Yes. I have heard that free market anarchists eat babies as well. Unlike those saintly socialists who CARE SO MUCH about us all that they want to be in charge of every little aspect of our lives, especially our wealth and our children's minds. If that philosophy is so great, why must people be kept ignorant, trained and indoctrinated with it for 12 years?

Maybe the Invisible Hand has invisible upholders of law at its command. However, I think that constitutional government is necessary to ensure some minimal standard of adherence to law. Minimalist Hayek, one of your favorite hands-off economists, might agree. I found an overview of his books that includes a summary of his ideas on a modified constitution that would perhaps put more checks on government growth than now exist with three branches of government and at the same time would allow for government coercion in some well-defined instances, such as national defense.

http://www.adamsmith.org/policy/publications/pdf-files/hayek-his-contribution-ed-4.pdf.

I don't know why you interpret Berry's commentary as one with socialist overtones. Would you make the same objections to the use of the word we if the subject was Western thought instead of the United States? Do you object to identification with a collective West?

I think Berry is merely urging people who are partaking of the benefits of U.S. living and are at the same time subject to the detriments brought about by current U.S. business and government policies, to think about alternatives to such policies. Did he say that there had to be a collectivist alternative or to a degraded environment, for example?

To try to answer your questions, I do not think that human nature is good per se, but I don't think it's flawed, as in defective, either. I think that it exists in a middle ground between an ultimate spiritual nature of good, at one end of a spectrum, that is never completely realized on the human plane, and an opposite end of the spectrum called evil. I think that the human capacity for good is met with the human capacity for evil, which must be overcome in degrees, through work and over time. Some people look as if they're not working to overcome evil at all. And while some of those people may be in government, I don't see a societal institution other than government that is capable of dealing with evil in the form of aggression against the rights of others.

I think that a human government should reflect the reality of the human situation, and not be based on the theoretical supposition that everything will work out for the best without the "rule of law."

>>>>Maybe the Invisible Hand has invisible upholders of law at its command. However, I think that constitutional government is necessary to ensure some minimal standard of adherence to law.<<<<<

We have tried that experiment and it has failed. Government (the political class) will not limit themselves when they have the power of legalized aggression. They simply redefine their limits and the laws because they can. Has the U.S. Constitution ensured any minimum standards of adherence to law? What is that law? Are we living in a government of rule of law? The 10th amendment states that no power not spelled out in the original constitution is granted to government, yet the political class does what it wants, ignoring that limit. The political class simply passes a law claiming thr right to our children's minds and teaches them bits about government that support their aggression and indoctrinate to obedience. The people, trained like dogs react to the stimulus provided on cue to support the regime and it's fallacies.

>>>> Minimalist Hayek, one of your favorite hands-off economists, might agree. I found an overview of his books that includes a summary of his ideas on a modified constitution that would perhaps put more checks on government growth than now exist with three branches of government and at the same time would allow for government coercion in some well-defined instances, such as national defense. <<<<

It doesn't really matter. Rothbard was an Objectivist at one point, Jefferson was a slave-holder and flouted the Constitution he helped write when he became president. When they were right they were right, when they were wrong, they were wrong. Belief that some aggression by the political class is acceptable just leads down the slippery slope. The political class, seeing national defense as a means to increasing their power to aggress, will simply see to it that there are no shortage of threats or perceived threats against the people that requires their expansion of power and aggression against citizens to ensure their "safety". Sound familiar?


>>>>I don't know why you interpret Berry's commentary as one with socialist overtones.<<<<

Because of his attempt to assign collective blame for the abuses resulting from the attempts to control and plan the economy. Plastics, pesticides, automobiles are not inherently bad things. The way they are produced and used is the problem, and that is highly regulated and controlled by central planning. "We" are to blame for misusing technology in ignorance, but that pales in comparison to the abuse caused by control of production and regulations. The abusers simply buy licenses or regulatory exemptions and pollute, control access and innovation at will. You believe that the state is protecting you and helping you when the opposite is true. Berry has this same simple belief that "government" is a beast that can be controlled by powerless people protesting.

