Thy Will be Done, On Earth as It is in Texas

[Joanne98]

The Covert Kingdom


Thy Will be Done, On Earth as It is in Texas


By JOE BAGEANT

Not long ago I pulled my car up alongside a tiny wooden church in the woods, a stark white frame box my family built in 1840. And as always, an honest-to-god chill went through me, for the ancestral ghosts presumably hovering over the graves there. From the wide open front door the Pentecostal preacher's message echoed from within the plain wooden walls: "Thank you Gawd for giving us strawng leaders like President Bush during this crieeesis. Praise you Lord and guide him in this battle with Satan's Muslim armies." If I had chosen to go back down the road a mile or so to the sprawling new Bible Baptist church---complete with school facilities, professional sound system and in-house television production---I could have heard approximately the same exhortation. Usually offered at the end of a prayer for sons and daughters of members in the congregation serving in Iraq, it can be heard in any of the thousands upon thousands of praise temples across our republic.

After a lifetime of identity conflict, I have come to accept that, blood-wise, if not politically or spiritually, these are my people. And as a leftist it is very clear to me these days why urban liberals not only fail to understand these people, but do not even know they exist, other than as some general lump of ignorant, intolerant voters called "the religious right," or the "Christian Right," or "neocon Christians." But until progressives come to understand what these people read, hear, are told and deeply believe, we cannot understand American politics, much less be effective. Given fundamentalist Christianity's inherent cultural isolation, it is nearly impossible for most enlightened Americans to imagine, in honest human terms, what fundamentalist Americans believe, let alone understand why we should all care.

For liberals to examine the current fundamentalist phenomenon in America is accept some hard truths. For starters, we libs are even more embattled than most of us choose to believe. Any significant liberal and progressive support is limited to a few urban pockets on each coast and along the upper edge of the Midwestern tier states. Most of the rest of the nation, the much vaunted heartland, is the dominion of the conservative and charismatic Christian. Turf-wise, it's pretty much their country, which is to say it presently belongs to George W. Bush for some valid reasons. Remember: He did not have to steal the entire election, just a little piece of it in Florida. Evangelical born-again Christians of one stripe or another were then, and are now, 40% of the electorate, and they support Bush 3-1. And as long as their clergy and their worst instincts tell them to, they will keep on voting for him, or someone like him, regardless of what we view as his arrogant folly and sub-intelligence. Forget about changing their minds. These Christians do not read the same books we do, they do not get their information from anything remotely resembling reasonably balanced sources, and in fact, consider even CBS and NBC super-liberal networks of porn and the Devil's lies. Given how fundamentalists see the modern world, they may as well be living in Iraq or Syria, with whom they share approximately the same Bronze Age religious tenets. They believe in God, Rumsfeld's Holy War and their absolute duty as God's chosen nation to kick Muslim ass up one side and down the other. In other words, just because millions of Christians appear to be dangerously nuts does not mean they are marginal.

Having been born into a Southern Pentecostal/Baptist family of many generations, and living in this fundamentalist social landscape means that I gaze into the maw of neocon Christianity daily. Hell, sometimes hourly. My brother is a fundamentalist preacher, as are a couple of my nephews, as were many of my ancestors going back to god-knows-when. My entire family is born-again; their lives are completely focused inside their own religious community, and on the time when Jesus returns to earth---Armageddon and The Rapture.

Only another liberal born into a fundamentalist clan can understand what a strange, sometimes downright hellish family circumstance

http://www.yuricareport.com/Dominionism/BageantTheCovertKingdom.html

Take a good hard long look at Bush's strongest supporters. Understand them. Know them. Then throw your tolerance into the trashcan. These people can not be reached.

[iconoclastic cat]

1. A Mother Love Bone fan, I see!

They were so fantastic. I have a pre-release demo of Shine here at home, as well as a lot of their vinyl stuff. I think I'll play them next.

