Opinion All hell and damnation By Roger Pulvers	フレームで見る  英文をプリントする  脚注をプリントする
地獄と劫罰（ごうばつ） 他国に自らの信仰を押しつけるアメリカ。一方、 民主主義を信じるもう一つのアメリカも存在する…。

One is constantly reminded of the deep religiosity of Americans. For Christ's sake, they preach in their halls of justice; they preach in their living rooms, their bedrooms and their bathrooms; they preach in the windy gutters of their big cities; and, as we roll with their tanks and soar with their aircraft over seas and borders, they preach in every corner of the globe ... to all creation.

America was a country founded on ethical intolerance. Small religious sects, persecuted in their home country, sought haven in the new world, more often than not imposing a stringent and intolerant regime on others. This is the social reality of America that underpins the more liberal and democratic political one. The country's history, when boiled down to basic polemics, may be seen as a rivalry between these two views of reality: one based on the word of (a Christian) God, the other grounded in the principle of equality before the law.

The complex intertwining of these two has created two Americas in one. Many of the regulations of American life today are dictated by religious factors similar to those regulating sects of long ago. Thanks to a president who is as religiously fanatical as you can get in American public life, America in 2003 is almost as close to being a theocracy as it was as colonies during the century and a half leading up to its independence from England in the 17th and 18th centuries.

But the world has changed somewhat since the days when all men, not to mention women, were seen as sinners in the hands of an angry God. America's wealth and military power give that God's anger a fierce and awesome power here on Earth. The pope may indeed not have divisions, but the president certainly does; and he has made it clear that they will be mobilized to kick in the doors of infidels (those seen by Americans as being anti-American) on the nights of his choosing. There can be no true innocents on the other sides of those doors, only unusual suspects.

Yet throughout this, the democratic political base - that other foundation of the state - is still firmly embedded in the land. The American people who stand on this foundation are not to be dismissed. They are having to suffer the guilt-by-association that the inhumane deeds of their government have foisted on them in their name. So did the Germans suffer - and continue to be made to suffer - for what their chosen government once perpetrated on the world, and so do the Japanese for their old sins. Perhaps the guilt now felt by truly democratically minded Americans (guilt for something that they loathe to associate with but are compelled to) gives them an inkling of how well-meaning Germans and Japanese felt and feel about their nation's former crimes.

The time will come, I believe, when Americans will reject the theocratic model now dominating them and opt again for democracy and human rights inside America. (If not, the country may well experience something like a second civil war.)

Maybe when they do come to choose democracy again, they will think twice about preaching all hell and damnation to a world that wouldn't mind, for a change, to be left in peace.

Shukan ST: Dec. 12, 2003

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