death of the Enlightenment

I read this NY Times article on Thursday.

To me, what we have to draw from this is not a nostalgia for the 18th century. Instead we have to reframe the debate with fundamentalist Christians who deny the Enlightenment foundations of this country in favor of an ex post facto concept of Christian nationalist founders.

Not a single one of the men who founded this country embraced the Christianity of George W. Bush. And not a single one of them would be happy with the assault on science, reason, and empiricism being perpetrated by the party in power.

When the neo-cons talk about a return to "traditional values'' they are not talking about the tradition of America. They are talking about the tradition of a small segment of America, and the values of this small segement are largely those which this country was designed to escape.

America's true traditional values are freedom, equality, justice, reason, and tolerance. These are also the core values of liberals/progressives/Democrats.

Saturday morning, the Times carried two more op eds, one by Nicholas Kristof and David Brooks. The gist of both being: Democrats need to move to the right and embrace fundamentalist Christianity, to aid and abet the Republicans in order to retain what little power they have left. I am sure that the Republicans, who have themselves spent the last 40 years running to the right, would love that. But the truth is, if we want to take back control of this country, we have to run to the left. This is not to say that we fulfill the stereotype constructed by Luntz, et al of the disengaged, latte swilling, Vidal reading left-wing wacko. For one thing, I know more conservatives than liberals who make the daily pilgrimage to Starbucks. For another, to the extent that we "lost" middle America, we lost it becuase they forgot all they owe to progressive politics: Social Security, employer provided health insurance, weekends (unions, woot!), the Internet, public education, and yes, more religious tolerance (not religious rule disguised as tolerance).

So, we champion these values. We stand up for the litte guy, instead of standing on the little guy. We reconnect America's heart to its brain. We return to reason, and resuscitate the Enlightenment. Or, we accept the dawning theocracy and wind up like other modern theocracies, impoverished, terrorized, and isolated from the rest of the world.