- Image via Wikipedia
Until the 1980s homeschooling was a benign activity that effected very few children. After homeschooling became dominated by right wing Christian theocrats perhaps a million vulnerable children (estimates are suspect because of poor reporting requirements) became virtual prisoners in their own homes, pawns in a scheme to overthrow the United States government and replace it with a theocracy. The theocrats scheme includes lobbying state legislatures, pressing free exercise of religion cases in the courts and collusion with extreme right wing Republican officials. About 50 US Congress persons in the Bush were thought to be dominionists. Many of them are still serving. The result is an almost total lack of oversight by government officials. It will require a new administration to undo the Bush administration handiwork.
The Supreme Court gave parents the right to teach children the tenets and the practices of their faith back in 1944. (Prince v. Massachusetts, 321 U.S. 158, 164 (1944). The Prince decision, together with the Yoder vs Wisconsin decision inspired theocratic zealots to create a rebellious strain of home schooling. Lead by radicals, this movement is creating a virtual fifth column of ignorant children raised to hate democracy and to revile and distrust their government institutions. In this way, the theocrats are systematically grooming innocent children through a staged process involving homeschools, a project called Generation Joshua and the Patrick Henry College. There aim is to quietly infiltrate, hamper, frustrate and then dismantle the government of the United States and establish a theocracy according to Dominionist theology. The theocrats plan seems to be working because the Bush administration opened the doors of government to Patrick Henry College graduates while the general public has taken little notice. But then, the devious theocrats are anything but honest and above board. They are like cockroaches, termites and other vermin that hide out of sight.
No one contemplated the political power radical right wing Christians would usurp in the latter decades of the 20st century. Nor, how they would first systematically attack the public school system and then in frustration, how they would begin to withdraw their children from public schools in astonishing numbers. Able to mobilize thousands of parents to swamp legislatures with calls and emails they steam rolled their agenda into laws across the country. There was little or no opposition from the federal or state governments because GW Bush was in collusion with this effort.
With children constantly supervised by zealous parents, the indoctrination of their backward debauched religion can take place 24 hours a day seven days a week. Out of sight, the indoctrination goes unnoticed. The unfortunate children’s parents rigorously shield them from civilian authority, and they are not allowed to associate with anyone that has not been pre-approved. Parents heavily monitor and restrict radio, television, movies, the Internet and live entertainment events. When legal problems threaten, parents use the threadbare guise of sacrosanct religious liberty and call on well heeled advocacy groups like Michael Ferris’s Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA), Focus on the Family, The Pacific Justice Institute, and The Eagle Forum to name just a few far right advocacy groups of dubious character.
In these families, there will be no nonsense about gender equality, or sex education or tolerance of other’s beliefs; parents are convinced they alone have the truth and all outsiders are Satan’s spawn that are going to hell. There is no effort to teach the children how to reason or make moral judgments based on logic; morality lessons consist of picked over biblical dogma. This trend has been in place for nearly 20 years and has spawned a vast infrastructure of lobbyists, legal assistance groups, and purveyors of “approved” curriculum materials. Many curriculum materials advertise that they teach subjects in a “godly”way. Believe it or not there are even teaching materials that extend this pedagogy to mathematics!
Rob Reich (Associate Professor of Political Science and Ethics at Stanford University ) explains what he considers is the major problem in terms of parents deliberately frustrating the development of autonomy in their children:
“The problem with homeschooling and parental authority over education arises not out of conflicts over whether children should become independent adults. Few people wish to defend the authority of parents who plainly care too little. The problem arises over parents who, as it were, care too much in seeking to prevent the development of autonomy in their children. I mean to suggest that parents who wish to control the socialization of their children so completely as to instill inerrant beliefs in their own worldview or unquestioning obedience to their own or others’ authority are motivated often by a fervent care for, not neglect of their children.
Even when defined minimally, some parents may object to the idea that their children should receive an education that promotes their critical thinking and capacities for reflection on their own and other’s ends. Being minimally autonomous, I claimed, was in the interest of the child for personal and civic reasons. The fact that autonomy is necessary for citizenship makes education for autonomy an interest of the state as well. Thus, when parents reject the facilitation of autonomy in their children, they find themselves in conflict with both the interests of the child and of the state.”
