unyawapi

"The governing party has increasingly struck a religious tone in an aggressive foreign policy that seems much more nationalist than Christian, while the opposition party has offered more confusion than clarity. In any election we choose between very imperfect choices. Yet it is always important to examine what is at stake prayerfully and theologically."
" I asked if he thought it was important that so many people associated with the ideas behind U.S. foreign policy were Straussians. He definitely demurred. Wolfowitz does not consider himself to be a Straussian. He says he does not find political philosophy all that exciting and Allan Bloom found him to be a disappointment in this regard, but a “successful disappointment,” which appealed to Bloom. He says when he gets together with real Straussians he becomes impatient with the level of abstraction of the discussion. He does not think Strauss is in any way important to the conduct of U.S. foreign policy."

Taking these two threads together presents an interesting picture of the nature of the expressed political philosophy of the culture as a whole. Wolfie may demur on Straussian direct influence, but will not deny that as a nation we project a Randian/Straussian objectivist theology that we have been divinely blessed with the necessary means to impose our own individual wills upon the blessings of this created landscape, and that those who resist us, even our own families and friends and communities, must bow down to us because we are number one. It is as if the whole of the theological and philosophical national ethos is premised on just that high school adolescent cheer. If you say it long enough and loud enough you can convince your peers to believe it. My Chevy is better than your Ford, but his Dodge Ram is cooler than that Toyota???

Yes, thus the national religious tone is the Straussian claim of superior position that "my God is number one." Of course there are lots and lots of things incredibly wrong with this position: hermeneutics, soteriological issues, failure to comprehend basic theological tenants, comprehensive knowledge of non-faith based economics, and so far forth. But the real problem is that none of these matter to the believer, not a one of them. In this new millenium, faith is impregnated with R/S objectivist individual power leading the new believer towards a doctrine of dogmatic orthodoxy espoused not by clerics but by political priests of the words. Christianity has been hijacked, bastardized, soundbited, reductio absurdum, until a national theology is held in place by the bombardment of necessary deceptions and lies. Ask a believer about one of their deeply held convictions, one of the foundational pins of their soteriological knowledge, and they will recite, not biblical texts or evangelical injunctions but the ravings of Bush and Coulter and RushOReallyHan. Ask them to site the text and they cannot. Ask them to accept as literally true other laws and commandments and edicts and they will not. Ask them to lay claim to their clearest expression of hope and faith and it will be the US is number one. That says it all for them.