[Joanne98]

2. The Prince

The First Prince of the Theocratic States of America




It happened quietly, with barely a mention in the media. Only the Washington Post dutifully reported it.<1> And only Kevin Phillips saw its significance in his new book, American Dynasty.<2> On December 24, 2001, Pat Robertson resigned his position as President of the Christian Coalition.



Behind the scenes religious conservatives were abuzz with excitement. They believed Robertson had stepped down to allow the ascendance of the President of the United States of America to take his rightful place as the head of the true American Holy Christian Church.



Robertson’s act was symbolic, but it carried a secret and solemn revelation to the faithful. It was the signal that the Bush administration was a government under God that was led by an anointed President who would be the first regent in a dynasty of regents awaiting the return of Jesus to earth. The President would now be the minister through whom God would execute His will in the nation. George W. Bush accepted his scepter and his sword with humility, grace and a sense of exultation.



As Antonin Scalia, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court explained a few months later, the Bible teaches and Christians believe “… that government …derives its moral authority from God. Government is the ‘minister of God’ with powers to ‘revenge,’ to ‘execute wrath,’ including even wrath by the sword…”<3>



George W. Bush began to wield the sword of God’s revenge with relish from the beginning of his administration, but most of us missed the sword play. I have taken the liberty to paraphrase an illustration from Leo Strauss, the father of the neo-conservative movement, which gives us a clue of how the hiding is done:





“One ought not to say to those whom one wants to kill, ‘Give me your votes,

http://www.yuricareport.com/Dominionism/TheDespoilingOfAmerica.htm

[iconoclastic cat]

3. Link for this one? What's it from?

[Emillereid]

12. Recently I made a trip into north western

North Carolina. The place is thick with evangelicals -- no other world view is even imagined much less tolerated. These people wear images of the crucification on their t-shirts! It is quite literally Bush country -- no other political point of view seems to be allowed. A professor at a local community college was drummed out after 17 years because he dared be a Democrat! A woman I met 'whispered' told me that she'd been warned to keep her political affiliation to herself when she worked for social services if she wanted to keep her job. I felt frightened sometimes if these people would somehow figure out that I didn't think like them.

The South has in many ways never been part of American democracy -- de Tocqueville saw that even when the country was new.

[PROGRESSIVE1]

4. I must agree. We CANNOT tolerate these BIGOTED FACSISTS!!!

[Joanne98]

5. Jesus Plus Nothing

Jesus Plus Nothing
Originally from Harper's Magazine, March 2003. By Jeffrey Sharlet.
SourcesAnd a man's foes shall be they of his own household.
—Matthew 10:36

This is how they pray: a dozen clear-eyed, smooth-skinned “brothers” gathered together in a huddle, arms crossing arms over shoulders like the weave of a cable, leaning in on one another and swaying like the long grass up the hill from the house they share. The house is a handsome, gray, two-story colonial that smells of new carpet and Pine-Sol and aftershave; the men who live there call it Ivanwald. At the end of a tree-lined cul-de-sac, quiet but for the buzz of lawn mowers and kids playing foxes-and-hounds in the park across the road, Ivanwald sits as one house among many, clustered together like mushrooms, all devoted, like these men, to the service of Jesus Christ. The men tend every tulip in the cul-de-sac, trim every magnolia, seal every driveway smooth and black as boot leather. And they pray, assembled at the dining table or on their lawn or in the hallway or in the bunk room or on the basketball court, each man's head bowed in humility and swollen with pride (secretly, he thinks) at being counted among such a fine corps for Christ, among men to whom he will open his heart and whom he will remember when he returns to the world not born-again but remade, no longer an individual but part of the Lord's revolution, his will transformed into a weapon for what the young men call “spiritual war.”

“Jeff, will you lead us in prayer?”