A measure of just how thoroughly the theocrats have taken control of the US Department of Education can be gained by the comments made by Jack Klenk, Director of the Office of Non Public Education at the U.S. Department of Education at a recent meeting sponsored by the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA a vociferous foe of homeschool oversight ) and featuring eight congressional representatives . Here is part of the HSLDA report on their web site:
“Mr. Klenk has served in the Department for over 20 years, and he talked about how he has seen homeschooling start and grow through the years. He also acknowledged that the Department of Education has heard the homeschool community’s message that the “federal government must leave homeschoolers alone,” and will honor that message. He closed by sharing his and the current administration’s belief that “homeschooling is good for children, good for families, and good for society. ”
Have we no right to expect impartial judgments emanating from such a high government official? Mr Klenk should enjoy his job while it lasts because the Obama administration will see to it that he will be among the first to be shown the door.
The corrupt Bush administration and his allied theocrats were determined to surreptitiously undermine and drag down the government of the United States. Accordingly, it should be obvious to Americans that the new administration must act decisively to regulate homeschools on an urgent basis. Rob Reich has proposed the following provisional framework:
“A PROVISIONAL REGULATORY FRAMEWORK FOR HOME SCHOOLING
Recall that the purpose of these regulations is to help ensure that the state’s interest in providing a civic education for children is met, and to protect the independent interest of the child in developing into a free or autonomous adult. … I propose three minimal regulations. The results of the democratic process might yield additional regulations, which would not necessarily be inconsistent with my views, but these seem to me the bare minimum, as follows:1. All parents who home school must register with a public official. The state needs to be able to distinguish between truants and home-schooled students, and it needs a record that specific children are being home schooled so that its other regulations can be enforced.
2. Parents must demonstrate to educational officials that their homeschool curriculum meets some minimal standard. The minimal standard will include academic benchmarks as well as an assurance that children are exposed to and engaged with ideas, values, and beliefs that are different from those of the parents. For instance, every home-school curriculum should include information about a variety of religious traditions (I believe this should be the case, as well, for public and private schools.) Parents are free to teach their children that their own religious faith is the truth, but they cannot shield children from the knowledge that other people have different convictions and that these people are, from the standpoint of citizenship, their equals.
3. Parents must permit their children to be tested periodically on some kind of basic skills exam. Should home-schooled children repeatedly fail to make progress on this exam, relative to their public or private school peers, then a case could be made to compel school attendance. Label this educational harm. (The same kind of educational harm surely exists in some public schools, of course. And this is one reason that I believe parents should have the authority to hold the state accountable for public schools by pulling their children from failing schools and enrolling them elsewhere.) In short, these regulations amount to the following:
The state registers who is being home schooled. The state insists upon a curriculum that meets minimal academic standards and that introduces students to value pluralism. The state tests students periodically to ensure that minimal academic progress is being made. Would many home schools be unable to meet these regulations? …. If creating and enforcing regulations would prevent even a few children from suffering educational harm or from receiving an education that stunted or disabled their freedom, the regulations would be worthwhile. Strictly enforced regulations ensure that parents do not wield total and unchecked authority over the education of their children. What is at stake here is not a question of social utility or stability, whether home schooling could threaten democracy. What is at stake is the justice that we owe children, that they receive an education that cultivates their future citizenship, their individual freedom, and that teaches them at least basic academic skills, skills that are necessary for ably exercising both their citizenship and their freedom.”
I wish I could be as sanguine as Rob Reich, because our democracy could clearly be at risk if millions of compromised children continue to go through this warped system. In addition, why settle for minimum standards?
Related articles by Zemanta
- Promising Innovations for Closing the Service Gap (tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com)
- HSLDA behind denial of service attacks (endhereditaryreligion.com)
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_b.png?x-id=a3b5f4d0-c494-442f-8784-848223f74734)
Canadians show us how it is done
- Image via Wikipedia
Senator Barbara Boxer and Sec of State Hillary Clinton are working to get the UN CRC treaty ratified in the next 60 days. The far right Christian fascists at Home School Legal Defense Association and ParentalRights.org are pumping out reams of misinformation to the thousands of people who hang on every word they publish. In turn, members of these groups cut and paste the propaganda they receive and flood the web with propaganda. The organizations are using this issue to raise money and will rake in millions with their divisive ill advised, self serving political strategy. They actually are trying to convince people that they can amend the US Constitution to “protect” parental rights. Representative Pete Hoekstra is the prime congressional mover and he has rounded up about 60 cosponsors.
