"American Theocracy"

I just read to articles, one in the March 17, 2006 New York Times and the other in the January 24, 2006 Rolling Stone, that taken together show a scary trend in our country. I am not a religious man although my family always has been. I did grow up in church and do believe in a higher being. I tell you this because I don't want to seem like someone who has no faith and doesn't want you to have it either. I just don't think it has a place in our government or politics.

We are a nation of many peoples and many religions. All good and all right in their own way. The relegious right has way too much power in this country and it needs to stop. How I don't know. I am just a guy trying to enjoy my and my family's life in this great nation. My son can vote for the first time this year. I think his first couple of elections could be some of the most important ever.

I ramble - hear are the articles:

From the NYT "'American Theocracy,' by Kevin Phillips - Tying Religion and Politics to an Impending U.S. Decline . It is a book review of Kevin Phillips' book.

"As he's done in so many of his earlier books, Mr. Phillips draws a lot of detailed analogies in these pages, using demographics, economic statistics and broader cultural trends to map macropatterns throughout history. In analyzing the fates of Rome, Hapsburg Spain, the Dutch Republic, Britain and the United States, he comes up with five symptoms of "a power already at its peak and starting to decline": 1) "widespread public concern over cultural and economic decay," along with social polarization and a widening gap between rich and poor; 2) "growing religious fervor" manifested in a close state-church relationship and escalating missionary zeal; 3) "a rising commitment to faith as opposed to reason and a corollary downplaying of science"; 4) "considerable popular anticipation of a millennial time frame" and 5) "hubris-driven national strategic and military overreach" in pursuit of "abstract international missions that the nation can no longer afford, economically or politically." Added to these symptoms, he writes, is a sixth one, almost too obvious to state: high debt, which can become "crippling in its own right."

New York Times - American Theocracy
New York Time - American Theocracy - Clear And Present Dangers

From Rolling Stone "God's Senator - Who would Jesus vote for? Meet Sam Brownback" is just what it seems. An article about Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas.

"They were striving, ultimately, for what Coe calls "Jesus plus nothing" -- a government led by Christ's will alone. In the future envisioned by Coe, everything -- sex and taxes, war and the price of oil -- will be decided upon not according to democracy or the church or even Scripture. The Bible itself is for the masses; in the Fellowship, Christ reveals a higher set of commands to the anointed few. It's a good old boy's club blessed by God. Brownback even lived with other cell members in a million-dollar, red-brick former convent at 133 C Street that was subsidized and operated by the Fellowship. Monthly rent was $600 per man -- enough of a deal by Hill standards that some said it bordered on an ethical violation, but no charges were ever brought."

Rolling Stone - God's Senator

".... an economy based on moving and managing money, a trend encouraged, Phillips argues persuasively, by the preoccupation with oil and (somewhat less persuasively) with evangelical belief in the imminent rapture, which makes planning for the future unnecessary. " - American Theocacy.

In the end scary stuff all.