From a fundamentalist viewpoint, modern culture is hellish
929205
This is the second book I've read by Dr. Kennedy.  I've lived in the South Florida area most of my life, and the spires of his Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church were visible from my house for at least a decade.  His influence, however, is much wider than that.  For years, his was the only megachurch in town (until it was displaced by Calvary Chapel).  I agree with him that postmodernism views traditional Christianity as an enemy and I don't doubt that religion is routinely mocked and attacked in the media.  My solution, as a Christian, is to avoid television programs or movies that mock religion.  I don't encourage others to boycott them, but I avoid them myself.

One chapter in particular is very telling about how Dr. Kennedy feels about Christianity: "The Hammer of Oppression: Distortion of the First Amendment."  Dr. Kennedy belives in the doctrine of dominionism; that is, that America is a Christian nation and should be governed as such.  However, he misses the point: America is a nation of religious liberty, not only of Christianity.  If the president were a practicing Wiccan, he can follow the doctrines of his religion all he wants, but he cannot force the American people to do the same; that principle holds for all religions, including Christianity.

Dr. Kennedy misquotes a U.S. Supreme Court decision in 1892 as proof of dominionism.  Here is the almost full quote: "...these and many other matters which might be noticed, add a volume of unofficial declarations to the mass of organic utterances that this is a Christian nation."

The full text of the decision can be found via links from Wikipedia: [...]

Notice the expression "unofficial utterances."  While some of the Founding Fathers may have been Christians, Deists, or hold some other faith, they knew from experience how dangerous a state-sponsored religion could be, which is why the documents that helped found this nation mention God or Christianity, they do not clearly identify this particular religion as being the religion of the state.

Jesus himself said "My kingdom is no part of this world."  He avoided getting involved in the politics of his day and his followers did the same.  Aside from this point, there are other matters of doctrine that I disagree with Dr. Kennedy about (the Trinity being one of them) but one of the book's problems is that much of it is dated.  Dr. Kennedy excoriates some movies including "The Handmaid's Tale" and "Johnny Mnemonic", both of which are well over a decade old by now.  Overall, it's an interesting take on American culture from the viewpoint of a fundamentalist minister, but I feel that there are much better books available.
4968978
I don't even read this book to know that I will be deeply insulted by it. Why? Books like this do nothing but add fuel to the fire which divides us as a nation. We need to focus on how we can work together instead of trying to force one way of being on everyone. It is unrealistic and uneducated to think that everyone, or even a majority, in America will ever have the same beliefs and ideas.

Also, I am tired of people who know nothing about paganism using the word to basically mean "evil people who want anarchy, death, and the demise of Christianity." The decsription states the books talks about how "those who don't believe in a God or a supreme being are revolting and stealing the next generation of Americans out from under Christian believers." The problem is, I am pagan, I do believe in a supreme being, and I have strong moral values (largely to do with kindess, the importance of family, and the Golden Rule). Attempting to attribute all of America's current problems to a reduction in fundamentalist Christian values and their presence in our culture is not only ridiculous, it shows a complete lack of any real understanding about how culture, economics, history, the uniqueness of America, etc. all play into creating the situation we are in.

Furthermore, a book like this has no business discussing how "forces not friendly to the American constitution and the fundamental beliefs of its founding fathers" are harming America because the principles of our Constitution and founding fathers are based on freedom and liberty. This is clearly not what fundamentalist Christians value since they are trying to limit people's freedoms by imposing their religous beliefs on other. What's more, the majority of our founding fathers were NOT fundamentalist Christian (many were actually Diests, not technically Christian at all).

I have nothing against Christianity, in fact, I think if you follow the teachings of Jesus, you will likely be a wonderful person. I know and am close friends with people from a variety of religious backgrounds, and I think there are very few religions where the actual message is one of hate or destruction. However, fundamentalists of all religions are infamous for their ability to take a wonderful, uplifting message and twist it into something dark and cruel. Even though I am not Christian, I feel bad that people have distorted Jesus' message of love, caring, nonjudgement, and nonviolence into a message based on hate and force. I have to wonder what Jesus would do if he came back and saw what people do in His name, because I don't think for a moment that He would be even remotely happy about all of it.
4540096
The reviewers who really get this book are those who stress that whatever it is, it is NOT a ringing defense of Gospel Truth in the Antimodernist tradition.