>>>> Would you make the same objections to the use of the word we if the subject was Western thought instead of the United States? Do you object to identification with a collective West? <<<<

Western civilization and culture has distinctive characteristics that are in contrast with other cultures. I don't think that can be disputed. That is not to say that there aren't exceptions, for example the many "little Chinas" all over the country. That is different than making a moral judgement against an entire population trying to live in a command economy.

>>>>I think Berry is merely urging people who are partaking of the benefits of U.S. living and are at the same time subject to the detriments brought about by current U.S. business and government policies, to think about alternatives to such policies.<<<<<

People are guilty to the degree they have control over their situation, and knowledge of wrong they do. They are not guilty for the wrongs their leaders do when they are powerless to stop them and are in fact victims themselves. A lot of people have ideas for alternative ways of life. I'm not holding my breath waitng for the political class to repent of their aggressions and step aside for alternative policies. Besides, they will simply glom onto the alternative state proposed and entrench themselves again.

>>>> Did he say that there had to be a collectivist alternative or to a degraded environment, for example?<<<

I don't think he used the term collectivist at all. It was simply the underlying premise, that "we" are all guilty. This is a waste of time and excuses the miscreants: we are "all" guilty because "we" partook and did not "change" things. Berry's real gripe is against the govschools for making people stupid and easily manipulated. But he blames the people.

>>>>>To try to answer your questions, I do not think that human nature is good per se, but I don't think it's flawed, as in defective, either. I think that it exists in a middle ground between an ultimate spiritual nature of good, at one end of a spectrum, that is never completely realized on the human plane, and an opposite end of the spectrum called evil. I think that the human capacity for good is met with the human capacity for evil, which must be overcome in degrees, through work and over time. Some people look as if they're not working to overcome evil at all.<<<<

LOL. Why should they work to overcome evil? Is evil a flaw?

>>>>> And while some of those people may be in government, I don't see a societal institution other than government that is capable of dealing with evil in the form of aggression against the rights of others.<<<<

If I am smart and I am evil, what situation allows me the most freedom to express my evil nature? Is government protecting you from aggression of others or do they simply show up later to pick up your remains, or file a report of what has been stolen? When you are working 9 months of the year for the government, when they can take your child from you if they choose, when they can tell you what you have to teach your child, what medications you can and cannot take, when they can control what work you can do, what information you have access to, what food you have access to, what property you can own-if any at all, it's clear who the real aggressors are. The aggressors, the evilest ones, the wolves, get into government work "protecting" the sheep and pick off the weakest, the stragglers, the fattest and most vulnerable. Or they simply shear them when they feel like it. "Societal institutions" become a problem when they are given the power of legalized aggression, whether it's a church or a chamber of commerce.

>>>>I think that a human government should reflect the reality of the human situation, and not be based on the theoretical supposition that everything will work out for the best without the "rule of law."<<<<

Does the government follow "the rule of law"? No. They decide what that rule is, arbitrarily according to their own shifting standards and place themselves above it. They can do this because they are better than we are, demi-gods of self defined righteousness simply because they are government. Do you accept that as "the reality of the human situation"? That some humans should simply be boss of other humans, decide everything about how they will live and demand most of the fruits of their labor? In short, that slavery is "the reality of the human situation" and must be so?

If you believe in original sin than it is true that "we" are guilty as we, all of us, carry the burden of the original sinners.

If one is powerless to prevent an action that is wrong but allows the action by claiming to be powerless to stop it than he is guilty. If my neighbor is being beaten before me and I do nothing because he is bigger and scarier than I am complicit in the beating even though I have a very well contrived reason to justify my inaction. Thus we are all complicit on a day to day, minute to minute, basis in the sorry state of affairs that surrounds us.

Additionally a careful examination of the state of the individual in relation to other individuals will reveal that that the concept of a separate, individuated self existing wholly apart from others, across the span of human years, not to mention the wishful concept of eternity, is, most likely, a false one.

>>>If you believe in original sin than it is true that "we" are guilty as we, all of us, carry the burden of the original sinners.<<<

Yes. We are descended from Adam and are burdened with sin, although capable of doing good, our nature is to do good for ourselves often resulting in evil for others.

