Fundamental confusion ...

Found this article (Religious Fundamentalism and Politics by Jeff Haynes) by searching google: fundamentalism and politics.

Being an impatient person I didn't get past the 5th paragraph. This stumped me:

To many observers and ‘ordinary’ people, religious fundamentalism is always socially and politically conservative, backward looking, inherently opposed to change. But if this is the case how can we explain the activities of militant Islamic groups around the world - often dubbed ‘fundamentalist’ - who strive to overthrow regimes with which they disagree? Other groups which have been labelled fundamentalist - such as ‘born again’ Christians in the United States or orthodox Jews in Israel - seem to fit more closely the conventional wisdom, as they are often linked to very conservative political forces who seek to roll back what they perceive as an unwelcome liberalisation and relaxation of social and moral mores.

The paragraph implies that religious fundamentalists cannot be both conservative and seek to impose their fundamentalist beliefs on others through change in current day political environments, even when the goal of the change is to impose upon the society, country or world the 'correct' laws and codes of behavior from the past. Isn't that what the GOP, along with the US christianists, claim to be doing? Re-creating some magical time from the 1950's through a somewhat violent assault on our laws and the very framework that holds our country together to such an extent that our police forces have been turned into military occupiers in our own cities?

Fundamentalism, conservatism and crusades seem, to me, to be linked concepts --with other hidden authoritarian objectives thrown in for good measure, of course.

I suppose for the author a 'rollback' to the past is conservative but 'striving to overthrow regimes' is not conservative. Though, of course, both may follow from a belief in 'the strict maintenance of ancient or fundamental doctrines of a religion or ideology.'

Really, it's only a matter of degree. If we can still use the term conservatives for those who are said to be 'averse to change and hold to traditional values and attitudes' when this same change-averse group is willing to rollback from present day to some idealized time decades ago, then why not use the term conservative for those who would use shock and awe to bomb a country back to the stone age for their own good?

Or perhaps there is no such thing as a conservative. Or a better definition of conservatives would be that they reject change when they are comfortable with the present but insist on change when the past looks greener? Or there's money to be acquired.

Yesterday's QUOTES ...

Share the love? Saudi Arabia's morality police are at it again, this time arresting and investigating 57 men for flirting. They have been accused of playing loud music and dancing in a manner meant to attract girls. The horror. -- at least they are picking on [stoning is, evidently, reserved for women] men for a change.

For a Republican 'conservative' like George W. Bush the more death and destruction, the better. Bush's Operation Help Others: ... Some 151,000 to 1,000,000+ have died violent deaths. Over four million have fled their homes and become refugees. Outbreaks of cholera. Some 70% of Iraqis without clean water and some 80% without adequate sanitation. ...
There's an entire professional corps of Serious Looking People whose job it is to tell you that your curiosity about what the people who run our government are doing is a "non-story."

Think a 'better human' is coming? ...

Evolution has accelerated in 1800 human genes, which encompass about 7% of the human genome, Harpending's team reports online this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Most of the mutations resulted from dramatic population booms, suggests lead author John Hawks of the University of Wisconsin in Madison. As populations expand, the number of mutations increases, boosting the chances for a beneficial genetic variant that can improve survival and sweep through a population (in the same way that a large population of insects develops a gene for resistance to a pesticide faster than a small population).

Interesting. What kind of qualities will these be? Intelligence? Or more fundamentalism set to finalize the end of the US experiment in democracy much like fundamentalist Islam destroyed the budding eastern civilizations.

The article identifies changes in resistance to disease and adjustment to the changes in food stuff.

Also read: John Hawks Weblog

Yesterday's QUOTES ...

The researchers found one theme universal to gene expression and aging: the slowing of a cell's energy factory.

They [right wing PR strategists] look down on the press with contempt as people who can be manipulated with ease. And they are right. The beltway journalists in their arrogance don't see themselves as being manipulated. And if they do see it they actually have a sick admiration for it (see Rove, Karl).

So these people, like most working Americans, are genuinely threatened, over a long period of time, by economic forces that are making a lot of people rich — but not them. They are, however, inexplicably quite content with that state of affairs, but are upset by an extremely small population of foreigners who are doing dirty work for low wages.
[...]
Aristocracy is, by definition, un-American. The question is how many Americans will be "messaged" into believing they are doing the patriotic thing by behaving like subjects and hunting down the foreign invader on behalf of their betters.
So [Mark] Steyn is mostly wrong. And to the extent that he is right, he is right by accident; liberalizing forces offend fundamentalists simply because fundamentalists have so much of their selves invested in their closed-minded views of the world. The differences between the fundamentalists of the west and those of Khartoum is a matter of degree, not of kind.
No, it is simply wrong to expect a typical panel of Republican Presidential Candidates to answer hard questions. They are practicing for the august position of President.