Patriarchal Dominionism: The Core of Tyranny

It is no accident that today we are seeing the confluence of the corporate state, the seizure of political power by the church, and an escalating war on women.  Like the corporation, the church was an instrument of the king, and we are coming full circle again, witnessing the blurring of the line between church and state, the ascendancy of corporate fascism, and mounting scapegoating of women.

Some of you may wonder why the GOP has slipped a cog and gone completely off the rails with regard to women’s basic human rights.  The answer is this:  the GOP has been taken over by corporate interests and the right-wing authoritarian fundamentalist church, both of whom have always been exceedingly hostile to women’s autonomy, psychosocial independence, power, financial freedom, and self-determination.  The Republican Party started its slide into fascist theocracy when it put the church’s opposition to abortion into its platform in 1976, and plummeted into full-blown misogyny in 2012 with its rape comments and inclusion of a call for a “fetal personhood” amendment to the Constitution.

In the beginnings of this country, the colonies were ruled by governors who were appointed by the king and who were also church leaders; they also were beholden to and exploited by the corporate arm of the monarchy in the form of the British East India Company.  It was tyranny on the part of both the church and the corporation that led to the series of revolts, such as the Boston Tea Party, that culminated in the American Revolution. The Revolution also coincided with the most outrageous abuse of power by the church:  the witch hunts. This tyranny has a long history, going back to the beginnings of patriarchy.

In antiquity, there was goddess-worship for 25,000 years prior to the advent of patriarchal religions which took over by force.  The goddess-worshipping matrilineal culture of Minoa, an egalitarian and peaceful, prosperous, highly-developed culture that honored and respected the earth and life-giving nature and revered the sacred feminine, was destroyed by an invading patriarchal group who worshipped a male war god who ruled by fear and domination and who brought violence, death and destruction, gender inequality, and the abuse of power with it.

The patriarchal religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, which appeared much more recently and currently dominate, are all Middle-Eastern in origin, and despite all the concern about Sharia Law, there is very little difference between the Al Qaida and Christian fundamentalist dominionists in their zeal to oppress women.  There is likewise little difference between the last two U. S. administrations’ use of torture, labeling people “terrorists”, and use of psychological manipulation and wars to pursue domination of the earth and every creature on it, and the Inquisitions’ and Puritans’ use of torture and labeling women as “witches” and the use of Christian dogma to silence, control, and intimidate.

Though the Christian dominionist reconstructionists would like us to believe that the country was founded as a “Christian nation” and should be ruled by rigid Christian orthodoxy, the fact is they are talking about puritanical colonial America, not the post-revolutionary, independent United States of America, which was founded on the principles of the Enlightenment—rationalism, universalism, empiricism, and most importantly, secularism.  Unless we put a stop to the takeover of our government by both the corporation and the church, we are going to be living in a fascist, authoritarian, Calvinist, corporate theocracy where individual freedoms, especially for women, are a thing of the past.  We must WAKE UP and kick the corporation, and the church, out of government once and for all and pass the Equal Rights Amendment and an amendment to abolish corporate personhood before women once again are chattel and patriarchal corporate and ecclesiastical tyranny totally obliterate the rights of human beings.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominionism

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witch_hunts

http://www.salon.com/2012/10/26/gops_insane_rape_remarks_arent_outliers/

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/oct/25/real-republican-party-rape-platform

http://www.politicususa.com/gop-attempts-drag-america-imaginary-conservative-utopia.html

http://voices.yahoo.com/witch-hunts-as-form-anti-female-discrimination-379982.html?cat=37

http://one-evil.org/content/people_15c_Innocent_VIII.html

http://www.themystica.com/mystica/articles/m/malleus_maleficarum.htm

http://sfr-21.org/women.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_witch-hunts

http://voices.yahoo.com/how-martin-luther-john-calvin-conducted-witch-379935.html?cat=37

Eisler, Riane, “The Chalice and the Blade,” Harper & Collins, 1988.

Daly, Mary, “The Church and the Second Sex,” Harper & Row, 1975.