Socialist? Are You Joking Me?

Another bewildering episode in the presidential campaign unfolded yesterday when Barbara West, news anchor for WFTV in Orlando, Florida, asked Joe Biden on a TV interview if his running mate Barack Obama was a socialist. Here’s the transcript of the interview:

BARBARA WEST, WFTV ANCHOR: I know you’re in North Carolina now, helping to get out the vote, but aren’t you embarrassed by the blatant attempts to register phony voters by ACORN, an organization that Barack Obama has been tied to in the past?

JOE BIDEN, DEMOCRATIC VICE PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I am not embarrassed by it. We are not tied to it. We’ve not paid them one single penny to register a single solitary voter.

WEST: But in the past, Senator Obama was community organizer for ACORN. He was an attorney for ACORN. And certainly in the Senate, he has been a benefactor for ACORN.

BIDEN: How has he been a benefactor for ACORN? He was their organizer. John McCain stood before ACORN not long ago complimenting them on the great work they did.

WEST: You may recognize this famous quote: “From each according to his abilities to each according to his needs.” That’s from Karl Marx. How is Senator Obama not being a Marxist if he intends to spread the wealth around?

BIDEN: Are you joking? Is this a joke?

WEST: No.

BIDEN: Or is that a real question?

WEST: That’s a question.

BIDEN: He is not spreading the wealth around. He’s talking about giving the middle class an opportunity to get back the tax breaks they used to have.

WEST: What do you say to the people who are concerned that Barack Obama will want to turn America into a Socialist country much like Sweden?

BIDEN: I don’t know anybody who thinks that, except the far right-wing of the Republican Party.

So what are we to make of this? For starters, it’s pretty clear how utterly confused this woman is. It’s one thing to be an ignorant American who buys into an insular, prefabricated fallacy fashioned by the media. It’s quite another to be a media figure who buys into an insular, prefabricated fallacy fashioned by a political campaign. It’s a third thing still to employ that fallacy against that campaign’s rival. Sure, Ms. West’s question is a cheap shot of the very worst sort, especially with the shape the McCain-Palin ticket is currently in. Sure, it’s a stupid, misguided question that exacerbates bitter partisan politics and plays on people’s ignorant fears – two of the prevailing trends in our society that Barack Obama has sought to combat. Those two things, however, I can stomach because they bear no material relevance to an Obama presidency beyond being belligerent and hurtful.

What I can’t stomach is this: in its wording and tone, the question legitimizes an egregious – and now quite popular – misinterpretation of Obama’s comment about “spreading the wealth.” The comment was most certainly not an endorsement of socialist philosophy or Marx. It was, first and foremost, a comment made amidst an impromptu conversation on economic policy with a voter (Joe the Plumber) on the campaign trail. It was not a comment made in a debate, a stump speech, a convention speech or any other public forum. It was not published in campaign literature or on any campaign-affiliated website. It has not been reiterated or reformulated in any way by either Obama or Biden or any of their aides or supporters. If one had to classify it as either a policy platform or an off-hand remark, one would have to choose the latter.

Those things considered, in the interest of fairness and journalistic consistency, Ms. West should have gone on to ask Sarah Palin if she really wanted to “drill baby drill” and John McCain if he really wanted to “bomb bomb Iran.” That is the level of seriousness the question contains, and unfortunately, about the level of seriousness left in the McCain campaign.  

Moreover, it has come to light in the past few days that both McCain and Palin, in their past – and now disavowed – political careers, made comments quite similar to Obama’s. In his latest column in The New Yorker, Hendrik Hertzberg recalls an interview on MSNBC from the 2000 campaign in which McCain argued for higher taxes for the rich. Hertzberg also quotes Palin: “We’re [Alaska] set up, unlike other states in the union, where it’s collectively Alaskans own the resources. So we share in the wealth when the development of these resources occurs.”  

There is a more serious issue at stake here, though, which requires us to do more than just fire back at McCain and Palin. Are we Americans stupid enough to mock and dismiss such a notion as “spreading the wealth” simply because of its connection to an (inappropriately) vilified historical figure? Wouldn’t it be better to consider the actual circumstances facing us? Over the last eight years, the gap between the rich and the poor in this country has undergone unprecedented expansion. Our economy is in severe decline and on the precipice of even greater disaster. A few weeks ago our Congress was forced to use $700 billion of our money to buy Wall Street out of irrevocable collapse. During the Bush Presidency, middle and working-class families have been made to foot the bill of a $120 billion/year war and sweeping tax cuts for wealthy corporations and the richest 1%.

