Friday, March 11, 2005

Why do Conservatives and Fundamentalists work together?

Conservatives are secular and are applying mostly secular responses to modernization. Much of what they are resisting is government interference with business personnel policies, monopolies, cartels, and stock-and-bond sales and government support of union organization. Forcing companies to pay for externalities (pollution and such) and injuries to workers are also things they resist.

Fundamentalists are religious (both Christian and Muslim) and they, too, are attempting to resist modernization. Their problem is that modern society and even the old mainstream American religions have been moving religion out of its prior all-encompassing social positions and relegating religion to various forms of personal psychological support. The down-grading of the Bible as the central source of human education, the pressures to make government less amenable to religious interference, and the freeing of women (result of the "pill") and gays from penalties for their sexual "deviations" from the accepted religious standard are all examples of the social downgrading of religion.

The religious are not accepting this without complaint. Their methods are to demand that their religion be accepted as superior to modern state structures and modern (read "Enlightenment") forms of thought. Note especially that they demand that they be given the role of moral arbiter.

In both cases the conservatives and the religious fundamentalists can agree that the real problem they face is government centralization and the government pressures to enforce social diversity and economic fairness. This is the direct result of Industrialization (which causes an increase in diversity) and Nationalism (which makes government a lot more important to the individual citizen without going through some intermediate organization like a church, city, company or local aristocrat or gentry.)

You can see why they would be allies. Their mutual problem is rejection of modernism.

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