Posted on 08/06/2004 7:30:39 AM PDT by Tuscaloosa Goldfinch
America is Indeed Becoming Two Nations
Over the last few weeks I have come to realize that Democratic Vice Presidential nominee John Edwards is at least partially correct when he says there are two Americas. Unfortunately, his portrayal of the two Americas is nothing more than a recycling of the liberal political tactic of promoting class distinction and envy attempting to pit us against each other.
But a more serious analysis of the social, cultural and political forces presently vying for their place in our nation would show that there are, indeed, two Americas. One America is still trying to hold on to Christian values and apply them not only in their personal and family lives but also in how they engage as citizens and as community members. The other America is a secular America that is growing more openly and stridently anti-Christian day-by-day. This America is being taken over by secular extremists that now openly display their loathing of traditional values and of "fundamentalist" Christians with no concern that they will suffer any consequences for their words or actions.
For example, in a recent interview with the San Diego Union-Tribune, singer Linda Ronstadt said, "It's a real conflict for me when I go to a concert and find out somebody in the audience is a Republican or fundamental Christian. It can cloud my enjoyment," she said.
Perhaps if the attacks were only coming from entertainers like Ronstadt such meanness and rudeness could be dismissed. But these positions are not just arising from entertainers and their industry; they are being echoed and argued by respected and successful members of American political and social life.
In a column he wrote for American Prospect entitled "Bush's God," Robert Reich, the former Secretary of Labor in the Clinton Administration, denounced religious zealots that give greater allegiance to God than they do to the government and labeled them as a greater threat than terrorism.
Reich said, "The great conflict of the 21st century will not be between the West and terrorism. Terrorism is a tactic, not a belief. The true battle will be between modern civilization and anti-modernists; between those who believe in the primacy of the individual and those who believe that human beings owe their allegiance and identity to a higher authority; between those that give priority to life in this world and those who believe that human life is mere preparation for an existence beyond life; between those who believe in science, reason, and logic and those who believe truth is revealed through Scripture and religious dogma. Terrorism will disrupt and destroy lives. But terrorism itself is not the greatest danger we face."
Reich is not alone in this belief. On March 6th of this year, Morris Dees, co-founder of the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, Alabama, told an audience that the so-called "Religious Right" is more dangerous than Neo-Nazis and Muslim extremists.
In other words, to the Dees and Reiches of this land, if your allegiance is first and foremost to Almighty God and not to the almighty state, you are more dangerous than a terrorist. Reich takes great offense when right-wing fundamentalists criticize him and other secularists as being moral relativists. In so doing, he said, "they confuse politics with private morality." Reich continued, "For religious zealots, there is no distinction between the two realms. And that is precisely the problem."
As secularists like Reich see it, when Christians, as American citizens, speak out against abortion or homosexual marriage or presidents having sex with interns, such expressions represent a greater threat to the well being of the nation than terrorism.
Reich called on his fellow Democrats to "mount a firm and clear counter-assault" against the Religious Right during this election and hold them, he says, "…accountable for what they are trying to do in our nation's schools - promoting the teaching of creationism, demanding school prayer, pushing "abstinence until marriage" programs, and opposing sex education." "This," according to Reich, "is all about imposing their religious views on our children."
Frankly, most Christians have thought it was the other way around: that our children's Christian values have long been under assault by the secular public schools. In fact, the secular left has for years been engaged in ideological warfare against Christian values that is systematically purging our nation of the very basis of our democracy…the belief that our rights are from God and not conferred to us by a benevolent, secular government. And the federal courts have been their weapons of mass destruction.
Right now there are still two Americas, but if secular extremists such as Robert Reich, Morris Dees, Linda Ronstadt and their like have their way, someday there will only be one nation under their god of politically correct secularism.
Gary Palmer is president of the Alabama Policy Institute, a non-partisan, non-profit research and education organization dedicated to the preservation of free markets, limited government and strong families, which are indispensable to a prosperous society.
July 29, 2004
NOTE: This column is a copyrighted feature distributed free of charge by the Alabama Policy Institute. For information or comments contact: Gary Palmer, Alabama Policy Institute, 402 Office Park Drive, Suite 300, Birmingham, Alabama 35223, (205) 870-9900, e-mail garyp@alabamapolicy.org. To subscribe to this column, please go to www.alabamapolicyinstitute.org/subscribe. To unsubscribe, go to www.alabamapolicyinstitute.org/unsubscribe.
I think the anger on the left is so intense, and their detachment from reality so wide, that in the event of a Bush victory they will claim cheating, and move to violence.
Yes, and they have plenty of help from external actors already embedded in our country. It's coming. Election 2000 was the warning shot over the bow. This election will put torpedoes in the water.
I agree. It will become dangerous, for example, to have a Bush yard sign or bumper sticker in Kerry country. Physically dangerous.
The mantra of secular fundamentalism is pacifism, so we'd lose the right to defend ourselves. No guns, of course. And pretty soon, no US.
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