Christian Conservatism as Myth

There are six political parties in America, not two.

These six align themselves into the two major political parties for convenience, but the grouping is not harmonious or even.

The elite of the Left are the Dissolute. They are idealists, concerned with ideas rather than pragmatics. These are media moguls, academicians, ACLU lawyers, and intellectuals primarily concerned with abolishing the norms of decency from society, or, rather, to alter the norms to bring them in line with a nonjudgmental, all-welcoming, but ultimately nihilist political correctness. They favor abortion and homosexual marriage. Libertarians are found here.

The elite of the Right are the Capitalists. Rightwing intellectuals and businessmen seek minimum government and free trade. Their primary concern is economics. They also tend to favor what is properly called the liberal institutions of rule of law, the constitution, the freedoms in the Bill of Rights. They are somewhat internationalist in flavor. Libertarians are found here also.

The yeomen of the Left are the Dependents. These include teacher’s unions and bureaucrats, farmers, trial lawyers and race hustlers, and everyone who depends on handouts from the public till, or pay-offs from class-action suits. They favor expansions of the federal government to fund their various programs, and class actions suits to force guns and cigarettes into oblivion. They are pragmatists, concerned with questions of Right Conduct, which they regard as synonymous with charity. Authoritarians are found here of the Welfare-State kind.

The yeomen of the Right are the Militarists. They favor a strong military and an aggressive foreign policy. They are anticommunist and patriotic. They do not share the internationalist feelings of the Capitalists. They are pragmatists, concerned with questions of Right Conduct, which they regard as synonymous with honor. Authoritarians are found here of the Law-and-Order kind.

The base of the Left are the Workers. These include many constituencies, such as southern Black Baptists, who do not share the social values of the Social Libertines, but they do share a suspicion of the Capitalists, in whom they see a mutual enemy. Their primary concern is economics: they want the government to regulate the market and protect the workingman.

The base of the Right are the Social Conservatives, who want to protect their families from the rising tide of filth and moral decay in which our current society is drowning. The are idealists, concerned with ideas rather than pragmatics. They want to see perversion shamed rather than lauded. The Social Conservatives have more in common with the Workers than they do with the Capitalists, whom they also mistrust as driving the morals of society into Philistinism, but the presence of the Marxist and socialist element in the Left elite drives the Conservatives to the Right. They want the government to regulate the speech and protect the manners of society. They regard abortion as child-murder.

The main opposition in the media, the marketplace of ideas, is between the two idealist factions: the Social Conservatives and the Libertines, between the Chaste and the Dissolute.

This leads to an exaggeration, a false perception that the Right is predominantly Christian, and the Left predominantly secular, whereas, in truth, Christians are not any more active now than ever before in politics: look at the way politics was conducted in the 60’s and 50’s; look at the Temperance movement, or the Abolitionist movement.

All that is happening now is that the antinomian Dissolute, the Left Elite, have openly and publicly declared themselves to be anti-Christian, and find increasing resistance to their views from all quarters as the horrific results of a quarter century of experimentation with unchastity and family-unfriendly social mores are coming home to roost.

Nearly every politician salutes the flag, kisses a baby, and goes to church on Sunday, but only politicians on the Right are accused of basing their agenda on their church. Are not John Kerry and Bill Clinton God-fearing sons of the Church?

The Church has not moved. She still condemns divorce, homosexuality, the use of contraception, and abortion. She also opposes war and mistrusts the wealthy, and she supports the poor. The Left in American moved away from the Church teachings on chastity, and now finds itself in opposition to her. The Right is just as far away from the Church on questions of just war and proper use of wealth, but no one emphasizes the breach there, and the Right has not come out openly against Christ. Even when the Pope himself, surely the world’s most widely recognized spokesman for Christianity, when the Holy Father denounced the War in Iraq, no newspaper spoke of the “Christian Left” or the “Christian Anti-war movement.”

There is no such thing as the Christian Right, unless you consider people like me to be of that camp. It is an invention of the popular media, because it feeds the popular vanity that Rightwingers are ignorant bumpkins from the Cow States. There are many secularists who regard modern nihilism in the areas of art, culture, and sexual self-control to be repugnant. But no one labels their political belief as being triggered by Biblical teachings, does he?

All my friends who are liberals are go to my Church. All my friends who are Right-wing war hawks are secular atheists.