In more then one place now I've read about people claiming that Bush's win signals a deathblow--or at least a blow--to the Enlightenment. The most explicit wailing came from Northwestern University's Gary Wills in the November 4 edition of the New York Times. Wills argues that the importance that a majority of the country places on "values" issues signals the death of the Enlightenment tradition in America.
This election confirms the brilliance of Karl Rove as a political strategist. He calculated that the religious conservatives, if they could be turned out, would be the deciding factor. The success of the plan was registered not only in the presidential results but also in all 11 of the state votes to ban same-sex marriage. Mr. Rove understands what surveys have shown, that many more Americans believe in the Virgin Birth than in Darwin's theory of evolution.
Thus Wills (a professed Catholic) poses the provocative question: "Can a people that believes more fervently in the Virgin Birth than in evolution still be called an Enlightened nation?" Something to ponder. But then Wills goes on to make the argument, already echoed in other places, that the fundamentalist Christian Right in red-state America is getting to look more and more like the Islamic fundamentalists we are fighting abroad:
America, the first real democracy in history, was a product of Enlightenment values - critical intelligence, tolerance, respect for evidence, a regard for the secular sciences. Though the founders differed on many things, they shared these values of what was then modernity. They addressed "a candid world," as they wrote in the Declaration of Independence, out of "a decent respect for the opinions of mankind." Respect for evidence seems not to pertain any more, when a poll taken just before the elections showed that 75 percent of Mr. Bush's supporters believe Iraq either worked closely with Al Qaeda or was directly involved in the attacks of 9/11.
The secular states of modern Europe do not understand the fundamentalism of the American electorate. It is not what they had experienced from this country in the past. In fact, we now resemble those nations less than we do our putative enemies.
Yikes. Europe, however, is much more tolerant:
Where else do we find fundamentalist zeal, a rage at secularity, religious intolerance, fear of and hatred for modernity? Not in France or Britain or Germany or Italy or Spain. We find it in the Muslim world, in Al Qaeda, in Saddam Hussein's Sunni loyalists. Americans wonder that the rest of the world thinks us so dangerous, so single-minded, so impervious to international appeals. They fear jihad, no matter whose zeal is being expressed.
Similar outcry came from the pages of The Guardian, in a column by Timothy Garton Ash, writing from San Francisco:
I'm getting seriously worried about anti-Americanism. Anti-Americanism in America, that is. Here are just a few of the things that I've heard travelling through blue, ie liberal, America over the two weeks since George Bush won the election. "The truth is, they just are stupid." (A New Yorker, of people in the red, ie conservative, states.) "The snakes." "Fascism." "Christian fascism." "I wanted to make a film about a time when young Americans fought against fascism and not for it." (A producer, explaining why he commissioned a film about the Spanish civil war.)
Strong words, indeed. The mission before us: to defend the legacy of the Enlightenment:
When all that has been said, the fact remains that America is now one of the most deeply divided countries among all the liberal democracies of the world. Looking at the unfolding debate on the website I have set up in connection with my book, Free World, I'm struck by the fact that the fiercest, most bitter arguments are not between Europeans and Americans but between Americans and Americans.
Battle may soon be joined to preserve the strict separation of church and state that the founding fathers intended. Or, to put it another way, to defend the legacy of the Enlightenment. No wonder liberal Americans have been feeling so blue. But there is one silver lining to the cloud hanging over them. Overstated though the dichotomy is between red and blue America, it does mean that no one who is at all well informed can believe that America is Bush and Bush is America. If the west is divided, the dividing line runs slap-bang through the middle of America.
So, to sum up: The Bush win signals a deathblow to--or at least, severely threatens--the tradition of the Enlightenment in the West, and Christian fundamentalism in the Red states has the potential to become, or is already, as dangerous as the Islamic fundamentalism that blows up buildings. Both of these men are writing from America.
Of course both men are taking this electoral loss way too far. American-style "Bible Christians" have been around for over a century without a reputation of insidious and intolerant acts like public beheadings and such. And, unlike the jihadists of the Middle East, Falwell, Robertson and Co. have the curious habit of always standing up and defending the American tradition of religious toleration, which finds its roots, among other places, in the Enlightenment thinking of Thomas Jefferson, and which is safeguarded by the First Amendment of the Constitution (a document that Falwell, Robertson and Co. always claim to defend) and that dates back to even earlier times in American history, as I have pointed out in a previous post.
The reports of the death of the Enlightenment have been greatly exagerated. But, anyway, can we really talk about "The Enlightenment" as if the term is unambiguous? After all, not all Enlightenment thinkers agreed with each other on everything--some, like John Locke, even believed in the Virgin Birth, while others, like Voltaire, were adamantly anti-clerical (i.e., "Ecrasez l'infame!"). More on this later.
