount.

The report gives the history of minority voter suppression in America (a very ugly story) and brings it right up to the 1980’s, particularly the huge voter registration effort in the black community by the Jesse Jackson campaign which apparently scared the bejeezuz out of the Republicans:

Democratic activist Donna Brazile, a Jackson worker and Albert Gore’s campaign manager in 2000, said “There were all sorts of groups out there doing voter registration. Some time after the ’86 election, massive purging started taking place. It was a wicked practice that took place all over the country, especially in the deep South. Democrats retook the Senate in 1986, and [Republican] groups went on a rampage on the premise they were cleaning up the rolls. The campaign then was targeted toward African-Americans.” As in the past, Republicans justified the purges in the name of preventing the unregistered from voting. But Democrats charged vote suppression.

[…]

The Republicans’ perceived problems arising from too heavy a reliance on volunteers began to be addressed with a different strategy in the mid-1980s. From Operation Eagle Eye onward, the major Republican ballot security programs had borne the imprimatur of the party high command, overseen by the RNC and implemented at the grassroots by local organizations and commercial political operatives. In the mid-1980s, the situation began to change. GOP ballot-security skulduggery in the city of Newark and environs had led to a consent decree in 1982 presided over by a federal judge in New Jersey, according to which the RNC promised to forego minority vote suppression.19 In 1985, several months before the RNC was hauled back before the same judge as a result of illegal purging efforts in a 1986 Louisiana senatorial campaign and agreed to submit all future ballot security programs it oversaw to the court for its inspection, a new organization was created—the Republican National Lawyers Association (RNLA).

A group of lawyers who had worked on the Reagan-Bush campaign in 1984 were behind its founding, and it was designed “to be a sort of Rotary Club for GOP stalwarts,” according to a contemporary article in Legal Times magazine. The RNC helped the association get off the ground with a $5,000 loan, although today the RNC claims no official connection with it. By 1987 the RNLA had active chapters in several states and the District of Columbia, and planned to hold its first annual convention early the following year. A lure for attendees, the planners hoped, would be continuing legal education credits and a possible appearance by Attorney General Edwin Meese III and President Reagan.20

The RNLA turned out to be much more than a Rotary Club for GOP lawyers, however; it became the predominant Republican organization coordinating ballot security. By its own account, in early 2004 it had grown to “a 1,900-member organization of lawyers and law students in all 50 states.”21 Its officers were experienced lawyers who knew their way around Washington as a result of having served in Republican administrations at the national and state levels and in major K Street firms. Michael Thielen, its current executive director, who earlier worked for the RNC, describes the organization as follows: Since 1985 the RNLA has nurtured and advanced lawyer involvement in public affairs generally and the Republican Party in particular. It is accurately described as a combination of a professional bar association, politically involved law firm and educational institute. . . . With members now in government, party general counsel positions, law firm management and on law school faculties, the RNLA has for many years been the principal national organization through which lawyers serve the Republican Party and its candidates.22

Its prestige in Republican party circles undoubtedly got a boost from its involvement in the Florida ballot recount battles of November-December 2000, when, according to one of its members, Eric Buermann, the RNLA was “extremely helpful . . . by sending lawyers to Florida to work on the recount, providing expertise as needed, and coordinating volunteer lawyer response.” It was this helpfulness which apparently led Buermann, the state’s Republican Party general counsel, to coordinate a collaboration between the RNLA and Florida legal response teams in 2002, so that, in the words of anRNLA newsletter that year, “there will be a permanent structure in place to keep the lawyers active and organized during off-election years.”23

Actually, the collaboration was even broader, involving the National Republican Campaign Committee and the RNC as well.24 The Democrats, on the other hand, also were developing a large network of lawyers that year—10,000, by one estimate—to counter vote suppression efforts. The nationwide deployment of thousands of lawyers in both parties led one journalist to predict “a new era in US politics after the Florida debacle two years ago—the age of the lawyers.”25

Executive Director Thielen gives this account of the organization’s involvement in the 2000 recount: “After election day, RNLA members were dispatched by party organizations and campaigns to multiple locations within several states. When it became clear that the final result in Florida would determine the outcome of the presidential election, members were concentrated there.” Thielen adds, “had it not been for the preeminent litigators retained by the campaign entities and the volunteer attorneys who spent weeks defending the intent of voters before canvassing boards, the will of thenation’s voters would surely have been thwarted.”26

What an odd thing to say. The “nation’s” voters clearly preferred Al Gore. It was only through that regrettable anachronism of the electoral college (and cheating in Florida) that had Bush within stealing distance.

