The Christian Right and the Rise of American Fascism
by Chris Hedges
www.theocracywatch.org, Nov 15, 2004

Dr. James Luther Adams, my ethics professor at Harvard Divinity School , told us that when we were his age, he was then close to 80, we would all be fighting the "Christian fascists."
The warning, given to me 25 years ago, came at the moment Pat Robertson and other radio and televangelists began speaking about a new political religion that would direct its efforts at taking control of all institutions, including mainstream denominations and the government. Its stated goal was to use the United States to create a global, Christian empire. It was hard, at the time, to take such fantastic rhetoric seriously, especially given the buffoonish quality of those who expounded it. But Adams warned us against the blindness caused by intellectual snobbery. The Nazis, he said, were not going to return with swastikas and brown shirts. Their ideological inheritors had found a mask for fascism in the pages of the Bible.
He was not a man to use the word fascist lightly. He was in Germany in 1935 and 1936 and worked with the underground anti-Nazi church, known as The Confessing Church, led by Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Adams was eventually detained and interrogated by the Gestapo, who suggested he might want to consider returning to the United States . It was a suggestion he followed. He left on a night train with framed portraits of Adolph Hitler placed over the contents inside his suitcase to hide the rolls of home movie film he took of the so-called German Christian Church, which was pro-Nazi, and the few individuals who defied them, including the theologians Karl Barth and Albert Schweitzer. The ruse worked when the border police lifted the top of the suitcases, saw the portraits of the Fuhrer and closed them up again. I watched hours of the grainy black and white films as he narrated in his apartment in Cambridge .
He saw in the Christian Right, long before we did, disturbing similarities with the German Christian Church and the Nazi Party, similarities that he said would, in the event of prolonged social instability or a national crisis, see American fascists, under the guise of religion, rise to dismantle the open society. He despaired of liberals, who he said, as in Nazi Germany, mouthed silly platitudes about dialogue and inclusiveness that made them ineffectual and impotent. Liberals, he said, did not understand the power and allure of evil nor the cold reality of how the world worked. The current hand wringing by Democrats in the wake of the election, with many asking how they can reach out to a movement whose leaders brand them "demonic" and "satanic," would not have surprised Adams . Like Bonhoeffer, he did not believe that those who would fight effectively in coming times of turmoil, a fight that for him was an integral part of the Biblical message, would come from the church or the liberal, secular elite.
His critique of the prominent research universities, along with the media, was no less withering. These institutions, self-absorbed, compromised by their close relationship with government and corporations, given enough of the pie to be complacent, were unwilling to deal with the fundamental moral questions and inequities of the age. They had no stomach for a battle that might cost them their prestige and comfort. He told me that if the Nazis took over America "60 percent of the Harvard faculty would begin their lectures with the Nazi salute." This too was not an abstraction. He had watched academics at the University of Heidelberg , including the philosopher Martin Heidegger, raise their arms stiffly to students before class.
Two decades later, even in the face of the growing reach of the Christian Right, his prediction seems apocalyptic. And yet the powerbrokers in the Christian Right have moved from the fringes of society to the floor of the House of Representatives and the Senate. Christian fundamentalists now hold a majority of seats in 36 percent of all Republican Party state committees, or 18 of 50 states, along with large minorities in 81 percent of the rest of the states. Forty-five Senators and 186 members of the House of Representatives earned between an 80 to100 percent approval ratings from the three most influential Christian Right advocacy groups - The Christian Coalition, Eagle Forum, and Family Resource Council. Tom Coburn, the new senator from Oklahoma , has included in his campaign to end abortion a call to impose the death penalty on doctors that carry out abortions once the ban goes into place. Another new senator, John Thune, believes in Creationism. Jim DeMint, the new senator elected from South Carolina , wants to ban single mothers from teaching in schools. The Election Day exit polls found that 22 percent of voters identified themselves as evangelical Christians and Bush won 77 percent of their vote. The polls found that a plurality of voters said that the most important issue in the campaign had been "moral values."
President Bush must further these important objectives, including the march to turn education and social welfare over to the churches with his faith-based initiative, as well as chip away at the wall between church and state with his judicial appointments, if he does not want to face a revolt within his core constituency.
Jim Dobson, the head of Focus on the Family, who held weekly telephone conversations with K arl Rove during the campaign, has put the President on notice. He told ABC's "This Week" that "this president has two years, or more broadly the Republican Party has two years, to implement these policies, or certainly four, or I believe they'll pay a price in the next election."
Bush may turn out to be a transition figure, our version of Otto von Bismarck. Bismarck used "values" to energize his base at the end of the 19 th century and launched "Kulturkampt", the word from which we get "culture wars," against Catholics and Jews. Bismarck 's attacks split the country, made the discrediting of whole segments of the society an acceptable part of the civil discourse and paved the way for the more virulent racism of the Nazis. This, I suspect, will be George Bush's contribution to our democracy.
DOMINIONISTS AND RECONSTRUCTIONISTS
The Reconstructionist movement, founded in 1973 by Rousas Rushdooney, is the intellectual foundation for the most politically active element within the Christian Right. Rushdooney's 1,600 page three-volume work, Institutes of Biblical Law, argued that American society should be governed according to the Biblical precepts in the Ten Commandments. He wrote that the elect, like Adam and Noah, were given dominion over the earth by God and must subdue the earth, along with all non-believers, so the Messiah could return.
This was a radically new interpretation for many in the evangelical movement. The Messiah, it was traditionally taught, would return in an event called "the Rapture" where there would be wars and chaos. The non-believers would be tormented and killed and the elect would be lifted to heaven. The Rapture was not something that could be manipulated or influenced, although believers often interpreted catastrophes and wars as portents of the imminent Second Coming.
Rushdooney promoted an ideology that advocated violence to create the Christian state. His ideology was the mirror image of Liberation Theology, which came into vogue at about the same time. While the Liberation Theologians crammed the Bible into the box of Marxism, Rushdooney crammed it into the equally distorting box of classical fascism. This clash was first played out in Latin America when I was there as a reporter two decades ago. In El Salvador leftist priests endorsed and even traveled with the rebel movements in Nicaragua and El Salvador, while Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell, along with conservative Latin American clerics, backed the Contras fighting against the Sandinistas in Nicaragua and the murderous military regimes in El Salvador, Guatemala, Chile and Argentina.
The Institutes of Biblical Law called for a Christian society that was harsh, unforgiving and violent. Offenses such as adultery, witchcraft, blasphemy and homosexuality, merited the death penalty. The world was to be subdued and ruled by a Christian United States. Rushdooney dismissed the number of 6 million Jews killed in the Holocaust as an inflated figure and his theories on race echoed Nazi Eugenics.
"The white man has behind him centuries of Christian culture and the discipline and selective breeding this faith requires...," he wrote. "The Negro is a product of a radically different past, and his heredity has been governed by radically different considerations."
"The background of Negro culture is African and magic, and the purposes of the magic are control and power over God, man, nature, and society. Voodoo, or magic, was the religion and life of American Negroes. Voodoo songs underlie jazz, and old voodoo, with its power goal, has been merely replaced with revolutionary voodoo, a modernized power drive." (see The Religious Right , a publication of the ADL, pg. 124.)
Rushdooney was deeply antagonistic to the federal government. He believed the federal government should concern itself with little more than national defense. Education and social welfare should be handed over to the churches. Biblical law must replace the secular legal code. This ideology remains at the heart of the movement. It is being enacted through school vouchers, with federal dollars now going into Christian schools, and the assault against the federal agencies that deal with poverty and human services. The Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives is currently channeling millions in federal funds to groups such Pat Robertson's Operation Blessing , and National Right to Life, as well as to fundamentalist religious charity organizations and programs promoting sexual abstinence.
Rushdooney laid the groundwork for a new way of thinking about political involvement. The Christian state would come about not only through signs and wonders, as those who believed in the rapture believed? , but also through theestablishment of the Christian nation. But he remained, even within the Christian Right, a deeply controversial figure.
Dr. Tony Evans, the minister of a Dallas church and the founder of Promise Keepers, articulated Rushdooney's extremism in a more palatable form. He called on believers, often during emotional gatherings at football stadiums, to commit to Christ and exercise power within the society as agents of Christ. He also called for a Christian state. But he did not advocate the return of slavery, as Rushdooney did, nor list a string of offenses such as adultery punishable by death, nor did he espouse the Nazi-like race theories. It was through Evans, who was a spiritual mentor to George Bush that Dominionism came to dominate the politically active wing of the Christian Right.The religious utterances from political leaders such as George Bush, Tom Delay, Pat Robertson and Zell Miller are only understandable in light of Rushdooney and Dominionism. These leaders believe that God has selected them to battle the forces of evil, embodied in "secular humanism," to create a Christian nation. Pat Robertson frequently tells believers "our aim is to gain dominion over society." Delay has told supporters, such as at a gathering two years ago at the First Baptist Church in Pearland , Texas , "He [God] is using me, all the time, everywhere, to stand up for biblical worldview in everything I do and everywhere I am. He is training me, He is working with me." Delay went on to tell followers "If we stay inside the church, the culture won't change."
Pat Robertson, who changed the name of his university to Regent University , says he is training his students to rule when the Christian regents take power, part of the reign leading to the return of Christ. Robertson resigned as the head of the Christian Coalition when Bush took office, a sign many took to signal the ascendancy of the first regent. This battle is not rhetorical but one that followers are told will ultimately involve violence. And the enemy is clearly defined and marked for destruction.
"Secular Humanists," the popular Christian Right theologian Francis Schaeffer wrote in one of numerous diatribes, "are the greatest threat to Christianity the world has ever known."
One of the most enlightening books that exposes the ultimate goals of movement is America's Providential History , the standard textbook used in many Christian schools and a staple of the Christian home schooling movement. It sites Genesis 26, which calls for mankind to " .have dominnion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, over the cattle and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth" as evidence that the Bible callls for "Bible believing Christians" to take dominion of America.
"When God brings Noah through the flood to a new earth, He reestablished the Dominion Mandate but now delegates to man the responsibility for governing other men." (page 19). The authors write that God has called the United States to become "the first truly Christian nation" (page 184) and "make disciples of all nations." The book denounces income tax as "idolatry," property tax as "theft" and calls for an abolish of inheritance taxes in the chapter entitled Christian Economics. The loss of such tax revenues will bring about the withering away of the federal government and the empowerment of the authoritarian church, although this is not explict in the text.
Rushdooney's son-in-law, Gary North, a popular writer and founder of the Institute for Christian Economics, laid out the aims of the Christian Right.
"So let's be blunt about it: We must use the doctrine of religious liberty to gain independence for Christian schools until we train up a generation of people who know that there is no religious neutrality, no neutral law, no neutral education, and no neutral civil government. Then they will get busy in constructing a Bible-based social, political and religious order which finally denies the religious liberty of the enemies of God." (Christianity and Civilization, Spring, 1982)
Dominionists have to operate, for now, in the contaminated environment of the secular, liberal state. They have learned, therefore, to speak in code. The code they use is the key to understanding the dichotomy of the movement, one that has a public and a private face. In this they are no different from the vanguard, as described by Lenin, or the Islamic terrorists who shave off their beards, adopt western dress and watch pay-for-view pornographic movies in their hotel rooms the night before hijacking a plane for a suicide attack.
Joan Bokaer, the Director of Theocracy Watch, a project of the Center for Religion, Ethics and Social Policy at Cornell University , who runs the encyclopedic web site theocracywatch.org, was on a speaking tour a few years ago in Iowa . She obtained a copy of a memo Pat Robertson handed out to followers at the Iowa Republican County Caucus. It was titled, "How to Participate in a Political Party" and read:
"Rule the world for God."
"Give the impression that you are there to work for the party, not push an ideology.
"Hide your strength.
"Don't flaunt your Christianity.
"Christians need to take leadership positions. Party officers control political parties and so it is very important that mature Christians have a majority of leadership whenever possible, God willing."
President Bush sends frequent coded messages to the faithful. In his address to the nation on the night of September 11, for example, he lifted a line directly from the Gospel of John when he said "And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness will not overcome it." He often uses the sentence "when every child is welcomed in life and protected in law," words taken directly from a pro-life manifesto entitled "A Statement of Pro-Life Principle and Concern." He quotes from hymns, prayers, tracts and Biblical passages without attribution. These phrases reassure the elect. They are lost on the uninitiated.
CHRIST THE AVENGER
The Christian Right finds its ideological justification in a narrow segment of the Gospel, in particular the letters of the Apostle Paul, especially the story of Paul's conversion on the road to Damascus in the Book of Acts. It draws heavily from the book of Revelations and the Gospel of John. These books share an apocalyptic theology. The Book of Revelations is the only time in the Gospels where Jesus sanctions violence, offering up a vision of Christ as the head of a great and murderous army of heavenly avengers. Martin Luther found the God portrayed in Revelations so hateful and cruel he put the book in the appendix of his German translation of the Bible.
These books rarely speak about Christ's message of love, forgiveness and compassion. They focus on the doom and destruction that will befall unbelievers and the urgent need for personal salvation. The world is divided between good and evil, between those who act as agents of God and those who act as agents of Satan. The Jesus of the other three Gospels, the Jesus who turned the other cheek and embraced his enemies, an idea that was radical and startling in the ancient Roman world, is purged in the narrative selected by the Christian Right.
The cult of masculinity pervades the ideology. Feminism and homosexuality are social forces, believers are told, that have rendered the American male physically and spiritually impotent. Jesus is portrayed as a man of action, casting out demons, battling the Anti-Christ, attacking hypocrites and castigating the corrupt. This cult of masculinity brings with it the glorification of strength, violence and vengeance. It turns Christ into a Rambo-like figure; indeed depictions of Jesus within the movement often show a powerfully built man wielding a huge sword.
This image of Christ as warrior is appealing to many within the movement. The loss of manufacturing jobs, lack of affordable health care, negligible opportunities for education and poor job security has left many millions of Americans locked out. This ideology is attractive because it offers them the hope of power and revenge. It sanctifies their rage. It stokes the paranoia about the outside world maintained through bizarre conspiracy theories, many on display in Pat Robertson's book The New World Order . The book is a xenophobic rant that includes vicious attacks against the United Nations and numerous other international organizations. The abandonment of the working class has been crucial to the success of the movement. Only by reintegrating the working class into society through job creation, access to good education and health care can the Christian Right be effectively blunted. Revolutionary movements are built on the backs of an angry, disenfranchised laboring class. This one is no exception.
The depictions of violence that will befall non-believers are detailed, gruesome and brutal. It speaks to the rage many believers harbor and the thirst for revenge. This, in large part, accounts for the huge sales of the apocalyptic series by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins. In their novel, Glorious Appearing , based on LaHaye's interpretation of Biblical Prophecies about the Second Coming, Christ eviscerates the flesh of millions of non-believers with the mere sound of his voice. There are long descriptions of horror, of how "the very words of the Lord had superheated their blood, causing it to burst through their veins and skin." Eyes disintegrate. Tongues melt. Flesh dissolves. The novel, part of The Left Behind series, are the best selling adult novels in the country. They preach holy war.
"Any teaching of peace prior to [Christ's] return is heresy." said televangelist James Robinson.
Natural disasters, terrorist attacks, instability in Israel and even the fighting of Iraq are seen as signposts. The war in Iraq was predicted according to believers in the 9 th chapter of the Book of Revelations where four angels "which are bound in the great river Euphrates will be released to slay the third part of men." The march towards global war, even nuclear war, is not to be feared but welcomed as the harbinger of the Second Coming. And leading the avenging armies is an angry, violent Messiah who dooms millions of non-believers to a horrible and painful death.
THE CORRUPTION OF SCIENCE AND LAW
The 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.

