The American right, on a path of no return toward theocracy

By Boss Gu, rewritten in English by Mr. Y

The American right is a powerful political force, but few truly understand it. In terms of party politics worldwide, the American right stands out.

The United States is a unique country, even among developed countries, an anomaly.

The official definition of the first three decades of modern Chinese history (after the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949) is a period of leftist error. Living in this environment has made many Chinese deeply wary of the errors of the left. However, being so far removed from monarchical society and having never experienced theocracy, many forget that there is another kind of calamity in the world: the calamity of theocracy.

We often think of countries like Iran that have returned from secularism to theocracy and rarely consider that countries like the United States are also facing a theocracy's return.

But when discussing the American right, we cannot help but discuss the theocracy threat in the United States.

1. Secular Europe and Religious America

For a long period of time, a popular view in China has been to use the development of Europe and the United States to prove the "advanced nature of religion." Their logic goes like this: 1. Europe and the United States are more developed than we are; 2. Europeans and Americans are religious; and the conclusion is: So, China's underdevelopment is due to a lack of religious belief.

But in fact, it wasn't religion that put Europe and the United States ahead of us. Quite the contrary: it was the Reformation, which broke the oppression of medieval religious theocracy, that ushered in the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, and the Industrial Revolution.

At that time, Europe not only had monarchical and aristocratic power, but also a powerful divine authority. The ascension of European kings to the throne was not legal without the Pope's blessing, a concept known as "divine right of kings". Religion used to be a powerful and influential center of power in Europe.

The Pew Research Center, an American think tank, produced a global report on religious belief, analyzing religious beliefs in dozens of countries. The report found that the percentage of people in China who voted that "religion is very important in their lives" was 3%, the lowest globally.

The percentages in European and American countries are indeed higher than Chinese. But that doesn't mean they're truly high. In fact, for most developed countries, this figure isn't high, mostly between 10% and 20%, far below the global average of 55%. So is religion closely related to economic development?

The above chart lists the most religious countries in the world.

For example, Ethiopia, where 98% believe religious belief is important to daily life, 62% of the population believes in God, and 36% believes in Allah. Also, Uganda (86%), Honduras (90%), India (80%), Indonesia (93%), Nigeria (88%), and Brazil (72%). These countries include Catholic, Muslim, and Hindu nations. The blue countries on the map that consider religion unimportant include China (3%), Japan (10%), Germany (10%), the United Kingdom (10%), France (11%), Russia (16%), Australia (18%), and Canada (27%).

In European countries, the influence of religion is waning. European society has effectively moved away from theocracy and become increasingly secular.

People in wealthy and powerful nations find religion unimportant, while people in relatively poor and underdeveloped countries do. This is a universal trend across the globe.

However, only one developed country in the world is deeply religious: the alternative United States, where 53% of the population considers religion important. Today's dollar bills still bear the famous religious motto: "IN GOD WET RUST! IN GOD WE TRUST!" And today, every American president takes the oath of office on a Bible.

The United States has always considered itself a nation ruled by God. In the minds of most Americans, the United States has no king; the president is chosen by God, and the president's will and power can never surpass God.

Of course, most American presidents are very modest, and none dare to claim to be chosen by God, with the exception of Dǒngwáng (懂王), who constantly claims to be "the chosen one."

The logic behind the US president's oath of office on a Bible is that one relies on God to control one's heart. Only by conquering one's inner evil desires can one better abide by the Constitution and laws. However, the US Constitution does not require the president-elect to place his or her hand on the Bible when taking the oath of office. However, since the first US president, George Washington, set the precedent, and every US president to date has been a Christian, swearing in on the Bible has become a customary practice.

This practice would be impossible in European society. If a multiethnic and multireligious nation still emphasizes a single religion on its national currency and in the presidential inauguration ceremony, it would be unacceptable to believers of other religions.

The United States was founded by Protestants fleeing religious persecution. It can be said that the Protestants of the time, upholding Locke's natural rights and theory of government, were the world's first revolutionaries to put leftist theories into practice.

However, as the United States began accepting more and more immigrants, theocratic tendencies continued to drive church members to try to enact doctrine into law. In a sense, the descendants of Protestants became the very people they most detested. Today, American evangelicals have shifted from being left-wing to representing theocratic right.

In Europe, the left is far more powerful than the right, and secularization is far greater than in the United States.

The United States historically implemented Prohibition, a policy heavily influenced by religion; even today, drinking on the street is still a crime. Meanwhile, in the Netherlands, drugs are legalized and red-light districts are openly established. Developed, left-wing countries, including Canada and Australia, have relatively lax regulations on prostitution, and some even have prostitutes' unions. Western European countries generally allow abortion and homosexuality; these controversial issues in the United States are only debated within a very small number of European countries.

