Here’s a great email from my cousin Lorrin (better known as Andy) to my mother. He’s a much better writer than I am. The email refers to his wife, Marvyne, and to my brother, Jeff, who has appeared on this blog before, and who is quite upset about the election results.

The Faith Patrol dropped by today to make sure my picture of Jesus is properly displayed over the mantel and check out my church attendance punch card. A little unnerving, but a small price to pay for a moral society, at long last, under the watchful eye of our God-loving Maximum Leader.

Actually I’m starting to get slightly depressed myself, not because of the election results, which of course I welcomed, but because of the extreme bitterness of many of the Bush-haters. I don’t recall anything like it, except maybe during the Vietnam era. You’d think we were on the verge of a homophobic Christo-fascist dictatorship, the paranoia fanned by the news media, which loves nothing more than to seize on a dubious generalization and flog it to death. I think it’s a gross exaggeration that exacerbates antagonisms in a way that’s most unhealthy for the body politic.

“Moral values,” especially the gay marriage issue, were certainly a factor in the election, and people who saw it as the overriding issue probably gave Bush the margin of victory. But then the nutty far-out left and the lopsided black vote would have given Kerry the margin of victory if he had won. Anyway, the born-again Christians don’t constitute as much of a monolith as the Michael Moore/Barbra Streisand/George Soros left–at least 20% of the evangelicals went for Kerry. And they couldn’t possibly impose a repressive Christian agenda on contemporary secular America even if they wanted to, which I don’t think most of them do anyway. They just feel beleaguered, unable to insulate themselves or their children from a pervasive anything-goes social and media climate that they see as having lost its moral compass.

The liberal media does its best to portray Bush as a religious nut (long article in the New York Times Magazine just before the election, for instance), but while I think his faith is genuine he doesn’t flaunt it unless he’s prodded by reporters and he’s given absolutely no indication that he chooses this or that policy because he thinks God tells him to. He may think or at least hope that God is on his side, but he doesn’t pretend to be God’s agent on earth. In his post-election news conference he went out of his way to emphasize religious freedom and diversity, everybody’s unequivocal right to “worship as he or she sees fit,” or not worship at all, as he made a point of saying a couple of times.

My own youthful atheism has mellowed into a somewhat more tolerant agnosticism–I still find it hard to comprehend that intelligent people can believe in Christian mythology, but some obviously do and I don’t begrudge them their faith. I certainly don’t feel threatened by them. Aside from abortion, which is kind of a special case, I think they’re generally far less coercive than the secular left, which of course has its own “moral values” and doesn’t hesitate to impose them on the rest of us with the help of sympathetic judges, advancing liberal social policies–on abortion, gay rights, affirmative action etc.–that often defy majority opinion and could never be democratically legislated outside of the courts. Just because secular moral values differ from the Christian perspective doesn’t mean they’re not moral values.

As it happens, I’m strongly pro-choice myself, pro-gay rights (if not necessarily gay marriage), dubious about the war and the deficit, vehemently opposed to life-at-any-cost fanaticism like John Ashcroft’s attempt to overturn the Oregon law permitting assisted suicide in terminal cases, unhappy with the administration’s one-sided support for Israel. But I had no reservations about voting for Bush, partly because I thought John (“I have a plan”) Kerry was a flatulent phony who offered no realistic alternatives on Iraq or anything else. Those endless references to his supposed Vietnam heroism and that ludicrous PR stunt, dressing up in a silly camouflage suit and going goose hunting in the probably delusional belief that it would help him with the redneck vote.

I don’t know if you check out Nick’s blog, but he posted a very good piece on Sunday about the utter political conformity of the left-wing milieu he finds himself surrounded by in Nashville–the herd of independent minds, as somebody once described it. It rang a bell with me because it’s very similar to my own milieu here in blue New York (perhaps a mirror image of your situation in Idaho, although I suspect that Boise itself is less rock-ribbed and I’m sure you have friends who agree with you). Like most of our own friends, acquaintances and relatives, Marvyne remains an unreconstructed Democrat but unlike some in our circle has taken the Bush victory in stride, though she dislikes Bush probably more than I dislike Kerry. As I told her, she’d vote for Mortimer Snerd if he was for abortion rights and against the war. But I helped her cancel out my vote by driving her to the polling place. Of course she would have walked there otherwise so there wasn’t much I could do to prevent it and I thought I might as well curry a little favor with the in-house opposition.