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God's Warrior Twins
Christian & Islamic Fundamentalism have a lot in common
by Kimberly Blaker
Toward Freedom, Fall 2003


In February 1998, Osama bin Laden issued an edict. "The ruling to kill the Americans and their allies is an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it, in order to liberate the Al Aqsa mosque [Jerusalem] and the Holy Mosque [Mecca]," he explained. "This is in accordance with the words of Almighty God... We call on every Muslim who believes in God and wished to be rewarded to comply with God's order to kill the Americans and plunder their money wherever and whenever they find it."
Those haunting words were played out on September 11, 2001. In response to the horrors that befell thousands that day, US citizens of all beliefs decried Islamic fundamentalism and the terrorism it seems to nurture. A large segment unquestioningly supported President George W. Bush's war in Iraq, believing his assertion that Saddam
Hussein and his weapons of mass destruction posed an equally dire threat. Yet few imagined, despite any concerns about the Bush Administration's agenda, a day when the President would disclose: "God told me to strike at al Qaida and I struck them, and then he instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did, and now I am determined to solve the problem in the Middle East."
On June 27, 2003, with those precise words Bush put his previous and, most certainly, future actions into perspective.
The ramifications of that statement, and the marked deterioration of civil liberties and religious freedom in the US over the past few years, leads to a nagging question: Could the US slip into a fundamentalist mode paralleling those nations we currently deem the world's greatest threat? The events of 9/11 certainly have played into the hands of the Christian right. Citizens and government officials, unnerved by the looming threat of further attack, have permitted, even encouraged, this movement to flourish, further fusing God and Jesus with government, patriotism, and the warding off of Islamic fundamentalist evils.
Although much savagery, such as honor killings and the stoning to death of women for adultery, occurs in Middle Eastern and other societies where Muslim, Hindu, and Jewish fundamentalisms hold sway, both history and contemporary events around the world confirm that Christian fundamentalism isn't immune from such barbarousness. In Fundamentalism and Terrorism, psychoanalyst Robert M. Young notes that prisoners were the victims of agonizing torture under the conservative Christian dictatorship in Argentina. Afterward, they were flown in helicopters, where their abdomens were cut open and they were dropped into the sea as shark feed.
This gory example may not be typical, but it does confirm that, under the right conditions, dreadful atrocities inflicted by extreme Christians aren't impossible. Most fundamentalists aren't inclined to such cruelties, yet aggressive, even violent tendencies are often present, if only toward spouses and children.
So, do US Christian fundamentalists bear any striking resemblance to Islamic fundamentalists abroad? In recent months, a disquieting reality has begun to penetrate the national consciousness. By examining the similarities, we may develop a deeper awareness and understanding of why our country is in its current predicament, and more importantly, where it may be headed.
UNIVERSAL VICTIMS
A chief similarity between Christian and Islamic fundamentalists is their patriarchal family structure and victimization of women. This is played out not only in private, but also in the public sphere where fundamentalisms rule. The appalling treatment of women in Afghanistan by the Taliban came to the forefront following 9/11. For example, women were regularly subjected to beatings at the hands of the Taliban's religious police. Their offenses? In some cases, reported Richard Lacayo in the December 3, 2001 issue of Time, simply the sin of wearing white socks or appearing in public without a burka. Spousal abuse and honor killings by family members have been the norm, and in some cases are legal, in many Islamic fundamentalist societies. In Afghanistan under the Taliban, women were also banned from working outside the home, except in a few specific healthcare positions.
While US laws currently don't dictate female attire, not long ago it was sinful for women to show their ankles. Many were required to adhere to a strict and insufferable dress code. Though today's Christian fundamentalists do not generally require the head-to-toe garments worn by the Puritans of the past, many still allow only loose fitting dresses with high necklines, cut no shorter than the knee, often uncomfortable for the occasion or season.
Obsessions with female purity are played out in other ways. In 1998, Alabama passed a law making it illegal to sell, distribute, or manufacture sexual devices, including vibrators. It was overturned in 2002, yet spoke volumes about how far Christian fundamentalists will go to impose their "values" on all US women. As if to hammer that point home, in April, Attorney General Bill Pryor filed his second appeal with the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta, challenging the most recent federal court ruling against the ban. Soon afterward, President Bush nominated Pryor to join the 11th Circuit as a judge.
The role of women in Christian fundamentalist homes is generally well defined: wife, mother, and homemaker. Often, they are not allowed to work outside the home and are vulnerable to abuse, sometimes condoned, or at best dismissed, by the clergymen they may ask for help. Restrictive and unfair divorce laws and welfare reforms are also frequently proposed by the Christian right, measures that would make it more difficult, if not impossible, for women to leave lethal relationships.
LASTING IMPRESSIONS
In Islamic fundamentalist societies such as Pakistan, the indoctrination of children is commonplace. According to the October 15, 2001 issue of US News ~ World Report, boys, sometimes as young as six and often from poor families, are sent to religious schools (madrasahs), where socialization is severely restricted during their most critical years. In the madrasahs, they spend their first three years memorizing the Koran. Science and math aren't taught, and history is limited to the Muslim world. Reportedly, children in madrasahs are shackled and sometimes beaten. According to Philip Smucker and Michael Stachell, writing for Time, the Taliban was largely made up of graduates from these schools.
With striking similarity, James Dobson, former professor of pediatrics and a popular conservative Christian voice heard by millions, summed up the Christian fundamentalist mindset in Children at Risk. "Those who control what young people are taught, and what they experience-what they see,
hear, think, and believe-will determine the future course for the nation," he predicted. In the US, that is accomplished by home schooling or sending children to ultra-conservative Christian schools, where socializing that might open doors to critical thought is limited. The key concept of fundamentalist education is controlling what children learn.
In Parenting Isn't for Cowards, Dobson also argues, "If the salvation of our children is really that vital to us, then our spiritual training should begin before children can even comprehend what it is all about." Thus, children are indoctrinated through recitation and memorization of Bible verses and prayers, often reinforced with hell-fire and brimstone lectures. Their textbooks typically distort scientific and historic facts. New math is avoided altogether, since it leads to the development of critical thinking skills.
Abuse of Christian fundamentalist children is well documented. As early as 1974, sociologist H. Erlanger reported in American Sociological Review that conservative religious affiliation is one of the greatest predictors of child abuse, more so than age, gender, social class, or size of residence. Other studies, reported in The Role of Parental Religious Fundamentalism and Right-wing Authoritarianism in Child-Rearing Goals and Practices by social psychologist Henry Danso and others, conclude that child discipline by corporal punishment is typically related to religious conservatism, probably stemming from fundamentalists' authoritarian nature.
MILITANT MOVEMENTS
All fundamentalisms sport their share of militants. In the US, extreme militia and "patriot" groups (many Christian-based) see war on terrorism "as justification for their existence," argued Brad Knickerbocker in the Christian Science Monitor on June 18, 2002. He believes that a Timothy McVeigh type could be tempted to join forces with foreign terrorists, "perhaps to precipitate the kind of race war envisioned in The Turner Diaries."
Militias in the US are dangerously equipped with the skills and weaponry to manifest the kind of fear, chaos, and destruction often seen in theocratic societies. Because most Christian extremists use religion as a grant to carry out what they see as God's bidding, militia groups could easily influence and fuel the fundamentalist climate. Considering the fact that 79 of the world's 82 armed conflicts during the brief period between 1989 and 1992 were within-rather than between countries-this possibility shouldn't altogether be dismissed.
The one-in some cases only-difference between Christian and Islamic theocrats is their use of the Bible, versus the Koran, to justify an oppressive ideology or holy war With approximately 400 militia-type groups in the US, and Christian identity believers alone numbering in the range of 40,000, the implications are profound.
Other evidence of militant and violent tendencies among Christian fundamentalists appears is 99 Covert Ways to Stop Abortion. Published by the Army of God, it's a list of vicious and criminal recommendations for terrorizing abortion clinic doctors, employees, and women seeking abortion. More than 2500 acts of violence, including murders and attempted murders, bombings, arson, death threats, assault and batteries, anthrax threats, and acts of vandalism have been committed by US anti-abortionists, reports the National Abortion Federation.
While less massive than Osama bin Laden's catastrophic World Trade Center attack, Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols caused 168 deaths when they bombed the Alfred P. Murrah Building in Oklahoma City. Influenced by the Christian Identity movement, their intention was to retaliate against what they perceived as government attacks on a Ruby Ridge white supremacist family and the Branch Davidians in Waco.
Karen Armstrong, author of The Battle for God, writes, "Because they believe that they are fighting for survival, fundamentalists tend to militancy, ignoring the more compassionate elements of the faith in favor of more ferocious theologies. In all three religions, including American Protestantism, fundamentalism seems to be becoming more extreme."
Christian fundamentalists in the US haven't committed terrorist acts to the same degree as some other fundamentalist groups for two main reasons, claims Armstrong. First, they live in a more peaceful society. But they also believe that, with God on their side, US democracy will give way to a theocracy on its own.
FUNDAMENTALISM AND FASCISM
There are many similarities between fundamentalism and fascism, and the two phenomena often mesh. Given the attitude of the current US administration, this warrants some discussion. As a political philosophy, fascism is both authoritarian and antidemocratic. The state is placed above the individual, requiring absolute obedience to a glorified leader.
The Bush Administration has been particularly authoritarian in regard to the war in Iraq, demanding blind patriotism from constituents. And, as Fareed Zakaria reported in Newsweek on March 24, 2003, Bush is equally demanding and authoritarian in his relations with foreign nations. "President Bush's favorite verb is 'expect'," he writes. Zakaria also mentioned that Donald Rumsfeld's favorite quote is an Al Capone line: "You will get more with a kind word and a gun than with a kind word alone."
Christian fundamentalists have also glorified Bush, another requisite for a fascist leader. In March, pamphlets produced by In Touch Ministries were distributed to thousands of Marines, calling on them to pray for Bush. Usually, it's the other way around.
Not all fundamentalisms, nor all fundamentalists within a particular religion, are identical. Environmental factors such as culture and government influence fundamentalist fears, reactions, and power. Still, several characteristics generally seem to be present: an inability to cope with modernity or life struggles; an authoritarian personality style; a need to simplify, which is accomplished through black and white thinking; and ultimately, given the right set of circumstances, the potential for inconceivable violence against those they perceive as their enemies.

Kimberly Blaker is editor and co-author of The Fundamentals of Extremism: the Christian Right in America A syndicated writer and columnist, she is also a staunch supporter of the separation of church and state.