If anything, it is in the way of being the opposite. A gentle-as-possible introduction to the New Biblical Scholarship directed at Catholic "fundamentalists" who do not share the author's basically approving and oh-so grateful attitude towards what they (and not he) would call not modern but Modernistic scholarship.

"It does not repudiate or even much criticize this scholarship."

For better or worse, just so.

That's why it would NOT make a good gift for the "conservative" or "fundamentalist" Catholic on your Xmas gift list. Giving it to one such all brightly wrapped could really spoil his Christmas morning. Ratzinger may or may not take, say, the Infancy Narratives literally. He may or may not consider questioning their historicity a biggie. But either way, in this book he is basically embracing the persons of those who, among other things, do not, and inculcating sympathy and respect for their views and judgments.

This is revolutionary in a private Catholic author who in his spare time is the Infallible Vicar of Christ.

This book could only horrify and scandalize "fundamentalists" who are not accustomed to the way in which the neo-orthodox simultaneously demur from and break lances for their Modernist homeboys.

Bottom line: Ratzinger approvingly, if diffidently, cites Bible scholars who taken together constitute the Antichrist That Dissolveth Jesus for the Lamentabili crowd. (If you don't get the reference you have no business reading this book or recommending it in the name of the Lord.) I mean, Ray Brown, for heaven's sake. The noirest of all conservative American Catholic betes noirs for thirty years.

All should at least agree that this is no pious meditation on Particularly Inspiring Events in the Life of Our Dear Lord geared to the comfort and joy of lowly faithful who don't know Rudolf Bultmann from Timothy the Cat. Ratzinger is inviting the believer to walk a very fine line on very dark and deep and stormy theological waters. He is dealing with theories and names that even he recognizes as representing extreme danger for all believers. And he slips up himself. On one page he says that the contemporary church basically embraces Modern Biblical scholarship. On another he says without qualification that Modern Biblical scholarship rejects the notion that Jesus identifed Himself as the Divine Christ. This author famously dislikes Scholasticism. It shows sometimes.

So he embraces that denial? We should? We MUST if we are going to show ourselves as properly renewed and updated in the Biblical field? We can be generous and say that the man is simply conflicted about these complex and thorny questions. That this hapless private author is also floundering all over the place about the extent to which he wants to make like PRE-Vatican II popes in the Syllabus of Bible-Related Error department.

He said that we are allowed to disagree with him. O Joy. Christmas morning is no time for the starry-eyed ultramontane "fundamentalist" to get wised up for the first time about this shady world of clerical gamesmanship. Or to be made to start looking funny for the first time at the shepherds and the Wise Men in his little creche set as they turn to midrash in his mind. Which, being translated, is mish-mash. Or mush.
4504612
Christopher Hitchins is not your usual atheist. Most nonbelievers seem to obtain their sustenance from excoriating the irrationality of believers and their supernatural gods.  Think of the gleeful diatribes of Madelyn Murry O'Hare as she savaged the unquestioning faith of fundamentalists. Those poor souls, who believe in an inerrant and infallible god with no evidence whatever (much less any proof) are the most vulnerable to reason's lash.

And Hitchins specifically believes that "religion poisons everything;" much of the book is taken up with this theme.  Although there is nothing new in this approach, he nevertheless manages to bring out the underlying savagery underlying both the Old and the New Testament, as well as its weak copy--the Koran, and the enormous intellectual dishonesty of all supernatural religions--i.e., Judaism, Christianity and Islam--that kill to prove their love of God.

Does that mean that hundreds of millions of people have it all wrong?  No says Hitchins, and it is here where he separates himself from the professional atheist hacks. Read this description of Martin Luther King, certainly as religious a person as one can find:

"In speech after speech [King] inspired the oppressed, and exhorted and shamed their oppressors. Slowly, the embarrassed religious leadership of the country moved to his side. Rabbi Abraham Heschel asked, "Where in America today do we hear a voice like the voice of the prophets of Israel ? ... His work of transforming public opinion and shifting the stubborn Kennedy and Johnson administrations was almost done, and he was in Memphis, Tennessee, to support a long and bitter strike by the city's ground-down garbage collectors, on whose placards appeared the simple words "I Am a Man." In the pulpit at Mason Temple, he reviewed the protracted struggle of the past years and then very suddenly said, "But it doesn't matter with me now." There was silence until he went on. "Because I've been to the mountaintop. And I don't mind. Like anybody I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And he's allowed me to go up the mountain. And I've looked over. And I have seen the Promised Land. And I may not get there with you, but I want you to know, tonight, that we as a people will get to the Promised Land!" Nobody who was there that night has ever forgotten it, and I daresay the same can be said for anyone who views the film that was so fortunately taken of that transcendent moment. ... The entire drama has the capacity to unite elements of Moses on Mount Nebo with the agony in the Garden of Gethsemane."

