Political Cortex: Brain Food for the Body Politic

Oh sure, the legislative policy wonks will talk about the threat of the right to their agenda, but in terms of seriously building an understanding of this formidable movement into the short and long term planning of the major organizations in America, it just doesn't much happen.

Sometimes we wonder why the religious right is doing so well. It is the leading faction in the GOP in Congress these days. It enjoys outright control of many state Republican parties including Texas -- where they recently reaffirmed their conviction that the U.S. was founded as a Christian Nation.

The religious right has influenced the domestic and foreign policy of the Bush administration on quite a range of matters and with appalling consequences. For example, Uganda had a model AIDS prevention program. But thanks to the coercive funding policies of the Bush administration, "abstinence only" replaced the successful model program -- and recently the minister of health announced that the HIV rate had doubled.

Horror stories abound.

But here is the deal.

In order to have coherent conversations about the religious right -- just as with any subject -- it helps to have some kind of common set of knowledge, an agreed upon set of terms, and the capacity to develop deeper understandings that can inform our evolving understanding of the dynamics of political life. I have suggested five books that could form the basis for such a conversation,  At the blog site, Talk to Action, we are trying to ratchet up our collective literacy about these things. But it is just one place. We need to have more such places in our political lives to have these conversations. One event that always features at least one discussion of the right is the annual reproductive rights conference at Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts.  

I was on the panel this year, when a remarkable thing happened:

There were about sixty-five people in the session; mostly young; almost all women. Some worked for reproductive rights organizations around the country. As always, it was an interesting and informative set of presentations, and a thought provoking question and answer period.

At the end of the program, each of the presenters was asked to take a minute for a final word.

I took my minute to observe that in our workplaces; in our political organizations, be they prochoice, LGBT, Democratic Party; whatever -- there are no spaces where we can speak knowledgeably and coherently about the religious right. As I said this, audible murmurs of agreement rippled through the room, and there was a visible physical reaction among many. I was startled by this: clearly I had surfaced and identified a need people have in their political lives.

At conferences all over America this summer, the  elephant on the table will be the religious right -- and everyone will be talking around it. Few will be so impolite as to ask when we are going to actually talk about it.