To see the truth of how the treaty is being implemented, we have an example to study of how Canada is going about the implementation process. Each article in the treaty has to be analyzed and then supporting legislation is passed to bring state law into compliance with the objectives in the treaty. Contrary to the lies of the HSLDA no group of bureaucrats in Geneva sits around dreaming up laws that control people in the states which sign the treaty.
One of the things that the UN CRC is very clear about is physical violence against children, otherwise known as spanking, swatting, or other such euphemisms. A Canadian web site explains how Canada is changing their laws to make all forms of hitting children, illegal wherever they may be. Not only that, but mental abuse is also outlawed.
Children are separate people entitled to human rights. What a concept.
Here is the preamble to the Canadian legislation:
BILL S-207 and the UN Secretary-General’s Study on Violence Against Children: Submission to Standing Senate Committee on Human Rights
Summary
The Canadian Coalition for the Rights of Children urges the honourable members of the Standing Senate Committee on Human Rights to ensure that Canada’s international and domestic human rights obligations are brought to bear in its review of Bill S-207. In particular, the Coalition draws attention to the findings of the recent UN Secretary-General’s Study on Violence Against Children, the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), and the committee’s own review of Canada’s obligations with regard to the rights of children. If these are taken into consideration, it would be difficult to find other than support for Bill S-207 and [to] move forward to ensure that Canada’s Criminal Code protects all Canadian citizens – including its youngest, smallest and most vulnerable – from all forms of violence.
Violence in its myriad forms is universally condemned under international human rights law. But corporal punishment is a form of violence that persists in the everyday lives of children worldwide. In some States, it is a sanctioned practice by government agencies and bodies (e.g., in education, justice and child welfare systems). In others, it is permitted by legislation and persists in families.
The UN Secretary-General’s Study on Violence Against Children recognizes corporal punishment as a form of violence, and asserts that violence against children administered as “discipline” or “correction” must cease to be condoned, authorized or regulated in domestic law if States are to uphold their human rights obligations.
The key messages of the Study, which are reflected in the recommendations, are:
(a) No violence against children is justifiable. Children should never receive less protection than adults.
(b) All violence against children is preventable. States must build a protective legislative environment and invest in evidence-based policies and programs to address factors that give rise to violence against children.
(c) States have the primary responsibility to uphold children’s rights to protection and access to services, and to support families’ capacity to provide children with care in a safe environment.
(d) States have the obligation to ensure accountability in every case of violence.
(e) The vulnerability of children to violence is linked to their age and evolving capacity.
(f) Children have the right to express their views, and to have these views taken into account in the implementation of policies and programs.
“The Study should mark a turning point – an end to adult justification of violence against children, whether accepted as “tradition” or disguised as “discipline”.
Paulo Sergio Pinheiro, Independent Expert, UN Secretary General’s Study on Violence Against Children
Here is the web site site where you can read more about how Canada is implementing the requirements of the convention.
A similar legislative process will take place in the United States as the various articles of the convention are implemented. The democracies of Europe are all working on implementing this treaty, not to mention dozens of countries around the world. A few countries have met all the legal requirements and have obtained the status of accession.
Here in the United States 200 religious organizations and NGOs support ratification and implementation of the UN CRC. Who is against it? The Southern Baptist Convention and the HSLDA.
Very soon the tykes up in Canada will be free of mis-informed, mis guided parents who still think they are lord and master of their domain and can do as they please to their children. That day cannot come too soon for our own children.