Surely, brother. It is April 2002, and I have lived with these men for weeks now, not as a Christian—a term they deride as too narrow for the world they are building in Christ's honor—but as a “believer.” I have shared the brothers' meals and their work and their games. I have been numbered among them and have been given a part in their ministry. I have wrestled with them and showered with them and listened to their stories: I know which man resents his father's fortune and which man succumbed to the flesh of a woman not once but twice and which man dances so well he is afraid of being taken for a fag. I know what it means to be a “brother,” which is to say that I know what it means to be a soldier in the army of God.

“Heavenly Father,” I begin. Then, “O Lord,” but I worry that this doesn't sound intimate enough. I settle on, “Dear Jesus.” “Dear Jesus, just, please, Jesus, let us fight for Your name.”

* * *

Ivanwald, which sits at the end of Twenty-fourth Street North in Arlington, Virginia, is known only to its residents and to the members and friends of the organization that sponsors it, a group of believers who refer to themselves as “the Family.” The Family is, in its own words, an “invisible” association, though its membership has always consisted mostly of public men. Senators Don Nickles (R., Okla.), Charles Grassley (R., Iowa), Pete Domenici (R., N.Mex.), John Ensign (R., Nev.), James Inhofe (R., Okla.), Bill Nelson (D., Fla.), and Conrad Burns (R., Mont.) are referred to as “members,” as are Representatives Jim DeMint (R., S.C.), Frank Wolf (R., Va.), Joseph Pitts (R., Pa.), Zach Wamp (R., Tenn.), and Bart Stupak


http://www.yuricareport.com/

[iconoclastic cat]

6. Yeah, I read this one when it came out.

A bit scary. I do feel a bit like an alien, insulated here in my alternate reality of the big northern city.

[bobbieinok]

7. also found here

http://philosophy.thereitis.org/displayarticle309.html

Bageant doesn't seem to say 'trash 'em' ............but MAKE SOME ATTEMPT TO UNDERSTAND WHERE THEY'RE COMING FROM

I think the start of the rise of the religious right and the Moral Majority (Falwell, Robertson, Ralph Reed, etc)was the growing feeling among people like this that no one was listening to them, that their concerns, were laughed at, that they were marginalized, etc.

Some people were ready to fill the gap, provide the leadership (make the $$)

[bobbieinok]

9. I grew up in the so bapt church in OK, went to college in TX,,

and grad school in CA

I remember reading in the early 60s while in grad school an article in maybe Atlantic or the Nation or some such 'eastern liberal media'.

The author was both directly and indirectly ridiculing the people (from groups similar to those discussed in the Bageant article) he was writing about. I had long since grown beyond so bapt and OK and TX culture.......but I found myself extremely insulted by the arrogant superiority of the author. I remember thinking 'The author would be significantly more respectful if he were writing about an African tribe and its witch doctors.'

[Joanne98]

10. the rise of the moral majority was a political ploy

but nobody challeged them because they were religious. the bush family was able to seize the political power to commit crimes against our country. now, look at the mess we're in. just because they got their feelings hurt in the 60's. boo fucking hoo. when we get our country back, we should make conservative churches pay off the debt which a special TAX just for them. bushco is not christian. there is no excuse for supporting a mafia crime family. bushco is evil. it's simple. I used to wonder what they're problem was but i don't care anymore. somebody has to pay for the attack on our country. these are the people most responsible. amen

[Joanne98]

8. A Prayer for the Incorporated

T.G.I.F., Amen
Posted on Thursday, July 22, 2004. The following prayers were distributed by the Industrial Christian Fellowship, a “cross-church Christian think-tank” based in Croydon, England. The Fellowship claims that “surveys have revealed that accountants, those in manufacturing, banking, and commerce, stockbrokers, and fund managers ... are seldom mentioned in church prayers,” and they issued eleven liturgies in an attempt to remedy that gap. Originally from Harper's Magazine, February 2004.
SourcesFather God, we ask your blessing on our economic world: Bless those in governments and banks, especially in poorer countries. Give them an understanding of economic forces and the mechanics of wealth creation; that they may produce laws and regulations which give freedom for people to create wealth.

