This will lead automatically and inevitably to the near-worship of certain personalities and entities in the civic realm.

Glenn Beck is not actually an office holder, nor is he truly likely to become one (at least on a national level), and he also includes religious (specifically Christian, and even more specifically a brand of evangelical Christian) thought in many of his messages. Yet his following is also evidence of the Orwellian replacement of religious figures with civic figures, and the manner in which the state itself is becoming the focus of worship. Beck and others like him -- on both sides of the political spectrum -- attempt to make the government a matter of morality and directly codified values rather than a matter of ethicality and democratic equality. That is, these personalities insist that there are clear "rights" and "wrongs" in matters of policy that are part of moral absolutes,...
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