Despite all of this, we are still one of the wealthiest nations on the planet. And yet, our education system is failing across the board, our health care ranking has fallen to 38 in the world, behind Colombia, Morocco and Costa Rica, among others, we have not allotted any funds to reform energy or environmental policy, and public transportation and infrastructure, especially in big cities, has fallen way behind. This is the America we live in after eight years of doing the very opposite of spreading the wealth. 

We can do better. We ought to be spending our money on anything besides war and financial bailouts. We ought to spend it on education, health care, environmental and energy reform, infrastructure, etc. In short, we ought to spend it on the American people again. Those are the things that matter to Americans, the things they’re investing in when they pay taxes, the things they expect their government to care about. As Hertzberg rightly points out, let’s look at Europe, where citizens pay slightly higher taxes and receive considerably higher returns: excellent education systems, free health care that works, well-maintained and efficient public transit, and serious reforms of energy usage and environmental protection.

These things are not pie in the sky for America. On the contrary, they are things we should already have and should only be thinking about how to improve. It’s only the Bush economic policies, the ones McCain wants to continue, that make them unattainable.

The McCain campaign, and now Ms. West, have used Obama’s comment not to bring up an important issue, not to extend the debate, but to swiftboat his urgently necessary economic plan. In doing so, they have relied, rather predatorially, on the penchant of ignorant people to be more easily swayed by dishonest symbolism than by hard facts and the truth. What could be less American?

With circumstances as dire as they are, I think we must begin to invest again in the American people, not just the rich. That means focusing on their problems, and providing them remedies. We can choose to call that “spreading the wealth.” Or we can call it “being more American.”

The Big Ripout

Not more than six weeks ago, the presidential race was a literal pick ’em, a neck and neck dogfight that no one could call. How did it change so quickly?

Let’s jump back to the first week of September: John McCain was riding high after his selection of Sarah Palin for running mate and his convention in Minneapolis, Obama and Biden had lost a bit of steam on the campaign trail, the economy was holding steady, and new reports had started filtering in that parts of the “surge” in Iraq had met their objectives. Most national polls showed an electoral scenario similar to 2000 and 2004, with the slight advantage to McCain and Palin. Senate and House polls showed Republicans recovering a few key seats they had lost in 2006 and possibly regaining their Senate majority. 

Then the asteroid hit Wall Street. Lehman, Merrill, AIG, Wachovia; one by one, they fell. Financial markets around the word felt the shock waves of the impact. In stepped Henry Paulson, shrewd moneyman but hapless politician, to broker a deal with Congress. Then President Bush stepped up and backed him.

The Greek melodrama-become-tragedy ensued. John Boehner, Roy Blunt and other free market-trumpeting Republicans in the House put their foot down and said no, while Barney Frank, Nancy Pelosi, Obama, McCain and others insisted yes. After a great deal of kowtowing and begging, Congress passed the bill and the recovery package went into effect. 

Now, here we are, some six weeks later, eight days before the election. The bailout seems to have stemmed the tide of economic disaster, at least for the time being. But the bottom seems to have been ripped right out of John McCain’s presidential campaign. He’s now eight points behind according to most polls, more than 50% of Americans think he will continue the Bush economic agenda, he’s behind by significant margins in Virginia and Colorado, two longtime aces in the hole for the GOP, and he’s in a rift with his running mate (the “diva,” one campaign official derisively labeled her). Even worse for the Republican Party, it’s now looking as if the Democrats will expand their Senate majority by six or seven seats and their House majority by up to thirty seats.

One commentator on MSNBC noted earlier today that although we’ve seen landslide elections in the past, we’ve never seen two in a row. If it was any more one-sided than it is right now, he said, it would be biblical.

The accusations have already started swirling. Conservative pundits have alleged that Obama is running a dirty campaign, not adequately reporting campaign contributions, for instance, and that McCain is running a sloppy campaign, choosing Sarah Palin, being too negative, too old, not distancing himself from Bush enough, etc. I think neither is true. Rather, I think this is one of those rare situations where a horrendous catastrophe, brought about in no small part by avarice and delusion, ends up benefitting the good guy (see the story of Noah’s Ark in the Bible for another such situation). 

