Fundamentalist Neocon Lightbulbs

[FireGarden]

http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/174837/tomdispatch_interview_james_carroll_american_fundamentalisms

Tomdispatch: I recently heard this joke: How many neocons does it take to screw in a light bulb? The answer: Neocons don't believe in light bulbs, they declare war on evil and set the house on fire.

[...] James Carroll: Well, embedded in that joke is a central idea: that what matters is not outcome, but purity of intent. A mark of a fundamentalist mindset is that one’s own personal virtue is the ultimate value. The American fundamentalist ethos of the Cold War prepared us to destroy the world. In other words, a world absolutely devastated through nuclear war was acceptable as an outcome because it reflected the virtue of our opposition to the evil of communism. Better dead than red.

[…] Better the world destroyed than taken over by communism. It’s profoundly nihilistic, which is also one of the marks of the fundamentalist mindset. An irony, of course, is that so much, then and now, is done in the name of realism, but this is such a profoundly unrealistic way of thinking.

[...] The point here is that the initial city-on-a-hill impulse has never stopped being part of our self-understanding — the idea of America as having a mission to the world or, in biblical terms, a mission to the gentiles. “Go forth and teach all nations,” Jesus commands. This commission is implicit in George Bush’s war to establish democracy — or “freedom” — everywhere. When Americans talk about freedom, it’s our secular code word for salvation. There’s no salvation outside the church; there’s no freedom outside the American way of life.

[…] Think of that phrase — “manifest destiny.” A key doctrine in what I am calling American fundamentalism. It remains an inch below the surface of the American belief system. What’s interesting is that this sense of special mission cuts across the spectrum — right wing/left wing, liberals/conservatives — because generally the liberal argument against government policies since World War II is that our wars — Vietnam then, Iraq now — represent an egregious failure to live up to America’s true calling. We’re better than this. Even antiwar critics, who begin to bang the drum, do it by appealing to an exceptional American missionizing impulse. You don’t get the sense, even from most liberals, that — no, America is a nation like other nations and we’re going to screw things up the way other nations do.

Widens the definiton of religion, really.
I would have thought that, if Americans were religiously American (ie: put American ideology and values first), rather than patrioticly American (ie: loyalty to king and country) then the world would be a better place.

Americans are following Bush rather than American values. Does that put me into that last paragraph? -- saying that America isn't living up to its values, perhaps, rather than not to its "true calling"

Hey, I'm not even an American.

 

[Charlie Monoxide]

Isn't this like the "Aristocrats" joke?

Charlie (destroyed the village in order to save it) Monoxide