Restitutor Orbis

I may be remembering incorrectly, but I cast my vote last November for Barack Obama, not Joe Liebermann. So why is it this not-really-a-Democrat senator is calling the shots? Why is it that the President - the man I did vote for - is kow-towing to a man who really isn't even a Democrat - not even nominally, whatever he may claim?

It's an interesting development. At the time Mr. Obama took office, you'll remember, there was a lot of talk about Liebermann and his role and his potential usefulness, given that he often voted in rank with the Democrats.

All that looks like speculative fiction today, as likely as finding a dragon in the Rose Garden.

Reuters is reporting that Obama faces healthcare insurrection from left flank

That should come as no surprise. Some of us are pretty upset about what looks more and more like a betrayal of one of his central campaign promises, to give us quality healthcare.

Leading the grousing from the left has been Howard Dean, a former Democratic National Committee chairman who ran unsuccessfully for his party's presidential nomination in 2004.

Dean, a medical doctor and former governor of Vermont, in recent days has said a Senate healthcare bill that Obama supports and which is lurching toward a possible vote in coming days should be killed.

"If I were a senator, I would not vote for the current healthcare bill," Dean wrote in a Washington Post opinion article on Thursday, his latest broadside on the matter.

The White House - and presumably Obama himself - is seeming more and more out of touch with the American people. Is it possible that Mr. Obama has forgotten his promise?

Obama's senior adviser, David Axelrod, went on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" program on Thursday to fire back at Dean, saying his argument is "predicated on a bunch of erroneous conclusions" and that the legislation does meet most Democratic goals.

Axelrod found himself challenged on the program by Ed Schultz, a liberal anchor on MSNBC's evening programing.

"They key is, people in this country right now don't believe that the White House has stood up to the insurance industry," Schultz said.

It's also looking more and more like it's time for a progressive revolution to put the Democratic Party back on track, if not replace it altogether. We have clearly been betrayed by some of our representatives in Washington, D.C., and our President, whom we elected on a ticket for Change, has apparently decided that the status quo is more comfortable.

Progressives need to realize that we won't get what we want, we won't get what we were promised, we won't get what this country needs, by being better informed and more cognizant of the facts than our conservative opponents. We need some passion as well, and we need to turn this passion - and our command of the facts - on our representatives in Washington, D.C., and on our President.

We’ve heard it all said a hundred times – that America is a Christian nation, that it was founded as a Christian nation, that the Founding Fathers were Bible-believing, God-fearing Christian men, that there is no Wall of Separation between Church and State.

The only problem is, none of it is true.

And the 18th century’s own Evangelicals signed off on the system of government those very secular-minded Founding Fathers established.

Back in the 18th century, you see, people were a lot closer to the events that shaped the new nation. They had close personal experience with the dangers of Church and State meddling in each other’s business. They knew what it was to be persecuted, not by a secular government but by a government under the control of another denomination.

They wanted protection. From each other.

And our new system of government, promised by the Declaration of Independence and come to fruition in the Constitution, gave them what they asked for.

Of course, none of these facts have stopped our own century’s Evangelicals from telling an entirely different story, one founded not in fact, not in history, but in wishful thinking, in history as it should have been – but wasn’t.

And they have big money backing them up. They have glossy websites, glossy publications, book clubs, brochures, even entire series’ of books, including the “Politically Incorrect Guide to…” series, which would be better named, “Factually Inaccurate Guide” or “Historically Inaccurate Guide.”

These books play to the base. Like any works of apologia – and that is what they are – they comfort believers, convincing them, reassuring them, that all is well, that the lies they’ve been told are safe to believe – and to go on believing.

But this mythical Christian America has no more solid a foundation than Creation Science – both are contradictions in terms.

