Trump and evangelicals have everything in common

The following served, in part, as the basis for my book Jesus, You’re Fired!, now available on Amazon.

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Repeat after me: The end justifies the means. If you ever find yourself scratching your head when an evangelical appears to brazenly contradict his own principles, refer back and repeat again.

It’s all you need to know.

The phrase sums up the philosophy of Niccolò Machiavelli, whose brand of ruthless politics earned him fame, or, rather, infamy, in the Middle Ages. The upshot is that actions aren’t morally right or wrong in and of themselves; their morality is determined by their results — which leads to the conclusion that might makes right.

If you’ve ever wondered why evangelical faiths, which preach things like turning the other cheek and practicing unconditional love, resorted to crusades and violent jihads in the service of that “love” ... refer back and repeat again. This was their mindset. It had nothing to do with love, and it was anything but unconditional. Believe or die. It was as simple as that.

Why do people who profess to believe in honesty, compassion, respect and fidelity support a pathological liar who brands refugees as rapists and brags about grabbing women’s genitals without permission? Refer back and repeat: The end justifies the means.

Whenever your first moral imperative is evangelism — to convert others to your way of thinking — all other principles are open to compromise. Even such high principles as unconditional love. Instead of offering such love freely, evangelicals too often resort to placing conditions on receiving it (at which point it’s no longer unconditional at all).

Crusades and witch trials

In the Middle Ages, the only thing unconditional is your surrender. The terms were dictated at the point of a sword, as in the crusades, or upon the threat of being burned at the stake, as in the Salem witch trials – where the “choice” was really no choice at all. The sinner accused of witchcraft could either refuse to recant and be burned alive, or confess to something they didn’t do ... and be burned alive anyway. Their only reward for lying — breaking one of the Ten Commandments — under duress was the promise of heaven from someone about to kill them. Such cruelty by a servant of “heaven” could hardly have reassured them about what lay in store there.

(One caveat: Not all people accused of witchcraft in such situations were burned. Some were drowned. Or crushed to death.)

These days, the methods are seldom physical torture, and the conditions aren’t always dictated “on pain of death.” But the same principle continues to apply: A quid pro quo is still offered in place of unconditional love, because the ultimate goal of evangelism isn’t love, it’s conversion. “Love,” like torture, is just a means to an end.

The fundamental quid pro quo, for any unbeliever (not just one accused of witchcraft), is the promise of heaven in exchange for a confession of belief. You can make a “deal with the devil,” but you also must make a deal with God. Deals — especially when signed under duress — are not unconditional love. But because this particular deal is at the heart of evangelism, it’s become a model for evangelicals, who often place conditions on other actions of “love” toward the sinner. They won’t scratch your back unless you scratch theirs.

Not all evangelicals behave this way. Some view love, not conversion, as their prime directive and really do show that love without any ulterior motive. But the fact that conversion is the ultimate goal for so many means that “the art of the deal” will always be a temptation for evangelicals – and one they have a hard time resisting.

Disposable morality

Because morality is of secondary importance to salvation, it becomes disposable. And, as a result, evangelicals wind up engaging in something they regularly criticize when others do it: “situational ethics.” For people who profess to believe in absolute principles, this kind of thinking is anathema. Evangelical voices often rail against it. Yet even situational ethics can be excused in the service of evangelism, and the resulting hypocrisy is also permitted if the outcome is a “saved soul.”

“When you do it, it’s evil; when we do the same thing, it’s noble.” Because the results are different.

The end justifies the means.

An evangelical’s quid pro quo can be as radical as a conversion at gunpoint, or it can be as simple as offering someone a helping hand and “inviting” them to attend church. An invitation like this leaves room for the would-be guest to decline, but it’s clear that he’s expected to attend. There’s significant social pressure to do so under the rule of reciprocity. When someone does you a favor, you feel obligated to reciprocate. The reason is simple: You don’t want to remain in that person’s debt. The rule of reciprocity gives him leverage in dictating how you discharge that debt, and a suggestion that you attend church can be a way of using that leverage.