Underlining the organization’s enhanced status among Republicans, White House counsel Albert Gonzales told the group, “You know, I must confess I groaned when I was first asked whether I would be willing to address another group of lawyers. However, when I found out this group included many lawyers that helped secure the election for George W. Bush, I quickly reconsidered.”27

The RNLA’s pride in its Florida efforts is expressed by trophies it presents to honorees at special receptions, consisting of lucite blocks that, as described on the organization’s Web site, “contain a commemorative message in honor of the Florida recount team, and contain actual ‘Chads’ from Florida dispersed throughout the Lucite. They [sic] were only a few hundred created and are not for sale but rather only presented to distinguished members and guests of the RNLA.” Not surprisingly, an RNLA lawyer, Hayden Dempsey, formerly a lawyer for Governor Jeb Bush, is heading Lawyers for Bush, the president’s legal defense team in Florida in 2004.

[…]

With the rise to prominence of the RNLA, the Republican Party’s nationally directed ballot security programs appear to have been transformed. While Operation Eagle Eye was directed from the command posts of the RNC by professionals, the people on the ground—poll-watchers and challengers—were often amateurs, which is to say Election Day volunteers who may have had only cursory training. The RNLA, born in the Reagan era, has gradually assumed the role of the party’s overarching anti-fraud enforcement agency. In the process, the organization has professionalized ballot security (its spokespersons seem to prefer the term “ballot integrity”) with a cadre of highly trained, aggressive, and mobile lawyers who can go anywhere in the nation on short notice. Indeed, they don’t even need to be mobile, in many cases. As one of the organization’s newsletters put it: “Ironically, when the Democratic National Committee bragged of sending in a thousand lawyers each to Missouri, Florida, and Texas for election day operations, the [RNLA] Field Operations Committee already had chapters organized in those states and did not need to send out of state lawyers to assist with the elections.”

You’ll all find this symmetry a beautiful thing, I’m sure: perhaps you remember that the original voter suppression effort of the modern GOP was called Operation Eagle Eye and its most famous member was none other than William Rhenquist, former Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court. In a fitting tribute, his successor John Roberts is a member of the RNLA and participated in the Florida recount under its auspices. Those Republicans do love their traditions.

The good news is that while they may have been plotting purges and voter suppression efforts all over the country, they have been doing a bang up job at protecting minority voting rights. The white minority, that is. (Well, ok, they might not actually be in the minority, but many of them feel that that they are, which is what counts. It seems like Negroes and Mexicans are just all over the place these days.)

From TPM’s Paul Kiel:

The U.S. attorney firings scandal has laid bare the administration’s — and particularly Karl Rove’s — preoccupation with prosecuting voter fraud. But there’s a flip side to this coin. The Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division has virtually abandoned its traditional role, undertaken since the 1965 Voting Rights Act, of actively protecting African American voters from discrimination. There’s no greater demonstration of that fact than this simple fact: During the first five years of the Bush administration, the Justice Department’s voting section only filed a single case alleging voting discrimination on behalf of African American voters. That’s despite the fact that the section, part of the Civil Rights Division, was created mainly to protect African American voters from discrimination. But during that same time period, the section managed to file the first ever “reverse” discrimination case under the Voting Rights Act. That case, United States v. Ike Brown and Noxubee County, alleges that Brown, the chairman of Noxubee County’s Democratic Executive Committee in Mississippi, has been trying to limit whites’ participation in local elections. The case, filed in 2005, is currently being tried, and is likely to reach its conclusion later this month. Joseph Rich, the chief of the voting section until he resigned in 2005, signed the complaint against Brown and told me that he thought that the case did have merit. But he said that it was “really a question of priority” for a section with limited resources. The political appointees in the section aggressively promoted the case, he said: “clearly they were very interested in this particular matter when it came up.” Rich, who worked for the department enforcing civil rights laws for more than 35 years, has very publicly criticized the section he left.

