Okay, yes, that's worrying...

[avevale_intelligencer]

Apparently the Republican front-runner wants to amend the Constitution so that it's more in line with what he sees as God's will. Presumably he will go on to recommend that the text in all published books and periodicals be replaced with the text of the Bible, since, after all, why would you ever want to read another book?

That is (I think) a crank. That is (I think) a loony. And if that has a hope in hell of becoming President, especially after the last one, then maybe the Constitution does need amending, if only to introduce some sort of screening.

The interesting thing from an outsider's standpoint is the depth of feeling a threat to the Constitution seems to arouse. After all, it's just a set of rules written down hundreds of years ago by a bunch of old guys who didn't even know about the Internet. But I can well imagine from what I've read on the subject that some Americans, reading that last sentence, might have felt the same kind of stab of anger--how dare I!--that a Christian might feel if I were to suggest on the same grounds that the Bible could do with some creative editing to bring it into line with modern thought.

Maybe America itself--the idea of America--is even more like a religion than I thought. Maybe it's more deserving of that status than some actual forms of religion.

Comments

You are *so* right ...

[the-magician.livejournal.com]

... the entire concept of America is indeed a religion.

One that is indoctrinated into children from an early age, through the Pledge of Allegiance (recited daily by just about every school child while facing the flag and with their right hand over their heart) and through the media.

There are basic tenets of "freedom of speech", "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness", "democracy = freedom" etc.

It has idols (Statue of Liberty, Washington Monument, Mount Rushmore etc.), and the greatest of these is the flag. Their national anthem is about their flag. And there are laws in many areas about what you may not do with the flag (and a potential Amendment about respecting the flag is bubbling under and may become active at any time) ... the idea of Union Jack boxer shorts or a Spice Girl in a Union Jack dress (or Union Flag if you prefer) but done with "Old Glory" (The Stars and Stripes) is anathema to many.

It has parables (such as Paul Revere and "The British are Coming", the Boston Tea Party, George Washington and the cherry tree).

And the two most sacred texts are the Declaration of Independence, and The Constitution.

The Constitution, like the Bible, is considered a (nearly) perfect document and every word in it is a guide to how life should be lived. There are "religious leaders" who interpret the printed word to say how it applies to the lives of the believers, they are The Supreme Court, and that explains why they wear those long religious robes. In the Catholic Church God's will about who should be the next Pope is made manifest by the Cardinals meeting and voting, in the US constitution, the will of the people to amend their holy book is made manifest by the States voting on an Amendment.

An Amendment is a mighty thing, difficult to draft as it must be perfect and it must enshrine a change in the will of 2/3rds of the country ... such as allowing women or blacks to vote.

And as a proper religion, it is not enough for personal salvation, there must be proselytising, going out to the other countries of the world (the non-believers) and converting them to the one true way of American Democracy. This is perhaps just the latest incarnation of what was previously known as Manifest Destiny. This is just *so* close to the ideological principles that led Nazi Germany to invade Poland and so much of the rest of Europe nearly 100 years later. [1]

I have no trouble at all finding lots of evidence to support your insight, "America" is indeed a religion, based on faith, dogma, one-true-vision, conversion of others, personal salvation, a code of ethics and a belief that some higher power will intervene (e.g. FEMA) if you pray hard enough and donate enough money.

[1] Eeek! Reading Wikipedia, the Pledge of Allegiance used to be said with a Nazi-style salute until World War II! Not relevant, just chilling ...

Re: You are *so* right ...

[lil-shepherd.livejournal.com]

Thou shalt have no other Gods before America?
Chuch and State officially separated (the "under god" was added to the pledge of allegiance in the fifties.)

Re: You are *so* right ...

[lexin.livejournal.com]

I never thought of it that way before...but you could be right. It does explain a good deal about interactions I had with people from the US on various online bulletin boards and on usenet in the days when I was active on there.

One example: I didn't post on a board for a while, and when I returned someone asked me where I'd been. I said (I'm paraphrasing, obviously) that I'd been to the States (my one and only visit) and that I'd really enjoyed my time there everyone had been wonderfully kind and welcoming, but also that I was glad to be home. And he was offended. And I couldn't understand why.

[ex-lark-asc.livejournal.com]

AIUI, every single American government since the inception of the Constitution has attempted to repeal the clause that says they can only rule for so long at a time. It's a damn good job Joe Public doesn't like the idea.

I was reading a rather nice Buddhist website the other day which gave some course materials (http://www.clear-vision.org/Students/Alevel-extract-atheistic.aspx) for A level students of religion. They included the following wonderful quote about what religion means these days:

We now come to the thorny subject of polytheism. The Christian teaching which has to some extent pervaded our education, has made us believe that polytheism belongs to a past period of the human race, that it has been superseded by monotheism, and that it finds no response in the contemporary mind. In order to appreciate the Buddhists' toleration of polytheism, we must first of all understand that polytheism is very much alive even among us. But where formerly Athene, Baal, Astarte, Isis, Sarasvati, Kuan-Yin, etc., excited the popular imagination, it is nowadays inflamed by such words as democracy, progress, civilization, equality, liberty, reason, science, etc. A multitude of personal beings has given way to a multitude of abstract nouns. In Europe, the turning point came when the French deposed the Virgin Mary and transferred their affections to the Goddess of Reason. The reason for this change is not far to seek. Personal deities grow on the soil of a rural culture in which the majority of the population are illiterate, while abstract nouns find favour with the literate populations of modern towns. Medieval men went to war for Jesus Christ, Saint George, and San Jose. Modern crusades are in aid of such abstractions as Christianity, the Christian Way of Life, Democracy, and the Rights of Man.

