THE BAGGERS AND JOHN CALVIN

I like to look for precedents to Bagger/Wingnut psychology and this part of Bouwsma's biography of John Calvin reminded me of what Bill O'Reilly said about conservatives:

"Conservative people tend to see the world in black and white terms, good and evil."

From pages 35 and 36 in Bouwsma:

Calvin would have liked to incorporate everything in heaven and earth into his philosophy; this would have eliminated all the unknown dangers that provoke anxiety. For this purpose he depended particularly on antitheses defined by conceptual boundaries. He tended to feel uneasy if he could not organize his understanding of the world by dividing phenomena neatly into antithetical categories: black and white, darkness and light. But the reductionism implicit in such categorization also severely limited his perceptions and above all his imagination. Fortunately he was too intelligent to practice it consistently.
One of his favorite antitheses was the dichotomy between we and they,
[PAGE 35]
insiders and outsiders, compatriots and aliens, which, theologically disguised, was an element in his insistence that God predestined some human beings to damnation as well as to salvation.
[PAGE 36]