From from sea to shining sea and Diebold to voter purges, the Republicans have been building a massive, centralized election stealing machine. But that’s exactly what you’d expect when you put halfwits, psychopaths and criminals in charge of the US government. People in power tend to follow their bliss.

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Blog Against Theocracy Part II: A Taste Of Rushdoony

by tristero

In this post, I begin our direct encounter with theocracy with some excerpts from Joseph Morecraft’s book, With Liberty & Justice for All: Christian Politics Made Simple. We’ll start with the introduction entitled “The Theology of Politics,” which was written not by Morecraft but rather the founder of “Christian Reconstruction,” the late Rousas John Rushdoony. You can find plenty of information about Rushdoony on the Web, but here are a few things to help you approach this material. The ideas touched upon by Rushdoony here will be developed in detail by Joe Morecraft in the main body of his book.

First of all, Christian Reconstruction is sometimes classified as the far right edge of the Religious Right, fairly close to the violent madness of Eric Rudolph and Christian Identity. I’m no scholar but I think that may be mistaken. With some very important differences duly noted, I think that Christian Reconstruction – with some important exceptions – is closer to the goals of theocrats like Dobson, Robertson, et al. Christian Reconstructionist texts, however, employ a very blunt, pull no punches, language, even in comparison to the crude style of men like Robertson and Falwell.

To put it differently, so it’s clear. Christian Reconstruction should not be thought the “religion” of men like, say, Dobson. However, when their use of language and their obsessions are examined closely, the commonality of objective is apparent: the establishment of an American theocracy. The rhetoric that Rushdoony uses gets echoed by the more “acceptable” theocrats, toned down, cleaned up (the word “theocracy” is replaced with “Christian Republic,” eg), and then injected into the mainstream discourse on church and state (in a manner common to other extreme rightwing activism, as exposed and described in detail by David Neiwert on his blog,).

However – and this is critical – men like Dobson, Scalia, Santorum, Falwell, and Robertson are not, repeat NOT, followers of Rushdoony, and in some places strongly disagree with him. . (And to make matters more complicated, there are – happily, I should add – numerous schisms within the Christian Reconstruction movement and similar groups.) All of that said, you will notice similarities of language and concerns between the so-called extremist Rushdoony, his follower Morecraft, and the more “moderate” christianists we have all become far too familiar with.

One other point. You may think Rushdoony’s ideas as to be beneath serious notice. Therefore, please note that a major funder of Rushdoony’s Christian Reconstrucion, billionaire Howard Ahmanson, funded the “intelligent design” creationism initiative at the Discovery Institute (Ahmanson sits on the board). That’s correct: Major funding for “Intelligent design” creationism is linked directly to the ideas you will encounter here.Ahmanson also funds the Claremont Foundation, a rightwing cultural thinktank, and funded the recall initiative of California’s governor Gray Davis. These are only a few of the initiatives Ahmanson has taken to advance the rightwing, and often specifically Republican, agenda.

That should give you some notion of how far at least one political operative directly involved in Christian Reconstruction has advanced into mainstream American politics. And how much influence he has had. The enormous amount of time American scientists have wasted in the fight against “intelligent design” creationism is just one of many examples of the major damage theocrats directly cause.

Excerpts from “The Theology of Politics” by Rousas John Rushdoony.

Printed as the introduction to the book, Amazon.com: With Liberty & Justice for All: Christian Politics Made Simple by Joe Morecraft III.

NOTE: All punctuation and emphases are in the original. Page numbers refer to the 1995 paperback edition of Morecraft’s book. My comments are in brackets and in upper case. I did not check all of Morecraft’s biblical references. Please inform me of any inaccuracies.

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An area of study much neglected in the past two centuries or more, is the theology of politics. [NOTE: RUSHDOONY IS SAYING “THE THEOLOGY OF POLITICS” HAS BEEN NEGLECTED EVER SINCE THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE UNITED STATES.] Political thinking has become secularized and humanistic to the point that to speak about the relationship of God to politics is for many to introduce an alien factor into the discussion. (p. 6.)