The Top Ten Power Brokers of the Religious Right
by Rob Boston (Church and State)
AlterNet, July 7, 2006 - www.alternet.org



The United States is home to dozens of Religious Right groups. Many have small budgets and focus on state and local issues; the most powerful organizations conduct nationwide operations, command multi-million-dollar bank accounts and attract millions of followers. They have disproportionate clout in the halls of Congress, the White House and the courts, and they wield enormous influence within the political system.
What follows is a list of the nation's Top Ten Religious Right groups, as determined by publicly available financial data and political prominence. Additional information describes the organizations' leaders, funding and activities.
1. Christian Broadcasting Network_Founder, CEO and Director: The Rev. Pat Robertson_2004 Revenue: $186,482,060_Location: Virginia Beach, Va._Web site: www.cbn.com
Overview: The Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN) airs Robertson's "700 Club," an incendiary daily mix of Pentecostal faith-healing, lifestyle advice and far-right politics. He calls church-state separation a "lie of the left" and thinks Christians like him should lead the world. With his withdrawal from the Christian Coalition in 2001, Robertson uses CBN as his primary political soapbox. The show, which according to Nielsen Media Research has 830,000 daily viewers, opens with a "newscast" that parrots Robertson's views, often followed by commentary from the televangelist himself. Top leaders of the conservative movement regularly pontificate on the program, and Republican members of Congress appear to tout legislative goals.
Robertson, 76, has a history of controversy. His 1991 book The New World Order was based on a host of anti-Semitic sources, although Robertson has always been pro-Israel for end-times theological reasons. The same book opines that former presidents Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush may have been unwitting dupes for Lucifer. On his TV show, Robertson once charged that Methodists, Presbyterians and Episcopalians represent "the spirit of the Antichrist." In a Sept. 13, 2001, diatribe, he asserted that the terrorist attacks on America happened because of the Supreme Court's rulings in favor of church-state separation. In the ensuing controversy, Robertson shifted the blame to Jerry Falwell, who had been on the show with him.
Over the years, the failed presidential candidate has often dallied with brutal dictators. He celebrated Guatemala's Pentecostal strongman Efrain Rios Montt, lauded Frederick Chiluba of Zambia as a model for American politicians, hunted for gold with Liberia's Charles Taylor and did business with Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire. (He was caught using relief airplanes owned by his charity, Operation Blessing, to ferry diamond-mining equipment in and out of Zaire.)
Despite all of this, Robertson retains a close relationship with the Republican Party establishment. Operation Blessing has received $1.5 million in taxpayer funding through the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives.
CBN is Robertson's flagship tax-exempt operation. He also founded and runs the American Center for Law and Justice, a Religious Right legal group; Operation Blessing and Regent University, a school offering degrees in law, business, journalism, theology and other disciplines. Added up, Robertson-related groups brought in $461,475,115 in tax-free donations in 2004.
Robertson Quote: "The fact that [the courts] are trying to ignore this country's religious heritage is just horrible. They are taking our religion away from us under the guise of separation of church and state. There was never any intention that our government would be separate from God Almighty. Never, never, never in the history of this land did the founders of this country or those who came after them think that was the case." ("700 Club," July 19, 2005)
2. Focus on the Family
Founder and chairman: Dr. James C. Dobson_2005 Revenue: $137,848,520_Location: Colorado Springs, Colo._Web site: www.family.org

Overview: Although sometimes mistakenly identified as a minister, James Dobson is a child psychologist who founded Focus on the Family in 1977. Dobson, 70, rose to national prominence after the release of his first book, Dare to Discipline, a controversial volume that lauded corporal punishment for children at a time when many child-rearing experts were recommending against it. He came to the attention of aides to President Ronald Reagan and during the 1980s served on various White House commissions, including a 1985-86 stint on Attorney General Edwin Meese's Commission on Pornography.
From modest origins, FOF has expanded into a huge ministry with a worldwide presence. Dobson's radio broadcasts are heard daily by an estimated five million Americans. According to its Web site, "Focus on the Family hasbecome an international organization with more than 74 different ministries requiring nearly 1,300 employees" with a "daily broadcast heard on over 6,000 facilities worldwide." FOF produces 10 magazines that are mailed to 2.3 million people and responds to as many as 55,000 letters per week. The ministry also produces various DVDs, books, pamphlets and other materials. It has political affiliates in 32 states that lobby and monitor state legislation.
A product of the strict Church of the Nazarene, Dobson is a hardcore fundamentalist who refers to church-state separation as the "phantom" clause in the Constitution. He frequently lambastes gays, legal abortion and the teaching of evolution in public schools. FOF sponsors controversial "Love Won Out" conferences run by an "ex-gay" ministry that seeks to convert homosexuals into fundamentalist Christian heterosexuals.
Although he poses as an avuncular family counselor, Dobson and his empire spread Religious Right propaganda and extreme rhetoric. In a 1996 radio address, he attacked the concept of tolerance, calling it "kind of a watchword of those who reject the concepts of right and wrong.It's kind of a desensitization to evil of all varieties." Two years before that, an FOF magazine attacked the Girl Scouts for being agents of "humanism and radical feminism."
More recently, Dobson lashed out at a pro-tolerance video produced for public schools that featured popular cartoon characters, among them SpongeBob SquarePants, because the group that produced it put a "tolerance pledge" on its Web site that included gays.
Dobson has promoted right-wing politics for a long time, but in 2004 he took the step of forming a more overtly political arm, Focus on the Family Action, and began personally endorsing candidates for public office. According to information on the FOF Action Web site, the group collected just under $25 million in 2005.
Figures such as these give Dobson major political clout. He regularly threatens Republicans with retaliation if they do not do his bidding and claims credit for knocking U.S. Sen. Tom Dashle (D-S.D.) out of the Senate in 2004. Dobson also issues regular threats to other Democratic senators representing "red states." In June of 2004, during a visit to Colorado Springs to speak at the U.S. Air Force Academy, President George W. Bush took time out for a private half-hour meeting with Dobson.
Dobson Quote: "Do we as Christians need to be liked so badly that we choose to remain silent in response to the killing of babies, the spreading of homosexual propaganda to our children, the distribution of condoms and immoral advice to our teenagers, and the undermining of marriage as an institution? Would Jesus have ignored these wicked activities?... No, I am convinced that he would be the first to condemn sin in high places, and I doubt if he would have minced words in making the point."(Christianity Today, June 19, 1995)
3. Coral Ridge Ministries_Founder and President: The Rev. D. James Kennedy_2005 Revenue: $39,253,882_Location: Fort Lauderdale, Fla._Web site: www.coralridge.org
Overview: D. James Kennedy, a former dance instructor who was converted to fundamentalist Christianity after hearing a sermon on the radio, founded Coral Ridge Ministries in 1974. Kennedy, pastor of Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church (PCA), is now seen on about 600 U.S. television stations on Sunday mornings. His "Coral Ridge Hour" mixes fundamentalism with strident attacks on public education, gays, evolution, legal abortion, "secular humanism" and other Religious Right targets.
Kennedy, 75, has a strong presence on radio as well through "Truths that Transform," a daily half-hour commentary heard on 744 stations. In addition, he has authored several books that promote far-right views.
Kennedy is a big promoter of the "Christian nation" view of American history. Every year, his Center for Reclaiming America for Christ, hosts a major Religious Right conference in Fort Lauderdale. The event attracts a mix of activists and politicians. In 2006, Arkansas Gov. (and 2008 presidential hopeful) Mike Huckabee spoke.
In 1995, Kennedy decided he wanted a presence in Washington and opened the Center for Christian Statesmanship. The Center hosts regular events for Capitol Hill staffers to instruct them in the proper "biblical worldview" and works closely with far-right GOP lawmakers.
Kennedy Quote: "This is our land. This is our world. This is our heritage, and with God's help, we shall reclaim this nation for Jesus Christ. And no power on earth can stop us." (Character & Destiny: A Nation in Search of its Soul, 1997)
4. Alliance Defense Fund_President, CEO and General Counsel: Alan Sears_2004 Revenue: $17,921,146_Location: Scottsdale, Ariz._Web site: www.alliancedefensefund.org
Overview: The Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) was founded in 1993 by a coalition of 30 Religious Right leaders, among them James Dobson, D. James Kennedy, Donald Wildmon and the late Marlin Maddoux and Bill Bright. The original idea was to create a funding pool that would subsidize the Religious Right's courtroom activity, and as its Web site proclaims, "reclaim the legal system for Jesus Christ." ADF head Alan Sears served under Reagan-era Attorney General Edwin Meese, leading the Meese Commission on Pornography.
While the ADF still supports lawsuits spearheaded by other groups, it has begun directly litigating in court as well. The org_anization also sends intimidating letters to government officials and public schools, containing thinly veiled threats to sue unless ADF demands are met. Last year, the group launched a campaign to derail the alleged "war on Christmas" and bragged that it had 800 attorneys standing by. (In the end, only one lawsuit was filed.)
Some ADF cases are filed merely to generate publicity. In 2005, the ADF sued a public school in California on behalf of a teacher who claimed he had been ordered to stop using the Declaration of Independence in class because of its reference to the "Creator." The ADF arranged for intense media coverage of the case but quietly dropped the suit once it became obvious the teacher's claims were not true.
Aside from threatening public schools, the ADF also diverts a lot of money into opposing same-sex marriage and what it calls the "radical homosexual agenda." It also opposes legal abortion and supports cases filed by employees seeking the right to proselytize on the job.
The ADF sponsors regular training for lawyers under its National Litigation Academy. In exchange for free instruction, "each attorney pledges 450 hours of pro-bono time to the Body of Christ," says the ADF Web site. More than 900 lawyers have reportedly participated. The group also sponsors Blackstone Legal Fellowships where law students "receive intensive training in Christian worldview principles and how they apply to the study and interpretation of law."
Sears holds extreme views. He was the first Religious Right figure to assert that the cartoon character SpongeBob Square_Pants might be gay and has criticized the 1959 comedy film "Some Like It Hot" for promoting cross-dressing.
Sears Quote: "One by one, more and more bricks that make up the artificial 'wall of separation' between church and state are being removed and Christians are once again being allowed to exercise their constitutional right to equal access to public facilities and funding." (January 2004 e-mail alert)
5. American Family Association_Founder and Chairman: The Rev. Donald Wildmon_2005 Revenue: $17,595,352_Location: Tupelo, Miss._Web site: www.afa.net

Overview: Donald Wildmon, a Methodist minister, founded the American Family Association in 1977. Its original name was the National Federation for Decency. His goal, Wildmon boldly stated, was to rid the television airwaves of "anti-family" programming, mainly through boycotts and threats of boycotts of companies that advertised on shows Wildmon dislikes.
The AFA has since branched out, engaging in typical Religious Right activities like attacking gays and bashing evolution. It now includes a lucrative radio empire with 176 affiliates in 34 states, a fundamentalist Christian news service and a legal group called the Center for Law and Policy. In 2000, Wildmon launched a nationwide campaign to urge states to pass laws mandating the display of "In God We Trust" posters in public schools.
Wildmon, 68, has flirted with anti-Semitism, suggesting that Jews control the entertainment industry. The AFA's Journal has also reprinted articles from The Spotlight, an anti-Semitic newspaper. In December, Wildmon said evangelicals may stop supporting Israel if Jewish leaders don't stop criticizing the Religious Right.
Wildmon Quote: "Anti-prayer/Anti-Christian groups - like the ACLU and Americans United for Separation of Church and State - have teamed up with liberal judges on the U.S. Supreme Court and are stripping away our religious freedom." (Fall 2000 fund-raising letter)
6. American Center for Law and Justice_Founder and President: The Rev. Pat Robertson_Chief Counsel: Jay Sekulow_2005 Revenue: $14,485,514_Location: Virginia Beach, Va., and Washington, D.C._Web site: www.aclj.org

Overview: The American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ) was founded by TV preacher Pat Robertson in 1990, originally as a joint project of Robertson's Christian Coalition and Regent University. Closely modeled on its nemesis, the American Civil Liberties Union - the organization whose name it mimics - the ACLJ was among the first Religious Right legal groups in the nation. Headed by Jay Sekulow, a Jewish convert to evangelical Christianity, the group seeks to roll back Supreme Court rulings upholding church-state separation, abortion rights and gay rights.
Although it claims to be non-partisan, the ACLJ works closely with far-right Republicans in Congress and even tried to intervene in Bush v. Gore, the Supreme Court case that awarded the 2000 election to George W. Bush. Sekulow has a close relationship with Bush, and several media accounts have reported that he is among a small group that helps select and promote Bush federal court nominees, including appointments to the Supreme Court.
Sekulow, 49, hosts a television show, "ACLJ This Week," that airs on several Christian cable networks. (His son Logan hosts a Christian variety program as well.)
In November, Legal Times reported on a series of shady financial deals involving Sekulow. His salary at the ACLJ, for example, exceeds $600,000 per year and he is listed as an independent contractor so the figure does not have to appear on financial disclosure forms. Sekulow maintains control of a separate legal group, Christian Advocates Serving Evangelism, with annual revenues of $14 million, that also solicits donations. He often hires family members to help run his various operations, and the groups he works for have leased or purchased three homes for him.
Sekulow Quote: "The fact is the phrase 'separation of church and state' is not found in the U.S. Constitution, the framework of our freedom. Too often, the 'separation of church and state' phrase is allowed to take the place of our actual constitutional provisions." (Ministry Magazine, Fall 2004)
7. Family Research Council_Founder: James C. Dobson_President and CEO: Tony Perkins_2005 Revenue: $9,958,115_Location: Washington, D.C._Web site: www.frc.org