>>>>If one is powerless to prevent an action that is wrong but allows the action by claiming to be powerless to stop it than he is guilty.<<<<<<<<

Well, first you have to define what is "wrong". The person doing the action may not think it is wrong at all. If he is not aggressing against another's person or property then it's no one's business. If attempting to stop an action that a person considers wrong causes that person to be thrown in jail, impoverishing his family and leaving his children vulnerable he is effectively being held hostage. Especially when the attempt will make very little difference, isn't the greater wrong to abandon responsibilities where the person can really make a difference and have an impact? Been there, done that, Jack. Trying to stop injustice on the part of the corporate state is a tricky thing, I would say nearly impossible.

>>>>If my neighbor is being beaten before me and I do nothing because he is bigger and scarier than I am complicit in the beating even though I have a very well contrived reason to justify my inaction. Thus we are all complicit on a day to day, minute to minute, basis in the sorry state of affairs that surrounds us. <<<

Not necessarily. Assuming your neighbor does not deserve his beating, then hopefully you would have a gun to provide self defense and persuade the attacker to quit. If you have no gun and fear for your personal safety no one could blame you for not jumping in to get beat up as well. You would be heroic and saintly to risk your personal safety to do so, although if you have responsibilities of your own you are putting in jeopardy then it might not be so heroic. You are not complicit in the crime, however. You did not choose to beat anyone up, that was another's decision. Besides, that is a more personal situation than pollution or instances of injustice or corporate greed that happen far from our own neighborhoods, beyond our control. In attempting to right a wrong thing, I found that others will back you up until it starts to get ugly, then they disappear, leaving you twisting in the wind and nothing is changed except you and your family suffer reprisals and are marginalized. "Movements", protests, etc. are generally useless unless the rulers want the change, then they promote the change. Berry should know this, he used to protest nukes and such all the time. All we can do is live our lives according to righteous principles and impact what we can, live as an example individually. I try to impact the environment as little as possible, drive a tiny little economy car, grow a garden, I refuse to participate in the futile voting exercises that perpetuate the mess, etc. If I see someone polluting or hurting someone else I would do everything I could safely to stop it, there are some things I have no control over, I am simply not ruthless enough to go up against the evil ones. I am not guilty of polluting the earth or oppressing anyone. You feel free to let that load of collective guilt be dumped on you but I'm not taking it on simply because I happen to live in a corporate state I have no control over. That is letting the real culprits off the hook.

>>>Additionally a careful examination of the state of the individual in relation to other individuals will reveal that that the concept of a separate, individuated self existing wholly apart from others, across the span of human years, not to mention the wishful concept of eternity, is, most likely, a false one.<<<<

??? Who knows? On this earth we are born separately, we live separately and we die separately. We have needs for social contact and our survival depends on social interaction and cooperation. But we still act as individuals, some of us making evil decisions and some of us trying to control that impulse. Maybe it will make a difference in that eternity. I can't envision God saying "You are going to hell because you did not stop the pollution and corporate greed in the USA". He is going to be much more concerned with the things I could have impacted and didn't. I think imagining yourself as some part of a great collective borg of erstwhile do-gooders is the wishful thinking.

Do you think that God actually tells people they are going to "go to hell" over anything? Do you believe in infinite rewards and punishments, that an all-loving Creator condemns its creation to hell? I think people work through what's in their consciousness "here or hereafter," if it takes "eternity."

I think we are individual and certainly our conscience is, but there are sins of omission, and I think Jack was trying to point to a sin of omission. I think that as much as we are individual, that all life is interdependent as well, in ways we see and cannot see.

Just out of curiosity, what do you think of the "Give me liberty or give me death" idea? I think it's a tad negative, since liberty and life are preferable, but I'm interested to know what you think of it.

It's true that life is interdependent, but our lives are so scripted and controlled that most of us are so busy trying to keep our own little boats afloat we have no idea what the scripters are conniving in the smoke filled back rooms and parlors. Most Americans are completely cluelss as to even the number of bases the US has strung all over the globe. A person has to have some level of awareness and capacity to change things before he can be held culpable of even a sin of omission. It is mostly an illusion that we can individually change a lot outside our own small spheres of influence, "we" are not the government, "We, the people" have no real power.

http://www.newsday.com/features/ny-history-hs818a,0,2647882.story?coll=ny-features-headlines

The Killing of Kitty Genovese
Her public slaying in Queens becomes a symbol of Americans' failure to get involved

By Michael Dorman


It was just after 3 a.m.

