The principles of independence and conformity have always been at odds. In the recent past, during what might be described as the New Age period, independent thought was valued. Now during what I will call our Patriotic Period, conformity and tradition have supposedly come to be most valued.
Both approaches are part of the human psyche.
One is guided by desire for knowledge and creativity, the other seeks both protection and power.
The New Age approach seeks to learn about new worlds and explore hidden potential, expanding into the universe and the future. The exploration of space was perhaps an optimistic expression of this ideal of independence and exploration.
The Patriotic approach seeks safety and identity often as part of a group. It fears the new as potentially dangerous. Its guiding emotion is fear and conservatives understandably seek power as a way to protect their values and ideals. However, such power can also be used aggressively, as we see with Venezuela, Iraq, Greenland, on the streets of LA and Minneapolis, and in the dozens of court cases striking down the President’s Executive Orders as illegal.
Many people fear new ideas, foreign people, and even new kinds of music, art and food. They threaten lives that are safe and secure from change. With a pessimistic and fearful mindset, all novelty is suspect and is sometimes considered evil.
Individuals, groups, and countries move back and forth between these two extremes.
Traditional religion and government institutions would in theory be strengthened and embraced in a truly conservative movement which would seek to study, maintain, and revive important past ideas, institutions, and values that were in danger of being lost or forgotten.
But many of the claims of reviving tradition are false, as older ideas and traditions are being reshaped and corrupted by the wealthy and power hungry.
For instance, ambitious Evangelical leaders who seek to spread the Gospel are often distorting and corrupting it to curry favor with the wealthy and powerful.
Conservative judges ignore and rewrite the Constitution and defy long established precedents, while claiming to try to bring back some form of traditional legal system that never existed. The wealthy have captured the Supreme Court Justices who are falsely claiming to be conservative in order to create a new system of laws and interpretations that benefit them alone.
With illiteracy and ignorance of the Bible, the Constitution, and US history at an all-time high, a form of counterfeit conservatism is being pedaled to the masses who do not even recognize themselves and the ideas they embrace as radical (the opposite of conservative).
When there is near zero knowledge of history, people will have pride in and cling to their claimed conservative ideas that do not resemble anything in the past. They are conserving little from the past but they are convinced that they are honoring their ancestors and the traditions of the past.
For instance, if they knew anything about World War II, they would recognize that as modern “conservatives,” they are embracing fas*cist ideas that their parents and grandparents died by the tens of thousands to defeat. These fake conservatives support fas*cism. They play the victim claiming that being against fas*cism is evil, conspiratorial, and criminal. Conservative? Not even close.
If they knew the Bible, they would realize Christ cherished strangers and foreigners and told his disciples to help and support them.
There is little to support any form of nationalism (much less Christian Nationalism) in the Bible. This is a made-up conservative value adopted by ignorant Christians to promote their own political power.
If they understood the Bible, they would realize that Christ and his close disciples told Christians to do a great many things as Christians, and not falsely claim that the primary responsibility of Christians is missionary work and “spreading the Word.” Jesus clearly said that the greatest command was to love God and your neighbor – not to proselytize.
If Evangelicals read the Bible, their very narrow missionary focus could not be justified, and they would be forced to rethink their entire religious approach and orientation.
Then, they would be much less likely to sell their souls to ambitious. amoral politicians who promise them control of schools, the government, and the media in a desperate effort to get others to believe what they believe and act like they think people should act.
If they knew Christian history, they would know that Christian leaders took Christian education out of the public schools in the first half of the 1800’s because they could not agree on a common curriculum or a common translation of the Bible. They would not falsely claim that secularists and the courts removed Christian public education.
This false “conservative” belief has been promoted and used by politicized Christian leaders to claim that Christians are victims and to justify their beloved “culture war.”
If they understood the 250-year-old Constitution and the three co-equal branches of government, they could never accept or support a riot by “conservatives” to endanger Congress and try to stop a Presidential election from being certified.
They would also never support a “unitary executive,” which closely resembles what people in the past called a dictator.
In terms of recent history, if conservatives followed the mainstream news reports of Fox News paying $787 million for defaming Dominion Voting Systems and numerous Fox executives admitting under oath during discovery that NONE of them believed the election was stolen, they could have spared themselves much frustration and from living and breathing a lie all these past months.
If they understood their Constitutional rights as citizens and residents, they would never accept the Supreme Court allowing police to arrest groups of people without probable cause, based on their looks or “foreign” mode of speaking, as federal police are doing in California.
They also would never accept the Supreme Court ruling the President is above the law. This is so clearly not “conservative” unless conservatives are trying to bring back a monarchy.
In short, a vote for a “conservative” President or Congressperson is generally a vote for a radical with little respect for history or tradition — a phony conservative.
There are many other false and radical beliefs branded as “conservative” and promoted by right-wing media organizations and religious leaders.
The desire to go back to the past is laudable when they are going back to an actual past whether religious, political, or historical.
It is less praiseworthy when they embrace a phony, doctored version of the past constructed for them by billionaire media barons, ambitious Christian leaders, and convicted criminal Presidents.
The dynamic of independence versus conformity is certainly being played out in our contemporary politics and religion.
However, strategically manipulating the past to promote false histories makes sincere efforts to return to a conservative past seriously flawed, and such manipulation is a direct threat to both religious groups and to our democratic institutions.