[zanda-myrande.livejournal.com]

AIUI, every single American government since the inception of the Constitution has attempted to repeal the clause that says they can only rule for so long at a time.

Have they? Have they really? Well, isn't that interesting...

Nice quote, but I'm not sure the distinction is that simple. I think I'm fairly literate and completely urban (if not urbane), but I'm much more comfortable with the idea of worshipping a personal deity (even if I haven't, you know, picked one yet) than an abstraction. I liked lil_shepherd's point that gods were someone to talk to; I can't imagine having a conversation with the Rights of Man. Well, I can, but they tend to develop a face and a hand to wave, and the rest follows automatically.

[ex-lark-asc.livejournal.com]

Well, I did read that on the internet, to be fair - but it didn't *seem* like a wack-job site. That means it must be true, right? ;-) (You should certainly be able to confirm or deny it if you choose to research, anyway).

Nice quote, but I'm not sure the distinction is that simple. I think I'm fairly literate and completely urban (if not urbane), but I'm much more comfortable with the idea of worshipping a personal deity (even if I haven't, you know, picked one yet) than an abstraction. I liked lil_shepherd's point that gods were someone to talk to; I can't imagine having a conversation with the Rights of Man. Well, I can, but they tend to develop a face and a hand to wave, and the rest follows automatically.

Well, yes; that's a lot like me, too. It's where quite a few characters in my fiction come from, I think. And as I said in my own LJ there are points on which I personally depart from Buddhism; this is one of 'em. And in fact Buddhism isn't quite that rational itself either, it has all sorts of little not-deities-honest kicking about that are very much faces put on concepts. Go read Wikipedia on the topic of Dakini :)

I do find it interesting to think about neo-Paganism as a reaction to exactly that depersonalisation of the world; it is *determinedly* polytheistic in almost all its forms. But I think the point the Buddhist text might be making is that you can't expect gods to be taken seriously at the government level any more - imagine someone standing up before the democratic leadership of the country and saying we needed to save the whales or put up parking meters because Vishnu wanted us to. Bush might be trying to start a crusade for "the Christian way of life", but if he actually outright said it was God's will that America attack Iraq, he'd be impeached on the spot. The will of a god isn't *justification* any more. We have to back it up with facts about why losing the whales or allowing free parking would be bad.

I think it's more than possible that gods started their life as exactly what you describe happening to the Rights of Man - they became a shorthand for a given set of justifications and reasoning that you got explained to you when you learnt about them. But I suspect given human nature that they became independent entities shortly afterwards, and that crusading in their names and so on ultimately had little to do with their original roots in the mind of the average Joe.

[keristor.livejournal.com]

I didn't read it that only rural-based societies and people worship personal deities, but as a sweeping generalisation (and therefore wrong in many individual cases) about the shift away from personal deities.

I definitely agree about the "someone to talk to" idea, I know many people who use their deities in exactly that manner (including me). I wouldn't think of talking to Magna Carta! But then I also talk to myself, and argue with myself, and lose the arguments...

[mamadeb.livejournal.com]

AIUI, every single American government since the inception of the Constitution has attempted to repeal the clause that says they can only rule for so long at a time. It's a damn good job Joe Public doesn't like the idea.


That's interesting, given that term limits for the President didn't exist until the 22nd Amendment, passed in 1951. Until that point, most presidents who served for two terms stepped down voluntarily to follow the example of George Washington.

[ex-lark-asc.livejournal.com]

Ohhhh. That rings a bell. I wonder if what I read was actually that every government since then has tried to repeal *that* amendment?

[mamadeb.livejournal.com]

"Administration". So far as we're concerned, the government remains the same; only those who administer it change.

Yeah, at various times, and often with bipartisan support (because, really, it's a *bad* idea - it creates a lame duck president who does all sorts of strange things in his final two years because he has zero accountability, and was created by a Republican congress still bitter about FDR), members of congress have introduced bills to start the process of repealing that amendment - the only way to do that is to create a new one, so the process is identical - but it's a long and arduous process and these bills have not gone anywhere.

And, sure, no president is going to deny that he'd like to serve more than two terms, but there would be no point in their trying - even if they were still in office when such an amendment were ratified, it would not probably not apply to them, just as President Truman was not affected by the 22nd Amendment. More than that - they would look greedy and that would turn off many voters.

[(Anonymous)]

"AIUI, every single American government since the inception of the Constitution has attempted to repeal the clause that says they can only rule for so long at a time. It's a damn good job Joe Public doesn't like the idea."

You understand it wrong, if you are referring to the term limit for Presidents. It was a strong convention from the start: George Washington felt that two terms ought to be enough for anybody. But it was only a convention.

It wasn't until Franklin Delano Roosevelt managed four election victories in the thirties and forties that a Constitutional Amendment was passed limiting the President to two terms.

I believe that some Presidents have wanted to change that back, Nixon among them. But it's quite a recent thing as a legal limit.

[dickgloucester.livejournal.com]

Of course, we really ought to be calling it USAtia.

[zanda-myrande.livejournal.com]

bedlamhouse has some interesting observations (http://bedlamhouse.livejournal.com/74212.html) on this. Gosh, that's a relief. Not being in the wrong was starting to freak me out. Oh, wait; actually, no.

He has very sensibly disabled comments.