Category: The Dish

A reader writes:

I, perhaps like many, was shocked to see the ABC News report on "Jesus Camp." Certainly the existence of an evangelical youth movement is not news to me, nor is the strong alliance between the Republican party and American evangelicals. What was new was that young Christians worship at the image of the President. How can this practice be considered Christian, or even within the Judeo-Christian tradition? I know of no sect of Christianity that has beatified or canonized President Bush as a living saint – in the mainstream traditions I am familiar with, such reverence is reserved for the departed. This practice seems to displace the divine with the human, and I have difficulty understanding how anyone calling themselves Christian can bow to worship a political leader, no matter how much he or she agrees with that leader’s politics.

I fear it is only the natural evolution of a movement that has fused inerrant Biblical truth with a political party. There is a great need within such cults for a great leader to venerate and worship. Christianity has been prone to such perversions in the past. And so the leadership-cult around Bush is not that surprising. From a Southern woman recently quoted in a CNN piece:

"There are some people, and I’m one of them, that believe George Bush was placed where he is by the Lord. I don’t care how he governs, I will support him. I’m a Republican through and through."

This is how "Christians" can come to be motivated by the cause of torture (a position one might say the Gospels are opposed to), and how they come to believe, in the words of Charles Krauthammer, that torture is a "moral necessity". Once you have abandoned all reason to faith, and when that faith is merged into a mass political movement, energized by mass, hysterical rallies where children are indoctrinated, it is quite clear the kind of fire you’re playing with. But Rove and Bush are about power. And there’s nothing quote so powerful as a mass movement with a leadership cult. Check the history books. Then check the current polls. And do the math. Rove is very good at math.

(Photo: Nell Redmond/Landov.)

Susan Collins, Olymia Snowe, Richard Lugar, Mike DeWine, Gordon Smith, John Sununu, Lincoln Chafee, and Chuck Hagel join the Democrats and the leading Republicans on the Armed Services Committee on retaining the Geneva Convention. One word about Sununu: he really is one of the last Goldwater conservatives in the Senate. I’m not surprised by his vote on Geneva, but I’m heartened nonetheless. He’s an under-reported Republican defender of individual liberty – a rarer and rarer species these days in the authoritarian Christianism of the GOP. Notice theocon Kathryn-Jean Lopez’s dismay that the U.S. may be required not to practise torture.

A former Salafist – yep, a college educated American who once studied Islam and decided the Wahhabists were the more persuasive interpreters – has been emailing with Rod Dreher. His name is Daveed Gartenstein-Ross. He has since come to the view that the extremists do not necessarily have the stronger arguments in interpreting Islam, but that their message is more persuasive to the average Muslim than the more complex interpretations of more learned scholars. He is as dismayed as I am about the response to the Pope’s recent remarks. The role of reason and therefore doubt in religious is one of the critical debates of our time (and it’s a central them of my book). The fact that the Pope has to apologize for intellectual engagement of a vital topic, while the West shrugs off the Muslim violence and murder that has ensued is a terrible portent in this civilizational struggle between fundamentalism and reasoned, humble faith.

"Ann Coulter is a joke. But she’s not the only joke among conservative talking heads. Many right-wing talk show hosts are absurd, Michael Savage being only the most obvious example. As pathetic as Michael Moore may be, he’s easily equaled in idiocy by the likes of Mr. Savage. That guy is a knuckle-dragging doofus … Many deeply conservative people are really creepy. You know: Home schooling, incessant prattling on about the evils of the liberal mainstream. It‚Äôs insufferable, and we can certainly understand why others are taken aback by it. Basically, political true believers of all stripes are a tad frightening. No political movement has a complete monopoly on the truth," – from the right-wing blog, Hatemonger’s Quarterly.

Will McCain’s opposition to torture hurt his chances for the Republican nomination? If the GOP defines itself as the party of torture, then it may be true. Much will depend on the rumors of some kind of compromise on the Hill. Still, Rove may counsel best to avoid a deal, and use the issue in the campaign. I’m struck by the Gallup uptick in Bush’s ratings. I’m not sure you should place any real trust in a single poll, and broader measures show much less movement. But I do think that the fast-evolving base of the GOP is likely to be roused by the promise of torturing terror suspects, and that running on Guantanamo Bay may make sense if you want to rile up these people – and, boy, do they need riling.

I understand Rove has postponed using 9/11 families against the Geneva Convention – he’ll wait till later in the campaign to do that, if it becomes necessary. But make no mistake: Rove isn’t going to duck the torture issue. He’s going to brandish it. McCain, Graham, Warner: these men represent the old Republican party, not the new pro-torture, Christianist, Jacksonian base. Rove would love to isolate the old, decent guards from the Southern base and find a candidate to continue the Bush legacy. And this may be his opportunity.

(Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty.)

Greg Mankiw, Bush’s former econ adviser, lists those who back a higher gas tax on national security and environmental grounds.

The conservative Boston Herald won’t go along with the Bush-Cheney torture policy:

At one level this battle between the White House and a rebellious handful of Senate Republicans is a war of words Рa fight over legalese, interpretations, meanings. At another level this is about core American values, about the rule of law and maintaining this nation’s reputation for taking the moral high ground. And this time George W. Bush has picked the wrong fight at the wrong time with the wrong people.

Even John Fund is getting it:

The federal government is now an astounding 185 times as big in real terms as it was a century ago. A general sense that Republicans have forgotten why they were sent to Washington is a big reason why only 43% of Republicans approve of Congress in this month’s Fox News poll. If Republicans can’t better explain how they plan to get a grip on spending, many voters will conclude they both deserve and need a time-out from power.

The more salient figure is one I won’t tire of repeating. US GNP grew 27 percent from 2000 to 2004. The government’s total estimated fiscal exposure (total of public debt plus military and civilian pensions, social security and medicare obligations and other), according to GAO, increased in the same period by 212 percent. The debt to be paid by the next generation went from $20 trillion to $43 trillion. This we are required to call fiscal conservatism. It is, in fact, complete insanity. When people say the Democrats would be worse, my only response is: how much worse could you get?

"The most frightening claim made by Bush with congressional acquiescence is reminiscent of the lettres de cachet of prerevolutionary France. (Such letters, with which the king could order the arrest and imprisonment of subjects without trial, helped trigger the storming of the Bastille.) In the aftermath of 9/11, Mr. Bush maintained that he could pluck any American citizen out of his home or off of the sidewalk and detain him indefinitely on the president‚Äôs finding that he was an illegal combatant. No court could second-guess the president. Bush soon employed such monarchial power to detain a few citizens and to frighten would-be dissenters, and Republicans in Congress either cheered or fiddled like Nero while the Constitution burned. The Supreme Court ultimately entered the breach and repudiated the president in 2004’s Hamdi v. Rumsfeld. Republicans similarly yawned as President Bush ordained military tribunals to try accused war criminals based on secret evidence and unreliable hearsay in violation of the Uniform Code of Military Justice and the Geneva Convention. The Supreme Court again was forced to countervail the congressional dereliction by holding the tribunals illegal in 2006’s Hamdan v. Rumsfeld," – Bruce Fein, standing up for conservatism’s distrust of arbitrary executive power.

They’re debating faith and politics over at Jim Wallis’ new blog. Check it out – although I have no idea why Reed has been chosen to represent the religious right. He’s a political operative, tainted by financial scandal.