Jeff Jarvis steps back and looks at what has happened in the Terri Schiavo case and the FCC’s clamp down on indecency and comes to this conclusion:
The religious right is separating itself from the rest of America. The theocrats may have finally gone too far too often.
TMV agrees. I’m about to go on a trip to the East Coast but tomorrow will try to do a post/review of Independent Nation in which John Avlon (who used to advise Bill Clinton and Rudy Giuliani) effectively makes the case that there IS a center in American politics and that many (but not all) of those who have captured it have won elections. The past few weeks may eventually be seen as a watershed in American politics….one way or another.
More from Jarvis:
They have been aided and abetted — but ultimately undermined — by a media that bought their PR and presented the loud voices of a few as the voice of the nation marching to the right and up to the altar. But the overdose of overdoing it that we’re seeing on TV these last few weeks may just be the catalyst that causes a backlash, that reminds us that we are a secular nation of churchgoers and that we value separation of church and state over either church or state: That is our mainstream.
Jarvis is right on the button and we ask you to consider this:
- There are always gradations in every political faction, in every party. Over the past few weeks we’ve seen one one extreme faction successfully pressure the Congress and the President (who according to one report is now claiming he didn’t want to sign that bill after all — what a GREAT Profile In Courage THAT is…) to take unprecedented action while not any making a real attempt to win over the general public first or build a working coalition for their position via arguments. It was sheer, unadulterated, pure power politics.
- Polls (which continue to be discounted on methodological grounds by those who desperately do not wish to believe them) show that the vast majority of Americans repudiate Tom DeLay’s and George Bush’s action. Why? Because their actions violated our culture of being a SECULAR NATION of church, synagogue and mosque-goers in this country — what Jarvis calls the “mainstream,” and what Avlon calls “the center.”
- This group further distanced itself from our country’s mainstream by execrable rhetoric suggesting that those who did not agree with them on this issue were somehow lovers of death. This is the peak (or nadir) of the rhetoric of moral superiority and smugness. This excessive rhetoric was condemned by many conservatives, particularly those who are thoughtful libertarians. Previously respected politicos and journalists who used this rhetoric will now find that they’ve lost considerable credibility with many people — no matter how much their supporters try to defend them.
More from Jarvis:
In the case of Terri Schiavo, we have heard angry, even frightening rhetoric from the religious right: people in Florida and in Congress accusing judges of murdering Schiavo; the Schindlers and their advocates, many of them ministers, turning on even their allies (even on Jeb Bush if he doesn’t do enough to satisfy them, if he doesn’t do the impossible); online advocates saying that the laws and the courts should be damned; and conservatives throwing over their political philosophy opposing federalism and government interference in service of their religious philosophy.
It’s not just Schiavo.
It’s also about the FCC and censorship, where we have a few, a very few religious nannies trying to tell the rest of us what we cannot hear and see. And, again, the religious conservatives throw away their allegiance to small government and their opposition to government interference in citizens’ lives in favor of their religious orthodoxy. (And religious Democrats ignore their belief in free speech — not for religious principle but instead for cynical political gain … which, I could argue, is worse, for it is unprincipled.)
Of course, it’s about abortion as well: Every time I drive my kids to their orthodontist, I pass what must be a clinic and see protesters standing outside not just protesting but trying to shock with their images and words. They don’t appear to be merely protesting or just angry; they look extreme.
And, he also notes:
And it’s about sex: At the same time they oppose abortion, the religious right opposes sex education beyond pushing abstinence with young people; in the age of AIDS, that’s doubly dangerous.
Jarvis sees this as an attempt to claim moral ground.
And, indeed, whatever happened to the days when American politics was dominated by intellectual arguments over policies delivered by statesmen, lawyers, and patriots from both parties (that both parties acknowledged as such)?
Too often (but not always) the politics of the religious right seems dominated by ideologicial cartoon-characters who admonish Americans who disagree over policies with thinly disguised suggestions that they are uncaring, perhaps evil people,immoral know-nothings who don’t value life. It’s therefore unsurprising that 21st Century politics is marked by the immediate tendency (on the right AND left) to demonize anyone with whom people disagree.
It stands to reason that if your opponent is EVIL, you must communicate it by the language of DEMONIZATION…which also means discounting their views and imposing your will if you can get people to do it (for instance, by pressuring Congress to intervene) rather than trying to aggregate interests by building workable political coalitions that maximize consensus and minimize confrontation.
What does Jarvis see happening? He suggests the GOP might disassociate themselves from this fringe, particularly if the Democrats (who have been largely silent as a party on this controversy) can get their act together.
He also notes that the press got a lot of this controversy wrong:
A vast majority of people objected to Congress’ intervention. But the press got that wrong in its running commentary, just as they get wrong the notion that we are a nation of red vs. blue extremes when, in fact, we are the nation of the vast mainstreams, a mainstream of individuals who all hold their own beliefs. Just as the Congress should looks at this episode and the polls and realize they blew it, so should the press.
Once again: just LOOK AT THE POLLS showing some 80 percent of Americans did NOT like the Bush/DeLay intervention and were in favor of removing the feeding tube. That in itself is NOT an argument for removing that tube; but the majority consensus shows how backhandedly Congress and the President treated public opinion — or how poorly attuned they were to it. We tell little kids “every act has consquences”; hopefully Bush/DeLay will face some on this political debacle marked by an unprecedented Congressional action endorsed by a President who rushed to Washington to sign the bill ratifying it.
The past few weeks we did NOT see a democratic government operating by consensus or afflicted by Tyranny of the Majority; we saw the majority party being hijacked by a MINORITY OF THE AMERICAN PUBLIC — something at variance with how our country is set up and something that should be troubling to the majority of Americans from both parties.
More Jarvis:
This is not about one true religion ruling the day; that is what our ancestors left so many years ago. This is about the democratic tension that occurs as our society struggles with what is right. That struggle is never over but we are blessed to be in a nation that allows us to struggle freely….And I am posting this on Easter morning as millions of Americans go to church — huge numbers of them who may not be devout in media terms and, in fact, go only once or twice a year. These are the reasonably religious, not the zealots, not the theocrats, just Americans.
Read Jarvis’s post in full.
Then email it to Bush/DeLay.
IMPORTANT NOTE: For an perspective on the Schiavo case not covered on most blogs and in the media be sure to read William Stothers’ special post here written for this site.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.