The Long Haul and the Arrow of Progress

For all of the no one following the comments in Religious Right: Credible Threat, it is clear that I can't skate through hoping that ballpark definitions will get us moved on to the second stage of proving or disproving my thesis - The Religious Right is a Credible threat to America - because Dan and Doug won't have it. Instead we're going to have to dig a little deeper into the premises. I am willing to do this, but let me just say, before we get into it, that, for my purposes, the ballpark definitions should suffice. We will probably spend an enormous amount of time describing and discussing minutiae about the terms I used in my original statement, eventually discarding most of those points as irrelevant until we finally agree that the mainstream, casual definitions of those terms were adequate and largely agreed upon, and that any confusion was caused by our arguing at cross-purposes.

So, on to the stickiness.

First, let me start off by admitting that I made a large mistake in the way I defined "this country". I concentrated on the founding documents hoping that the evolution of ideas, including the changing interpretation of the founding documents (Constituation, Declaration, Federalist Papers, even Common Sense, etc.) was assumed. A conversation on the evolution of American ideas of justice and its effects on American jurisprudence is exactly the kind of exercise that we could be lost in for several days, and I don't want to embark on that discussion at all, but if something like is the only way to move on, so be it.

So, Part I: The America We Live in and the America that We Want to Live In

America, as both a geographical area and as the amalgamation of the myriad currents of thought that characterize the people who live in it and who, by their actions and those thoughts, define it, is too complicated to be described in a 1,000 word blog entry.

Such a description of America is not necessary for a thoughtful evaluation of the proposition "The Religious Right is a Threat to America" to be entertaining and fruitful.

America has evolved greatly since its inception and, in its particulars, is very different from the America of 1776, which itself would be too complicated to describe in a 1,000 word blog entry.

Over its 230 year history, one current in the shifting waters of America's self-definition has dominated all others. There is an Arrow of Progress from 1776 to 2007 that has, without exception that I am aware of, expanded individual liberty. If there are exceptions, they are irrelevant, because the evidence of the Progress is evident everywhere.

So, America, for me, is defined as a coordinate on that Arrow of Progress.

I am not so concerned with the coordinate per se, but with the Arrow. America is a work-in-progress, but it has been making progress toward increased social justice, toward improving the quality of life for everyone, for 230 years.

So, my refined proposition is:
"The Religious Right would reverse the Arrow of Progress that defines America's evolution toward greater social justice."