A red Fiat rolled slowly through the darkness into a parking space adjacent to the Long Island Rail Road station in Kew Gardens. The young woman behind the wheel emerged from the car and locked it. She began the 100-foot walk toward her apartment house at 82-70 Austin St.

But then she spotted a man standing along her route. Apparently afraid, she changed direction and headed toward the intersection of Austin and Lefferts Boulevard -- where there was a police call box.

Suddenly, the man overtook her and grabbed her. She screamed. Residents of nearby apartment houses turned on their lights and threw open their windows. The woman screamed again: ``Oh, my God, he stabbed me! Please help me!''

A man in a window shouted: ``Let that girl alone.'' The attacker walked away. Apartment lights went out and windows slammed shut. The victim staggered toward her apartment. But the attacker returned and stabbed her again.

``I'm dying!'' she cried.

Windows opened again. The attacker entered a car and drove away. Windows closed, but the attacker soon came back again. His victim had crawled inside the front door of an apartment house at 82-62 Austin St. He found her sprawled on the floor and stabbed her still again. This time he killed her.

I figured this episode would be posted. It is an example of a moral situation where the individuals witnessing the attack could have acted with little danger to themselves and helped the victim. I don't think these type of attacks are what Berry is bemoaning. It's not the same thing at all as being without knowledge of or ability to impact the evil deeds of corporate and governmental offenders far away.

js,

Oh darn it, I thought I'd make an inroad with Hayek and his breakdown of laws into "administrative" and the important ones, then slip in my own reasons in favor of government on the uphill slope of this argument with you. Government law breaking and aggression, taxes, etc.--I agree, it's bad. But we can't change it overnight and people aren't going to have a spontaneous remission from dumb, weak, fat, straggling, aggressive and plain evil and suddenly turn into autonomous responsible self-governing people. If everyone in the world were behaving better than they are, then anarchy might work.

Collective guilt? Let's see, I think that people living in this country (there's the we again) may tend to take the benefits for granted, shrug off the harm that U.S.-based companies and the U.S. government commit on foreign shores and in this country, then complain about being victimized. Undoubtedly the "political class," as you call them, who are running the gov't. and corporate show bear more responsibility than serfs who drive one polluting car, but there's the power of boycott, among others that aren't being exercised very often, for example, the power to withdraw one's labor from a system one believes is corrupt.

Turning to flaws, I think that I use cosmetics to help minimize flaws. When I confront evil within myself, I grapple with it. There is no mistakening it for a flaw, as in an article of clothing that's marked down as a second. However, I also think that evil is ultimately (in the absolute sense) an illusion, to be seen through and worked through with good. Maybe what you call original sin I'd call original illusion, which brings suffering.

The government may have me enslaved through many forms of coercion, but I have enslaved myself through overuse of the computer, limiting all of my freedom that the government has not taken away. Thus I must again try to taper off and post in moderation. I thought for a while that my mobius looping on this machine was a manifestation of hypergraphia, but now I think it's just a bad habit called hypergraphia ;-)that I shouldn't indulge to the point of enslavement.

Thank you for your thoughtful post. I will think about the issues you raised.

Oh dear, I made a mistakening.

I agree with js. I was going to say, "whose We" also.
Maybe whoever, "WE", is didn't know what was next, but, "I", did. And I'm a nobody in particular. A former hamburger, turned goat rancher. But I'm not blind. That which happened on 9/11 was completely predictable. Anybody could have called that shot, and in fact did.

END of THE WORLD
The world came to an end!
Most people missed it.
But, it did indeed end.
Loved ones lost are not ghosts.
It is, we, who are the shadows,
of a former life.
An exsistance that is no more.
It is not so difficult to find meaning in their
deaths.
It is difficult to find, and to follow that one
thread of meaning to our own continued exsistance,
without them.
Except to say, it is a very ingrained habit,
that we do continue.
If only to be going through the motions,
For awhile.

