Pubdate: Thu, 22 May 2003
Source: Charleston Gazette (WV)
Copyright: 2003 Charleston Gazette
Contact:  http://www.wvgazette.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/77

HELLFIRE

Morals Shaped America

DURING a conversation, an Australian told an American: "We were the lucky 
ones. We got the criminals, and you got the Puritans."

This story is passed around as a joke, but it conveys a clear message: 
Today's Aussies, descended from England's deported convicts, are a bawdy, 
happy-go-lucky, live-and-let-live people - while American society has been 
shaped by centuries of moralizing and taboos.

The U.S. pattern is evident in the daily news, as the Bush administration 
endlessly tries to halt abortion, limit sex education, block stem cell 
research, foster school prayer and impose other moral goals of the 
so-called "religious right."

"Morality is central to our politics and attitudes in a way that is not the 
case in Europe," wrote "virtues" champion William Bennett - before he was 
exposed as a compulsive gambling loser.

America's moral basis is the theme of a new book, Hellfire Nation: The 
Politics of Sin in American History, by Brown University scholar James 
Morone. It's causing a stir in academia.

"The moral urge which is at the heart of American politics and society" is 
a profoundly important force in the nation's identity, Morone contends. 
"Moralizing divides Americans into a righteous us and a malevolent them."

He recounts chapter after chapter in which moralizers shaped America's 
beliefs, laws and attitudes. For example:

*  Colonial Puritans flogged, pilloried and hanged nonconformists such as 
Quakers. "The Scarlet Letter" was a badge of shame for loose women. Then 
the colony was seized by witch mania.

*  Victorian taboos reached a peak in the late 1800s, when Anthony Comstock 
enforced laws against "vice" and jailed hundreds of Americans for petty 
sins. Margaret Sanger was jailed eight times for advocating birth control.

*  Early in the 1900s, hysteria over rumors of "white slavery" impelled 
Congress to pass the Mann Act against transporting females across state 
lines, and to create the Bureau of Investigation, which later became the FBI.

*  The temperance movement, epitomized by saloon-smashing Carry Nation, 
pulled America into Prohibition - which became a tumultuous period of 
booze-smuggling that created organized crime.

*  Opposition to the teaching of scientific evolution flared in the famous 
1925 "Scopes Monkey Trial," and remains alive today.

*  Currently, a major "sin" issue is whether gays will be accepted fully as 
Americans.

"Us, them, and the shifting lines that run between them get drawn, disputed 
and dissolved in moral terms," Dr. Morone writes. "For better or worse, 
moral conflicts made America."

Reviewing his book, The Washington Post agreed that "righteous zeal has 
proven pivotal to the formation of an American identity" to a much greater 
degree than in Europe.

In the book, the professor says an opposite religious impulse, the "social 
gospel," spurred America's movement against slavery, and later against 
racial segregation, and brought "New Deal" and "Great Society" reforms. 
However, several critics have noted that those liberal advances arose from 
secular forces as much as from religious agitation.

America's "hellfire" momentum today is epitomized by the Bush 
administration. The current issue of The Economist says Attorney General 
John Ashcroft has "become the country's moralizer-in-chief." It recounts:

"Ashcroft has prosecuted 'medical marijuana' users in California despite a 
state initiative legalizing the practice. Has tried numerous ploys to 
challenge Oregon's assisted-suicide law, including encouraging the Drug 
Enforcement Agency to revoke the licenses of participating doctors.... He 
has repeatedly tried to bully local federal prosecutors into seeking the 
death penalty."

The British journal says Ashcroft's ultra-moralizing seems odd, because:

"The country is still basically split down the middle politically, and this 
political divide reflects a deeper division about values. When it comes to 
matters such as God and sex, many of the people who voted for George Bush 
live in a different moral universe from Al Gore's supporters....

"As an evangelical who refrains from smoking, drinking, dancing and looking 
at nude statues, Mr. Ashcroft represents a minority in his own party, let 
alone the country. He has no chance of winning the culture wars; the forces 
arrayed against him, from the media to the universities, are too vast."

Hellfire has been a driving force throughout the entire history of America, 
and it's still flaming in Washington. Social tides are nearly impossible to 
predict, so we can't guess whether the Ashcroft mentality will boom or 
wither. But watching the moral tug-of-war can be a fascinating spectator sport.
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MAP posted-by: Larry Stevens