Simplistic Value Systems Will Remain In Vogue
If The True American Majority Remains Divided

By William Finucane

George W. Bush has another four years in the presidency, this time as a duly elected president rather than a judicially appointed executive. How did that happen?

Pollsters asked people what criteria they based their voting decision upon? Huge numbers said moral matters made the difference. Many were self-described "Evangelical" religious people with strong feelings about what they consider moral issues. Yet it seems clear that what they wanted more than anything from this election is respect. Yes, respect.

Evangelicals, Catholics and others with what they feel are ‘sacred feelings toward their churches’ all went to the polls and voted in far greater numbers than they have in many years.

George Bush offered them deep respect. He is one of them.

Bush has, he says, personally been touched by Christ; not metaphorically, really, since he apparently feels he has Christ with him. And when offered to the massive group of religious faithful as a candidate, his attraction was understandable. Religious zeal has many adherents.

Sure, Massachusetts’ Sen. John Kerry won the presidential debates. What would you expect from him, he is an intellectual. He can make any simple question an excuse to sound like a smart wordsmith, and given a complex question on a serious issue, he can give an erudite answer.

But that was not what the ‘Religious Right’ sought; in fact, to the fundamentalist ‘Christian’ right, complex answers seem only to raise suspicions.

Forget all that fancy talk.

Give us our answer and give it to us straight.

Ok, then, since that’s obviously what they want, Bush will give it to them in spades: war needs winning, gay marriage is perversion, abortion is murder. Bush did not say exactly that, but it was close enough to get the clear, plain, unvarnished image of support for such positions across to the fundamentalists.

So he got most of the ‘Super-Religious’ vote.

Now he intends to show just how much he respects them. There will be Supreme Judicial Court appointees, and many more to lower courts, that will paint a quasi-religious, radical-conservative history on the nation for years, maybe many decades to come. The Social Security System will be immersed in a huge debate, with the Religious Right smack in the middle of it, following the radical line of thought that declares private investments will be the pathway to greater security in retirement.

Simplifying the tax code will be another massive fight. And of course the Religious Right will be out there swinging. And of course the reinforced Republican House of Representatives and the GOP Senate will be moved by the same reactionary policies and publicly stated agendas.

If the GOP overlords of the U.S. House and Senate decide to keep excluding Democrats from committee debate, presenting finished bills for a floor vote in either chamber, the national divide will not become closer: It will become more sharply defined. This phenomenon can and probably will happen quickly.

Watch how legislative action unfolds in the first three months of the new Congressional session and see if Democrats get any voice in the legislative debate!

The one-party rule will show up in the House most prominently. Democrats still have enough seats to put on a filibuster in the Senate, but even there the posture is weak.

When they were in the minority, Republicans could sit on committees and speak their minds, and act upon their party’s political viewpoint. They might lose the argument, but no one challenged their right as elected representatives of American citizens to engage the majority in spirited debate.

The very concept of democracy demands that all elected representatives of the public have full and complete access to the legislative process, including the ability to argue a point of view.

Unfortunately, while democratic principles demand such a political reality, the current Republican majority does not adhere to such criteria. The radical Republicans in office today practice the politics of exclusion, where members of the minority party – the Democrats – are simply excluded from meetings where the legislative agenda is created..

This truly endangers the country. And it does so all the more now, when America is a bitterly divided nation. That bitter divide, of course, has much to do with these very policies, which became commonplace during the last four years, when the Bush Administration was pressing forward without an electoral victory. It can only be imagined how the agenda will be pressed forward now, after an election in which Mr. Bush and the radical-Republicans gained a majority of the popular vote.

To many of the evangelicals and their cousins in the ‘Christian Right,’ much of their personal approach is based on a desire for simple, clear answers to complicated questions and issues. They want the Iraqi war won, they want protection from terrorists and they want all their answers to arrive in a polished and basic manner; i.e., decided beforehand by a sort of unwavering adherence to a concept of truth that allows no dissent.

Such fundamentalists can and do look to the same sureness in government as they do in their church. Life fits. All things work together. That’s their so-called ‘middle,’ but it is no more the middle than they are representative of the middle of the country.

True, such people are visible throughout the middle-states, but it is only in the Southern States – the Deep South of the Old Confederacy – that they are solidly entrenched, where their far-right views are considered mainstream, middle-of-the road.

On the two coasts, and in many place in-between, are Democrats and Independents and traditional Republicans, who remain committed to democracy with a small ‘d.’ But of course over the past few decades they have muddled up everything that should be so simple; they keep asking complex questions, and they keep viewing the world as a complicated place requiring sophisticated approaches to problems.

Such Americans don’t see everything in black and white terms. They have complex and sometimes even convoluted reasons for supporting gay marriage and a woman’s right to an abortion. They do not see all Muslims as evil; they are able to differentiate between fanatics and average people, and have sympathy for the latter.

These Americans might not do any better than the Radical-Republicans at stopping terrorists, yet actions taken by them would not be colored by hatred and absolutism, and by that fact alone they might be more successful. But that is not a consideration now; at this point, the GOP and its fundamentalist, religious right policies remain bent on waging war in a manner that leaves virtually no room for debate, but ample room to qualify all actions as patriotic and necessary.

Standing proud is George W. Bush. He is a Christian leading the war against infidels. No quarter to the terrorists and enemies, he urges. He is astride a metaphorical stallion like El Cid in his fight against the Moors.

Maybe it is not so metaphorical. Mr. Bush is, in fact, a Christian waging war on Moors. And all the middle of the country, all the Religious Right and other groups are clinging to his coat tails.

Mr. Bush leads now, and he is obviously not a liberal, nor is he an intellectual man or one with an ear trained toward how Europe and Asia are reacting to the United States at this juncture.

Right now, the biggest point the former middle and the liberal wing of American politics must comprehend is that they are no longer the powerful political base of America. It’s vital that liberals and moderates and everyone not associated with the new, Radical Republicans, understand that point.

If the huge segment of the populace comprised by the open-minded, progressive and liberal thinkers – the disparate and poorly organized majority of the electorate – fails to understand how thoroughly the right-wing radicals have captured power, no progress can or will be made toward returning the nation to its traditional and centrist values.

It is vital to look forward, not backward, and to come together in a unified manner in order to thwart the solid block of right-wing, evangelical true believers who have driven the nation so far to the right that what was the centrist middle when John F. Kennedy was president would now be considered far to the left.

It is time to move the nation back to its true center, and to do that everyone who does not consider themselves a ‘conservative’ by today’s standard must stand together in opposition to the right-wing radicals.