This was written in response to what someone went through. This someone, told friends and family that the world just ended, and to wait for the outward sign. The other boot to drop. This person said it would be the sign that will take us to war, and this war would spread, and it would never be won. This war would start to increase and amplify everything wrong with this country, and the rest of the world.
What this person wrote, and what this person told her family, and close friends, took place a little more than 2 months before 9/11.
Point is, we are not paying attention. Anyone of us can call these plays in advance. Why? Because of a srange psycic ability? NO! Because it's so blatantly OBVIOUS!!!
Anyone can do this. Try yourself out. Sit around, and dicuss it. Ask what's next, and then banty ideas off each other. Let it come out of your mouths. Say it. It's on the tips of everyones tongues. Test yourself, and see how acurate you are.
These things have players, and a playbook. If you watch the game long enough, you, as an observer, notice the plays, and the stategy. Soon, you get so good at it, you can actually call it in advance.
When you watch the news, pay close attention to what they are sying, and doing. What they are emphasizing, and the timing. Forget the things they put out there as a distraction for us.
Notice things locally also. The implentation of programs etc.
The great thing about all this, too, is that as we get better at calling the plays, we realize that the world rulers/movers/and shakers are fallable. They screw up. They make a wrong play, or the play gets fumbled, so to speak, due to unforseen factors.
This fallability is cause for hope.

Folks,
Small ell socialism in its modern form came into being in France about 1790 according to my sources. Since that time its record has been one that is long and dismal creating human suffering where ever it is found.
Every so often it covers itself with such disgrace that it cannot cannot under its own name. At those times its advocates invent new names, deny the old names and their history and begain advocating again under a new guise. In their presentations they always move toward the abstract and the glowing.
They make presentations that sound beautiful and are the answer to every man's dreams. In fact that is what they are -- our dreams.
The rest of us work as Gatto described it. We move from the concrete toward improvement. Our attempts are based solidly on past achievement.
Their attempts move from dreams to design a whole new world no one has seen before nor has any grounding in its operation.
When people make mistakes the leaders reluctantly must use punishment to reinforcce the plans they have described to us. The punishment moves from pain to terror to death. The failure in plans leads to shortages, apathy and more punishment. Finally everything totally collapses followed by a period of peace and then the appearance of a new snake oil salesman.
Ron

Are you implying that Berry's piece is akin to socialism? I'm sure that would surprise the old guy as he plowed his fields with draft animals.


To imagine a better way, especially when one actually attempts to live in accord with it, does not necessarily imply socialism. I don't think that Berry is operating in the fashion you describe. He is poetic, as most poets are, but that does not mean he is unaware of the necessity of doing the work.

You would enjoy his essay "Discipline and Hope". Cheers.

Jack,
Perhaps I was wrong. I didn't realize he was a poet. Maybe he is just an idiot.
He word paints a beautiful picture. I recall fondly those Missouri summers spent at the stinky end of a mule. That economy didn't support electricity but we had a plentiful supply of excellent screens to nail over our windows.
Still Herman Kahn predicted in the 1960s that by 2176 we would have a world population of 25 billion. Of course if we intend to eschew electricity, air conditioners and have a plentiful supply of Percherons then we will need some planning as well as a police force to ensure that no one cheats. What does that idyllic little worker's utopia start to sound like? Collectivism by any other name will fore shorten the freedom of individuals.
Ron

If there are 25 billion people living on this planet I don't know if the span from birth to death will be able to rightly be called a life.

Do you define air conditioners and electricity as the the penultimate quantifiers of a good life?

