The rise of the fundamentalist right in America

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If anything it is underhyped. It's fighting hard every day across the nation to work its way into our school systems. It has already succeeded in making prayers at the beginning of governmental meetings common, if not standard. It is difficult for a candidate to run for office without addressing and even endorsing religion, and religion is a very potent weapon in for those who would call attention to it.

The reason we don't pose it as more of a worry here is because we don't retain a historical memory of our own missteps into red-baiting, commie-hunting, blacklisting, union-busting, and spying on citizens. The American memory is selective, short, and self-flattering, and when it comes to questions of the world, our answer might as well be a simple, "We won." And by that we mean everything. And so, all other matters settled, our focus shifts inwards.

As far as our credibility goes, our might has usually functioned as an adequate substitute and remains one. Credibility is of limited use without power, and power needs it only sparingly. China and Russia may well increase their power dramatically in the coming century, but if they with their very flawed and corrupt systems do so, it will likely have as little to do with credibility as American influence does today. It will be the result of the success of their economic systems first and foremost. In this, America will still prove a potent competitor. But The American Century has come to a close. We are not the uniquely industrialized, unruined country we were after World War II. The power of the dollar is immense but no longer near absolute, and there are other markets and centers of innovation. America's insistence that there are no problems with its class structure because America has no social classes may also become more problematic as Eastern nations and a united Europe gain greater economic and political might, some of which will undoubtedly come at American expense. This, as uncertain times do, may in turn increase America's love affair with religion and hardline politics.

For all their problems, we may find it is Europe and the major nations of the Asian Pacific Rim that come to outpace America in maintaining and even increasing both the civil rights and the general welfare of the broad mass of their citizenry.