……In the text, “And Hatred Became Flesh,” we will perhaps better understand the history of American politics, made up of deregulation and privatization, which, over more than thirty years, have reduced the government to the skin of its flesh that a now unique discourse assigned to it. “The invisible hand,” as interpreted by Milton Friedman, the star of the Chicago School, struck political reality so hard that many are those who put forward the hypothesis that never before has a political philosophy, except that of Marx, contributed so much to changing the distribution of power in the world in general and in the United States in particular.
Milton Friedman, who recently died at an advanced age, had the energy of a great proselytizer. He traveled the world from India to Iceland, via Chile, China, and the United States, where he multiplied. Armed with the advice he gave them, presidents, whether Democrats or Republicans, accepted as a necessity this market discipline that Friedman said was necessary for survival. Not even the premises were discussed. Successive presidents all spoke the same language, using words taken from a single discourse, the fabrication of which we will analyze at length, with the help of cognitive science and funding from lobbying. Indeed, we cannot understand the political life of the United States without understanding the influence of lobbying, which is the despair, among others, of Bill Moyers, one of the most profound observers of the American political scene .
"Our politicians," he declared at a conference, "are little more than money launderers in the trafficking of power and policies [1]." This is not one of those theatrical phrases to which the French political scene has accustomed us: in the United States the transfer of power from the public to the private sector is practically a done deal .
Ideologies die hard.
The economic meltdown of the financial and real estate markets in 2007-2008 was in no way perceived as a failure of laissez-faire policies; quite the opposite: passions were unleashed.
The time of fanaticism
Let us remember. A small populist group that started from nothing, the Tea Party, duly financed by "invisible hands" but generous, the same ones that financed Ayn Rand, will add this passionate element to the ideology when it seeks to divert attention and anger onto a scapegoat, here, in fact, a herd of goats. Books are burned, effigies are hung, invective is hurled, and certain words are systematically greeted with boos, socialism at the forefront. But let us return to the United States.
Around the unfortunate scapegoats, and in an atmosphere of slaughter, strange alliances are formed between the fundamentalists who would like to return to a state religion (including one of the candidates for the presidential nomination) and the new powers that only believe in numbers. This is one of those often ephemeral alliances, but this time it risks lasting to the extent that the ideology of numbers and growth does not want to be burdened with the waste it produces: not only so-called natural waste but also the waste represented by certain humans, those whose survival, deemed useless and costly, depends on the State (deficient children, the elderly, the disabled without work, without shelter and without health). In the name of "compassionate capitalism," their care has begun to be delegated to families and Churches, which will see the number of their flocks increase tenfold in the coming years. The ground is favorable.
Another advantage of religion: the narrow reading of certain texts of the Bible allows for the sowing of doubt about certain scientific theories, such as that of evolution. From there to calling into question all sciences, environmental science at the forefront, there is only one step, quickly taken by the industrial complex. The slide is pernicious: it is demanded that the theory of "intelligent design" be taught in the same way as the theories of evolution. Suddenly, we can demand that the conclusions of studies on the greenhouse effect, which we do not want to bother with, be taught at the same time as the handful of studies that call it into question. We repeat: "This is a matter of opinion, and we are in a country of freedom of opinion."
The final advantage: sexuality, denounced by Republican candidate Rick Santorum, who is obsessed with it, allows for the most close-knit groups and associations. Certain subjects such as abortion or homosexuality are indeed so emotionally charged in the United States that anyone who advocates a return to fundamentalist morality secures ballots regardless of their economic and political platform. Market discipline and religious discipline go hand in hand during election time, especially since both love nothing less than to punish, with a rage that some commentators, including Paul Krugman, are beginning to perceive.
Because order is needed in the great disorder of globalization, which cannot long remain a vortex, this powerful but structureless force. There is no world government to bring order to the sharing of resources, coveted by an ever-increasing number of entities. No court judges their increasingly destructive methods of exploitation. No prison accommodates the new types of criminals whose charges have not yet been drawn up. There are, for the moment, only old answers to this challenge: totalitarian laissez-faire, a barely modified version of Social Darwinism, emerging nationalisms, hard-line fundamentalisms, and mafias of all kinds, which like disorder to be at the zenith of their influence.
Europe, for its part, lost in the vortex, offers only nostalgic responses. Nostalgia is, unfortunately, neither an ideology nor a power. It is only a long whining that reminds us of that autumn of the Middle Ages that Huizinga tells us about [2]. When it is asked to receive the iron rule of market discipline, it cannot refuse, not because it does not have the economic means but because it does not have the conceptual tools to say no and to propose a more suitable model. Its liberal egalitarian thought and its ideology of unlimited individual rights and rights holders were conceived at a time when borders and technologies made it possible to manage their application on a given territory, structured by public institutions. They no longer hold water. Prisoner of the too rapid construction of a European confederation accompanied by a poorly drafted constitution, terrified prisoner of the flow of populations crossing its territory and of a jurisprudence which is not without recalling the gloss, Europe is incapable of being a State in the etymological sense of the term, which stands upright (from the verb stare ) .
So much for the pessimistic scenarios that otherwise fill the landscape of thought. And thought rules the world, the economist reviled by laissez-faire, John Maynard Keynes, liked to repeat. He was reviled because he had made the State a de jure and de facto enterprise that stood on its own two feet, an essential countervailing force to the powers of overly powerful special interests.
We are at the crossroads of a quasi-Pascalian gamble. Either we believe in an invisible economic hand that will spread prosperity and freedom across the planet, or we don't believe in it and rebuild and strengthen state structures around new national and international laws that allow us to manage access to the planet's natural and human resources locally and globally. Right or wrong!
