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Someone asked me recently why I thought there was no such thing as a
"Culture War."
I think "Culture War" is just a political slogan. It is used by the Right
wing fundamentalists who want to fool people into believing that they
constitute at least half the nation's population. They do not. It is used
in a similar fashion to "The Moral Majority." It didn't take many years to
figure out that they were neither moral nor a majority. They were a small
group of people who dream of a totalitarian society with themselves in charge.
Fundamentalism is by its very nature totalitarian. If Jerry Falwell, Pat
Robertson, and most of the Bushites get their dream world, there will only
be 27 amendments to the Constitution and the first will be modified to
explicitly require gun ownership. The amendment we now think of as the
first will be gone. Freedom of the press, freedom of speech and especially
freedom of religion will be gone. After that amendment, which has so long
been a thorn in their side, is eliminated, then they'll turn their
attention to the 14th (equal protection) because it is obvious that some of
the animals are more equal than others.
The fundamentalists arrive at all this by the most twisted logic
imaginable, but their very logic demonstrates what they desire--religious
totalitarianism. The quote below is from the American Atheist newsletter:
>Commentator and former presidential candidate Alan Keyes recently told
>Agape Press, a religious news service, "There is a difference between
>constitutional government and judicial dictatorship." He cited a
>recent federal ruling ordering Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore to
>remove a Ten Commandments monument from the state's Judiciary
>Building. For Keyes, the first phrase of the Bill of Rights which
>declares, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of
>religion" prohibits judges and courts from stopping many practices
>having to do with government promoted religion.
>
>Whether the Pledge, or school prayer, or the Commandments, "It means
>what it says," argues Keyes, "and what it says is there can be no
>federal law which deals with the subject of religious establishment.
>What it means, therefore, is that if you're sitting on the federal
>bench you've got no lawful basis for addressing or interfering with
>this issue."
by "this issue" obviously, he means the courts cannot use the 1st Amendment
to protect us from one of the other branches of government trying to make a
government religion. He means that anyone who violates the 1st Amendment
cannot be prosecuted for doing so.
There is no culture war. That vast majority of Americans are tolerant
people who want to live and let live. We are proud of our heritage of
allowing all Americans to worship as they please. We are proud of the
fact that Americans are a free people and we consider equality before the
law to be a sacred principle.
For example, I think that Americans will eventually see through the empty
rhetoric of the fundamentalists in regard to gay marriage. I think they are
already beginning to do so. Americans are uncomfortable with unequal rights. We
all know how hard it was to extend equal rights to Black people, but it
wasn't the young hippie dippy protesters (my generation) who extended those
rights. It was their conservative parents who had the political power to do
it.
------
Susan Brassfield Cogan, author of
Murder on the Waterfront http://tinyurl.com/87m54
Jubilee, A Novel http://tinyurl.com/9x6m9
The Pocket Darwin http://www.nuuf.org/darwin1.html
And Much More: http://www.coganbooks.net
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