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[silvershamrock]

This is a ridiculously alarmist article.  And it's rather poorly written, too.  It comes from a site that seems dead set on villainising the American Right, and ... well, read this extract for yourself:

Over the last 30 years Evangelical fundamentalists have managed to do what Chairman Mao failed to do with his Red Guards: indoctrinate a whole

Comments

[aleph_naught]

I don't know, in some respects I agree with him - the Christian right in the states are very much set against the fundamental principles of the American republic, and I'd argue they're a far greater threat to freedom and democracy. But really, it depends on what you take the concept 'America' to stand for - for me, it calls to mind the values of the Enlightenment out of which the country was born, secularism, democracy, the free pursuit of happiness. The American project is something that I identify with quite strongly. As such, to my thinking, the Christian right is about as anti-American as you can get.

But many identify America with her worst aspects - religious bigotry, warmongering, imperialism, unrestrained capitalism and all the consequences of that. Which is also a perfectly valid way of looking at it, but I think it's also more pessimistic.

[silvershamrock]

I oscillate between pessimism and idealism myself, actually. The USA was founded on very noble ideals, and it's one of the few revolutions in history that has actually done more good than harm (1), but that goal has been corrupted and perverted as time has passed.

Is it possible to get back to those ideals? Possibly, but not without some serious adjustments in attitude. Both the American Left and the American Right are upping their rhetoric, and I can't help but see another civil war in the making.

But then, I tend to lean more toward pessimism than optimism. Maybe the leadership of both sides will see where they're heading and pull back from the brink.
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(1) Both the French and Russian Revolutions led - directly or indirectly - to the culling of the educated and the idle; that is, the doctors, engineers, poets and musicians. It's no coincidence that the French cultural domination faded so rapidly after the Napoleonic Era.