Legal thinkers don't have much time, not only because we have less and less space, but also because there are more and more takers for an ideology that promises immediate rewards. Perhaps, after so much dreaming of possible futures, we are heading towards an era where humans will live only in the present. Isaiah Berlin called them Barbarians: "Those who are not curious to know where they came from, how they got there, where they are going, whether they really want to go there, and if so, why, and if not... why not."
Thus would be extinguished the dream of Enlightenment that made Kant weep with joy. "Humankind," he said, "has always been progressing and will always continue to do so in the future: which opens up a perspective as far as the eye can see in time." Ayn Rand, the passionaria of absolute laissez-faire, called him "the most evil man in history."
The Antichrist enters politics. The Tea Party has, in effect, sealed an alliance between two totalitarian ideologies: one based on a rigid interpretation of macroeconomics and one dominated by a rigid interpretation of the Bible.
A holy alliance with the smell of sulfur
Let's emphasize the term rigidity because this is not an alliance between capitalism and the church in general. That would mean nothing. The laissez-faire we have been talking about is as totalitarian as the attitude of the fundamentalist church we are going to discuss. We are far from the laissez-faire of Adam Smith and we are far from the Christian Church that speaks of pity, sharing, and sacrifice. We will not be talking about the Church of the New Testament where Christ, in sandals, chases the merchants from the Temple with a whip. Nor is it the church of the Kennedys, of Jack, the first Catholic president, nor that of Ted Kennedy who, before dying in 2010, made sure that health insurance would cover those who could not have it. This church was hated by Ayn Rand. This church continues to lose ground, just like the capitalism defended by Republicans and represented by Ike Eisenhower.
We are entering other manifestations of Christian worship, in a world where the Bible is punitive, where the world is traversed by the Horsemen of the Apocalypse, a world with its terrible battles including that of Armageddon. These are well-known passages, in a country where half the inhabitants read and consult the Bible. They are read and reread in the southern states which form what is called "the Bible Belt" . It was there that a movement took shape a century ago, among the vast network of evangelical preachers, teachers of the Bible: those who established the so-called fundamentalist movement. Baptists, Methodists, Presbyterians, Pentecostals and small independent churches all wanted to return to the foundations of the Christian faith .
The foundation is the Bible. It is important to know that in certain parts of the United States, it is the absolute reference, the framework from which all events are interpreted, whether it be September 11, the war in Afghanistan, or the presidential election.
We're not talking about a fringe reading [3]. "A recent survey by Time and CNN found that 36% of all Americans believe the Bible is the Word of God and should be taken literally. 59% are confident that the events predicted in Revelation will come to pass. Nearly one in four Americans believe that 9/11 was foretold in the Bible, and nearly one in five believe they will live to see the end of the world. Even more significant: more than a third of Americans favor a policy of support toward Israel because they believe that Jesus will return to earth the day the Jews possess their own country in the Holy Land. Millions of Americans firmly believe that the future is written in the Bible and that "the end of the world is near."[4]
An entire interpretation of contemporary political events has thus been made through the books of Revelation. Matthew Avery Sutton, professor of history at Washington State University , invites us to this essential reading for anyone who wants to understand American political life. " Biblical criticism," he writes, "the return of the Jews to the Holy Land, the sciences of evolution, and the First World War are all signs that the second coming of Jesus is imminent. On the basis of biblical prophecy, they have identified signs […] that foreshadow the arrival of the last days: the growth of strong central governments and the consolidation of independent nations into a single one led by a seemingly benevolent leader."
" This leader, and they are convinced, is the Antichrist, who is leading humanity towards a second Armageddon.
This prophecy pushed them, politically, to the right.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt troubled them greatly. He had remained in power for three terms and was seen as the ardent defender of the United Nations. Worse, he had created what was seen as a government empire so vast that it seemed the time had come: he was the Antichrist himself.
"Fundamentalists joined the libertarian right in their fight against Roosevelt [ …] For them, the world of 2011 resembles the world of the 1930s in many ways. International turmoil and a prolonged economic downturn have fueled distrust of government. "For some evangelicals, President Obama is even more troubling. We don't really know where he was born, he preaches internationalism, his support for Israel seems lukewarm, and on top of that, he receives the Nobel Peace Prize. His government involvement in health care is seen as the ultimate plot: to create a great empire that wants to dominate everyone's life.
"In 2008, John McCain, the Republican candidate opposing Obama, called him "The One," the name of the Messiah. McCain knew what he was doing . [5][AS2] "
Here we are: the government is dominated by this satanic presence that seeks to supplant God and the churches through social programs, that practices infanticide and euthanasia, that destroys parental authority… going against the divine destiny of America, the nation that fights in the name of Christ the Redeemer against the infidels in the world.
That's not all. The story of Revelation isn't the only one to color politics. In recent years, the story of Sodom and Gomorrah has returned to haunt consciences to the point where sexual sin will play an increasingly important role in the 2012 election campaign. We invite those who might think this is an exaggeration to listen carefully to what Rick Santorum, the star of the Tea Party Republican candidate who was at one time a star candidate for the Republican nomination, has to say. The support he has received suggests that we are not dealing here with a mere marginal "illuminated" as the French press claims, but with the representative of a hard-line movement that is spreading throughout the countries of the world, a movement that calls into question the separation between Church and State.