Overview: The Family Research Council (FRC) was founded by religious broadcaster James C. Dobson in 1983 to give his views a presence in the nation's capital. For many years, the group was merely an arm of Focus on the Family. In 1992, Dobson severed the official ties, although he says they remain "spiritually one."
Gary Bauer, a former Reagan administration official, ran FRC for several years. The group's current president is Tony Perkins, a 43-year-old former Louisiana state legislator and anti-abortion activist. The FRC focuses on culture war issues such as abortion, gay rights and end-of-life care. Recently, it has led the Religious Right effort to attack the federal courts and strip judges of their ability to hear church-state cases, sponsoring a series of anti-court rallies called "Justice Sunday."
Headquartered in a 10-year-old building on the edge of D.C.'s Chinatown, FRC has become the leading Religious Right group in the nation's capital and enjoys a close relationship with the GOP leadership. In March of 2005, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist and then-House Majority Leader Tom DeLay spoke at an FRC briefing. DeLay made controversial remarks about Terri Schiavo, a Florida woman in a persistent vegetative state. (Americans United released a tape of the remarks to the media.)
Perkins Quote: "The [Supreme] Court has become increasingly hostile to Christianity. It represents more of a threat to representative government than any other force - more than budget deficits, more than terrorism." ("Confronting the Judicial War on Faith" conference, March 7, 2005)
8. Jerry Falwell Ministries_Founder and Director: The Rev. Jerry Falwell_2005 Revenue: $8,950,480
Location: Lynchburg, Va.
Web site: www.falwell.com

Overview: Jerry Falwell is perhaps the best-known Religious Right leader in America today, if only due to his long service to the cause. His Moral Majority is long gone, but Falwell remains on the scene and continues to attack church-state separation through several vehicles.
Falwell's empire includes his congregation, the 20,000-member Thomas Road Baptist Church in Lynchburg; Liberty University; "The Old Time Gospel Hour" television program; the Liberty Alliance and a legal group headed by Mat Staver called Liberty Counsel. Although no longer in his prime, Falwell continues to be a frequent guest on the Fox News Channel and regularly cranks out fund-raising mail touching on all the standard Religious Right themes.
Falwell, 72, has a long track record of intolerant and bizarre pronouncements. His newspaper labeled the children's show character Tinky Winky a stalking horse for the gay-rights movement in 1999. He has asserted that the Antichrist is alive today and is Jewish. Two days after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Falwell appeared on Pat Robertson's "700 Club" and opined that God had lifted his protection and allowed "the enemies of America to give us probably what we deserve." The comments sparked nationwide revulsion.
Despite all of this, Falwell continues to be embraced by leaders of the Republican Party and makes regular media appearances.
Falwell Quote: "Separation of Church and State has long been the battle cry of civil libertarians wishing to purge our glorious Christian heritage from our nation's history. Of course, the term never once appears in our Constitution and is a modern fabrication of discrimination." ("Falwell Fax," April 10, 1998)
9. Concerned Women for America_Founders: Tim and Beverly LaHaye_2005 Revenue: $8,484,108_Location: Washington, D.C._Web site: www.cwfa.org

Overview: Formed in 1979 by Beverly and Tim LaHaye, Concerned Women for America brings "biblical principles into all levels of public policy." It was originally intended to counter feminism, including opposing ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment. When that issue died with the failure of the amendment, CWA focused on opposing communism. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the group has dealt mainly with culture war issues such as abortion, gay rights, sex education and alleged "secular humanism" in public schools, pornography and opposition to church-state separation. The group adds a heavy dose of United Nations-bashing to the list. It claims 500,000 members, although the figure is probably exaggerated.
CWA regularly brings volunteer lobbyists to Capitol Hill under an effort called "Project 535." As the group Web site puts it, "These ladies fearlessly speak with the member or his staff to discuss a particular piece of pro-family legislation."
Despite its name, men hold some leadership positions at CWA. Mike Mears is executive director of CWA's political action committee. Bob Knight heads the group's Culture & Family Institute. Wendy Wright, 43, serves as president. Now in semi-retirement, the LaHayes, now both 80, are less heavily involved with day-to-day operations.
Tim LaHaye has a long history of involvement in far-right politics. He lectured on behalf of the John Birch Society throughout the 1960s and '70s and later helped found the Council for National Policy. More recently, he is known to most Americans as the coauthor of the best-selling Left Behind novels. These apocalyptic potboilers have made LaHaye a very wealthy man.
Tim LaHaye Quote: "America's public education is purposely designed to eradicate Jesus from the scene and replace Him with the likes of John Dewey, Sigmund Freud, Wilhelm Wundt, Friedrich Nietzsche, Karl Marx, Charles Darwin, and many more." (Mind Siege: The Battle for Truth in the New Millen_nium, 2001)
10. Traditional Values Coalition_Founder and Chairman: The Rev. Louis P. Sheldon_2005 Revenue: $6,389,448_Location: Anaheim, Calif. and Washington, D.C._Web site: www.traditionalvalues.org
Overview: The Rev. Louis P. Sheldon founded the Tradi_tional Values Coalition (TVC) in 1980 primarily to work on issues in California. The group later branched out, establishing a Washington beachhead. The D.C. office is run by Sheldon's daughter, Andrea Lafferty. The organization is a 501©(4) group, which means donations to it are not tax deductible. However, it maintains a fully tax deductible arm called the TVC Education and Legal Institute. (Sheldon also runs a small political action committee that in 2006 gave all of its money to Republican candidates in California.)
Sheldon, 72, claims to represent 43,000 churches, but critics dispute that figure. In the world of the Religious Right, the Presbyterian minister has a reputation as something of a money-grub

Reckoning with the God Squad
Fundamentalist bullies cannot be appeased. They must be confronted.
by Bill Moyers
In These Times magazine, October 2005

At the Central Baptist Church in Marshall, Texas, where I was baptized in the faith, we believed in a free church in a free state. I still do.
My spiritual forbears did not take kindly to living under theocrats who embraced religious liberty for themselves but denied it to others. "Forced worship stinks in God's nostrils," thundered the dissenter Roger Williams as he was banished from Massachusetts for denying Puritan authority over his conscience. Baptists there were a "pitiful negligible minority" but they were agitators for freedom and therefore denounced as "incendiaries of the commonwealth" for holding to their belief in that great democracy of faith-the priesthood of all believers.
Such revolutionary ideas made the new nation with its Constitution and Bill of Rights "a haven for, the cause of conscience:' No longer would "the loathsome combination of church and state"-as Thomas Jefferson described it-be the settled order. The First Amendment neither inculcates religion nor inoculates against it. Americans could be loyal to the Constitution without being hostile to God, or they could pay no heed to God without fear of being mugged by an official God Squad. It has been a remarkable arrangement that guaranteed "soul freedom:'
It is at risk now, and the fourth observance of the terrorist attacks of 9/11 is an appropriate time to think about it.
Four years ago, the poet's prophetic metaphor became real again and "the great dark birds of history" plunged into our lives.
They came in the name of God. They came bent on murder and martyrdom.
Yes, the Koran speaks of mercy and compassion and calls for ethical living. But such passages are no match for the ferocity of instruction found there for waging war for God's sake: "Those who believe fight in the cause of Allah, and those who reject faith fight in the cause of Evil:'
So the holy warriors came-an airborne death cult, their sights on God's enemies: regular folks, starting the day's routine one minute and in the next, engulfed by a horrendous cataclysm.
But it is never only the number of dead by which terrorists measure their work. It is also the number of the living-the survivors-taken hostage to fear. The writer Terry Tempest Williams has said "the human heart is the first home of democracy:' Fill that heart with fear and people will give up the risks of democracy for the assurances of security. Fill that heart with fear and you can shake the house to its foundations.
Having lost faith in all else, zealots have nothing left but a holy cause to please a warrior God. They win if we become holy warriors, too; if we kill the innocent as they do; strike first at those who had not struck us; allow our leaders to use the fear of terrorism to make us afraid of the truth; cease to think and reason together, allowing others to tell what's in God's mind. Yes, we are vulnerable to terrorists, but only a shaken faith in ourselves can do us in.
Muslims have no monopoly on holy violence. As Jack Nelson- Pallmeyer, an assistant professor of Justice and Peace Studies at University of St. Thomas, points out, God's violence in the sacred texts of both faiths reflects a deep and troubling pathology "so pervasive, vindictive and destructive" that it contradicts and subverts the collective weight of other passages that exhort ethical behavior or testify to a loving God.
We know we can go through the Bible and construct a God more pleasing to the better angels of our nature. We also know that the "violence-of-God" tradition remains embedded deep in the DNA of monotheistic faith. Inside that logic you cannot read part of the Bible allegorically and the rest of it literally. If you believe in the virgin birth of Jesus, his crucifixion and resurrection, and the depiction of the Great Judgment at the end times you must also believe that God is sadistic, brutal, vengeful, callow, cruel and savage - that God slaughters.
Let's go back to 9/11 four years ago. The ruins were still smoldering when the reverends Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell went on television to proclaim that the terrorist attacks were God's punishment of a corrupted America. They said the government had adopted the agenda "of the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians," not to mention the ACLU and People For the American Way. (The God of the Bible apparently holds liberals in the same low esteem as Hittites and Gergushites and Jebusites and all the other pagans of holy writ.) Critics said such comments were deranged. But millions of Christian fundamentalists and conservatives didn't think so. They thought Robertson and Faiwell were being perfectly consistent with the logic of the Bible as they read it: God withdraws favor from sinful nations-the terrorists were meant to be God's wake-up call: better get right with God. Not many people at the time seemed to notice that Osama bin Laden had also been reading his sacred book closely and literally, and had called on Muslims to resist what he described as a "fierce Judeo-Christian campaign" against Islam, praying to Allah for guidance "to exalt the people who obey Him and humiliate those who disobey Him:'
Suddenly we were immersed in the pathology of a "holy war" as defined by fundamentalists on both sides. You could see this pathology play out in General William Boykin. As a member of the US military, Boykin had taken up with a small group called the Faith Force Multiplier whose members apply military principles to evangelism with a manifesto summoning warriors "to the spiritual warfare for souls:' In uniform, Boykin attended evangelical revivals preaching that America was in a holy war as "a Christian nation" battling Satan and that America's Muslim adversaries will be defeated "only if we come against them in the name of Jesus." For such an hour, America surely needed a godly leader. So General Boykin explained how it was that the candidate who had lost the election in 2000 nonetheless wound up in the White House. President Bush, he said, "was not elected by a majority of the voters -he was appointed by God:' Not surprising, instead of being reprimanded for evangelizing' while in uniform, General Boykin is now the Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence. (Just as it isn't surprising that despite his public call for the assassination of a foreign head of state, Pat Robertson's Operation Blessing was one of the first groups to receive taxpayer funds from the President's Faith-Based Initiative for "relief work" on the Gulf Coast.)
We can't wiggle out of this. Were talking about a powerful religious constituency that claims the right to tell us what's on God's mind and to decide the laws of the land according to their interpretation of biblical revelation and to enforce those laws on the nation as a whole. For the Bible is not just the foundational text of their faith; it has become the foundational text for a political movement.
The radical religious right has succeeded in taking over one of America's great political parties-the country is not yet a theocracy but the Republican Party is - and they are driving American politics, using God as a battering ram on almost every issue: crime and punishment, foreign policy, health care, taxation, energy, regulation, social services and so on.
They have brought intensity, organization and anger to the public square. They use the language of faith to demonize political opponents, mislead and misinform voters, censor writers and artists, ostracize dissenters, and marginalize the poor. These are the foot soldiers in a political holy war financed by wealthy economic interests and guided by savvy partisan operatives who know that couching political ambition in religious rhetoric can ignite the passion of followers.
In recent weeks a movement called the Ohio Restoration Project has been launched to identify and train thousands of "Patriot Pastors" to get out the conservative religious vote next year. According to press reports, the leader of the movement-the senior pastor of a large church in suburban Columbus-casts the 2006 elections as an apocalyptic clash between "the forces of righteousness and the hordes of hell:' The fear and loathing in his message is palpable: He denounces public schools that won't teach creationism, allow teachers to read the Bible in class or allow children to pray. He rails against the "secular jihadists" who have "hijacked" America and prevent school kids from learning that Hitler was "an avid evolutionist" He blasts the "pagan left" for trying to redefine marriage. He declares that "homosexual rights" will bring "a flood of demonic oppression' On his church Web site you read, "Reclaiming the teaching of our Christian heritage among America's youth is paramount to a sense of national destiny that God has invested into this nation'
The corporate, political and religious right have converged, led by a president who, in his own disdain for science, reason and knowledge, is the most powerful fundamentalist in American history. And radicals on the Christian right are now the dominant force in America's governing party. They control much of the U.S. government and are on the verge of having it all. Without them the government would not be in the hands of people who don't believe in government. They are culpable in upholding a system of class and race in which, as we saw last week, the rich escape and the poor are left behind. And they are on a crusade against government 'f, by, and for the people" in favor of one based on biblical authority. So the Grand Old Party -the GOP-has become God's Own Party its ranks made up of God's Own People "marching as to wan"
It has to be said that their success has come in no small part because of our acquiescence and timidity. Our democratic values are imperiled because too many people of reason are willing to appease irrational people just because they are pious. Republican moderates tried appeasement and survive today only in gulags set aside for them by the Karl Roves, Bill Frists and Tom DeLays. Democrats are divided and paralyzed, afraid that if they take on the organized radical right they will lose what little power they have.
As I look back on the conflicts and clamor of our boisterous past, one lesson about democracy stands above all others: Bullies-political bullies, economic bullies and religious bullies-cannot be appeased; they have to be opposed with a stubbornness to match their own. This is never easy-these guys don't fight fair. "Robert's Rules of Order" is not one of their holy texts. But freedom on any front and especially freedom of conscience-never comes to those who rock and wait, hoping someone else will do the heavy lifting.
Christian realism requires us to see the world as it is, without illusions, and then take it on. Christian realism also requires love. But not a sentimental, dreamy love. Reinhold Niebuhr, who taught at Union Theological Seminary and wrestled constantly with applying Christian ethics to political life, put it this way: "When we talk about love we have to become mature or we will become sentimental. Basically love means ... being responsible, responsibility to our family, toward our civilization, and now by the pressures of history, toward the universe of humankind:'
Christian realists aren't afraid to love. But just as the Irishman who came upon a brawl in the street and asked, "Is this a private fight or can anyone join in?:' we have to take that love where the action is. Or the world will remain a theater of war between fundamentalists.

