June 02, 2005
Neocon-Romantics
Trying to make sense of the messianic ardor of the Neocons is a mistake. If anything, Christo-fascism is willfully anti-rationalist. One of the major features that differentiates the Left from the Right in our country is that the Left is rooted in the Enlightenment. The enlightened mind is characterized by the belief that science and rational thought lead to sound solutions. What makes it so difficult to make sense of the Religious Right is that these are precisely the principals that they most fervently oppose. The master theologian of their movement was R.J. Rushdoony whose book The Institutes of Biblical Law provided them the basis of their coda. The argument is simple: our humanist laws must be replaced by the harsh Biblical law of yore. Reconstructionist Bushevics quite literally and candidly preach “fire and brimstone”. Their goal, which they freely offer up at the slightest request, is the total repeal of Democratic liberties. Senator Rick Santorum (R-PA) was more than happy to make his opinion clear to a reporter: “It all comes from, I would argue, this right to privacy that doesn’t exist in my opinion in the United States Constitution.” It is fruitless to attempt to rationalize such a sentiment as that of a representative guardian of our Democracy. There is simply no honest scenario in which such a belief system makes sense to anyone who is freedom loving. Prominent Reconstructionist P. Andrew Sandlin gives their anti-Enlightenment and Democracy-hating agenda historical context: “Let us never forget that there is a glorious Christian culture in the past – our past. This is medieval Europe. This is Reformation Europe.” In other words the Feudal, theocratic tyranny this country was founded against is the past that Neocons idealize. There is an uncomfortable parallel,albeit due to a misunderstanding on the part of Christo-fascists, with the 19th-century Romantics. They too, it is true, shared a suspicion of the rationalism of Enlightenment thinking and were attracted to the Gothic aesthetic of the Middle Ages in which they believed they might reclaim a lost sense of spirituality, mysticism and heroic romance. That is, however, as far as the parallel goes. These artists and writers were particularly interested in championing subjective experience over ideas of objective reality. The Reconstructionist nostalgia for the fear-mongering that characterized the discipline and control exerted by Christianity over people in the Middle Ages would have been abhorrent to them. By contrast, the Romantic aim was decidedly poetic.