(May 5, 2015 at 4:50 am)Red Economist Wrote: ...but that religion was once the basis for understanding politics.
...as in ancient Egypt, where Hatshepsut had her theogamy of divine birth from Amun-Re carved on the wall at Deir el-Bahri. The religious and secular spheres were still separate even then; priests did not rule. But unlikely a pharaoh could mount the throne or stay there without support from a substantial portion of the temple establishments. Moreover a party need not be so extreme ideologically as fascism to take on quasi-religious overtones. The way Republicans in Utah talk, you'd think all their precepts were handed down from God Almighty along with a mission of reseating the traditional patriotic family in its proper dominant place. Durkheim considered political ideology a functional equivalent of religion despite the distinctions that can be made between them.
