----- Original Message -----
From: "Gary Denton" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Killer Bs Discussion" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Tuesday, December 07, 2004 2:36 PM
Subject: "God Is With Us"
> Interesting article on the God message from Bush, the GOP, Leo
> Strauss, and the neo-cons.
>
> ...
> While many of us reserve a soft spot for true Christian generosity and
> the warm teachings of Jesus, it's important to remember that
> Christianity can be (and has been) distorted for darker purposes.
> Whether you're talking about Nazi Germany, the pre-Civil War American
> South, or the atmosphere in the U.S. these past few years, whenever
> questions of conscience are vigorously denounced, you can bet there is
> trouble ahead -- and the hijacking of faith and the manipulation of
> religion should always arouse suspicion. Moral values as a mandate?
> What better way to foster civil obedience and "One nation Under God"
> unity in a time of preventative war, suppressed liberty and sanctioned
> torture.
>
> So, yes, despite tales of Hitler's atheism and Germany's Godlessness,
> the list of Hitler's religious assertions and Nazi Christian
> affiliations is long, and before Americans swallow more WMD-type
> baloney, it's best to comprehend this history and understand that no
> nation, including our own, is immune to faith-based fascism.
I have a difficulty with this type of hyperbola, even when the differences
between Hitler and GWB are acknowledged. Let me give a few example. MLK
used religious language and imagery a lot more than GWB has ever
contemplated in his movement. It's true that Southern churches supported
slavery, but the abolitionist movement was a religious based movement.
Just think of the words to the Battle Hymn of the Republic...and you can
see a far stronger invoking of God than anything done by GWB, or MLK for
that matter.
So, let us consider Hitler. In Hitler's Germany, religion was subject to
the state. It was Deuchland Uber Alles (sp), including one's obligation to
God. That's because Hitler was a nationalist...he thought of history as
the struggle of peoples...with certain races clearly superior to others.
This is different in type as well as degree from patriotism in the US. For
Hitler, nations were ethnic groups....Jews who were in Germany for 500
years were Jews, not Germans. He didn't accept conversion of Jews as
acceptable. If one grandparent was a Jew, then you are a Jew..even though
your parents and you are practicing Christians.
The Bremen confession stands in contrast to this view, naming Jesus as the
head of the church. Bonehoffer thought himself a soldier of Christ for
fighting the evil of Nazi Germany. The problem with the churches in
Germany was that they were "liberal" in believing that the churches were
there to serve the needs of people. Combine that with the prevalent belief
in the importance of ethnic groupings in much of Europe, and there is
fertile grounds for strife.
Further, if you look at a number of Hitler's speeches, which I did when
this topic comes up earlier, you can see that his references to God were
rather perfunctory. Religion was one more useful tool, when put in its
proper position of being subjected to state control. But, his philosophy
owed much more to Nietzsche than it owed to early 20th century Christian
practices. The idea of racial types was strong in Germany...think of
Thomas Mann's story "Tonio Kroger" where two conflicting biological types
(Italian and Scandinavian) struggled in one person.
Let's contrast that to the US. The US isn't a nation according to Hitler's
views. It's a bunch of mutts. He thought it was a shame that someone like
Jesse Owens could race against Germans because he was clearly closer to
animals. For him, the British were worthy enemies,
but the US could be dismissed.
The US is a conceptual nation, not an ethnic nation. Thus, we have a lot
of protection against that type of ethnic nationalism...because we are an
amalgamation of different ethnic groups. Listening to Bush's rhetoric, we
see strong indications that he believes in the idea of the US, and
spreading this idea through the rest of the world. One could argue that
the idea that people want to choose their own government and to have limits
placed on the control that government has over their lives is simply a
cultural artifact...that Arabs naturally prefer brutal dictatorships, I
suppose...but I think that sort of argument is needed in order to claim
that the idea of spreading representative government is cultural
imperialism.
> Substituting "America" for "Germany," many of Hitler's religious
> assertions could have been uttered by Jerry Farwell or Pat Robertson
> -- with Hitler even asserting that God punished Germany for turning
> away from Him -- before promising that renewed piety would protect the
> Fatherland and make it prosperous and successful once more.
I think Farwell has much more in common with Michael Moore than Hitler
here. Hitler was not against using religion as a tool, but I think that
most of his writings indicated that he viewed traitors, not a lack of
prayer, as the reason Germany lost WWI. One needs to remember that Hitler
did not rule Germans with an iron fist until after the assassination
attempt. In contrast, blood guilt seems to be a concept accepted by both
Moore and Farwell. Of course I think Moore and Farwell are both full of
BS, but I also think their ideas are not inherently as dangerous as
Hitler's.
> George Bush is not Hitler. America is not Nazi Germany. But buying
> into religious assertions or thinking that God is on your side is not
> wise when it comes to matters of war -- particularly when that war is
> an aggressive preventative war based on false premises and
> assumptions.
Was buying into MLK's religious assertions dangerous? Was buying into the
idea of being called to end slavery dangerous? I think the answer to that
is no. I think the key can be found in Peter Gomes work again, is someone
really trying to act on fundamental biblical principals or is someone
simply cherry picking examples that fit.
In national and international affairs, since these are public acts, an
extremely helpful step is the examination of a claim to be following a
calling is relating it to "love your neighbor as yourself." Both the
abolitionists and the civil rights movements qualify for this. The
Declaration of Independence's self-evident truths qualify.
Slavery certainly doesn't. The Catholic/Protestant conflicts in Ireland
don't. And it goes without saying that the Nazi's actions didn't. But,
lets look at what Bush is claiming to be God's calling for the US and for
him. Quoting an old sig of JDG:
"The liberty we prize is not America's gift to the world,
it is God's gift to humanity." - George W. Bush 1/29/03
Visioning the US as being called by God to help spread this gift to others
does seem to follow this general rule.
Now, using war as a mechanism for this is problematic. But, I think most
of us would say "it depends" to determine if war is morally justified. For
example, I have seen no-one on this list argue that the Dutch standing
aside and allowing Serbicidia to take place was the best moral judgment.
Yet, it was the only legal thing they could do, the UN forbade any
practical means of stopping the genocide. So, unless one wishes to argue
that we are morally compelled to let genocide there, in Rwanda, and in the
Sudan to run it's course because it is wrong to take life to defend life,
then one would have to say that sometimes war to preserve or obtain liberty
for others is justified, and sometimes it is not.
>From the start, I have leaned against this Gulf War because of practical
matters. I was virtually certain that the US would win the war; I thought
ousting Hussein was morally justified; but I thought the likelihood of
bungling the aftermath because we were not adequately prepared.
So, in short, I don't think that evoking of God in the vision of spreading
freedom and representative government throughout the world that's is a
problem. Indeed, it is strongly within the tradition of the US, from the
Declaration of Independence, through Lincoln, through today. Bush's
difficulties are a function of the implementation of this vision.
Indeed, he appears to be the inverse of his father...all "the vision thing"
and virtually no practical implementation.
Dan M.
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