The article at the link below argues that U.S. Conservatism has morphed into three fundamentalisms: Biblical, Constitutionalism, and Economic.
Fundamentalists believe in certain eternal Truths that never vary: “the will of God, the principles of the Founding Fathers, the...laws of the free market.” These eternal Truths are codified in the King James Bible, The US Constitution, and the writings of Ayn Rand & Friedrich von Hayek, respectively.
Conservatives/Fundamentalists believe history
“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. To believe today’s constitutional fundamentalists, the true constitution was betrayed around 1900 in the name of the "living constitution" by progressives and liberals....
[Modern market fundamentalists ignore]
the long history of tariffs, land grants, military procurement and mixed public-private corporations in the United States, [and] pretend that the U.S. was governed by the laws of the market until Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal replaced capitalism with socialism...
...The rise of triple fundamentalism on the American right creates a crisis of political discourse in the United States...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...”
http://www.salon.com/books/history/...ar_room/2011/07/05/lind_three_fundamentalisms
Fundamentalists believe in certain eternal Truths that never vary: “the will of God, the principles of the Founding Fathers, the...laws of the free market.” These eternal Truths are codified in the King James Bible, The US Constitution, and the writings of Ayn Rand & Friedrich von Hayek, respectively.
Conservatives/Fundamentalists believe history
“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. To believe today’s constitutional fundamentalists, the true constitution was betrayed around 1900 in the name of the "living constitution" by progressives and liberals....
[Modern market fundamentalists ignore]
the long history of tariffs, land grants, military procurement and mixed public-private corporations in the United States, [and] pretend that the U.S. was governed by the laws of the market until Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal replaced capitalism with socialism...
...The rise of triple fundamentalism on the American right creates a crisis of political discourse in the United States...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...”
http://www.salon.com/books/history/...ar_room/2011/07/05/lind_three_fundamentalisms
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