THE CORRUPTION OF SCIENCE AND LAW
- Image via Wikipedia
The following is an excerpt of an article by Chris Hedges that appears here:
http://www.theocracywatch.org/chris_hedges_nov24_04.htm
The [Christian fascist] movement seeks the imprint of law and science. It must discredit the rational disciplines that are the pillars of the Enlightenment to abolish the liberal polity of the Enlightenment. This corruption of science and law is vital in promoting the doctrine. Creationism, or “intelligent design,” like Eugenics for the Nazis, must be introduced into the mainstream as a valid scientific discipline to destroy the discipline of science itself. This is why the Christian Right is working to bring test cases to ensure that school textbooks include “intelligent design” and condemn gay marriage.
The drive by the Christian Right to include crackpot theories in scientific or legal debate is part of the campaign to destroy dispassionate and honest intellectual inquiry. Facts become interchangeable with opinions. An understanding of reality is not to be based on the elaborate gathering of facts and evidence. The ideology alone is true. Facts that get in the way of the ideology can be altered. Lies, in this worldview, become true. Hannah Arendt called this effort “nihilistic relativism” although a better phrase might be collective insanity.
The Christian Right has fought successfully to have Creationist books sold in national park bookstores in the Grand Canyon, taught as a theory in public schools in states like Alabama and Arkansas. “Intelligent design” is promoted in Christian textbooks. All animal species, or at least their progenitors, students read, fit on Noah’s ark. The Grand Canyon was created a few thousand years ago by the flood that lifted up Noah’s ark, not one billion years ago, as geologists have determined. The earth is only a few thousand years old in line with the literal reading of Genesis. This is not some quaint, homespun view of the world. It is an insidious attempt to undermine rational scientific research and intellectual inquiry.
Tom Delay, following the Columbine shootings, gave voice to this assault when he said that the killings had taken place “because our school systems teach children that they are nothing but glorified apes who have evolutionized out of some primordial mud.” (speech Delay gave in the House on June 16, 1999 )
“What convinces masses are not facts,” Hannah Arendt wrote in Origins of Totalitarianism, “and not even invented facts, but only the consistency of the system which they are presumably part. Repetition, somewhat overrated in importance because of the common belief in the “masses” inferior capacity to grasp and remember, is important because it convinces them of consistency in time.” (p.351)
There are more than 6 million elementary and secondary school students attending private schools and 11.5 percent of these students attend schools run by the Christian Right. These “Christian” schools saw an increase of 46 percent in enrollment in the last decade. The 245,000 additional students accounted for 75 percent of the total rise in private school enrollment.
THE LAUNCHING OF THE WAR
Adams told us to watch closely what the Christian Right did to homosexuals. He has seen how the Nazis had used “values” to launch state repression of opponents. Hitler, days after he took power in 1933, imposed a ban on all homosexual and lesbian organizations. He ordered raids on places where homosexuals gathered culminating with the ransacking of the Institute for Sexual Science in Berlin . Thousands of volumes from the institute’s library were tossed into a bonfire. Adams said that homosexuals would also be the first “deviants” singled out by the Christian Right. We would be the next.
The ban on same sex marriages, passed by eleven states in the election, was part of this march towards our door. A 1996 federal law already defines marriage as between a man and a woman. All of the states with ballot measures, with the exception of Oregon, had outlawed same sex marriages, as do 27 other states. The bans, however, had to be passed, believers were told, to thwart “activist judges” who wanted to overturn them.The Christian family, even the nation, was under threat. The bans served to widen the splits tearing apart the country. The attacks on homosexuals handed to the foot soldiers of the Christian Right an easy target. It gave them a taste of victory. It made them feel empowered. But it is ominous for gays and for us.
All debates with the Christian Right are useless. We cannot reach this movement. It does not want a dialogue. It cares nothing for rational thought and discussion. It is not mollified because John Kerry prays or Jimmy Carter teaches Sunday School. These naive attempts to reach out to a movement bent on our destruction, to prove to them that we too have “values,” would be humorous if the stakes were not so deadly. They hate us. They hate the liberal, enlightened world formed by the Constitution. Our opinions do not count.
