POLITICAL ADHERENCE
Virtually all of Earth’s political systems are derived from and based upon specific religions and their behavioral credos. Asiatic rulers claim to be gods, descendents of gods, or chosen by gods to rule. Similarly, most European royalty have claimed to be “God’s chosen” and to have been authorized to rule “by the grace of God.” For most of the past 2,000 years the nation-states of Europe have waged wars of extreme brutality purportedly to establish the superiority of one version of their shared religion over another. In Spain, early Christians were displaced by an Islamic invasion from Africa until Spanish forces in turn repelled the invaders in 1492.
In each case the prevailing group would confiscate the property of the other and torture, enslave or murder the vanquished peoples. With the ascension of a new ruler there often came a change in religious alliances that would spark both civil and international wars. As a detailed example we can look at England, an island nation that had, like most of Europe, been subject to the Christian Catholic religion. In the middle 1500s England was ruled by King Henry VIII, who as a young man wrote a highly supportive treatise about Catholicism. For his efforts Henry was given a title of honor by the leader (pope) of the religion: Defender of the Faith.
Several years later, Henry sought a divorce from his wife, an action forbidden by Catholicism except for very specific and extreme circumstances. But his request was denied by the pope, which led Henry the faithful defender to sever ties with the church and establish a new religious order of his own. To ensure that the new religion would do his bidding, Henry made himself the head, and he went on to repeal the many special privileges that the Catholics had long enjoyed. He did, however, allow considerable freedom for people to practice whichever religion they chose, which was a considerable novelty for the time.
Upon Henry’s death, his elder daughter, Mary, restored Catholicism and went on to ban and suppress all other religions in England. Under her rule, Henry’s Protestants were arrested, tortured, and murdered in great masses during a civil war that earned her the sobriquet “Bloody Mary.”
When Mary died, Henry’s young daughter became Queen Elizabeth. During her long reign, she restored Henry’s Church of England to status as first religion of the realm, but she also allowed broad religious freedom that Mary had suppressed. Her time and reign were still brutal, but far less so that in other European nations; and she ruled over a great surge forward in human social development. But when Elizabeth died she was replaced by a weak, pliable, and devout Catholic who once more restored chaos, violence and horror to England. That cycle would continue for another 160 years.
By the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries the political power to persecute others was considerably diluted among many governments of the planet. Yet those religious influences are still important in Earth’s affairs, and almost never for the professed purpose of making Earth a better place. Most leaders still take an oath to God, and nations believe that God is one their side—a “God loves us and hates you” mentality. Politicians still establish laws and guiding principles, selectively, based on religious sources. That is why, for example, gambling is illegal in many places, but many governments may engage in the practice (where they are typically called “lottos”) that is strictly prohibited for individuals; why prostitution is illegal in countries based on certain strict Christian interpretations, but is legal in other nations; and why warfare is the job of noble and brave young people under government orders, but killing at the individually-directed level is the crime of murder.
The argument has been made that some of the most repressive governments of Earth have not been based upon religions at all, but have actually been based on societies that have outlawed religious practices. Notable among these models are the Nazis of Germany, Communists of Russia, and Communists of China. The latter two have been the predominant political powers over most of Earth’s largest continent for the past 100 years.
Though Communism began in Russia in 1917, it is simpler to begin with the Nazi state of 1933-1945 because it is clearly an example of a redirected religion. The Nazi leader, one Austrian-born peasant of no particular talent save perpetuating hatred and discontent, was Adolph Hitler. To ascend to power he attached his cause to a historical distrust and antipathy of the Jewish people of his own part of Europe. By the time he had sufficient power to assume the role and title of Der Führer, his hatred and state-sponsored persecutions went beyond the Jews to include the disabled, deformed, retarded, Slavs, dark peoples, and many others. Early in his rise to power he was considered a German demigod, and the population literally accepted the proposition that Hitler was Germany: the nation would rise to greatness or fall into oblivion based on how well the people served their Führer. His closest cadre of bodyguards and elite troops was inducted into a religious order of Teutonic Knights, complete with the pomp, circumstance, and icons used by any dominant religion. Hitler’s Germany was not a godless state, but a state with its own god who happened to be flesh and blood and walking among the people.