It is true that most of the citizens of the new United States were Christians of one kind or another, many of them, especially following the successful conclusion of the War for Independence, refugees from oppressive religious environments in the Old World. They came here precisely because there WAS separation between church and state, precisely because here, they could be free of government-sponsored religion.
The problem for today’s Evangelicals is that the government itself was secular in nature, founded by men grounded in science and reason and disciples – and products – of the Age of European Enlightenment.

These men had the opportunity to form any sort of government they wished. ANY. They could have made a monarchy of our new nation – it was considered and the idea dismissed. They could have established a theocracy – but no one gave that idea any thought at all. It was never even a possibility. The motto of the new nation was, significantly, “E Pluribus Unum” – Out of Many, One. It was not, equally significantly, “In God We Trust.”

Instead, they gave us a nation founded on ancient principles of democracy, a product of ancient polytheistic Greece, and freedom of speech and thought – also products of the ancient polytheistic world – and human rights, a product of the European Enlightenment so heartily condemned by the Church. Nothing in the new nation was based on biblical principles. The Founding Fathers took more from the Iroquois Federation than they did Old Testament Israel.

There too, facts have not stopped today’s Evangelicals, who ardently insist that our nation was founded on Biblical principles. I would like to inquire where in ancient Israel there existed ideas of Democracy and Free Speech and thought. In ancient Israel, free thought and free speech got you stoned. Nor was there Democracy; there was monarchy and theocracy. There were no human rights. Exercising human rights would get you stoned. It was a society built on exclusion and enforced behavior. There was no liberty anywhere in sight.

So what we have today as the heart and soul of the Republican Base is a Mythical America, an American history of the imagination, one of wishful thinking but not of fact. Just as is much of the Bible, this Mythical America is pious history.

Look at some of the assertions made by the Mythicists:

• The American “revolutionaries” were actually conservatives


• The Puritans didn’t steal Indian lands


• The Bible promotes human freedom


• The enemies of the Bible are enemies of true reason and tolerance


• The Bible made modern science possible (which is why it started in the Middle Ages)


• The Middle Ages were the real “Age of Reason”


• The “Enlightenment” yielded tyranny and war.

It is no surprise that these “talking points” are aped on social networking sites, on FOX News and anywhere else conservatives gather. They’re said as if they’re true. The specious reasoning that goes behind them is repeated as if it even made sense (which it doesn’t).

• The revolutionaries were liberals. They founded our nation on the liberal principles of the European Enlightenment – not upon the conservative principles of the Old World.


• The Puritans did steal Indian lands. Shamelessly.


• The Bible nowhere promotes human freedom. Evangelicals can repeat the myth of Christian egalitarianism and slavery all they want but the truth is, Christianity did not promote egalitarianism and it did not free the slaves.
  
• The statement that enemies of the Bible are enemies of reason and tolerance proves itself wrong.


• Science did not start in the Middle Ages. It started in the ancient polytheistic world – and, significantly, not in Biblical Israel but in Greece, which promoted freedom of thought and speech. When science saw the light of day again, it was not because of Christianity, but despite it, as the historical record clearly demonstrates.


• The Middle Ages were not the Age of Reason. One has only to look at the rampant superstition, the crusades, the wars against heretics, the inquisition, the witch-burnings, the anti-Jewish pogroms, the forced conversion of Pagan peoples in Northern and Eastern Europe…no, not much Reason but a whole lot of slaughter in God’s name.


• The Enlightenment did not stop war, but it did not yield war as a consequence. It did, however, put a stop to crusades, wars against heretics, the inquisition, witch-burnings, and rampant anti-Jewish pogroms. It was not quite able to stop forced conversion of Pagan peoples but at least we stopped slaughtering them in “God’s” name.

Our society is diverse and free to a degree that has never been possible before in history. Diversity and plurality are a blessing. But to the Evangelicals, it is a threat. It threatens the status quo. It threatens them with loss of power and loss of influence. The more diverse our society becomes, the more resistant they become. The more reactionary they become. They become more intolerant, more hateful, and more inclined to use fear as a weapon to browbeat others into servitude to “their” Bible.