Georges Lakoff, more on the lookout than ever for language and its metaphors, also warns liberals who tend to underestimate the importance of Rick Santorum's speech and the effect his words have on brains . His hypothesis is that all thought is physical. We think with something very physical: our brains, and we have no choice. The brain's circuits are strengthened with repetition. And language, far from being neutral, activates the circuits of the complex brain that is rooted in the moral systems of both conservatives and liberals. There is conservative language that, when repeated [AS3] , strengthens the circuits of the conservative brain. This is extremely important for so-called "independents," who are effectively both conservatives and liberals. They will hesitate for a while, but the more they hear conservative language, the more its moral system will be inscribed in the brain's circuits .
It's a speech Reagan had outlined. Psychologist Drew Westen explains what he says, directly, between the lines and between the paragraphs: " Once upon a time, there was an America that was the beacon of humanity. Then liberals came along and created a huge federal bureaucracy that put handcuffs on the invisible hand of the free market. They subverted our traditional American values and opposed God and faith." For example, "instead of requiring people to work for a living, they siphoned money from the pockets of hardworking Americans and gave it to drug addicts and women who then drove Cadillacs. In place of the traditional American values of family, fidelity, and personal responsibility, they preached promiscuity, premarital sex, and homosexuality." They failed to maintain the armed force that defended the world. Instead, they cut military budgets, disrespected our soldiers in uniform, and burned our flag [6]."[AS4]
Democrats have never responded to this subliminal discourse, always remaining at the level of information and reason. They demonstrate, strive to provide evidence, cite surveys, and are helpless in the face of what they consider bad faith or madness. They constantly appeal to reason and live by the great Enlightenment belief that the proper functioning of democracy depends on good information; Machiavelli had tried to tell them: the vulgar only believe in appearances and entertainment.
They don't seem to understand the power of symbols, images, and emotions, perhaps the most powerful of which is the tribal instinct. Psychology professor Jonathan Haidt explains: " Despite everything you've learned in basic economics, people aren't always selfish. They seek to belong. When they believe their group—whether racial, religious, regional, or ideological—is under attack, they rally to its defense, even at personal cost. Politics is a competition between coalitions of tribes. The key to understanding tribal behavior isn't money; it's the sacred, whether that sacred thing is a tree, a rock, an ancestor, a flag, a book, or a god. [7]"
Part of America is rallying around religion. Why religion and not patriotism, "the last refuge of the scoundrel" according to Samuel Johnson? Probably because the "nationalist" string had been pulled too far. George Bush tried it with the War on Terror, and it worked for a few years, but it's difficult to rally the clan around such a diffuse enemy. However, the War on Terror, because it was associated with a religion (Islam), gave rise to another point of convergence.
If you really want to understand what is happening in politics, Haidt concludes, "follow the trail of the sacred. The right has taken the lead in the war of Christendom and is preparing for holy war." Nothing is ever very simple in the minefield of religions, which are coupled with internal wars. It's a holy war without the Pope. Catholicism is constantly attacked for historical and liturgical reasons: people especially don't want to hear sermons against the rich and calls for love of one's neighbor and the poor. The theme of social justice, defended for several decades by so-called progressive bishops, is perceived as communist . And since nothing is ever simple, there is dissension within the Catholic Church itself.
So a holy war began, uniting all the fundamentalist factions of Christianity around the same enemy. And when the person you're facing is the devil himself, any compromise is sacrilege. Which is just as well: market fundamentalism doesn't tolerate compromise either. And so, in 2012, a Republican aspirant for the office of President of the United States of America, Rick Santorum, emerged to fight on both fronts and wage holy war against the devil himself: Barack Obama.
At the beginning of the year, the turn of events in the presidential campaign took many analysts by surprise, expecting declarations of faith in laissez-faire. For a time, they believed it was a passing phenomenon, but the first results of the primary elections confirmed that a religious groundswell was supporting a candidate who had emerged from the shadows, and that this groundswell would persist.
As early as March 2012, Georges Lakoff warned political analysts: No matter who wins the Republican presidential nomination, Santorum's strategy will have succeeded . Rick Santorum constructs an ideology made up of clear and firmly repeated messages, messages that draw their force from the depths of an accusatory and punitive religious reading, and it is a message that, repeated, leaves its mark.
Rick Santorum is perfectly clear about his intentions: " I do not believe," he says, "in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute. The idea that the church cannot have any influence or cannot intervene in the functioning of the state is absolutely contrary to the goals and vision of our country [AS5] ."
He is also very clear about what he criticizes about modern government: protecting and legitimizing the sin of the flesh that obsesses him. Because he is obsessed. A New York Times commentator among others has followed the candidate's career since his youth through his interviews and speeches. Whatever the subject he is asked to address (economics, civil liberty, taxes), he invariably returns to sexual freedom, the source, according to him, of all evil. " Woodstock," he says, "was the great American orgy. That's what the Democratic Party has become. It has become the party of Woodstock. It uses our most basic, primitive lusts, sex first and foremost. It has created a culture of abortion. It's not about life. It's about sexual freedom. That's what it's about. Homosexuality is the same. It's about sexual freedom. Everything is ' sexual freedom [AS6] . '"
He accuses Democrats of encouraging women to work, which is contrary to their vocation. "Respect for the housewife," he says, "has been poisoned by a toxic combination: the political elites' war against the family and the misogyny of extremist feminists who want only work outside the home to be valued." [AS7] In this register, one of his bêtes noires is feminism and he never misses an opportunity to say that "radical feminists do not want equality with men but want to take their place [AS8] ."