Winning

Evangelism is, at its core, convincing (or coercing) someone to believe what you believe. In short: winning. “God” must win, and “Satan” must lose. But the minute you sacrifice principles on the altar of success, you also render labels like “God” and “Satan” meaningless. Undefined by any moral compass, they mean whatever you want them to mean in the moment.

Evangelicals, politically speaking, are often motivated to by the stands they’ve taken on issues such as abortion, same-sex marriage, gun rights, and so forth. But even these principles can be compromised or sacrificed altogether in exchange for the overarching goal of simply winning. The idea is that, once they’ve won, they’ll have unchecked power to enforce their views on these issues. Power supplants principle as the immediate goal, and the drive to achieve it by winning becomes not only everything, but the only thing.

This is why so many evangelicals who appear to be at odds with the current president issues of substance and character, support him enthusiastically. They view him as their King David: their champion, destined to win. And if winning is everything, they have everything in common. It’s not about love. It’s all about the art of the deal: getting the other party to sign a contract that’s favorable to your side, even if it means concealing the fine print or forcing a signature under duress. The methods don’t matter.

Refer back and repeat after me …

Donald and Bathsheba: Why so many evangelicals defend Trump

The following is an excerpt from my book Jesus, You’re Fired!, now available on Amazon.

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Why are so many evangelicals standing by Donald Trump in the face of actions that would seem to be directly at odds with the teachings of the Bible?

When it comes right down to it, as much as they talk about sin, specific sins are of much less concern to many evangelicals than the “work of the devil.” Sins themselves are viewed as inevitable, because each of us is – according to a doctrine set forth by Paul of Tarsus – born into a fallen state because of Adam’s original sin.

“We’re all sinners,” Jerry Falwell Jr., son of the Moral Majority founder, said in announcing he was still supporting Trump.

Sinful acts can be forgiven, and Christians will still sin (though, it is hoped, somewhat less frequently). So the endgame isn’t to stop people from sinning, it’s to redeem their fallen nature and make sure the devil doesn’t tempt them back to what Darth Vader might call “the dark side.”

Take the story of the woman at the well in the Gospel of John, who had already been married five times and was living with a man outside of wedlock. Jesus made note of this, but he didn’t condemn her for it. Instead, he used it as an opportunity to identify himself as the messiah – the rightful ruler of Israel and the kingdom of God.

This was the point of the scene, and it’s the point evangelicals are focused on, as well. They’re far less concerned about sinful acts (individual transgressions against God or his people) than they are about humanity’s sinful nature and the salvation from it they believe Jesus can provide.

As a result, evangelicals are caught up in a black-and-white struggle between the forces of good and evil. Salvation and damnation. God and Satan.

“Whoever is not for me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters.” - Matt. 12:30

“Anyone who loves their son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.” - Matt. 10:37

These are the sayings of Jesus that resonate with many evangelicals. Loyalty is paramount; any sins that might be committed along the way are secondary – and may be excused (forgiven) as long as that loyalty is unwavering.

The politics of dualism

American politics represents a convenient parallel to the good-vs.-evil struggle of the evangelical mindset because, like the dualist battle between YHWH and Satan, the electoral system as it works in the United States typically presents voters with two choices. It’s easy for evangelicals to align those choices with the God’s heavenly hosts and Satan’s demonic hordes – the armies of light and darkness engaged in “spiritual warfare” on the eternal plane.

When the Republican Party co-opted the evangelical movement (or was it the other way around?) during the era of Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority in the 1980s, the two became joined at the hip. Many evangelicals started to see Republicans as an earthly “army of light” corresponding to the heavenly host, while demonizing Democrats as tools of “the enemy.”

This is likely why, in the minds of many evangelicals, Donald Trump can be forgiven for his undeniably sinful attitudes and actions toward women, while Bill Clinton – and his wife, Hillary, whom they view as his enabler – cannot. No matter how many times Trump has engaged in fornication or boasted about abusive behavior, and no matter how many times he’s switched parties or positions, he has been redeemed in the eyes of many evangelicals by his association with the Republican Party. Clinton, on the other hand, is “outside the fold.” Calling himself a Christian and asking forgiveness aren’t good enough for evangelicals who have accepted the premise that the Republican Party is God’s chosen instrument in U.S. politics. He might as well be a Protestant asking forgiveness of the IRA.