The starting point of biblical thought is the fact of creation. In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth (Genesis 1:1) This creating God is not some vaguely non-partisan deity who belongs equally to a variety of religions and philosophies. He is the triune God; He is the father of Jesus Christ [NOTE: ONE OF RUSHDOONY’S POINTS IS TO CLAIM A BIBLICAL JUSTIFICATION FOR RELIGIOUS INTOLERANCE. MORECRAFT WILL MAKE THIS MORE EXPLICIT LATER.] …John begins his gospel by making this identification

1. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
2. The same was in the beginning with God.
3. All things were made by him; and without him was not anything made that was made (John 1:1-3)

Thus politics cannot be a neutral realm…All things are under God and His government.

Moreover, we are plainly told that He who is the blessed and only Potentate, the King of kings, and Lord of lords (II Timothy 6:15) is our Lord Jesus Christ. This means that, first, there can be no religiously neutral political system. All are either under Christ or against Him…

Second, this means that we must have a theology of politics, one based on the whole word of God. Such a theology must apply Scripture to every facet of political life.

Third, because social order is a moral fact, and morality is a branch of theology, a lack of faith among the people, and an indifference to theological order by the state, soon means a moral decay and social collapse.

Fourth, a civil government is not a church and is thus not involved in church matters nor in ecclesiastical doctrines, but it must affirm a biblical faith if it is to avoid social collapse. [NOTE: THIS IS HOW RUSHDOONY AND OTHER CHRISTIANISTS UNDERSTAND THE MEANING OF “SEPARATION OF CHURCH OF STATE.” AGAIN, MORECRAFT WILL EXPAND UPON THIS]…This does not mean a creedal stand by the state….A sound theology of politics must begin in the lives of the people and manifest itself in the churches. If it is not in the people nor in the Church, it will not be in the state.

Fifth, in terms of Scripture, Church and state are both ministries under God. The church is a ministry of grace, and the state is a ministry of justice. Note that in neither case should we limit the ministries…we dare not forget that God’s grace reaches men through a variety of channels. The same is true of civil governments; the world would be a bleak and fearful place if justice existed only within the machinery of the state. Our parents routinely administered justice to us, as do churches, employers, and a variety of groups and persons…We must see the ministerial nature of civil government without limiting justice to the state. (pp. 6-8) [NOTE: RUSHDOONY INSISTS UPON A HIGHLY CIRCUMSCRIBED CIVIL GOVERNMENT WHICH SHARES SECULAR POWER WITH THE CHURCH, PARENTS, EMPLOYERS, AND, IMPORTANTLY, UNNAMED OTHERS TO ADMINISTER JUSTICE.

MORECRAFT WILL EXPAND THIS INTO A THEORY OF GOVERNMENT LIMITED ONLY TO A HIGHLY PUNITIVE JUDICIARY AND PENAL SYSTEM WITH VIRTUALLY NO OTHER FUNCTION OR POWER. THE GOVERNMENT WILL COLLECT ONLY A SMALL “FLAT TAX.]

Theology By Other Means

The major point that Rushdoony makes is that, to paraphrase Clausewitz, politics is theology by other means. That said, do not be misled into thinking that Rushdoony explicitly advocates a state that legislates Christian morality. As Morecraft, makes clear, that is never the state’s role.

What goes unstated by both theocrats, however, is that while the state is forbidden to interfere in church affairs, the church is not so constrained. Furthermore, the church has the right to administer justice as well as the state. AND the church has the obligation, from God, to judge the morality of all citizens of the state, including non-Christians. Moral behavior entails strict obedience to God’s laws as set forth in the Bible. And, as you will see, strict punishment for disobedience to God.

Blog Against Theocracy Part I: Meet The Theocrats

by tristero

This Easter weekend, there is a blogswarm going on called Blog Against Theocracy. My contribution is a bit idiocsyncratic, namely a series of posts consisting of numerous excerpts from a book that explicitly advocates theocracy entitled With Liberty & Justice for All: Christian Politics Made Simple by Joe Morecraft III. There will be a lot of material but if you are worried about the “religious right” – what I call christianism – I hope that you will take the time to read it all.

