Dec 31, 2015 06:13 PM
(This post was last modified: Dec 31, 2015 06:13 PM by C C.)
Not God’s Politics
https://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/...san-jacoby
EXCERPT: [...] I am an admirer, not a worshipper, of the men who forged the American Revolution. Trying to discern the “original intent” of the founders is rather like drawing conclusions about modern social issues from the Bible. Men like John Adams and Thomas Jefferson wrote so much—like the authors of the Scriptures—that you can find almost anything you want in their opinions. Did these men of the Enlightenment contradict themselves? Yes, they did—they contained multitudes. But one thing is clear (pace Justice Scalia): the framers never intended to create a “Christian nation” or even a religion-based government. If they had, they would have said so in the Constitution—and the deliberate omission of God from the nation’s basic legal framework continues to pose a troublesome barrier for preacher-politicians. Religious conservatives in the nineteenth century never thought that the United States had been established as a Christian nation, or they would not have tried repeatedly (and unsuccessfully) to promote a “Christian amendment” to the Constitution....
Under Watchful Eyes - The medieval origins of mass surveillance.
http://www.laphamsquarterly.org/spies/un...chful-eyes
EXCERPT: [...] For it seems to be such a contemporary issue: the mass surveillance of the global population by corporations and government bureaucracies that has transcended all pretense of democratic accountability. The technologies that enable it are sophisticated, sleek, and silent. A sort of cyborg omniscience is obtained by those who control the information. If we have drifted into the dystopia of which George Orwell and Aldous Huxley warned, then surely, we are inclined to think, we have entered a terrifying new world. But those who see in all this something eerily futuristic may have it backward. In our modern surveillance state, it’s possible we have in some perverse and unexpected fashion actually regained something of the comforts of being known by a higher authority—something that the modern West had largely lost, and for which we have perhaps unconsciously longed. At its most essential level, the notion of an omniscient, omnipotent, interested, judging God was translated into our inherited forms of governance through the Roman Catholic interpretation of Christ’s words to Peter...
https://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/...san-jacoby
EXCERPT: [...] I am an admirer, not a worshipper, of the men who forged the American Revolution. Trying to discern the “original intent” of the founders is rather like drawing conclusions about modern social issues from the Bible. Men like John Adams and Thomas Jefferson wrote so much—like the authors of the Scriptures—that you can find almost anything you want in their opinions. Did these men of the Enlightenment contradict themselves? Yes, they did—they contained multitudes. But one thing is clear (pace Justice Scalia): the framers never intended to create a “Christian nation” or even a religion-based government. If they had, they would have said so in the Constitution—and the deliberate omission of God from the nation’s basic legal framework continues to pose a troublesome barrier for preacher-politicians. Religious conservatives in the nineteenth century never thought that the United States had been established as a Christian nation, or they would not have tried repeatedly (and unsuccessfully) to promote a “Christian amendment” to the Constitution....
Under Watchful Eyes - The medieval origins of mass surveillance.
http://www.laphamsquarterly.org/spies/un...chful-eyes
EXCERPT: [...] For it seems to be such a contemporary issue: the mass surveillance of the global population by corporations and government bureaucracies that has transcended all pretense of democratic accountability. The technologies that enable it are sophisticated, sleek, and silent. A sort of cyborg omniscience is obtained by those who control the information. If we have drifted into the dystopia of which George Orwell and Aldous Huxley warned, then surely, we are inclined to think, we have entered a terrifying new world. But those who see in all this something eerily futuristic may have it backward. In our modern surveillance state, it’s possible we have in some perverse and unexpected fashion actually regained something of the comforts of being known by a higher authority—something that the modern West had largely lost, and for which we have perhaps unconsciously longed. At its most essential level, the notion of an omniscient, omnipotent, interested, judging God was translated into our inherited forms of governance through the Roman Catholic interpretation of Christ’s words to Peter...