We commend for your blessing and guidance those coping with redundancy. We pray for our managers.

We pray for the unemployed, the overworked, for those who work in the mass media.

Let us pray for people whose work necessitates unsocial hours, long commuting journeys, and frequent moving of house.

We pray for those with no sense of purpose or vocation. We pray for all Career Advisers.

We pray for those who have become ill through stress. Give, Lord, your healing power to those hurt at work and guide the Health and Safety Inspector in his/her investigation.

We pray for those thinking about changing their jobs, especially those unhappy or insecure at work, those feeling unvalued or unfulfilled, and those who can’t wait for 5 p.m. Friday.

Amen.

[Joanne98]

11. They forgot to pray for the oil and defense industries.....

I guess they didn't want to be THAT OBVIOUS......

[Joanne98]

13. The Handmaid's Tale

The Handmaid's Tale is set in the futuristic Republic of Gilead. Sometime in the future, conservative Christians take control of the United States and establish a dictatorship. Most women in Gilead are infertile after repeated exposure to pesticides, nuclear waste, or leakages from chemical weapons. The few fertile women are taken to camps and trained to be handmaidens, birth-mothers for the upper-class. Infertile lower-class women are sent either to clean up toxic waste or to become "Marthas," house servants. No women in the Republic are permitted to be openly sexual; sex is for reproduction only. The government declares this a feminist improvement on the sexual politics of today when women are seen as sex objects.

The novel focuses on one handmaid, Offred (she is given the name of the man whose children she is expected to bear--she is of Fred). Offred became a handmaid after an attempt to escape with her daughter and husband from Gilead. They fail; her daughter is given away to a needy woman in the upper circles, and Offred does not know whether her husband is alive or dead, whether he escaped or was captured. Offred is in the service of the General and his wife, Serena Joy. Serena Joy hates that she is unable to bear children and hates Offred for taking her husband seed. If Offred does not become pregnant promptly, Serena Joy will undoubtedly take revenge by sending her away, possibily to the toxic colonies.


Offred does not become pregnant, but she does develop an unexpected relationship with the General. He plays games of Scrabble with her (all forms of writing are officially denied handmaids) and gives her gifts of cosmetics and old fashion magazines. One night he dresses her in a cocktail dress and takes her to an illegal nightclub where Offred runs into an old female friend, now a prostitute in the club.


Serena Joy, desperate for children, finally arranges for Offred to sleep with the chauffeur. The two are happy together; she thinks she is pregnant. Soon after, Serena Joy finds the cocktail dress the General gave to Offred. She knows her husband is to blame, but accuses Offred anyway and sends for the police to take her away to certain death. When the van arrives to take her away, however, it is driven by rebels who carry Offred to safety.



http://endeavor.med.nyu.edu/lit-med/lit-med-db/webdocs/webdescrips/atwood157-des-.html

[cprise]

14. Short version: U.S.A. is the seat of Christian Fundamentalism

What it doesn't say is that while having an effect on national policies, they are dwindling in numbers. Scientific American 'by the numbers' column showed how fundamentalists have been steadily declining in numbers over the past 20 years-- somewhat under 15%. They contrasted this with an inverse trend for non-believers, now somewhat over 15% of the population.

They may be Bush's strongest supporters, but they are not the most numerous.

[Joanne98]

15. It only takes 10% of a country's population to overthrow a goverment

As long as the rebels are extremely committed. The fundies are committed, well funded and have people in all the right places. When I read this stuff I hate liberals for letting them get this far.

[Joanne98]

16. Diebold and the "Conservative Christian" connection

Incestuous relationships

Increasingly, investigative writers seeking an explanation have looked to Diebold’s history for clues. The electronic voting industry is dominated by only a few corporations – Diebold, Election Systems & Software (ES&S) and Sequoia. Diebold and ES&S combined count an estimated 80% of U.S. black box electronic votes.

