That is precisely why religion is so important to the Bush administration. Without religious justification, the Bush administration has no justification at all, certainly nothing based on factual knowledge. The same was true for the Roman administrators of imperialism and the European administrators of colonialism. In a fundamental and traditional way, "Social conservatives are hapless GOP dupes" (3).
Confronted with failed responses, flawed initiatives, internal corruption, incompetent choices and dwindling support from even religious conservatives, the Bush administration has little choice but to maintain all of the distortions and fabrications that it used to coerce the American people into a self-righteous and belligerent posture in the first place. In its futile efforts to preserve itself, it can only further open up the holes it has ripped in the fabric of American democracy.
Only "fools and charlatans" (to use Jefferson's words) would seriously entertain the notion that the Bush administration will somehow rise above its crime, corruption and incompetence to lead America on to an American religious capitalism in dominion of the global economic heap. This is, of course, pure self-righteousness coming from a nation that is decades behind the European democracies in the provision of educational and medical needs to their people. Self-righteousness does not buy very much for very long, as the Bush administration has clearly demonstrated.
Only fools and charlatans would tender the notion that the Bush administration will somehow return from the values of religious capitalism to the values of science and democracy. On the subject of these values, neoconservatism knows nothing and cares even less, seeing these values accurately as a threat to its dominion. The values of science and democracy have nothing in common with the values of religion and capitalism, never have.
When the Bush administration discredits Old Testament religion and crony capitalism from the global political arena, when its moral bankruptcy reaches fruition in fiscal bankruptcy, there will be many Americans asking the "Why" questions they largely ignored during the Bush administration's assault on the people. There will be many Americans interested in knowing whom to blame for the utter failure of the modern world's first formal democracy. They must do so in order to avoid making the same mistakes again.
The first fingers pointing to blame will, of course, be directed at the obvious causes of America's fall from grace, i.e., the Old Testament conservative Republican party and the incompetence and corruption that the "born again" Bush administration has brought into American government. In discrediting religious capitalism, the Bush administration will have inadvertently accomplished what liberal capitalism could never have accomplished on its own. In the post-Bush era, there will no longer be opposition to original American values and ideals.
Under capitalism's dominion, neither liberal or conservative political factions can be seen as being particularly American. Both are inculcated with the mindless notions that have allowed capitalism's increasingly rapid rise to political dominion. In surviving capitalism's dominion, liberalism has had to accommodate so much greed-inspired nonsense, liberalism is as dead-lost as conservatism is dead-wrong.
The second fingers pointing to blame will, therefore, be directed at the enabling causes, i.e., the utter failure of a compromised liberal electorate to have any moral influence whatsoever on the direction America has been going since its takeover by corporate capitalism following World War II. Well-healed liberals remain entirely dependent on the capitalism that has made them wealthy and, at the same time, forced millions of working American parents into poverty.
Like wealthy conservatives, wealthy liberals see themselves as deserving of everything they have managed to acquire under capitalism. Their children deserve the very best educations in private schools, oftentimes spending more money per year to educate one child than millions of working parents can earn in a year. For that matter, a good SUV can cost more than two working parents can make in a year. Then, of course, there is the vacation home, the sail boat, etc.
Global democracy is the logical extension of America's pioneering and failed efforts to establish a human rights-based government under the direction of the people. Global capitalism, in sharp contrast, is an exercise in both fantasy and futility because capitalism's plan to make the whole world in America's capitalistic image would require the acquisition of several additional planets - and there are none for sale (World Watch Institute).
Here is the subtle self-righteousness inculcated into well-healed people by capitalism's monied dreams and mindless demands. It is, self-evidently, not so much a problem of conservatives versus liberals. It is, as it always has been, more a problem of the "haves" versus the "have nots."
Well-healed liberals see conservatives as the bad guys and they see themselves as the good guys. The problem under capitalism's one-sided dominion is that both sides are sinners in the eyes of Jefferson's God, i.e., in the eyes of the people. Both sides comprise the beautiful people who traditionally get what they want before the people get what they need.
In other words, both conservative and liberal capitalism survives at the expense of poor working people, a fact of capitalism that has stifled meaningful human progress in America for half a century. Liberal capitalism is still capitalism. It abides the ludicrous right wing notion that sharing and socialism are on the path to hell on earth. It implicitly champions the ludicrous notion that competition and capitalism's corruption are not on the path to hell on earth.
Liberal capitalism guarantees that the liberal electorate, in dealing with conservative crime and corruption, will be self-restricted to doing too little, too late. It can be seen as being entirely complicit in the crimes of conservative capitalism and it too will be abandoned in favor of progressivism's greater concern for the people and the values of democracy, e.g., honesty, integrity and compassion, values which embrace and transcend the values of liberal and conservative capitalism (4).
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
