Sorry, I don't like 'Radical Reactionary'. Based on the view there is a 'New Wave Fascism' that has been developing in Europe, North America and elsewhere too, a consequence of the crisis of Globalization provoked by the 2007 crash and Covid, and the unhappy marriage of economic and political nationalism, New Wave Fascist would seem appropriate, but is probably too academic.Quote:
Originally Posted by filghy2
The confusion deepens because on the one hand, I think the original sin of the Americas is the conflict between the Religious and the Secular. Some would argue, after Tocqueville, that the Christian identity of the early American settlements was never in question, and that they compromised politically precisely because their own conflicts in Europe had led them to the Americas, so the point of principle in politics was not to make the religious identity of the settlement Political, but let it be whatever it was. I see this as a fall-out from the Catholic-Protestant divide, but also the bitter divisions within the various non-Catholic sects.
So I am tempted to re-package Conservatives as 'Religious Fundamentalists' because for the most part this identifies the supporters of Trump and his penumbra, which includes McConnell and friends, and also links their policy preferences to a frame of reference which is more likely to be the Bible than the Constitution, as per Texas.
Here is the additional problem -being a Religious Fundamentalist in the US is to be part of a declining sector of the population.
Below are extracts from an unusually (for the Telegraph) sympathetic article which looks broadly at this issue-
-It points out that medical technology such as ultra-sound has helped refine the chronology of gestation but also impacted issues such as term limits in the debate on abortion, but note too the reference to the concept of 'quickening' which meant that Abortion was legal in the United States until the 19th century.
-The decline of religion and the growth of secular views thus impacts the political geography of those States where the majority vote for one party, but are governed by the losers. This seems to me to thus establish a major long term dilemma for the meaning of democracy in the US.
-So I stand by Religious Fundamentalist rather than Conservative, not least because I think it identifies the losers being in control of the political agenda, in the States, the Supreme Court, and perhaps Congress too. It may also swerve from a Religious determination to a Nationalist one, where the existential threat to the US does not just come from 'radical leftists' who have no God, but the belief that to be an American one must believe in God, Family and Country, closing the circle. In an attempt to end the perpetual conflict between the Religious and the Secular, they are claiming it seems to me, that to be an authentic American means to be a Christian, and there is no compromise on that.
Here are some extracts-
"...the United States is in the middle of a likely-irreversible shift toward secularism. As recently as 2004, a Gallup poll found that 85 per cent of Americans identified as Christian. By 2021, that number had plummeted to 63 per cent and the decline shows no signs of slowing down. Between 2006 and 2021, white evangelical Protestants’ share of the population has declined 37 per cent. Younger Americans are far more likely to be secular – 40 per cent of millennials in Gallup’s poll identified as nonbelievers or had no religious preference. And yet Americans are not becoming less divided over abortion as the influence of religion wanes."
"The success of the US anti-abortion movement in polarising the conflict is not just the result of strategic savvy. The movement has benefited from larger shifts in US political geography and partisanship. Before Roe v Wade, the anti-abortion movement was the strongest in states like Pennsylvania, New York and Minnesota. Republicans were weak politically in the South, which still pledged its fidelity to the so-called Dixiecrats, who had long defended racial segregation.But the movement’s centre of power has shifted south. Now, Democrats have no realistic chance of winning in most Southern states, which are home to solid and increasingly uncompromising anti-abortion majorities. Even Republican voters uncomfortable with abortion bans are unlikely to change how they cast their ballots. That’s partly because of negative partisanship – the hatred of leaders and even voters from the opposite party, which has risen exponentially since the Eighties. The more antipathy voters have for the opposition, the more willing they are to vote for extreme candidates –and to set aside their concerns about sweeping criminal abortion bans. For example, the most recent data we have suggest that a majority of voters in Oklahoma favour abortion being legal under all or most circumstances. And yet that state has passed an abortion ban with no debate."
America’s abortion debate is a chilling reminder of how history can be rewritten at a stroke (yahoo.com)