In the early 1980s, brothers Bob and Todd Urosevich founded ES&S’s originator, Data Mark. The brothers Urosevich obtained financing from the far-Right Ahmanson family in 1984, which purchased a 68% ownership stake, according to the Omaha World Herald. After brothers William and Robert Ahmanson infused Data Mark with new capital, the name was changed to American Information Systems (AIS). California newspapers have long documented the Ahmanson family’s ties to right-wing evangelical Christian and Republican circles.

In 2001, the Los Angeles Times reported, “. . . primarily funded by evangelical Christians – particularly the wealthy Ahmanson family of Irvine – the institute’s $1-million annual program has produced 25 books, a stream of conferences and more than 100 fellowships for doctoral and postdoctoral research.” The chief philanthropists of the Discovery Institute, that pushes creationist science and education in California, are Howard and Roberta Ahmanson.

According to Group Watch, in the 1980s Howard F. Ahmanson, Jr. was a member of the highly secretive far-Right Council for National Policy, an organization that included Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North, Major General John K. Singlaub and other Iran-Contra scandal notables, as well as former Klan members like Richard Shoff. Ahmanson, heir to a savings and loan fortune, is little reported on in the mainstream U.S. press. But, English papers like The Independent are a bit more forthcoming on Ahmanson’s politics.

“On the right, figures such as Richard Mellon Scaife and Howard Ahmanson have given hundreds of millions of dollars over several decades to political projects both high (setting up the Heritage Foundation think-tank, the driving engine of the Reagan presidency) and low (bankrolling investigations into President Clinton’s sexual indiscretions and the suicide of the White House insider Vincent Foster),” wrote The Independent last November.

The Sunday Mail described an individual as, “. . . a fundamentalist Christian more in the mould of U.S. multi-millionaire Howard Ahmanson, Jr., who uses his fortune to promote so-called traditional family values . . . by waving fortunes under their noses, Ahmanson has the ability to cajole candidates into backing his right-wing Christian agenda.

Ahmanson is also a chief contributor to the Chalcedon Institute that supports the Christian reconstruction movement. The movement’s philosophy advocates, among other things, “mandating the death penalty for homosexuals and drunkards.”

The Ahmanson family sold their shares in American Information Systems to the McCarthy Group and the World Herald Company, Inc. Republican Senator Chuck Hagel disclosed in public documents that he was the Chairman of American Information Systems and claimed between a $1 to 5 million investment in the McCarthy Group. In 1997, American Information Systems purchased Business Records Corp. (BRC), formerly Texas-based election company Cronus Industries, to become ES&S. One of the BRC owners was Carolyn Hunt of the right-wing Hunt oil family, which supplied much of the original money for the Council on National Policy.

In 1996, Hagel became the first elected Republican Nebraska senator in 24 years when he did surprisingly well in an election where the votes were verified by the company he served as chairman and maintained a financial investment. In both the 1996 and 2002 elections, Hagel’s ES&S counted an estimated 80% of his winning votes. Due to the contracting out of services, confidentiality agreements between the State of Nebraska and the company kept this matter

http://www.dangerouscitizen.com/Articles/1088.aspx

Does this mean Christians are trying to steal your right to vote. It damn sure does. Yours and people in 156 other countries. The fundies are in soooooooo much trouble. When this story finally goes big and global everybody on EARTH is going to want to kick their asses. They better pray they get raptured first. Amen

[Joanne98]

17. The Neo-cons and the Evangelicals LEO STRAUSS

Leo Strauss and the Noble Lie:
The Neo-Cons at War
by
John G. Mason



A

s our Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld once noted in an off the cuff remark, strategic truths sometimes need be defended by a “bodyguard of lies.” Here Rumsfeld was thinking no doubt of Churchill’s famous quip defending Operation Fortitude, the mock invasion force aimed at Calais that drew the attention of Herr Hitler and his high command away from the Normandy beaches and hid the Allies’ operational plans in the summer of 1944. Rumsfeld’s critics in Washington and London, however, have in mind more the history of contemporary philosophy than the history of WWII.

