Walter Russell Mead parries my criticism by recalling the intolerance of his youth:
The Left has been winning most of the cultural arguments, but its fear of the Right grows even as the country continues by and large to move culturally toward tolerance and acceptance of diversity. My guess is that this is due to the country’s equally pronounced drift toward the Right on a number of political and economic issues. New Deal values and suspicion of unfettered free markets were much more widespread in those far off halcyon days when I first attended the still-segregated Pundit Elementary School: this was a much more collectivist country in 1958 than it is today.
This misunderstands my concerns. I have experienced firsthand the progress Mead cites, as my once flaky idea of marriage rights has come to pass and as DADT has fallen. I can see how abortion is now embedded in American society – even after a generation or two has vowed to stop it. But this, far from proving the Christianists redundant, has only made them more determined to fight harder. In fact, I think the very progress Mead cites has emboldened, infuriated and energized them. And that revived fundamentalist right is now threatening to take back power at a national level.
And one key development has also occurred. The Christianists were once in the Democratic party, engaged in an endless and bitter but integrating coalition with economic liberals and secular progressives. And this helped soften the hard edges, even when they were dictating policy. Today, the GOP is controlled entirely by the religious right, and its manner of thinking has altered to a purely religious one. Policies dependent on circumstances are now doctrines (no tax hikes ever) unable to be altered. Foreign policy is dictated by Christianist dogma (on, for example, Israel) rather than prudential advancement of national interests. As the society has moved on, the GOP has become more noticeable for its white-knuckled resistance to all such change.
Today's GOP, for example, favors repeal of the repeal of DADT, a constitutional amendment to ban all relationship rights for gay couples, criminalization of all abortion including cases of rape and incest, the undermining of evolution in education, disbelief in climate change, support for torture, cheers for the death penalty, and a global Judeo-Christian war against Islam. Yes, reality in a changing, more individualized world, is stacked against them. But that doesn't mean reactionaryism doesn't have traction. Closing the EPA is a radical stance, compared with, say, Nixon's environmental policies. Calling the very term gay the "work of Satan," as Bachmann has, is not the spirit of Reagan in the Briggs Initiative. Embracing torture 20 years after Reagan signed the UN Convention against it is another grim development. The expulsion of all pro-choice Republicans from the party is another. Yes, Dick Cheney has a gay daughter. Like Mead, I thought that would make a difference. But the GOP subsequently stripped his daughter of any rights (even private contracts) in her relationship in Virginia, launched successful efforts in a majority of states to ban recognition of gay relationships in state constitutions – and the Bush administration backed the Federal Marriage Amendment. The drug war – far from over – is actually being intensified against casual pot-smokers.
My concern is that fundamentalist religious thinking has now permeated every aspect of one major party – from foreign policy to economics and social policy. The social progress we have made has not disproven that – it has merely intensified the passion the Christianists feel. So too has the war after 9/11 in which Islam became reified on the religious right as the enemy, and in which pragmatic attempts to engage the Muslim world – especially in its democratic revolutions – are regarded as blasphemous, if it requires any cooperation from Israel, a sacred ally in Rick Perry's mind.
Compare the GOP with the Tories they once shadowed. The Tories were prepared to raise some taxes to cut the debt. They have pioneered and embraced conservative environmentalism. They are backing full marriage equality for gays. They leave abortion and the death penalty to the individual consciences of legislators, without taking a party position. But they are also emphatically in favor of private enterprise, and a prudent foreign policy – and are cutting spending in ways that the GOP has only ever aired theoretically. This is what conservatism used to be. And like Mead, I am old enough to remember it.
The Dish 