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Voices of the Northwest
Sadler's Sense: From Constantine to George, God's Will and Secular Power
America's gift to the world in 1789 was the separation of church and state for the first time since Late Antiquity.
By Russell Sadler
Posted on Nov 4, 2004 |
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Republicans argue that George W. Bush was elected with more votes than any president in history. It is just as historically accurate to argue that nearly half the voters in this country voted against George W. Bush and the direction he is taking the country in one of the largest voter turnouts in our nation's history.
Many independents -- and Democrats -- who swarmed to the polls in unusually large numbers were voting against the continued killing of our troops in the field, the disappearance of tons of explosives now strapped on the bodies of suicide bombers, the alienation of our international relations, the loss of jobs and medical coverage, lack of economic security, pollution and natural resource looting of the public lands, unfunded lip service for education, the deterioration of basic human rights including the torture by Americans of prisoners of war in contravention of the Geneva Conventions and the incarceration of non-citizens without charges.
Independents -- and many conservatives -- are shocked at the national debt. It is $7.4 trillion (not $2 trillion as first posted) and it's growing at a rate of $1 billion a day. The money is borrowed -- largely from China loaning us back our trade imbalance. This debt is so huge, your children and probably their grandchildren will be working to pay it off, while our nation will be held political and economic hostage by the countries that hold our debt.
But these voters are dismissed by Bushites as "the reality-based community" who share none of the concerns of the Bush "faithful" who have a very different agenda planned for us. This cannot continue. Candidates who win office by a whisker cannot claim a "mandate" for a radical, transformative agenda without suffering consequences.
Members of the "reality-based" community cannot understand why other voters cannot see the self-serving nature of those in charge and make much of the blind religious faith of evangelical fundamentalist who support Bush. The "reality-based community" does not understand that Bush and his allies do not want policies. They want power. The power to enforce social and cultural conformity -- their orthodoxy -- at the expense of independent thinking.
The explanation for this large divergence in world views has been a part of politics since the Roman Emperor Constantine legitimized Christianity out of political expedience in the fourth century A.D., setting the stage for the triumph of faith over reason. The two concepts have been at war ever since. In the centuries before Constantine the Roman Empire perpetuated the Greek philosophical tradition of reasoning -- inductive or deductive "proofs" derived from empirical or observable evidence. Life and the world around us was what humans could prove it was, based on rational observation of empirical evidence.
The philosophy of reason and independent thinking threatened the power the Christian church held over its parishioners. In a effort to stop theological disputes among competing factions of the Christian church, Constantine held ecumenical councils in which he rewarded bishops who endorsed his orthodoxy, including his "divine right" to rule, and punished bishops that opposed it.
Constantine's orthodoxy deliberately stifled independent reasoning and substituted the "mystery, magic and authority" of the Christian church. In exchange, the church kept order among its parishioners and Constantine's subjects. Pope Gregory the Great warned rational thinkers that looking for cause and effect in the natural world ignored "the cause of all things" -- the will of God backed up secular authority.
America's gift to the world in 1789 was the separation of church and state for the first time since Late Antiquity. Jefferson, Madison and the other Enlightenment-influenced founders deliberately prohibited the state from establishing the religious orthodoxy the founders felt was responsible for centuries of religiously-inspired wars in Europe.
George W. Bush and his allies plan to tear down that wall and establish fundamentalist Christianity as America's orthodox religion and the basis for secular legislation. The American mullahs believe this is the will of God. And that is the reason why the "reality-based community" of rational thinkers cannot understand Bush and his allies or communicate with them.
The Republican leadership is gloating it has a three-branch "lock" on the government for a generation, much as FDR gave the Democrats after the Great Depression. It is an illusion.
What gives the Republicans their contemporary control is a coalition dominated by states in the South where Republican demagogues simply replaced conservative Democrat demagogues, together with states in the midwest "breadbasket" that are losing population.
This unstable coalition is held together by artful marketing and public relations schemes that emphasize emotional but essentially content-free cultural value issues to divert attention from the deterioration of middle class living standards. Marketing is the manipulation of public opinion to encourage an impulse buying decision. Eventually even marketers must deliver on their promises or their customers wind up with buyers' remorse.
Copyright© 2004 by Russell Sadler
Debt Figure Correction: 11-16-04-ed.
For more background on the pivotal Constantine period, we recommend
The Closing of the Western Mind: The Rise of Faith and the Fall of Reason by Charles Freeman, published by Knopf,
and The World of Late Antiquity by Peter Brown, W. W. Norton and Company, New York and London
available through the Powell's Book Store link at the left blue column. -Editor
Visit Sadler's Sense column's at West By Northwest.org:
Sadler's Sense: Credibility or State of Our State
Sadler's Sense: Look in the Mirror, Oregon
Sadler's Sense: Why We Must Pay the Piper Now
Sadler's Sense: A Short History of Measure 30
© Copyright 2000-2004 by West By Northwest.org
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