Whew--this is not the ranting of an ideologue anxious to strike down any signs of man's spirituality. Hitchins recognizes that no matter how often a self-empowered  priestly class has pre-empted man's inherent spiritual nature--and always  perverted it for their own gratification--mankind nevertheless must act out its deepest inner feelings. It is human nature to act nobly, a characteristic that religious ideologues turn to their own advantage, with the inevitable power struggle that always results.

The only weak link in this brilliant exegesis is the final chapter: "In Conclusion: the Need for a New Enlightenment." Seven skimpy pages of more of the same, a lament on the evils of organized religion with the solution being the need for a new enlightenment. Well, O.K. But following such unrelenting erudition, offering up a mere slogan seems rather to indicate the difficulty of a solution than an understanding of it.
2207834
Any student of history knows that international terrorism has ancient roots but the real revelation is that the problem is not simply the Jihadists. True, they have one goal and that is the utter destruction of Israel and the Jewish people. However, that bloody agenda is underwritten and supported by much of Western civilization. And the template for the "modern" concepts of the West come from the Roman Empire whose foundation is linked to Biblical Esau, brother of Jacob (Israel).

Like Esau, the West shares a cultural, ethical and familial tie with the Jewish People. Yet, that ancient connection has become dangerously strained by the selfish need to dominate the Jews and to claim their rightful inheritance (one that includes more than just real estate). Professor Narrett demonstrates how Western civilization's boast--that it embodies the highest ideas of Greco-Roman thought--is a hollow boast. As an ideology it will eventually fail because it is man-made.

The book should be required reading for our leadership who seem to have utterly missed a vital historical lessson from the Roman Empire. They realized, after it was too late, that the Jews were entrusted with a set of vibrant, life-sustaining laws (the Torah) that provide a genuine path to peace.

If you want to understand the conundrum of the so-called peace process and its equally worthless 'Roadmap' you need to read  Eugene Narrett's lucid revelation, Israel & the Endtimes. His book is more than an urgent call for sanity, it also reveals the folly of the New Middle East.

I recommend it highly.
2606906
My review is on the reviews of this book,

It is very complex what we see in the world and what is written on page.  The few exerpts I read from the book and then read the reviews of those who already have an oponion of Islam.

It will not change the true story we see and read every day.

It only supports the anger and plain disgust by civil humans.

I stand by my country USA and that of other Demorcatic nations who fight the terroists where ever they are.  To see those creatures who call a holy war, kill innocent people in the name of thier twisted religion is too much.

The facts that are brought into this book, cannot be written for every event that happened.

History is brought forth from those who took note and by word of mouth.  So in many cases the history is embellished or changed to suit those who use is for thier own Gain.

The fact of terroists who use Islam as thier main course for Jihad is just use of evil.

My friend who is Kurdish, reads daily news and recieves phone call of his family and friends plight there in Iran.  Women and children shot while walking in the street by extremist leaders and there crones.  Evil is everywhere and it runs rampante because there is no control over self worth and true love.

They breed on another because of the ingnorance of Life.

Those who support Extremist behaviour are to be dealt with in an extreme way.  Cowards they are, those who claim holy war.

These holy war individuals who now take to opening bombs in public places and run like frightened women. Hide and laugh while thier brothers die in the streets, yet pat one another on the back for jihad. ugh.  They actually sleep at night?

There is no holy in what they do.  But evil awaits them to congradulate them in hell.  I truly believe that, they will get thier just rewards, do evil and you will meet evil, and not the virgins they are told they will get.  Oh by the way? The women who blow themselves up?  What is their reward for dishonoring thier womanhood?
795065
Living for 48 years in the buckle of the Bible belt, and in the hometown of the fortress of fundamentalism, this book was some fresh insight into another kind of fundamentalism and the abuses arising therefrom.  Just when we thought we had seen it all, since we live at the fountainhead of "mainline fundamentalism" (yes that's what we were told), here's a whole new kind that adds new dimensions of cultishness.  I'm assuming the author speaks to the issue with some authority, as she is granddaughter of the founder of the cult from which she ultimately escaped.
If you are interested in the recent exposure of abuses behind the walls of fundamentalist cults, this book will be a good addition to your library.
192426
Prothero defines culture wars as, angry public disputes that are simultaneously moral and religious and address the meaning of America. Often, our modern times are singled out as being significantly more venomous than decades and centuries past. The reality is our heated and fractious exchanges are, and were,  generally among the same groups (liberal & conservative) over deeply embedded outlooks and principles. Although, the author acknowledges that the terms liberal and conservative have altered over time, the basic identification connected with each is how those labels are understood during our modern times.

