The terrifying thing about dictatorship is people's willingness to believe in the divine aspirations of dictators. ... [T]he desire to worship gods is surely part of being human. And when traditional gods are banned, humans have a way of taking their place.

[...]

Some of the most monstrous crimes have been carried out by dictators who destroyed or emasculated traditional religious institutions, and substituted their own forms of worship. The Hitler cult was founded on the ruins of the German monarchy, and was accompanied by systematic assaults on organized religion. The same, incidentally, was true of the wartime Japanese emperor cult, which for a short time became almost the exclusive focus of religious fervor, since other spiritual practices were either banned or harnessed to the imperial cause. Stalin and Mao went even further. Neither the Japanese leadership nor Hitler was able to achieve a complete religious tabula rasa. They still had to make some compromises with established institutions. The Communist leaders had no such trouble.

This is something that secularists and atheists who are also pragmatists, such as myself, must somehow deal with, that the religious impulse appears to be innate in most people, and if that's true it cannot simply be ignored without potentially dire consequences. Because if it is not in some way fulfilled, it can be perverted in ways that are extremely damaging to civilized society. This underlines the need for progressive religiosity (as exemplified by the role of the Catholic Church and other religious bodies in the civil rights movement) in any liberal civil society.

From the standpoint of rationalistic atheism, even the most progressive of religions is bound to have aspects which appear irrational and logically indefensible, but if the religious impulse is indeed to some degree innate, ignoring such an irreducible elements of human nature is a profound error, since any political or social system which attempts to ignore or re-fashion human nature beyond the available limits will lead it to eventually crash and burn -- Communism (which attempted to obviate the profit motive) being the most obvious modern example of this.

This is one reason why the generally accepted American principle of separation of church and state is so important to maintaining both a secular society and broad religious tolerance. The ban against governmental involvement in religion works both ways, to protect the rights of all religionists to practice their faith and the right of the non-religious minority (a growing minority) to not have religious beliefs of any kind forced upon them.

The religious right, in its effort to transform secular America into a religious (specifically Christian) state, knows well that undermining this standard understanding of the Establishment Clause is essential to their efforts, which is why every nick in the wall (faith-based welfare funding, upholding "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance, permitting local governments to host creches and other Christmas displays) should be of concern to us, even as we understand, as Kevin Drum has pointed out a number of times, the realpolitik that continuing to wage those battles alienates some potential supporters and keeps them at a distance from our coalition.

These small conflicts are not so much important in and of themselves as they are for collectively keeping the edifice of church and state separation intact and protecting our rights -- everyone's rights, in fact. (The only thing it doesn't actually protect is the right of one religious group to claim primacy and foist its beliefs on others at will -- which is why the theocrats oppose it.)

Since the election, I've seen all sorts of proposals for what part of the liberal/progressive agenda should be, or needs to be, jettisoned in order to win. I understand the impulse behind this -- losing sucks, especially losing to Bush & Company -- but the real trick we need to pull off is to win and to hold on to our most important principles at the same time. This doesn't mean we cannot make strategic alliances with those with whom we do not agree 100%, but it does mean that we shouldn't willy-nilly dump the things we stand for simply to insure (or attempt to insure) a win in the next election.


To my mind, the problem isn't in the principles, it's in the way we apply them -- and that means we need more candidates who are able to frame these issues in ways that preserves their underlying purpose and meaning but allows them to appeal to a broader audience.

Along those lines, take a look at these posts by Chris Bowers and Jerome Armstrong on MyDD, and this one by Kos as well. These folks, along with Hillary Clinton in her recent remarks about abortion, are all working their way to a new equilibrium within the Democratic coalition. It's not one that rejects our past positions, nor does it pander to religionists, centrists or moderates -- it's one that changes the emphasis while maintaining the underlying principles.