Like the rest of the nation, over the course of the twentieth century West Virginia has experienced a radical transformation from a society and economy centered on farming to one based on industry. Nevertheless, the West Virginia people have to a large degree retained their rural character.

As historian Otis Rice explains in West Virginia: A History, the conservative values instilled by the agricultural lifestyle "sprang in part from the emphasis of country churches upon righteous living, the role of the common school in undergirding morality and character, and the necessity of maintaining standing with lifelong neighbors by conforming to prevailing customs and mores."

Despite a century of sometimes turbulent economic change, and a decline in agriculture as a way of life in this state, we can still see these rural values at work in West Virginia politics – often to the detriment of the people who hold them dear. Without being grounded in the economic independence of the yeoman farmer and the interdependence of the farm community that give it balance, this native conservatism has too easily yielded to authoritarian and dynastic forms of governance.

Thus we have the spectacle of governors who express outright disdain for the law (especially environmental regulations); and permanent incumbents at every level of government; and hereditary politics, with one generation succeeding another into public office

It’s worth noting here that as the

nation as a whole has become more conservative, we’re seeing similar tendencies at the national level. The leading presidential contenders in both major political parties are the Wall Street-approved sons of establishment Washington politicians. American government seems to be turning into the system dominated by what John Adams described as the "natural aristocracy" that he and other Federalists – deeply suspicious of popular democracy – hoped it would.

Thomas Jefferson, the Federalists sworn enemy, thought that the only way real democracy could work was if the citizenry were made up of economically independent farmers, craftspeople and merchants. He was right. The decline in American democracy we are witnessing at present corresponds exactly to the decline in farming as an occupation. A hundred years ago, during the Progressive era that temporarily checked the power of the robber barons, four of every ten Americans were farmers. Today it’s barely two out of a hundred.

This situation bodes ill for progressive politics in general, and for environmentalism in particular. There are two major reasons for this:

First, the business of agriculture itself has undergone a dramatic change. Pressured by the same forces of globalization that have replaced Mom-and-Pop stores with franchises, hometown pharmacies with Right-Aids, and Main Street shops with Walmarts, independent family farms are dying out at the fastest rate since the Great Depression, and are being replaced by giant agribusinesses.

Through a process known as "vertical integration," these agribusiness corporations, with a monopoly on global markets, have seized control of every step of food production, and turned independent farmers into indentured servants. The clearest examples of this in West Virginia can be found in Hardy County.

Knowing their farms are at the mercy of both the corporations who supply their product and the banks who provide the

financing for these factory-style operations, farmers are reluctant to challenge either the environmental or labor practices that they are being forced into. The traditional connection between the farmer and the land had been severed.

Second, in reaction against the uncertainties of the new global economy and the loss of community values fostered by family farms, people have sought spiritual refuge and a renewed sense of community in the rockhard absolutes of religious fundament

-alism. This worldwide phenomenon was termed "Jihad vs. McWorld" in an influential essay published by sociologist Benjamin Barber. Where we see this phenomenon most notably in the United States is in (as might be expected) the rural regions of the Bible Belt, including West Virginia.

The increasingly important role of the religious right in national politics – especially its influence in the Republican Party – is well known. Less noticed is the widespread view among fundamentalists that environmentalism is a pagan religion, a form of Earth worship that represents a direct threat to traditional Christianity.

Environmentalists, many of whom base their concerns about ecology on the biblical mandate to be "good stewards" of the Earth, may find this incredible. But right wing Christian media is full of warnings that we environmentalists are the stealth advance army of an internationalist and federal government conspiracy intent on depriving Americans of their private property rights and regulating them into slavery. Federal court decisions upholding environmental regulations only confirm their suspicions.

We are presented here with numerous ironies. For one thing, transnational corporations are in reality in far greater collusion with the oppressive government haunting the paranoid conservative imagination than environmentalists – who consider themselves lucky indeed if they can find a judge who will agree to uphold the relatively enlightened laws of a previous era. In fact, one major reason for the decline in American family farms is the export-oriented policy of the US Department of Agriculture, which favors corporate agribusiness.

Another irony is one that has been with us from the earliest days of the American republic: the alliance of conservative clergy with the pro-business party. Writing about this early alliance, historian Arthur Schlesinger observed that "religion, in exchange for protection against Jeffersonian anticlericalism, would hedge the aristocracy of wealth with divinity. To the clergy was assigned the essential functions of reconciling the lower classes to inequality and binding them to absolute obedience to the laws."

What makes this so ironic is that recent archeological and historical research into the origins of Christianity reveal it to be as much a political and economic development as a spiritual one. In the years that Jesus was preaching, Galilee was in the midst of tremendous economic upheaval, as the subsistence farmers and fisherman who had lived there for centuries were taxed out of their property by the puppet governors of imperial Rome. The dispossessed were then put out work in the round-the-clock operations in the fish-processing factories in Magdala, a town on the edge of the Sea of Galilee – whose products were then shipped to every corner of the empire, where they were savored by imperial yuppies.

What scholars are calling the "Kingdom of God movement" was a revolution against the economic elites, an attempt by Jesus and his followers to rebuild the sense of community and social justice that was lost as a traditional way of life was destroyed by the globalization of the Roman economy. In this respect, it is important to remember that crucifixion was a punishment reserved only for those who had committed political crimes.

Michael Hasty lives and writes in the wilds of Hampshire County. He is a regular columnist featured in the Hampshire Review. His strange and environmentally extreme notions continue to amaze, fascinate and outrage many of the readers of that publication. For those of our readership who want to risk being "amazed, fascinated and outraged," you can find his columns on