This movement will not stop until we are ruled by Biblical Law, an authoritarian church intrudes in every aspect of our life, women stay at home and rear children, gays agree to be cured, abortion is considered murder, the press and the schools promote “positive” Christian values, the federal government is gutted, war becomes our primary form of communication with the rest of the world and recalcitrant non-believers see their flesh eviscerated at the sound of the Messiah’s voice.The spark that could set it ablaze may be lying in the hands of an Islamic terrorist cell, in the hands of the ideological twins of the Christian Right. Another catastrophic terrorist attack could be our Reichstag fire, the excuse used to begin the accelerated dismantling of our open society. The ideology of the Christian Right is not one of love and compassion, the central theme of Christ’s message, but of violence and hatred. It has a strong appeal to many in our society, but it is also aided by our complacency. Let us not stand at the open city gates waiting passively and meekly for the barbarians. They are coming. They are slouching rudely towards Bethlehem. Let us, if nothing else, begin to call them by their name.
Chris Hedges, a reporter for The New York Times, is the author of War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning . He holds a Master of Divinity from Harvard Divinity School . His next book , Losing Moses on the Freeway: America ‘s Broken Covenant With The Ten Commandments is published by The Free Press.
Note from Joan Bokaer – Chris refers to a memo I received in Iowa from Pat Robertson’s organization. The year was 1986 — two years before his presidential bid, and three years before the Christian Coalition was formed.
Related articles by Zemanta
- Max Blumenthal: Remembering Paul Weyrich (huffingtonpost.com)
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_b.png?x-id=dabdb222-700c-4232-abf3-00660615138b)
ABC News: Inside the Council for National Policy
Inside the Council for National Policy
Meet the Most Powerful Conservative Group You’ve Never Heard Of
That countering is heavy and silent, in part because few people, outside its members, seem to know what the group is, what it does, how it raises money, and how interlocked it has become in the matrix of conservative activism.
Conservative, it clearly is.
Unlike other groups that meet in darkened chambers, the CNP doesn’t seem to favor, as a matter of policy and choice of guests, one-worlders, secular humanists, or multicultural multilateralists.
According to one of its most prominent members (who asked that his name not be used), the CNP is simply and nothing but a self-selected, conservative counterweight to the influential center-left establishment.
Panel topics at this year’s convention hew to the CNP’s world view, but Baldwin, who wouldn’t give specifics, said they reflected many different vantage points.
“We’ll probably discuss some of the hot issues that are relevant today. The Middle East … We’ll have a number of speakers from different perspectives. We’re not of all one like mind when it comes to what’s going on there.”
He continued: “Worldwide terrorism. Campaign finance reform. Generally, we kind of mirror what’s going on in society. We pride ourselves on being relevant and timely, so that members want to come to our meetings.”
Still, the group’s shadowy reputation deters some high-profile figures from speaking before it — those who directly influence policy.
For example: A knowledgeable person lists former CIA Director James Woolsey as a Friday night speaker and says that on Saturday, Reagan defense official Frank Gaffney will debate former presidential candidate Pat Buchanan about Israel.
The cavalcade of “formers” resembles nothing more formidable than a Fox News prime-time guest lineup.
In the 1990s, social issues tended to dominate the panels, and guests tended to be talking heads who were plugged in to policy circles, rather than operating from within them.
The concoction of federalism, economic growth, social traditionalism, religious activism and anti-secularism goes down well among members because it is spiced with disdain for a common enemy: the creeping influence of political and philosophical liberalism.
Many current and former members politely said they would prefer not to speak on the organization’s behalf. Those who did respond to telephone and e-mail messages declined to talk about their interest in the organization. More than a dozen did not respond at all.
“Obviously, membership would imply that there is a commonality, so that goes without saying,” said Alvin Williams, CEO of a political action committee that promotes black conservatives. “I don’t think it is anything threatening at all.”
He declined to elaborate.
Darla St. Martin, associate executive director of the National Right to Life, would only say, “Since everyone else is so skeptical [about speaking], I don’t think I should.”
Even Judicial Watch’s Larry Klayman, the watchdog and open government proponent, would not comment, a spokesman said. His busy schedule — four depositions in two days — precluded a short telephone interview.
Gary Bauer, the former presidential candidate and ubiquitous media presence, asked a spokesman to decline a request for an interview about the CNP, citing the group’s long-standing policy against press publicity.
