Government as Religion: The Church of the State
The Church of the State
While the Left works to banish discussions of religion from the public forum, government under President Barack Obama and the Democratic Congress has taken on many of the trapping of religion. The Church of the State is today’s Impertinent Question by John Hayward.
The Church of the State
By John Hayward
08/30/2010
Glenn Beck’s enormous weekend rally in Washington has drawn some criticism for its religious character. Howling into the vacuum where CNN’s audience used to be, Bill Press declared the rally to be “a slap at both President Lincoln and Dr. King, not to mention the American people.” Dr. King, you see, gave his timeless “I Have a Dream” speech at the same location, on the same day 47 years earlier. I’m sure he would have been deeply offended at the thought anyone would ever mention God there again.
After breathing into a paper bag for a while, Press got himself under control enough to gasp out a final slander against the hundreds of thousands of Americans who showed up to get slapped by Glenn Beck: “If you ask me, that’s like granting al-Qaeda permission to hold a rally on September 11 – at Ground Zero.” Remember this little tirade the next time Press unloads a lecture about the mean-spirited hatefulness of the Right.
If you’re tempted to overlook it as a random outburst from his disintegrating mind, the transcript linked above is from June, while Press made virtually identical comments after the rally last Sunday. This is the clumsy spectacle of an idiot trying to latch on to a Narrative, which portrays all conservative thought as tainted by religion… and religious believers are completely unwelcome in our public discourse. They are essentially disqualified from participation in our government.
How can anyone offer a principled objection to the introduction of faith to our national discussion? The platform of the Democrat Party is entirely based on faith in the State.
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A perfect illustration of this point is provided by Nancy Pelosi’s infamous statement that we needed to pass the ObamaCare bill in order to “find out what was in it.” This is government by revelation. We are expected to hand limitless funding and authority to our political class, so they can enact a marvelous bill which is beyond our feeble comprehension, which will restructure our lives for decades to come.
Environmentalist legislation has always been presented as a religious decree, handed down in a liturgy of pseudo-science. The amount of faith required to swallow it has increased as the fraudulent nature of “global warming” becomes more obvious. No questions about the “settled science” are permitted. People like Al Gore describe global warming skeptics as apostates from the true religion of the State. Paul McCartney, among others, has gone as far as comparing them to Holocaust deniers. Environmentalism has its own holy day, “Earth Day,” when school children are compelled to participate in its rituals. Because radical environmentalism requires vast amounts of compulsive force, it’s a fundamentalist denomination of the Church of the State. The power accumulated to “save the planet” can be put to so many other wonderful uses!
The deep opacity of the Obama Administration gives it the flavor of an inscrutable clergy, deeply upset when laymen violate their inner sanctum. It offers fanciful metrics for measuring its performance, like “jobs created or saved” and “lives touched,” much like a tribal shaman taking credit for the weather. The President came to power by offering himself as a redemptive figure requiring the faith of his congregation in order to work miracles, expressed through revival-tent slogans like “hope and change” or “we are the ones we’ve been waiting for.” He was assisted in this project by a remarkable number of news photos depicting him with a halo. Only now have his congregants realized the god he speaks for is a flabby horror with trillions of tentacles, heaving its bulk from the crypts of the Treasury to devour private-sector jobs, and bellow insane demands for calorie counts on fast-food drive thru menus.
The primitive anger of Bill Press is easy to understand, when you realize he sees himself as a deacon in a gigantic church, which demands a vast tribute of tax dollars and promises miracles in return. The Church of the State regards Martin Luther King, Jr. as one of its saints, so the presence of a heretic like Glenn Beck on its hallowed ground, discussing the same ancient traditions that Dr. King held dear, is blasphemous.