The story of Communism has many elements in common with Nazism. In each case a charismatic leader was supported by a large establishment of people eager for change and the belief that such change would work to everyone’s benefit. In each case the old religions were suppressed and, eventually, banned. In each case an autocratic and delusional tyrant assumed the role of a god on Earth and then set out to destroy any and all forms of perceived threat to their power. Religions were banned, but so too was true scholarship, logic, reason, and rationalism. To even question a premise, let alone authority, could result in extreme societal retribution that could include torture, servitude, imprisonment, or death. The words “State” and “Führer” and “Chairman” would stand in for “God,” and to the same effect. To defy, in any small way, the authority could lead to eradication.
Chinese Communism started off in the Russian model, but quickly altered itself to fit a very different cultural system. This is, and has always been, the Chinese way. But in establishing Communism, China did relatively little to change from its historical governmental practices. For over 1200 years, China has been a huge empire under the political control of men (and, rarely, women) who were seen as “the sons of heaven,” and thus gods. Imperial decree was law and the society was organized in a way that largely ensured Imperial decree would be uniformly followed. Emperors were not especially tolerant of new ideas unless they could be kept under imperial control. For over twelve centuries the Chinese people saw their prosperity or poverty as periods when the Son of Heaven was in favour or not with his godly parents.
By the late 1800s the imperial situation had declined into a debased and ineffective center that was seen as overly under foreign influence. During the latter 1800s China had held firm to its policy of isolation and its people lived in ways that were almost the same as had their ancestors of five or six centuries earlier. Meanwhile, surrounding nations, including arch rival Japan, had enthusiastically embraced the ideas of the military-industrial West, and they became increasing threats to continued Chinese security. By 1911 the Chinese people revolted against their emperor and effectively brought down the imperial system. There followed 38 years of division, factions, invasions by Japan and Russia, and regional rule by warlords until, in 1949, the Communists took control of the nation. Though their titles and rhetoric sounded new and modern, the reality is that China was returned to a revised imperial system very little different from the times of powerful emperors of the past. Though Communist leaders loudly decry religion of any type, they have nonetheless established a religious-type empire anew.
Thus in Communism we see the old pattern repeated. The leaders repudiated established religions and made their practice illegal, and then made their own political entity into the new state religion. Like the earlier religion it replaced, the new order came complete with dogma, suppression, indoctrination, and blind faith obedience to the demigod ruler.
The philosophical question of whether a political system can be properly considered a religion or not is immaterial to the practice such a system requires. The net result is the same. The citizen is expected to pay some degree of obedience to a state entity that represents “The Nation” to an equivalent degree that must be paid to a religious order. “The Nation,” like the churches, may demand taxes, prescribe laws and standards of behavior, dispense punishments, and command people to engage in war. “The Nation” does not have a Hell to which it may banish dissidents, but it does have prisons and the ability to murder its own citizens if they betray The Nation. Such executions are the ultimate punishment, but need be performed rather rarely to ensure that fear of such punishment deters political infidelity. Through the various levels of acceptable intimidation that a state allows itself to inflict upon its own population, modern societies differ from the older ones by replacing religious fervor with a political dogma known as “jingoism#.” This devotion to patriotism in place of religion is generally termed Nationalism.
[“Klaatu” is the name of a fictional character depicted in the short story "Farewell to the Master," by Harry Bates (1940). What follows here is not a work of fiction but a commentary. The author claims no copyright for use of the term “Klaatu” or references to the film, The Day the Earth Stood Stil, by Edmund North. Otherwise, the text is copyright© 2008, 2012 by Robert George Sprackland. All rights reserved.]