In the United States, the Democratic and Republican parties have been arguing over homosexuality and abortion for centuries, yet have yet to reach a consensus. The reason behind this is simply that religious influence in the United States is far stronger than in Europe.

Religion as a personal belief does not pose any political problems. It simply represents personal preference. Many people assume that Americans, simply because they have money, indulge in sensual pleasures, but this is not the case. Many American capitalists and the middle class maintain a good upbringing and inherit the rigorous and simple spirit and temperament of old American Protestants.

We often see reports of the simple lives of wealthy Americans, whether it's Bill Gates of the established software empire or Mark Zuckerberg, the upstart social media mogul. Behind this is a capitalist spirit guided by religious asceticism. In the United States, hedonism is not supported by traditional religions; religion encourages most men to return home to their wives and children after work.

But when religious doctrines are transformed into secular law, it's actually the rise of theocracy. Theocracy is right-wing, hierarchical, and represents the clergy, a privileged class acting as messengers of God, responsible for interpreting doctrine and determining human rights - the so-called "God-given human rights".

2. Republicans and theocracy

The fusion of religious and political forces took place through the right-wing Republican Party in the United States.

In the mid-20th century, Billy Graham, a renowned evangelical leader, Southern Baptist elder, and "America's Preacher" rose to fame as an advisor to President Eisenhower. During Eisenhower's presidency, Billy Graham successfully promoted the integration of patriotism and Christianity, bringing evangelicalism, a significant political force, into the mainstream political arena. Since then, evangelicals have become a key constituency in Republican primaries.

In 1980, a divorced Hollywood actor defeated evangelical candidate Jimmy Carter to become president of the United States. This man was Ronald Reagan, the 40th president of the United States, a leading figure in American conservatism and neoliberalism. Reagan's previous unconventional personal history seemed at odds with evangelical doctrine, but his conservative policies, compared to Carter's centrist policies, resonated more favorably with evangelical voters.

Evangelical voters disregarded personal backgrounds and chose candidates whose policies were more consistent with evangelicalism, thus giving rise to this tradition of "being on the issue, not the person". A political leader's personal experience doesn't sway evangelicals' choices; only their policies do.

This is why, despite Trump's numerous life blemishes that contradict evangelical doctrine and ethics, such as forcibly separating families at the US-Mexico border, multiple divorces, and extramarital affairs with porn stars, evangelicals generally support him.

Many evangelicals compare Trump to Cyrus the Great, the Persian emperor who liberated the Jews from Babylon, and even call him "King of Israel," one of Jesus' nicknames. Trump himself revels in this: "I am the chosen one." "For the American faith, my administration will always fight!" Trump once told the media and his constituents. He also described his COVID-19 treatment as "a blessing from God" and a successful recovery as "a miracle from God".

Trump's fawning over evangelicals to secure his election reached a new high among Republican leaders. During his presidency, Trump announced he would eliminate the IRS's restrictive rules on churches, which stipulated that pastors would lose their tax-exempt status if they supported candidates for public office.

Trump said, "I will completely repeal the Johnson Amendment, allowing representatives of our faith to speak freely without fear of retaliation." The Johnson Amendment stipulates that tax-exempt groups, including churches, lose their tax-exempt status if they engage in certain activities, including direct or indirect participation in or intervention in any political campaign, supporting (or opposing) any candidate for public office, providing political campaign funds, or making public statements on their positions.

In other words, if a church participates in politics, it loses its tax-exempt status. This law restricts religious influence in politics, and Trump, in order to curry favor with evangelicals, decided to repeal it.

Before the election, Trump said in an interview that abortion is a sin, a statement that deeply appealed to evangelicals. Trump himself was actually a supporter of the Democratic Party. He indulged in sensual pleasures and was not at all a qualified believer of the standard ascetic evangelical church. But for the sake of elections and to gain the support of evangelicals, he tried his best.

After his victory, it's long been an open secret that evangelical figures have frequently visited the White House, becoming Trump's advisors. The WASP (white American wing) represented by evangelicals has also become a loyal fan, never abandoning him.

3. Religious America and Anti-Intellectualism

It's fair to say that the United States boasts the highest level of higher education in the world, with over 300,000 Chinese students studying there alone.

Americans have always prided themselves on attracting the world's best talent, and the influx of countless outstanding entrepreneurs and researchers is an indisputable fact.

At the same time, the United States is rife with anti-intellectualism, a sentiment even Chinese, whose average educational level is far lower than theirs, find incomprehensible.

The publication of "On the Origin of Species" in 1859 sparked the greatest debate in public schools since the founding of Christianity 2,000 years ago, concerning the relationship between evolutionary theory and creationism. This debate originated in the 1920s, when fundamentalist religious organizations lobbied public schools to ban the teaching of evolution and atheism. Former Secretary of State Bryan strongly supported these organizations.