He accuses the government of promoting education to better manipulate the minds of young people: " The indoctrination taking place in American universities is one of the keys to the power of the left, which is holding America hostage. And it is indoctrination [AS9] ! "
He proposes giving parents back the power they have lost to educate their children according to true values: " The government has convinced parents that education is no longer their responsibility. And in fact, they have been forced, in many ways, to abandon their children to public education. Their control has been taken away. This has to change or the education sector is not going to improve in this country [AS10] ."
Rick Santorum sets an example in this regard, as his seven children do not attend public school and are educated at home. It should be noted that he receives government subsidies to do so, as homeschooling is legal and partly funded by the state. It is a movement that has gained considerable momentum in the United States. It was estimated that in 2002-2003, between 1,700,000 and 2,100,000 children were educated at home. This type of education is on the rise everywhere. A small percentage of parents do this for academic reasons (the schools provide what they consider too poor an education), but the vast majority simply want to shield their children from the bad influences and ideas disseminated by schools. In particular, they want the theory of evolution to be taught alongside the so-called theory of intelligent design, a substitute for creationism. Santorum can no longer tolerate, he says, the dishonesty of those who teach Darwin's principles: " What we should be teaching are the gaps and what is not explained by the theory of evolution. These must be presented alongside the scientific point of view [AS11] ."
Above all, he wants the government to stop legitimizing sexual sin in all its forms. He promises to abolish all laws that allow gays to marry: "Gay marriage," he says, "threatens my marriage. It threatens all marriages. It threatens the traditional values of our country [AS12] ." He promises to ensure that the state will not fund sex education or contraception, which he considers not only sinful but also a cause of economic problems: " I 'm going to talk about something that no president has talked about, I'm going to talk about the dangers of contraception in this country […] Many Christians see nothing wrong with it. But it's not acceptable. It's sexual license that goes against what should be."
He constantly attacks Planned Parenthood, a leading family planning organization that advocates for sex education and access to health care. A third of its funding comes from the U.S. government. He accused it, in April 2011, of being based on racism and eugenics. " I can't imagine another organization receiving federal funding that is more toxic than Planned Parenthood ," he says. He promises to ban it, of course.
Finally, Rick Santorum promises to completely reform Social Security, which he claims has become an organization that encourages women to have abortions: in a March 2011 interview, he declared that Social Security was a flawed system from the beginning but had become worse with abortions. "The reason Social Security is in serious trouble," he explained, "is that we don't have enough workers to support the retirees. Well, one-third of all young people in America are not in America today because of abortion, because one in three pregnancies ends in abortion . [AS13] "
That said, he is in no way suggesting that the government should, as it does, help women who choose not to have abortions if they remain single. Single mothers are more than ever “scapegoats.” “ Santorum wants women to be denied welfare until they agree to a paternity test or say who the father of their child is. He would tell them, ‘If you don’t tell us who the father is, you don’t qualify for welfare benefits, none, not even medical care. You tell us who the father is or you won’t get benefits.’” He argued that such measures would help single mothers slow down their sex lives. “If the mom knows she’s not going to get welfare if she doesn’t tell us who the dad is, maybe she’ll be a little more careful next time [AS14] .”
Are the enemies of my enemy my friends?
The motivations differ and certainly the analyses, but it will be understood that the rigid factions of laissez-faire and that of religion have an enemy in common for which they use the same word evil . Let us not forget that this was the word used by Ayn Rand. Military strategists use this well-known principle "The enemies of my enemy are my friends" but polemology has taught them that these alliances only last the duration of a battle or at best a war. When we are dealing with two such antinomic ideologies, it is possible to suppose that the alliance will disappear with the election but this is only a military hypothesis.
Once the common enemy is denounced, everything indeed opposes these two ideologies. Ayn Rand wants to reduce the State to a comma, Rick Santorum does not want to destroy the State. He wants to replace it with a punitive State. If we listen to him carefully, we will understand that while he will certainly get rid of all aid services, it is clear that he will impose a host of legislation that cannot be to the taste of those who want to let the law of supply and demand find a moral balance. This seems like an irreconcilable difference, but as we will see, this holy alliance that reeks of sulfur has two advantages: dogmatizing science and returning the "providence" of the welfare state to the "providence" of the churches. This alliance will endure.
Dogmatizing science
Economism believes in science, technology, and their teaching; these are the engines of growth. As we know, in countries where they hold power, and throughout history, fundamentalists (of all stripes) have scrutinized all science based on their beliefs. It is clear that Rick Santorum is determined to continue the tradition, with the help of big corporations. Indeed, laissez-faire, which believes only in numbers, would also like to scrutinize science based on its postulates when it demonstrates that there are limits to exploitation, growth, and pollution. Laissez-faire cannot stand the word "limit."
Absolute laissez-faire and fundamentalism have thus found another enemy, and a formidable one: science, or at least certain scientific discourses that they do not like. One does not want to hear about Darwin; the other cannot stand talk about global warming, the greenhouse effect, the loss of the water table, the effects of hydraulic fracturing, in short, anything that would slow down growth.
Large corporations are not interested in Darwin's theories, which do not hinder growth. One might even think that Spencer's application known as "social Darwinism" is not without displeasure for them. This so-called evolutionary political doctrine postulated that the struggle for life between humans is the natural state of social relations. In particular, it advocated eliminating institutions and behaviors (charity, compassion, aid) that hinder natural selection, which eliminates the least fit for the greater benefit of society. John D. Rockefeller was very fond of this, explaining that The American Beauty rose variety can only be produced in the splendor and fragrance that thrill the beholder by sacrificing the first buds growing around it. The same is true in economic life. This is merely the application of a law of nature and a law of God .
The ideologues of extreme laissez-faire will nevertheless find it very useful to question evolutionism, which will then allow them, by association, to cast doubt on all the scientific discoveries that bother them. Sowing doubt is their specialty.
