Blog Against Theocracy

It's happening this weekend, and I'm sure you can find all sorts of posts on the hateful, vitriolic, terrorist-loving, America-hating left-wing blogs. I especially recommend the series by Tristero at Hullabaloo.

Pat I: Meet the Theocrats
Part II: A Taste of Rushdoony
Part III: God's Law, Never Man's
Part IV: Takeover of the Texas GOP
Update: Part V: How a Christian Republic Punishes and Taxes
Update II:Part VI: The Continuing Influence Of Pat Robertson
Update III:Part VII: Culture Is Religion

And a coda by Digby: Sleeper Cells


Tristero focuses on the writings of Rushdoony and Morecraft in the first three parts, which is scary enough for anyone who believes in America, and then in the fourth points out how the theocrats have taken over the Republican party lock, stock and barrel in Texas.

For anyone who does believe in this county and what it has meant for better than two hundred years, it's easy to see who the real anti-Americans are. My own thoughts on theocracy are fairly simple: As an American, I find the idea repellent. I think the role of religion in political life is limited, and I think the role of sectarian religion in political life is nonexistent. I am a firm believer in the Bill of Rights and the idea that, absent harm to others, each individual should be free to follow his own conscience and make his own life, without having to answer to the arbitrary and irrational demands of those of his fellow citizens who feel that their beliefs should have pride of place.

Those who would seek to impose, for example, what Echidne of the Snakes called a "list of taboos" from a frew tribes of nomadic sheepherders three thousand years in the past as the law of the land are, to me, the most serious threat to the rest of us today, and I don't really see that it matters whether they come from Baghdad or Houston.

There are serious questions of public morality that we as a nation need to debate, and I expect that each person's religious beliefs will inform their choices in that debate, but the whole point of this country is compromise and consensus, which are not something that a theocracy allows. The decisions reached in that debate must, of necessity, adhere to the guarantees set forth in the Constitution of each individual's dignity, worth, and autonomy, and must have, before the law, a rational basis, which again is outside the parameters of a theocracy. There can be a system of non-theistic, rational, and functional public morality based on trust, integrity, and honesty, none of which ever seem to come into play in contemporary public discourse. For that, actually, I pretty much blame those who mask themselves in the mantle of "moral leadership" while subverting our public institutions toward their goal of an American theocracy through intellectual and moral dishonesty. (Take a look at the websites of the American Family Association, Focus on the Family, Traditional Values Coalition, Agape Press, the Discovery Institute, for examples of what I mean.)

I follow a minority religion, and my adherence was arrived at through much introspection, prayer, and soul-searching. I don't seek to impose it on others, nor do I make great public display of my beliefs, because 1) we don't proselytize, and 2) it's my business and no one else's. I extend everyone else the same courtesy. I'd like to keep it that way.