God 'n Money

So it's been about 500 years since the Europeans stumbled onto the American continent. Quite a discovery, that, but back then it wasn't so easy to scrape together an existence on this wild continent. The terrain, the winters, the Injuns, made it a risky enterprise in the beginning to pack up shop and cross the pond. You had to have a really good reason (negative or positive) to do it. Primarily, the new world was settled at first by two groups: religious refugees and some of the first modern corporations.

God and Money don't have a lot in common, in principle. Jesus told Ceasar he could keep his shit, for all he cared. Religions mostly teach compassion for fellow man, adherence to some sort of moral code, charity and the like. Corporations are an every-man-for-himself getup. Churches want their leaders to be humble shepherds. Corporations want their leaders to be fierce competitors.

What do God and Money have in common? In a word: Power. It's the one thing religious leaders and corporate leaders all want. Don't believe me? Name one church or corporation that doesn't want to grow. More people, more money, more power.

Five hundred years is not really a very long time in the grand scheme of things. Much of the current American electorate was recently descended from people who came to the U.S. of A. for God or Money. However, as a voting bloc, neither the God crowd (who, at the extreme, seem to think the Constitution was written by Jesus), or the Money crowd (who think Government is nothing but an annoyance) can claim a majority of the electorate. Therein lies the genius of what's been happening over the last few decades. The Money crowd has convinced the God crowd that "Hey, we're with you, brethren." Historically, the God crowd's more mainstream interests have been more aligned with the Democratic Party's principles - that Government's role is to protect us and help out the most vulnerable among us. But now the God crowd is voting against the environment, against the policies that protect the weakest of us, against their own interests, in most cases.

Anyhow, I don't think this sham alliance can really last very long. And we're already starting to see the rift between the two factions of the GOP widen over the Harriet Miers nomination. The God people are already trying to assert their authority over the Money people.