They won't do it openly and fund so-called Young Earth creationism , which is too extreme even for them, and which claims that the Earth was created in six days by God, about 6,000 years ago, that the evolution of species is a myth, that Adam and Eve literally lived and sinned in the Garden of Eden, and that the fossils found there are objects created by God or the Devil to deceive human beings. It is associated with another movement that claims that the Earth is flat according to an interpretation of the Bible. For the Flat Earth Society, NASA, in cahoots with the airlines, is part of a vast anti-Bible conspiracy. According to them, everyone knows that the moon landing was filmed on a Hollywood set.
The market freaks aren't that crazy, and the airlines are too important for them. So they're going to encourage and fund another form of creationism: that of "intelligent design." It's, they say, a "scientific theory" whose conclusions are as valid as those of Darwinism. With one of the great scientific theories thus called into question, we can happily examine many other meta-theories, such as those of the environment, through the same intellectual sieve. It was worth thinking of.
Intelligent design is creationism "in a cheap suit," according to British biologist Richard Dawkins. It is based on the assumption that "certain observations of the universe and the living world are better explained by an intelligent cause than by undirected processes such as natural selection." Intelligent design applies only to the field of biology and does not address the origin of the universe. It differs from creationism in that it accepts a universe that is more than 13 billion years old and the Big Bang theory. It does not comment on God, but rejects the mechanism of random mutation coupled with natural selection as the driving force behind the emergence of new species . Its followers readily cite Socrates, Plato, Aristotle who believed that the emergence of the natural world required a mind, or Cicero who saw in the stars and the adaptation of animals proof of a rational design. Recent philosophers are not forgotten. In his book The Design Revolution , William A. Dembski even uses the criteria developed by Karl Popper to cast doubt on Darwinism. This would probably not be to the taste of the great epistemologist.
Other philosophers, very much alive and well, delighted by this renewed interest in metaphysics, "offered" their services for a large fee. It was a rare moment when the reading of philosophy was so generously funded. For the funds poured in. According to Above Top Secret, a forum for discussion and research on beliefs, " Funding for the Discovery Institute (Center for Science and Culture)—and the intelligent design campaigns—goes through the Hudson Institute, which redistributes what it receives from corporations working in biotechnology, genetic engineering, agricultural research, pharmaceuticals, and others: Monsanto, DuPont, Dow-Elanco, Sandoz, Ciba-Geigy, ConAgra, Cargill, and Procter & Gamble . [8]"
Perhaps their sudden enthusiasm for philosophy can be better understood by reading the Center's 1988 document, The Intelligent Design Wedge Strategy : " The Intelligent Design Wedge Strategy reformulates creationism, redirects the evolution of the debate, and serves several strategic functions: to neutralize Christian scholars who assert that belief in God is no barrier to acceptance of evolutionary science; to maintain and consolidate the support of the religious right; to create the illusion of a scientific basis in order to circumvent tax laws that prohibit the use of public funds to finance religious activities; and, above all, to confuse those who would believe in environmental science and seek to understand the effects of industrial activity on the life of the planet and the biosphere ."
Make no mistake, says Samantha Smoot, who runs the Texas Freedom Network , and who opposes teaching intelligent design in schools, This isn't just some fringe group of the religious right operating only in Texas. "This is a national program. But the religious right has changed tactics. It's draped itself in the banner of creationism. We're now dealing with think tanks and pseudo-scientific information whose goal is to destroy real science. [AS15] "
"Intelligent design" makes life easier for those who insist that the greenhouse effect is unproven and is a hypothesis, if not a conspiracy, fomented by special interest groups. Let's listen to what Republican Texas Governor Rick Perry has to say about this: " I think there are a significant number of scientists who have manipulated the data in order to fund their projects. And I think every week, if not every day, scientists are coming forward to challenge the hypothesis that man is responsible for the greenhouse effect ."
Early in the campaign, dissenting voices were heard even within the Republican Party itself. Presidential hopeful Jon Huntsman, in particular, gave a television interview [AS16] in which he criticized Rick Perry: " The minute the Republican Party became the anti-science party, we had a huge problem. When we take a position against evolution, when we take a position that goes against what 98 of the 100 climate scientists say about the greenhouse effect, I think we are on the wrong side of science and in a losing position." He was not only ignored, but he lost all chances of running for president. Perry himself even went so far as to suggest to televangelist James Robinson: "I do believe we go through tough economic times for one reason: to get us back on track with the principles of the Bible [AS17] ."
A distraught Paul Krugman expressed his dismay and concern in a 2011 New York Times article : "Today , we don't know who will win next year's presidential election. But the odds are that one of these years, the greatest country in the world will find itself governed by a party that is aggressively anti-science, anti-knowledge. And, at a time of grave difficulty—environmental, economic, and otherwise—that's a terrifying prospect . [9]"
Equally terrifying—for anyone raised like Krugman to believe in neutral human knowledge for the benefit of a better society—is the second foundation of the holy alliance between carelessness and fundamentalism: the control of poverty.
Pity and the ferule
In October 2005, Le Monde diplomatique translated an article by John Kenneth Galbraith, "The Art of Ignoring the Poor [10]." Published twenty years earlier in English by Harper's Magazine, the great economist's thought had lost none of its relevance or clarity. In it, he describes " one of the oldest human exercises: the process by which, over the years, and even over the centuries, we have undertaken to spare ourselves any bad conscience about the poor."