Further reinforcing evangelical support for Trump is acceptance of the monarchial model that dominated politics in the ancient Near East. This is the model represented in the Bible, with God ruling from a throne in heaven as and anointing kings to act in his behalf on earth (hence the title “king of kings” as opposed to “president of presidents”).

The test of a king’s legitimacy wasn’t his righteousness, but his faithfulness to YHWH. Fornication? No big deal. Solomon did it. David did it. But David continually recommitted himself to YHWH, while Solomon earned the wrath of the prophets by allowing an Asherah pole – dedicated to a fertility goddess – to be placed in the temple of YHWH.

In fact, if one wants to understand many evangelicals’ continued embrace of Trump, one need look no further than David. Described in the Bible as a “man after God’s own heart,” he nonetheless slept with the wife of a loyal soldier named Uriah, then arranged for that soldier to be put in harm’s way so that he might be slain in battle – clearing the way for David to have the woman himself.

Such actions were probably not unusual in the days when absolute monarchs could sleep with any woman they wanted. But they’re less acceptable in the United States, which follows a model of government that owes its inspiration to Greek democracy, not the ancient Near Eastern model of the tyrant king.

Autocracy or democracy

The tension between these two systems remains palpable for some evangelicals, who see their relationship to God as one of a subject to an absolute ruler and may view those whom they identify as God’s chosen leaders in the same light. So if Trump brags of being able to do anything he wants to a woman because he’s “a star,” he’s boasting about something the Bible’s most famous king – David – actually did.

Of course, not all evangelicals – and certainly not all Christians – think this way. There are plenty of people of faith who put morality ahead of what amounts to loyalty (remember Jesus’ parable of one blind man leading another into a pit?). When Falwell Jr., who is now president of Liberty University, announced he was still with Trump, a group of students at the university claiming to represent a majority of students and teachers on campus issued a statement denouncing Trump.

But that doesn’t mean the behavior of evangelicals who have stuck by Trump is somehow inexplicable. In some ways, it makes perfect sense, and they really aren’t as hypocritical as they might at first appear. They’re just putting loyalty above morality and adhering to a model of government at odds with the representative democracy practiced in the U.S.

Is it surprising that they would gravitate toward a leader like Trump, who’s more autocrat than democrat? Not at all. In fact, it’s exactly what one would expect.

Note: The author spent more than a decade in the evangelical movement, attending evangelical churches, during the decade when the Moral Majority rose to prominence in American politics. He has written on philosophy, spirituality, ethics and the origins/development of Western religion.  

A point-by-point rebuttal to Kavanaugh's WSJ op-ed

Breaking down key excerpts in Brett Kavanaugh's Wall Street Journal op-ed, headlined "I Am an Independent, Impartial Judge," with my point-by-point response:

"I was very emotional last Thursday, more so than I have ever been."

More than on your wedding day, more than at the birth of your children. This is troubling, especially since you go on to say how important your family supposedly is to you.

"I might have been too emotional at times."

Saying you "might have been" is a hedge. It means you realize others think you were, and you don't agree with them, but because you want to save face, you're going to pretend they might have a point. Instead of taking responsibility for your actions, you’re seeking to minimize them, in the same way you sought to minimize your excessive drinking and bad behavior in high school and college. No wonder you were grounded so often on that calendar of yours.

"I know that my tone was sharp, and I said a few things I should not have said.:"

Minimizing, again. “Sharp?” Try rude and belligerent. "A few things?" Many, things, some of which were distortions, others of which were simply false.

"I hope everyone can understand that I was there as a son, husband and dad."

This has nothing to do with your ability to be an impartial judge, . In fact, impartiality demands that you set aside personal biases. This is not evidence of your ability to do so, but the exact opposite. If this is the kind of logic you use making legal arguments, I'm amazed that you were even considered for the bench, much less the highest court in the land.

"I testified with five people foremost in my mind: my mom, my dad, my wife, and most of all my daughters."

No, you didn't. You testified with yourself foremost in your mind. This is clear from the testimony itself. You're using your family as human shields in a war against, how did you put it? Democrats who hate Trump and are seeking revenge for the 2016 election? You certainly didn’t have the sexual assault victim who says you were the perpetrator foremost in your mind - either then or now.