I’m genuinely sorry to hear that Jeff is so depressed by the current scene that he doesn’t want to teach political science any more. I hope events will persuade him that he’s too pessimistic. Happy Thanksgiving…Lorrin

There has been much wailing and gnashing of teeth lately about George Bush being a born-again Christian, and about the tendency of evangelical Christians to vote based on their religious beliefs, as if this were some kind of recent and growing threat to American democracy. For a little perspective, I offer here some quotations from a few, now, more well-respected presidents.

Abraham Lincoln:

“I do not think I could myself be brought to support a man for office whom I knew to be an open enemy of, or scoffer at, religion.”

“It is the duty of nations as well as of men to own their dependence upon the overruling power of God, and to confess their sins and transgressions in humble sorrow, yet with assured hope that genuine repentance will lead to mercy and pardon, and to recognize the sublime truth, announced in Holy Scripture, and proven by all history, that those nations only are blessed whose God is the Lord.”

“Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled up by the bondsman’s 250 years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another draw with the sword, as was said 3000 years ago, so still must it be said, ‘the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.'”

“In regard to this great book [the bible], I have but to say, it is the best gift God has given to men. All the good Savior gave to the world was communicated through this book. But for it we could not know right from wrong. All things most desirable for man’s welfare, here and hereafter, are to be found portrayed in it.”

John Adams:

“The general principles upon which the Fathers achieved independence were the general principles of Christianity. I will avow that I believed and now believe that those general principles of Christianity are as eternal and immutable as the existence and the attributes of God.”

“We recognize no Sovereign but God, and no King but Jesus!”

“We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

“I have examined all religions, as well as my narrow sphere, my straightened means, and my busy life, would allow; and the result is that the Bible is the best Book in the world. It contains more philosophy than all the libraries I have seen.”

Andrew Jackson:

“Sir, I am in the hands of a merciful God. I have full confidence in his goodness and mercy…. The Bible is true… Upon that sacred volume I rest my hope for eternal salvation, through the merits and blood of our blessed Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ.”

“I nightly offer up my prayers to the throne of grace for the health and safety of you all, and that we ought all to rely with confidence on the promises of our dear Redeemer, and give Him our hearts. This is all He requires and all that we can do, and if we sincerely do this, we are sure of salvation through his atonement.”

Being married to Candace means that I am immersed in the milieu of musicians and songwriters, talented, artistic people, here in Nashville and environs, and they are for the most part card-carrying members of the now very depressed, Bush-despising left. In between lovely music, bitter jokes are shared, like What’s the difference between Iraq and Vietnam? Bush figured out a way to get out of Vietnam. And so on. Somebody sings Country Joe’s “Fixin’ To Die Rag”, substituting Iran for Vietnam. There is no intention to be offensive to anybody present, because it never occurs to anyone that there could possibly be somebody in the room who does not share these sentiments. After all, we are all intelligent, nice people, not like those ignorant bigots on the other side.

I suppose it is cowardly, but I keep a low profile, because I have found that people get very upset when they find out that I support the war and George Bush. My policy is, don’t ask, don’t tell. If they ever were to ask, I would tell, but they never do. And the reason they never do is because they already know that everyone in the room agrees with them 100% about everything. So they don’t have to ask. The irony is that these people pride themselves, and I mean pride themselves, on being really smart, and open-minded, whereas they appear to me, to be more close-minded than many of the people they despise. Fortunately that mindset has cost them the election and will continue to cost them elections by ever greater margins in the future.