BILL MOYERS is a broadcast journalist and former host of the PBS program "NOW With Bill Moyers." He also serves as president of the Schumann Center for Media and Democracy. This article was adapted from a recent address at Union Theological Seminary in New York, where Judith and Bill Moyers received the seminary's highest award, the Union Medal, for their contributions to faith and reason in America.


The Rapture Racket
by Bill Berkowitz
Z magazine, February 2005


The rapture is a racket," writes Barbara R. Rossing in the first sentence of her recently published book The Rapture Exposed: The Message of Hope in the Book of Revelation (Westview Press, 2004). Rossing, a New Testament scholar and an associate professor at the Lutheran School of Theology in Chicago, maintains that the Rapture is a fraud of monumental proportions, as well as a disturbing way to instill fear in people.
"Whether prescribing a violent script for Israel or survivalism in the United States, this theology distorts God's vision for the world," Rossing writes. "In place of healing, the Rapture proclaims escape. In place of Jesus's blessing of peacemaking, the Rapture voyeuristically glorifies violence and war .... This theology is not biblical. We are not Raptured off the earth, nor is God.
What if the "Book of Revelations" doesn't spell doom and gloom? What if it doesn't mandate the death, destruction, and annihilation of all but true believers? What will Rapture-mongers do?
Reverend Tim LaHaye and his co-author Jerry Jenkins are as responsible as anyone for taking the Rapture mainstream. Their Left Behind series of apocalyptic novels has sold nearly 60 million copies and for several years has been a regular staple of fiction bestseller lists across the country. The final book in the 12-volume series, Glorious Appearing, was released last spring and quickly found its way onto the bestseller lists.
LaHaye-a longtime religious right political leader, who cofounded the Moral Majority in 1979-does the novels' imagining, while Jenkins, the author of more than 100 books, including Out of the Blue with former Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Orel Hershiser and Just As I Am, Rev. Billy Graham's memoir, does the writing.
The phrase left behind derives from "the Christian fundamentalist belief in the Rapture [also known as the End of Days] that is, at the sound of a trumpet, Jesus will soon appear in the clouds to take believers up to meet him, thus escaping the horrible calamities foretold in the Book of Revelations," writes Guy Manchester in Freedom Writer. Manchester, the author of Acts of the Apostles, a novel about theocracy in the U.S., maintains that Rapturists believe that those who aren't lifted up will be left behind to suffer the consequences of "the Great Tribulation," a seven-year period, the last three and a half years of which will contain great suffering and devastation. Jews, among others, will be left behind to suffer, but before it's over "144,000 of them will accept Jesus as their savior. The rest will perish."
For millions of true believers the Rapture is a glorious prospect. Some fundamentalist Christians see the war in Iraq and the Israeli/Palestinian conflict as a foreshadowing of the coming of the Rapture and as a way to speed up the end of times. The Rapture scenario is what many believe drives evangelical Christians to demonstrate their unwavering support for Israel. Rossing writes, "... the new movement of 'Christian Zionism' is a militant all-or-nothing kind of Zionism that scripts Israel as a player in the dispensationalist Christian endtimes drama in a way that baffles even Israelis."
"They [the Left Behind books] are instilling this terrible fear in children that people are going to be left behind. It is not biblical. There is no Rapture in the Bible," Rossing told Rutherford Institute's John Whitehead.
"9/11 was a wake up call to America," LaHaye told Morley Safer in his "60 Minutes II" interview. "Suddenly, our false sense of security was shaken. Now we realize we're vulnerable. And that fear can lead many people to Christ."
"I see many signs of the Lord's return. This could be the generation that's going to hear Jesus shout from the heaven and we'll respond to be with him. And you don't want your loved ones to be left behind," he pointed out.
In her interview with Whitehead, Rossing turns the tables on the Rapture faithful who see death, annihilation, and years of terror: "I was on '60 Minutes' 1111] with Tim LaHaye. He said that liberals have created this loving, wimpy Jesus and that we need the judgmental, warrior Jesus. The big question now is what is the true image of Jesus? A loving Jesus is not wimpy. A loving Jesus is precisely who Jesus is and that is how he is portrayed in the Gospels."
Rather than scare the living daylights out of folks, the "Book of Revelation" actually aims "to comfort and inspire Christians to a vision of hope," Rossing stated. "In the early Roman Empire, when it looked like violence was getting out of hand-much like things today-it was a message to people that the empire would not last much longer and that the emperor was not the one in charge of the world. Jesus is in our midst, but He is not the avenging warrior Jesus. Jesus is the lamb who is leading us to a different way of life-one espousing love."
The Left Behind series has helped launch an extraordinarily profitable cottage industry where there's no shortage of new products and spin-offs: Left Behind II: Tribulation Force-the second Left Behind movie starring Kirk Cameron -is now available on DVD; the Left Behind Prophecy Club is a fee-based website and newsletter designed "to help people understand how current events may actually relate to end times prophecy";
"In a world where madmen rule, the voice of God will not be silenced," reads the promotional blurb for Jerry Jenkins's latest novel titled Silenced (book two in the SOON trilogy).
For those looking for Rapture scorecards, webmaster Todd Strandberg has created the Rapture Index, which he playfully calls a "Dow Jones Industrial Average of End Time activity." The Rapture Index tracks a number of indicators aimed at gauging how bad things are on earth. Included in the mixed bag of categories are:
* False Christs
* Satanism
* The Mark of the Beast
* The Anti-Christ
* Stats on unemployment, inflation, interest rates, and oil prices
* Drug use, liberalism, and civil rights
Two weeks after 9/11, "the index hit an all-time high of 182... as the bandwidth nearly melted under the weight of 8 million visitors," Time magazine reported. As of late December, the Index stood at 153, down four points from the year's high. The Index's record low number was 93 and was registered December 12, 1993, the end of Bill Clinton's first year as president.
Comparing the theme of the Left Behind series to ethnic cleansing, New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof recently wrote: "If a Muslim were to write an Islamic version of Glorious Appearing and publish it in Saudi Arabia, jubilantly describing a massacre of millions of non-Muslims by God, we would have a fit." Kristoff added, "It's disconcerting to find ethnic cleansing celebrated as the height of piety."

Bill Berkowitz is a freelance writer coveting conservative movements.

The faith of our founding fathers definitely wasn't christianity.
by Brooke Allen
The Nation magazine, February 21, 2005


