Friday, November 7, 2008

Center-Right Chrisitian Nation

The election of Barack Obama has caused the Folks at Fox News and elsewhere to declare America is a Center Right country. It is utter nonsense to apply such a vacuous generalization to individuals. No two individuals hold the exact same political beliefs. The pernicious genius of the current structure is it has shoe-horned individuals into one of two camps. Often causing people to swallow hard and vote "for the lesser of two evils".

Similarly since a very high percentage of Americans identify themselves as christian, America is often referred to as a "christian" nation. I suppose if one lumps the First Baptists, Catholics, Mormons, Methodists, Armenian Orthodoxy and all the other branches together it could be considered true. The problem is no two individuals hold the same religious beliefs but for the sake of civil society and friendships they often, but not always, overlook scripitura disagreements.

Well, The Founding Fathers were not christians. They were deists. (100%)
My own mind is my own church. ~ Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason.

Nor were they politically right.

They founded the United States as a Feudal Oligarchy controlled mainly by the landed interests. It did incorporate the Platonic ideas of meritocracy that occasionally in the merchant class and very rarely in the fields were the lower classes toiled would be found a man of talent who could rise into the quasi-aristocracy.

James Madison recognized America was founded where, "the rights of persons were subjected to those of property. The poor were sacrificed to the rich."

Madison and others since they were well versed in the classics, also understood Aristole's warning:
Aristocracy degenerates into oligarchy, when the few, who are rich, govern the state as best suits the interests of their avarice and ambition; and a republic degenerates into a democracy when the mass who are poor, make the gratification of their own passions the only rule of their administration.

James Madison fully expected class struggle between rich and poor. And the history of America is testament to this struggle. The last 8 years have been a phase of utter dominance by the plutocracy.

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