In a comment on my “Spiritual Warrior” post Rombald suggested I was too concerned about the longevity of America’s religious liberty.  Here is my answer, because to do the issue credit took me beyond a simple reply. 

Rombald-

I wish I was a confident as you are about the religious and
physical security of Pagans.  I
really do.  A few years ago I would
have shared your views completely. 
Now I do not.

Here is why I am not as secure in my sense of safety as I
was not that long ago, despite the very important ousting of Republicans from
power in 2008.  I will present them
as a list rather than a paper because it would take too long and I do not have
the time.  I will end with a
discussion of the factors that push in the opposite direction.

1. For many years my politics tended to be classical liberal
and strongly influenced by the principles of the American revolution (that last
part is still true).  While I did
not agree with conservatives on many issues, we shared roughly similar
interpretations of the constitution. 
Particularly starting with George Bush II, in a flash all of that
conservative veneration for the constitution and precedent and American
traditions vanished in an orgy of flag waving breast beating, support for
setting aside the bill of rights, and finally, aggressive war and torture.  Conservatives who raised concerns were
denounced and fired.  

That the people who were the
biggest cheerleaders for all this had at one time seemingly sincerely praised our
constitutional tradition and the rule of law shook me deeply.  Commitment to American values had
become a matter of partisan politics to be set aside upon finally attaining
power.  I became far less
complacent about my country’s commitment to democracy when it could be so
undermined by a bunch of guys with box cutters.

2. The Republicans are no longer acting like an American
political party – they are acting like a European one.  That means disciplined voting and a
breakdown of the blurry boundaries between parties that have long characterized
American politics.  The trouble is
that while parliamentary regimes emerged out of struggled between disciplined
parties, and evolved ways of integrating this party discipline into democratic
systems, our constitutional system was developed before the rise of
parties.  It has worked well with
them anyway, when they were what political scientists call “weak” which means
not particularly cohesive and disciplined.  But if you read James Madison’s Federalist 10, you will see
that the logic of our most famous document written in defense of the American
system is directly contradicted if we have disciplined parties.

In the American system, when you have a disciplined party it
can cause our kind of government to break down, as we are seeing today in the
Senate.  This is because the
constitutional ideal is practical consensus.  Laws get passed when different kinds of majorities elected in
different ways can all agree: the House, Senate, and President.  This consensual bias is what has made
the Senate so vulnerable today. A Senate that operated on the democratic
principle of majority vote would have been vastly more effective than the
assemblage of tired old men and women and the ideologues that stymie them that
we have as “representatives” today.

3. This disciplined party is dominated by several groups
with a very weak commitment to constitutional democracy, if they can be said to
have any commitment at all.  Not
least is the “Christian” right.  So
we have something rather alien to our history, a disciplined party with plenty
of control over members’ funding at the national level, a party that would be
an irritant in a parliamentary system but is a serious problem in our
constitutional one.  The contemporary
Republican Party, by historical standards, is un-American.

4. The Weimar Republic was brought down not by riots, but by
typical democratic coalition politics combined with efforts of the
anti-democratic parties on the right and left to bring about a state of
perpetual crisis, from which they hoped to gain power.  They generated enough crisis that
genuine conservatives brought Hitler into the Chancellorship legally.  Then a new crisis – the Reichstag fire
caused by arson by a particularly stupid communist -led to Hitler declaring a
state of emergency and the Nazi dictatorship.

5. The Republicans, like the Nazis and Communists in the
Weimar Republic, have acted to make any government they do not control
ungovernable.  At the same time
when they were in power, the Republicans and their allies continually
questioned the patriotism of even their gentler critics, talked crisis non
stop, and did all they could to spread fear of terrorism, politicized the
Justice Department, and sought to create a national machine for perpetual
rule.  They were acting as if they
wanted to prepare popular sentiment for a elective dictatorship – something
like Mexico’s old PRI system.  Their
own excesses brought them down in 2008, but down is not out.

6. Out of power we see major conservative and religious
right leaders like Limbaugh and Beck and Palin and too many others talk about
the possible need for armed insurrection, the deliberate treason of Democrats,
and similar sentiments.  This
erodes the foundation for a democratic government: that the opposition is
loyal, but has different ideas about policy, and if they win we have another
shot in the next election.  

7. Crisis usually elevates authoritarian leaders.  As continued crisis and Democratic
incompetence (which is not the fault of the Republicans by any means) continue,
many people will seek a simple solution. 
Certainly that has been the case in many countries in the past.  The “strong manly” leader able to kick
ass and whip everyone into line that appeals to such voters will almost
certainly be a Republican.  Such a
leader is a threat no matter what his party, but this is a continual Republican
theme.  Hence their continual claim
that people who disagree are either wimpish men or lesbians.

8. A key part of the Republican coalition, reflecting its
Southern un-American roots, is the “Christian” right.  One of their major tactics has been to spread fear and
distrust of citizens they disapprove. 
This culture is responsible for almost 100 years of terror against black
Americans in the south.  It is
based on reading the Bible in such a way that it will  ALWAYS be a threat to democracy because it cannot admit that
different points of view are truly legitimate.