It is hard to believe that George Bush has ever read the works of George Orwell, but he seems, somehow, to have grasped a few Orwellian precepts. The lesson the President has learned the best-and certainly the one that has been the most useful to him-is the axiom that if you repeat a lie often enough, people will believe it. One of his Administration's current favorites is the whopper about America having been founded on Christian principles. Our nation was founded not on Christian principles but on Enlightenment ones. God only entered the picture as a very minor player, and Jesus Christ was conspicuously absent.
Our Constitution makes no mention whatever of God. The omission was too obvious to have been anything but deliberate, in spite of Alexander Hamilton's flippant responses when asked about it: According to one account, he said that the new nation was not in need of "foreign aid"; according to another, he simply said "we forgot." But as Hamilton's biographer Ron Chernow points out, Hamilton never forgot anything important.
In the eighty-five essays that make up The Federalist, God is mentioned only twice (both times by Madison, who uses the word, as Gore Vidal has remarked, in the "only Heaven knows" sense). In the Declaration of Independence, He gets two brief nods: a reference to "the Laws of Nature and Nature's God," and the famous line about men being "endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights." More blatant official references to a deity date from long after the founding period: "In God We Trust" did not appear on our coinage until the Civil War, and "under God" was introduced into the Pledge of Allegiance during the McCarthy hysteria in 1954 [see Elisabeth Sifton, "The Battle Over the Pledge," April 5, 2004]. In 1797 our government concluded a "Treaty of Peace and Friendship between the United States of America and the Bey and Subjects of Tripoli, or Barbary" now known simply as the Treaty of Tripoli. Article 11 of the treaty contains these words:
As the Government of the United States... is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion-as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquility of Musselmen-and as the said States never have entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mehomitan nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.
This document was endorsed by Secretary of State Timothy Pickering and President John Adams. It was then sent to the Senate for ratification; the vote was unanimous. It is worth pointing out that although this was the 339th time a recorded vote had been required by the Senate, it was only the third unanimous vote in the Senate's history. There is no record of debate or dissent. The text of the treaty was printed in full in the Philadelphia Gazette and in two New York papers, but there were no screams of outrage, as one might expect today.
The Founding Fathers were not religious men, and they fought hard to erect, in Thomas Jefferson's words, "a wall of separation between church and state." John Adams opined that if they were not restrained by legal measures, Puritans-the fundamentalists of their day-would "whip and crop, and pillory and roast." The historical epoch had afforded these men ample opportunity to observe the corruption to which established priesthoods were liable, as well as "the impious presumption of legislators and rulers," as Jefferson wrote, "civil as well as ecclesiastical, who, being themselves but fallible and uninspired men, have assumed dominion over the faith of others, setting up their own opinions and modes of thinking as the only true and infallible, and as such endeavoring to impose them on others, hath established and maintained false religions over the greatest part of the world and through all time."
If we define a Christian as a person who believes in the divinity of Jesus Christ, then it is safe to say that some of the key Founding Fathers were not Christians at all. Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and Tom Paine were deists-that is, they believed in one Supreme Being but rejected revelation and all the supernatural elements of the Christian Church; the word of the Creator, they believed, could best be read in Nature. John Adams was a professed liberal Unitarian, but he, too, in his private correspondence seems more deist than Christian.
George Washington and James Madison also leaned toward deism, although neither took much interest in religious matters. Madison believed that "religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise." He spoke of the "almost fifteen centuries" during which Christianity had been on trial: "What have been its fruits? More or less in all places, pride and indolence in the Clergy, ignorance and servility in the laity, in both, superstition, bigotry, and persecution." If Washington mentioned the Almighty in a public address, as he occasionally did, he was careful to refer to Him not as "God" but with some nondenominational moniker like "Great Author" or "Almighty Being." It is interesting to note that the Father of our Country spoke no words of a religious nature on his deathbed, although fully aware that he was dying, and did not ask for a man of God to be present; his last act was to take his own pulse, the consummate gesture of a creature of the age of scientific rationalism.
Tom Paine, a polemicist rather than a politician, could afford to be perfectly honest about his religious beliefs, which were baldly deist in the tradition of Voltaire: "I believe in one God, and no more; and I hope for happiness beyond this life .... I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church." This is how he opened The Age of Reason, his virulent attack on Christianity. In it he railed against the "obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and torturous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness" of the Old Testament, "a history of wickedness, that has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind." The New Testament is less brutalizing but more absurd, the story of Christ's divine genesis a "fable, which for absurdity and extravagance is not exceeded by any thing that is to be found in the mythology of the ancients." He held the idea of the Resurrection in especial ridicule: Indeed, "the wretched contrivance with which this latter part is told, exceeds every thing that went before it." Paine was careful to contrast the tortuous twists of theology with the pure clarity of deism. "The true deist has but one Deity; and his religion consists in contemplating the power, wisdom, and benignity of the Deity in his works, and in endeavoring to imitate him in every thing moral, scientifical, and mechanical."
Paine's rhetoric was so fervent that he was inevitably branded an atheist. Men like Franklin, Adams and Jefferson could not risk being tarred with that brush, and in fact Jefferson got into a good deal of trouble for continuing his friendship with Paine and entertaining him at Monticello. These statesmen had to be far more circumspect than the turbulent Paine, yet if we examine their beliefs it is all but impossible to see just how theirs differed from his.
Franklin was the oldest of the Founding Fathers. He was also the most worldly and sophisticated, and was well aware of the Machiavellian principle that if one aspires to influence the masses, one must at least profess religious sentiments. By his own definition he was a deist, although one French acquaintance claimed that "our free-thinkers have adroitly sounded him on his religion, and they maintain that they have discovered he is one of their own, that is that he has none at all." If he did have a religion, it was strictly utilitarian: As his biographer Gordon Wood has said, "He praised religion for whatever moral effects it had, but for little else." Divine revelation, Franklin freely admitted, had "no weight with me' and the covenant of grace seemed "unintelligible" and "not beneficial." As for the pious hypocrites who have ever controlled nations, "A man compounded of law and gospel is able to cheat a whole country with his religion and then destroy them under color of law"-a comment we should carefully consider at this turning point in the history of our Republic.
Here is Franklin's considered summary of his own beliefs, in response to a query by Ezra Stiles, the president of Yale. He wrote it just six weeks before his death at the age of 84.
"Here is my creed. I believe in one God, Creator of the universe. That he governs it by his providence. That he ought to be worshipped. That the most acceptable service we render to him is doing good to his other children. That the soul of Man is immortal, and will be treated with justice in another life respecting its conduct in this. These I take to be the fundamental points in all sound religion, and I regard them as you do in whatever sect I meet with them."
As for Jesus of Nazareth, my opinion of whom you particularly desire, I think his system of morals and his religion, as he left them to us, the best the world ever saw or is likely to see; but I apprehend it has received various corrupting changes, and I have, with most of the present dissenters in England, some doubts as to his divinity; though it is a question I do not dogmatize upon, having never studied it, and think it needless to busy myself with now, when! expect soon an opportunity of knowing the truth with less trouble. I see no harm, however, in its being believed, if that belief has the good consequence, as it probably has, of making his doctrines more respected and better observed, especially as I do not perceive that the Supreme takes it amiss, by distinguishing the unbelievers in his government of the world with any particular marks of his displeasure.
Jefferson thoroughly agreed with Franklin on the corruptions the teachings of Jesus had undergone. "The metaphysical abstractions of Athanasius, and the maniacal ravings of Calvin, tinctured plentifully with the foggy dreams of Plato, have so loaded [Christianity] with absurdities and incomprehensibilities" that it was almost impossible to recapture "its native simplicity and purity." Like Paine, Jefferson felt that the miracles claimed by the New Testament put an intolerable strain on credulity. "The day will come' he predicted (wrongly, so far), "when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter." The Revelation of St. John he dismissed as "the ravings of a maniac."
Jefferson edited his own version of the New Testament, "The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth," in which he carefully deleted all the miraculous passages from the works of the Evangelists. He intended it, he said, as "a document in proof that I am a real Christian, that is to say, a disciple of the doctrines of Jesus." This was clearly a defense against his many enemies, who hoped to blacken his reputation by comparing him with the vile atheist Paine. His biographer Joseph Ellis is undoubtedly correct, though, in seeing disingenuousness here: "If [Jefferson] had been completely scrupulous, he would have described himself as a deist who admired the ethical teachings of Jesus as a man rather than as the son of God. (In modem-day parlance, he was a secular humanist.)" In short, not a Christian at all.
The three accomplishments Jefferson was proudest of-those that he requested be put on his tombstone-were the founding of the University of Virginia and the authorship of the Declaration of Independence and the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom. The latter was a truly radical document that would eventually influence the separation of church and state in the US Constitution; when it was passed by the Virginia legislature in 1786, Jefferson rejoiced that there was finally "freedom for the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and the Mohammeden, the Hindu and infidel of every denomination"-note his respect, still unusual today, for the sensibilities of the "infidel." The University of Virginia was notable among early-American seats of higher education in that it had no religious affiliation whatever. Jefferson even banned the teaching of theology at the school.
If we were to speak of Jefferson in modem political categories, we would have to admit that he was a pure libertarian, in religious as in other matters. His real commitment (or lack thereof) to the teachings of Jesus Christ is plain from a famous throwaway comment he made: "It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg." This raised plenty of hackles when it got about, and Jefferson had to go to some pains to restore his reputation as a good Christian. But one can only conclude, with Ellis, that he was no Christian at all.
John Adams, though no more religious than Jefferson, had inherited the fatalistic mindset of the Puritan culture in which he had grown up. He personally endorsed the Enlightenment commitment to Reason but did not share Jefferson's optimism about its future, writing to him, "I wish that Superstition in Religion exciting Superstition in Polliticks... may never blow up all your benevolent and phylanthropic Lucubrations," but that "the History of all Ages is against you." As an old man he observed, "Twenty times in the course of my late reading have I been upon the point of breaking out, 'This would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in it!" Speaking ex Cathedra, as a relic of the founding generation, he expressed his admiration for the Roman system whereby every man could worship whom, what and how he pleased. When his young listeners objected that this was paganism, Adams replied that it was indeed, and laughed.
In their fascinating and eloquent valetudinarian correspondence, Adams and Jefferson had a great deal to say about religion. Pressed by Jefferson to define his personal creed, Adams replied that it was "contained in four short words, 'Be just and good." Jefferson replied, "The result of our fifty or sixty years of religious reading, in the four words, 'Be just and good,' is that in which all our inquiries must end; as the riddles of all priesthoods end in four more, 'ubi panis, ibi deus.' What all agree in, is probably right. What no two agree in, most probably wrong."
This was a clear reference to Voltaire's Reflections on Religion.
As Voltaire put it:
"There are no sects in geometry. One does not speak of a Euclidean, an Archimedean. When the truth is evident, it is impossible for parties and factions to arise .... Well, to what dogma do all minds agree? To the worship of a God, and to honesty. All the philosophers of the world who have had a religion have said in all ages: "There is a God, and one must be just." There, then, is the universal religion established in all ages and throughout mankind. The point in which they all agree is therefore true, and the systems through which they differ are therefore false."
Of course all these men knew, as all modem presidential candidates know, that to admit to theological skepticism is political suicide. During Jefferson's presidency a friend observed him on his way to church, carrying a large prayer book. "You going to church, Mr. J," remarked the friend. "You do not believe a word in it." Jefferson didn't exactly deny the charge. "Sir," he replied, "no nation has ever yet existed or been governed without religion. Nor can be. The Christian religion is the best religion that has been given to man and I as chief Magistrate of this nation am bound to give it the sanction of my example. Good morning Sir." Like Jefferson, every recent President has understood the necessity of at least paying lip service to the piety of most
American voters. All of our leaders, Democrat and Republican, have attended church, and have made very sure they are seen to do so. But there is a difference between offering this gesture of respect for majority beliefs and manipulating and pandering to the bigotry, prejudice and millennial fantasies of Christian extremists. Though for public consumption the Founding Fathers identified themselves as Christians, they were, at least by today's standards, remarkably honest about their misgivings when it came to theological doctrine, and religion in general came very low on the list of their concerns and priorities-always excepting, that is, their determination to keep the new nation free from bondage to its rule.

Brooke Allen is the author of two collections of essays, Twentieth Century Attitudes and Artistic License: Three Centuries of Good Writing and Bad Behavior (Ivan R. Dee).

Theocracy is derived from the two Greek words Qeo/j(Theos) meaning "God" and kra/tein (cratein) meaning "to rule." The Reverend Rod Parsley, a champion of theocracy, or what he calls a "christocracy," told his congregation at the World Harvest Church, located just outside Columbus, Ohio, "Theocracy means God is in control, and you are not." more

The theocratic right seeks to establish dominion, or control over society in the name of God. D. James Kennedy, Pastor of Coral Ridge Ministries, calls on his followers to exercise "godly dominion ... over every aspect ... of human society." At a "Reclaiming America for Christ" conference in February, 2005, Kennedy said:

Our job is to reclaim America for Christ, whatever the cost. As the vice regents of God, we are to exercise godly dominion and influence over our neighborhoods, our schools, our government, our literature and arts, our sports arenas, our entertainment media, our news media, our scientific endeavors -- in short, over every aspect and institution of human society.

Twenty-five years ago dominionists targeted the Republican Party as the vehicle through which they could advance their agenda. At the same time, a small group of Republican strategists targeted fundamentalist, Pentecostal and charismatic churches to expand the base of the Republican Party. This web site is not about traditional Republicans or conservative Christians. It is about the manipulation of people of a certain faith for political power. It is about the rise of dominionists in the U.S. federal government.

Today's hard right seeks total dominion. It's packing the courts and rigging the rules. The target is not the Democrats but democracy itself. more

According to acclaimed journalist and television host Bill Moyers,

True, people of faith have always tried to bring their interpretation of the Bible to bear on American laws and morals ... it's the American way, encouraged and protected by the First Amendment. But what is unique today is that the radical religious right has succeeded in taking over one of America's great political parties. The country is not yet a theocracy but the Republican Party is, and they are driving American politics, using God as a a battering ram on almost every issue: crime and punishment, foreign policy, health care, taxation, energy, regulation, social services and so on. more

Dominionist Influence in The U.S. Congress

One way to measure the political strength of dominionists is to study voting patterns of members of Congress. A recent amendment added to a bill in the U.S. House of Representatives, HR 2123, allows religious discrimination in Head Start hiring which is a serious blow to both religious liberty and civil rights. more The graph on the right shows how Representatives voted.

210 Republicans and 10 Democrats voted for the amendment. 9 Republicans, 186 Democrats and 1 independent voted against the amendment. This graph illustrates that dominionists reside overwhelmingly in one political party. Since the Republican Party has majorities in both houses of Congress, they set the agendas, chair the committees, and decide which bills will and won't come up for a vote.

Congressional scorecards from organizations such as the Christian Coalition, Family Research Council, and Eagle Forum also illustrate the strength of dominionists in Congress. Click here to view Senate Congressional scorecards from those three organizations as compared to the League of Conservation Voters, a consortium of environmental groups. You'll see an almost perfect inverse correlation -- the higher the scores from dominionist groups, the lower the scores on the environment. (The tables in the above link were provided by Glenn Scherer, October, 2004 - note: four Democratic Senators were campaigning for the Presidential Primary in 2004 and missed many votes which lowered their environmental scores substantially.)

Christian Coalition Rates the U.S. Congress, 2004 The Christian Coalition was founded in 1989 by television preacher Pat Robertson to take over the Repuliban Party from the bottom up. It has been remarkably successful at getting candidates elected. While the organization is now considered a sinking ship -- they have been surpassed by Focus on the Family and The Family Research Council -- their Congressional scorecards are still useful. Their ratings cover a broader range of issues than the other groups, showing the breadth of their agenda. To read Christian Coalition scorecards for the 108th Congress, and the issues on which they were based, click here.

In 2004, forty-eight out of fifty-one Republican Senators voted with the Christian Coalition 100% of the time. One Democrat also received a 100% scorecard -- Zell Miller who has since retired.

The graph to the right shows how often members of the U.S. Senate voted with or against Christian Coalition supported bills in the 108th Congress. Republicans are red, Democrats are blue. Forty-one out of fifty-one Republican Senators received scores of 100% from Christian Coalition, meaning they voted with Christian Coalition 100% of the time. Thirty-one out of forty-eight Democrats and one independent received scores of 0.

Only three Senate Republicans are in the 60% column. They are Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island, and Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins from Maine.

There is a vast chasm between public opinions and voting patterns of dominionist legislators. Consider the Terri Schiavo case. According to a CBS poll, a whopping 82 percent of the public believed "the Congress and President should stay out of the matter." And, according to a Barna Group study, only five percent of the population holds a biblical worldview.


Dominionism In Action
Ohio

"Ohio will be a training ground that will launch a national reformation." more
The Ohio Restoration Project was founded:

to identify and train thousands of "Patriot Pastors" to get out the conservative religious vote next year. According to press reports, the leader of the movement -- the senior pastor of a large church in suburban Columbus -- casts the 2006 elections as an apocalyptic clash between "the forces of righteousness and the hordes of hell." more

One of the stated goals of the Ohio Restoration Project is to get Ohio's Secretary of State, Kenneth Blackwell, elected Governor in 2006. Blackwell has authored a plan for "Civic Renewal" that is featured on Ohio's official government web site. Katherine Yurica's stunning article calls this new document:

... a Dominionist document: a religious treatise in secular terms, but dominionist to the core. It's a brilliant little package to get millions of evangelical Christians and their friends to accept authoritarian government without even a whisper of protest. more

A New Manifesto and An Old Platform

"We will not try to reform the existing institutions. We only intend to weaken them, and eventually destroy them," claims a manifesto from Paul Weyrich's Free Congress Foundation. Called The Integration of Theory and Practice: A Program for the New Traditionalist Movement and written by Eric Heubeck in 2001, this manifesto illuminates the tactics of the dominionist movement.

The recommendations found in the Texas Republican Party Platform offer a legislative blueprint for dominionism. Stated in the Preamble, "The Republican Party of Texas affirms the United States of America is a Christian Nation ..." more

From Conception to Death

Dominionism is about the loss of choices. Battles are underway to take away our choices from how we conceive children to how we die. more

Justice Sundays

For those not aware, Justice Sunday is now a permanent piece of the religious right's arsenal in their war on the separation of church and state . Combining their access to elite politicians and their vast media network, Justice Sundays bring together a sampling of the religious right and congressional leaders like Sen. Bill Frist and Tom Delay, and call for Christian Americans to both pray and act to support judicial causes: the first regarded the nuclear option and the second called for support of conservative nominees to the court.