Virtually all of Earth’s political systems are derived from and based upon specific religions and their behavioral credos. Asiatic rulers claim to be gods, descendents of gods, or chosen by gods to rule. Similarly, most European royalty have claimed to be “God’s chosen” and to have been authorized to rule “by the grace of God.” For most of the past 2,000 years the nation-states of Europe have waged wars of extreme brutality purportedly to establish the superiority of one version of their shared religion over another. In Spain, early Christians were displaced by an Islamic invasion from Africa until Spanish forces in turn repelled the invaders in 1492.
In each case the prevailing group would confiscate the property of the other and torture, enslave or murder the vanquished peoples. With the ascension of a new ruler there often came a change in religious alliances that would spark both civil and international wars. As a detailed example we can look at England, an island nation that had, like most of Europe, been subject to the Christian Catholic religion. In the middle 1500s England was ruled by King Henry VIII, who as a young man wrote a highly supportive treatise about Catholicism. For his efforts Henry was given a title of honor by the leader (pope) of the religion: Defender of the Faith.
Several years later, Henry sought a divorce from his wife, an action forbidden by Catholicism except for very specific and extreme circumstances. But his request was denied by the pope, which led Henry the faithful defender to sever ties with the church and establish a new religious order of his own. To ensure that the new religion would do his bidding, Henry made himself the head, and he went on to repeal the many special privileges that the Catholics had long enjoyed. He did, however, allow considerable freedom for people to practice whichever religion they chose, which was a considerable novelty for the time.
Upon Henry’s death, his elder daughter, Mary, restored Catholicism and went on to ban and suppress all other religions in England. Under her rule, Henry’s Protestants were arrested, tortured, and murdered in great masses during a civil war that earned her the sobriquet “Bloody Mary.”
When Mary died, Henry’s young daughter became Queen Elizabeth. During her long reign, she restored Henry’s Church of England to status as first religion of the realm, but she also allowed broad religious freedom that Mary had suppressed. Her time and reign were still brutal, but far less so that in other European nations; and she ruled over a great surge forward in human social development. But when Elizabeth died she was replaced by a weak, pliable, and devout Catholic who once more restored chaos, violence and horror to England. That cycle would continue for another 160 years.
By the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries the political power to persecute others was considerably diluted among many governments of the planet. Yet those religious influences are still important in Earth’s affairs, and almost never for the professed purpose of making Earth a better place. Most leaders still take an oath to God, and nations believe that God is one their side—a “God loves us and hates you” mentality. Politicians still establish laws and guiding principles, selectively, based on religious sources. That is why, for example, gambling is illegal in many places, but many governments may engage in the practice (where they are typically called “lottos”) that is strictly prohibited for individuals; why prostitution is illegal in countries based on certain strict Christian interpretations, but is legal in other nations; and why warfare is the job of noble and brave young people under government orders, but killing at the individually-directed level is the crime of murder.
The argument has been made that some of the most repressive governments of Earth have not been based upon religions at all, but have actually been based on societies that have outlawed religious practices. Notable among these models are the Nazis of Germany, Communists of Russia, and Communists of China. The latter two have been the predominant political powers over most of Earth’s largest continent for the past 100 years.
Though Communism began in Russia in 1917, it is simpler to begin with the Nazi state of 1933-1945 because it is clearly an example of a redirected religion. The Nazi leader, one Austrian-born peasant of no particular talent save perpetuating hatred and discontent, was Adolph Hitler. To ascend to power he attached his cause to a historical distrust and antipathy of the Jewish people of his own part of Europe. By the time he had sufficient power to assume the role and title of Der Führer, his hatred and state-sponsored persecutions went beyond the Jews to include the disabled, deformed, retarded, Slavs, dark peoples, and many others. Early in his rise to power he was considered a German demigod, and the population literally accepted the proposition that Hitler was Germany: the nation would rise to greatness or fall into oblivion based on how well the people served their Führer. His closest cadre of bodyguards and elite troops was inducted into a religious order of Teutonic Knights, complete with the pomp, circumstance, and icons used by any dominant religion. Hitler’s Germany was not a godless state, but a state with its own god who happened to be flesh and blood and walking among the people.