Five events, or episodes in US history are examined through the lense of conservative and arguably liberal viewpoints:

*The 1800 Presidential election-Whigs and order. Jefferson and the French Revolution.
*The anti-catholicism period that was a result of an influx of Irish Immigration.
*The birth and rise of the LDS church with their polygamy doctrine.
*Prohibition and Pluralism-drinking, vice, purity, and the birth of Modernity.
 *The Contemporary Culture Wars (School prayer, Abortion, Gay Rights/Marriage)

In a nutshell, society is changing, or has changed, and conservatives want to keep things status quo; thus, keeping their power, position, and their relevance. What provides the impetus that inspires the call to action is the unceasing anxiety that America is doomed unless swift and unyielding action is taken. Yet, it seems to be always too little, too late. You see, its just about next to impossible, if not impossible, to judge when the succeeding cultural crisis will exhibit itself so that preparations can be made to defeat it before its conclusion.

What I found to be the most intriguing idea from the book is the concept of ambiguity. Towards the conclusion of the book, Prothero states that conservatives are intensely uncomfortable with the notion. While liberals tend not to be.  Ideas, actions, laws, and people are either pure (moral) or impure (immoral) when considered through the conservative lense. Thus, ambiguous topics such as abortion (Should we force women to carry pregnancies to term? Is it murder? Do we punish it like murder? Do women have the final say about what happens to their bodies?) must be determined unambiguous and therefore simply immoral by conservatives. So, it must be unquestionably stopped. Yet, it seems, this is yet another lost war politically exploited to get the conservative base cognisant and provoked. Therefore, donating to campaigns and getting out the vote.

The books is well researched and cited. Although written by a scholar, the style is accessible and conversational. At the end, the reader is admonished to keep talking (to the other side) and to keep it civil. In this age of social media, that can be considered a very tall order.
3240108
This book mirrors much of the frustration normal, everyday people feel with the religious fascist dictating world politics today.

I imagine, hopefully not in my life time but soon, there will be a great conflict between the superstitious and the sane people.  I imagine that a brutal, crippling war will be started by the Agnostics/Atheists, of which I am one, during a time when the religious fascists are busy fighting amongst themselves.  It will be a decisive strike and will change the face of mankind but it will ultimately fail.

You see, you can't possibly stop all of the stupidity always. Stupidity is a powerful force and is not bound by lack of intellect or social upbringing but is in fact fostered by an oligarchy of powerful men using childish superstitions to control not-so-bright groups of willing sycophants.

Just so we don't get hung up on semantics, "ignorance" is not knowing something and there is no shame in that.  However, "stupidity" is knowing what is right and still doing the wrong thing.  This is often called faith.

All of this speak of control and religion reminds me of the 3rd passage of the Tao Te Ching:

"If you do not adulate the worthy, you will make others non-contentious.

If you do not value rare treasures, you will stop others from stealing.

If people do not see desirables, they will not be agitated.

Therefore, when the sage governs,

He clears peoples minds,

Fills their bellies,

Weakens their ambition and

Strengthens their bones.

If the people are kept without cleverness and desire

It will make the intellectuals not dare to meddle.

Acting without contrivance, there is no lack of manageability."

Pretty creepy since it basically says, in this translation, that a wise and powerful ruler will keep his people happy and well fed but ignorant.  You see, when people start thinking for themselves they start to wonder why they are doing all the work and the leader is getting rich.  They start to wonder why they are sending their children off to die in pointless, undecipherable wars when the "leaders" themselves are demonstrably cowards and are unwilling to send their own children off to die.