In 1925, Tennessee passed a Butler Act requiring public schools to "prohibit any theory which denies the biblical account of creation and replaces it with one which proposes that humans evolved from lower animals." As late as the 1960s, a large number of teachers in American schools continued to directly teach creationism and deny evolution.

In 2015, Alabama officially enacted legislation requiring teachers to teach evolution, deeming it scientific.

Over 200 years after the theory's introduction, many US states truly recognized it as scientific. Among these, the most powerful force resisting science is religious organizations, but in European society, these have never been a problem.

According to a 2014 Pew Research Center survey, only 66% of Americans know that scientists generally agree on the theory of evolution. Those who reject evolution are divided on whether scientists have reached a consensus on the issue, with 47% saying that scientists do, while 46% disagree.

57% of evangelicals believe that humans and other organisms have always existed in their current form. About half of Mormons and three-quarters of Jehovah's Witnesses also reject evolution. By contrast, approximately 30% of Puritans, 29% of Catholics, 16% of Jews, and 15% of nonreligious individuals hold similar views.

Understanding the difficult path forward for the theory of evolution in the United States makes it clear why so many Americans have shown such alarming anti-intellectualism during the pandemic. This is all due to the influence of religion on people's acceptance of modern scientific knowledge. The latest Pew Research Center poll shows that 63% of Republican supporters believe the COVID-19 outbreak has been exaggerated. Among Democrats, only 14% believe the outbreak has been blown out of proportion. Even Trump's COVID-19 diagnosis and the outbreak in the White House have failed to sway the views of most Republicans.

Among Trump's supporters, the view that the epidemic is just a "big flu" is very common, and it is not uncommon to even regard the epidemic as a "hoax." The right-wing website "Red State" called infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci a "mask Nazi". Fauci has received death threats and even hired a personal bodyguard to protect himself and his family.

"Virus parties" appear from time to time across the United States, leading to concentrated infections on many occasions. From mid-August to the end of September 2020, the number of users joining Facebook "anti-mask" groups increased by 1800%. Some even believe that the wire in masks is a 5G antenna and a government conspiracy.

A poll shows that "44% of American Republicans believe a claim, reportedly originating on Facebook, that Microsoft founder Bill Gates intends to implant digital identity chips for tracking purposes in people through mass COVID-19 vaccinations." On American social media platforms, tens of thousands of people have launched a campaign to refuse the vaccine funded by Bill Gates.

According to the latest Pew Research Center poll of 10,121 U.S. adults conducted nationwide between February 16 and 21, 2021, the percentage of Americans who believe science has a positive impact on society has dropped by 6 percentage points since January 2019, before the pandemic. This decline was primarily among Republicans.

Among Republicans and Republican leaners, 57% now believe science has a positive impact on society, a sharp drop of 13 percentage points from 70% before the pandemic.

Among Democrats and Democratic leaners, the percentage who believe science has a positive impact remained virtually unchanged from 2021 to 2019, at 78% and 77%, respectively.

The reason for this is simply the resurgence of religious values ​​resulting from the deep integration of the Republican Party with American evangelicalism.

4. The Signal Behind Abortion Bans

After Trump's 2016 election victory, the Republican Party's theocratic faction was emboldened, and Republican states introduced the strictest abortion bans in history. Alabama's ban was incredibly strict, even prohibiting abortions in cases of incest and rape. Georgia also enacted its strictest abortion ban ever, sparking outcry from Hollywood actresses who refused to film in the state.

On May 21, 2019, the Louisiana Senate passed a state constitutional amendment declaring that women in the state do not have a constitutional right to abortion. Like Alabama's abortion ban, this amendment did not exclude the special circumstances of rape and incest.

Since 2019, 15 US states have introduced "heartbeat bills", which would prohibit abortions if a woman's pregnancy is more than six weeks and medically confirmed to have a fetal heartbeat.

If a woman is found to have intentionally aborted a fetus, she could be charged with second-degree murder and face up to 30 years in prison. Medically, a fetal heartbeat typically appears after six weeks of pregnancy. However, within the legally mandated timeframe, women are likely to miss the legal abortion window due to uncertainty about their pregnancy.

Before Alabama, six states—Georgia, Ohio, Arkansas, Kentucky, Mississippi, and North Dakota - had passed these strict anti-abortion laws. Of course, these bans will have no practical effect in the United States because Americans can go to Democratic states to get an abortion. However, they represent a significant step backward for the US.

Between 1825 and 1841, ten US states enacted laws prohibiting women from having abortions, punishing them for doing so. These laws gradually became widespread across the US. From 1880 to 1960, abortion was illegal in all US states, except in special circumstances, such as when a woman's life was in danger.