Important note to new readers: As many longtime followers of my work know, my respect for all forms of genuine religious expression is a matter of long public record. Theocracy, however, is not religious, but political expression. Privately, and within his church and congregation, Joe Morecraft is entitled to worship (or not) as he sees fit.

However, Morecraft is not entitled to immunity from criticism, let alone tolerance, when – as will become quite clear – he heaps contempt on American democracy, distorts American history, and openly advocates the overthrow of the US government and its replacement with a sadistically violent totalitarian state. When he does so by appropriating biblical iconography and texts – which he arbitrarily and perversely interprets as providing him and his pals with a monopoly on the truth of God’s will – it is Joe Morecraft, not I, who deeply insults all Christians.

Why I Am Doing This

For the most part, I will try to limit my comment on these excerpts to brief explanations that attempt to clarify the text. I will also point to echoes of this text in other theocratic writings. For the most part, while my bias is clear, I will not try to refute anything said. Why? Well, for one thing, I have spent some four years doing exactly that, on this blog and on my own, Tristero, and in numerous comments, public talks, lectures, and papers. Detailed refutations of specific theocratic arguments – say, that the US was founded as an explicitly Christian nation – are very easy to find, by me and others. There’s little point in saying all that again. For another, I think it’s important to encounter theocratic texts for yourselves and develop your own objections.

I’ve noticed that, aside from commenting on one or more obnoxious soundbites, few of us liberals bother to attend to the full spectrum of what theocrats say and do. And it’s no wonder; it’s genuinely unpleasant reading. But the problem is that those provocative, isolated soundbites provide a terribly distorted picture of what theocrats are up to. If you encounter short excerpts of Rushdoony or North, they sound crazy. But when you read a lot of their thoughts, you gain a much more detailed and accurate impression of a fascistic, demented and frightening mentality. More importantly, if you encounter only one or two theocratic arguments you may be left with the impression that modern American theocracy is a religious idea or a religious movement. That is a serious mistake. I think if you take the trouble to read all the excerpts I post here, chances are likely that you’ll conclude, as I have, that christianism is a highly influential and extremely dangerous political movement that is more mainstream than you might imagine.

In order to understand what American theocracy is – and why those of us who are worried about it are worried sick over it – you need to encounter it in context and that means reading beyond deliberately tendentious soundbites like, “9/11 is God’s vengeance on a corrupt United States.” You need to see how the various pieces of their arguments are developed and interconnect. You also need to see how the theocrats deliberately manufacture opportunities to create coalitions with non-religious extremists. And you need to see how theocratic ideas have become not only more acceptable, but actually become mainstream topics of political discourse.

In short, if you want to understand how to confront theocracy – and with a lot of effort on our part on a lot of different fronts, I think it can be re-consigned to the ugly margins of American public discourse – you need to find out not only what they think, but how they think. And that will take examining what theocrats say in context.

Morecraft’s book is useful because it is stylistically consistent and short. Also, Morecraft is unusually blunt and direct both in his language and his intentions. That said, it is not, repeat NOT, “the Christianist Manifesto.” It’s not even close. There probably is no such thing. The theocrats, for many reasons, simply don’t work like that. For one thing, there is so much they intuitively agree about, there’s no reason to bother. For another, they are way ahead of us. They know what they want; their focus now is on implementation, not theorizing.

But the excerpts from Morecraft’s book will give you an excellent introduction to their genuinely bizarre mindset. It’s my hope that these excerpts dispel a lot of liberal misconceptions about the theocrats. For example, what theocrats like Dobson and Donohue mean by “religious freedom” and “tolerance” is very different than our understanding of the terms. By getting a clearer view of their rationales, deceptions, distortions, and obsessions, I think we will be better able to craft more effective ways to fight them.

God knows we need all the help we can get.

Later today, I will post excerpts from the introduction to With Liberty & Justice for All which was written by R.J. Rushdoony, the founder of Christian Reconstruction. Over the weekend, I will post excerpts from the book proper.

