The Day the Enlightenment Went Out

[xricci]

The Day the Enlightenment Went Out
By Garry Wills, 4 November 2004
Op-Ed Contributor, New York Times


This election confirms the brilliance of Karl Rove as a political strategist. He calculated that the religious conservatives, if they could be turned out, would be the deciding factor. The success of the plan was registered not only in the presidential results but also in all 11 of the state votes to ban same-sex marriage. Mr. Rove understands what surveys have shown, that many more Americans believe in the Virgin Birth than in Darwin's theory of evolution.


This might be called Bryan's revenge for the Scopes trial of 1925, in which William Jennings Bryan's fundamentalist assault on the concept of evolution was discredited. Disillusionment with that decision led many evangelicals to withdraw from direct engagement in politics. But they came roaring back into the arena out of anger at other court decisions - on prayer in school, abortion, protection of the flag and, now, gay marriage. Mr. Rove felt that the appeal to this large bloc was worth getting President Bush to endorse a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage (though he had opposed it earlier).


The results bring to mind a visit the Dalai Lama made to Chicago not long ago. I was one of the people deputized to ask him questions on the stage at the Field Museum. He met with the interrogators beforehand and asked us to give him challenging questions, since he is too often greeted with deference or flattery.


The only one I could think of was: "If you could return to your country, what would you do to change it?" He said that he would disestablish his religion, since "America is the proper model." I later asked him if a pluralist society were possible without the Enlightenment. "Ah," he said. "That's the problem." He seemed to envy America its Enlightenment heritage.


Which raises the question: Can a people that believes more fervently in the Virgin Birth than in evolution still be called an Enlightened nation?


America, the first real democracy in history, was a product of Enlightenment values - critical intelligence, tolerance, respect for evidence, a regard for the secular sciences. Though the founders differed on many things, they shared these values of what was then modernity. They addressed "a candid world," as they wrote in the Declaration of Independence, out of "a decent respect for the opinions of mankind." Respect for evidence seems not to pertain any more, when a poll taken just before the elections showed that 75 percent of Mr. Bush's supporters believe Iraq either worked closely with Al Qaeda or was directly involved in the attacks of 9/11.


The secular states of modern Europe do not understand the fundamentalism of the American electorate. It is not what they had experienced from this country in the past. In fact, we now resemble those nations less than we do our putative enemies.


Where else do we find fundamentalist zeal, a rage at secularity, religious intolerance, fear of and hatred for modernity? Not in France or Britain or Germany or Italy or Spain. We find it in the Muslim world, in Al Qaeda, in Saddam Hussein's Sunni loyalists. Americans wonder that the rest of the world thinks us so dangerous, so single-minded, so impervious to international appeals. They fear jihad, no matter whose zeal is being expressed.


It is often observed that enemies come to resemble each other. We torture the torturers, we call our God better than theirs - as one American general put it, in words that the president has not repudiated.


President Bush promised in 2000 that he would lead a humble country, be a uniter not a divider, that he would make conservatism compassionate. He did not need to make such false promises this time. He was re-elected precisely by being a divider, pitting the reddest aspects of the red states against the blue nearly half of the nation. In this, he is very far from Ronald Reagan, who was amiably and ecumenically pious. He could address more secular audiences, here and abroad, with real respect.


In his victory speech yesterday, President Bush indicated that he would "reach out to the whole nation," including those who voted for John Kerry. But even if he wanted to be more conciliatory now, the constituency to which he owes his victory is not a yielding one. He must give them what they want on things like judicial appointments. His helpers are also his keepers.


The moral zealots will, I predict, give some cause for dismay even to nonfundamentalist Republicans. Jihads are scary things. It is not too early to start yearning back toward the Enlightenment.


Garry Wills, an adjunct professor of history at Northwestern University, is the author of "St. Augustine's Conversion."

[shawn·m]

I shudder to think what would happen if my über-pious mother-in-law possessed nuclear capabilities.

[3pointdeli]

we definitely need to rely on reason more than faith. this is a sickening trend.

[Saundra Hummer]

Originally Posted by 3pointdeli

we definitely need to rely on reason more than faith. this is a sickening trend.

This thought alone in many fundamental evangelical religions would seperate you from the congregation, and would make your points with them mute.

