Religion and the Politics of Submission

It is well known that religious conviction is one of the great motivators to political action, for both good and evil. Unlike secular progressives who continue to believe that the Democratic Party is both willing and able to represent their interests, many conservative Christians have begun to seek out alternatives to the GOP, disillusioned by the failure of undivided Republican government to fulfill their political expectations. Though the recent Pew survey on political party affiliation found that the percentage of self-described independents grew across all religious groups, Mormons and Catholics may well be in the vanguard of this particular movement. I have noted before that independents and third party affiliates comprise over 50% of registered voters in Utah and highlighted Catholic frustration with the duopoly parties over the issue of abortion. Considering his political options, the Catholic Knight makes a strong case for affiliation with the America's Independent Party in comparison with the Constitution Party.

Overall, the Constitution Party is a fantastic organization as far as authentic political conservatism goes. The term paleo-conservative best applies, and I mean that in the descriptive sense, not in the pejorative. Every item of it's platform is well thought out, idealistically consistent, and detailed. In fact, it's too precise. It's too thorough, consisting of no less than forty sections, leaving little room for debate or dissent on even the smallest issue. Therein lies the problem.

On America's Independent Party (AIP), on the other hand, Knight writes that it has:

a simple platform that outlines the basic message of national moral reform, and basic American ideals, without rigidly locking candidates into a strict elaborate platform. The platform of AIP is simple, consisting of just twelve sections, allowing candidates considerable flexibility on lesser issues. Under this platform, any social conservative could run for office in AIP, regardless of his political background as either a Republican or a Democrat. Disaffected conservatives from both the GOP and the DNC can find a home in AIP, and many of them are.

America's Independent Party was founded by Alan Keyes after he failed to garner the support of the Republican and then the Constitution Party in the 2008 presidential election. Keyes makes an eloquent case against 'the politics of submission' constitutive of our duopoly system of government:

As things stand today, the only purpose of politics is to get elected. In order to get elected, you must get more votes than your opponents. The most efficient way to achieve this result is to find out what people want to see and hear, then fabricate and project an image that corresponds to their desire. The electoral process has become an information exchange between self-centered hedonists and self-promoting liars: people willing to expose their selfish desires choose from a menu of fictional satisfactions offered by candidates pursuing their own selfish ambitions. On Election Day the electorate selects the candidate whose fabricated image most effectively seduced their self-serving judgment.

Prior to Election Day the focus of the political process is on the candidates. The term politics is therefore used to refer mainly to the activities undertaken by and on behalf of those competing for political office. Besides the candidates themselves, the people involved in politics, are the pollsters and analysts of opinion who figure out what the people want to see and hear; the media consultants whose work is to produce and project an image of the candidate that corresponds to their preferences; and the money people who gather from every possible source the funds needed to pay and equip the rest. But there are obviously two other groups of people who actively participate in the process: those who control access to the media, and those who control access to the money. They have become the only electorate that really matters, the praetorian guard, as it were, whose choice ultimately determines which candidates shall be lifted up for the adulation or opprobrium of the selfish rabble. I say they are the only electorate because the people who determine the choices actually determine the choice. This paradigm of politics therefore effectively abandons the idea of government of by and for the people. Instead we have government over the people, manipulated by the media, who are owned by money powers that therefore control both the process and its results.