The economic meltdown, I think it is safe to say, has had a profoundly negative impact on the reputation of the Republican Party, more than the tone of either campaign, more than the debates, more than any other single issue. The old adage that “politics is about the price of eggs” is true, and the particularly severe circumstances we are currently experiencing explain why a disproportionate number of moderate voters have moved into the Obama camp and even some longtime Republicans have defected. An eight-point swing in six weeks, especially in the last two months of a 19-month campaign, is serious business, and it requires a serious explanation. 

I’d love to chalk it up to the American people having had a change of heart, realizing that Obama is the man we need and McCain is not. But I think it is less a case of that than of people starting to blame the Republicans for the current mess and choosing the only alternative open to them. That’s fine, we’ll take it. But is it really true, as Sarah Palin often demands, that we should not be focusing on who to blame but on how to fix it?

I think not. I think that would be rather like telling an alcoholic you have just diagnosed with depression not to focus on the cause. That notwithstanding, I wouldn’t say that John McCain has run a bad campaign; people are always going to charge that the loser in a competition implemented a flawed strategy. Rather, I think that larger events, namely those connected to the economy, took the competition out of his hands, and for that matter, out of Obama’s hands, too.   

Moreover, I think big money has made its choice in this election: 1) just last week Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke proposed a $200 billion stimulus package to offer more direct relief to homeowners facing foreclosure, a measure that jives nicely with Obama’s economic philosophy, 2) we’ve known for several months that Obama’s chief economic adviser, Robert Rubin, was a former chairman of Goldman Sachs, and 3) perhaps most significantly, three of the top six contributors to Obama’s campaign thus far are Goldman, JPMorgan, and Citigroup, all of whom fared beautifully in the bailout. 

As much as I can’t stand John McCain and his running mate, it seems that greater forces are at work in this election than his poor strategy.

Powell’s Endorsement of Obama: What it Means

A couple of days ago former Secretary of State Colin Powell endorsed Barack Obama for president on Meet the Press. Very few – if any – could have predicted this kind of bold and crucially-timed political statement from the former Army General who served from 2001 to 2004 in the Bush Administration and was one of the more frequent frontmen for their criminal policies. Indeed, the shockwaves from it continue to emanate through both the McCain and Obama campaigns and through the media.

Political comentators on the right, such as Rush Limbaugh, George Will and Bill O’Reilly (formerly great admirers of Powell for his decorated military service and seemingly race-neutral politics), seemed to take particular exception with the endorsement. They and others issued statements soon after the show that the endorsement was all about race. 

When asked what impact the endorsement would have on the campaign, Will remarked,

“Some impact. And I think this adds to my calculation – this is very hard to measure – but it seems to me if we had the tools to measure we’d find that Barack Obama gets two votes because he’s black for every one he loses because he’s black because so much of this country is so eager, A) to feel good about itself by doing this, but more than that to put paid to the whole Al Sharpton/Jesse Jackson game of political rhetoric.”

Limbaugh added several hours later,

“Secretary Powell says his endorsement is not about race…okay, fine. I am now researching his past endorsements to see if I can find all the inexperienced, very liberal, white candidates he has endorsed. I’ll let you know what I come up with.”

Of course if you know these two, it’s not so surprising to hear them talk like this. But what this episode illustrates on a larger scale is how openly and unabashedly racist people in this country still are. These two – especially Limbaugh – have a huge base of supporters, especially when you factor in that they operate in print and on the radio, two of the more outdated forms of media communication. If they really admired Powell apart from his (ill-advised) participation in the Reagan, Bush I and Bush II administrations, they would not have turned on him with such haste and petty disdain.

The fact is this: no matter how you feel about Powell, Obama or anyone else on either side of this campaign, the General gave a well-reasoned, articulate explanation for why he will be voting for Obama on November 4th. He does have a decorated resume of bipartisan service, he was a dedicated soldier, and he has never been a radical spokesperson for the left or for progressive racial politics. To cast as him as such is not only tasteless and stupid, but downright embarrassing.