They actually teach not to have worldly friends; that they are to shun them. If you don't believe in their ways, you're not to be associated with. This to me is a convenient and easy way to keep "the faithful" in the fold, as they are also not to watch movies or do other ungodly things. If they were to it is my opinion that they would begin to form other opinions about important isssues, ideas not in keeping with the teachings of their particular religion; they would see the good in others and see that perhaps that way of being devout might have something not in keeping with their newfound thoughts.

They have even taught that the Catholic Church is "The whore of Babylon", this is the form of radical thought that Kerry was up against, that and the clever ways of Mr. Pink, Bush's reservoir dog (My special name for Karl Rove.
A clever hired killer) played on their numbers, and their intolarant beliefs.

Not all Republican votes or cross overs were because of faith, but too many to overcome without a brilliant campaign strategy, which, unfortunantly John Kerry didn't have. He turned down the requests for him to use homosexuality as a campaign strategy. Advisors wanted him to go after that issue harder then he did, but he refused. He thought that the deaths in Iraq, drug costs and our economy, were more important. Guess the public didn't, so go figure!

[3pointdeli]

Originally Posted by Saundra Hummer

This thought alone in many fundamental evangelical religions would seperate you from the congregation, and would make your points with them mute.

i'm perfectly happy to know i could never be a member of that crowd. seems ridiculous though that "God" supposedly gave us free will and the brain power to solve things through reason and scientific experimentation and yet none of those clowns would ever dare to use it.

[shawn·m]

Originally Posted by Saundra Hummer

They actually teach not to have worldly friends; that they are to shun them. If you don't believe in their ways, you're not to be associated with.

You don’t suppose this brand of self-indulgence is intellectually barren, do you? I cringe at the very thought of what horribly deformed offspring might leap forth from the loins of such theological inbreeding.

[Saundra Hummer]

Originally Posted by 3pointdeli

i'm perfectly happy to know i could never be a member of that crowd. seems ridiculous though that "God" supposedly gave us free will and the brain power to solve things through reason and scientific experimentation and yet none of those clowns would ever dare to use it.

We have that group of people who come around and talk of their religion after interuppting what ever it was you were taking care of at the time and to talk about who knows what besides. Five to six people showing up in vans, and talking away. Rich didn't want to be rude and tell them he wasn't interested so he would let them preach on and on everytime they came, until one day one of the fellows told him "You couldn't join our church if you wanted to!", just as a matter of conversation about his church, not coming down on Rich, but meaning he wasn't "of God." That did it, he no longer is held captive by them with their longwinded schpeels. Then there was another time when I was talking to a loan manager about our house loan and (not realizing he was that religion,) when a large group of them pulled up I started complaining and telling him about what they had told Rich, and said if that's the case, they should loose their tax free status and, how I have my own religion and how I will never believe their way in a million years and, how they always come by at the most inoppertune time imaginable, and how I am going to ask them to quit coming by. They didn't get out that day as they saw who I was talking to and just left, but they never came here again, and that man raked us over the coals financially as much as he could until we realized the connection he had with them and then it all ended.

[Saundra Hummer]

Originally Posted by shawn-m

You don’t suppose this brand of self-indulgence is intellectually barren, do you? I cringe at the very thought of what horribly deformed offspring might leaping forth from the loins of such theological inbreeding.

I am from a family deeply rooted in the Southern Baptist belief, and I have never heard them say and do the things we hear of these people who are trying to run the country. They believe in evolution, they aren't backwards in their beliefs at all. I have a lot of ministers in my family, and I always looked at them as being enlightened and good, not someone you look at and wonder how in the world did they come to this point of believing backward doctrines.

When you study a lot of belief systems there have been ways in which some clerics have used those beliefs to control, such as the Aztec Priests, the Egyptian priests, and on down through history, so it's not new, but for people in this day and age to be into this, just floors me, and the things we read about how this administration is working to control the world, using faith in many instances, it's like an Orwellean nightmare, except this is real and documented (evidently) and is so scary that it becomes terribly disconcerting to hear, to learn of. To think that this is actually happening, not something from a melodrama on t.v, or in a movie. This is real and it is something I have a hard time thinking of as actual. It must just be some wacked out manipulator feeding us falsehoods to take our money! But no, Bill Kristol, (not that he isn't wacked out!) the arch conservative reporter, editor, etc., is the chairman of the board. Good god, what are we coming to?