In the past few months, the “bodyguard of lies” metaphor has been redeployed and used to characterize the Bush Administration’s raw manipulation of the CIA and other intelligence agencies for propaganda purposes and for the gross deceit that seems to characterize the rationales put forward for their Iraq policy. Of these there were many--WMDs, a suspected connection between Saddam and Al Qaeda, or the humanitarian rescue of the Iraqi people. They shifted depending on their intended audience and perhaps the day of the week. The “imminent threat” of WMD’s were emphasized for the British public while links to “Al Qaeda-like terrorism” were stressed at home – where the fiction that Saddam was directly involved in the September 2001 attacks has been firmly embraced by over two thirds of the American public. As Olivier Roy rightly noted last May, ”Washington’s stated war goals were not logically coherent, and its more intellectually compelling arguments were usually played down or denied.”

By the summer of 2003 - when the hunt for banned Iraqi WMD’s had gone nowhere and the Al Qaeda connection to Saddam had disappeared into thin air along with Saddam and Osama themselves, the cumulative disappointment shook the official rationale for the Anglo American invasion of Iraq. This placed Mr. Rumsfeld and the civilian policy makers in his Pentagon group on the defensive and set them up for the critics who had been waiting impatiently in the wings during the short but triumphal march to Baghdad. Secretary Rumsfeld’s credibility problems had now become Blair’s and Bush’s nightmare—provoking a transatlantic media storm that has touched the political establishments of the co-belligerents.

In London this affair has mainly raised questions about the honesty of Mr. Blair and his press and defense secretaries. In Washington it has done so as well, and the prevailing view of the Administration’s war policy among its critics is summed up succulently by the United for Peace slogan: “Bush lies—Americans die.” But this affair has also a raised a related and perhaps even more troubling question about the philosophical roots of the ideology that’s driving the “counter-revolution” in foreign and domestic policy within the Bush Administration. In short, the relation between strategic disinformation and political truth has been very much on our minds of late—along with some concerns about the lessons taught by Leo Strauss to the brilliant group of his former students who now occupy the seats of power in Washington


A Crisis of Intelligence

Last May that Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia gave the speech on the Senate floor that marked the moment when Bush’s Iraq policy began to seriously unravel. “The truth,” he said, “has a way of asserting itself despite all attempts to obscure it. Regarding the situation in Iraq, it appears to this Senator that the American people have been lured into accepting the unprovoked invasion of a sovereign nation, in violation of long-standing international law, under false premises.” He concluded, “We just fought a war that didn’t need to be fought.” And of course, Byrd assumes that “unnecessary wars” can never be just. But if proven this charge alone would constitute technical grounds for the impeachment of the President for “high crimes and misdemeanours”—as Senator Bob Graham of Florida pointed out last July.

The principal false premise in question was the claim that Saddam possessed an arsenal of chemical and biological terror weapons that was both operational in March and an immediate threat to the security of the United States, that is, an “imminent threat.” This is no small matter. This was the central claim made by Colin Powell and Jack Straw at the UN Security Council in order to justify the immediate use of military force against the Iraqi regime. This was the claim that justified the charges of disloyalty and unfaithfulness that put Jacques Chirac, Gerhard Schroeder and Hans Blix on trial in the American and the British media for three long months. And finally this was the claim that—along with the baseless assertion that Saddam was a full partner with bin Laden’s terrorists in the attacks on New York and Washington—finally persuaded a reluctant and divided American public to rally behind their President during the Second Iraq War. But since the invasion ended, as we all know, these claims have been very much in doubt. Both on the ground in Iraq where American weapons inspectors reported having found nothing after a fruitless search for the missing chemical and nuclear arsenal and in London and Washington where this “intelligence failure” has become a major political scandal.


http://www.logosjournal.com/mason.htm

Great article. Long article :)

[hadrons]

18. read "What's the Matter with Kansas" to understanding these nuts ....