“Going forward, you can count on me to be … hardworking, even-keeled, open-minded, independent and dedicated to the Constitution and the public good.”

Let’s take this one at a time. Hardworking? Except when you’re getting drunk at frat parties that make “Animal House” look tame by comparison. Even-keeled? After Thursday’s hearing, you really expect me to believe that? Open-minded? When you respond to an allegation of sexual assault by calling it a “calculated and orchestrated political hit” on behalf of the Clintons and blaming your opponents instead of expressing even a shred of empathy for survivors? Independent? In light of your history working in a political capacity for Republican politicians (whatever happened to separation of powers?) Dedicated to the Constitution: The same document prohibits slavery and involuntary servitude. News flash: Sexual assault is an attempt to subject another person to exactly that. The public good? More like your own ambition, ego and reputation.

“As a judge, I have always treated colleagues and litigants with the utmost respect.”

As a judge? The implicit admission here is that, in other facets of your life, you don’t accord such respect to others. Again, this is supported by your behavior in high school, college and at Thursday’s hearing. Always? Not on Thursday. Or don’t you consider senators to be your colleagues in upholding the Constitution you claim to hold so dear?

"I have been known for my courtesy on and off the bench. I have not changed."

Your angry, defensive and sometimes belligerent behavior during Thursday's hearing suggests otherwise. Or maybe you HAVEN'T changed. Maybe you were a discourteous jerk all along. Your behavior in high school and college would seem to confirm precisely that.

Oh, and one last thing. This op-ed piece? The Fox interview? The words “protest too much” come to mind. On top of that, any good lawyer will tell you it’s a bad idea to act as your own defense attorney. But then, you’re not a very good lawyer, are you, Mr. Kavanaugh? You’re just an insecure overachiever who has risen to the top on the coattails of political hacks who want to use you for their own purposes. Being used by others shouldn’t make you feel good, Mr. Kavanaugh, but if you’ve done it yourself, you probably don’t have any room to complain.

Kavanaugh hearing a triumph for toxic male anger

American hasn’t been made great again. It’s been sucked down into a sinkhole fueled by toxic male rage. The Kavanaugh hearings illustrated that beyond a reasonable doubt.

The problem goes much deeper than partisanship, tribalism or any other “ism.” It rests on one tragic but glaring truth, and one alone: Toxic male anger works.

Viewers, even those on the right, were moved by Christine Blasey Ford’s honest and credible testimony during the September 27 hearing. But when Brett Kavanaugh sat down to testify, it was as if nothing Ford had said mattered. Senators didn’t address the sexual assault Ford said Kavanaugh committed against her. All they cared about was the self-righteous anger he exhibited.

Even some liberal talking heads on cable news spoke favorably of a performance by a man who:

• Engaged in hyper-partisan accusations unbefitting a nominee to any court.

• Repeatedly refused to answer questions directly.

• Sought to excuse drinking and crude behavior based on his immaturity, yet at the same time tried to whitewash it by touting how mature he was for his age (if one can call studying and playing football at an all-male prep school signs of maturity). I’m sorry, but you can’t have it both ways. And you shouldn’t be able to excuse a crime by touting how many good things you’ve done. Bill Cosby, anyone?

“It’s all about me”

But most of all, Kavanaugh made it all about him, just like he probably made it all about him in that upstairs bedroom. (I say “probably” because he hasn’t been convicted in a court of law – which might happen if anyone ever conducted an impartial investigation. It’s no surprise that Kavanaugh refused to even call for an investigation, because he was obviously afraid of what an investigation could uncover. So was the committee. How disingenuous is it to say “I’ll do whatever the committee decides” when you know damn well the committee wants the same thing you do?)

In unleashing an angry, accusation-filled tirade against his enemies, Kavanaugh did exactly what the man who nominated him does in virtually every situation: refused to apologize or even acknowledge any degree of responsibility. This, predictably, earned high praise from the bloviator-in-chief. And it also cued Republican senators to follow his example. They’d appointed a sex-crimes prosecutor as their surrogate to question Professor Ford, not wanting to look like they were bullying a victim of a sexual assault. But when it came time to “question” Kavanaugh, they grabbed the microphone and went off on one tirade after another on his behalf.

