Paul Thomas: Conservative America's dangerous delusions

Can a political movement have a mental breakdown?

The odd, sometimes feral, behaviour on the right since Barack Obama became President have caused some commentators to wonder if American conservatism has lost its collective marbles.

They cite the emergence of the Birthers, those who insist that Obama wasn't born in the US and is, therefore, constitutionally ineligible for the White House.

There's an unmistakable whiff of the Flat Earth Society in the Birthers' steadfast refusal to be swayed by the evidence to the contrary and their inability to produce a skerrick of proof to support their charge of an elaborate - and prescient - deception.

Secondly, there's the welter of inflammatory rhetoric. Politics has always involved name-calling and the attribution of bad faith, but where does political rough-and-tumble end and black propaganda begin?

Sarah Palin claims that health care reform will mean the creation of government "death panels" to decide who's worth saving and who isn't.

In a loopy echo of Lindy Chamberlain ("A bureaucrat stole my baby"), she implied that her disabled infant son could be snatched from her arms and put down.

There's the rabid opposition to a national health system, something the rest of the developed world regards as essential to a civilised, functioning society.

To some extent this is just another reminder that America really is different - and proud of it. The notion that America is uniquely blessed and virtuous and should keep the decadent outside world at arm's length - American Exceptionalism - is as old as the republic itself.

For some Americans the fact that the US is the only advanced country without a public health system is an excellent reason for not having one.

Fundamentalist Christianity is now the prevailing ideology of the American Right, having filled the philosophical vacuum created by conservatism's traditional distrust of big ideas. For religious zealots of all persuasions, faith trumps reason and paranoia rather than tolerance is the default setting in external relations.

Fundamentalists saw AIDS and 9/11 as punishments for immorality, modern versions of the fire and brimstone that rained down upon Sodom and Gomorrah.

Earlier this year, a Republican in the Oklahoma state legislature tabled a motion blaming the recession on America's moral crisis and lashing Obama for disregarding "the biblical admonitions to live clean and pure lives by proclaiming an entire month to an immoral behaviour".

For those who need a translation, his crime was to recognise Gay Pride month.

Strangely enough while conservatives are quick to admonish others to lead squeaky-clean lives, they don't always practise what they preach.

Take South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford and Senator John Ensign for instance: both are married with children, vociferous advocates of religion-based family values and were regarded as potential presidential candidates in 2012 until they were exposed as adulterers.

That's not all they have in common: both came down hard on Bill Clinton over the Lewinsky affair, declaring that he'd shown himself to be unfit for high office and should resign or be impeached.

Despite their own affairs being far more substantial, both in the logistics and the execution, neither has resigned. Ensign, in fact, recently declared his intention to seek re-election in 2012.

Rush Limbaugh, the talk show host who seems to have emerged as the de facto leader of the Republican Party, attributed Sanford's dalliance with an Argentinean woman to his angst at being forced to accept a share of the economic stimulus largesse dished out by the Obama Administration. This plea in mitigation would be preposterous even if it weren't for the fact that the affair began months before Obama was even elected.

This disconnect between public morality and private conduct can be seen simply as validation of Acton's dictum that power tends to corrupt. Together with the scaremongering and vilification, however, it suggests that a black and white world view is mutating into a bitter and delusional self-righteousness.

A Republican Congressman recently called Obama's health care plan a "threat to democracy."

Given the religious right's apparent difficulty in accepting the outcome of elections that elevated Obama to the presidency and gave the Democrats a majority in both houses of Congress, one could be excused for thinking that what they really believe is that democracy is a threat to faith-based conservatism.

No one's saying they have to join in the outside world's protracted swoon over Obama or meekly fall into line with his policies, but the attacks on his legitimacy and the demagogic portrayal of his legislative programme as alien and sinister are dangerous.

As The Nation editor/publisher Katrina Vanden Heuvel has warned, they could unleash extremism leading to "violence, hatred and toxicity".

Now that's what you call a threat to democracy.