American Theocracy and the rise of a "Christian Nation"

I'm going to try something that may be a bit hackneyed, the idea of discussing politics or religion in a blog... actually both at the same time. I don't claim to know a goddamned thing about political theory, or economics, I went to school for six years to earn degrees in Music and Geology and had little time to explore other classes. But... there's always a but... I still have opinions that I want to express and some questions that could do with a few answers.

I was first drawn into this when I came across Brillo's posts about McCain's video interviews with Beliefnet and I got a little sad. Well, more than a little. I don't often put much thought into politics, seeing as I'm too wrapped up in my life to figure out how any of it affects me. However, this is an executive election year, so politics are at the forefront of the national consciousness. The problem is, I don't understand the huge differences in social politics and the disjunction between social and economic politics in the republican party. I don't understand the 'Religious Right' and how it has come to affect our political spectrum so incredibly. I mean to say that a large enough portion of our nation's electorate identifies in some way with this group that our politics are skewed heavily in that direction.

Social politics seem to be the only issues for most people I've run into who claim to be republicans. People will say "I'm conservative" and that's that. They don't mean they're fiscally conservative, or for smaller government,  the traditional sense of the 'Right.' In fact they're really in it for the opposite: a government that dictates what we do in our lives and how we do it. This is because these types of conservatives believe. That's what they do best. They believe themselves to be the "values voters" of America. They believe that the government's role is to cultivate virtue. What's more, they believe that there are moral absolutes, binary issues that are either right or wrong. Because of this, litigating things like school curriculum (I.D. and prayer), overturning Roe v. Wade and amending the constitution to ban gay marriage come to the forefront of social politics where in any other democratic country (Western Europe) bringing up the idea of limiting social liberties based on the beliefs of a "moral majority" would get you laughed out of parliament.

I don't know how this happened, how our political system was hijacked and the spectrum of political discourse was shifted so far to the right. My only postulation is that those who engineered this amazing political ploy found a way to tie their values to those of simple, small town America. Mayberry, Middleton, whatever you want to call it. I read a book recently called The Averaged American, by Sarah Igo. It wasn't a particularly amazing read but it did bring plenty to light on how Americans perceive themselves. She posits that there's the public, and "the public," the latter being something created in the minds of Americans: an image of the normal, average, everyday "American." The Right capitalizes on this idea, citing American values and telling people that some actions are "un-American"

So, this post was started by a statement that "America is a Christian Nation." Here's an edited video of the entirety of beliefnet's interview with McCain, the link with context is mentioned above.

Here's the other side of the issue, which makes me feel a little better, and provides me with a little faith in Humanity.




Just think a little harder as to what a real Christian nation could look like: something a little more like this.