And the more inclined they are to embrace an imaginary, Mythical America. As a result, we are introduced to ideas that have no basis in historical fact, like the points discussed briefly above. We have conservative Christians making blind, unsupported assertions about this Mythical America as though it really existed, without a thought being given to the facts.

And why bother with the facts when talking points are so handy - when apologetic works abound, demonstrating these myths to be fact and denouncing fact as myth? It’s all very comforting to them, and all very damaging, not only for them, but for all of us. They want to impose on the United States a return to the 13th century, to that imaginary “Age of Reason” they talk about, when they – and they alone – were free to do what they wanted – to everyone else. And let not a word be raised in protest.

Because as you all by now know, they can damn and condemn and it’s their God-given right, but should anyone raise a word in protest, it’s a “war against Christianity” or “hate” or “intolerance.” Because it isn’t freedom they really want. It’s the privileging of their myth, of their own beliefs, at the expense of everyone else. It’s the freedom to persecute, without apology or thought, everyone different from them, and like their 13th century brethren, justify it in their god’s name.

But America didn’t exist in the 13th century. It could not have existed in the 13th century. It took a genuine Age of Reason to make America possible, and going back to the 13th century would skip right over it. It’s pretty obvious to anyone living in an evidence-based world, but as the Politically Incorrect guide series of books make clear, their interest isn’t in evidence – it’s in wishful thinking.

(Author's Note: I have granted permission for this essay to be cross-posted on God's Own Party http://godsownparty.com/blog/ and thanks go to Leah for reviewing it before publication)

My new piece, "Back to the 30’s: National Socialist and Republican Discourse 1" has been published by ProgressiveNation. It is the first in a series of articles examining the similarities between National Socialist and Republican discourse and making a comparison between tactics used by the Brownshirts (Storm Troopers) and the Tea Party movement.

Environmentalism impacts our lives in many ways - sometimes unexpected. We many of us recycle - some more than others, with it being understood that different communities can hinder or advance efforts at recycling. It can be particularly difficult in apartment buildings, as I've discovered. Where I am now, recycling reduces my garbage output by a good 33%. It makes a noticeable dent in what I throw out, even being limited to type 1 and 2 plastics.

We're also all familiar with the need to not leave all our lights on, and vampire-energy and so forth, and the evils of big SUV's and other gas-guzzlers.

But now they're after our TVs. I just read on Saturday that "California assails TV power usage" and that a "one-third cut" has been mandated by 2011.

The problem is that the big new flat-panel TVs, though lighter and easier on my back, suck up more power than the old fashioned cathode-ray tubes of yesteryear. TV's account, they say, for 10% of household electrical use if you include "related devices" like digital recorders and game consoles.

Egads, they'll be after our games next, and my gods' given right to record programming for later viewing. The Consumer Electronics Association, as might be expected as an outfit representing manufacturers, disagrees with the 10% figure and says 3% is more reasonable.

Personally, I'm more worried about my back than the power.

Even so, I wasn't consulted and California has decided that there be limits on TVs over 58 inches wide.

So they're shooting for a one-third reduction by 2011 and a one-half reduction by 2013. Those that can't meet the standards won't be allowed in CA. I wonder if they'll stop you at the border when you're moving into the state and make you throw your TV into the desert if it's too big.

And that's not all. Washington, Oregon, and Massachusetts, along with Canada and Australia, are considering similar measures.

My biggest TV is 42 inches. Just upgraded from 27. So I'm set even in California, but it's not about me.

Well, okay, it's about me, but it's about a lot of other things as well - where do we draw the line, for instance, between consumer rights and the needs of the environment? What becomes necessary? And how much can we justify in the way of government interference?

The environment is a precious thing. We only have one. I'm a Heathen - a Pagan if you will - and Pagan religions are nature religions, as all original religions were. We have a good healthy respect for the environment. That's perhaps natural when you understand that we live in a world filled with the divine.

