On Dec 9, 2004, at 9:13 AM, Dan Minette wrote:
----- Original Message ----- From: "Gary Denton" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
So, yes, despite tales of Hitler's atheism and Germany's Godlessness, the list of Hitler's religious assertions and Nazi Christian affiliations is long, and before Americans swallow more WMD-type baloney, it's best to comprehend this history and understand that no nation, including our own, is immune to faith-based fascism.
I have a difficulty with this type of hyperbola, even when the differences
between Hitler and GWB are acknowledged.
I thought it more a Cassanraesque declamation than an hyperbolic effusion myself. ;)
Let me give a few example. MLK used religious language and imagery a lot more than GWB has ever contemplated in his movement.
Yes, but MLK was not making the claim that any god wanted him to be president; and he was not making the claim that pushing for black civil rights was a crusade.
It's true that Southern churches supported
slavery, but the abolitionist movement was a religious based movement.
Just think of the words to the Battle Hymn of the Republic...and you can
see a far stronger invoking of God than anything done by GWB, or MLK for
that matter.
The distinction is crucial, though -- slavery's wrong. When someone like Bush (or Falwell!) tries to imply that the ludicrous assault on Iraq is in any way sanctified, he's cheapening the value of religious feeling. He's whoring out Jesus in the name of this stupid war, in the name of xenophobia.
It was Jesus who told of Samaritans. Apparently the "reverend" Falwell has forgotten that story. And Duh-bya, like a lot of born-agains with no real background in Christianity, has a pretty narrow interpretation of ... well, evidently of everything.
MLK was pro diversity. Lincoln was, however reluctantly, pro-freedom. George isn't truly either of those things, nor are the cadre of Evangelicals who seem to think they own the US (and Christianity) now.
It's not that religion is used in arguments; it's *how* it's used.
So, let us consider Hitler. In Hitler's Germany, religion was subject to
the state. It was Deuchland Uber Alles (sp), including one's obligation to
God.
Not that different from putting up the Decalogue (Protestant ver. ;) in public facilities and insisting the US is a "Christian nation" (it most certainly is not, nor was it ever).
That's because Hitler was a nationalist...he thought of history as
the struggle of peoples...with certain races clearly superior to others.
Translate to Falwell, where history is the struggle of the righteous against satan, with certain groups bound for salvation, others for hell.
This is different in type as well as degree from patriotism in the US.
Not when the patriotism is couched in the language of Evangelical hogwash, it's not, unfortunately.
For
Hitler, nations were ethnic groups....Jews who were in Germany for 500
years were Jews, not Germans. He didn't accept conversion of Jews as
acceptable. If one grandparent was a Jew, then you are a Jew..even though
your parents and you are practicing Christians.
So ... what, the war would be over if those damned heathen wogs would just convert to the One True Faith? (Which flavor of Christianity, BTW, would that be, exactly?)
Further, if you look at a number of Hitler's speeches, which I did when
this topic comes up earlier, you can see that his references to God were
rather perfunctory. Religion was one more useful tool, when put in its
proper position of being subjected to state control.
Yeah, Bush doesn't have to take that tack, because he's got plenty of Evangelical kooks waiting in the wings to do it for him. That's the value of a theocracy with a democratic fa�ade. You can pretend to be doing the will of the people while at the same time demodernizing decades of progressive, true-freedom gains.
Let's contrast that to the US. The US isn't a nation according to Hitler's
views. It's a bunch of mutts. He thought it was a shame that someone like
Jesse Owens could race against Germans because he was clearly closer to
animals. For him, the British were worthy enemies,
but the US could be dismissed.
The US is a conceptual nation, not an ethnic nation. Thus, we have a lot
of protection against that type of ethnic nationalism...because we are an
amalgamation of different ethnic groups.
But we *don't* have protection; that's the problem. We aren't as likely to move ethnically (though we certainly have done in the past -- Japanese internment camps, for instance, and of course all the anti-Islamic violence that surfaced after 11 Sept) but we're certainly falling -- leaping? -- into the trap of religious fervor.
Listening to Bush's rhetoric, we see strong indications that he believes in the idea of the US, and spreading this idea through the rest of the world.
That's not how I interpret it. What I hear is that he wants to spread his idea of a deity through the world. And that is very probably what many others are hearing as well. Some of them decide to strap on bombs because they hate the idea so much.
