[An e-mail to my sisters in April of 2005. The big story at the time was Justice Sunday, a judge-bashing rally organized by evangelical religious leaders and their political pals.]
Sister: Have you read Frank Rich this week? This is really scary...]
Perhaps the closest historical antecedent of tonight's crusade was that staged in the 1950's and 60's by a George Wallace ally, the televangelist Billy James Hargis. At its peak, his so-called Christian Crusade was carried by 500 radio stations and more than 200 television stations. In the "Impeach Earl Warren" era, Hargis would preach of the "collapse of moral values" engineered by a "powerfully entrenched, anti-God Liberal Establishment." He also decried any sex education that talked about homosexuality or even sexual intercourse. Or so he did until his career was ended by accusations that he had had sex with female students at the Christian college he founded as well as with boys in the school's All-American Kids choir.
Me: Infuriating! Though Rich speaks of the machinations of a few prominent religious zealots this is really an indictment of the American public. People are uninformed, lazy, and stupid. It's easy to blame the false prophets but it's the people who are really at fault.
I say that because I don't think these religious leaders believe their own sermons. They believe in their own wisdom to shepard the masses, which is a completely different form of self worth than piousness. That's why these pseudo-religious movements lend themselves so easily to nutcases like Ku Klux Klansmen, Eric Rudolf, Josephy McCarthy, etc. They share a belief in their own supremecy, not a belief in the lessons of the Bible. Somewhere along the line brotherhood and goodwill to man gets dropped.
The religious leaders do not believe their own sermons? No. And dare I say, I don't think their audience does either. People should wake up and realize this sort of Kabuki theater isn't fooling (or helping) anyone. I refuse to believe that people who subscribe to this kind of culture- the kind that upholds a pious facade at all costs- do so out of devotion to high morals or some dreamy naivety. These are the same people who believe in original sin, are they not? The cupability of man for his willful behavior? No, moral devotion or naivety does not explain their attachment to their culture. That is total B.S. They know the bargain they have entered into. They buy into the culture for 1) protection from public scrutiny of their lives, and 2) to espace the difficulty of judging the world for themselves; judging its inhabitants and ideas for themselves. Fear and laziness, that's all it is.
If these conservative, God-fearing politicos hold such a monopoly on wisdom, then someone please explain to me why the great scientists and artists throughout history have so overwhelmingly subscribed to what is called a liberal perspective? I believe it's because in order to be a great scientist or writer one must question why things are arranged as we find them. Whether the subject is the cosmos or society at large this desire to investigate how things are constructed is paramount. Of course such curiosity is anathema to the cultural veneer presented by religious zealots.
The other day in the N.Y. Times I read a brief review of a biography of Robert Oppenheimer. Openheimer ran the top secret Manhattan Project that built the atomic bomb during World War II. Later, when Oppenheimer questioned the wisdom of the arms race he was called a communist and traitor to his country by Joseph McCarthy and other right wing wackos. His security clearance was revoked. In the article the reviewer related an amusing anecdote. When Oppenheimer found himself alone in a Senate elevator with Joseph McCarthy, just before the doors opened he turned to the senator and winked. Hah! As if to say, "I don't care what you think, I'm not the problem." It must have been a detestable thought for a man as brilliant as Oppenheimer.