Do they care about Brett Kavanaugh? Hardly. Because in their eyes, it’s all about them. Their re-election. Their power. Their egos. Their fear that someone who looks and acts a lot like them might actually be held accountable for doing something they find abhorrent. Or maybe they don’t. Maybe it’s too similar to something they’ve done or wanted to do themselves.

Red herrings

This wasn’t about presumption of innocence – it wasn’t even a court case. It’s not about the fact that it happened a long time ago and that “people can change.” To that latter point, a Slate headline noted that “Brett Kavanaugh’s testimony made it easier than ever to picture him as an aggressive, entitled teen.”

It also made it very easy to picture him acting that way on the bench, making it all about him or about the people who look like him, while focusing his toxic male anger at those who dare to be different or to suggest that he might be wrong.

If Christine Blasey Ford was telling the truth, she had every right to be flame-throwing pissed as hell at Kavanaugh and his apologists. Yet there wasn’t even a hint of anger in her testimony. Instead, she said she was “terrified” to be testifying, repeatedly deferred to the committee’s judgments and used words like “collegial” during her testimony.

Kavanaugh’s self-righteous explosions, which sent emotional shrapnel flying scattershot around the hearing room, provided quite a contrast. And you know what? They’re what won the day, along with Sen. Lindsey Graham’s even more unhinged testimony that left at least this viewer wondering why he seemed to be taking this so personally.

None of Professor Ford’s collegiality, cooperation and civility mattered – not a whit. It was all blown away by the destructive force of Category 5 Hurricane Brett.

Who we are

We were left with one inescapable conclusion: We, as a society, like toxic male anger. Because it works. In the short term. For us. Or at least for enough of us like it to elect a bully to our highest office and repeatedly look the other way when he runs roughshod over our traditions, our ethics and our fellow citizens. Christine Blasey Ford’s collegiality and civility? Signs of weakness - at least in the minds of far too many.

They excuse bullying and assault as “boys being boys” because they don’t dare give it their full-throated endorsement – even though that’s what they really want to do. If you doubt me, just look at how blatant racism, sexism and jingoism has come out of hiding. We thought we were on track to beating it. But like a stubborn and virulent disease, it was just lying dormant. We’d merely sent it underground.

Toxic male anger sends our soldiers off to die on foreign soil. It gives us negative campaigns at election time that make some of us want to turn off the television for a month until it’s all over. It excuses the excesses of drunken frat boys to the extent that it doesn’t matter what they do as long as the person from our side of the aisle gets elected. (A poll found that Republicans, by a 54 to 32 percent margin, thought Kavanaugh should be confirmed even if the accusations against him were true.)

We celebrate anti-heroes and vigilantes in our movies: people who break the rules so our side can prevail. Because our side is “right,” even righteous. We tolerate white supremacists and empower bullies in the hope that they might be on our side.

A 2-year-old’s tantrum

But toxic male anger isn’t on anyone’s side but its own. It’s the same amoral force that fuels the tantrums of 2-year-olds who have yet to learn right from wrong. The 2-year-old has an excuse. We don’t, because we do know right from wrong and we resort to it anyway.  

None of this is to say that all men are toxic or that the solution is merely to elect a bunch of women. Gender stereotyping won’t solve anything, and to suggest that males are a slave to toxic anger is an insult to those who aren’t. (It’s also to ignore the fact that such anger appeals to, and is employed by, any number of women – if it weren’t, the current occupant of the White House would have zero female supporters.)

Nor is it to suggest that anger doesn’t have a place. It’s a human reaction. But if we make it the driving force behind our most important decisions, as we did in the Kavanaugh case, we’ll end up with a country run by 2-year-olds.

If we aren’t already there.  

We've sacrificed our principles on the altar of tribal loyalty

Note: I consider this is the most important essay I’ve ever written. Read it. Be pissed off. I don’t care. Someone had to say it.

Call it the “H” word: Hypocrisy.

Some days, it seems like every other post on social media condemns the opposition for this cardinal sin. It’s little wonder in an age principle has taken a back seat to tribal identity and the quest to win at any cost.