The story of Communism has many elements in common with Nazism. In each case a charismatic leader was supported by a large establishment of people eager for change and the belief that such change would work to everyone’s benefit. In each case the old religions were suppressed and, eventually, banned. In each case an autocratic and delusional tyrant assumed the role of a god on Earth and then set out to destroy any and all forms of perceived threat to their power. Religions were banned, but so too was true scholarship, logic, reason, and rationalism. To even question a premise, let alone authority, could result in extreme societal retribution that could include torture, servitude, imprisonment, or death. The words “State” and “Führer” and “Chairman” would stand in for “God,” and to the same effect. To defy, in any small way, the authority could lead to eradication.
Chinese Communism started off in the Russian model, but quickly altered itself to fit a very different cultural system. This is, and has always been, the Chinese way. But in establishing Communism, China did relatively little to change from its historical governmental practices. For over 1200 years, China has been a huge empire under the political control of men (and, rarely, women) who were seen as “the sons of heaven,” and thus gods. Imperial decree was law and the society was organized in a way that largely ensured Imperial decree would be uniformly followed. Emperors were not especially tolerant of new ideas unless they could be kept under imperial control. For over twelve centuries the Chinese people saw their prosperity or poverty as periods when the Son of Heaven was in favour or not with his godly parents.
By the late 1800s the imperial situation had declined into a debased and ineffective center that was seen as overly under foreign influence. During the latter 1800s China had held firm to its policy of isolation and its people lived in ways that were almost the same as had their ancestors of five or six centuries earlier. Meanwhile, surrounding nations, including arch rival Japan, had enthusiastically embraced the ideas of the military-industrial West, and they became increasing threats to continued Chinese security. By 1911 the Chinese people revolted against their emperor and effectively brought down the imperial system. There followed 38 years of division, factions, invasions by Japan and Russia, and regional rule by warlords until, in 1949, the Communists took control of the nation. Though their titles and rhetoric sounded new and modern, the reality is that China was returned to a revised imperial system very little different from the times of powerful emperors of the past. Though Communist leaders loudly decry religion of any type, they have nonetheless established a religious-type empire anew.
Thus in Communism we see the old pattern repeated. The leaders repudiated established religions and made their practice illegal, and then made their own political entity into the new state religion. Like the earlier religion it replaced, the new order came complete with dogma, suppression, indoctrination, and blind faith obedience to the demigod ruler.
The philosophical question of whether a political system can be properly considered a religion or not is immaterial to the practice such a system requires. The net result is the same. The citizen is expected to pay some degree of obedience to a state entity that represents “The Nation” to an equivalent degree that must be paid to a religious order. “The Nation,” like the churches, may demand taxes, prescribe laws and standards of behavior, dispense punishments, and command people to engage in war. “The Nation” does not have a Hell to which it may banish dissidents, but it does have prisons and the ability to murder its own citizens if they betray The Nation. Such executions are the ultimate punishment, but need be performed rather rarely to ensure that fear of such punishment deters political infidelity. Through the various levels of acceptable intimidation that a state allows itself to inflict upon its own population, modern societies differ from the older ones by replacing religious fervor with a political dogma known as “jingoism#.” This devotion to patriotism in place of religion is generally termed Nationalism.
[“Klaatu” is the name of a fictional character depicted in the short story "Farewell to the Master," by Harry Bates (1940). What follows here is not a work of fiction but a commentary. The author claims no copyright for use of the term “Klaatu” or references to the film, The Day the Earth Stood Stil, by Edmund North. Otherwise, the text is copyright© 2008, 2012 by Robert George Sprackland. All rights reserved.]