Judging by its 1998 membership roster, which was obtained by a secular watchdog group called the Institute for First Amendment Studies and posted on its Web site, the New Right’s many colors are represented, but there are few, if any, neo-conservatives, Republican moderates and libertarians.
via ABC News: Inside the Council for National Policy.
Truthdig – Reports – When They Came for the Homosexuals…
By Chris Hedges
On the morning of March 8 in Sioux Center, Iowa, two buses parked outside a hotel were found covered with anti-gay slurs, along with a hate-filled message on a piece of cardboard reading: “God does not love feary fags.”
The buses were transporting some 50 lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender students, along with supporters, on the start of a two-month trip to 32 Christian colleges with policies that discriminate against those who are not heterosexuals. The Equality Ride, as it is known, organized by Soulforce, had first traveled to Sioux Center to visit Dordt College, a school that counts “sexual activity with someone of the same gender” as possible grounds for “an employee’s discharge or a student’s dismissal.”
The harassment is not new. During a similar series of protests last year, someone in Cleveland, Tenn., scrawled “fags-mobile” on the side of the bus. Members of the Equality Ride have been arrested for trespassing, at the West Point military academy and elsewhere, and greeted at many of their stops with active hostility. The night before the buses were spray-painted with hateful slogans, three vehicles circled the hotel where the activists were staying to harass those inside.
The website has more on the ride, including pictures of the bus graffiti. But what is important is not this specific incident, or any other recent examples of public intolerance, but the seismic shift in public mood in much of the United States, a shift largely engineered by the radical Christian right. The Christian right has begun to strip gays and lesbians of their constitutional rights and render them second-class citizens. The gay rights movement, which made many gains over the past couple of decades, is reeling backward. And the mounting persecution of gays and lesbians is ominous not only for them but for the rest of society.
I spent two years reporting and writing “American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America.” At the numerous gatherings I attended around the country, one of the driving forces and most effective mobilizing agents was the issue of sexuality. This mass movement, led by figures such as James Dobson, claims that tolerance of “alternative lifestyles” is eroding the American family. They describe “same-sex attraction” as a disease that can be cured. And they condemn all sexual love that is not heterosexual as an abomination in the eyes of God.
Gays and lesbians still within the church, seeking desperately to deny their sexuality and remain in the Christian collective, often suffer severe depression and blows to their self-esteem. The U.S. surgeon general’s office has published data indicating that those who are young and gay are two to three times more likely to commit suicide. Those who conform, no matter what the personal cost, will find acceptance. Those who remain militant, who stand up for another way of being, must be silenced. The methods that will finally sever them and their supporters from a Christian America are often left unmentioned, but the rhetoric makes clear that there will not be a place for them. Gays and lesbians, like other enemies of Christ, are not fully human. They are “unnatural.” And preachers in the movement argue that if America does not act soon to eradicate homosexual behavior, God will punish the nation.
These attacks mask a sinister agenda that has nothing to do with sexuality. It has to do with power. The radical Christian right—the most dangerous mass movement in American history—has built a binary worldview of command and submission wherein male leaders, who cannot be questioned and claim to speak for God, are in control and all others must follow. Any lifestyle outside the traditional model of male and female is a threat to this hierarchical male power structure. Women who do not depend on men for their identity and their sexuality, who live outside a male power relationship, challenge this pervasive cult of masculinity, as do men who find tenderness and love with other men as equals. The lifestyle of gays and lesbians is intolerable to the Christian right because its existence is a threat to the movement’s chain of command, one they insist was ordained by God.
via Truthdig – Reports – When They Came for the Homosexuals….
Truthdig – Reports – Chris Hedges: America’s Holy Warriors
Posted on Dec 31, 2006
Blackwater guard
From Salon.com
A bodyguard from Blackwater USA protects former Coalition Provisional Authority head Paul Bremer in Iraq in 2004. Blackwater’s founder is a right-wing Christian whose paramilitary contractors may be operating outside constitutional restrictions imposed on the police and military.
By Chris Hedges
Editor’s note: The former New York Times Mideast Bureau chief warns that the radical Christian right is coming dangerously close to its goal of co-opting the country’s military and law enforcement.
