The conservatism of conservatives hinges on what is implied in their concept of God. Most conservatives would assume that their God is a traditional one. And most of the rest of us would either concede the question as a private, subjective one or dismiss it as so much mysticism. Mysticism it may be; but not all mysticism is the same. The pre-Enlightenment God was pretty much a feudal and then a bourgeois affair. The post-Soviet, anti-Communist God, by contrast is a comic book hero who has little more in common with the old God than a name and some vague notion of supremacy.
When I say "comic book hero," I mean literally, not figuratively. Super-hero comics came into their own in the U.S.A. in the 1930s. The genre of the murder-mystery was pioneered by Edgar Allan Poe in the 1840s and railroad peril melodrama was popularized in the 1860s. The "God" of the anti-Communists owes more to these sub-literary genres than it does to the Bible, custom or theology. Of course the Bible is mined for static tableau to background the super-hero struggle against evil Communism (political correctness, multiculturalism, cultural Marxism, the Frankfurt School, intellectuals, secular humanists, social democrats, Muslims, etc.). But one needn't go further than the garden of Eden and the Serpent. -- Sandwichman
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