Luckily we have great minds like Ayn Rand who wrote so eloquently, "I am a man. This miracle of me is mine to own and keep, and mine to guard, and mine to use, and mine to kneel before! I do not surrender my treasures, nor do I share them. The fortune of my spirit is not to be blown into coins of brass and flung to the winds as alms for the poor of the spirit. I guard my treasures: my thought, my will, my freedom. And the greatest of these is freedom."
2863605
Beautifully written and deeply expressed, it is the story of how people get lost in the rigid, inhumane, rules of Christian fundamentalism. I particularly admired how the author did her own research about the religion instead of just obeying what she was told.

I even felt for her ex-husband, who was so trapped in the particular carrot-and-stick arrangement that was being a Fundamentalist minister. On the one hand spoiled and indulged by all around them, on the other a suffering subject of impossible demands which created stresses that no one is allowed to handle properly. They can only compensate, even in bizarre ways, until they are exposed.

This arrogant religious attitude towards normal human needs nearly destroyed the author but she decided that she and her children deserved better. And they do. This is a story about what happens when women are seen as servants with no needs of their own, oppressed by the male half of humanity so they don't have to grow up and be adults.

It is a system that doesn't want anyone to be adults. I am happy for the author that she did it anyway.
2546467
One thing I don't think anyone else mentioned: Judging a book by the cover
There is nothing about the passed out supermarket patron in the book. The analogy seems obvious, and the facts end up seeming true. The psychology of the design does appeal to the teens who like pictures and the like. What I don't get is  how Christianity (the pedestal religion) dissociates post-modernism when it uses its principles through the entire book.

The idea that exactness isn't necessary is postmodern. For example in celebrities, Carl Sagan is mentioned as a modernist, yet Sagan was quoted to be agnostic. The Humanist Manifesto is not a "sacred text" of atheism either, because nothing is sacred in that world view. Satanists mock Christianity but they mostly don't believe in the supernatural. Magic the Gathering is just a freaking game!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

While I am at it, for secularists all religions are just a game. For the religious, all the secularists are a threat.
1059687
This movie has such contemporary resonance. The story of dogmatic religion in the pursuit of absolute power over men and in search of total subjugation over women, the killing of the spirit of inquiry and rationality in the name of belief, all this is continuing to this day--in ISIS, the Taliban, and in fundamentalists of all stripes.

Native cultures, sciences, arts, languages, learning are still being plundered and destroyed today. As it was in Alexandria 1900 years ago, so it is today in Syria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and India today.

At a more subtle level, evangelism and colonialism continues to attack India's ancient "pagan" culture and Sanskrit learning 60 years after the British left India, in the form of the Pollocks, Witzels, and Wendy Donigers of the world, with their orientalist prejudices, misappropriations, misreadings, and self-serving perspectives. The confused communists of India, with their belief in violent methods and media control, are in cahoots with their orientalist western brothers to destroy what's left of ancient India's culture.

This movie made me cry for alternative perspectives, "other"ed traditions, native histories--especially Indic ones, which have been brutally suppressed for over a 1000 years. It is an old civilization, contemporaneous to Alexandria shown in this movie, the last "pagan" culture left standing, today struggling to survive, fighting to be whole and well again.
1779382
In "Jihad vs McWorld," an earlier work published in 1995, Benjamin Barber made some prescient observations about the threats that Islamic fundamentalism and consumer capitalism posed for liberal democracy.  The warnings went largely unnoticed until 9/11.  At which point the book was republished for its insightfulness as to why Islamic fundamentalists were bent on destroying the McWorld created by consumer capitalism.  Now Barber has written a follow-up: Not only does Jihad pose a threat to McWorld, McWorld is actually in the process of undermining itself as well as liberal democracy.

There is nothing new about fulminating against the excesses of consumer capitalism.  Critics from Thorstein Veblen, to John Kenneth Galbraith, to Daniel Bell have done as much.  Barber extols the productivist capitalism of an earlier era, characterized by hard work, discipline, and deferred gratification.  This type of capitalism met "the real needs of real people."  Today in the era of consumer capitalism basic needs are met rather quickly, leaving the consumer with lots of disposable income and many options of spending it foolishly.

It has long been known by marketing executives that the purpose of advertising is to make people buy what they don't really need.  One wonders about the long term consequences of a lifetime of this kind of brainwashing.  Barber breaks the process down into two stages.  The first is the "consumerization of the child."  This is done by inculcating shopping-centered behavior in children, training them to become habitual shoppers and even developing brand consciousness.  The second stage is not to have the child develop into an adult.  Marketing executives seek to infantilize adults, so that they have no deeper understanding of themselves than the brand names that define them.  Even though this critique of consumer culture sounds harsh, there is some truth in it.