The State demands the absolute faith of its subjects. The same people who are perpetually surprised by “unexpected” economic news expect our trust and obedience to their intricate plans. Criticism of their decisions is taken as proof of the critic’s ignorance. They were not amused to step outside their bureaucratic temples and see a vast crowd gathered in tribute to a higher power than any court or subcommittee. Such discussions inevitably turn to inalienable rights, and self-evident truths. Every socialist fears the day when people stop believing in them.
by John Hayward
image: dbkp file
John Hayward writes under the name of Doctor Zero, where his pieces are a staple of Hot Air’s Green Room and a favorite of readers. John also maintains Doctor Zero.org where readers can find his superb collection of essays, Doctor Zero: Year One, available on Amazon.
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Did you just call Obama a messiah for Cthulu?
I find that appropriately hilarious.
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We shouldn’t be surprised to see government as religion; it was inevitable, given the uniqueness of the American experiment. While the founders scrupulously avoided the terrors that come with state-sponsored religious practice or indoctrination, they may have laid the groundwork for a new belief system: America and the Constitution.
The Constitution stresses that the rights enshrined within it were not created by the new government. Instead, it declares these rights to be inalienable, and inherent to all human beings. They are often described as “G-d Given” rights. No restrictions or qualifications were placed on them, and even the lowest immigrant was given a share in “the franchise”. While in many cases these rights were violated in practice (and we strive to illuminate these failures so as not to repeat them), even the promise of them sets America apart from other countries.
These inalienable rights are sacrosanct to most Americans, though some rights are held more dearly than others. The most universally held is the First Amendment. It was telling that, during the recent rallies in Washington, citizens in both groups said, “I don’t like what the other group is saying, but they have every right to say it”. The Second Amendment is interesting in part because of the division among citizens; those who want to ban guns see it as relic, while those who defend it see it as the right that protects all others. These are not abstract theological arguments–they are visceral, unshakable beliefs, as fierce as the battles between Roman Catholicism and the Protestant Reformers. The Bill of Rights is not so different than the Ten Commandments–they provide an essential anchor to what we are, and what we want to be.
This deep-seated set of beliefs is not a bad thing at all. I am proud to be Jewish, and have an interest in the geographical origins of my grandparents, but when asked about my identity, “American” is what comes to mind first. I am far more diligent in my practice of “Americanism” than in Judaism.
But what has happened somewhere along the line is we have shifted our worship from the idea of America to the priests who control our access to it. The revelation (revolution?) preached by Jesus was that the priests, who were supposed to be the conduit between G-d and the people, had instead come to represent themselves instead as the SOURCE of goodness and law. It made no difference whether they exercised their powers to serve themselves, or in the sincere belief that they were helping the people; by assuming the mantle of power, they perverted the original ideals. The Protestant Reformation tells much the same story.
The founders were very aware of the corrupting power of authority, which is why they designed such an inefficient and exasperating system of government. I have to shake my head every time an opinionator rails against “activist” judges, because that is EXACTLY how our system is supposed to work! Three branches of government, each having checks on the other two–and with individual states once having the right to confound all three! It may be the shift of power away from the states towards Federal control, that was the impetus for this; I’ll leave that discussion to wiser heads than mine. FDR exercised unprecedented powers in the sincere belief that it was what was best for a people in crisis; I cannot say this about the Democrats that followed him. I’m not even certain I can say it about the Republicans who followed either, since power once gained is rarely surrendered. The Cold War enabled our leaders to justify the erosion of our rights by declaring that “the Soviets are worse”. The “War on Drugs” and the “War on Terror” have used the same justifications to invest more control into Authority and away from the individual.
In the end we choose our legislators and presidents based on who is least worst. We’re supposed to be happy that the deficit increased less than was predicted, but it’s like thinking that a 2 foot jet of blood spurting from my cut jugular is better than a 4 foot jet.
I wish I had a neat and tidy way to end what has turned into a lengthy essay. I don’t have a cure. We have to find a way to prune back this top-heavy tangled tree without killing it. One way I do this is by promoting the Appleseed Project http://appleseedinfo.org/.
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