The Grillmaster has remarked before in this space on the remarkable ability of the radical religious right to drum up unreasonable feelings of fear and victimhood in service to political causes. This has caused some grumblings in the ranks of readers, at least in part over the use of the word 'unreasonable.' The counterargument goes, in short, that conservatives in this country have every right to be fearful, and need to rally to defend the Christian (or as we today call them, Judeo-Christian) values upon which this country was founded. The Ralph Reeds of the world don't create fear out of whole cloth; they simply mobilize it to their own ends.
There are a few substantial problems with this counterargument. First, if you look at the history of these fearmongering campaigns, it is clear that Reed and others make their living by exaggerating and generalizing a crisis based upon often innocuous events. That's how politics works, on both left and right, and I would hope that intellectually honest conservatives could admit this. Second, I'm still far from convinced that the kind of aggressive civic religion advocated by these groups is actually good for the churches they want to protect. The ongoing fall from grace of Mr. Reed ought to serve as a cautionary tale to preachers both right and left about the dangers of intertwining one's message too closely with the big business of contemporary politics.
The obvious question becomes this: What is to be done in response to this repeated pattern of fearmongering? For too long, the response from much of the Left has fed these feelings of fear and victimization. It is here that my debate partners have a point. Liberals have talked down their well-educated noses at the uncivilized fringes (or is that masses?) who actually dare to believe in God. How quaint. While conservative operatives may drum up fear to unreasonable levels, snobby secularists have a bad habit of giving them plenty of easy material for their work.
This patronizing cycle has proven threatening to both the Democratic party and American democracy. The threat to the Dems became self-evident in 2004 with the by now well-documented rise of the 'value voters' who in part returned Bush to the White House. The party faces many challenges, but one of the most important is to convince voters once again that it stands for both a set of programmatic prescriptions AND a relatively coherent vision of American values. An increasing number of progressive leaders understand this challenge; it will be interesting to see how that understanding develops in the coming years.
The threat posed to our democracy in general is less obvious, but far more pernicious. Irrespective of who is at fault for the decline in public discourse, particularly around values issues, that decline has thoroughly permeated our political system. Judicial nominations are a pathetically veiled game of interest politics. Lobbying machines on both sides of the aisle perpetuate their own existences by stirring up division. State ballot initiatives 'fire up the base' rather than propose meaningful solutions to the pressing problems of the day.
As Dr. Grillmaster diagnoses things (oh yes, I'm a M.D.), this is one of the most significant ailments of contemporary American politics. The prescription? That will have to wait for Part II...