What’s more is that Powell delivered his endorsement with a level of racial sensitivity and forward-thinkingness that, regrettably, we have not even seen from the Obama campaign, let alone McCain or any of his supporters in the media. He raised the elepant-in-the-room point about Obama being a Muslim: as Americans, he said, we should not stand for even a second for the kind of kneejerk racism that treats a Muslim presidential bid as unconscionable. For some inexplicable reason, this is the first time any public figure has gone on record not just to say, “Obama’s not a Muslim,” but to say, “So what if he is?” Good for Powell.

The point pertains not just to Muslims and not just to Obama, of course, but to the general bigotry that is still very active in our national politics. Unfortunately, the Republicans are not even the sole perpetrators of it; recall Hillary Clinton calling Obama a Muslim back in the Spring during her bid for the nomination. As it has been almost since this country’s birth, the problem is systemic.

Beyond helping Obama in the polls and ruffling the feathers of some of the more despicable individuals in the conservative media, I think the real and lasting impact of Powell’s endorsement (to help Will better answer his question) is to remind us of the subtle but real pitfalls that bigotry still poses, and that going forward, we will have to be especially wary of them. 

I wonder if it ever occurred to Will or Limbaugh that Obama’s skin color doesn’t figure much into our thinking: Powell and others of us are voting for him simply because he’s a better candidate for president than John McCain. Period.

A Marxist Take on the Financial Crisis

Last night I attended Pace University Professor Andrew Kliman’s lecture on the economic crisis, entitled, “Worse Than They Want You to Think: A Marxist Analysis of the Economic Crisis.” The lecture was held at the New SPACE – the New School for Populist Anti-Capitalist Education. I expected Kliman to bring a strong Marxist bias to his discussion of the economy and to his analysis of the current trends we are seeing in our economy. As it turned out, the biases were mostly all mine. Kliman is not a Marxist economist but more of a moderate. Some of his views brush against socialism but others seem far more Keynesian or free-marketist.

I discovered this as his lecture went on, and as I discovered it, I became more impressed by him; he was drawing on his extensive technical knowledge of economics, but filtering that knowledge in order to analyze our current economic crisis only in terms of the socialist and Marxist theories. One member of the audience even made a laudatory comment to this effect after Kliman had finished. The professor’s objective, in other words, was not to get us, the audience, to come around to his personal views on the hows and whys of the subject matter, but to get us to understand the subject matter from the point-of-view of Marxist theory’s salient contours.

Kliman began the lecture by explaining to us the Marxist concept of crisis. He remarked rather humorously that Marxists are famous for having predicted five out of the last three economic recessions, and that “crisis” is a very important analytical tool. A crisis is not, according to Kliman, a recession, a depression or a downturn, although those conditions may be on the horizon for our economy. A crisis rather, in the strict Marxist definition, is a total lack of confidence in the system. Financial institutions lack confidence that the recipients of the loans they issue will be able to repay those loans with accrued interest in due time, investors lack confidence that the instruments in which they place their capital will give them a strong return in reasonable time, and so on. The really fundamental problem with our economy right now, argues Kliman, is that there is no liquidity, no free flow of capital, and above all, no confidence in either of those things. The various actors in our economy are now in a kind of stalemate, while the health of our economy depends on constant, confident interaction.

Much of Kliman’s lecture was devoted to a statistical analysis of how we arrived at this point, how credit and liquidity froze up so suddenly, how so many key assets depreciated so quickly, what effect the federal bailout has had on credit, and what the larger ramifications of the crisis are for our economy. I found the lecture to be more of a recap of what has happened over the past few months, albeit through statistical analysis I had not seen before, than a theoretical projection. Kliman did remark towards the end of his talk that the really big problem with this financial crisis, as exhibited by the tenor of the bailout package, is that we have given up trying to save the poor and we have even given up trying to save the rich. All that is really left to save is the system itself, and that is where we seem to be directing nearly all of our resources, mainly at the behest of vocal legislators, the president, and government finance officials like Bernanke and Paulson.

I see this situation ending in two possible ways: either the steps already taken by the government and others that have been proposed will alleviate the crisis and we will look back on this episode as a catastrophe averted, or none of the steps taken by the government or private financial institutions will do enough to quell the systemic problems and we will be forced to make serious changes to the structure of our economy. I suspect at this point, with broad calls for new oversight coming from all directions, that compromises will have to be made. Kliman says that the government purchase of bad assets has already cast us into a kind of state capitalism.

