Shabbat Goy: Au Contraire
"You guys have become the Jews of the 21st century," said Michael Horowitz, senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, to a conference of evangelicals in Washington this week. The conference is called " The War on Christians and the Values Voters in 2006." Speakers include: Tom Delay, John Cornyn, Sam Brownback, and many other stars in the Christian right firmament.
Not to carry the Jewish analogy too far, however, conference organizer Rick Scarborough invites attendees to view Tom DeLay as a Christ figure, a man "God has appointed" brought down by his faith in God. After DeLay finished his speech, Scarborogh remarked that "God always does his best work right after a crucifixion."
Speaking of "laughing behind backs": Former DeLay communications director Michael Scanlon described his plan for mobilizing conservative Christians against the Coushatta tribe's casino competition as: "bring out the wackos to vote against something and make sure the rest of the public lets the whole thing slip past them." The plan will work, he continued, because, "The wackos get their information from the Christian right, Christian radio, the internet and telephone trees."
Did "Christ" have "Judas" working for him as communications director? Or is DeLay a false prophet? Wonder how the evangelicals incorporate the Coushattas into their theodicy.
posted by Frances @ 7:29 AM
5 Comments:
Let's face it; the evangelicals easily wear the mantle of laughingstock, although right now it seems to me that they're getting in just as many or more laughs at others' expense. In the context of that particular persecution-complex fest referenced in the Post article, Horowitz's comment was just unbelievable rhetoric -- he was actually saying that the evangelicals are the Jews of the 21st century in the sense that they are the new targets of persecution. Last time I checked, Dometian wasn't sitting on the throne, rather it was Constantine along with his rubber-stamp Senate and he was throwing everyone but the Christians and Capitalists to the lions. Wait a minute; maybe I mistook Constantine for Nero...
At any rate, I think the existence of the conference jibes with one of my major points. The evangelicals of Middle America are not being influenced by the eastern Jewish lobby as much as by the evangelical lobby, which is actually more pro-Israel than some in the Jewish community. As Don Feder, the head of Jews Against Anti-Christian Defamation, said to his evangelical listeners: "Remember, the people in this audience are more Jewish than people like Barbra Streisand, because you embrace Jewish values, she doesn't." Unequivocal support for Israel on theological grounds is one of those values, I dare hazard. In short, in regards to Israel, we have a faith-based foreign policy.
I think they're making real good progress in The War on Culture.
The conservatives are losing the culture war on the culture front--as in public opinion is moving away from them. Gays are gaining greater acceptance, women aren't expected to stay in the home anymore, America is becoming more religiously diverse, with the secular % increasing.
But this conference isn't about arguing with public opinion or broader societal trends. Instead, they're accusing others of discriminating against them. The case for that is laughable.
The Christian right may be losing on the culture front, but it isn't losing on the policy front. They've made nice gains in the composition of the Supreme Court, in restricting abortion and contraceptive access, impeding stem cell research, and in FCC decency regulation. They're very happy about all the tax cuts, too.
Government is only a small part of life, and its effects on society are limited. To the extent that government can play a role, the Christian right has gained ground over the past 30 years. The religious right have a powerful voice in public policy and a near veto over the Republican party's policies, nominees, and elected officials.
Despite the short term gains in policy, my guess is that the Xian Right will end up losing most of those battles over time, much as the old evangelicals eventually lost Prohibition. The wild card here is the Supreme Court: if Stevens dies suddenly in the next two years, you could quickly have a culture war majority in place.
What I find especially interesting about these battles is how the right has so easily co-opted the PC politics of the multiculti left to create a rhetoric of unending identity grievance. It's just that the "persecuted" minority is not blacks or women or gays, it's "Christians" and "taxpayers." It creates a weird marriage of power and privilege with constant whining, as if the rich, the white, and the Christian are constantly being thrown to the lions.
DK -- really interesting! So IL Democrats have been strategically using culture war initiatives that won't pass to crosspressure suburban Republicans. This is sort of how those issues got their start in Congress. Culture war issues were a much bigger part of the congressional agenda in the 1980s when the GOP was using them to crosspressure rural/southern Democrats. Despite the impression one might get from news media coverage, there are actually far fewer votes on culture war issues today than in the 1980s now that the GOP has a majority.
I'm not sure if the IL approach translates easily to the national stage, though, even if the Democrats gain the House or Senate. With Democratic numbers reduced as they are, there aren't many members who represent districts where they can get mileage out of pushing cultural conservativism. If Democrats do win control of a chamber, the new Democratic seats are far more likely to come from suburban (culturally liberal) areas rather than from rural areas. These issues utterly alienate the urban/suburban Democrats, as in, most Democrats. Meanwhile, it's pretty hard to get to the right of what Republican majorities will support.
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