The Democrat's Dilemma
America has been taken over by the right-wing. It officially started in 2000 when Al Gore won the presidential election but George W Bush took office. Since that time the America that I grew up in has been dramatically changed.

In a land where church and state are supposed to be separate, the Republicans have forged a union with the Religious Right. This has led to the systematic dismantling of environmental and civil liberty policies, championing the corporations and providing more for the rich at the cost of the middle and lower classes. Religion, under this guise, has become identified with militarism, fundamentalism, economic hegemony and ecological irresponsibility.

Rabbi Michael Lerner is editor of Tikkun magazine, the largest circulation liberal/progressive Jewish magazine in the world. He preaches social justice and political freedom in the context of new structures of work, caring communities and democratic social and economic arrangements, inspiring compassion, generosity non-violence and recognition of the spiritual dimensions of life. In The Left Hand of God, he explores how the Right was able to manoeuvre itself into the position of control with money and power being the sacraments, and self-interest the holy grail, and why the Left stood by and allowed it to happen. The irony is that as America has become de-spiritualised and focused on materialistic values the hunger for a connection to a more meaningful purpose leads many to religion. Capitalising on this, the right-wing religious organisations overtly promote being in contact with the sacred. So, while the Left does nothing because of the underlying belief that human needs can be satisfied by achieving material success, the Right is busy seducing the more vulnerable in society by developing Ôspiritual communitiesÕ that provide support and a context in which the desire for a higher purpose, which is inherent in all of us, becomes prostituted.

It is indeed true, as the Right often proclaims, that there is a spiritual crisis in America, but rather than tracing its cause to materialism and self-centredness reflected in corporate America's economic bottom line, the Religious Right align themselves with the political Right which has traditionally argued that it is in everyone's best interest if corporations and the marketplace are free from all social responsibility and so allowed to forge ahead uncontrolled. This way of thinking means that traditional areas of social responsibility such as environmental issues, adequate pay and health and safety regulations for employees are disregarded.

But all may not be lost, and Lerner provides a plan of action - as he puts it, a 'Progressive Spiritual Covenant with America'. He sees the 'Network of Spiritual Progressives' as being a movement that can energise the Left, providing them with intellectual, political and spiritual inspiration - allowing for a society that is humane, generous, peace-oriented and ecologically responsible. Many of these ideals were incorporated in the constitution, so with conscious effort it should not be impossible to find our way back.

Overall, Lerner's book is a thoughtful approach to the spiritual crisis taking place in America, a crisis that it is exporting to the world as a whole in various ways. However, I found his plan of action a bit naive. In his list of projects for spiritual activism, he misses the first, most fundamental action that must be taken to ensure a fair and honest system - reinstitution of a voting system that once again is for a society that practices the pursuit of liberty and justice for all. Without that all the high ideals in the world will come to nothing, and the fact is that right now the electronic systems foisted on American voters are open to systematic abuse by those who may wish to swing elections. One cannot help but be suspicious of the fact that the makers of the machines are themselves associated with the political right.

Charla Devereux is the Network Manager and a Research Fellow of the International Consciousness Research Laboratories (ICRL) group based in Princeton, New Jersey, representing complementary medicine matters. I am a trustee of The Dragon Project Trust, and an advisor to Environic Foundation International (based in Washington, DC)