A set of principles can become the fundamental basis for the beliefs and arguments in defense of beliefs long after the passage of time erodes the context in which those beliefs were originally stated. And yet, the passage of time can also lend strength to the convictions of the believers. I call this phenomenon Anachronistic Fundamentalism.
An informed person of education might be aware that this concept has been advocated by philosophers of a previous age. I am not such an informed person. I'm just an asshole with an opinion and some time on my hands. With that in mind, I move forward to examples.
Socialism
Socialism is a political philosophy that has many, many schools of thought. I'm not going to talk about the 'socialism' which is the fiction of the current American right wing as a bad word they wish to attach to the Democratic Party. I'm talking about real historical socialism. It was born and grown in Europe and America during the time that the economic system of mercantilism, colonialism and slavery was evolving into industrialism, unionism and easier international trade. A central precept of all schools of socialist thought was the model of class struggle, which was best (and most famously) expounded by the brilliant Karl Marx.
These models of class struggle were created with the conditions of their time in mind. They were so brilliant and flexible that many thinkers were able to adapt the class struggle model to conditions in many cultures and places for over 100 years.
But as time has passed, world economies have evolved in ways that Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Debs could not and did not envision. The world economy is more united now than it has ever been. Nations are interdependent because technology in communication and transportation has dropped structural barriers to trade. This changed the nature of capital and labor markets, rendering socialist models of capitalist vs worker almost completely invalid. And yet, there are fundamentalists who cling to the language and thoughts of these models that economic evolution has left them behind.
Jewish and Christian Love
Christianity (or new age Judaism) is loaded with anachronistic fundamentalism. My favorite Jewish AFs are in the Ten Commandments of Moses and The Burning Bush of Yahweh fame. "Thou shalt honour thy father and thy mother" did not have the generic meaning of respecting one's elders that it has today. It meant that by authority of the church, people had to support their parents financially. Latter day Jews and Christians changed the meaning of one of God's top 10 because cultural and economic conditions have change and yet these laws are still largely held to be the perfect word of the Almighty and are not to be trifled with under threat of ostracism and eternal damnation.
My favorite example in Christianity is the concept of empathic love. Empathy is a philosophical concept that appears nowhere in any Jewish or Christian scripture because the concept did not exist until European philosophers invented it in more modern times. And yet empathic love has got to be up there in the top 3 bestest and highest forms of love of all time. Now, you might say "Come on Buck! That whole 'love others as you would love yourself' deal is pretty empathetic. Besides, Plato said that stuff long before Jesus appeared in them swaddling clothes. Don't you think?'
I don't think so. The simple use of the word 'love' does not infer empathy even though we might think so in modern times given the importance that empathic love has taken on since philosophers dreamed it up in the 20th century. Jesus may have been thinking about empathic love, but his scribes had no knowledge of any word or model to express it. Here's a reference for more on the subject of empathy:
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/empathy/
American Libertarianism
This is where my energy for this topic came from. I would call this constitutional fundamentalism. The US Constitution (and the first 10 amendments) went into effect in 1789. Consideration, debate, practical application of parts of its principles and compromises amongst the founding fathers began in 1776 with the adoption of the Articles of Confederation. A little simple math shows that nearly 13 years of bureaucratic process led to this holy document of American government.
The main combatants were the Virginia plantation owners led by Jefferson and Madison, versus the New York and New England bankers and merchants led by Hamilton, John Adams and joined by Washington in the latter stages of the bickering. Their fight was bitter and very partisan.
The bi-partisan negotiations that led to passage of the US Constitution were conducted in a time when there were no automatic weapons, aircraft, medically safe abortions, open discussion of homosexuality, publicly held multinational corporations with mutual funds and pension plans investing in their stocks, telephones, telegraphs, instant global communications, nuclear fusion or centralized production of nuclear power. Slavery existed. I could go on, but the short version is that the world was a different place. These geniuses could not and did not make any provisions in their documents for the existence of the world that we live in.
Today we have a branch of the Republican Party that has a rigid belief in how the current US government should be run based on strict interpretation of the US Constitution. They call themselves Libertarians. Their most prominent current adherent is Ron Paul. Ron Paul rarely sees a US government action that he doesn't declare unconstitutional and suggest that it should be eliminated. Since the constitution didn't mention a specific power to deliver mail, the US Postal service is unconstitutional.
One of Paul's biggest targets of this fundamentalist fervor is the Federal Reserve Bank. True, it is not listed in the US Constitution as a power granted to the federal government. This is not because the founders had the foresight and genius to stay out of the banking business. The reason is that the founding fathers could not agree on central banking.
The Articles of Confederation failed because the finances of the country were ruined. Hamilton (as a New York banker) saw the practical necessity for central banking and convinced Washington (as the most politically powerful man in the country) that something stronger was needed. The Jefferson/Madison contingent hated bankers and would not agree to any of Hamilton's banking provisions.
And yet Libertarians cling to the words in the Constitution as if they were handed down by Yahweh via a burning bush on Mount Sinai. They were not. The Ten Commandments may have been handed down from God, but stuff changed.
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