[lone_wolf]

I didn't vote for Arlen (this time), but I'm encouraged that he's already put Bush on notice regarding judicial appointments.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Specter urges caution for Bush
Discourages nominating anti-abortion judges
PHILADELPHIA, Pennsylvania (AP) -- The Republican expected to chair the Senate Judiciary Committee next year bluntly warned newly re-elected President Bush on Wednesday against putting forth Supreme Court nominees who would seek to overturn abortion rights or are otherwise too conservative to win confirmation.
Sen. Arlen Specter, fresh from winning a fifth term in Pennsylvania, also said the current Supreme Court now lacks legal "giants" on the bench.
"When you talk about judges who would change the right of a woman to choose, overturn Roe v. Wade, I think that is unlikely," Specter said, referring to the landmark 1973 Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion.
"The president is well aware of what happened, when a number of his nominees were sent up, with the filibuster," Specter added, referring to Senate Democrats' success over the past four years in blocking the confirmation of many of Bush's conservative judicial picks. "... And I would expect the president to be mindful of the considerations which I am mentioning."
With at least three Supreme Court justices rumored to be eyeing retirement, including ailing Chief Justice William Rehnquist, Specter, 74, would have broad authority to reshape the nation's highest court. He would have wide latitude to schedule hearings, call for votes and make the process as easy or as hard as he wants. (Rehnquist absent as high court returns <http://www.cnn.com/2004/LAW/11/01/rehnquist.cancer.ap/index.html>)
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tennessee, expressed confidence Wednesday that Bush will have more success his second term in winning the confirmation of his judicial nominees. (Supreme Court vacancy could come sooner than expected) <http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/10/27/scotus.vacancy.ap/index.html>
"I'm very confident that now we've gone from 51 seats to 55 seats, we will be able to overturn this what has become customary filibuster of judicial nominees," Frist said in Orlando, Florida.

See where he stands
Legal scholar Dennis Hutchinson said Specter's message to the White House appears to be "a way of asserting his authority" as he prepares to chair the Judiciary Committee when Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, is term-limited from keeping the post next year.
"What he may be trying to do is say, 'Don't just think that I'm going to process what you send through. I have standards, I'm going to take an independent look, you have to deal with me,"' said Hutchinson, a law professor at the University of Chicago. (Health of the justices) <http://www.cnn.com/2004/HEALTH/10/25/justices.health.glance.ap/index.html>
When asked Wednesday about Specter's impending chairmanship, another Republican on the panel, Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, did not offer a ringing endorsement.
"We'll have to see where he stands," said Cornyn, a close friend of Bush who worked to get all of the president's nominees through the Senate. "I'm hoping that he will stand behind the president's nominees. I'm intending to sit down and discuss with him how things are going to work. We want to know what he's going do and how things are going to work."
While Specter is a loyal Republican -- Bush endorsed him in a tight Pennsylvania GOP primary -- he routinely crosses party lines to pass legislation and counts a Democrat, Sen. Joseph Biden of Delaware, as one of his closest friends.
A self-proclaimed moderate, he helped kill President Reagan's nomination of Robert Bork to the Supreme Court and of Jeff Sessions to a federal judgeship. Specter called both nominees too extreme on civil rights issues. Sessions later became a Republican senator from Alabama and now sits on the Judiciary Committee with Specter. (Election could tip balance) <http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/10/20/election.scotus/index.html>
Despite a bruising challenge from conservatives this year in Pennsylvania's GOP primary, Specter won re-election Tuesday by an 11-point margin by appealing to moderate Republicans and ticket-splitting Democrats, even as Pennsylvania chose Democrat John Kerry over Bush.
A former district attorney, Specter also bemoaned what he called the lack of any current justices comparable to legal heavyweights like Oliver Wendell Holmes, Louis Brandeis, Benjamin Cardozo and Thurgood Marshall, "who were giants of the Supreme Court."
"With all due respect to the (current) U.S. Supreme Court, we don't have one," he said.
Though he refused to describe the political leanings of the high court, Specter said he "would characterize myself as moderate; I'm in the political swim. I would look for justices who would interpret the Constitution, as Cardozo has said, reflecting the values of the people."

[shawn·m]

Yes, indeed. Double-plus ungood.

