America is a Religion
DonViejo posted a great Salon article about how Ted Cruz is really running for High Priest of America, here:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1218189164
In the first paragraph Salon briefly quotes political activist George Monbiot, from his article "America is a Religion", written in July 2003.
The quote was chilling, and the full article more so. From a populist perspective, a separation of Church and State should be a foundational principle of a democracy, placing the power to govern under the authority of the people, not under the authority of a God.
About the Religion that is America, Monbiot wrote:
...the formation of the American identity was part of a process of “supersession”. The Catholic Church claimed that it had supplanted the Jews as the elect, as the Jews had been repudiated by God. The English Protestants accused the Catholics of breaking faith, and claimed that THEY had become the beloved of God. The American revolutionaries believed that the English, in turn, had broken their covenant: the Americans had now become the chosen people, with a divine duty to deliver the world to God’s dominion."
<<snip>>
"Gradually this notion of election has been conflated with another, still more dangerous idea. It is not just that the Americans are God’s chosen people;
America itself is now perceived as a divine project. In his farewell presidential address, Ronald Reagan spoke of his country as a “shining city on a hill”, a reference to the Sermon on the Mount.7 But what Jesus was describing was not a temporal Jerusalem, but the kingdom of heaven. Not only, in Reagan’s account, was God’s kingdom to be found in the United States of America, but the kingdom of hell could also now be located on earth: the “evil empire” of the Soviet Union, against which His holy warriors were pitched.
http://www.monbiot.com/2003/07/29/america-is-a-religion/Over a decade old, but with a quick coat of paint the article reads fresh.
Evil empires change over time, and though the Soviet Union is gone and our current face of Satan is Islam, we haven't become less devout missionaries for America. We've become more fervent. Satan is no longer a competing country, Satan is a competing religion.
One final quote:
In December 2001, Rudy Giuliani, the mayor of that city, delivered his last mayoral speech in St Paul’s Chapel, close to the site of the shattered twin towers. “All that matters,” he claimed, “is that you embrace America and understand its ideals and what it’s all about. Abraham Lincoln used to say that the test of your Americanism was … how much you believed in America. Because we’re like a religion really. A secular religion.” The chapel in which he spoke had been consecrated not just by God, but by the fact that George Washington had once prayed there. It was, he said, now “sacred ground to people who feel what America is all about”. The United States of America no longer needs to call upon God; it is God, and those who go abroad to spread the light do so in the name of a celestial domain. The flag has become as sacred as the Bible; the name of the nation as holy as the name of God. The presidency is turning into a priesthood.
The saying goes: "When Fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross" -- but who knew the two items were really one and the same?
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