GOP doesn't mean 'God's Own Party'

From the Houston Chronicle op-ed page, another shot of old school GOP genius Kevin Phillips:

Now that the GOP has been transformed by the rise of the South, the trauma of terrorism and George W. Bush's conviction that God wanted him to be president, a deeper conclusion can be drawn: The Republican Party has become the first religious party in U.S. history.

We have had small-scale theocracies in North America before — in Puritan New England and later in Mormon Utah. Today, a leading power such as the United States approaches theocracy when it meets the conditions currently on display: an elected leader who believes himself to speak for the Almighty, a ruling political party that represents religious true believers, the certainty of many Republican voters that government should be guided by religion and, on top of it all, a White House that adopts agendas seemingly animated by biblical worldviews.

Indeed, there is a potent change taking place in this country's domestic and foreign policy, driven by religion's new political prowess and its role in projecting military power in the Mideast.

Click here for the rest.

The essay goes on to explain some of the concepts found in Phillips' new book, American Theocracy, which I've posted about a couple of times before, but he makes a really cool observation in the piece's introduction above. Just as American fascist elements are unrecognizable today to many Americans because because they do not manifest obviously in the way that German fascism did--that is, German fascism deeply reflected German culture and history, while American fascism is much more about God and apple pie--modern theocracy is not as easily seen because it doesn't look exactly like historical theocracies. The old Puritan and Scarlet Letter style of theocracy is simply not possible outside of small communities in the industrialized west. Consequently, religious influence and control must take different forms: it is unlikely that fundamentalist control will ever truly extend into an individual's bedroom in the form of some kind of sexual policeman or security video system, but their influence is felt in terms of misleading and inaccurate "abstinence based" sex education, draconian abortion laws in South Dakota with other states joining soon, and decreased funding for the availibility of AIDS drugs and research. That is, I'm sure the fundamentalists would just love to be in your bedroom telling you how to have sex, but since they can't, they'll do the next best thing.

Just because the forces of religious government in America don't wear turbans doesn't mean they're not exactly like the Taliban.

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