Western politics are based on this bad conscience, maintained and regulated by Christianity. In an article on the foundations of politics, Glenn Tinder reminds us that the word charity comes from the Latin caritas , which means "love," a very particular love of others: "Christian love," he writes, "has a very specific name, agape , different from other forms of love: philia, friendship, Eros, or passion. [11]" The origin of the aptly named charitable organizations rests on this definition. Enlightenment philosophers or Karl Marx will try to found altruism on other bases, but, Tinder tells us, the fact is that the aid and mutual aid policies of modern secular states have their deep roots in agape . Here he partly takes up the themes of Carl Schmitt, who undertook an analysis of the secularization of theological concepts to apply them to the theory of the State. According to this idea, the religious God becomes judge, while the miracle becomes the exception [AS18] . "All the concepts that are prevalent in modern state theory are," he says, "secularized theological concepts."
This would be how the welfare state would have replaced almost all charitable organizations, redefining their modalities. Charity became an application of citizens' rights including economic rights creating what Gosta Esping Anderson called "The world of the welfare state", a complex world of direct and indirect aid, varying from one state to another . This is a shift in power that must be understood to mean a loss for the Churches. Certainly the sisters of charity continued to help the most deprived, but we are far from the time when charitable orders organized the social field in the Middle Ages and were financed by a Church that owned a third of the land in Europe.
That said, whether it is justified by "right" or by " love," altruism is, for Ayn Rand and Milton Friedman, an economic heresy on several counts. Ayn Rand is brutal: altruism, in the mouth of one of these heroes, is "a monstrous sentiment" that profits the "parasites" on whom self-interested bureaucrats will build their selfish empire. For Milton Friedman, it is a misplaced sentiment that slows growth and becomes counterproductive. Let the builders of growth do their thing, and poverty will disappear, he says. While waiting for these happy days, laissez-faire, properly understood, does nothing. Laissez-faire is, at first, a laissez-die.
Here we are again in the midst of an antinomy: churches preach love of neighbor, charity, and altruism. How some put these into practice is debatable, but the fact is that the world of Christianity is based on agape . How can Tea Party protesters , sincere churchgoers, wave placards glorifying Ayn Rand, for whom, as Donald DeMarco and Benjamin Wiker tell us, sacrificing oneself for a child, before or after birth, or for elderly parents or others, was simply anathema [12]?
The first part of the answer is simple, since it is simply a transfer of power that suits everyone: laissez-faire no longer wants the state to play the role of nun, and churches are only too happy to regain control of what they had lost. The other aspect is a more complex corollary, but one that can be summarized as follows: fundamentalist laissez-faire and Christian fundamentalism place moral responsibility solely on the individual. If an individual cannot find work, it is because he is lazy, says the former. And if he steals an orange because he is hungry, it is because he is listening to the devil, says the latter. The essential thing is to relieve society of any responsibility towards him, but also to ensure that the orange thief no longer steals the fruit of the entrepreneurs' labor. Fundamentalist laissez-faire needs a punitive social order. Fundamentalism is only too happy to offer its guilt-tripping services.
But first, we must regain control.
Take back control
Secularization has always been deplored by the churches, certainly because they were losing territory, but also because the "law" lacked love. They joined in chorus with the critics of bureaucracy, which is also accused of indifference and coldness. The law is made, it must be said, to put a distance between facts and feelings. Max Weber explained to us that coldness and neutrality are a sine qua non condition of the transition from the feudal state to the modern state. This is unavoidable: the price of democracy is bureaucracy in that it applies the law "without hatred, or passion and therefore without affection or enthusiasm." In his latest work, Francis Fukuyama adds an interesting perspective to Weber's by tracing this neutrality back to the celibacy of priests, which, he says, allowed the church to remove them from the emotional hold that clan and family could have over them [13]. Agapé was delegated in its manifestations to missionaries and nuns whose long history was documented by Georges Duby and Michèle Perrot in The History of Women in the West [14].
Neutrality had its advantages, especially if we take as an example the single mothers who no longer had to endure the sermons of midwifery priests and nuns. But it also has its drawbacks for those who remember the boundless devotion of the latter in hospitals and hospices, including those of Beaune, which were a model of management. When it comes to human suffering, agape is unrivaled.
Let's return to our secular century. All social services and hospitals are accused, sometimes not without reason, of incompetence, squandering funds, and lack of heart. Even for the most socialist, hospitals can be the sites of those barbaric invasions that gave their title to Denys Arcand's very beautiful film. Nostalgia, helping the pendulum swing back, was imminent at this critical moment when a strong conservative current wanted to give back to the nuns what, it said, was rightfully theirs. This was, moreover, in the metaphors it commonly used. When businessmen were criticized for layoffs, dismissals, and other disciplines—imposed, it was said, by the market—they invariably responded, "We are not sisters of charity."
The transfer of functions was formalized by George Bush in the 1990s: he called it "compassionate conservatism," a metaphor that Doug Wead had chosen in 1986 to describe his father, Herbert W. Bush. In his first official speech, two weeks after his inauguration as President of the United States, George W. Bush announced that he intended, as promised during his election campaign, to call on religious groups active in the charitable field to strengthen his government's social action.
It seemed perfect at the time: "Bush's social policy was based on condemning the federal government, strengthening private initiative, and valuing the work done by religious organizations. These organizations, long confined to the private sphere, would be at the heart of the system put in place by the Bush administration to help the most needy." The state could afford to cease being a welfare state without a guilty conscience, since it would be replaced by something much better: "an army of compassion" that would bring the poor and excluded the love, attention, and comfort they needed. This "army," composed, according to Bush, of men and women imbued with deep religious conviction and unwavering altruism, would take the place of "insensitive" and "ineffective" bureaucrats and civil servants.
