America’s National Origin Myth

POSTSCRIPT:

Abraham Lincoln once opined: “Happy day when—all appetites controlled, all poisons subdued, all matters subjected—mind, all conquering mind, shall live and move; [and be] the monarch of the world.  Glorious consummation!  Hail, the fall of Fury and reign of Reason.  All hail!”  Note, here, that Lincoln did not hail FAITH; he hailed the rational faculties. This is a reminder that the American Republic was founded on categorically secular principles.

Broadly speaking, it is self-contradictory to posit a religiously-oriented democratic government.  There can no more be a Christian democracy than there could be a Judaic or Islamic democracy.  Alas.  In America, Christian Dominionists will persist with their specious asseverations until they realize that theocratic democracy is an oxymoron.  Such epiphany might begin with a better understanding of the founding documents of the United States.

When it comes to fetishized documents, flagrant mis-readings are de rigueur amongst ideologues.  Such disingenuousness is especially egregious for those who are married to the inerrancy of the document…yet find themselves committed to agendas that do not comport with what the text ACTUALLY SAYS.

Sometimes this is a matter of eliding objectionable statements–as Judeo-Christian apologists are obliged to do when instructed to take an eye for an eye in the Hebrew Bible.  They insist that this must REALLY mean: ensure the punishment is proportional to the crime (rather than what it obviously means: two wrongs make a right).

Other times, this is done to evade statements that they ardently wish did not exist–as when some Christians read the exhortation in the New Testament to “render unto Caesar what it Caesar’s, and render unto god what is god’s.”  Instead of recognizing the implicit endorsement for the separation of church and State, those with a theocratic bent opt to interpret this to mean, well, NOTHING.

Practitioners of eisegesis prefer that everyone read “between the lines” instead of simply read the ACTUAL LINES.  Sometimes this involves positing chimerical subtext…which, lo and behold, just so happens to stipulate precisely what one wishes.  Upon importing the desired meaning into a text, one can then pretend that it was there all along.  Sometimes this involves insisting that words mean something other than what they obviously mean.  Hermeneutic chicanery is routine for those who are forced to square their own ideals with a sacred text that is diametrically opposed to those ideals.

Right-wing ideologues in MOST contexts are able to promote their agendas by touting a revision of history that happens to serve their purposes.  Those who argue for tax-breaks for big corporations claim to be doing so in the spirit of the American Revolution.  Such people are stupendously confused.  The Boston Tea Party, after all, was a protest against corporate tax breaks. (!)  The British crown had instituted tax policy that favored the East India company over the smaller, local merchants–thus doing the bidding of oligarchs at the expense of the lower classes.  America was founded on a REBUKE of corporate power; yet the way those on the right wing tell it, one would think that the Republic was predicated on plutocracy rather than democracy.

Manufacturing a heritage has become somewhat of a cottage industry in certain communities.  The key is that the heritage is highly-varnished; and designed to suit the purposes of those doing the varnishing.  The theocratically-minded in America do this by propounding a chimerical Judeo-Christian legacy.  They can then justify their tenets by recourse to confabulated histories.

This is more a matter of self-ingratiation than of perspicacious deliberation.  For the revisionist, historical records are made to be broken.  It is easy for today’s ideologues to disregard what the Founders ACTUALLY said in favor what what they WANT them to have said.  While Neocons disregard George Washington’s warning’s about “foreign entanglements”, right-wing libertarians disregard the Preamble to the Constitution, which explicitly states that the federal government was instituted to provide for the general welfare.  Never mind Thomas Paine’s position that the State’s role is to facilitate the commonweal (via public education, public healthcare, social security, etc.)

By clinging in desperation to a confectionary heritage, Reactionaries revel in a farcical legacy that–they insist-must be upheld.  Little do they seem to realize that ideals are not static blueprints to follow; they are guides for evolution (to wit: an open-ended process).

One does not need to retain the dogmas of 1776 in order to uphold the spirit of 1776.  The dream of the American Republic is not about what we used to be; it’s about what we can become.