The event is then broadcast out over the many Christian TV and radio stations, reaching as many as "79 million homes." more

To read more on Justice Sundays I and II, click here.

How did this happen?

Voter apathy is key to the phenomenal ascent of the theocratic right in the U.S. government.

With the apathy that exists today, a small, well-organized minority can influence the selection of candidates to an astonishing degree. (Pat Robertson, The Millennium, 1990)
Robertson tells us who makes up that "well-organized minority." It includes only Christians who share his point of view. As he said on his television program, the 700 Club:

"You say you're supposed to be nice to the Episcopalians and the Presbyterians and the Methodists, and this and that and the other thing. Nonsense! I don't have to be nice to the spirit of the Antichrist." (Rob Boston, Pat Robertson, the Most Dangerous Man in America?, Prometheus Books, 1996, p. 149.)

"The apathy of other Americans can become a blessing and advantage to Christians," wrote Mark Beliles and Stephen McDowell in 1989 in America's Providential History, a popular textbook for Christian schools and the Christian homeschool movement.

If just 10% of all Christians in America today woke up and realized how easy it is, got involved consistently for the long haul, it would not take long to reform America completely. (p.266)

For the authors, the term "Christian" refers uniquely to people who share their biblical worldview. The word "reform" is key. It means reforming the United States so that it becomes a "Christian" nation.

Where do we go from here?
The answer to the power of the Christian Right is electoral power of our own. No excuses. Many of us have tended to abandon this cornerstone of citizenship in favor of other things. It is time to get our priorities strait. Less talk, more action. Less entertainment, more citizen involvement. Less TV and sports. More electoral politics. Do we want the theocrats to win? More electoral politics.

If we believe that democracy is a good thing, we need to learn to get very good at it. We need to be better at it than those who would destroy it. (How to Beat the Christian Right, by Frederick Clarkson, March 20, 2005)

While a record number of people voted in the 2004 elections, 100 million eligible voters didn't vote. Dominionists began to seriously mobilize politically in the United States twenty-five years ago, and it is being noticed only now! We need to educate the American public about this ideology.

The theocratic right has historically targeted midterm elections because voter turnout is much lower than in Presidential elections. Those who favor Democracy and a pluralistic society need to be passionate about politics. Legislators representing the theocratic right can be replaced in the 2006 elections, but it will take hard, sustained work, and lots of passion.

And traditional Republicans need to wake up. George Bush was re-elected because he hid behind moderates. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Governor of California, spoke at the Republican Convention about how the Republican Party is tolerant and inclusive. His speech demonstrates that this country values tolerance and diversity.

But the theocratic right is not a movement of tolerance. In the words of the Christian Coalition field director, Bill Thomson, the "leftist" foes should be destroyed:

You're going to run over them. Get around them, run over the top of them, destroy them - whatever you need to do so that God's word is the word that is being practiced in Congress, town halls and state legislatures. That's your job.

Christine Todd Whitman, former Governor of New Jersey who favors environmental protections, stepped down as director of the Environmental Protection Agency, an agency that has become, under the Bush administration, an advocate for polluters. Strangely, after she left the EPA in frustration, she then went on to lead the Bush re-election campaign in New Jersey. As long as the theocratic right can hide behind moderates, it will be easier for them to remain in power.

And we need to stop using terms such as "Christian," "conservative" and most of all "moral," and start calling the dominionist movement what it is. Chip Berlet and Margaret Quigley, senior analysts at Political Research Associates, suggest the term "theocratic right:"

The predominantly Christian leadership envisions a religiously-based authoritarian society; therefore we prefer to describe this movement as the "theocratic right."

Christian Zionism

In this section:
Introduction
Christian Zionism
Jewish Zionism
Israel
Likud and Falwell
An Expanded Israel
The Settlements
Subsidizing The Settlements
Populating The Settlements
Influencing Washington
The Tragedy of the Settlements
Postmillennialism and Premillenniallism

Updates

Introduction
Ariel is a Jewish settlement in the West Bank of Palestine, and Faith Bible Chapel is one of hundreds of Christian Zionist Churches funding settlements like Ariel. From The Christian Science Monitor, April 25, 1998:

Five years ago, Ariel was a town in the doldrums. Laying the groundwork for making peace with the Palestinians, then-Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin had frozen building plans and cut off preferential funding to Jewish settlements like this one, on land Israel occupied in 1967.
Depression set in here as the settlers came to be seen as peace's spoilers and began to fear for their settlement's future.

Then came faith. Faith Bible Chapel, that is, an Aurora, Colo., evangelical church whose members made it their mission to "adopt" Ariel.

Would Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip be able to survive without massive support from Christian Zionists in the United States? This is the question this web page is exploring.

Christian Zionism
Christian Zionism is based on God's covenant with Abraham from Genesis of the Old Testament of the Bible. To read about the early Christian Zionists, click here.

Jewish Zionism
Jewish Zionism was not based on Scripture. The early Jewish Zionists were reacting to the fierce anti-semitism that was rampant throughout Europe. By the late nineteen thirties, when millions of Jews were desperately trying to get out of Europe, no country would take in large numbers of Jewish refugees. Only one country offered -- the Dominican Republic, but it, too, fell far short of its promise. To read more about early Jewish Zionism, click here.

Israel
Establishment of the State of Israel was seen by Christian Zionists as fulfillment of God's Covenant with Abraham. In contrast, it was seen by most Jewish Zionists as a place where Jews would be safe. To read about the establishment of Israel, click here.

The early secular government of Israel agreed, for practical reasons, to leave the ancient Jewish lands of Samaria and Judea out of its borders. To read more about Israel's pre-1967 borders, click here.

After the War of 1967, which Israel won in just six days, Israel occupied the ancient Jewish lands of Samaria and Judea in the West Bank along with the Gaza Strip and the Sinai Desert to the South, the Golan Heights in the North. and all of the city of Jerusalem. That war was seen by Christian Zionists and some ultra-orthodox Jews as a sign that God was further fulfilling His promise to Abraham. To read more about the War of 1967, click here.

To read a chronology of settlement growth, click here.

Likud And Falwell
Government support of settlement building accelerated dramatically in 1977 when Menachem Begin became Prime Minister. Begin's ultranationalist notions had made him a figure on the fringe for the first three decades of Israel's existence, but his Likud Party had finally come to power.

Ironically, Begin won a Nobel Peace Prize in 1978, along with President Anwar Sadat of Egypt, for signing the Camp David Accords. Thanks to skillfully managed negotiations on the part of U.S. President Jimmy Carter, Begin agreed to return the Sinai desert to Egypt, but refused to discuss the Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza. And this is where our story begins - the same year that the Camp David Accords were signed.

That year, 1978, Begin invited The Reverend Jerry Falwell for his first official visit to Israel, and the following year, 1979, his government gave Falwell a gift -- a Lear Jet.

Begin's timing was perfect. He began working seriously with Christian Zionists at the precise moment that Christian fundamentalists in America were discovering their political voice.

The same year that Falwell received his Lear Jet, 1979, he formed the Moral Majority, an organization that changed the political landscape in the United States. What was Falwell's interest in Israel? He was a Dispensationalist. Dispensationalism is a system of theology that believes the Jews must return to Israel as part of God's plan for Christ to return. To read more about the history of Dispensationalism, click here.

An Expanded Israel
In order to fulfill Biblical prophecy, Dispensationalists have been working hard to ensure that the world's Jews return to Israel and occupy all of Palestine. To facilitate that process, Dispensationalists have been leading groups of pilgrims to Israel since Falwell's first visit in order to win financial and political support for the Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

The late Grace Halsell, author of Prophecy and Politics, participated in two Falwell-led pilgrimages to Israel in 1983 and 1985, and quotes a fellow Christian pilgrim on the tour:

"The Jews must own all of the land promised by God before Christ can return. The Arabs have to leave this land because this land belongs only to the Jews. God gave all of this land to the Jews." (p.87)

The late Ed MacAteer, considered to be the godfather of the Religious Right, talked about his expansionist dreams for Israel in an interview on CBS' 60 Minutes: Zion's Christian Soldiers.

"I believe that we are seeing prophecy unfold so rapidly and dramatically and wonderfully and, without exaggerating, makes me breathless. Every grain of sand between the Dead Sea, the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea belongs to the Jew." When asked if that includes the West Bank and Gaza, his answer was "Every bit of it."

Rapture Awaits in the Florida Panhandle, Toronto Star, February 12, 2005

Read about a Christian Coalition gathering in 2002 to witness the passion Christian Zionists, and some U.S. Republican legislators, feel about Israel.

Did Tim LaHaye Just Call Israelis "Not-To-Be-Trusted Yids?," Talk To Action, December

Jews and the Christian right: Is the honeymoon over? Michelle Goldberg, Salon

The Christian Right, Dominionism, and Theocracy - Part Five, Talk To Action, December 26, 2005

The day after Christmas, Tim LaHaye's "Left Behind Prophecy Club" sent out its daily e-mail message with a 2005 "Year in Review" summary The teaser stated: "Are we living in the End Times? Could events of today signify that the Rapture and Tribulation could occur during our generation? Five important Signs from 2005 say yes!" read on

The Settlements
Journalist Jeffrey Goldberg, writing for the New Yorker magazine, estimates there are roughly 150 settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, with a total population estimated at 243,000. [This article was written well before Israel's withdrawal from Gaza] Goldberg writes:

Perhaps three-quarters of the Jews in the West Bank and Gaza could be considered economic settlers ... The remainder of the settlers, fifty thousand or so, came to the territories for reasons of faith.

Goldberg's article, The Zealots, is based on interviews with settlers of faith. While Christian Zionists have formed strong working relationships with settlers of faith, this web site is concerned primarily with economic settlers, many of whom live in the settlements due to financial support from the Christian Zionists. A survey taken by the Israeli organization Peace Now in July, 2003

indicates that more than 70 percent of settlers, a significant increase from previous polls, would agree to eventually leave the West Bank and Gaza if they were compensated, while 29 percent are ready to leave right away. (From New York Times, August 2, 2003)

Peace Now monitors settlement activity and provides detailed maps of the settlements and outposts.
Subsidizing Settlements
It's not known how much money for settlements comes from the Israeli government, supported by U.S. dollars, and how much comes from Christian Zionists. The financial support of Christian Zionists, however, appears to be substantial enabling settlers to buy attractive homes at a very reasonable price. Lawrence Shafer, a businessman, moved to the settlement of Ariel for economic reasons. He told television producer Bob Abeshouse on Bill Moyer's Now,

There's a lot of people in the outside world think that we all live here because we're all very right wing fanatics. No, we're people who do not have enough money to afford to buy a flat. But we want to leave something to our children. We've always wanted to buy our own house. And to buy a house inside inland Israel costs three times what it costs in Ariel.

Donald Wagner is Professor of Religion and Middle Eastern Studies at North Park University in Chicago and executive director of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies. He wrote a series of commentaries on the phenomenon of Christian Zionism for the Lebanon Daily Star. This comes from Part 4:

The International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, led by a former Anti-Defamation League employee and Orthodox rabbi, Yechiel Eckstein, claimed to have raised over $5 million, mostly from fundamentalist Christian sources.

Christian Friends of Israeli Communities, based in Colorado, is one of the many organizations that runs an Adopt-a-Settlement Program. From their web site:

The focus of Christian Friends of Israeli Communities (CFOIC) is to link settlements in Israel with Christian churches and individuals throughout the world. These communities are located in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza.

$25 / month
Partner of CFOIC-Israel $50 / month
Friend of Biblical Israel $100 / month
Patron of Biblical Israel $500 / month
Pillar of Biblical Israel $1,000 / month
Guardian of Biblical Israel

The above opportunity to invest comes from Project Focus of Christian Friends of Israeli Communities.

Sondra Oster Baras is the director of the Israel office of Christian Friends of Israeli Communities. She told the San Francisco Chronicle that she estimated "one-third of the 145 Israeli settlements receive funds from Christians."

The Jerusalem Prayer Team prays

.. for peace in Jerusalem because the Scriptures tell us to in Psalm 122:6. Also, the Great Commission proclaims that we would be a witness unto Him in Jerusalem, Judea, and Samaria.

From the Middle East Information Center, the goal of the Jerusalem Prayer Team

.. is to raise enough to give a gift of $55 apiece to 14,000 settlers.

Eventually we hope [to raise money for all] 200,000. But the best we can do now is 14,000....

From Bridges for Peace:
Many Christians have felt this desire to reach out and help in the prophetic restoration of Israel, in a tangible way, by blessing individuals (new immigrants and veteran Israeli alike) with material gifts. Bridges for Peace has done just that.

