Death and the Status Quo

Ethan Cooper

During the presidential election of 2000, Karl Rove drove a wedge into American society, pushing conservatives and progressives into their respective corners and leaving those in the middle wondering what the hell happened. Tapping into the 80 million strong Evangelical movement for its base, conservatism took on a more divisive, more publicized stand on social ideas like flag burning, Roe v Wade and gay marriage, leaving many progressives wondering why the once Libertarian Republicans had moved into issues once reserved for the individual.

The genius of Rove was that he knew his history. Americans have a long-standing precedent for befuddling the issues that bring about real positive change in favor of promoting issues founded in religious dogma or old-timey conservatism which are meant simply to anger and increase conservative voting.

Like the social issues Rove presented as critical to his time in order to engage voters, the social conservative public of the 19th century had their own staples of dogma-derived priorities. The extreme moral dilemma and ultimate contradiction of the day--a free society with slavery--was not high on the list. Instead, the most challenging and critical issue for social conservatives was that the Post Office was open on Sunday, the Sabbath.

Justification for this high priority came of course from Scripture in the same way the modern issue of gay marriage is derived from today. We are told that if we allow gay marriage, the entire fabric of our society will unravel, leading humans to polygamy, beastiality and destroying the concept of family. In his now infamous statement, former Republican Senator Rick Santorum said "In every society, the definition of marriage has not ever to my knowledge included homosexuality. That's not to pick on homosexuality. It's not, you know, man on child, man on dog, or whatever the case may be. It is one thing. And when you destroy that you have a dramatic impact on the quality."

In the 1830's William Garrison started a newspaper, The Liberator, advocating such progressive liberal ideas such as abolition and women's rights. At the time, the Church strongly opposed both by out-casting those who spoke in favor of them by labeling them infidels and atheists. Similar to today, the Church may have had different priorities then their progressive counterparts, but they still had to justify these priorities when these issues are publicized.

The Church's justification of slavery went something like this: God created society in this form and we each have a role to play in his plan, therefore standing for social reform was counter to his creation and stood in direct conflict to God and treasonous against country. W.J. Cash in "The Mind of the South" summarized the justification this way,

"Every man was in his place because God had set him there. Everything was as it was because He had ordained it so. Hence slavery, and, indeed, everything that was, was His responsibility, not the South's. So far from being evil, it was the very essence of Right. Wrong could consist only in rebellion against it. And change could come only as He Himself produced it through His own direct act, or as He commanded it through the instruments of His will, the ministers"

The priorities of conservative social ideas of the past which favored religious dogma instead of innate rational morality had a great impact on society, especially regarding slavery and women's rights. It was "of a different era" and of course it did take time for the realization of our Constitution to take full effect on all citizens of the United States.

However, today we find institutionalized, the same type of mis-prioritization favoring religious dogma on critical issues for the personal gain of politicians and the multinational corporations which favor a fiscally conservative politician no matter how far out their social conservative views may be. They will promote through all media, inflammatory sentiments to ensure a fiscal conservative is in charge, and because money is priority one, the ends always justifies the means even if they have to sacrifice the well being of it's citizens.

Our capacity to be lead astray by our leaders is part of our history and will continue as long as social conservatives hold us back from our true moral potential as a society. As long as we let them manipulate us with our own beliefs, we will never make progress on the things that have the potential to bring about real change that could benefit us all.