Clash of Civilizations 2008
NRO
September 4, 2008
Animosity towards Palin reveals a division that goes beyond cultural differences.
Opinion concerning Gov. Sarah Palin’s selection as John McCain’s running mate is dividing almost as fiercely as it did in 1991 when Anita Hill made her accusations against Clarence Thomas.
Some argue that the division is yet another reflection of the depth of the cultural divide in America between Rednecks and Blue State People.
But is the divide, finally, cultural? A question of hunting, hairdos, hockey? Of taste in dress and parenting styles? Only on the most superficial level.
The deeper division which Gov. Palin’s selection has exposed is religious. Palin has called herself a “Bible-believing Christian.” The idea that a person formed in such a troglodytic, pre-Enlightenment school should hold a high place in the government frightens a class that believes, with all the certainty of its Ivy League vision of the world, that Bible-believing Christians are a threat to the republic.
What Richard Hofstadter called the “paranoid style” in American politics is now the style of the mandarin classes, as books like Damon Linker’s The Theocons: Secular America under Siege, make clear. For the coastal elites, Sarah Palin is the barbarian at the gate. McCain, in choosing her, was “cynical,” because in the contest with a secular messiah her faith will not only energize Catholic and Evangelical constituencies (which regard promises of secular salvation dubiously), but will also excite the paranoiac rage of many in the secular-liberal camp. People in the grip of paranoia have been known to do stupid things in elections.
The paranoia is real enough. Americans, Linker writes in The Theocons, must stave off “a future in which the country is thoroughly permeated by orthodox Christian piety.” In the paranoiac view of the coastal elites, Christian piety is a threat to secular politics. Its methods are those of Torquemada. Its ideas are those of the Stone Age. How can people who find a truer account of the human condition in the Bible than in, say, the Origin of Species be, well, reasonable?
“Reason’s last step,” Pascal said in the Pensées, “is the recognition that there are an infinite number of things which are beyond it. It is merely feeble if it does not go so far as to realize that.”
It’s a point which even the Blue People implicitly concede. For they, too, have their pent-up longings, their unreasonable yearnings for perfection, redemption, a world beyond pain. Senator Obama, who speaks of the moment when “the perfection begins” (the moment when the proselyte sees the light and embraces his communal faith) offers the Blue People a secular approximation of the nirvana they seek.
Sarah Palin embodies the alternative ideal.
Thus the clash of civilizations 2008. The struggle will almost certainly be fiercer in this election than it was in those of 2000 and 2004. The mandarins on the coasts never cared for George W. Bush. But their dread was tempered by the suspicion that the graduate of Andover, Yale, and Harvard was merely manipulating the religious question for political gain. Here was Machiavellianism they could understand — much as they understand Senator Obama’s dalliance with faith-based initiatives. It’s just politics.
In contrast to the Bush dynasty, the Palin clan is, from the point of view of the well-to-do classes, the genuine article, a pure specimen of the native fauna.
That’s not just politics. For the other side, it’s war.
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It’s just more proof that we have entered the predicted Christian re-persecution… I’m not able to find the biblical passages relating to this but I am positive that some of you out there can…
September 4th, 2008 at 5:43 amExcellent follow up to your earlier post Lftbhndagn.
It is time to choose a side.
September 4th, 2008 at 5:48 am… choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your forefathers served beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living. But as for me and my household, we will serve the LORD.” Joshua 24:15
Just as applicable today as it was then
September 4th, 2008 at 5:56 amI enlightened a friend in Canada last night about the true essence of seperation of church and state, based on the myopic media coverage of the elections they (and we) get. It’s being framed as if everyone’s going to have to go to confession and get their knuckles whacked with a ruler if McCain and Palin are elected. I, for one, will never view government as my source for salvation.
September 4th, 2008 at 6:18 amhttp://news.aol.com/political-machine/straw-poll
Latest Straw Poll from AOL….
McCain 65%
September 4th, 2008 at 6:30 amHussein 35%
The USS Sarah Palin steamed into the harbor of the Peoples Republic of Obama, trained her 16 inch guns, and laid waste to all that was …
September 4th, 2008 at 6:47 amThe polarization that exists within the US is probably the most extreme in our history. To frame the differences on just the scale of religion is myopic. Lets just call the two sides as what they are. Dems are SOCIALIST / COMMUNIST.. Repubs are actually democratic. One group wants to “progress” our society to one of complete socialism, one wants to maintain the integrity of our founding fathers vision. The Dems may be well intentioned (keyword may), thinking (somehow) that our system can improved by moving toward socialism (even though it has never worked historically)and fail to consider that it is our actual democracy that made the nation what it is. Make no bones about it.. this election is critical in that it will mark the point in time where we began to go hardcore socialist, or where we were able to maintain our model and our historic national identity. If it was good enough for our founders it is good enough for me, and I will fight, I will not standby and watch our country be destroyed from within by misguided thinking no matter how intentioned. Our country is fine (not perfect) as is, there is no better system in the world. I dont think the powers that be realize exactly how divided we are and how close we are to some real internal strife.
September 4th, 2008 at 6:57 am
bill-tb - 
, and the coming day in november when the articles of surrender are signed by the Obamites upon the decks of that mighty new ship 
September 4th, 2008 at 8:07 am“…For the other side, it’s war.”
It is.
September 4th, 2008 at 10:26 am