Back Before the Theocrats Took Over
Scrapbook Back Before the Theocrats Took Over The Scrapbook had been under the impression that while America is still a churchgoing nation when compared with Europe, nonetheless our public life is...
...Please, no angry letters...
...Harry Truman's secretary of state Dean Acheson, a man more commonly identified nowadays as "urbane" than as a Bible-thumper...
...Theocracy...
...Scrapbook Back Before the Theocrats Took Over The Scrapbook had been under the impression that while America is still a churchgoing nation when compared with Europe, nonetheless our public life is increasingly secularized...
...Yesterday the devil came here...
...And the devil came here yesterday...
...Hicks Nix Chicks Tix The Dixie Chicks may need to look into changing their name...
...Douthat argued that "the fear of theocracy has become a defining panic of the Bush era," hence the recent flood of books...
...According to Acheson, for American settlers "the Book was all," and Americans had learned from it that "the fear of God was the love of God, and that the love of God was the love of man, and the service of man...
...Acheson, the Times reported on September 30, 1952, represented Truman, who had "received the first copy of the new Bible at a White House ceremony...
...He contrasted this, the Times reported, with "the Soviet thesis 'to hate in order to avoid the softness of the love of man.'" The novelty in American politics, as Douthat noted, was the decision in the 1970s by "Democrats to identify with a segment of the population—self-identified secularists and nonbelievers—that has grown rapidly over the past three decades and grown more assertive along the way...
...You can read the full story at www...
...Not since the members of Sonic Youth turned middle-aged has there been a band name less fitting...
...Then they released an album, Taking the Long Way, an aimless pop confection that entirely lacks the dirt-road spunk of their other work...
...we are dealing here with the prejudices of American intellectuals...
...tour to such an extent that the band had to cancel several shows...
...One can, of course, view all this feuding between the band and country music fans as a proxy war between George W. Bush and musician-celebrities of a leftist bent, in which case the president looks like he's going to pull this one out...
...The various authors, he summarized, "are in agreement about the main point, which is that something has gone terribly wrong with the separation of church and state in this country, and that America is poised to fall into the hands of people only one step from the ayatollahs...
...And though the Chicks' new album debuted at number one on Billboard, it has gone on to sell only a quarter as many copies as their last album, Home, and only about an eighth as many as their bestselling 1998 Wide Open Spaces...
...And who was the headline speaker...
...The August/September issue of First Things carried a deft review and deflation of this burgeoning literature by Ross Douthat, an occasional contributor to our pages, under the title "Theocracy...
...Which you might think would be hard to top, except that Venezuela's Hugo Chavez managed it, with his scholarly musings on the American evildoers: "The devil is right at home...
...Satire Alert An item for all the baseball fans, from the fine folks at The Onion: Alfonso Soriano Regrets Joining 40-40 Club After Meeting Other Members WASHINGTON, DC—Upon recording his 40th stolen base of the season, in addition to his 45 home runs, and gaining entry into baseball's exclusive 40-40 club, Nationals left-fielder Alfonso Soriano said that after meeting the other three members—Jose Canseco, Barry Bonds, and Alex Rodriguez—he now understands why no one has joined in the past eight years...
...The Chicks have, however, called in reinforcements...
...The Scrap-book is well aware that there are plenty of urbane Christians...
...A documentary made with the Chicks' cooperation follows the band after singer Natalie Maines's comment to a British audience on the eve of the Iraq war, "Just so you know, we're ashamed the president of the United States is from Texas," and through the ensuing controversy...
...Yesterday, ladies and gentlemen, from this rostrum, the president of the United States, the gentleman to whom I refer as the devil, came here, talking as if he owned the world...
...Moments Amazingly, if you query the Nexis database you will learn that people still invoke the "moral authority" of the United Nations with a straight face...
...We came across a particularly striking example the other day while thumbing through the archives of the New York Times...
...theonion.com/content/node/53084...
...And finally, they decided to release as the album's first single a resentful track called "Not Ready to Make Nice...
...Theocracy...
...There are many things wrong with this thesis, but its willful ignorance of American history has to rank near the top of the list...
...National leaders in church and Government, and the diplomatic envoys of almost two-score countries, took part in the first public service in which the new-version Bible was used...
...The title, Shut Up and Sing, appears to be an echo of Laura Ingraham's fine book of the same name, though the politics were pure left: Co-director Barbara Kopple is also known for her work on the fact-challenged, John Kerry-associated, anti-Vietnam war Winter Soldier project...
...The devil, the devil himself, is right in the house...
...As for the Dixie Chicks, they added shows in Canada to pick up the slack in their touring schedule...
...On the one hand, it's a travesty that American taxpayers contribute more than $400 million a year to provide a soapbox to the world's trailer-trash thugs...
...Great U.N...
...Johnson referred to this, in a slightly different context, as the triumph of hope over experience...
...Nor were their fans, apparently, who took a pass on the Chicks' U.S...
...And it smells of sulfur still today...
...It played earlier this month at the Toronto Film Festival...
...Right here...
...Last week saw the appearance before the General Assembly of the Iranian Holocaust-denier Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, dreaming of the imminent apocalyptic end of the world...
...First the Chicks said they didn't consider themselves a country music band anymore...
...Right here [crosses himself...
...It tells of the unveiling in 1952 of the Revised Standard Version of the Bible...
...On the other hand, at a mere dol-lar-and-change per American per year, you could argue that it's the cheapest spectacle this side of reality TV, if not quite as uplifting...
...But a few months ago, our bookshelves began groaning under new titles warning of theocracy, of theocons, of religious rightists on the march —including the dreaded American version of the Islamist, the "Christianist...
...And "the hysteria over theocracy, in turn, represents an attempt to rewrite the history of the United States to suit these voters' prejudices...
Vol. 12 • October 2006 • No. 3