Republicans, those free-trading, anti-Russian patrons of the Moral Majority, are foursquare behind a protectionist president who adores tariffs, loves the Russians even more and breaks the commandments like they’re going out of style. Oh, and about the so-called 11th commandment, voiced by none other than GOP patron saint Ronald Wilson Reagan – “Thou shalt not speak ill of a fellow Republican”? They’ve brushed that under the rug, as well, to placate a president who routinely does just that.

But it isn’t just Republicans. Democrats do it, too. Only white people can be racists, and only men can be sexists – or so they say – as though bad (and good) behavior somehow morphs into something else depending on who’s doing it.

This hypocrisy transcends party or ideology. It goes to something more fundamental: We’ve exchanged broad principles for narrow judgments that benefit us ... and to hell with everyone else. These days, we view identity, not the nature of an action, as crucial in determining whether that action is right or wrong.

Violence is wrong, but it’s OK to “punch a Nazi” – without due process (another principle we enforce selectively). A hate-crime murder is worse than another murder? Maybe it is worse to hate someone than to simply have no regard for that person’s life, but tell that to the guy who just lost his daughter to the robber who shot her in the head because he wanted her purse.

Oh, and by the way, it’s just fine to condemn things like assaulting women and defaming your enemies, as long as their guy is doing it. When it’s your guy, you try to ignore it, make excuses and, if none of that works, flip the script by blaming the victim.

Whither the Golden Rule?

“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”* Remember that one? It’s part of Jesus’ Greatest Hits, probably the lead track on Side 1. Confucius, Seneca the Younger of Rome and Hillel the Elder in the Talmud (among others) all said something similar, so you can’t beg off by dismissing it as Christian dogma. A whole lot of non-Christian folks have said the same thing.

Under this principle, if someone treats a white person unfairly, it’s just as bad as if someone treats a black person cruelly – because it isn’t the victim’s identity that matters. The behavior is cruel no matter who the victim is. Bringing the victim’s identity into it takes the focus off of the behavior, which is where it should be.

This is what apologists for sexual assault try to do, too. These sleazeballs say the victim was “asking for it” by dressing “too provocatively.” They flip the script, attempting to make victims responsible for an act of violence committed against them, because of the victim’s identity. As a woman. As someone who has the audacity to express some degree of individuality and expect not to be assaulted for it. Imagine that.

When we condemn people based on identity rather than action, we strike at the heart of principles – like the pursuit of happiness and freedom of expression – that this country was founded on. When we abandon principle for the sake of identity, those principles get discarded, too. What’s left is a dictatorship, or the building blocks of one.

But people are scared to death of invoking principles because they know it can come back to bite them. What if they have skeletons in their own closet? It’s much safer to demonize (or canonize) someone else based on his or her identity than it is to invoke a broad principle that can – perish the thought – be applied to little old you.

Political precedent

Politicians get away with this all the time. Case in point: Republicans who refused to vote on a Supreme Court candidate nominated by a Democratic president for nearly a year, saw nothing wrong with trying to force a hasty vote on an unpopular Republican nominee facing serious questions about his character.

But when principles are thrown out the window, character goes right along with them. Identity is what’s important. This guy is a Republican nominee. He’s golden, regardless of what he might have done. That Democratic guy? We had to block him because he was a Democrat. Republicans are doing the same thing in defending the current president against ethical charges after impeaching a Democratic president facing ethical charges of his own – a president whom, naturally, Democrats defended because he was a Democrat.

Loyalty is valued over conscience, and winning is esteemed more highly than playing by the rules. So much for what we used to teach our children: “It’s how you play the game.”

When you have no principles, its easy to argue that principles should be invoked selectively, because they’re no longer important in their own right. They’re weapons to be employed in fallacious arguments to destroy the opposition. But the more they’re used in this way, the less credibility they have. People aren’t stupid. They see what these politicians are trying to do, and they don’t like it.

The unfortunate byproduct of this, however, is that the principles themselves become tarnished because of how they’re (mis)used. When principle no longer carries any weight in an argument, people turn to something that does: identity politics. The term is most often associated with the left and conversations about race, but it’s far bigger than that. The right does it just as much and, sometimes, even more blatantly, dismissing anything negative as a product of the opposition’s “fake news” machine.

