Another great piece! These people are terrifying, inherently exclusionary and deeply embedded in the GOP base. These are fringe figures and ideas in American history, but not in the mainstream of the modern Republican Party.
I have just recently begun to more deeply the ideas in this piece but I appreciate them being brought forth. It addresses my confusion as to why conservative religious people would cling to Trump as they did and do. The innocent sounding Council on National Policy seems to be a chunk of the political arm of these movements. I’ll keep reading and thinking.
This is a nice survey of reactionary theo-politics in America. Have you ever read Mark Lilla's book "The Stillborn God"? He looks at the differentiation of politics and religion historically through the prism of major (mostly European) philosophers writing about the topic starting with Hobbes. He calls this the "Great Separation". It's really the process of differentiation that is the prime mover of liberalism. These reactionary ideas seem to aim at knitting politics and religion back together. What's weird to me is that I experience the American tradition as inherently, if not perfectly liberal -- all the way back to the Founding Fathers. A "post-liberal" politics, as these people describe it, would actually be European, and not really American, but the Europe of the middle 18th century, not the Europe of today. It's really not clear to me that Humpty Dumpty can be put back together again in the manner that these writers fantasize about. It's more likely we get Putinism -- squalor and brutality and lies.
One thing that these writers identify is that, while liberalism has advanced a new order of political culture, our religious culture hasn't changed much, at least in form, and this has led to attrition in observance. For the most part, we have the same menu of Axial Age religions as people did in the Middle Ages, and their rituals are increasingly marginalized in our communal cultural experience. We can tolerate different religious outlooks from a political point of view, but if we don't address religion on its own terms, politics aside, there ends up being a hole in the culture. Do we have the right approach to religion for a contemporary industrial society? If not, what should that look like? My feeling is that we don't because the religions of the past are not congruent with modernity, and I sketched out a potential new approach in my last essay for Arc. I'd be curious to hear your thoughts on religion -- without a political mandate, what forms of religious observance are congruent with our culture and historical moment? How can this congruence be defended intellectually?
This social solidity is a lie. This idea of perfect social harmony is the most pernicious and ridiculous and nakedly false idea. How can people POSSIBLY believe this? It does not exist anywhere! The most homogenous community has internal factions and disagreements and gossip and so on. It’s simply cover for racism and bigotry and a fantasy of domination. Also, it’s a cover for people who want to promise a utopia but have no content to the utopia so they claim that all ‘the problems’ that exist are caused by ‘the others’ and if you get rid of ‘them’ you will simply have a utopia. As if a history does not exist in which groups have always been conceived and re-conceived and they laughably create ‘a group’ that was once a bunch of ultra violent squabbling others (‘Europeans’) even adding into the group people who are not part of the group. How do people believe such things when they are disproved by constant personal experience?
Another great piece! These people are terrifying, inherently exclusionary and deeply embedded in the GOP base. These are fringe figures and ideas in American history, but not in the mainstream of the modern Republican Party.
Thank you! And yes I agree these elements are quite scary
I have just recently begun to more deeply the ideas in this piece but I appreciate them being brought forth. It addresses my confusion as to why conservative religious people would cling to Trump as they did and do. The innocent sounding Council on National Policy seems to be a chunk of the political arm of these movements. I’ll keep reading and thinking.
This is a nice survey of reactionary theo-politics in America. Have you ever read Mark Lilla's book "The Stillborn God"? He looks at the differentiation of politics and religion historically through the prism of major (mostly European) philosophers writing about the topic starting with Hobbes. He calls this the "Great Separation". It's really the process of differentiation that is the prime mover of liberalism. These reactionary ideas seem to aim at knitting politics and religion back together. What's weird to me is that I experience the American tradition as inherently, if not perfectly liberal -- all the way back to the Founding Fathers. A "post-liberal" politics, as these people describe it, would actually be European, and not really American, but the Europe of the middle 18th century, not the Europe of today. It's really not clear to me that Humpty Dumpty can be put back together again in the manner that these writers fantasize about. It's more likely we get Putinism -- squalor and brutality and lies.
One thing that these writers identify is that, while liberalism has advanced a new order of political culture, our religious culture hasn't changed much, at least in form, and this has led to attrition in observance. For the most part, we have the same menu of Axial Age religions as people did in the Middle Ages, and their rituals are increasingly marginalized in our communal cultural experience. We can tolerate different religious outlooks from a political point of view, but if we don't address religion on its own terms, politics aside, there ends up being a hole in the culture. Do we have the right approach to religion for a contemporary industrial society? If not, what should that look like? My feeling is that we don't because the religions of the past are not congruent with modernity, and I sketched out a potential new approach in my last essay for Arc. I'd be curious to hear your thoughts on religion -- without a political mandate, what forms of religious observance are congruent with our culture and historical moment? How can this congruence be defended intellectually?
Not ignoring this, just contemplating the question
It's a lot to think about. I understand.
This social solidity is a lie. This idea of perfect social harmony is the most pernicious and ridiculous and nakedly false idea. How can people POSSIBLY believe this? It does not exist anywhere! The most homogenous community has internal factions and disagreements and gossip and so on. It’s simply cover for racism and bigotry and a fantasy of domination. Also, it’s a cover for people who want to promise a utopia but have no content to the utopia so they claim that all ‘the problems’ that exist are caused by ‘the others’ and if you get rid of ‘them’ you will simply have a utopia. As if a history does not exist in which groups have always been conceived and re-conceived and they laughably create ‘a group’ that was once a bunch of ultra violent squabbling others (‘Europeans’) even adding into the group people who are not part of the group. How do people believe such things when they are disproved by constant personal experience?