The drive by the Christian right to take control of military chaplaincies, which now sees radical Christians holding roughly 50 percent of chaplaincy appointments in the armed services and service academies, is part of a much larger effort to politicize the military and law enforcement. This effort signals the final and perhaps most deadly stage in the long campaign by the radical Christian right to dismantle America’s open society and build a theocratic state. A successful politicization of the military would signal the end of our democracy.
During the past two years I traveled across the country to research and write the book “American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America.” I repeatedly listened to radical preachers attack as corrupt and godless most American institutions, from federal agencies that provide housing and social welfare to public schools and the media. But there were two institutions that never came under attack—the military and law enforcement. While these preachers had no interest in communicating with local leaders of other faiths, or those in the community who did not subscribe to their call for a radical Christian state, they assiduously courted and flattered the military and police. They held special services and appreciation days for all four branches of the armed services and for various law enforcement agencies. They encouraged their young men and women to enlist or to join the police or state troopers. They sought out sympathetic military and police officials to attend church events where these officials were lauded and feted for their Christian probity and patriotism. They painted the war in Iraq not as an occupation but as an apocalyptic battle by Christians against Islam, a religion they regularly branded as “satanic.” All this befits a movement whose final aesthetic is violence. It also befits a movement that, in the end, would need the military and police forces to seize power in American society.
One of the arguments used to assuage our fears that the mass movement being built by the Christian right is fascist at its core is that it has not yet created a Praetorian Guard, referring to the paramilitary force that defied legal constraints, made violence part of the political discourse and eventually plunged ancient Rome into tyranny and despotism. A paramilitary force that operates outside the law, one that sows fear among potential opponents and is capable of physically silencing those branded by their leaders as traitors, is a vital instrument in the hands of despotic movements. Communist and fascist movements during the last century each built paramilitary forces that operated beyond the reach of the law.
via Truthdig – Reports – Chris Hedges: America’s Holy Warriors.
The origin of Christian fascism
Interacting with fundamentalist Christian parents we start to see patterns in their responses. Eventually the light dawns that these people hate democracy, are racists, and misogynists. And those are their good qualities. Here are some answers to why you will never get through to them.
Answer number one is they do not believe in dialog, they see no point because they hold the ultimate truth. Answer number two, they hate you. Here, lifted from the Yurica Report is a crucial part of the back story.
The father of neo-conservatism had many “spiritual” children at the University of Chicago, among them: Paul Wolfowitz and Abram Shulsky, who received their doctorates under Strauss in 1972. Harry V. Jaffa was a student of Strauss and has an important connection to Dominionists like Pat Robertson as we shall see below. However, Strauss’s family of influence extended beyond his students to include faculty members in universities, and the people his students taught. Those prominent neo-conservatives who are most notable are: Justice Clarence Thomas, Robert Bork, Irving Kristol and his son William Kristol, Alan Keyes, William J. Bennett, J. Danforth Quayle, Allan Bloom, John Podhoertz, John T. Agresto, John Ashcroft, Newt Gingrich, Gary Bauer, Michael Ledeen and scores of others, many of whom hold important positions in George W. Bush’s White House and Defense Department.
To understand the Straussian infusion of power that transformed an all but dead conservative realm, think of Nietzsche’s Overman come to life. Or better yet, think of the philosophy most unlike Christianity: Think of pure unmitigated evil. Strauss admits that Machiavelli is an evil man. But according to Strauss, this admission is a prerequisite to studying and reading Machiavelli: the acknowledgement is the safety net that keeps the reader from being corrupted. One is tempted to talk back to Strauss and point out an alternative: the admission could be the subterfuge that keeps a man from being ridiculed and rejected for espousing Machiavellian methods.
In one of the most important books for our times, Shadia Drury’s Leo Strauss and the American Right, undertakes to explain the ideas behind Strauss’s huge influence and following. Strauss’s reputation, according to Drury, rests in large part on his view that “a real philosopher must communicate quietly, subtly, and secretly to the few who are fit to receive his message.” Strauss claims secrecy is necessary to avoid “persecution.”[36]
In reading Strauss, one sometimes encounters coded contradictory ideas. For example, Strauss appears to respect Machiavelli because—as he points out—in contrast to other evil men, Machiavelli openly proclaimed opinions that others only secretly expressed behind closed doors. But we have just noted that Strauss teaches that secrecy is essential to the real philosopher. Strauss concluded, some would say that Machiavelli was after all, a patriot of sorts for he loved Italy more than he loved his own soul. Then Strauss warns, but if you call him a patriot, you “merely obscure something truly evil.”[37] So Strauss dances his way through the Machiavellian field of evil, his steps choreographed with duplicity and it’s opposite. The reader cannot let go.