It's not democracy they're rejecting; it's the *culture* they see attached to it, one of hedonism and excess, and following a false god to boot.
They find it troubling. Can you see why they might?
Imagine how you'd feel if Japan started trying to push a Shinto-based culture on the rest of the world. Wouldn't you resist any attempts to promote idolatry in the streets where your kids could see it? What if Japanese toys, games and cartoons all started actively pushing Shinto ideals and beliefs? Wouldn't you protest the way your kids were being corrupted away from your deity by cultural contamination? What if part of Shinto teaching was that marijuana was okay, that everyone who wanted it should be able to get and use it? Wouldn't you feel your moral teachings to your youth were being undermined by this overridingly popular culture?
George Bush is not Hitler. America is not Nazi Germany. But buying into religious assertions or thinking that God is on your side is not wise when it comes to matters of war -- particularly when that war is an aggressive preventative war based on false premises and assumptions.
Was buying into MLK's religious assertions dangerous?
To racists, sure. ;)
Was buying into the
idea of being called to end slavery dangerous? I think the answer to that
is no. I think the key can be found in Peter Gomes work again, is someone
really trying to act on fundamental biblical principals or is someone
simply cherry picking examples that fit.
Thing is, Dan, that Duh-bya is no MLK, nor Abe Lincoln, any more than he's Hitler. He's not very bright, he's not very well grounded in philosophy, he's ignorant of science and he's not even particularly motivated to find the man who we KNOW was responsible for NYC in September. He's said as much himself. In fact he trumpets his ignorance of world events, boasting that he doesn't read newspapers. Hell, he's even less informed than Will Rogers, who was a self-confessed ignoramus with poor judgment ("I never met a man I didn't like"...).
There's no need to wait for history to judge his presidency. He's rotten at it -- clumsy at best, incompetent at worst -- and, to the extent that he's let OBL escape and Rummy has let the US military go into battle underprepared and ill-equipped, his administration has given aid and comfort to the enemy in "a time of war" -- that's treason. Were he Clinton you KNOW there'd be impeachment proceedings against him by now. The things of which Bush is guilty are much more terrible than a BJ in the Oval Office. He led the entire damn nation into a brand-new Viet Nam.
In national and international affairs, since these are public acts, an extremely helpful step is the examination of a claim to be following a calling is relating it to "love your neighbor as yourself." Both the abolitionists and the civil rights movements qualify for this. The Declaration of Independence's self-evident truths qualify.
Slavery certainly doesn't. The Catholic/Protestant conflicts in Ireland
don't. And it goes without saying that the Nazi's actions didn't. But,
lets look at what Bush is claiming to be God's calling for the US and for
him. Quoting an old sig of JDG:
"The liberty we prize is not America's gift to the world, it is God's gift to humanity." - George W. Bush 1/29/03
Visioning the US as being called by God to help spread this gift to others
does seem to follow this general rule.
Which god gave democracy to India? Vishnu? Ganesh? Shiva? I'm pretty sure if you ask an Indian, s/he won't answer that it was Jesus or JHVH.
Which god gave democracy to Thailand? It surely wasn't Siddhartha Gautama, who himself was very clear that he wasn't a god; he was just awake (bodhi).
To say that democracy is [the Christian] god's gift to the world is to run roughshod over the traditions, cultures and values of millions who are not and never will be Christian. It's extremely ethnocentric and culturally biased. And it just ain't true.
So, in short, I don't think that evoking of God in the vision of spreading
freedom and representative government throughout the world that's is a
problem. Indeed, it is strongly within the tradition of the US, from the
Declaration of Independence, through Lincoln, through today. Bush's
difficulties are a function of the implementation of this vision.
It's not invoking nature or nature's god, as Jefferson had it; it's invoking a specific type of Paulino-christian fundamentalism, using terms like "crusade" openly, and effectively calling for the murder of any non-Christians. That's what any rational mind has to object to, and I'm pretty sure that the Constitutional authors, Lincoln and MLK would be in agreement with me on this.
Bush's rhetoric is on the edge. The right-wing extremists take it around the bend. The only way to respond meaningfully to it is for George to tone it down and advise others to do the same, but he won't do that, because that requires wisdom and subtlety, two traits which he is conspicuously lacking.
-- Warren Ockrassa, Publisher/Editor, nightwares Books http://books.nightwares.com/ Current work in progress "The Seven-Year Mirror" http://www.nightwares.com/books/ockrassa/Flat_Out.pdf
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