Losin’ It

by digby

Via Oliver Willis, I see that Bill O’Reilly did a full-on Howard Beale tonight with Geraldo of all people.

In the entire, dark, black history of Fox News’ The O’Reilly Factor, this is probably the craziest clip ever. A young girl was tragically killed by a drunk driver. But this was not enough for O’Reilly. Instead, because the criminal was an illegal alien he added this incident to his ongoing crusade against the brown people. Luckily Geraldo was on the show and he – to his credit – called out O’Reilly’s xenophobia for exactly what it was. This drove Bill O’Reilly insane. I was almost certain he was going to reach across the table and hit Geraldo.

It’s quite a show. (But then both these guys are clowns, aren’t they?) My money is on Geraldo, not only because he’s right, but because he’s had so much practice getting into physical fights on TV. O’Reilly’s a typical bully — lots of bluster, glass jaw.

Paddy Chayevsky is somewhere laughing and laughing and laughing.

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Polarized Elites

by digby

Here’s an interesting article in the new Democratic Strategist discussing “polarization.” According to the authors, there do seem to be some signs that the nation is a bit at odds but the causes remain obscure and it seems the people themselves are just as centrist as David Broder. (And anyway, we aren’t in a civil war so how bad can the polarization be?)

They quote heavily from a study that found that while the country may appear to be divided, it is actually the elites and the extremists like you and I who are making the Real Americans more polarized:

Badly in need of a reality check, popularized renditions of the polarization narrative were subjected to a more systematic assessment a couple of years ago in a book provocatively titled Culture War? The Myth of a Polarized America. In this intriguing study, rich with survey data, Stanford’s Fiorina and his associates reaffirmed the oft-obscured fundamental fact that most Americans have remained centrists, sharing a mixture of liberal and conservative views on a variety of presumably divisive social questions. Ideologues of the left or right–that is, persons with a Weltanschauung, or whose politics consistently form an overarching world view that tilts to extremes–are conspicuous on the fringes of the two parties and among political elites, but scarcely among the public at large. Indeed, sentiments there appear to be moderating, not polarizing, on various hot-button issues.

Moreover, the authors argued, the moderate consensus seems almost ubiquitous. The inhabitants of red states and blue states differ little on matters such as gender equity, fair treatment of blacks in employment, capital punishment, and the merits of environmental protection.7 Majorities in both places appear to oppose outlawing abortion completely or permitting it under all circumstances, and their opinions have changed little over the past thirty years.

No knowledgeable observer doubts that the American public is less divided than the political agitators and vocal elective office-seekers who claim to represent it. The interesting question, though, is, how substantial are the portions of the electorate that heed their opinion leaders, and thus might be hardening their political positions? Here, as best we can tell, the tectonic plates of the nation’s electoral politics appear to be shifting more than Fiorina and his coauthors were willing to concede.

Yes, it does seem that something odd is happening, what with the huge, unbridgeable differences of opinion on the issues of the day among Democrats and Republicans and all. But the authors also lay this at the feet of the “elites” who are sending their followers down the garden path:

What has happened in the electorate has much to do with how sharply political elites have separated along their respective philosophical and party lines. That separation is not in doubt. In the 1970s, the ideological orientations of many Democratic and Republican members of Congress overlapped. Today, the congruence has nearly vanished. By the end of the 1990s, almost every Republican in the House was more conservative than every Democrat. And increasingly, their leaders leaned to extremes more than the backbenchers have. Outside Congress, activists in the political parties have diverged sharply from one another in recent decades. Meanwhile, interest groups, particularly those concerned with cultural issues, have proliferated and now ritually line up with one party or the other to enforce the party creed. Likewise, the news media, increasingly partitioned through politicized talk-radio programs, cable news channels, and Internet sites, amplify party differences.