[Joanne98]

19. Good idea. I forgot about that. Thanks hadons. :)

[Joanne98]

20. What's The Matter With Kansas by Thomas Frank

One of “our most insightful social observers”* cracks the great political mystery of our time: how conservatism, once a marker of class privilege, became the creed of millions of ordinary Americans

With his acclaimed wit and acuity, Thomas Frank turns his eye on what he calls the “thirty-year backlash”—the populist revolt against a supposedly liberal establishment. The high point of that backlash is the Republican Party’s success in building the most unnatural of alliances: between blue-collar Midwesterners and Wall Street business interests, workers and bosses, populists and right-wingers.

In asking “what ’s the matter with Kansas?”—how a place famous for its radicalism became one of the most conservative states in the union—Frank, a native Kansan and onetime Republican, seeks to answer some broader American riddles: Why do so many of us vote against our economic interests? Where’s the outrage at corporate manipulators? And whatever happened to middle-American progressivism? The questions are urgent as well as provocative. Frank answers them by examining pop conservatism—the bestsellers, the radio talk shows, the vicious political combat—and showing how our long culture wars have left us with an electorate far more concerned with their leaders’ “values” and down-home qualities than with their stands on hard questions of policy.

A brilliant analysis—and funny to boot—What’s the Matter with Kansas? presents a critical assessment of who we are, while telling a remarkable story of how a group of frat boys, lawyers, and CEOs came to convince a nation that they spoke on behalf of the People.

*Los Angeles Times

One of the best books written on the subject,"Why do poor people vote against their own economic interests?" It's all because of GAWD.

[Joanne98]

21. The Crusanders

The Crusaders
A powerful faction of religious and political conservatives is waging a latter-day counterreformation, battling widespread efforts to liberalize the American Catholic Church. And it has the clout and the connections to succeed.
By Charles P. Pierce, Globe Staff, 11/2/2003

There is a glow to the priest when he talks. Something lights him up inside, and its intensity is increased by the mild way he says what he's saying. The words, harsh and unyielding, seem not so much a departure from the mainstream as they do a living refutation that there is any mainstream at all, not one to which the priest has to pay any mind, anyway.



He is talking about a futuristic essay he wrote that rosily describes the aftermath of a "relatively bloodless" civil war that resulted in a Catholic Church purified of all dissent and the religious dismemberment of the United States of America.

"There's two questions there," says the Rev. C. John McCloskey 3d, smiling. He's something of a ringer for Howard Dean -- a comparison he resists, also with a smile -- a little more slender than the presidential candidate, perhaps, but no less fervent. "One is, Do I think it would be better that way? No. Do I think it's possible? Do I think it's possible for someone who believes in the sanctity of marriage, the sanctity of life, the sanctity of family, over a period of time to choose to survive with people who think it's OK to kill women and children or for -- quote -- homosexual couples to exist and be recognized?

"No, I don't think that's possible," he says. "I don't know how it's going to work itself out, but I know it's not possible, and my hope and prayer is that it does not end in violence. But, unfortunately, in the past, these types of things have tended to end this way.

"If American Catholics feel that's troubling, let them. I don't feel it's troubling at all."

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/magazine/articles/2003/11/02/the_crusaders/

Good article.

[Joanne98]

22. Opus Dei and Fat Tony

Scalia and Opus Dei
Radicals on the High Court
By MIKE WHITNEY

"After I joined they gave me a barbed wire chain to wear on my leg for two hours a day and a whip to hit my buttocks with."