I am not trying to define it. I believe Herman Kahn defined why he believed the Earth would support 25 billion in comfort and ease -- but, for that you will have to go read his book.
I have lived on a cotton farm without electricity and used battery radios. I think a lot of romantic notions exist that aren't sustainable in reality.
Ron

Thanks Ron,
That's it in a nutshell.

http://www.vuw.ac.nz/chaplains/issues/jihad.html


Shadowlands
<< Every nation has a positive side and a shadow side. One of the most vivid portrayals of this was in the fantasy novel of C.S. Lewis, “That Hideous Strength”, where he contrasts the two sides of England – as he saw them, not to everyone’s satisfaction. Rather more empirically, Germany’s shadow side undoubtedly emerged under Hitler and the Nazis. We in this country have a shadow side, which Rob Muldoon exploited, and which a certain politician who can’t speak Somali (or English after midnight) is also exploiting. Someone once said that when you jolt a Christian it should be the Holy Spirit that spills out. However, sometimes when you jolt a nation it’s the shadow which spills out.

It is my conviction that this is what has happened with the United States, since the jolt of 11 September 2001. Its shadow has spilled out, and that shadow is dangerous for the world, for Islam and for the Christian Church. Dangerous not least because the shadow is all too often shaped, expressed, couched in “Christian” discourse, however inimical that discourse may be to authentic Christian truth and values. More about this a little later.

There is also a shadow side to individuals; there certainly is to me. We could describe this in terms of Paul’s sarx, the fallen human nature, in bondage to epithumia, to desire, craving, lust, greed of various sorts. No doubt Jung also would have some interesting things to contribute here. I want to use the term somewhat broadly and loosely, and say that this shadow side of human beings takes particular expression in each individual. Your shadow, your besetting sin is not the same as my shadow and my besetting sin. Nor can I deal with your besetting sin (though I may experience some of its consequences); I have to struggle against my own. This is not too far away from one deep form of jihad in Muslim understanding.

There is a shadow side of nations; a shadow side of individuals; and there is a shadow side of religions. I would argue that there is both light and shadow in all religions, including Christianity. It is not simply that every religion is compromised by the sins and failings of its individual members, though sadly that is true enough. There is also a systemic and conceptual shadow side. Women, slaves, homosexuals, Jews and Muslims have all at various times in history experienced the shadow side of Christianity; Canaanites of old and Palestinians of today have experienced the shadow side of Judaism; I refrain from detailing who have experienced the shadow side of Islam, for that would cut across what I want to model tonight. However, it is no part of my desire to gloss over the sufferings of my brothers and sisters in Christ in many Muslim countries, in the past and in the present.

I want here to explore the relationship of “fundamentalism” with the shadow side of religion. Do you find the term “fundamentalism” useful? meaningful? I dislike it for several reasons. It is imprecise, it is usually pejorative, and its use is all too frequently a substitute for thought. Historically it refers to the defence of a set of Evangelical Protestant positions which were thought to be “fundamental” to Christian faith and under threat in the first part of the 20th Century, and which included a particular understanding of the Scriptures - their literal inspiration and inerrancy. I myself find that latter element points to the most helpful theological use of the term “fundamentalism”: a belief in the inerrancy of sacred Christian Scripture, or by extension, of other sacred Scriptures. It is not a term which should be used dismissively to describe orthodox belief in the central, “fundamental” tenets of a particular religion. Nor is it necessarily interchangeable with religious fanaticism, or religious intolerance. I know “fundamentalist” Christians who are gentle, rational, tolerant people; I know “liberal” Christians who are bigoted, irrational and intolerant.

That stated, I believe there nevertheless is a link between “fundamentalism” in the limited sense I have identified, and the shadow side of religion. When we commit ourselves to a belief in the literal inerrancy of a sacred book, we are committed to the defence of the truth of every part of it, and to the submission of our lives to every part of it. Sadly, that means we embrace the shadow side of our religion, as well as the other, for the shadow is there in the Book as well as the rest of the religion. We lose the capacity and the freedom to critique the shadow in the light of the Light; indeed, we may lose the very capacity to discern any difference.

In the Bible, for example, if we have eyes to see, we can discern the internal critique and purification of the simplistic Deuteronomic link between obedience to the Torah and prosperity, security and health, and between disobedience and poverty, defeat, and sickness. We can see the debate between election for national privilege and election for servanthood and universal blessing. And we can see the quite crucial tension between ‘holy war’ and what Jewett and Lawrence call ‘prophetic realism’. The one chooses the path of redemptive violence, sanctifies the wholesale slaughter of those who oppose the People of God, like the Amalekites, drives the Zealot party in Jesus’ day, resulting in the Roman destruction of Palestine as a Jewish entity, and is a significant element in some Zionist policies today. The other critiques the pride and narrow nationalism of Israel and Judah, chooses the path of the Suffering Servant and redemptive love, and is supremely embodied in the teaching, actions and person of Jesus, who if he had not been crucified by the Romans and the Jerusalem establishment, would surely sooner or later have been dealt to by the Zealot party.

