The Three Fundamentalisms of the American Far Right

A column in Salon follows the evolution of the far right in America from the post WWII years through today analyzes how we've come to such batshit craziness and irrationality which has now taken over the Republican Party for the most part. The irony in the piece is that it looks at the evolution - using a concept that much of the far right refuses to believe in despite scientific evidence to support evolution. But then, that's part and parcel with the fundamentalism that has replaced facts and reason. Just look at the GOP Congressional leadership to see how little objective facts and reasoning have evaporated from the scene in the GOP. Much of the drift to irrational insanity not surprisingly flows from the fundamentalism and ignorance by choice of the Christianist faction within the GOP which in my view is like a metastasizing cancer. Here are some highlights:
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In contradiction to the hostility to Darwinism shared by many of its constituents, the American right is evolving rapidly before our eyes. The project of creating an American version of Burkean conservatism has collapsed. What has replaced it is best described as triple fundamentalism -- a synthesis of Biblical fundamentalism, constitutional fundamentalism and market fundamentalism.
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Following World War II, the American right was a miscellany of marginal, embittered subcultures -- anti-New Dealers, isolationists, paranoid anticommunists, anti-semites and white supremacists. Russell Kirk and others associated with William F. Buckley Jr.'s National Review sought to Americanize a version of high-toned British Burkean conservatism.
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The term "fundamentalism" originated in the early twentieth century as a description of reactionary evangelical Protestants in the U.S. who rejected liberal Protestantism and modern evolutionary science and insisted on the inerrancy of the Bible. . . . . once white Southerners captured the Republican party and the conservative movement, the High Church right that found Kirk and Buckley among its college of cardinals gave way to the political equivalent of the Foot-Washin’ Baptists.
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The increasingly-Southernized American Right has transferred the fundamentalist Protestant mentality from the sphere of religion to the spheres of law and the economy. Protestant fundamentalism is now joined by constitutional fundamentalism and market fundamentalism.
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In all three cases, the pattern is the same. There is the eternal Truth that never varies -- the will of God, the principles of the Founding Fathers, the so-called laws of the free market. There are the scriptures which explain the eternal truths -- the King James Bible, in the case of religious fundamentalism, the Constitution or the Federalist Papers, in the case of constitutional fundamentalism, and Friedrich von Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom in the case of market fundamentalism . . .
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History, to the fundamentalist mind, is a story of original perfection, followed by betrayal and restoration. The early Christian church was perfect; it was corrupted and betrayed by medieval Catholicism; and it was restored to its original purity by radical Protestant reformers. In the same way, the American constitution was not a flawed compromise among rival states and factions, to be improved by later amendment, but a document of superhuman wisdom, created in a kind of secular Pentecost at Philadelphia in the summer of 1787.
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Modern American market fundamentalism, too, is recognizably modeled on the fundamentalist Protestant version of church history . . . . the market fundamentalists pretend that the U.S. was governed by the laws of the market until Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal replaced capitalism with socialism . . .
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Back when conservatism was orthodox and traditional, rather than fundamentalist and counter-revolutionary, conservatives could engage in friendly debates with liberals, and minds on both sides could now and then be changed. But if your sect alone understands the True Religion and the True Constitution and the Laws of the Market, then there is no point in debate. All those who disagree with you are heretics, to be defeated, whether or not they are converted.
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The era of triple fundamentalism on the American right is bound to come to an end. Sooner or later, dogmatism and reality will collide, and it is not reality that will crumple like tinfoil. The only question is how much damage will be done to the American polity before the revolution of the saints fizzles out.
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As I've noted often before, the extreme fundamentalism that we are seeing suggests to me severe emotional and psychological issues on the part of adherents who are absolutely terrified of (i) having to exercise independent thought and analysis and (ii) having their house of cards religious beliefs exposed as lies. This mental illness if you will makes members of the far right perfect victims for demagogues both in the pulpit and in Congress.