As such, I try to be careful. I try not to drive when I don't have to. I don't leave unnecessary lights on. In short, I follow Solon's advice: Nothing in excess. Or, as it is put in the Icelandic Sagas, "A wise man does all things in moderation" (Thorkel in Gisli Sursson's Saga).

If everybody lived according to these rules, we could go a long way towards voluntarily resolving some of the problems we are now seeing legislated against. As we go on, we may see more extreme measures taken to protect the environment.

And they will likely be necessary. The problem is, most of the burden falls on the individual in this country. Very little in the way of regulations control what industry does to our environment. They have power lobbyists in Washington. They practically own members of Congress.

So industry pollutes and we lose our big TVs.

Now being a moderate guy, I can probably live without a TV bigger than 58 inches. Honestly, I don't have the wall space for more than that unless I finish my basement.

Will that be next? You can't finish basements because the construction process pollutes? Or will it harm some heretofore unknown microbe that dwells in the cracks of the concrete.

Excess, you see, can go many ways, not only in individuals who might be careless environmentally, or in businesses which remain unregulated, but in governments - even environmentalists, who resort to extreme solutions where moderation might suffice.

I've seen some crazy things over recent years. Crazier even than wanting to take away our TVs (and you don't see an NRA-like group protecting our TVs do you?). I would just like to see common-sense, moderation prevail.

I don't think that's too much to ask, or to expect - from all sides.

The Right has made a lot of fuss about President Obama being a liar, about breaking his campaign promises. If you go ahead and fact check these claims, you don't get the same result the Right insists on. What you get instead is a mixed bag. Less than a year into office, I really don't think it's all that bad. Yes, I'm disappointed about some things, but I'm happy about others. But as Odin says in the Words of the High One, "don't praise a day 'till it's over." Until President Obama has had his chance, it's really not right to issue a verdict.

If you're interested, go to PolitiFact.com's Obameter. Here is a brief peek at their findings:

Tracking Obama’s promises
55
Promise Kept
14
Compromise
7
Promise Broken
17
Stalled
156
In the Works
266
Not yet rated

Republicans are desperate to prove FDR's legislation, known as the New Deal, did not work. They are desperate because if it worked, it will work again - for Obama. And they do not want Obama to succeed. So, to discredit his economic plan, they seek to prove the New Deal failed to lift the country out of the Great Depression. It won't work.

Why?

Because the New Deal worked.

From DemocraticUnderground.com:

When Franklyn Roosevelt began his presidency in 1933, our nation was in the midst of the greatest depression in our history. Our annual gross domestic product had been nearly cut in half since the Stock Market Crash of three and a half years previously, and unemployment stood at 25%. Within four years of taking office, GDP rose to about 90% of where it had been prior to the Stock Market Crash. In FDR's first term in office our country experienced a 5.3% increase in jobs, the greatest percent increase in jobs of the past 20 presidential terms, from 1929 to 2009. As a result, the unemployment rate was approximately cut by more than 40% by the end of his first term. By 1941, prior to the onset of World War II, the unemployment rate had declined to below 10%.

And the New Deal was so much more than an economic policy. It was public policy. It was a revolution in thinking. And it changed America. No one questions this latter statement and I think this change is really what is at the heart of conservative hostility. Entrenched interests do not like change. And I think this is what is at the heart of conservative hostility to President Obama. He threatens the status quo. America's white masters were xenophobic, preservationist, and jealous of their position.

As Morton Keller argues ("The New Deal: A New Look," Polity 31 (1999), 657-663) the New Deal "emerged from the Great Depression and felt the need to change a dysfunctional economic order, not from a desire to preserve an older American from new social, political, and economic threats" and that "from the hindsihgt of more than half a century, we can see what emerged from the New Deal...was not renewed xenophobia and standpattism...Rather, the basic New Deal themse of a broad, inclusive, democratic cultural nationalism, and a readiness to use federal programs and deficit financing when necessary to secure prosperity and meet large domestic or international needs."