I like hanging with people who think about things, and therefore have diverse opinions, and who actually enjoy discussing them, and even, dare I say it, arguing about them, and even, mirabile dictu, changing their minds. Strangely enough, such people are now, regardless of their opinions about anything in particular, called “conservatives”. Has it always been thus? I don’t think so. I think there was a time, long, long ago, when “liberals” were capable of thought. I don’t really understand what it was that made them decide to give it up, something about Vietnam, but whatever it was, I think it was a mistake. I like the two party system. I hate to see it disappear. I’m looking forward to voting for a Democrat again some day, but I just don’t know when or if I’ll ever get the chance. In the meantime, I enjoy the company of these fine people when the bitter politics stops and the music begins.

We’re not talking about any tangible legal rights here, such as inheritance, visitation, tax deductions, etc., all of which could be granted with little public outcry. We’re talking about changing the legal definition of a word, marriage, irrespective of any actual rights and privileges. Some gay activists want legal recognition that the word marriage means homosexual unions as well as heterosexual unions, that they are the same thing. Gay marriages may be every bit as wonderful as straight marriages, but they are not the same thing. Men and women are equal, but they are not the same. I like apples and oranges, but they are not the same. Some gays feel that not having the word means their relationship is not respected. Some heteros feel that changing the word means that their relationship is not respected. That is the only right that is being considered, and it is a right that would be given to some by taking it away from others. The primary intent of this crusade, not the only one, but the primary one, is to piss people off. Why not issue male homosexual union certificates and female homosexual union certificates? Why not call things what they are?

Posted by Harcamone

Yeah, sure. OK. But I don’t know if I believe that as much, and as absolutely, as Andrew Sullivan and his readers believe it. Still, the sense one gets about this tactic is very disturbing. It’s wrong, and I don’t want to be part of it. Not only do I not want to be part of it in a passive sense, I want to stand and act in opposition to this horrible mentality. In fact I do stand against it. I am a good influence in my little world, which includes a number of people who are the sort of Christians Andrew is so fearful of. It takes a bit of subtlety and skill, and an easy-going nature, and rather long arms, to engage and embrace a person who believes that the Bible is God’s template for humanity. Can Andrew do this? I wonder.

As much as homo-hating is deeply wrong — and even more wrong when used to get votes for the president of the United States — I believe that the radical homosexual campaign to appropriate the word “marriage” is wrong; wrong not in a moral sense, but in the political sense. Proponents of the invidious anti-gay marriage amendments refer to the “re-definition” of marriage. And yes, damnit, they are right. In the common-sense way of understanding everyday English as spoken by the vast majority of people, to say that marriage refers to two men or two women is to redefine it. Let’s not be disingenuous.

I believe this particular battle of the larger cultural war was unncessary, provocative and polarizing, and painted a big, bright target on the forehead of the “gay movement.” No one has been more vociferous in support of it than our pal Andrew Sullivan. What a wonderfully smart man he is, and what an uncompromising fanatic he becomes when the subject of “gay marriage” is raised. One could speculate that if the radical queers had not been so nuts about getting M-word-married, and if a few contemptuous judge-morons had not ruled as they did, the religious conservatives would not have felt the need to circle their wagons with these hideous amendments.

I feel terrible, and sad, when I read the letters on Andrew’s site — poor little gay boys in tears because society hates them. No, society does not necessarily hate them. Damn Andrew for equating gay-marriage-opposition to hatred of queers, thus helping to create a kind of gay hysteria.

Andrew might be surprised by the number of people who could eventually be persuaded that homosexual legal bonding is a good thing; that it’s good for loving homosexual couples to be bonded and faithful, to have a home and a cooperative life, to have mutual assets and other things to take care of; good that all committed couples’ bonds should be recognized in some kind of legal fact and granted the normative domestic rights.

But the radical queers couldn’t be bothered to figure out creative ways to accomplish these goals, perhaps even strategizing gradual long-term gains. Nooooo, they had to give the finger to the conservative Christians. They had to push the grapefruit in their faces.