He signed two executive orders to this effect, "one to create an office in the White House to oversee aid to community initiatives, the other to establish coordinating centers with faith-based organizations in five departments (labor, housing, health, justice, and education) that deal with these issues. [15]"
It wasn't talked about much after that. The idea was nevertheless launched: it was necessary to give back to the church what had been taken from it. Santorum repeated it at each city he stopped on his campaign: "Look at all these countries we come from. They are all dead from the point of view of faith. Go to Europe; church attendance can be counted on the fingers of one hand. Why? Because the government has seized the prerogatives of faith . [AS19] " He was careful not to mention that in the United States this had already been done: the important Church to which his rival Mitt Romney belonged, the Mormon Church, had already regained quasi-control of the charity and had done so for a long time.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (its official name) has its own tax system to finance its charitable work: a tithe that deserves its name even if it doesn't bear it. The Mormon Church takes 10% of the income of all its members. It is certainly not a small church but a growing empire that we would do well to pay attention to. The Mormon Church is by far the largest religion born on American soil. Its growth rate is one of the fastest in the world. In the United States, it has 4.8 million members and is growing by 4.7% per year (this rate is double abroad, where there are already 4.9 million adherents). Sociologist Rodney Stark has calculated that in about 83 years, the number of Mormons worldwide is expected to reach 260 million .
Its welfare system is such that it is said that no Mormon is dependent on federal welfare. The Church teaches us that in times of need, a person's first duty is to solve their own problems and seek help from their extended family. Failing this, a bishop can provide them with money or vouchers redeemable in the community. This generosity is not infinite: the system also includes 97 centers that help people find employment, which they achieve in 10 to 12 weeks. The most remarkable aspect of this system is the basis for this system of temporary financial assistance—in times of great need, which is rare: once a month, church members are asked to forgo two meals and donate the equivalent of their worth to the welfare system. The money received is administered locally, so that each community can care for its own disadvantaged members. The community also helps by giving its time to the sick and the elderly who are never left alone.
It's a church with internal rigidities, but it's not closed in on itself like others. It funds the education of its young people at the best universities. Students certainly read the Bible, but also Milton Friedman and Ayn Rand, who is very popular in Mormon countries. This is hardly surprising: the Chicago School preaches, like the Mormon church, the need for the individual to be solely responsible for their actions. People work a lot in Mormon countries, whether managing their own businesses or for the community (without pay). The mutual aid plan is established, says its founder, so that "the scourge of laziness disappears."
It is a rich, even very rich, Church, with investments of $6 billion, which are spent little on the poor but are committed to schools and universities. It is a well-structured state in a state that is falling apart.
It's no surprise, then, that a Mormon, Mitt Romney, is running for the 2012 Republican nomination, even though some aspects of the cult (such as polygamy, which is now banned) have marginalized his religion for decades. Reluctance has diminished, especially since this presidential candidate can, in good conscience, propose dismantling the American federal welfare system (the church will take care of the poor until they find work. He knows it works) while promising to devote all his efforts to growth and deregulation. He has a proven track record. This businessman He made a lot of money by buying bankrupt companies and selling them at a profit . He downsized as he deemed necessary, earning him the nickname "vulture capitalist" from some quarters. His personal fortune is estimated at $200 million.
In fact, he has the considerable financial support of the largest corporations. But for others, he is not "conservative" enough, and they prefer Rick Santorum, whose economic program is hardly different and would also please Milton Friedman. Because Rick Santorum brings an element that is not found in the speeches of Mitt Romney, who seems too pragmatic and does not wield the iron enough in the eyes of some. Santorum, on the other hand, is not content with promising to cut social programs: he wants to lecture, humiliate, and punish sinners... and especially sinners. The time has come for market fundamentalists who want to throw the poor in prison to ally themselves with Christian fundamentalists who love nothing less than to punish.
You stole the merchant's orange
Laissez-faire is not kind to thieves unless the crooks are entrepreneurs or bankers, as Frank Rich sighs. Not that the doctrine sees them as minions of Satan. Thieves steal because they are selfish, like everyone else. Their crime is to live off the wealth of others and thus join the already over-inflated ranks of parasites who, in the 1960s, played the victim to excuse their crimes. If the thief steals the merchant's orange, it's not because society is unjust and he's hungry. He can work, but finds it easier to parasitize this society that owes him nothing. If he persists in the crime, he's imprisoned, for life on the third offense.
The Church has formulated this freedom of choice in a different and similar way. Man must not be a wolf to man. Every man for himself is sin, and the Church welcomes the poor. But when he deviates from the right path and whatever the reason, the individual is alone to bear the weight of his sin. If the thief steals the merchant's orange, it is because he has succumbed to temptation. If he becomes a brigand, it is because evil is in him. If the woman aborts a child she cannot feed, she commits a crime. Sin is never social but individual and when there is forgiveness, it is spiritual; We will remember Jean Valjean in Les Misérables .
Since the cause of evil is never situational, we will not seek preventive social solutions. In this sense, laissez-faire and the church seek to make the individual responsible. This is a welcome swing after several decades of what some saw, not without reason, as an abuse of the principle that everyone was guilty except the individual. For at least two decades, victimization, Steve Salerno tells us, "presented guilt in a bad light [AS20] ." This was the time when the welfare state bore the extreme weight of all responsibility, the time when the orange thief blamed his father, his mother, the school, and society.