“Fundamentalism” ignores, or smoothes out, or eliminates such debates, and in so doing ingests the poison of the shadow of the religion – if that is not too confused a metaphor. I make the assumption that all religions and all sacred Scriptures have such a shadow. Judaism and Christianity and Islam certainly have.

My thesis is that when personal individual shadow and religious shadow and national shadow are allowed to interact freely and reinforce one another, we are in deep trouble. My thesis is that the true jihad or spiritual struggle is with the shadow. I am called as a Christian to deal with my shadow side as an individual person, and to identify the shadow side of Christianity and minimise it, and to identify and critique and minimise the shadow side of whatever nation or civilisation I live in.

That great moral realist, Reinhold Niebuhr, put it this way:

“The man in the street, with his lust for power and prestige thwarted by his own limitations and the necessities of social life, projects his ego upon his nation and indulges his anarchic lusts vicariously. So the nation is at one and the same time a check upon, and a final vent for, the expression of individual egoism.” [Moral Man and Immoral Society] Niebuhr further recognised that religion could make things worse, and urged that “each religion, or each version of a single faith, seek to proclaim its highest insights while yet preserving an humble and contrite recognition of the fact that all actual representations of religious faith are subject to historical contingency and relativity. Such a recognition creates a spirit of tolerance and makes any religious or cultural movement hesitant to claim official validity for its form of religion or to demand an official monopoly for its faith.”
[Children of Light and the Children of Darkness]

Christian shadow, Western and American shadow, and Islam
There has all too frequently been a cooption of Christianity by those with power or the desire for power, in nation, economy, family, or race. And many people over the centuries have drawn on the shadow side of Judaeo-Christianity with its images and stories of redemptive violence, rooted in the Conquest of Canaan, in the bloody defence and purification of God’s Chosen Holy People, the desire to usher in God’s peace and justice by the total elimination of the dehumanised and demonised enemy, the projection of all this on to apocalyptic end-time scenarios, all fused definitively into that rhapsody of sacred violence called the Revelation of St John the Divine.

Until I read Jewett and Lawrence’s book, “Captain America and the Crusade against Evil”, I had not realised how deeply this shadow side of Christianity was embedded in American history, beginning with the Pilgrim Fathers, and thus embedded in the American psyche. The book’s title refers to the comic book character who the authors assert embodies the values of “zealous nationalism” and of the American “monomyth”, itself deeply influenced by Christianity’s shadow. They understand “the Captain America complex” as a bipolar form of civil religion that periodically blesses crusades against evil enemies. I quote:

“…there are six important elements of the Captain America complex, which it shares with Christian zeal and Jewish zeal as well as with militant Islamic jihad:

Each side views its anger as blessed by the deity, which thereby absolutizes zeal and jihad and eliminates normal restraint.

Each side conceives of its opponents as members of a malevolent conspiracy, originating from the realm of absolute evil, and thus sees any compromise as immoral.

The stereotypes of the actors in this conflict are stark and extreme, with all goodness on one side and absolute evil on the other. To mourn over the deaths of such opponents thus appears to make as little sense as concern over the seasonal demise of locusts.

…such opponents must either be killed or converted. Each side believes that its own violence is redemptive, while it deplores the violence of the other side as senseless and unjust.

To allow oneself to be defeated by the other side is to abandon faith itself, whether in the form of Christianity, Islam, or Judaism, and whether devoutly religious or explicitly secular.

Every action of one’s enemies is to be perceived to desecrate the holy, and overcoming such desecration is seen as a religious and political imperative.”