Here’s an email from my cousin Andy:

Now that things have settled down I finally got around to checking out your blog. Literate (of course) and quite stimulating. Good essay on utopianism, very much on target, although I don’t think liberal/conservative distinctions have become entirely meaningless. Disparate views among conservatives on discrete questions like abortion, gay rights, free trade, Iraq, etc.don’t necessarily negate agreement on broad over-all political philosophy. I also think the views of liberals, self-proclaimed or otherwise, tend to be more predictable than those of conservatives, at least conservatives like you and me. And I don’t think we’re that unusual.

Liked your observation that the founding fathers were visionaries but not utopians. The Constitution’s unflinching recognition of human nature and its simple but sophisticated machinery for curbing excess are indeed remarkable. Despite rhetorical similarities the American revolution was profoundly different from the French, which was basically utopian and ended up devouring its own children, as they say of revolutions in general, culminating of course in Bonapartism. At least Napoleon was preferable to Robespierre.

The abiding sin of the left is sentimentality, which I suppose in this context might be another name for utopianism. The irony is that sentimentality, with its ostentatious love for humanity in the abstract, often leads to the most horrendous crimes in the name of a higher good. Hitler and Stalin were sentimentalists. The actual driving force was perhaps lust for power, but I think they also believed in the idealism they preached with such bloody consequences, the superiority of the Volk or the manifest destiny of the proletariat.

But you’re right, of course, that utopians have also, historically, been in the forefront of beneficent reform, and that conservatives can fall into the trap of believing improvement is not possible (though there are plenty of exceptions to that, notably Bismarck and Disraeli). Trouble is that utopians are like the guy who knew how to spell banana, just didn’t know when to stop; whether liberal or totalitarian, they’re more addicted to coercion than democratic conservatives are. In contemporary America the penchant for social engineering was notably manifest, for instance, in the utopian attempt to promote equality by creating an artificial “racial balance” in the schools, through massive coercion, mainly busing, which ended up practically destroying urban public education without doing black kids any good. Even when I was a no-enemies-on-the-left liberal I thought that was idiotic and self-defeating, which of course proved to be the case. In fact my life in the People’s Republic of New York, while doing TV minidocumentaries on economic and social questions, had a great deal to do with my burgeoning apostasy.

Randy is an interesting guy, a point of view I hadn’t heard from a self-proclaimed homosexual–no apparent self-hatred, no apology for personal preferences or behavior, but at the same time a realistic acknowledgement that homosexuality is deviant, that equating it in every way with straight life and institutions isn’t all that healthy socially. Not that tolerance isn’t in order, or that the gay rights movement hasn’t been a good thing on balance, but the current gay party line reminds me somewhat of those feminists who insist that all differences aside from the undeniable obvious are culturally imposed. (Incidentally, while I’m turned off by the shriller feminists, I think one reason for the vitality of the West is the emancipation of women and the channeling of their talents and energies into intellectual, vocational and social life.)

I once heard Truman Capote say that he didn’t really believe in bisexuality, that everybody, basically, is either gay or straight. One hesitates to dispute a dispatch from the front, but I don’t think that’s true. My own opinion is that homosexuality is largely inherent, but with gradations, sometimes malleable to a greater or lesser degree, and in some though not all cases partly a matter of choice; if environmental and social pressures steer an individual with homosexual tendencies into a straight life I don’t think it’s necessarily destructive to personal happiness or fulfillment. But of course it depends…

Posted by Harcamone

Is it appropriate, or polite, to laugh? Can there really be, as Reuters says, a huge wave of Americans who want to move to Canada because they are so disgusted/grieved/terrified/angst-ridden, whatever, that Bush was elected? Well, I hate to sound crude or mean, but I say Good Florking Riddance to every one of them. Not being born yesterday, we know exactly what kind of people they are. We don’t need them here. Let them go fuck up Canada. In twenty years there might be a wave of Canadians wanting to move down here.

You know, I’m not as dismissive of the “moral values” demographic as I useta. Like you said, gay marriage, abortion, hostility to committed Christianity. These are not ridiculous, unreal concerns. They have real substance, and I am not reflexively opposed to them anymore. In fact, I am very glad that they mean something to a significant portion of the populace.