Sharon Clasen, former member of Opus Dei

"Blessed be pain. Loved be pain. Glorified be pain"

Josemarie Escriva, Founder, Opus Dei

(Commentary on Ron Grossman's article in the Chicago Tribune; Covert Catholics)

Whether or not an alleged member of Opus Dei, like Justice Antonin Scalia, enjoys a touch of the lash on his prodigious derriere from time to time, is certainly no business of ours. However, the affiliation of a Justice on the highest court in the land to an organization that, for all appearances, is nothing more than a right-wing cult should arouse not only suspicion, but an investigation.

Opus Dei is a clandestine Catholic organization based in Chicago, Ill. In size, it is insignificant, a mere 85,000 members (only 3,000 members in the US) compared to the one billion Catholics worldwide. But, its membership boasts of some of the most powerful and wealthy people in the country. The group catapulted to national attention when spymaster, Robert Hanson, was arrested and convicted in what turned out to be the greatest act of treachery in the history of the FBI. Hanson's arrest drew immediate and unwelcome notoriety to the secretive group.

Opus Dei came under the microscope again when it was featured rather unflatteringly in the popular mystery novel, The Da Vinci Code. The novel did a great deal to support the notion that the organization had a sinister underlying purpose. If their purpose, however, is to acquire as much power as possible within the Church, as many believe it is, then they have succeeded quite nicely. For one thing the Pope's spokesman, Joaquin Navarro-Valls, is an active member, which indicates that a devoted party loyalist is as close as possible to the seat of authority in the Church.

The secrecy surrounding the group has generated widespread curiosity. "Former members claim it is a cult that pressures psychologically vulnerable college students into joining." opines Ron Grossman of the Chicago Times.

Grossman goes on to add, "Critics are put off because, as part of their devotional regimen, some Opus Dei members inflict pain on themselves that seems to border on masochism. Supporters respond that mortification of the flesh is an ancient and honorable Christian practice that puts them spiritually in touch with the great saints of the past."

http://www.counterpunch.org/whitney01172004.html

More evil in the Catholic costume. The Catholic MAFIA......

[Joanne98]

23. George H W Bush and Rev Moon

Is George Bush a Moonie?


George Bush Sells out to the Moonies
It's bad enough that these nutcases are spreading their diseased cults all over the world. But it's a real shame for former President Bush to dishonor America by selling you to the Reverned Sun Myung Moon for a mere $100,000. By praising Moon George Bush is contributing the the personal destruction of tens of thousands of lives aroung the world.
This is insanity beyond belief and I just can't sit back and watch it happen. Moon is a serious brainwasher and a menace to sane and normal society. Moon controls hundreds of millions of dollars, many newspapers across that world including the Washington Times, Moon controls the Republican Party, and the Christian Coalition. If you're a Christian and think that your serving the lord, you might want to look into how the moonies are taking control of the Religous Right.

Moon seeks to control the news media throughout the world. When you hear about the so called "liberal press" think twice. There is no liberal press. It's a ruse to throw you off about how the press is really influenced. Whenever you hear about a story breaking in the Washington Times, your getting a message from Reverened Moon.

Bush owes Moon big time. Moon funneled millions of dollars into Bush's 1988 election. Had it not been for Moon, Bush would never have been president. Bush was supposed to pardon Moon so as to erase his felony conviction but never did. And Moon didn't support Bush in 1992 the way he did in 1988.


http://www.perkel.com/politics/moonies/bush.htm

It's amazing how the Bush family sold our country out to all kinds of scum just so they could get some money. Moon was recently crowned Messiah in the Senate building.

[Karenina]

24. Kick!

:kick:

[mongo]

25. It is time to infiltrate

These Christians and point out just how un-Christian this administration is.

Instead of attacking them, we need to fight them on their own terms. We should be going to these churches and talking to their leaders.

They have been encouraged to run for public office since the 80's. They see our society as "sick" and they are trying to fix what they perceive as a problem.

But instead they have become the dupes for a global plutocracy.

[PROGRESSIVE1]

26. Agreed!!!