9.  The
Christian right, in their own groups, have frequently spoken of the need to
“dominate” the country and rule it by “Biblical” values.  History tells us what those values are
when mixed with political power. 
In this post Nazi era, why would Pat Robertson, long a major Christian
right leader, speak of the need for a “Godly fumigation”?

10. A VERY IMPORTANT thing to remember: In much of Europe
before the rise of the Nazis, German Jews were considered among the MOST
completely assimilated Jews in all of Europe.  They were more accepted in society than in most other European
countries.  Even after the Nazi
rise to power, many said that conditions were worse in Poland.  Few left because it was inconceivable
that what eventually happened could happen.  Pagans are more easily demonized and less well understood
than were Jews.  Any population
that can believe that Obama hates whites, was born in Kenya, and is a socialist
is a population so stupid they will believe anything told them by authorities
they trust. This mass of ignorance, actively promoted by major right wing leaders,  is a big big chunk of the Republican
Party – depending on the question from about 1/3 to 2/3.  Interestingly, the men who have done
much to encourage such views are now attacking public confirmation that much of
their audience believes the.  They are trying to manipulate millions into mindless fear of anyone not like
them while hiding it from the rest of us. 

11. They are allied with a large portion of big finance and
the military industry.

This does not mean we are on the verge of a fascist take
over, but it does mean we need to keep our eye on the ball. And any American
fascism would have a strong “conservative” Christian component. 

Our political system is far more secure than the Weimar
Republic was, in part because while we have a revolutionary right, like the
Weimar Republic did, unlike them, we have no significant revolutionary
left.  On the other hand, our
system is easier to push into chaos than was Weimar because it is
institutionally not well equipped to handle a large disciplined party seeking
to destroy the government, as the Republicans are. Weimar required communists
and Nazis working together to bring down. 
Here the Republicans could do it themselves unless Democrats come to
understand what is afoot, and most so far appear too venal, isolated, and
self-absorbed to do so.

Our Founders and succeeding leaders of our genuine
traditions have told us over and over again that “eternal vigilance is the
price of freedom.”  What we have
going for us is

1. The younger an American is the more tolerant they are

2. The younger Americans are the less truck they have to do
with this kind of degenerate religion.

3. We have a far longer and more successful democratic
tradition than did the Weimar Republic and even in Europe before WWII many
fascist movements failed to come to power.

4. As I understand the Nazi rise, urban Germans far more
anti-Nazi than other Germans.  I
think this was not accidental, and happily we are far more urban than Germany
was.  Cities breed tolerance.  So does higher education, and a great
many young Americans have gone to college.

So I am not simply being an alarmist.  But I think it is very important to
push back strongly to attacks on us, to call them what they are, to defend
civilized values against home grown barbarians who hold them in contempt.

Notice the reactions of most of the Christian who took the
time to respond to the post on the desecration of a Pagan site at the Air Force
Academy.  They tended – with some
wonderful and principled exceptions – to

A. place blame on us for intolerance and even “hate” without
ever copping to intolerance or hate themselves or in their communities.  This was so prevalent as to be
striking.  This tactic turns
attention away from Christian right misbehavior by focusing on us as the bad
guys.  It is standard right wing
operating procedure – as when Kerry was attacked in terms of his service during
Vietnam, while never mentioning Bush’s avoidance of service.  Basically, accuse the opposition of
doing what you are guilty of doing.

B. deny we are really a religion or really worth taking
seriously.

C say we practice evil.

This is an attempt, deliberate or otherwise, to frame the
terms of the discussion so that WE are on the defensive.  If they succeed, people remember us as
the problem, not the acts of desecration. 
It is important that this not happen.

The solution is to push back, and push back hard.  Not with lies, but in ways that
emphasize we are not the threat, they are.  That we are not intolerant, they are.  That we are not trouble makers, they
are.  That we are not
anti-American, they are.  And more
and more I think it important to try to separate them from the larger Christian
community of decent people. 

Related to this, get involved in interfaith work, where we
meet Christians and others who are fine with working with people of different
faith traditions.  This is a very
good corrective to any tendency to demonize all Christians or any other faith
tradition.  There is wisdom in them
all in my view.  One of the best
moments in my life was helping to organize an interfaith tree planting of
native oaks in the Berkeley Hills by the Berkeley Area Interfaith Council.  Each faith tradition did their own
planting in their own way, but we all did it together on the same day. 

This does not mean we need to become political organizers or
anything of the sort, but I think it does mean we need to be strong defenders
of our path as worthy of respect by everyone.

Two books that did a lot to shape my thinking are

Claudia Koonz: The Nazi Conscience (which explains how
Germany was transformed by Nazis into a society where the stuff that happened
could happen.  Pay particular
attention to the role of the media. 
I think it is the single most important book for our purposes.) 

Robert O. Paxton, The Anatomy of Fascism (The best general
study of fascism across cultures that I know of.)