On Nov 2, 2004, at 11:54 PM, Seward, Jeff wrote:

I read it. I like the one about the virtual reality folks vs. the earthy reality folks. Actually, I don’t think either group is very well connected to “real” reality. The virtual reality folks think Michael Moore is an insightful, reasonable guy; the earthy reality types think Jerry Falwell should be taken seriously. MSNBC just showed results of an exit poll that said the top three issues, according to the voters, were “moral values” (21 percent), “the economy” (20 percent), and “terrorism” (18 percent). Of the “moral values” crowd, 77 percent went for Bush, and the moral values they were concerned about were gay marriage and abortion and the sense that the broader culture is hostile to fundamentalist Christians (which it is). Kerry lost 75 percent of white evangelical Protestants. Their turnout offset the big Democratic turnout of minority and youth voters. The Democrats lost every Southern state and every border state. Why? Basically race and the Bible, these days mostly the Bible. And also the sense that Democrats are largely urbanites and have no understanding of what is important to the way of life of small town and rural Americans. Republicans have many issues with which they can appeal to urban and suburban voters–mostly anti-tax, pro-business economic issues. The Democrats at this point have no issues at all with which they can appeal to small town and rural voters, especially if they are religious. The Democrats have lost all interest in figuring out a way to make white evangelical Christians the sense that they respect their religious views or the lives they lead in small towns and rural areas. This is mainly because the overwhelming majority of Democrats (except for some Black evangelicals) don’t respect their religious views or their way of life. But Bush is winning this election because of this rock solid part of the Republican base.

I believe the American idea to be the most revolutionary, world-wide idea that has happened on the scene in two thousand years. I am sure that George Bush sees it the same way. I am quite sure that John Kerry does not. Kerry is captivated by a world government, European vision that relegates the U.S. to one of many obselete nation states.

The American idea has been tested to its core, by the revolution, the war of 1812, the civil war, WWII (and the cold war, a continuation), and now, the war on terror, which I prefer to name the war against Islamic fascism. The idea of democracy, freedom, capitalism, separation of powers, separation of church and state, has prevailed against all of its challenges to date.

This election is a seminal moment in that history, which is not just the history of the United States of America, but the history of the world. If Kerry were to win, which now appears unlikely, it would not be the end, as if the Confederacy had won the civil war, but it would be a major setback, which a braver, more resolute public would be forced to overcome four years from now. Unless, of course, Kerry turned out to be a bigger man that he has shown himself to be heretofore.

It’s extraordinary to me, that when you look at the maps, you see red states everywhere, with a handful of blue states on the west coast and in the northeast, and this means it’s a tie. In other words, the Democrats dominate in the few very large uban areas, and everywhere else it’s a Republican world. This is not a good sign. If this election were decided on geography (which it slightly is, thanks to the electoral college), it would be a landslide for the Republicans. We are looking at a deep divide between Americans who live in large cities, and everyone else.

I see this as a divide between those who live primarily in the virtual world and those who live primarily in the real world. Even without electronics and dsl, to live in a city is to live in a virtual world of man-created, geometric reality, with occasional glimpses of blue sky and potted plants. Andy Warhol said that TV is better than reality. That’s begining to look like a prophesy. I am a virtual world dweller, living out among real world dwellers, and I thiink that they have a firmer grasp on reality than those of us who interprete what’s what via pixels. For those of us in the virtual world, Iraq and the war on terrorism is a video game, and abstract appeals to a rational universe are compelling, but to the denizens of the real world, it is much more concrete. People are trying to kill us. For real. We should kill them first. For real. Real world dwellers don’t care about abstract dreams of enlightened consciousness bringing about a new world of peace-loving vegetarians. Real world dwellers have guns, and they have them for a reason, i.e., meat and defense.

These are the people who are fighting for all of us in Iraq, and who will fight for us wherever it is necessary. They are despised and patronized by the urban democratic virtual reality dwelling sophisticates, me included, but without them, we’re dead. And in this video game, you don’t get more plays.