Link that with the recurring theme of the “Manifest Destiny” of the American people, which emerges again and again in the rhetoric of westward expansion against the Indians, of conflict with the Mexicans and Spanish, of the two World wars, of the Cold War, and now of the “war” against terrorism. (Here’s a representative sample, this from Senator Albert Beveridge at the beginning of the 20th Century: “Almighty God…has marked the American people as the chosen nation to finally lead in the regeneration of the world. This is the divine mission of America…We are the trustees of the world’s progress, guardians of the righteous peace.”) Link it also with the widespread belief amongst American Christians in pre-millennial eschatology and the Rapture, with its vision of Armageddon usually linked somehow with the State of Israel, its vision of faithful believers lifted into the sky while the world is destroyed and cleansed in preparation for the thousand year reign of the saints, and we are in a very scary place. The cresting of this thinking under Ronald Reagan:

“transformed the conservative Republican party, which had hitherto been committed to federalism, capitalism and the international rule of law, into a millenarian party resistant to federal authority, hostile to the traditional American politics of compromise, and profoundly suspicious of international law and peacekeeping. The Christian right also reached out to the conservative Likud bloc in Israeli politics, encouraging it to resist any efforts at compromise with Palestinians.”
[Jewett & Lawrence]

As a reality check I invite you to measure all this against two things: the rhetoric, and many of the actions, of George W. Bush (after these words were written); and the scenarios played out in countless American films, television dramas, comics, the lot. We can be thankful that there is another side to the United States and to Americans, drawing on the prophetic realism of the Scriptures and on the rational values of the Enlightenment present in the United States Constitution. Make no mistake, good theology and bad theology have consequences in the wider world.

And where does Islam fit in? Well, schizophrenia rules: Western diplomacy says “we are not making war on Islam”; conditioned cultural reflexes say “Islam is the enemy”; and more and more Muslims are saying “the West is treating us like the enemy”. >>

What you are calling the shadow side of individuals I see as original sin. What you are calling the shadow side of religions and nations is another matter. Nations are simply geographical/political areas. They cannot have shadow sides, it is impossible. The rulers of the people in these geo-political areas certainly have shadow sides. The shadow side of Nazi Germany was the free reign of the sinful nature of it's rulers at that time, and the people who supported them. There were many Germans who didn't support them, many who did nothing out of fear or because it wasn't them personally being persecuted. Blanket blame over the entire nation of Germany is unjust.
A religious doctrine can have a shadow side. I don't know a lot of Muslim doctrine so I can't speak for that. Christianity as in living as Christ taught does not have a shadow side. The individuals who are Christians certainly do have shadow sides (sinful natures), but these are flaws of the Christians, not Christianity. The two are separate things.
My observation has been that the term fundamentalist is generally used to describe those Christians who place the rule of God over the rule of man. They do not accept that other men have the right or are fit to rule them. This is extremely threatening to those who believe men should rule each other, that people can be made good or should be controlled by the "right" people....state worshippers. That said, I do realize that a lot of professed Christians are really state worshippers, wanting to enforce their way of life and beliefs through the state rather than trust God to gather His flock. This drives would be Christians who realize this is wrong away from Christ, ironically. Why is it easier to believe that entire nations are collectives with a collective "shadowside" than to believe that man has a sinful nature?

"My observation has been that the term fundamentalist is generally used to describe those Christians who place the rule of God over the rule of man."



H. L. Mencken's definition: a terrible, pervasive fear that someone, somewhere, is having fun.

LOL. Yeah, Mencken wasn't a Christian, had no respect for the "booboisie" in general and religious "booboisie" in particular. But I really don't see the term "fundamentalist" used except in cases where a doctrine is espoused that threatens state sovereignty over men and asserts God's. This includes those misguided types who push for government to enforce their notions of what God wants, which may be right or wrong. For example, churches that lean leftward and "call" for government to bring "social justice" (economic redistribution and gatekeeping) are never called "fundamentalist". The Catholic Church is not considered "fundamentalist", it is no longer perceived as a threat to the state and many of the Church's priests are socialists, pretty much state worshippers and without faith in God. Ironically, I kind of think it's an appropriate term, What can be more fundamental than deciding what/whose laws to follow and realizing God's law is the base of all peace and justice?