Brian’s Reflection: Tuesday, October 23, 2007


When fascism comes to America it will be
wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.

- Sinclair Lewis, American playwright,
whose play “Main Street” debuted
on this date, 1920. Lewis was the first
American to win a Nobel Prize for Literature


Could anyone be more an American than Sinclair Lewis?

My friend Connor told me decades ago that America would eventually be a Fascist country. I doubted him. I was wrong. If we use the criterion of Sinclair Lewis, I think we have reached that stage. The flag has become, for many, the symbol of a patriotism that includes only militarism and power and force in pursuit of American world hegemony. Well, politics is politics, and fear of social collapse is fear of social collapse. I regret that the flag has been confiscated by one special interest group - and more, that this travesty has somehow been permitted. Listen to the news. Americans now have to protect themselves against covert widespread government invasion of their freedoms.

Of course, I am more concerned, being a Christian, about the “cross”. The Klan burned crosses on the lawns of the victims of their racial and religious bigotry. The cross has been confiscated, at least in popular “religious” media, by those who stand for things that I believe would be tant amount to re-crucifying Jesus. Jesus stood for God’s unconditional love, Mercy, Justice, “new revelation” through the Spirit of Truth. No self-respecting Christian dares put a cross or Christian bumper-sticker on their car anymore - it stands, in the eyes of the majority of Americans, and especially young Americans, for bigotry, violence, exclusion, narrow-mindedness, judgmentalism, hate. How God must weep.

The flag stands for the universal rights of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Justice and Liberty and equal rights under the law for ALL. The Cross stands for Divine unconditional Love, the dignity of every human being, the supremacy of Compassion, the generosity of blessedness, the humility of redeemed sinners, the rejection of coercion and ignorance.

If you are a true American, reclaim the Flag and the Cross for their true meaning. Reject the flowering Fascism that is spreading its ugly, inhuman shadow over the Land.

The alternative is enslavement, and fear ….. and, in the words of the Hebrew prophets, “the destruction of the land”.

Brian+