There is also some truth to the claim that it is undermining the public sphere.  A society of adolescents or infantilized adults focusing primarily on their private needs has, according to Barber, led to a decline in public participation in democracy as well as a decline in public institutions.  He fears that the increasing privatization of the the public sphere that has been going on for the past decades will be the undoing of democracy.

Although Barber proposes some "remedies" to "redirect capitalism," they're not even worth mentioning because they are futile.  When the excesses of consumer capitalism reach a point where they are no longer sustainable, capitlaism will redirect itself.  When infantilized adults find that their quality of life is not improving with the consumption of more useless goods they will then decide to grow up.
2595302
It is only now that I understand the Islamic dichotomy - the earthly government v/s the Allah/Muhammad government.
I also realize that it is the Islamic ideology that has and will eternally engage "real Muslims" in war until they achieve their religious obligation as slaves of Allah/Muhammad - To convert the kufrs/infidels of the whole world to Allah and Muhammad.
Their methods are simply bloody dangerous - Convert to Islam, pay slave tax for life or die.
No one can win a war against Muslims with bombs and bullets.
Islam is the real danger and not its followers.
It is Islam, as an ideology, that breeds perpetual terrorists.
3793636
This Roman Catholic authors writings are grotesque and sobering. She profoundly displays Christian orthodoxy against modernism, and Southern-Protestantism that is hypocritical. Themes include the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, the Resurrection, and the person of Christ. Not recommended for the light-hearted or immature.
2709312
A very interesting and mostly well-written book about an intriguing and often hidden side of American life, American Mormonism and its extreme fundamentalists.

I was rather appalled and even sickened by the tendency of male Mormon fundamentalists to take young girls, even their own daughters, as wives. And also by the blatant racism of these same folks. Though not nearly as appalling, the racism and sexism of the mainstream Later Day Saints was also quite disgusting. Then again, these mainstream LDS folks have led the charge against gay people. I was also a bit surprised to read about the mainstream Mormon's "lying for the church", which made Mitt Romney's deceitful flip-flopping on issues like choice, gay rights and the environment, easier to understand.

One thing I don't understand is all the comments claiming that Krakauer conflates the mainstream LDS with the Fundamentalist LDS. He make the distinction clear on every page. Too bad that the self-righteous in the LDS insist on being so defensive and uncritical, even as they turn their enmity and money on gays and women.
3508447
<a data-hook="product-link-linked" class="a-link-normal" href="/Cultures-of-War-Pearl-Harbor-Hiroshima-9-11-Iraq/dp/0393061507/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_rvw_txt?ie=UTF8">Cultures of War: Pearl Harbor / Hiroshima / 9-11 / Iraq</a>

Dr. Dower's book seems to hit a nerve among some readers. This is because it destroys the myth of moral superiority that some harbor when atrocities are committed by their side, as opposed to when this is done by the other side. It is high time that such a myth be destroyed.
Historically, the mixture of national hubris, militarism and religion have proven to be toxic. In the Twentieth Century, imperial Germany and imperial Japan provided illustrations of that social disease. I don't say that imperial America has reached such a state. However, nobody can deny that there is a trend here. Aggressors always think that their justified war would be both short and victorious! The Bush-Cheney war of aggression against Iraq, begun on March 20, 2003, still fits the pattern, more than seven years later.
For half a century now, Hollywood, and now cable TV, has promoted the delusional idea of American exceptionalism, professing that the United States is "the Greatest Country" in the world, with the more or less clear implication that other countries are less worthy. In due time, this is bound to have a profound effect on the collective cultural psyche.
As for militarism, President Dwight Eisenhower, a military man himself, decried in his 1961 Farewell Address the rise of the military-industrial complex in the United States. Half a century later, nobody can say that the situation has improved. If something, it has degraded. And as to religion, poll after poll indicate that the U.S. is, with Turkey, the most structurally religious democracy in the world.
There you have it. --Mix a sense of inherent superiority with entrenched militarism and throw God into the equation, and you have a recipe that has proven deadly in the past.
____________________________
Rodrigue Tremblay is the author of "The New American Empire":
http://www.amazon.com/New-American-Empire-Rodrigue-Tremblay/dp/0741418878/ref=sr_11_1/104-8428100-2298348?ie=UTF8