RE: "Jonathan Schell, The Unconquerable World: Power, Nonviolence, and the Will of the People"...

If Schell's thesis is "...that the separation of church and state, and the divorce of social responsibility from both state and corporate actions, have so corrupted the political and economic governance architectures as to make them pathologically dangerous," this will send left-leaning readers (and potential readers) into orbit. Such is the state of discussion of the place of faith in the civic sphere: on the right, there is a melodramatic display of evangelical Christianity as the only bulwark against the howling wastes of total anarchy, and on the left, a reflexive and shrill citation of the worst excesses of Christianity from the past thousand years as the rationale for exiling all mention of religious faith. Both are equally wrong-headed. The right treats being a Christian as a weird badge of honor that lets them look down on those not saved - when true Christianity requires the exact opposite: a forgoing of self and devotion to others. The left ingores the fact that many of the most tireless champions of social justice are people of deep and abiding (and often Christian) faith, that it's that very faith that animates their efforts, and that wholesale conversion is about the last thing on their agenda.

I am Roman Catholic (gasp!) and generally left-leaning. My choices are between a right that trots out a sad and corrupted charicature of Christianity, and a left that gets hives at the thought of a public figure unironically using "God" in a sentence. Some choice. All told, I'll generally side with the latter, but I grit my teeth doing it. Hey, I enjoyed Al Franken busting right-wing chops in "Lying Liars..." as much as the next Democrat. He had to get his licks in, though, what with implying (however jokingly) Sean Hannity goes on his frustrated screeds because he's a closeted homosexual, stemming from what happened to "cute little altar boys" in the Church of his youth. Sigh...I'll read "The Unconquerable World" if only to find an adult discussion for a change.

Here is where the political assumptions of the neo-conservative movement really bite us.

You see, these are intellectuals. These are deep, interesting, long books. Books.

It's the basic anti-intellectualism of the right-wing (except when it's their own, paid-for intellectuals) that keeps us blind.

Americans are being taught by their political, religious, and "media" leaders not to read, not to think, to just listen -- to them.

How we "break through" that shield of willful, bitter ignorance is at the heart of our struggle for the next year.