If nothing else, I think this episode will force us to reconsider the meaning of the “free market.” For many decades now, the private sector, aided by the lenient to non-existent tax and regulation policies of Republican presidents and congresses, has generated for itself colossal levels of wealth. For the most part, it has not seen fit to distribute that wealth. Let us remember, in accordance with a fair and accurate reading of Adam Smith, that “a free market absent of government regulation” is a contradiction in terms.  The free market cannot exist without government, let alone prosper. What we are now seeing is the slide of the free market into self-destructive anarchy. Sure, the case can be made that over-regulation causes problems as well (Kliman attributes the mini-crash of credit and savings in the 1990s to this). But, from our current vantage point, I think most would agree that a small glitch in a discrete sector of the economy would be preferable to our current global crisis.

However we choose to resolve or not resolve the current array of problems, I think it would be wise for all of us to rethink some of the core misconceptions we have either made or subscribed to that are now at the root of our troubles.

Visiting Invasion 68: Prague

 

Today I visited the Aperture Art Gallery in Chelsea to see a photography exhibition called, “Invasion 68: Prague.” The photos, taken by Czech photographer Josef Koudelka and assembled beautifully by the gallery, depict the events of the infamous days in late August 1968 when Soviet and Warsaw Pact tanks rolled into the streets of the Czech capital to quell the tide of democratization and social awakening that came to be known as “Prague Spring.” It is no stretch to say that Koudelka’s photos, when taken as a whole, show one of the darker sides – and perhaps the darkest in recent memory – of state socialism. 

Besides being a political statement, though, the exhibit is a tremendous work of art. Koudelka’s particular brand of war-street photography is immediately compelling, both because it harkens back to the work of renowned predecessors and because it is something totally new and organic. It focuses both on the stillness of individuals and on the ebb of massive, faceless crowds, thus capturing war-beset human beings in their two most predictable forms. All of his subjects he sets against ravaged backdrops of the city. In several shots, the human subjects seem almost to be secondary in importance to the scenery. What is striking about the collection, from the very first photo to the very last and regardless of size or dimension, is its raw organic beauty. No photo looks planned or staged (to the contrary, it is rather easy to imagine Koudelka snapping the shutter button while ducking through crowds and hiding behind ramparts), but every one looks intensely focused, intentional and compelling. 

I would attribute this quality to Koudelka’s instinctive artistry. His eye for depth, space, angle and lighting, not to mention his intense fascination with the array of emotions that were manifested on the faces of the Czech people those days, are what make the photos striking. On that note, there is also something to be said for the artful precision with which these photos were laid out. On four perpendicular black walls, the pictures are arranged in groups of two, four, eight and sixteen. The larger photos tend to be more epic, telling a longer story by way of a more complex composition. Some of the smaller photos, arranged in groups of up to sixteen, appear to have been taken in close chronological proximity to one another, and tell a story in more cinematic fashion as one’s eye moves across them. 

The arrangement of the photos also enhances the mood of the collection since it mimics the chronology of the event. On the first wall, we see mostly photos of stillness: spare street corners occupied by one or two folks, Wenceslas Square and Narodni, the huge thoroughfares in the Old Town part of Prague, completely deserted, people waiting, wondering, wearing confused, nervous looks. Of course this is an artistic exaggeration – the people of Prague did not know what was coming – but for the viewer watching the event unfold, it is a very effective tactic. On the next wall, the action picks up. Stillness and uncertainty transform into confusion, bewilderment and pain. We see larger groups of people shuffling chaotically through the streets, in and around the lines of tanks coming down from the National Museum, women crying hysterically, young men shouting furiously at the Soviet soldiers and running behind the tanks. 

The third wall shows gun-toting soldiers (the Soviet soldiers are invariably depicted as emotionless droids), buildings in ruins and walls dotted with bullet holes, charred vehicles and tanks, gravesites and ragged corpses. There are also scenes of desolate street passages lined by graffiti-caked walls, one of the more famous forms of Czech resistance. In the last photo, we see a tough, older woman scraping graffiti marks off one of these walls. 

It is hard to imagine the presentation of the photos doing more justice to Koudelka’s remarkable work. It places them roughly in the order in which they were taken, and more importantly, it effectively conveys the crescendo of action and emotion that accompanied the invasion and the scarred confusion with which the city of Prague was left after the tanks departed. Upon leaving the gallery, it is easy to imagine the very same photos being taken of a city rocked by a hurricane or some other natural disaster; the invasion had that feel. 

