John Dean has exposed the rotten core of the new conservatism. They aren't conservatives in sense of preserving the rights and liberties of individuals. They aren't conservatives in the sense of believing that that government is best that governs least. No! they are authoritarians, who will use any means to achieve their ends. They are conservatives in the sense that elitist and controlling sense that was personified by that antithesis of religious liberalism John Calvin.
Here is what John Dean says about the new conservatives:
Today's Republican policies are antithetical to bedrock conservative fundamentals. There is nothing conservative about preemptive wars or disregarding international law by condoning torture. Abandoning fiscal responsibility is now standard operating procedure. Bible-thumping, finger-pointing, tongue-lashing attacks on homosexuals are not found in Russell Kirk's classic conservative canons, nor in James Burham's guides to conservative governing.
John W. Dean, op-ed, Boston Globe 7.14.06, thanks to Philocrites.
Calvin had a major influence on authoritarian thought on the new nation of America. The Americans were not about to listen to apologists for royalty and inherited wealth. There dissenting tradition and the abundance of land to be stolen from the natives made European classism based on inheritance unattractive. Calvin argued for elitism and oligarchic power as a consequence of merit, God given merit to be precise.
Calvin had about the same relation to the Protestant reformation as Napoleon Bonaparte did to the French Revolution. He was too young to be a leader in the beginning stages of the movement, but he played the role of giving order and suppressing radical elements at a critical stage after the movement had spread. His conception of how religious elites should relate to the rest of the population was his lasting influence on Protestant thought and on our country beginning in the colonial period,
Calvin assumed that God is all knowing, and all powerful. His God both knew and determined who was going to be saved and who was going to hell. Calvin looked at his fellow humans and decided that most would be damned and only a few would be saved.
He argued that we could not know who was damned and saved based on their actions, after all they might be faithless and unregenerate sinners who were trying to earn heaven by "good works." Being kind, gentle, a peace maker and a courageous champion for justice counted for little for this apologist for power (his biographies indicate that he had none of these qualities himself.) So God saved people by unmerited grace, not by any redeeming attitude, ethical act, or spiritual quality that could be discerned.
What could be discerned was God's justice. Calvin argued that those whom God had chosen for redemption would be more upright, and law abiding and those whom God had damned would degenerate into drunkenness, debauchery, poverty and stupidity. So while we could not know for sure who was damned and who was saved, we could make a good guess. Some would be blessed by their upright and law abiding conduct and become rich and powerful, and while the damned would be illiterate, impoverished, laboring people who were unruly with a strong tendency toward crime and mayhem.
Godly government was by the godly, who ruled over the ungodly. The godly knew what was best, and the ungodly was incapable of knowing what was good for them. So in our colonial period we witness a Puritan elite that held slaves, murdered Indians, and engaged in land speculation with forged documents to enrich themselves, but they were blessed by God and they were pillars of our First Parish Churches. The ungodly on the other hand joined dissenting churches and withdrew their allegiance from the elite. In time the North Americans made a revolution and disestablished the elite's church, but the ideas of Calvin had struck deep roots in our consciousness, and when ever white Americans need to control some chaos we see the notion of an elite of Godly merit resurrected.
The word Puritan has come to mean a lot of things, it originally described an attempt to purify religious community of corruption, to reestablish the New Testament church. But it has come to mean the use of the state power to enforce control over peoples ethical, moral and life style choices based on narrow moralism. Puritanism had both a liberating and a controlling side, and is fracture into religious liberalism versus a Calvinist authoritarianism has marked U.S. history since the American Revolution.
As we take note of hypocrisy and corruption of the new authoritarian "conservative" elite, it is tempting to conclude that they don't take Christian moralism seriously, and that their alliance with the Christian right is mainly for political advantage. Tempting but that analysis underestimates the theological rationalizations of the elite, and assumes that they know see their own conduct as unethical and destructive. The elite justify their behavior by the ends that they are pursuing, and any violence, any lie, any allegiance of convenience and any sleaze is okay if it serves God, Free Enterprise and their own God given merit.
I note a consistency with the new authoritarian "conservative" elite and the way Calvinists have justified their actions for over four hundred years. Calvinism was and is a theology that justifies authoritarianism, and the elites that have felt justified by its doctrines enslaved Africa, licensed pirates to prey on the Catholic Spanish, murdered Indians for land, waged wars of aggression based on Holy War rationales, set up colonial empires, and exploited immigrant labor including children in their mills. More recently they have misinterpreted the Bible to justify homophobia, sexism, and the destruction of the social welfare system while giving theological warrant to vicious foreign policies.
They act like thieves and bullies. . .and insist that they are meritorious and have the God given right to rule over an unruly world. Not much different from John Calvin himself.
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