Attacks on presidential hopefuls will increase in volume, frequency, and audacity as the primary season draws near. Time is short, the stakes are high, and the pundits will pounce on their prey. One recent barrage against Congresswoman Michele Bachmann not only impugns her integrity as a political leader, but also questions something fundamentally and luminously American: the right of religious individuals to participate according to their deepest principles at every level of political life.
There is a buzz in the political beehive about the dark dangers of Bachmann's association with "dominionism"—a fundamentalist movement heaven-bent on imposing a hellish theocracy on America. In the August 15 issue of The New Yorker, Ryan Lizza asserts that Bachmann has been ideologically shaped by "exotic" thinkers of the dominionist stripe who pose a threat to our secular political institutions. The piece—and much of the subsequent media reaction—is a calamity of confusion, conflation, and obfuscation.
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