These changes, the reality of which hardly anyone contests, raise an important scholarly question with profound practical implications: what are the effects of elite polarization on the mass electorate? One possibility raised by Fiorina and others is that the people as a whole are not shifting their ideological or policy preferences much. Rather, they are being presented with increasingly polarized choices, which force voters to change their political behavior in ways that analysts mistake for shifts in underlying preferences.26 A plausible inference is that if both parties nominated relatively moderate, nonpolarizing candidates, as they did in 1960 and again in 1976, voters’ behavior might revert significantly toward previous patterns. Another possibility is that changes at the elite level have communicated new information about parties, ideology, and policies to many voters, leading to changes of attitudes and preferences that will be hard to reverse, even in less polarized circumstances.

That certainly sounds frightening. What if we scruffy political know-nothings out here in the hinterlands can’t shake off our partisan brainwashing even if our guiding lights in both parties give us some nice moderate candidates to choose from? I shudder to think of the consequences.

They authors conclude with this very unnerving thought:

It would be a mistake, however, to see only one-way causality in the relation between changes at the elite and mass levels. History supports Jacobson’s contention that political elites in search of a winning formula anticipate voters’ potential responses to changed positions on the issues and are therefore constrained to some extent by that assessment…

A feedback loop that mutually reinforces polarized comportment up and down the political food chain has at least a couple of important implications. For one, the idea that self-inspired extremists are simply foisting polar choices on the wider public, while the latter holds its nose, does not quite capture what is going on. While it is possible to distinguish conceptually between polarization and sorting, the evidence suggests that over the past three decades these two phenomena cannot be entirely decoupled. Polarized politics are partly here, so to speak, by popular demand. And inasmuch as that is the case, undoing it may prove especially difficult–and perhaps not wholly appropriate.

Inappropriate? I don’t think so. No knowledgeable person would contest the idea that you simply cannot let the rabble dictate politics in a democracy. Uber-centrist Ellen Tauscher understands that:

Finally one person got to the point and asked the right question. He wanted a united Democratic platform that was simple and easy for Americans to understand, one similar to the Republican’s Contract with America which helped them win in 1994. Tauscher paused a moment and then asked the man if he was a professional activist or politician. The man smiled, shook his head, and responded that he was a doctor. Tauscher promptly replied that she doesn’t plan on performing surgery just because she saw it on TV.

I hope the Democratic elites who have been leading the wee-citizens astray these past few years will come to understand, as centrist Ellen Tauscher has, that they must stop all the polarizing behavior they’ve been exhibiting and start moderating and compromising with the rightwing Republicans if they want to win the hearts and minds of the polloi. That’s truly the only way we can ever get our reasonable, moderate country back.

That is how its done, isn’t it?

And one more thing. The assumption is that this is solely about the “culture war” which is evidently considered some sort of lesser constellation of issues than the ones on which an earlier liberal hero quite pointedly and consciously polarized the nation:

Here is another important distinction: “polarization” is not synonymous with “culture war.” Intense political conflict can occur along many different dimensions, of which cultural issues form only one. When Franklin D. Roosevelt took dead aim at “economic royalists” at the height of the New Deal, his politics polarized American society. But an economic crisis, not a cultural one, was at the root of the polarization.

I’m not sure at whom that comment is aimed. Is there anyone who believes that polarization can only occur around the “culture war?” But it does bear thinking about why Roosevelt went head on at “economic royalists” when he was trying to pass his New Deal programs: it was politically useful to him. I suspect the Republicans who created the “culture war” had a similar idea.

While there is a lot of talk in the article about “elites” and “activists” as the purveryors of polarization, nobody actually comes out and says who created (and named) this thing called “the culture war.” They were elites, all right. Elites of the Republican party. I find it a bit amazing that this isn’t discussed in an article about our current polarized climate. Maybe they’ve never heard of Rush Limbaugh, but he and his various conservative clones are the ones who’ve been making a handsome profit selling culture war, not the Democrats. We became polarized because since 1980 they consciously polarized us.

I’m not trying to be obnoxious, really. This is an academic paper and not a political document. But it is written in a magazine called Democratic Strategist and it worries me that our elites still believe that there is some parity in the causation of this current polarized political scene. I simply don’t see how we can move forward, even to take advantage of this underlying consensus these scientists purport to see, if the party won’t admit how the attitudes and hyper-partisanship of the last fifteen years came to be. It wasn’t Democrats pushing from the fringe that caused this situation — Democrats consistently moved to the middle for nearly the entire time. And the Republicans just kept moving the center ever rightward.