The New Deal brought positive change. It promoted the end of racism and xenophobia, "eroded anti-Catholicism, anti-Semitism, and even, gradually, the segregation of blacks in American life." The Great Society legislation sponsored by President Lyndon B. Johnson was a continuation of the process, as Keller calls it, "an extension rather than a fresh and different political movement."

It is impossible to call the New Deal a failure unless you are part of the entrenched, xenophobic interests now represented by the Republican Party. Just as it did 60 years or more ago, the small town native-American hostility to the immigrant-filled big cities came to the fore - stoked by xenophobes like McCain and Palin and their talk of a "real" America - which is the rural, backwoods, small-town as opposed to the alien and evil big city. There were even good and bad parts of various states, according to the Republican Party, or "real" and "unreal" parts of America. This attitude is the antithesis of the New Deal.

We can argue the merits of the New Deal backwards and forwards, but we must first understand the issues. And the issue here is that the Republicans of today represent entrenched, largely white interests and the old status quo. Republican attitudes today are a reaction against the New Deal, reaction against the Great Society, and a reaction against Obama as another reformer in the mold of FDR and Johnson.

But Keller points out that the New Deal has not been a "one-party inheritance." We can look at Eisenhower's Interstate Highway System, which would have been unthinkable without the New Deal. Does anybody oppose our interstate system? Anyone? Anyone? The Space Program is another child of the New Deal - even the arms buildup of Reagan, so adored by Republicans today. You can claim he defeated the Red Menace but he defeated the Red Menace only because of a paradigm shift put into place by a progressive Democratic leadership. Reagan, too, is unthinkable in pre-New Deal terms.

Keller points out that "American politics and government in the second half of the twentieth century has been dominated not only by a rejected of the New Deal legacy, but rather by a continuing adaption, in its spirit, to the demands of a changing American society."

Of course, we have seen how Republicans even now hearken back to the halcyon days of pre-Depression America, to a yearning for small town values (and vice) over the alien landscape of the immigrant-filled big cities, to the old xenophobia which bread isolationism, and it is no surprise that it appeals mostly to white voters who feel threatened and who sense a loss of control. Opposition to the New Deal is reactionary. It always has been. The alternatives in the 30's were totalitarianism - either left or right. And of course, it is to the totalitarian model that conservatives seem to lean even today. They embraced Bush and his imperial presidency, for example. They reject Obama and accuse him of being the true totalitarian but we all know that the real reason for this is not a rejection of totalitarianism but the fact that Obama is not THEIR totalitarian. This is their chance, they seem to think, to turn back the clock and reclaim America for the white voter, for entrenched interests, and to restore some mythical golden age that never was - the myth of a Christian America with "real" values.

But that was an age when race and religion were prime determinants in whether a person deserved to be part of the community. We see this today in the Republican Party and the appeal to "small town" or "real American" values. Reject alienism, reject what is foreign and that which threatens to overturn the status quo. Is it any surprise that blacks are predominantly Democrats and that Hispanic/Latino voters abandoned the Republican cause en masse in 2008?

The New Deal saved us from this conservative pipe dream - a paradise for them but hell for anyone who fits into the category of the "Other". It was, as Keller says, not an episode but a defining moment like the Revolution "or the establishment of the new nation". It is a moment we should embrace and protect, not reject. And short-sighted conservative opponents today do not realize how much their own policies and have depended upon New Deal legislation and the paradigm shift that went with it. 1920 is gone folks. Good and gone. And good riddance. We have moved on. The world has moved on. We can't go back in time. We can't undo the New Deal - it has become part of American life. And it is so much more than economic policy. So much more.

For Further Reading: Mitch McConnell Is Wrong – The New Deal DID Work, and it Still Does