Right down the pyramid the Catholic Church and the Republican party line up their paradigms. The Church is a sacramental system where the Church is the mediator between Man and God (or reality) through the sacraments, not the individual priests, as in the Protestant religion. Thus we have the problem of priest sexual misconduct that doesn’t interfere with his administering the sacraments. It is the Church that is infallible, absolute, and above the law of society. The priest is just an instrument.
The Republican Party as a monolithic moral view of America—the Moral Party of patriotism and religious family values—like the church gives power to its members through the party. And Judge Kav is chosen because he believe in the infallibility of the President, who like the Pope, is above the law.
In both the Church and the Republican Party the primary virtue is loyalty. Doubt and questioning of the creed is not an option. All Catholics and Republicans follow the talking points of the Creed.
Protestant Reformation broke up the monnolithic Catholic Church into special interests, thousands of different churches, just like the Democratic Party is a party of special interests and churches. So in warfare, the Republicans have the edge like the British Redcoats against tribal armies because every soldier marches in lock step.
The Church and the Republican party are both eschatological in that there is an end of time, for the Church after death, for the. GOP in time when the Promised Land of Conservative values will be the law of the land, and God will once again be at the center of society.
Secular humanism and Liberalism is not a party of values, because values are subjective and are always based in some religion. Because the Constitution separate Church from State, America is starved for personal value and meaning that religion provides, so religion came back into America through the back door of the Republican Party, but dressed in secular clothes. Like a converted Jew in Spain, the Republicans have to closet their religion or mythos in the secular world of logos.
Let me explain. Secular humanism rationalism is the value of the Enlightenment and the founding fathers who were Deists. Everything is logical and the world is a clock. God made the clock and then stepped back to not interfere again. Religion wants a personal god who can interfere in human life. The former is the Greek Logus; the latter is the Religious Mythos. Logic versus mythology or Bible.
So how can you have both, since we need both reason and faith. Well, the Republican Party (I’m not finding fault, just trying to understand) by creating a secular religion gives us both logos and faith at the same time, only the faith is the primary force while it wears the disguise of the Logos.
The side-effect of this obeying two contradictory imperatives, reason and faith, is a national neurosis, or split mind, or as Trump says, True and Fake News, with Trump reality being the mythos or story of reality instead of the evidential reality that we are accustomed to.