This election confirms the brilliance of Karl Rove as a political strategist. He calculated that the religious conservatives, if they could be turned out, would be the deciding factor. The success of the plan was registered not only in the presidential results but also in all 11 of the state votes to ban same-sex marriage. Mr. Rove understands what surveys have shown, that many more Americans believe in the Virgin Birth than in Darwin's theory of evolution.
Thus Wills (a professed Catholic) poses the provocative question: "Can a people that believes more fervently in the Virgin Birth than in evolution still be called an Enlightened nation?" Something to ponder. But then Wills goes on to make the argument, already echoed in other places, that the fundamentalist Christian Right in red-state America is getting to look more and more like the Islamic fundamentalists we are fighting abroad:
America, the first real democracy in history, was a product of Enlightenment values - critical intelligence, tolerance, respect for evidence, a regard for the secular sciences. Though the founders differed on many things, they shared these values of what was then modernity. They addressed "a candid world," as they wrote in the Declaration of Independence, out of "a decent respect for the opinions of mankind." Respect for evidence seems not to pertain any more, when a poll taken just before the elections showed that 75 percent of Mr. Bush's supporters believe Iraq either worked closely with Al Qaeda or was directly involved in the attacks of 9/11.
The secular states of modern Europe do not understand the fundamentalism of the American electorate. It is not what they had experienced from this country in the past. In fact, we now resemble those nations less than we do our putative enemies.
Yikes. Europe, however, is much more tolerant:
Where else do we find fundamentalist zeal, a rage at secularity, religious intolerance, fear of and hatred for modernity? Not in France or Britain or Germany or Italy or Spain. We find it in the Muslim world, in Al Qaeda, in Saddam Hussein's Sunni loyalists. Americans wonder that the rest of the world thinks us so dangerous, so single-minded, so impervious to international appeals. They fear jihad, no matter whose zeal is being expressed.
Similar outcry came from the pages of The Guardian, in a column by Timothy Garton Ash, writing from San Francisco:
I'm getting seriously worried about anti-Americanism. Anti-Americanism in America, that is. Here are just a few of the things that I've heard travelling through blue, ie liberal, America over the two weeks since George Bush won the election. "The truth is, they just are stupid." (A New Yorker, of people in the red, ie conservative, states.) "The snakes." "Fascism." "Christian fascism." "I wanted to make a film about a time when young Americans fought against fascism and not for it." (A producer, explaining why he commissioned a film about the Spanish civil war.)
Strong words, indeed. The mission before us: to defend the legacy of the Enlightenment:
When all that has been said, the fact remains that America is now one of the most deeply divided countries among all the liberal democracies of the world. Looking at the unfolding debate on the website I have set up in connection with my book, Free World, I'm struck by the fact that the fiercest, most bitter arguments are not between Europeans and Americans but between Americans and Americans.
Battle may soon be joined to preserve the strict separation of church and state that the founding fathers intended. Or, to put it another way, to defend the legacy of the Enlightenment. No wonder liberal Americans have been feeling so blue. But there is one silver lining to the cloud hanging over them. Overstated though the dichotomy is between red and blue America, it does mean that no one who is at all well informed can believe that America is Bush and Bush is America. If the west is divided, the dividing line runs slap-bang through the middle of America.
So, to sum up: The Bush win signals a deathblow to--or at least, severely threatens--the tradition of the Enlightenment in the West, and Christian fundamentalism in the Red states has the potential to become, or is already, as dangerous as the Islamic fundamentalism that blows up buildings. Both of these men are writing from America.
Of course both men are taking this electoral loss way too far. American-style "Bible Christians" have been around for over a century without a reputation of insidious and intolerant acts like public beheadings and such. And, unlike the jihadists of the Middle East, Falwell, Robertson and Co. have the curious habit of always standing up and defending the American tradition of religious toleration, which finds its roots, among other places, in the Enlightenment thinking of Thomas Jefferson, and which is safeguarded by the First Amendment of the Constitution (a document that Falwell, Robertson and Co. always claim to defend) and that dates back to even earlier times in American history, as I have pointed out in a previous post.
The reports of the death of the Enlightenment have been greatly exagerated. But, anyway, can we really talk about "The Enlightenment" as if the term is unambiguous? After all, not all Enlightenment thinkers agreed with each other on everything--some, like John Locke, even believed in the Virgin Birth, while others, like Voltaire, were adamantly anti-clerical (i.e., "Ecrasez l'infame!"). More on this later.