[…] did The Conservative Intelligencer’s true self (I am certainly more alter than idem) ever jump into the middle of a good one, this […]

Thoughtful. Well said.

Indeed. I want to springboard off your last line, there….

[…] Wesley’s recent post The “Christian Right” and Political Activism: Looking at the Big Picture rings a bell with me–especially right at the end, where he says, “Roe vs. Wade, which […]

So, gay people started the culture war by standing up for their rights? Women started it by demanding equal pay? Minorities trapped in ghettos started it by demanding access to better education? “Pagan environmentalists” (LOL) started it by looking out for future generations?

There is absolutely NO way to spin the opposing view on Lawrence v. Texas as “defensive.”

“If there truly is a culture war in America, we didn’t start it.”

Most social movements are framed in defensive terms whether its true or not - much easier to mobilize people when you convince them they’re getting screwed.

In a nutshell:
So, gay people started the culture war by standing up for their rights? Women started it by demanding equal pay? Minorities trapped in ghettos started it by demanding access to better education? “Pagan environmentalists” (LOL) started it by looking out for future generations?–YES

“gay people started the culture war by [claiming positive legal benefits in the name of ‘civil rights’]?”

“Women started it by demanding [that the government interfere in the market in an unprecedented way to skew economic outcomes to fit a dodgy statistical measure of] equal pay?”

“Minorities trapped in [public housing provided by upper-class white liberals eager to secure them as a permanent constituency while salving their ‘white guilt’] started it by demanding [that one expensive and unsuccessful government intervention be compounded by another, reducing the odds that they would ever get] better education [as defined by upper-class white liberals eager to ensure that the State, not parents, would inform the youth of the nation on their priorities]?”

“‘Pagan environmentalists’ (LOL) started it by looking out for future generations?”

The last was so self-refuting, complete with LOL, that it was fun enough to leave it as is. If you need help, see here or here for clues.

Cheers,
PGE

You pointing to GIAIM or whatever it is as representative of environmentalists, is analogous to me pointing to the polygamist Mormon sect out in Utah as representative of Christianity.

Government intervention against domestic abuse and child labor were also at one point “unprecedented”. I guess it all depends on your baseline. 1800, here we come!

Yawn. How about John Muir, the father of conservation (though he actually called himself “preservationist” after his friend Pinchot took “conservationist” to mean we could still *use* some of it), founder of Sierra Club?

“Now we observe that, in cold mountain altitudes, Spirit is but thinly and plainly clothed. As we descend down their many sides to the valleys, the clothing of all plants and beasts and of the forms of rock becomes more abundant and complicated. When a portion of Spirit clothes itself with a sheet of lichen tissue, colored simply red or yellow, or gray or black, we say that is a low form of life. yet is it more or less radically Divine than another portion of Spirit that has gathered garments of leaf and fairy flower and adorned them with all the colors of Light, although we say that the latter creature is of a higher form of life? All of these varied forms, high and low, are simply portions of God, radiated from Him as a sun, and made terrestrial by the clothes they wear, and by the modifications of a corresponding kind in the God essence itself… [From: The Journals]”

Yawn.

my bad, forgot source link to Muir Quotes in the philosophy research database at erraticimpact.com

PG and Adrian-

That’s a great Muir quote. He said quite a few similar things. I think “pantheist” would have been a better choice of terms, though pagan cerainly fits much of the movement as well. While some Christian and “Christian” churches have enlisted in the movement, the mainstream of environmentalism, when not entirely secular, still fetishizes Eastern religions and Neo-Paganism and is hostile toward traditional, orthodox Christianity.

Five minutes of scanning came up with these:

“The more you contact the voice of the living Earth and evaluate what it says, the easier it will become for you to contact it and trust what it provides.” - Sierra Club Sourcebook

“I realized that Eastern thought had somewhat more compassion for all living things. Man was a form of life that in another reincarnation might possibly be a horsefly or a bird of paradise or a deer. So a man of such a faith, looking at animals, might be looking at old friends or ancestors. In the East the wilderness has no evil connotation; it is thought of as an expression of the unity and harmony of the universe. William O. Douglas Go East, Young Man, 1974 ”

“There is hope if people will begin to awaken that spiritual part of themselves, that heartfelt knowledge that we are caretakers of this planet. Brooke Medicine Eagle ”

“The victory of Christianity over paganism was the greatest psychic revolution in the history of our culture. By destroying pagan animism, Christianity made it possible to exploit nature in a mood of indifference to the feelings of natural objects. Lynn I. White, Jr.Science, 10 March 1967”

“When we Indians kill meat, we eat it all up…. When we build houses, we make little holes. When we burn grass for grasshoppers, we don’t ruin things. We shake down acorns and pinenuts. We don’t chop down the trees. Wintu Indian quoted in Julian Burger, The Gaia Atlas of First Peoples, 1990″

“Loyd: “It has to do with keeping things in balance. It’s like the spirits have made a deal with us. We’re on our own. The spirits have been good enough to let us live here and use the utilities, and we’re saying: We know how nice you’re being. We appreciate the rain, we appreciate the sun, we appreciate the deer we took. Sorry if we messed up anything. You’ve gone to a lot of trouble, and we’ll try to be good guests.”
Codi: “Like a note you’d send somebody after you’d stayed in their house?”
Loyd: “Exactly like that. ‘Thanks for letting me sleep on your couch. I took some beer out of the refrigerator, and I broke a coffee cup. Sorry, I hope it wasn’t your favorite one.’”
Barbara Kingsolver Animal Dreams”

