Thinking For Oneself In Bush's America
By Dr. Gerry Lower - 18 June 2003

Being free, being able to think for oneself, is certainly the mark of a true individual. Being able to make one's own decisions and being able to act on those decisions is largely what being an individual living in a democracy is all about. As a result, our Fathers made an immensely big issue out of self-determination (liberty), because it provides for a political philosophy which gives us a chance to learn who we are and why we are here, and it provides for a political philosophy which maximizes the distinction between the human presence on earth and that of all other life forms.

All other life forms on this planet live in the 'real' world and they respond entirely to that call. Your dog is going to go into heat regardless of whether or not it makes sense to you or your dog. In contrast, we humans live in a world generated from our own observations and interpretations, a conceptual world located between our ears. It is within this tiny, albeit infinite, 'world' that we are expected to make value judgments and decisions on our own. It is called the gift of choice, an evolutionary gift from inside, but one that has gone largely unappreciated and unimplemented in the world. Despite all current human controls over the world, we remain entirely enmeshed in the struggle to think for ourselves, as if we haven't quite got democracy figured out yet.

In contemporary America, for example, one would be hard put to find an individual who would admit to not thinking and deciding for him or herself. We uniformly claim to think for ourselves because it is the sole trait that distinguishes us from our pets in heat, it is the primary criterion for claiming humanhood. But, this most human characteristic remains largely absent in contemporary America, despite our claims.

Since World War II, we have increasingly become what is known as an 'amorphous' society, a society of people who can no longer be described as being unified by a chosen set of ideas, words and actions. Rather, America has become increasingly divided, commencing in 1980 when the Reagan administration brought religious pandering into the White House. Since then, the increasing divide between liberal and conservative causes has produced both gridlock and an inconsistent hodge podge of social policies reflecting the traditional pendular movement of the American political world between liberal and conservative values and interpretations.

This pendular movement, however, was lost with the political appointment of the Bush administration. Gridlock has been broken and the political pendulum is now stationed at the extreme right, no longer embracing any human middle ground, maintained there not by the values of democracy but by the values of vengeance-based Old Testament religion and crony capitalism. The religious right holds the position that these values are so fundamentally integral to the "American Way" that it is permissible, even desirable, to employ lies and fabrications and self-righteous attitudes and approaches in order to ensure that the 'right' side will win in every conflict. Let Jefferson's contract between church and state, a necessary requirement for religious freedom, be damned. Control and dominion is all that really counts.

The Bush administration has established its dominion through the use of religious coercion by lumping every single factionated branch of western religion into one Old Testament heap, as if the Lutheran and Protestant Reformations never occurred, as if Jefferson and Franklin and Deism never existed, as if western Christendom has made no human progress since Constantine decided that it was justifiable to conquer the known Western world in the name of Christian compassion.

By employing religious coercion, the Bush administration has managed to secure popular support for the destruction of civil rights and religious freedom in America, the adoption of a smug, self-righteous, unilateral posture in the world, and the implementation of outright immoral aggression directed at a poverty-stricken, nearly defenseless nation with resources highly coveted by corporate America. Now, that doesn't sound very Christian, does it? Nor does it have anything to do with Democracy.

The Bush administration has, as trenchantly pointed out by Ben Tripp (The Other "F" Word, CounterPunch, May 9, 2003), crossed the line between privilege and power, crossed the line between church and state, and crossed the line between civilian and military authority, to reach the glorious gates of fascism, all brought to you by blind greed and power mongering hidden beneath Old Testament self-righteousness.

As a result, even the self-proclaimed 'Christian' community in America is divided to the core. The US Council of Catholic Bishops, the National Council of Churches and countless religious leaders from the Pope on down have gone on record as believing that the Bush administration's pre-meditated and unprovoked war against Iraq was launched from immoral ground. At the same time, even larger numbers of 'christians' have been loudly beating the drums of war in rhythm with Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson and Franklin Graham in advocating military action against the heathen world of Islam, which they hope to convert to their version of 'christianity' and capitalism on the road to their own apocalypse.

