Senator Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) believes that by striking down archaic sodomy laws the Supreme Court has paved the way for society's acceptance of bestiality.

Televangelist Pat Robertson describes feminism as a "socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians."

And on and on it goes.

Sadly, these folks misconstrue pluralism, tolerance and free will as being incompatible with "the truth." But what they understand--and do not want other Americans to--is by "the truth" the mean their own highly selective definition. And to that end, these members and friends of the Religious Right are hostile to any variation of "the truth" that conflicts with their narrow understanding. And they are especially hostile to any differing version of "the truth" that would interfere with the economic agenda of a would-be plutocracy that finances much of their cultural agenda, one that believes firmly in laissiez-faire economics.

Standing squarely in the path of such unrestrained and often undisciplined self-interest, Liberalism advocates a muscular activist government in order to balance the interests of those with superfluous economic power with that of those less powerful. As such, certain economic royalists demand that Liberalism's good name must be destroyed and dragged through the mud; its strengths of tolerance and flexibility redefined as "godless."

It is no secret that the economic muscle behind Opus Dei is a group of wealthy individuals, such as Tom Monaghan and his fellow members of  Legatus. On the fundamentalist side, the Unification Church's Sun Myung Moon finances the very conservative Washington Times and has made a significant donation to Jerry Falwell's Liberty Baptist College, bailing it out of financial problems in 1994. (i) The Coors family regularly donates to religious based not-for-profits such as Pat Robertson's Regent University and Morality in the Media. California State Senator Rob Hurtt, owner of the Container Supply Company is leading supporter of James C. Dobson's Focus on the Family.

Yet, religious hostility is a strange argument to use against a political philosophy whose greatest heroes include clergy such as Reinhold Niebuhr, Martin Luther King Jr. and Monsignor John A. Ryan, as well as a political heritage having a direct links to the Catholic Distributive Justice movements. As noted in The Road to Theocratic Serfdom, there is a direct path from Pope Leo VIII's Rerum Novarum to Hilaire Belloc's distributism to The Bishop's Plan of 1919 ghost-written by Monsignor Ryan and finally to the New Deal.

There exists a similar path from the Abolitionists to the Social Gospel progressives to the Civil Rights movement. Their message is still the heart and soul of many mainstream Protestant denominations. Thus they too have cynical enemies who seek to eradicate this voice of conscience. At the top of this list are neoconservatives--those folks who make it a point to talk about "the corrosive effects of liberalism." At first glance this group of Rightists may seem a strange place to start, but it is not. William Kristol's the Project for the New American Century has very close ties to the Institute for Religion and Democracy, the culturally conservative think tank that is actively infiltrating the mainstream Protestant churches with the intent of carrying out their cynical message.

But could it be when the Religious Right and their agents call liberals "godless" they just might be compensating for their own moral insecurity? Paraphrasing Theodore Roosevelt, Liberalism draws the line at misconduct, not wealth. Then could it be that when they attack the secularity of Liberalism they are subconsciously acknowledging the undisciplined behavior that results from their own ideologies?

Wikipedia tells us that:

Psychological projection (or projection bias) is a defense mechanism in which one attributes ("projects") to others, one's own unacceptable or unwanted thoughts or/and emotions. Projection reduces anxiety by allowing the expression of the unwanted subconscious impulses/desires without letting the ego recognize them. The theory was developed by Sigmund Freud and further refined by his daughter Anna Freud.

For the all the Religious Right's bluster about secular Liberalism's morality bringing down Western Civilization, the facts indicate otherwise. As writer Joe Conason keenly observed in his book Big Lies:

As New York Times columnist Paul Krugman noted not long ago, "the red states do a bit worse than blue states when you look at indicators of responsibility and commitment to family. Children in red states are more likely to be born to teenagers or unmarried mothers; in 1999, 33.7 percent of babies were born out of wedlock versus 32.5 percent in the blue states. National divorce statistics are spotty, but per capita there are 60 percent more divorces in Montana than in New Jersey."

Actually, the available divorce data show that marital breakdown is considerably more common in the Bible Belt than in the secular Northeast. During the "decadent" Clinton years, that trend was somewhat mitigated by nationwide improvements in social indicators, including teenage pregnancy and drug abuse as well as divorce. While those changes provided a respite from two decades of increasing social trouble, they were more attributable to better economic opportunities and higher family incomes than to sermons by fundamentalist clergymen. The percentages of broken families and unwed mothers remained higher in places like Arkansas and Oklahoma than in New York and Massachusetts.(ii)

As if to compound those statistics on family stability, FBI crime statistics for 2004 establish that states such as Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Jersey and New York have murder rates of five (5) or less per 100,000 while states such as Alabama, Alaska, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas and South Carolina all exceed that parameter. With that in mind, does the eye-for-eye justice often advocated by many on the Religious Right actually work? The numbers show that the highest murders rates exist in regions of the country where capital punishment is most often practiced.

As previously mentioned, Religious Right conservatives often preach a gospel of laissez-faire economics. But acting solely out of arbitrary economic self-interest eventually clashes with most objective notions (as well as mainstream Judeo-Christian notions) of the common good. It is nothing more than the economic tenants of Ayn Rand Objectivism cloaked in religious garb. A leading retail chain such as Wal-Mart may be able to sell its products at its "target price" but it will do so at the expense of providing a living wage for its employees, thus denying them their right to self-development. Many on the Right do not see economics primarily as a human endeavor and as such conveniently not subject to a moral constraint.

There are the cultural warriors who would gladly manipulate the beliefs of religious Americans solely to maintain political power. But first they must distract the public from the hypocrisies and shortcomigs of their own philosophical agenda. This is accomplished by creating false or exagerated claims about their liberal opponents. Many of these same folks are even willing to debase faith into a form of Christian nationalism. In this way the Golden Rule is thus exchanged for the rule of gold.

Now, which is the political philosophy that is better defined as "godless"?

NOTES
(i) See-"A Church In Flux Is Flush With Cash," by Marc Fisher and Jeff Leen, Washington Post.com, November 23, 1997; Page A01
(ii) Joe Conason, Big Lies, pages 109-110