A living planet is a much more complex metaphor for deity than just a bigger father with a bigger fist. If an omniscient, all-powerful Dad ignores your prayers, it’s taken personally. Hear only silence long enough, and you start wondering about his power. His fairness. His very existence. But if a world mother doesn’t reply, Her excuse is simple. She never claimed conceited omnipotence. She has countless others clinging to her apron strings, including myriad species unable to speak for themselves. To Her elder offspring She says - go raid the fridge. Go play outside. Go get a job. Or, better yet, lend me a hand. I have no time for idle whining. David Brin

“Our environmental problems originate in the hubris of imagining ourselves as the central nervous system or the brain of nature. We’re not the brain, we are a cancer on nature. Dave Foreman Harper’s, April 1990”

“The gross heathenism of civilization has generally destroyed nature, and poetry, and all that is spiritual. John Muir letter to J.B. McChesney, 19 September 1871″

“Another important Judeo-Christian belief predicted that God would bring a cataclysmic end to the Earth sometime in the future. One interpretation of this belief is that the Earth is only a temporary way station on the soul’s journey to the afterlife. Because these beliefs tended to devalue the natural world, they fostered attitudes and behaviors that had a negative effect on the environment. Donald G. Kaufman and Cecilia M. Franz Biosphere 2000: Protecting Our Global Environment, 1996”

“When the soil disappears, the soul disappears. Ymber Delecto ”

“We shall continue to have a worsening ecologic crisis until we reject the Christian axiom that nature has no reason for existence save to serve man. Lynn White, Jr. “The Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis,” 1967”

“The word “wilderness” occurs approximately three hundred times in the Bible, and all its meanings are derogatory. René Dubos The Wooing of Earth, 1980″

OK, impressive list of quotes there. For the record (from wikipedia):

“According to Philip Yancey John Muir was fond of the Bible, and an admirer of wilderness prophets like John the Baptist, which drove him to be more of a lone Christian than a churchgoer. Stephen Fox (author/educator) relates that, by the age of eleven, young Muir had learned to recite “by heart and by sore flesh” all of the New Testament and most of the Old.”

Anyway this pagan business is a distraction, the “lol” was for the horror/disgust I imagined you saying the word “pagan” with. My point was that if a group of people are getting screwed and they decide to stand up for what they deserve, the reaction is “defensive” in the same way that Jim Crow was “defensive” against the first push for civil rights. “Our way of life was attacked, we were merely defending our right to beat up gay people and keep women illiterate and barefoot in the kitchen!”

OK, Adrian, as a matter of rhetoric I do acknowledge that there can be a “chicken and egg” problem, here. Everyone contends for the quasi-moral high ground of “natural” and “average” in the demagoguery that naturally attends the cult of the “normal” in egalitarian democracy.

I can only say that I sympathize deeply with those among social conservatives whose reaction to the many innovations in political theory in the 20th C has been tribalistic. I think of the scene in Red Dawn, where Patrick Swayze’s character is about to execute a traitor in their midst, who nearly got them all killed. His brother asks him, if they can execute prisoners in cold blood, “What makes us different from them?” Swayze’s character, working himself up to do something he would otherwise find unthinkable, shrieks, “Cuz we were here first!”

It is not a satisfying answer. But it is an honest one, and has merit.

Adrian-

“the “lol” was for the horror/disgust I imagined you saying the word ‘pagan’”

I understand. Funny side note though - I’m actually really fond of the pagans I know. Having spent adulthood on the fringes of gamer culture, I’ve known more than my share. My last circle of friends was almost entirely one flavor of pagan or another — mostly Celtic but even including a tattooed Norse worshiper.

We really have two separate arguments going on here. My point was about the mischaracterization of the Christian Right as an aggressive movement looking to alter the basic tenets of American society. In fact, it is a defensive movement.

I’m happy to discuss the relative merits of Christian conservative positions, which is your main concern and a separate issue.

I would begin by pointing out that Christian conservatives have not been remotely reactionary in the style of Jim Crow defenders. Virtually no one rejects outright all of the changes which have taken place in American society over the past 50 years.

I think “chicken and egg” probably describes it best. Given a specific status quo, one side is “defending” itself against the injustices of the status quo by altering it, and the other side is “defending” its privileges by trying to preserve the status quo. But that’s why I think it’s a mistake to try to characterize a movement as “defensive,” because it just perpetuates this struggle over “who started it” without looking at which vision has a more just society, which is the ultimate goal in the ‘culture war’.

Adrian-

“But that’s why I think it’s a mistake to try to characterize a movement as “defensive,” because it just perpetuates this struggle over “who started it” without looking at which vision has a more just society, which is the ultimate goal in the ‘culture war’.”

I must say, with a grin, that my characterization of the movement as “defensive” was done. . . defensively. I’m responding to constant attacks on Christian conservatives which typify them as militant and offensive in nature, when I believe the opposite is true.

As for the injustices vs. privileges argument, I don’t accept the formulation. In some cases, I believe this is accurate, in most, however, I think that the situation is best framed as one group asserting new rights at the expense of the existing rights of others. The situation is much more ambiguous than you seem to allow.