This is one of the more profound effects of September 11th terrorism in America. It has brought an old internal religious conflict boiling back to the surface, a conflict that has been inherent in Western Christendom for nearly two millennia. Just flip the King James Version open and check it out, because doing so provides a genuine lesson in learning to think for oneself. Do real Christians accept the Old Testament version of morality based in legalism (we have long known that one cannot legislate morality) and penalism and vengeance? Or do real Christians accept the New Testament version of morality based in compassion and forgiveness? Needless to say, one cannot really have it both ways.

There it is, folks, right in front of you. These two approaches, the one to a legal/penal morality based in vengeance, the other to an ethical morality based in compassion, have been mutually exclusive since the first Christian spelled out his solutions to despotic religious rule two millennia ago. Nascent Christianity was and is a complete rejection of absolute legalism, vengeance-based moralities (penalism) and marketplace values.

All right, people, right here and now is your chance to think for yourself -as opposed to taking some one else's word for it and agreeing with it whether it makes sense or not. Are the belligerent, militaristic machinations of the Bush administration derived from Old Testament vengeance-based morality or from New Testament compassion-based morality? Is George W. Bush an Old Testament despot or a New Testament Christian?

These are, mind you, not very difficult questions, the answers being self-evident to all but the frightened, the superstitious and the morally challenged. So, what do you think? Does it strike you that George W. Bush might not really be very Christian at all, that he might be a tad off the Christian track? Well, God bless you. Entirely on your own, you have reached the same conclusion that was reached by Thomas Jefferson in considering the religious despots of Europe. You have just rediscovered a fundamental truth beneath American political philosophy, that religion and Christianity simply ain't the same thing. Not bad for a first effort at enlightenment.


Jefferson, of course, was quite privy to religious history and, by his time, the history of the western church was readily seen as one of massive factionation, with one religious reformation after another, until it was clear that the general trend in western culture was away from religious despotism and toward individual empowerment. Indeed, most of our Fathers were Deists who were easily bright enough to make the distinction between the values of traditional religion and the values of nascent Christianity, as you just have.

Jefferson even went so far, in a letter to his friend Kercheval, to point out that "the purest system of morals ever before preached to man [nascent Christianity] has been adulterated and sophisticated by artificial constructions [Old Testament supernaturalism and vengeance-based morality] into a mere contrivance to filch wealth and power [...] and perverted into an engine for enslaving mankind, so as to constitute the real Antichrist." The experiences which drove our Fathers to this conclusion are available to us on a daily basis in George Bush's America, if we would only think for ourselves.

So far so good. Now that you are over this millennial hurdle and can see that one is either Christian or one is not, that Christianity has nothing whatsoever to do with Old Testament supernaturalism and never did, you will be well on your way to thinking for yourself. This is essential, because if you can pull it off, there is high hope for all of us, and here is why.

There is a profound human reason why it is so important to be able to think for oneself and make one's own decisions in a democracy. Because, my newly enlightened friends, it is by thinking for ourselves that we find our only route to common ground and agreement.

No way you say? How could that possibly be if we are all running around thinking for ourselves?

In truth, restricting ourselves to the world of honest human knowledge and compassion (the world of Science and nascent Christianity) and leaving go in public life the world of supernatural conjecture and confusion (the world of religious fundamentalism, e.g., 'compassionate' conservatism, Judaism and Islamism), provides far more ground for common agreement than traditional religion could hope to provide.

With Constantine's reintegration of nascent Christianity and Judaism, the western religious worldview has provided mostly ground for disagreement, by virtue of offering mutually exclusive moralities (conservative/liberal) in the same book. The Old Testament has been a great read for those interested in imperialism, colonialism and crony capitalism, but there never was, by definition, any Christianity in it. It's really that simple, if you think for yourself.

Now that you are a free thinker, please do keep in mind the enormous beauty that comes from all of us thinking for ourselves. Because if we all do so, in a free society and in recognition of our common origins and intertwined destinies, we will end up agreeing on so many things, we might actually begin to like each other. At that point, my friends, we are home free.

Copyright © 2003 by the News Insider and Gerry Lower