In Strauss’s view, Machiavelli sees that Christianity “has led the world into weakness,” which can only be offset by returning the world to the ancient practices of the past. (Implied is not a return to the pagan past, but rather a return to the more virulent world of the Old Testament). Strauss laments, “Machiavelli needed …a detailed discussion revealing the harmony between his political teaching and the teaching of the Bible.” [38]These statements of Strauss, by themselves, were sufficient to send neo-conservative Christians to search for correlations between Machiavellianism, radical conservatism and the scriptures.[39]
Strauss’s teaching incorporated much of Machiavelli’s. Significantly, his philosophy is unfriendly to democracy—even antagonistic. At the same time Strauss upheld the necessity for a national religion not because he favored religious practices, but because religion in his view is necessary in order to control the population. Since neo-conservatives influenced by Strauss are in control of the Bush administration, I have prepared a brief list that shows the radical unchristian basis of neo-conservatism. I am indebted to Shadia Drury’s book (Leo Strauss and the American Right) and published interviews for the following:
First: Strauss believed that a leader had to perpetually deceive the citizens he ruled.
Secondly: Those who lead must understand there is no morality, there is only the right of the superior to rule the inferior.
Thirdly: According to Drury, Religion “is the glue that holds society together.”[40] It is a handle by which the ruler can manipulate the masses. Any religion will do. Strauss is indifferent to them all.
Fourthly: “Secular society…is the worst possible thing,” because it leads to individualism, liberalism, and relativism, all of which encourage dissent and rebellion. As Drury sums it up: “You want a crowd that you can manipulate like putty.”[41]
Fifthly: “Strauss thinks that a political order can be stable only if it is united by an external threat; and following Machiavelli, he maintains that if no external threat exists, then one has to be manufactured.”[42]
Sixthly: “In Strauss’s view, the trouble with liberal society is that it dispenses with noble lies and pious frauds. It tries to found society on secular rational foundations.”
Strauss’s Student, Harry Jaffa on the 700 Club with Pat Robertson
For four days in 1986, from July first through the fourth of July, Pat Robertson interviewed neo-conservative Dr. Harry Jaffa, a former student of Leo Strauss, on the 700 Club show. The topic was the importance of the Declaration of Independence. Joining with Jaffa was Robertson’s own man, Herb Titus, the Dean of CBN’s School of Public Policy. This series of interviews was one of the most important philosophical moments in the development of the political agenda and political philosophy of the Dominionists.
Robertson found in Harry Jaffa, the champion he needed, whose reasoning would influence how the Constitution should be interpreted by conservatives and would provide a “Christian” view of the establishment of the United States that excluded the secular social contract view. Harry Jaffa would influence both Clarence Thomas (who would be appointed to the Supreme Court by President George Bush senior in 1991) and Antonin Scalia (who would be appointed to the Supreme Court by President Ronald Reagan on September 26, 1986).
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=248ad173-8ed1-482c-b394-c60edb9d865a)
The Threat of Christian Fascism is Hidden, but Very Real
For more on fascism:
American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America
Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism
American Theocracy: The Peril and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil, and Borrowed Money in the 21stCentury
Reports on the web include:
http://www.yuricareport.com/Dominionism/TheDespoilingOfAmerica.htm#_edn14
http://www.theocracywatch.org/
http://www.publiceye.org/magazine/v19n3/clarkson_dominionism.html
http://www.theocracywatch.org/chris_hedges_nov24_04.htm
http://www.talk2action.org/story/2008/1/5/155457/0298
http://www.harpers.org/archive/2006/12/0081322
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=af5538e3-14cd-4842-af16-088f296945f9)
« Newer Posts