And it is even more obvious that if the Democrats are now calling a halt to this rightward shift, it’s because their voters finally hit the wall. If Democrats are now fighting to regain some ground it is at the behest of their constituents not the other way around.

This rightward move has slowed for the moment, mostly as a result of the most disasterous presidency in modern memory. But there are no guarantees. Reagan was elected just six years after Nixon was run out of town. It is foolish to believe that the Republicans will not regroup nor is it reasonable to believe that they have learned anything from all this. (Remember: conservatism can never fail. It can only be failed.)

I certainly hope that the Democrats have, however. We have been in a conservative political era for more than a quarter century. They have had ample opportunity to try out every crackpot, rightwing think tank scheme they ever hatched and it has been a disaster up and down the line. We are overdue for a major course correction. But this country is a very, very big ship and it takes a lot of energy to stop its momentum and get it to turn in another direction. I think polarization may be necessary to effect that — when the ship is going hard to starboard, you’ve got to pull like hell to port if you want to straighten it out.

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Ganders Excepted

by digby

This week, the right went completely ape over Pelosi wearing a scarf in a mosque. No matter what the local custom or religious requirement, they said, no American leader should stoop to such behavior.

Oddly, they seem to have no problems with this:

One could point out that Bush is kissing and holding hands with the leader of the country from which came fifteen of the nineteen 9/11 hijackers and that makes him little better than a terrorist himself, but that would be what a stupid rightwinger would say if Bush were a Democrat. I’ll just point out that both Bush and the King have oil on their hands and leave it at that.

H/T to NTODD who made exactly this point the last time the goofy wingnuts went into a frenzy over an American in a scarf. They never learn.
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Bill’s Big Love

by digby

Julia wonders where Big Bill Donohue is now that his favorite candidate has reiterated his support for publicly funded abortions. That’s right, Donohue has been strangely silent about any of the contentious issues where Rudy Giuliani seems to come out on the side of the liberals but he loves writing about how wonderful Rudy is.

In fact:

It appears as if the only thing Mr. Giuliani’s done that’s offended Mr. Dononue enough to write about it is appear in a Saturday Night Live sketch where catholic schoolgirls talk about necking. Odd, that, when Mr. Giuliani as mayor instituted government-paid partnership benefits for gay couples, and Mr. Donohue feels pretty strongly about that.

Julia points out that despite Donohue’s reticence to criticize Giuliani’s positions on social issues, Donohue has found time recently to excoriate Mrs Clinton for “courting the homosexual vote” by not appearing in New York’s St Patrick’s Day parade. His “good friend” Rudy was also slated to skip the parade (FOF — fear of firefighters) until Donohue turned skipping the parade into a pander to gays.

Rudy, you see, doesn’t have to worry about such things. When it comes to “courting the homosexual vote,” nobody does it like Rudy:

I guess as long as he doesn’t cover himself in chocolate, Donohue doesn’t have a problem with it.

Baby steps.

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Oh No He Di-unt

by digby

Not only has former neocon pin-up boy Frances Fukuyama abandoned all of his former fans, he’s gone and rubbed their noses in the dirt in the worst possible way:

The End of History was never linked to a specifically American model of social or political organisation. Following Alexandre Kojève, the Russian-French philosopher who inspired my original argument, I believe that the European Union more accurately reflects what the world will look like at the end of history than the contemporary United States. The EU’s attempt to transcend sovereignty and traditional power politics by establishing a transnational rule of law is much more in line with a “post-historical” world than the Americans’ continuing belief in God, national sovereignty, and their military.

Finally, I never linked the global emergence of democracy to American agency, and particularly not to the exercise of American military power. Democratic transitions need to be driven by societies that want democracy, and since the latter requires institutions, it is usually a fairly long and drawn out process.

Outside powers like the US can often help in this process by the example they set as politically and economically successful societies. They can also provide funding, advice, technical assistance, and yes, occasionally military force to help the process along. But coercive regime change was never the key to democratic transition.

Oh dear. Somebody bring Kristol and Perle a freedom fry and some smelling salts.

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