We aggrandize our desire for revenge, our desire to mitigate a humiliating sense of victimization whether perpetrated by a malign nature, an unpunished other, or a malignant leadership into a universal justice exacted by god at the judgment day. They will get theirs. I will get mine. Judgment day brings reward for obedience, the punishment for disobedience, both universalized into eternity.
A continuation:
Why wait for judgment day? It strikes me that the rhetoric of evangelical christianity absolutely depends upon the moral superiority afforded to victims, a moral superiority infused throughout christianity. I would need to do all the research to come up with the appropriate quotations, but the general structure of the argument is this:
First, and foremost, we live in a corrupt and corrupting world. The stance against gay marriage, the stance against abortion, for example, are both versions of the same argument. I won't go into all the particulars, but the democratic party, and Obama in particular, are of the devil's party because they fail to condemn those practices which give wider range to sexual expression. (The stance against abortion, I suspect, has less to do with any perceived infanticide, more to do with the sexual expression it allows women. Men are held to the consequences of the sexual act for the most part only socially. Women are held to the consequences of the sex act both socially and biologically -- if, that is, one does not sanction abortion. They can no longer erase, as it were, the principal biological consequence of the sexual act.)
Second, the bulwark against the corruption and corrupting world are those, like us, who stand against the corrupt and corrupting world. The words, "stand against," are, of course, loaded -- and I mean that both figuratively and literally. Those who live principally in a secular state are somewhat puzzled by the fervor of their stance. No one is forcing men to engage in homosexual activity, nor are they forcing men into marriage with one another, any more than they are forcing women into abortions. Our constitution gives you the right to believe that gay marriage and abortion are evil, and gives you the right to forego such practices if you have that belief. In regard to those issues, in a world free from specific prohibitions against gay marriage or abortion, one is perfectly free to live one's life as one chooses, whether for or against.
A world in which one is free to practice homosexuality or get an abortion, however, is not a world which is free from, in their view, corrupt and corrupting influences. Ditto abortion. If one considers the likes of Winthrop and Edwards the true founding fathers of our country, those who wished to make of America a beacon on the hill, the desire for freedom to practice their religion was the desire to create actively a social order free from the corrupt and corrupting influences. Anything that inhibits their freedom to create a social order free from the corrupt and corrupting influences, in their view, curtails their freedom in general. The secular state itself, a state in which legal sanctions protect one's freedom to practice homosexuality, one's freedom to get an abortion, the state exemplified by those who elect an Obama, curtails the evangelical's freedom to create a social order free from those self same corrupt and corrupting influences. At a personal level, it might be true that they are free to practice their religion as they choose, and of course they do, of vociferously, but at a social level, it is not true that they are free to practice their religion, because their religion absolutely demands a social order in which homosexuality and female sexuality are sins publicly punishable -- a social order based on biblical values.
Consequently, the evangelical feels victimized in much the same way that the radical islamist feels victimized. It is a humiliating sense of victimization by a malign nature -- one infused with original sin, one in which the argument "I was born this way" holds no sway because we were all born to be tempted by natural impulses and the strength of one's faith, one's purity, is measured by one's ability to resist those impulses. By an unpunished other -- particularly those who seem perfectly happy in their corruption, and who are, in the pursuit of their particular happiness, an affront to those same values. By a malignant leadership, particularly a secular leadership -- one that condones the corruption, one who seeks actively to protect the "rights" of the corrupt to practice their corruption, one that actively curtails their ability to create a social order based on their biblical or koranic values, one that reinforces the individual's resistance to natural impulses with the threat of punishment, and maintains social order with actual punishment for those who succumb. We should be clear about what an evangelical wants when he or she says "the government is the problem." It is not a Jeffersonian belief that the best government is the least possible government, but secular government in particular. Not unlike Winthrop or Edwards or others, they want to displace the secular government with a theistic government -- one in which the evangelical is free to create a social order that frees them from corrupt and corrupting influences.
Next: the unholy alliance ...
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