An American Caliphate

Don't run for the dictionary! A caliphate is form of government headed by a man believed to be a direct descendant of god -- and it is the form of government that American voters seem to prefer.



Perhaps the most terrifying aspect of the election of is that so many Americans cited "moral values" in their decision to ignore reason and vote for Geroge W. Bush. He won because of an outpouring of people who don't just favor different public policy -- that would be well within the tradition of American democracy -- these people favor a whole different definition of America.



As Tom Friedman wrote in his New York Times column, we disagree on the answers to fundamental questions that define what America is:

Is it a country that does not intrude into people's sexual preferences and the marriage unions they want to make? Is it a country that allows a woman to have control over her body? Is it a country where the line between church and state bequeathed to us by our Founding Fathers should be inviolate? Is it a country where religion doesn't trump science? And, most important, is it a country whose president mobilizes its deep moral energies to unite us - instead of dividing us from one another and from the world?

Bush was able to construct a mandate by cobbling together votes from two groups, the evangelical and the fearful, in support of the greedy. Bush won majority votes of whites, married women, white born-again Christians, military families, and regular church goers. By contrast, Kerry was supported by single women, working women, blacks, youth, gays and lesbians and those who rarely or never attend religious services.



The foreign newspapers headlined it as "Divided States of America" and "Torn in the USA." Their editorial writers warned that the newly elected George W. Bush will use his mandate to consolidate his conservative and militaristic platform. The Guardian of London issued a two word editorial, "Oh God!"



Last month tax policy expert David Kay Johnston warned an audience in Minneapolis that twenty years from now the United States is in danger of being a "fascist theocracy," and predicted that, "it could happen sooner if George W. Bush is elected."



He may be right. The largest economy the world has ever known, with the mightiest military in the history of humankind, is now firmly under the control of a man who many voted for in the hopes that he would carry out a religious mandate.



The Times of India - Why George Bush won the poll: God, Gays and Guns



Sydney Morning Herald (Australia) - What We Call Peace is Little Better Than Capitulation To a Corporate Coup