Digby on Fundamentalism and Stuff

I found this post on Digby, linking to The Fundamentalist Agenda, by Davidson Loehr, and it really made me think.

Now, I've never been a fan of people who take one word and beat it to death. I recall one conversation about "What is evil." When evil can mean lots of different things to different people. I was unable to drink enough cool-aid to pass out and graciously exit from the conversation and just went home with a bad headache. Similarly, a discussion about "what is love" would be just as fruitless.

I've also read way too much about what Democrats need to do to get back on top, blah, blah, blah and I thought I'd had enough of it.

This incorporates both of those topics, but it's really good and you should read it.

Now, the basic definition of fundamentalism is tyring to get back to "fundamentals" and what one may view as a simpler time, right? But wait, there's more....

The article by Loehr first indentifies five characteristics of the fundamental agenda that are virtually identical across all fundamentalist movements in the world "regardless of religion or culture."

1) Men rule the roost and make the rules. Women are support staff and for
reasons easy to imagine, homosexuality is intolerable.

2) all rules must apply to all people, no pluralism.

3) the rules must be precisely communicated to the next generation

4) "they spurn the modern, and want to return to a nostalgic vision of
a golden age that never really existed. (Several of the scholars
observed a strong and deep resemblance between fundamentalism and
fascism. Both have almost identical agendas. Men are on top, women
are subservient, there is one rigid set of rules, with police and
military might to enforce them, and education is tightly controlled
by the state. One scholar suggested that it's helpful to understand
fundamentalism as religious fascism, and fascism as political
fundamentalism. The phrase 'overcoming the modern' is a fascist slogan
dating back to at least 1941.)"

5) Fundamentalists deny history in a "radical and idiosyncratic
way."

Pretty interesting stuff.

Then Loehr says this:
But for the liberal impulse to lead, liberals must remain in contact
with the center of our territorial instinct and our need for a structure
of responsibilities. Fundamentalist uprisings are a sign that the
liberals have failed to provide an adequate and balanced vision, that
they have not found a vision that attracts enough people to become stable.

Just as it's no coincidence that all fundamentalisms have similar agendas,
it's also no coincidence that the most successful liberal advances tend to
wrap their expanded definitions in what sound like conservative
categories.

John F. Kennedy's most famous line sounds like the terrifying dictate of
the world's most arrogant fascist: “Ask not what your country can do for
you; ask what you can do for your country.” Imagine that line coming from
Hitler, Khomeini, Mullah Omar, or Jerry Falwell. It is a conservative,
even a fascist, slogan. Yet Kennedy used it to effect significant liberal
transformations in our society. Under that umbrella he created the Peace
Corps and vista programs and through them enlisted many young people to
extend our hand to those we had not before seen as belonging to our
in-group.

Likewise, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. used the rhetoric of a
conservative vision to promote his liberal redefinition of the members of
our in-group. When he defined all Americans as the children of God, those
words could sound like the battle-cry of an American Taliban on the verge
of putting a Bible in every school, a catechism in every legislature.
Instead, King used that cry to include Americans of all colors in the
sacred and protected group of “all God's children”—which was just what
many white Southerners were arguing against forty years ago.

When liberal visions work, it's because they have kept one foot solidly
in our deep territorial impulses with the other foot free to push the
margin, to expand the definition of those who belong in “our”
territory.

What I learned from this is:
1. I guess it's not what you say, but how and when you say it.
2. We should embracing patriotic and/or religious symbols rather than spitting on them, because those things inspire people.
3. We should stay and work to make America a better place rather than complaining about the government and throwing in the towel and moving to Canada and letting *them* win. It's our country too, ya know.
4. We should fight against the religious right and not let them hijack christianity for their hate agenda.
5. And lastly, we should fight to not let mom, the flag and apple pie symbolize ill-fated foreign wars, social injustice, and poor economic policy.