Partially due to last week's 505, this week's diary has two parts. There is a link below to a diary posted earlier this week. Please consider the "Gore" part of that diary as part of the overview of Chapter Two: "Blinding the Faithful." More of the overview is below.
This diary is part of an ongoing series about the ideas in and the thoughts inspired by Al Gore's: The Assault on Reason. It is not a Run, Al, Run diary. I ask, also, that participants reign in partisanship as well as "hot" language. This place is for discussion. If your thoughts are coherently and coolly presented, I'm sure someone will engage you. I ask all participants to help maintain decorum here.
Overview:
Chapter Two: "Blinding the Faithful" of Al Gore’s The Assault on Reason contains a discussion of the decision on the part of the Founders to keep church and state separate. Gore points out that people such as Thomas Jefferson were not against religion; they were against the combination of religious dogma and political power. James Madison believed that the free exercise of religion would split religion into competing sects that would prevent a religious movement from growing dominant enough to exert power in the guise of a political movement. It is Gore’s contention that what Madison and others were worried about has been "turned on its head." A political movement, led by President Bush, has attained power in the guise of a religious movement. The language the president uses is distinctively religious: "axis of evil," "You’re either with us or against us," "...a monumental struggle of good versus evil," "rid the world of evil," and the particularly unfortunate proclamation of a "crusade." Nevertheless, according to Gore, the true driving force of the Bush coalition is simply to gain power.
More about what Chapter Two contains and further observations about the Bush coalition by Gore (and me) can be found at a diary I posted earlier this week. I find Gore's name for one group in the coalition, the "corporate royalists," to be particularly telling. I urge readers to follow the link to that diary and then return here to make comments:
http://www.dailykos.com/...
More from Gore:
"...Bush’s view of his policies in the context of a fateful spiritual conflict between good and evil does not really represent Christian doctrine. It actually more closely resembles an ancient Christian heresy called Manichaeism- rejected by Christianity more than a thousand years ago- that sought to divide all of reality into two simple categories, absolute good and absolute evil."
"Yet Bush’s incuriosity and seeming immunity to doubt is sometimes interpreted by people who see and hear him on television as evidence of his conviction, even though it is this very inflexibility- this willful refusal even to entertain alternative opinions or conflicting evidence- that poses the most serious danger to our country...By the same token, the simplicity of many of Bush’s pronouncements is often misinterpreted as evidence that he has penetrated to the core of a complex issue..." (55)
From algebrateacher:
Since the Bush coalition has a world view that includes only two choices, what can we assume they believe about domestic politics? Good and evil. Right and wrong. Winners and losers. Voting for Democrats means the terrorists win. United States Attorneys looking for "voter fraud" as a way of intimidating voters and voter advocate groups. "Caging" as a way of disenfranchising voters. Ridicule of those who ask questions. Sewing doubt within and against the opposition. Systematic corruption of, within and against institutions such as the media, education, health care, the military, congressional oversight and independence, judicial independence, the rule of law...the very Constitution itself. Our institutions are almost unable to respond to, let alone fight against, this onslaught. All of these are based from one central interest which is to pursue power for power’s sake.
Bush and his coalition have reduced American politics to the level of civil war; they have adopted the ideas of "culture war," a religious conception. I believe scholars of the American Revolution can recognize similarities in the approach to preserving power that were used by the loyalists. I believe scholars of the American Civil War can recognize much of the language, certainly in word choice and styling, of advocates of the Confederacy.
The conflict between progressives and the Bush coalition has reached back to the creation of politics. It is the Bush coalition that has declared its intention to pursue the idea that one man should rule another. The back-and-forth, up-and-down of American politics has been removed from consideration by the Bush coalition. This is at the core of Gore’s book. There is not just an assault on reason. There is an assault on centuries of history that have brought power, slowly in some cases, to the individual.
Regarding the poll: Most of the eighteen-year-olds of 1972 turn 53 during this year. My apologies to those "before 1972." As a sop to you, please let us know in a comment when your first election was. Were you involved in a campaign?
Regarding next week: Chapter Three, "The Politics of Wealth" Gore writes about the interplay between democracy and capitalism.