The Secular Believers

Capitalists dominated the victorious North and the U.S. after the Civil War, industrializing the nation and filling out the West. America was Protestant and supportive of business. Though still confident through the Roaring Twenties (the business of America is business), business-led Protestantism was humbled by the Great Depression. Starting in 1933, from FDR to LBJ through the New Deal, the Fair Deal, the New Frontier, and the Great Society, progressive presidents carried America through a social revolution, until it all came undone with Vietnam. By then, America had a new elite based upon the power of government that included those who benefited from government’s countervailing power to the business-led elite.

The Democratic presidency was in tatters by 1968. At that point, a new force stood astride America. The media in 1968 not only helped prevent Johnson’s re-election, in 1974 they literally drove Nixon from office. Watergate showed us the president no longer ran the nation. Instead, it was the national media led by The New York Times, The Washington Post/Newsweek [Kay Graham, pictured], CBS, NBC, ABC, TIME, and the Los Angeles Times—David Haberstam’s The Powers That Be (1979). When Jimmy Carter didn’t measure up in 1979-80, the media helped reduce his presidency to powerlessness as well.

Reagan in 1980 ushered in a populist counter-revolution to new elite rule. But in the aftermath of Bush’s Iraq failure, the Katrina disaster, the Republican congress’ corruption problems and its 2006 election defeat, the new elite are again setting America’s agenda. What makes our elite run?

1. Comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable. “The comfortable” are wealthy businesspeople and their friends in the Republican Party, including Christian conservatives who reject the new elite's secular values. “The afflicted” are the working class as represented by organized labor, and special classes of victims, including women, children, the elderly, those in poverty, minorities, gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and trans-gender individuals. “Comforting” means employing the resources of government to help, and “afflicting” means employing taxes, laws, regulations, and the courts to re-balance the scales toward equality.

2. Celebrating life, protecting the living, and punishing the forces of death. The elite have moved past belief in eternal life, and related codes that restrict personal freedom. The elite want to make the world better within their short lifetime, here and now. They support freedom of expression, except when it's used against the weak. They oppose killing and wars, profit- making activities that harm the environment, and actions that hurt anything living. They take on those who consciously hurt people, animals, trees, air, water, and glaciers.

3. Preserving rule by the enlightened. Members of the elite act on behalf of those less able to defend themselves. So it is vital that the elite retain their power to do good. Americans (the new elite does not fear foreigners) who would take away the new elite’s power are fighting on behalf of selfishness and death. They must be defeated. The new elite rule on our behalf. In that sense, they are as old as temple priests at the dawn of civilization.