This history was reversed in the 1970s.

In 1973, the US Supreme Court ruled in Roe v. Wade, granting women the right to decide whether to have an abortion. Abortion has been legal in most states ever since.

The 1960s and 1970s marked a crucial period for the US to move towards secularization. A series of so-called progressive movements, such as sexual liberation, desegregation, and cultural pluralism, objectively crippled theocracy in the US.

In fact, abortion, legalized by the Supreme Court, has returned to the forefront of American controversy after a 40-year hiatus, demonstrating that religious forces, fed up with the expansion of secular power and the Democratic Party's abuse of affirmative action, are ready to launch a final assault.

Many people may not understand the harm abortion bans do to women.

Europe's most conservative country is Ireland, which only lifted its abortion ban in 2018.

The incident that caused the biggest public outcry was that a 14-year-old girl became pregnant after being raped. The local court not only did not allow her to have an abortion, but also prohibited her from going abroad to have an abortion.

Other victims of abortion bans include women who died on the operating table due to various issues preventing them from obtaining abortions.

Even more tragically, in countries where abortion is prohibited, what do women do if they don't want to have children? Using a clothes hanger to pierce the uterus, which is unbelievable. Is this the modern world?

Can the economic data and per capita GDP reflect the disaster caused by the abortion ban?

Ireland has long maintained an abortion ban, yet it's often hailed as a model of small government due to its low taxes, even becoming a tax haven. It's also one of Europe's richest countries, with a per capita GDP of $101,000.

Is such a government truly small?

When the Irish abortion ban was lifted, women across the country rejoiced. Does this indicate that this oppression is even more brutal than high taxes?

Trump is actively catering to theocracy in order to win votes, and Republican state governments are collectively celebrating the re-introduction of the abortion ban. What signal does this send?

Such a signal is undoubtedly dangerous for a secular nation. I seem to see the shadow of a large Iran cast upon this land.

The emergence of a theocracy does not require the fusion of political and religious leaders, because the underlying logic of "divine right of kings" is that the ruler rules on earth on behalf of God. When secular power needs to curry favor with religious forces, the secular edifice has already collapsed.

If a political leader favors a single religion in policy, then the principle of "render unto Caesar what is Caesar's, render unto God what is God's" that prevails in most secular states today is extinguished. In this case, Caesar's secular power derives from God's people, not Caesar's citizens.

Trump's restrictive policies on foreign immigration also bear the shadow of theocracy.

Evangelicals in the United States are die-hard Trump supporters who feel their traditional values ​​are threatened. The Democrats' various so-called affirmative action measures, including allowing same-sex marriage, marijuana use, unisex restrooms, abortion, and population liberalization, have led evangelicals to believe that if this continues, America will no longer be an evangelical world, and their traditional values ​​will be extinguished.

This is indeed the case. The number of WASPs (White Anglo-Saxon Protestants) among evangelicals has been declining annually, now below 30%, and many of the younger generation are turning away from traditional values. Evangelicals, who are mostly between 40 and 70 years old, have strong religious beliefs and are deeply concerned about the collapse of America's traditional values ​​system. They are the political force that Trump relies on most.

The Democratic Party's method of countering this force is to bring in large numbers of immigrants and give them votes to offset the power of WASP. Both parties are polarizing, and their respective tactics are becoming increasingly extreme.

WASP seeks to theocratize America, giving religion a role to play and preventing pagans from erasing traditional values. Multiculturalism, on the other hand, opposes WASP as America's core value system and instead advocates for cultural diversity. Every culture should be respected, and any appeal to a single cultural value cannot be turned into law to restrict those with different beliefs.

This is the problem with democracy. Because it's all about counting heads, the Democrats used laws requiring unisex restrooms and legalizing marijuana, leading to a WASP backlash. WASP's tactics are similarly based on votes: to prevent immigration, ban abortions for everyone in the state, prohibit prostitution, gambling, drug use, and homosexuality.

Therefore, the right to vote, in essence, means that everyone has the power to coerce those on the other side who hold different views, and this is the fundamental reason for the rift between the two parties.

The bipartisan debate in the United States is not merely a policy debate in the economic sense; it involves a fundamental debate over whether the United States should be a secular or theocracy.

Don't assume that theocracy is far away from us. Didn't the theocracy in Turkey easily overthrow the secular regime and is on the road to restoring theocracy? Has the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt forgotten about it? Theocracy of centuries ago has always been with us. It's just that China, a traditional secular country, has many people unable to understand what theocracy represents, let alone the disasters it brings.

Do you think only the Democrats are destroying America? No, the Republicans are also powerful bulldozers.

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