My mother-in-law comes from a long line of fire and brimstone ministers who definitely did not spare the rod. She is of the/a fundamentalist sect that regards Southern Baptists as heretics and casts her vote according to whomever is closest to her intolerant stance. Keep in mind that this is the same woman that, without a trace of humor, called her grandkids “Little Heathens” to their little faces.

One of my fondest memories is of her 10-year-old grandson positing this subsequent dinner-time insight; “Grandma... ppththhhpt... Grandma, Grandma... pppth- belch-thhhpt.” Fair is fair.

After the second time she lived with us...whimper... I discovered she’d planted, among many other things, a prerecorded VHS tape. I don’t remember its title or the speaker’s name, but the thrust was an attempt to discount evolution. The speaker was engaging, I’ll give him that, but his concluding argument had me rolling in stitches. I wish I could remember verbatim, I can’t, but it went something like this:

“Dinosaurs were plant eaters. We know this because their teeth were flat and made for chewing leaves. Then something happened and dinosaurs grew sharp teeth needed for ripping flesh. How and why did this happen? I wasn’t there, you weren’t there, nobody was there so we don’t know why.” This, of course, acknowledges the mechanism at the very heart of evolution. Damn funny stuff.

But it also goes a long way towards codifying fundamentalist extremest behavior; full of willfully unrecognized paradox and contradiction. For example, mum-in-law won’t venture into a particular market because it’s owned by false-god Arabs. She will, however, work and receive payment for serving dinner to a well-to-do Jewish family on Christmas Eve.

I have a hard time believing such individuals could possibly number so many that any political party would debase themselves by wearing such faulty theology. But truth is stranger than fiction and Canada just keeps sounding better and better. On the bright side, I’ve survived to tell a few tales –so far.

[Tenorman]

Quote from the original article

America, the first real democracy in history, ........

Michael Moore stated this, and now Garry Willis.

Iceland and the Isle of Man go back to before Columbus set foot on the West Indies.

Anyone know what definition of democracy these two are using to justify their statements?

[Saundra Hummer]

Funny Shawn!

Isn't amazing how mean, down and dirty mean, some of the people we talk about can be? I mean mean, down and out dispicable, really! I had to go to a private school for a bit, one run by a fundalmentalist church, because they didn't have stairs, I was about 8, and they used to beat on the kids there for the least provacation, I used to get my hand hit with a ruler for saying "Oh my gosh" They thought that was taking Gods name in vain. One boy was a handfull and the cutest thing, and boy, he would get it every day, and hard, a real "whooping!" in front of all of us most of the time, but when they would really get hot, they would, three or four of them, litterally drag him to the office or the empty class room next door and let him have it. Mean, like I have never seen before. This church then started an orphanage, around the block from where we lived, and we used to go over and want to play with the kids, and we weren't allowed to, and it was the saddest thing you ever saw, the kids wanted to talk to us so much, and had to whisper so they, the women who ran the orphanage wouldn't hear us talking to them, come out and make us leave or, have the little kids go in the house. They told us they were hit on and punished all of the time, several times a day. We told our parents and they told the authorities and they were shut down for abuse. I have some strong reservations about religion having too much control, it is a frightening thought to me.

[Andy D]

[QUOTE=xricci]

which raises the question: Can a people that believes more fervently in the Virgin Birth than in evolution still be called an Enlightened nation?

No.

Regards

Andy D.

[Saundra Hummer]

Originally Posted by Tenorman

Quote from the original article

America, the first real democracy in history, ........

Michael Moore stated this, and now Garry Willis.

Iceland and the Isle of Man go back to before Columbus set foot on the West Indies.

Anyone know what definition of democracy these two are using to justify their statements?

Maybe they mean a parliamentery democracy, whereas we are just a plain democracy??? Surely they weren't so careless to state such as that and not know the facts, but it sure sounds like they were.

[Andy D]

There is little democracy in America, the illusion is that you are told there is, and the ignorant and the NFL watchers are happy to see things this way.

America was founded on violence on killing people, the natives, the animals, each other etc. The problems you face are impressive, you have a very real race problem, as we do in the UK, you are racist and you care little for the environment.

You are easy to manipulate and you ask too few questions about what your Governemnt is doing in your name,

Well Sept 11th change all this and you saw, for a while at least, what many people in other parts of the world have seen for many years. The greed, the ignorance, the abuses etc will one day take away what you say you value most!

Regards

Andy D.