The right demonizes the mainstream media, regardless of whether the reporting is principled and the content is accurate. The left, meanwhile, demonizes white males, regardless of whether they’re advocates for equal rights or anti-immigrant, chauvinist pigs. What we don’t want to look at here is the fact that both sides are engaged in the same behavior: They’re putting identity ahead of principle.

The Fallout

This is how we get things we say we hate: things like negative campaigning and officeholders who refuse to apologize for anything they’ve ever done, no matter how questionable or even heinous. This is why we have to have a #MeToo movement instead of a society that respects women from the get-go. It’s why neo-Nazis feel emboldened and some people feel like it’s OK to pop them one: because we’ve abandoned our principles.

We’d rather demonize than apologize, because “the other’s” identity as our enemy is more important than our own principles. This is how armies behave during wartime: They churn out biased propaganda and dehumanize the enemy, so a soldier’s conscience – the seat of those principles – doesn’t get in the way of killing. The fact that we’re doing this during peacetime, against our own fellow citizens, illustrates just what’s happening to us.

We’re not just hypocrites, we’re heartless ones.

This is what happens when we mortgage our principles on the altar of our bitterness for the sake of mere convenience. If this is the kind of identity we want as individuals, or as a nation, history will judge us a colossal failure.

* Note: I like to add “if you were in their shoes” to this principle.

Read more political essays by Stephen H. Provost in Media Meltdown, available on Amazon.

Political fundamentalism: Our true constitutional crisis

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“Your right to use your fist ends at the tip of my nose.”

My father, an esteemed professor of political science, taught me that one. The idea is that rights – even the most fundamental ones – aren’t absolute.

Yes, I have the right to bear arms, but I can have that right rescinded if I’m sent to prison. I have the right to free speech, but that right doesn’t permit me to incite a riot. I have the right to practice my religion, but not to forcibly convert people or launch a jihad.

The limits on our rights should be obvious, but they seem to be growing less and less so. As politics become more polarized and positions become more hardened, more people are viewing issues in absolute terms.

This has long been a hallmark of religious fundamentalism, which views compromise as a dirty word and sees “situational ethics” as a tool of the devil to tempt the righteous. But of late, political partisanship has started to look more and more like a religious cult.

Identity, not issues

Donald Trump has tapped into this by casting himself as a pseudo-messiah who alone can fix it – whatever “it” is, and even if “it” doesn’t need to be fixed. But the problem extends far beyond Trump’s opportunism. It’s a rigidity of belief, a dogmatic loyalty that transcends issues and defines the true believer’s identity.

It’s not just Republicans; it exists on the Democratic side, too. Witness the anger among party regulars when Bernie Sanders, a (gasp) independent, dared to challenge loyal partisan Hillary Clinton for the presidential nomination.

My point isn’t to rehash the 2016 primary or general election. That’s been done to death, resurrected and keeps walking around like a zombie with a score to settle. It’s to illustrate that both sides have become more concerned with identity than with content. That’s why Trump can act in ways that seem antithetical to Republican ideals (Russia, tariffs, personal character) with impunity. Think about it: Trump himself has, at best, a passing acquaintance with what’s in the Bible, but he can refer to the Bible as a mark of identity, and Christians will stand up and cheer.

It's also why Trump’s status gets all the attention, and things like health care, education and crime barely register on the national news. Events like the Flint water crisis, the tragedy in Puerto Rico and the Las Vegas shooting (remember that?) break into the headlines temporarily, only to quickly disappear and be forgotten. They’ve had their 15 minutes of fame. The woman dying in a hospital because she can’t afford a prescription and the homeless guy who couldn’t repay his student loan don’t even get 15 seconds.

We care about identity, not issues. About labels, not people.

This isn’t just a result of tribalism (although it certainly is that), it’s fundamentalism, the engine that drove the Russian Revolution, the rise of Mao Zedong and, yes, Hitler’s ascension. On the surface, fundamentalism seems to be about strict adherence to dogma. But it’s really about magnifying personal power through the lens of identity, usually provided by labels or charismatic leaders. If those labels or leaders are challenged, principle will be sacrificed in a heartbeat to protect them.

