The source of many of the current crises afflicting the world today is not generated by a conflict between economic systems (market v planned economies), religions (christian v. muslims), geographic regions (east v. west) or governmental systems (republican v authoritarian), although all of these are used to justify the hatred and the hostility. No, the most significant conflicts sweeping the globe today are the between the Theocratic State and Secular State.
The recent imbroglio between the Israeli military and the Gaza relief flotilla is but a recent and highly emotional example of this conflict.
There can be no question that despite the trappings of democracy, the current government of Israel has all the earmarks of a Theocratic State. A religious elite, exempt from defending their way of life and excused from contribution to the common good, has a control on the reins of power far out of proportion to their numbers. As some jewish commentators have reminded us, the modern Israeli state is a zionist and not necessarily a jewish state.
But the focus on Israel and the botched raid on the flotilla, although a clear example of the warlike, and arrogant nature of the Theocratic State, is misplaced. In fact, what is happening there in Israel is happening elsewhere. In almost every country of the world the forces of the Theocratic State are on the march. Their goal is nothing less than the eradication of the Liberal Secular State.
The Theocratic State and the Secular State are at war, with the fate of liberty and democracy hanging in the balance. They, these forces of Theocracy, are the heirs to the forces of authoritarianism most recently represented in the economic determinism of Communism that itself succeeded to the authoritarian mantle of the dictatorial national state epitomized by National Socialism.
Who are these people?
They are the fundamentalist religious elites who have, for their own purposes, allied themselves with the malefactors of great wealth in their lust for power. They include the conservatives in the Vatican and the Roman Catholic episcopate, the mega-church and electronic church ministers in American fundamentalist evangelical movement, the radical Muslim clerics, the leaders of the ultraconservative parties in israel and other like minded theocratic elites throughout the world.
Their enemy, in all cases, is the Liberal Secular State and the constitutions of those states that enshrine the secular nature, and inalienable rights inherent in a secular democracy.
Who stands in their way?
Liberal secular democracy does. Although the theocratic elites may point to their rivals in other emerging theocratic states as their enemy, the Liberal Secular State is viewed as too weak and too compromised to recognize the threats from without and within. It requires the institutional trappings of authoritarian commitment, provided by these Theocratic leaders and their allied fifth columns, until these foreign and domestic threats are eradicated,
We must remember, as a rule, secular democracies rarely go to war when their population is knowledgeable and informed except in defense against direct attacks on their homeland. When a theocratic inspired politics allies itself with the military industrial complex, war is well neigh assured and permanent war required until the triumph of one theology over all or Armageddon.
We must not view these conflicts as between atheists and theists, christians and muslims, conservatives and liberals, that is what the theocratic elite want. The Liberal Secular State protects all these differences and that is precisely what the proponents of the Theocratic State find anathema.
The essential conflict in the world has always been between those who lust for authoritarian power and those who resist, only their names change over time. Today the authoritarian forces are led by the Theocrats and it is only the Liberal Secular State that can resist and defeat them.