Make No Mistake: This Is A Religious War
By Dr. Gerry Lower
27 March 2003

The past two decades have witnessed a remarkable polarization of the American political scene, culminating inpolitical dominion by the ultra-conservative Republican right wing. This process, decades in the making, has been closely followed by Keith Poole and Howard Rosenthal, two political scientists with the University of Houston, who utilize Congressional voting data to create maps of ideological dynamics over time [1].

Using a mathematical approach called multidimensional scaling, they were able to map political positions, which fall naturally on a right-left, conservative-liberal axis. Analyses were based upon the "closeness" of conservative and liberal points as a function of time (Figure).

Poole and Rosenthal's data suggest that the US House and Senate were minimally polarized over the years from 1900 to 1980. Even national crises, e.g., Pearl Harbor and Kennedy's assassination, failed to stimulate much bipartisanship or polarization, reflecting perhaps the notion that Congress, during that era, saw itself as having more obligation to the people than to a particular political agenda.

Then, "something happened" in the 1980s to evoke a polarization that has been sharply increasing ever since,ultimately creating a "gap" between the two positions [2]. This, of course, is the gap over which Senator Jim Jeffords decided to leap in abandoning a Republican party too "dogmatically conservative," and the same gap over which former President Jimmy Carter decided to leap in abandoning a Southern Baptist Convention gone too right wing and fundamentalist. Exactly what happened in the 1980s to create this gap, i.e., the precise cause of political polarization, remains a matter of speculation.

According to Paul Krugman [3], polarization has not been a case of the right becoming more right and the left becoming more left. The Poole and Rosenthal data suggest that the Democrats have not moved left but tend now to occupy the position formerly referred to as the center. At the same time, the Republicans have moved to the right, "so far to the right that ordinary voters have trouble taking it in."

Poole and Rosenthal considered several possible explanations for polarization and concluded that the most likely source of political polarization is economic in nature, reflected in the sharply widening gap between the rich and poor, and the creation of an economic caste system of "haves" and "have nots," with conservative Republicans staunchly on the side of the "already-too-rich."

There is no doubt that polarization can be related to inequities in income and wealth, the top in America literally eating the bottom. But the commonplace existence of economic inequity, characteristic of all religiously-dominated cultures, has more to do with symptoms than causation, more to do with the results of despotic action than with the despotic ideas beneath that action.

Notably absent from consideration as causes of American inequity and polarization are those self-righteous religious belief factors which provide a basis for the social acceptance and nourishment of economic inequality. Setting aside considerations of post World War II "political correctness," this is an answer that is self-evident to even the casual observer. Consider, for example, the enormously unfair distribution of massive wealth in the deeply religious, oil-producing countries of the Middle East. In order to comprehend what has happened to America since the 1980s, religious viewpoints simply must be considered in order to develop a realistic comprehension of causation.

Statistical methods such as those of Poole and Rosenthal are fundamentally sound only if they tell us things we already know. To state the self-evident conclusion at the onset, the cause of polarization in American politics is the emergence of Republican neo-fundamentalism embracing "compassionate" conservatism and crony capitalism. Never mind world wars and presidential assassinations, it took a simple return to self-righteous Judeo-Roman religious attitudes in government to cause polarization and ultimately a rightwing takeover.

This movement achieved political acceptance in 1980 with the Reagan Administration, which set American precedent by overtly pandering to the views of the religious right for support in the voting booth. The movement achieved regional political dominion in 1994 when the Southern Baptist "christian" right took over the Texas Republican Party. The movement achieved national political dominion with the George W. Bush Administration, which brought "compassionate" conservatism and crony capitalism directly into the Oval Office, in an absolute breach of Jefferson's contract between church and state, a fact which disqualifies the Bush Administration from speaking on behalf of the people. None of this bothers the Bush Administration, of course, since it never intended to speak on behalf of anyone except its financial supporters in the ultra-capitalistic religious right wing.

The most characteristic feature of "compassionate" conservatism is that it is not compassionate at all and, therefore, not Christian at all. It is simply Judeo-Roman fundamentalism reborn in corporate cathedrals. The egregious corruption of Enron now provides an exemplar of self-righteous corporate America at its worst. After 18 months, the Bush Administration has still failed to bring the Enron criminals to justice, simply because these are Bush's kind of people, religious criminals who can do no wrong in the eyes of a god which they make in their own image.

It is simply the case that religion and conservative politics have gone hand in hand from the beginning, and the historical evidence would have it that whenever religion and politics have one voice there is hell to pay for it. Western religions, birthed during Biblical eras of conquering despotism, have always provided sanctuary and support for despotic regimes, from Roman Imperialism through European Colonialism to American crony Capitalism. The overt arrogance of the Bush Administration when moving into the White House, as if bearing a mandate from their god when it didn't even have a mandate from the people, is a well-documented piece of history, reflecting the belligerent mindset of "compassionate" conservatism.

By now, the Bush Administration, on behalf of the American people, has essentially let the entire world know who wants to be boss. It has accomplished this by dictating exclusionary doctrine, abandoning international treaties, snubbing the European democracies, declaring unprovoked war on Iraq, and fueling both the national deficit and class warfare by pandering to the rich at the expense of working people. The basis for this belligerence (and that is all it is) is a self-assigned moral transcendence over the people and the law, a transcendence rooted in fundamentalist religion and the Judeo-Roman tradition of absolute and infallible authority.

Make no mistake, people. The unfolding US-driven war on Iraq is many things aside from being unprovoked and immoral. It is a global religious war and, therefore, a millennial war, the most historically significant war since the emergence of nascent Christianity as a rejection of vengeance-based morality, absolute legalism and marketplace values. This is true because it is fundamentalist Western religion and crony capitalism that are now being discredited in the eyes of the world.

This is not a war between democratic citizens and religious fanatics; it is a war between religious fanatics -those in the White House and those without a house. It is a war between those with the most devastating military on earth and those with no obvious military at all. It is a war between western "christianity" (Judeo-Romanism) and Islamism, certainly to be joined by Judaism, in fulfillment of bin Laden's apocalyptic dreams.

So, as we stand on the edge of the abyss, we also stand on the threshold of a dream. The elimination of self-righteous fundamentalist religion and crony capitalism from the political arena (the "end of time" for these despotic world views) will open the doors to a global democracy and a political philosophy based in compassion (the "second coming"), as Jefferson intended first time around.

Copyright © 2003 by the News Insider and Gerry Lower


Dr. Gerry Lower lives in Keystone, South Dakota. He is published in the areas of molecular pathology/oncology/epidemiology, medical theory/philosophy/ethics, and global philosophy and ethics. Gerry has recently returned from Ukraine where he presented several papers on the values of science and democracy at the Kiev Medical Academy. His primary concern is the development of a rigorously-definable global philosophy and ethics suitable for a global democracy.

[1] The Polarization of American Politics, Keith Poole and Howard Rosenthal.

[2] Growing Apart: The Mathematical Evidence for Congress' Growing Polarization, Jordon Ellenberg, December 26, 2001, Slate Magazine.

[3] America the Polarized, Paul Krugman, January 4, 2002, The New York Times. (figures available)