People have asked me why I dislike identity politics (which is, incidentally, practiced by both sides). There’s your answer.

Objectifying our principles

As positions are hardened and battle lines are drawn, the Constitution begins to function the way the Bible does in the world of Trump. It becomes less a source of guiding principle and more an object to be defended. Its contents and meaning become less relevant; all that matters is the identity it conveys on true believers.

They see the Second Amendment as an absolute right not only to bear, but to brandish and even to use firearms, including the most lethal. Especially if they’re the ones holding the guns.

They believe the First Amendment protects even speech that incites others to violence or curtails their rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. As long as they’re not on the receiving end of it.

They invoke it to defend the practice of religion – even when that practice involves discrimination, bigotry or passing restrictive laws based against “outsiders.” As long as their the ones making those laws.

This us-versus-them view of the world is the root of the problem. “We” are always right, good and superior. “They” are always wrong, evil and inferior. Such fundamentalist paranoia about “the world” and “heretics” and “unbelievers” has infected party politics to a degree not seen since the Southern white establishment’s resistance to the civil rights movement. It’s reflected in the attitude of many toward immigrants, regardless of legal status, and toward people belonging to the opposite party.

It has been, of course, the justification for slavery, pillage, murder and genocide.

Strict manipulation

Such attitudes are buttressed by the concept of “strict constitutionalism” – of applying the Constitution “the way the framers intended.” This sounds noble on the face of it. But not only is it problematic, it’s ludicrous and, in the end, dishonest.

It’s problematic because we can’t get inside the framers’ heads to determine exactly what they intended. We can consult their writings, but guess what? The framers didn’t all agree on everything. They reached compromises. In fact, based on their actions, that may be clearest conclusion we can draw about their intent: that they agreed on the value of compromise – quite inconvenient in the current political climate, where compromise is viewed as weak or downright evil.

(This aversion to compromise is, not surprisingly, another hallmark of religious fundamentalism. You don’t compromise with outsiders, unbelievers and heretics. You don’t give the devil a foothold. In American politics, you don’t call him the devil. That’s something Ayatollahs do. Instead you label him – or her – according to his or her political party or race or sexual orientation. You say he’s a communist or a Nazi. Or you call him names like “liddle” and “crazy” and “sneaky” and “crooked.”)

Now, where were we? Oh, yes ...

Applying the Constitution as the framers intended is ludicrous because they intended it for the world they lived in. Not ours. They set forth a series guiding principles were meant to be universal, or nearly so, not a hard-and-fast code of conduct.

They weren’t intended to be applied the same way every time; broad principles never are. Sometimes, “love thy neighbor” means to give of one’s self out of compassion; other times, it means practicing tough love. It all depends on the circumstances, and circumstances have changed dramatically since the framers’ era. They lived in a world of newsletters, bayonets and horse-drawn carriages, not social media, assault weapons and Teslas. They couldn’t have envisioned our world, and they didn’t try to. They counted on us to follow the principles they set down, not try to replicate how they would have interpreted them.

So, it’s ultimately dishonest to try to get inside the framers’ heads and apply things the same way they might have. It’s like trying to get inside the head of God – which is what religious fundamentalists do all the time. And guess what? The dictates of such a “God” nearly always wind up echoing their own biases and furthering their own agendas. In the same way, strict constitutionalists tend to substitute their own biases and agendas for what they imagine the framers might have intended. This isn’t strict constructionism.

It’s reconstructionism and, strictly speaking, a power grab.

The upshot

These days, many Americans no longer think twice about sacrificing principle in achieving their goals, whether those principles are contained Bible, Constitution or somewhere else. To them, identity is more important. “Winning” is more important.

Welcome to the Machiavellian States of America.

Neither Islam nor Christianity is the true threat to our republic. The real danger lies in the fundamentalist approach to both that has spread to our politics.

If we really believe in the Constitution, we have to stop “defending” it and start abiding by the principles it sets forth. If we don’t, we’ll be spitting in the face of the framers we pretend to revere and exchanging their vision for the very thing they fought to be free of: tyranny

We’ve started down a road that leads us to a place where we won’t recognize ourselves ten years from now. We won’t recognize our country. And worse still, a good many of us may actually like it.