Koudelka’s photos constitute an agonizing and beautiful memoir and the gallery’s arrangement amplifies it into accessible, relatable form. Koudelka was there and we were not, but for a brief, disturbing while, it almost seems as if we were.

Chavez, Christianity and South America

 

When Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez took his second oath of office in Spring 2007, he swore it in the name of Jesus Christ, whom he called “the greatest socialist in history.” The populist Chavez’s presidency has been marked by two salient themes: hard pushes for reform of labor, production, international trade, and economic and social justice in his country, and bucking – often ostentatiously – the reproaches of the doctrinaire keepers of free-enterprise in the U.S. and Europe. His moves towards what many western critics have called a socialist state and his country’s plentiful supply of petroleum reserves, which he has sought to nationalize as a means of guaranteeing the profits to his countrymen, have contributed to his unpopularity in the west.

What’s more is that for years, even decades, Venezuela has been a religious battleground. Catholics have a powerful political stake in the country, comprising roughly 70% of the electorate. But since his inauguration in 1999, Chavez has vigorously criticized his country’s clergy for complicity with corrupt administrations that preceded his rule. 

Christianity has seen a marked resurgence in the politics of South America over the past decade, however. Liberation theology, the branch of Christianity that views Jesus as a socialist preacher, seeks to apply his views to political institutions and moral life and seeks to reorganize society according to the model of early Christian base communities, has grown in popularity in several countries, including Brazil and Paraguay. Chavez has, for the most part, courted genial relations with these countries because of their common emphasis on social justice and reform. 

For anyone seeking to understand the reasons for this new trend is occurring, I would propose a basic answer. Latin American leaders like Chavez, Lugo (in Paraguay), Lula da Silva (in Brazil), Castro before them and others have begun to realize the need for a more egalitarian way of managing resources, conducting commerce and orchestrating labor and production. Their countries don’t have the commercial wealth that many of those to the north and east do, and they are not willing to tolerate the human expense that those countries have to gain that level of wealth. So they have devised a new method of governance, which nearly resembles Marxist socialism but has many important differences. And the reason that Christianity has become such an integral piece of this sociopolitical experiment is that Latin America is an overwhelmingly Christian region, with deep-rooted traditions, ingrained administrative structures (primarily belonging to the Catholic Church), and a plentitude of adherents, scholars and historians. 

In Latin America, Christianity is the perfect vehicle for revision and adjustment of political practices. There are two reasons for this: first, Christianity is comfortable, acceptable and appealing to a huge portion of the population, and second, it is something that allows people to bond across ethnic and national boundaries. It thus facilitates a common interest in establishing a new type of society based on the bedrock principles that believers already subscribe to. An analogous situation might be the following: if you’re trying to make your dog swallow a pill, you will find the task far more easily done if you wrap it in a strip of bacon. From the perspective of national leaders vis-à-vis their peoples, this is how I think the growing tide of Christian establishmentarianism in this region ought to be viewed. 

This is not to say that these leaders are Machiavellian non-Christians with their sights set on deception and personal gain. To the contrary, many of Chavez’s reforms have tangibly benefitted his constituents. Moreover, the gradual and measured introduction of populist reforms has allowed Venezuela to maximize the utility of its natural resources and labor in a manner unprecedented in South America. Western criticism of these reforms should be taken with a grain of salt. Leaders in the U.S. and Western Europe have not so much been standing up for justice and democracy, as they would have us believe, as for the continuation of “free trade” agreements that have favored them at the great expense of their Latin American trading partners. It has been the unwillingness of Chavez and many of his political allies to continue to subject their countrymen and economies to this stacked situation that has angered the west.  

Whether or not Jesus was a socialist is a question deserving years – perhaps a lifetime – of scholarly investigation. It is certainly possible, given some modern analyses of the gospels, that his message contained elements that, in a post-Marx world, we might call socialist. But that is hardly even a prelude to answering the question. For now, I think it is fair to say that the political expediency of Chavez’s coining and usage of the phrase is pretty clear: he was trying to make a popular political appeal. South America is undergoing a major socialist-populist transformation in which Christian theory is being restored to a central position in political institutions and mentality. If this trend continues, I think it will be interesting to observe how conservative political leaders in North America and progressive leaders in South America use the very same faith to underwrite diametrically opposed social agendas.