The pendulum swings are often violent. In the case that concerns us, they were all the more so because the desire to empower and punish went beyond the world of crime. There is no longer any need to steal an orange to attract wrath. We punish the poor because they are poor. Paul Krugman admits: "It's scary." The Nobel Prize winner in economics cannot find the meaning of the economic measures imposed by the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), which attacks the most vulnerable and the destitute. This, he says, makes no economic sense. He says this very quickly at the end of an article: "It seems that they are dealing with a need imperative and profound to inflict suffering, to expurgate sin or something like that. [16]" He, always so clear and precise, cannot find the words to say it.
Let us give it a word: hatred, the one that is nestled deep within the human brain that Laborit speaks of: "Man continues to use his reptilian brain and his limbic system in order to maintain his domination over other men and over nature . " [AS21] To confirm this domination, he needs to impose suffering, to see it and even to enjoy it. "The aim of punishment," says Hobbes [AS22] , "is not revenge but terror." Nietzsche wrote his most powerful pages on this theme. We are far from the Utopian of Thomas More who loves nothing less than to see the happiness of others, from the noble savage of Jean Jacques Rousseau or from the man whose soul aspires to the good of Kant. The theses of a social hierarchy imprinted in the suffering flesh of others are beginning to be corroborated by more recent anthropological studies.
In short, we would feel less rich if there were no poor people and if we did not think they deserve it for their sins. We are human. "What men desire," Hobbes continues [AS23] , "they call good; and what they hate, they call evil." If we so passionately desire prosperity for ourselves, poverty for others is a hateful sin, evidence of moral deficiency. Ayn Rand gave the rich permission to call wealth "moral good." Rick Santorum gives them permission to call poverty "sin" by associating it with sexual depravity. Ayn Rand gave this permission at a time when globalization opened up possibilities for limitless wealth. Rick Santorum anathematizes the poor at a time when, after the economic crisis, they are increasingly numerous.
The rich are richer, the poor poorer. The gap between rich and poor in the United States has widened in recent years. The wealthiest 1% of families own, on average, 225 times more wealth than the average American family, according to the liberal Economic Policy Institute (EPI) in Washington. The gap between these two categories has never been this wide since the first series of studies, conducted in 1962. In 2007, the index was 181, and in the 1960s, it was 125. In 2009, the wealthiest 1% owned an average of about $14 million (€10.6 million). This represents a 27% increase since 2007. For the 99%, it was a decline everywhere.
The euphoria of the 1% is compounded by a small concern as poverty becomes more visible and possibly dangerous. "As the welfare state is dismantled, it is replaced by the harsh realities of the punishment state with increasingly criminalized social problems. The harsh values of this new social order are revealed by the ever-younger incarceration rates of young people, the modeling of public schools on prisons, and the very harsh anti-immigration laws . [17]"
Prisons are overflowing with prisoners, as American criminal law has become increasingly repressive, particularly since the 1970s. Reagan championed the slogan " Get tough on crime." The incarceration rate, which was already one of the highest in industrialized countries in the 1970s, quadrupled in fifteen years: from 240,000 inmates in 1975 to nearly one million in 1995, then two million in 2005.
For the ideology of hatred, it is a consecration and let's even say that sometimes it is a pleasure. We talk little about it, if at all, but how can we explain the history of humanity without this pleasure of destruction that runs through it from time to time. There is a pleasure in punishing, Nietzsche and Foucault told us this, but they did not go far enough: there is also a pleasure in destroying a mountain, polluting a river, slaughtering endangered animals and destroying forever cultures too weak to resist.
Economic warfare is not an empty metaphor.
Note
[1]. Bill Moyers, keynote speaker, “ The countervailing force to corporate power , ” Public Citizen's 40th Anniversary Celebration, October 20, 2011;
[2]. Johan Huizinga, The Autumn of the Middle Ages , Paris, Payot, “Petite Bibliothèque Payot” collection, 2002.
[3]There are a plethora of excellent books on religion in the United States. Among them is Daniel Williams, God's Own Party: The Making of the Christian Right , Oxford (Miss.): Oxford University Press, 2010.
[4] Timothy P. Weber, On the Road to Armageddon: How Evangelicals Became Israel's Best Friend , Ada (MI), Baker Academic, 2004.
[5]. M atthew A very S utton , “ Why the Antichrist Matters in Politics,” New York Times , September 25, 2011.
[6]. Drew Westen, “The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate Of the Nation”, Public Affairs , 2007.
[7]. Jonathan Haidt, “Forget the Money, Follow the Sacredness,” New York Times , March 17, 2012.
[8]. “Origins and creationism conspiracy”, online debate of November 24, 2006.
[9]. Paul Krugman, “Republicans Against Science,” New York Times , August 28, 2011.
[10]. John Kenneth Galbraith "The Art of Ignoring the Poor", Le Monde diplomatique , October 2005.
[11]. Glenn Tinder, “ Can we be Good without God? On the political meaning of Christianity, The Atlantic , December 1989.
[12]. Donald De Marco and Benjamin Wiker, Architects of the Culture of Death, San Francisco (Cal.), Ignatius Press, 2004.
[13]. Francis Fukuyama, The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution , New York (NY), Farrar Straus & Giroux, 2011.
[14]. George Duby and Michelle Perrot (eds.), The History of Women in the West , 3 vols., Paris, Perrin, 2002.
[15]. Jean Guy Vaillancourt, “President Bush’s Compassionate Conservatism,” Relations No. 668, May 2001.
[16]. Paul Krugman, “The Urge to Purge,” New York Times , June 27, 2011.
[17]. Henry A Giroux, “Trickle-Down Cruelty and the Politics of Austerity”, Truthout, July 11, 2011.