Control

Michele Bachmann, Queen of Reactionaries, and Rick Perry, Prince of Ponzi, advocate government policy which centers on returning to a time when the nuclear family's role and religion's role in individual lives trump individual choice. Models for this kind of cultural shift exist. Look to Islamic theocracies. 

Absolute parental control and isolation from the scientific advances of society are symptomatic of repression of individual choice and creativity. It is essentially antisocial. Advocating for the dismantling of Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security is advocating for greater domination of children and elders by ignorant and narcissistic family members, religious figures and private corporations. We have seen the results of this kind of society in the Roman Catholic priest scandals, in cases of child abuse in extremist Mormon cults and in the exploitation of workers by corporations prior to labor movements. 

The Libertarian mania for individualism is not about freedom. It is about control. The paranoid rhetoric of Tea Party fanatics about government is really about fear of being required to participate in a society with lifelong education, science and individual choice at its core. Control is the reactionary's antidote to fear of change and diversity of opinion.

Humanists embrace change because they understand that change is an essential part of the human condition.   Secular humanists embrace conscious change with rationality, including science, debate and common sense. The current cultural conflict in the U.S. seems to be contention over governmental support of the individual in making free choices for a better society vs. a monolithic society determining the choices in advance for all individuals. Ironically, the superficial self-determinism of the Tea Party is actually about allowing parents and conformist institutions to control the culture for everyone by eliminating the intervention of an informed, secular national government, ruled by an elected legislature, an elected administration and a judiciary. 

As a gay man who was rejected by his family of origin and religious authority in my youth, I know all too well what the society advocated by control freaks will look like. As an AIDS and cancer survivor, I know all too well what being seriously ill will be like in a Bachmann or Perry America. The Right's haranguing about freedom is a lie. The Right has always stood for the control of the individual by corporate or establishment interests, not for the common good but for the good of those in control. The Right's basic assumption is that material wealth and power are righteous and superior. This is the antithesis of what humanists stand for.