From Prophecy and Politics, 1986, about the American Christian Trust headed by Mrs. Bobi Hormas:

"The trust enjoys 501©(3) status and receives funds from private individuals, estates and large evangelical-fundamentalist organizations. The Trust in turn gives this money to Israel, expressly for Jewish settlements in the West Bank. Mrs Hormas told me the Trust planned to raise a hundred million dollars to purchase land for Jewish settlements in the West Bank, the present target area being in the Palestinian town of Hebron... This I was told would help fulfill biblical prophesy. (p,170-171)

Populating the Settlements: Funding Jewish Immigration to Israel
In addition to buying land and subsidizing settlements, Christian Zionists have played a major role in supporting Jewish immigration from the former Soviet Republics to populate the settlements. From Donald Wagner:

John Hagee, pastor of the Cornerstone Church in San Antonio, Texas, announced in February 1997 that his church was donating over $1 million to Israel. Hagee claimed the funds would be used to help resettle Jews from the Soviet Union in the West Bank and Jerusalem. "We feel like the coming of Soviet Jews to Israel is a fulfillment of Biblical prophecy," Hagee stated.

The Gratefully Grafted Ministries is one of the international organizations that supports immigration to Jerusalem and West Bank settlements through their Israel Fund:

All funds are used toward serving the Body of Messiah in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, the Galilee and beyond ..

Their ministry sponsors the Ebenezer Emergency Fund and Operation Exodus:

From 1991 through the Fall of 2004, Ebenezer has brought more than 100,000 olim back to Israel.

If their numbers are accurate, and if most of their "olim" end up in the settlements, they could have brought into the West Bank and Gaza Strip as much as 41% of the settlers. (Author's note - Gratefully Grafted Ministries' website changes from time to time, so the quotes on this page my no longer exist in their site.)

Christians for Israel

is helping the Jews home to Israel from the former Soviet Union. This is an international project known as Operation Aliyah. It is more than just a humanitarian project - it is a divine calling for the Church to assist the Jewish people in their physical return and restoration of the land of Israel.

Why does Operation Aliyah exist?

In the fulfillment of Biblical Prophecy. The Jewish people were scattered throughout the nations according to God's word, because of their disobedience. God beckons to the gentiles to assist in the return of the Jewish people to Israel. Jeremiah prophesied that the return will be of greater magnitude than the exodus from Egypt and will involve all the tribes of Israel. This time they will remain in their land. I will plant them upon their land, and they shall no more be pulled up out of their land which I have given them, saith the Lord thy God. Amos 9:15

Influencing Washington
Akiva Eldar, journalist for the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz, claims that Christian Zionists are pouring money into Israel. "But that's not the only way they are supporting Israeli settlement of the West Bank."

The most important thing is that they have so much influence in Washington, that they are so influential in the White House and in Congress. (Bill Moyer's NOW, June 6, 2003.)

Jerry Falwell told 60 Minutes:

There are 70 million of us. And if there's one thing that brings us together quickly it's whenever we begin to detect our government becoming a little anti-Israel.

Pastor John Hagee's Cornerstone Church raised $1 million dollars in 1977. When asked if he realized that support of Likud's policies and the increase in Jewish settlements was at cross-purposes with US policy, Hagee answered:

I am a Bible scholar and a theologian, and from my perspective the law of God transcends the laws of the United States government and the US State Department.

The Village Voice, May 18, 2004, documented that National Security Council Near East and North African Affairs director for President George W. Bush, Elliott Abrams, actually met with the Apostolic Congress, a dispensationalist organization, to discuss their theological concerns. Three weeks after that meeting President Bush reversed long-standing U.S. policy, endorsing Israeli sovereignty over parts of the West Bank in exchange for Israel's disengagement from the Gaza Strip.

From Stephen Zunes, Foreign Policy In Focus, June, 2004:

It appears, then, that right-wing Christian Zionists are, at this point, more significant in the formulation of U.S. policy toward Israel than are Jewish Zionists, as illustrated by three recent incidents.

After the Bush administration's initial condemnation of the attempted assassination of militant Palestinian Islamist Abdel Aziz Rantisi in June 2003, the Christian Right mobilized its constituents to send thousands of e-mails to the White House protesting the criticism. A key element in these e-mails was the threat that if such pressure continued to be placed upon Israel, the Christian Right would stay home on Election Day. Within 24 hours, there was a notable change in tone by the president. Indeed, when Rantisi fell victim to a successful Israeli assassination in April 2004, the administration-as it did with the assassination of Hamas leader Sheik Ahmed Yassin the previous month-largely defended the Israeli action.
When the Bush administration insisted that Israel stop its April 2002 military offensive in the West Bank, the White House received over 100,000 e-mails from Christian conservatives in protest of its criticism. Almost immediately, President Bush came to Israel's defense. Over the objections of the State Department, the Republican-led Congress adopted resolutions supporting Israel's actions and blaming the violence exclusively on the Palestinians.
When President Bush announced his support for the Road Map for Middle East peace, the White House received more than 50,000 postcards over the next two weeks from Christian conservatives opposing any plan that called for the establishment of a Palestinian state. The administration quickly backpedaled, and the once-highly touted Road Map essentially died.
The Tragedy of the Settlements
Soon after the war of 1967, Israel's founding Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion, by that time retired, spoke to the Knesset, Israel's Parliament. His prophetic words were recorded by Jewish scholar Arthur Hertzberg in The Tragedy of Victory. Ben Gurion said:

All of the territories that had been captured had to be given back, very quickly, for holding on to them would distort, and might ultimately destroy, the Jewish state.

A delegation of United States church leaders visited Turkey, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Israel, and Palestine in 2002. They declared:

We emphasize the urgency of the crisis in the region and our sense that the Middle East and, indeed, the entire world, stands on the brink of a catastrophe if a comprehensive peace is not achieved soon.

For Jews and Arabs living in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, life has become cycles of violence, fear and hatred. Much of the world has come to see Israel as an occupier nation, a perception that has isolated Israel in the United Nations and led to anti-semitism around the world.

Amidst all the tensions created by the settlements, Jerry Falwell told 60 Minutes, "The Bible Belt in America is Israel 's only safety belt right now." Falwell and the movement he helped create have played a major role in supporting the construction and maintenance of the settlements. They helped bring tens of thousands of Eastern European Jews to Israel to increase the population of the settlements. They have made it politically risky for any American president to promote a peace plan.

Because of their passion to see Israel permanently expand its borders, Christian Zionists have added fuel to the flames of anti-semitism worldwide. Their work has also served to isolate Israel, particularly in the United Nations. And then Falwell has the chutzpah to say, "The Bible Belt in America is Israel 's only safety belt right now."

Esther Kaplan writes in The Nation, July 12, 2004, The Jewish Divide on Israel, that "American Jews are at least evenly split on how to secure Israel."

Postmillennialism and Premillennialism
Postmillennialists are not Christian Zionists. They are adherents of Christian Reconstructionism or Dominion Theology. They represent the most extreme constituency of the Religious Right. They are the activists who claim the United States is a "Christian nation," calling for the United States to return to Old Testament Biblical law.

They don't believe in the rapture theory, or that we are living in the End Times before Christ returns. Leading Reconstructionist author, the late David Chilton, explains that the last days ended with the destruction of the temple in 70 A.D:

the expression "the last days" and similar terms, are used in the Bible to refer, not to the end of the physical world, but to the last days of the nation of Israel, the "last days" which ended with the destruction of the temple in 70 A.D. (Paradise, p12)

Gary North, a prolific Christian Reconstruction writer points out in The Unannounced Reason Behind American Fundamentalism's Support for the State of Israel:

In order for most of today's Christians to escape physical death, two-thirds of the Jews in Israel must perish, soon. This is the grim prophetic trade-off that fundamentalists rarely discuss publicly, but which is the central motivation in the movement's support for Israel. It should be clear why they believe that Israel must be defended at all costs by the West.

Postmillennialists believe that Christians must take domionion, or control over most of the secular institutions in the world in order for Christ to return. Therefore, they encourage Christians who share their biblical worldview to become politically active.

From George Grant, a leading postmillennial writer in The Changing of the Guard , Biblical Principles for Political Action:

Christians have an obligation, a mandate, a commission, a holy responsibility to reclaim the land for Jesus Christ -- to have dominion in civil structures, just as in every other aspect of life and godliness.

But it is dominion we are after. Not just a voice.

It is dominion we are after. Not just influence.

It is dominion we are after. Not just equal time.

It is dominion we are after.

World conquest. That's what Christ has commissioned us to accomplish. We must win the world with the power of the Gospel. And we must never settle for anything less... Thus, Christian politics has as its primary intent the conquest of the land -- of men, families, institutions, bureaucracies, courts, and governments for the Kingdom of Christ. (pp. 50-51)

Christian Zionists Are Premillenniallists

Of the many theories about when Christ will return, the most popular is called premillennial dispensationalism. It is depicted in the best-selling Left Behind novels by the Reverend Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins.

Premillennialists believe that since God has a plan, the future is already set in motion. It might seem logical that if events taking place on earth are part of God's pre-ordained plan, then political activism is unnecessary. But the Reverend Tim LaHaye explains why Christians who share his Biblical worldview should be politically active.

LaHaye named humanism as the great evil threatening to destroy America and coined the term "pre-tribulation tribulation" to characterize what will come about if humanists are allowed to take control of the government.

In 1980 LaHaye published The Battle for the Mind where he asked, "Is a Humanist Tribulation Necessary?" LaHaye answered that the Great Tribulation,

is predestined and will surely come to pass. But the pre-Tribulation tribulation -- that is the tribulation that will engulf this country if liberal humanists are permitted to take control of our government -- is neither predestined nor necessary.

But it will deluge the entire land in the next few years, unless Christians are willing to become much more assertive in defense of morality and decency than they have been during the past three decades." (Battle for the Mind, 1980, pp. 217-218)

Susan Friend Harding, a Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Santa Cruz, has published widely on fundamentalist Christianity. She wrote Chapter 3, Imagining the Last Days, the Politics of Apocalyptic Language in the fourth Volume of the Fundamentalism Project. The Fundamentalism Project was sponsored by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences to study the rise of fundamentalism worldwide. The volumes are published by the University of Chicago Press. Harding writes:

LaHaye urged Christians to pray and witness as usual and also to help the victims of humanism ... to join the national drive to register Christian voters ... to run for public office ... (pp. 69)

[Falwell] argued that unless born-again Christians acted politically ... they would lose their ... [ability] to fulfill Biblical prophecy. (p. 70)

In other words, political involvement is required to get raptured. While pre and post millennialism differs on the subject of Israel, adherents share similar political goals for the United States government: dominion by those Christians who share their Biblical worldview. People of both belief systems support political candidates who support their narrow theocratic agenda, and they oppose the secular government, or godless Constitution that our founders gave us.

What does George W. Bush believe? It's not clear. Unlike former President Ronald Reagan, who talked openly about his fascination with Armageddon, President Bush has not mentioned the Rapture or Armageddon. His road map for peace calls for a Palestinian state -- something opposed by Christian Zionists. His domestic policies, however, are consistent with Dominion Theology. (See video by Joan Bokaer about dominionism available to download for free on this web site.)

Articles
CBS 60 Minutes, Christian's Zion Soldiers, October 6, 2003

Washington Post, The Evangelical-Israeli Connection, March 24, 2004

On The Road to Armageddon, Beliefnet, 2004

From Bill Moyer's Now
Christian Zionists in the Holy Land
Troubled Lands1
Troubled Lands2

The Jewish Divide on Israel, The Nation, July 12, 2004

The New Yorker, Among the Settlers , May 31, 2004

Frontline, Israel's Next War? April 5, 2005

Destined To Clash: Zionism and the Settlements, The Forward, March 4, 2005

Evangelical Children's Novels Push Conversion of 'Spiritually Empty' Jews, The Forward, March 18, 2005

Israel, on Its Own, Is Shaping the Borders of the West Bank, New York Times, April 19, 2005

Part IV: Pie in the Sky, Truthout, April 26, 2004

Threat to Divest Is Church Tool in Israeli Fight, The New York Times, August 6, 2005

Evangelicals Get a Piece of the Promised Land, IPS News, October 3, 2005

Discontent among Christian Zionists, Talk To Action, December 9, 2005




...all above from www.theocracywatch.org

Neo-fascism in America
by Jim Macgregor
Information Clearinghouse


Some time ago, The Herald newspaper, Glasgow, Scotland, published a letter in which I criticised the war in Iraq and suggested that the neo-cons in the US were a ruling neo-fascist elite. A trail of letters followed with one correspondent stating that I was making a serious error labeling them neo-fascist. He called them "tragically over-zealous apostles of liberal democracy." Following the lively Herald debate, I was invited by The Surface to contribute this article.
Jim Macgregor
My interest in America began on the day after my 16th birthday; November 22, 1963, when President John F. Kennedy was driven along Deeley Plaza to his death. Within days I watched Lee Harvey Oswald being led out to his execution before the assembled media, and I was completely hooked on American politics. Four decades, thousands of books, and a million conspiracy theories later, we still don't know the truth about those astonishing events in Dallas. Like the all-too-many assassinations played out in front of the rolling cameras, American politics can be difficult to comprehend.
My own comprehension of American politics was helped enormously by a profound little essay, Escaping the Matrix, written by American, Richard K. Moore. [1] Moore, parallels the political situation in America with the Wachowski brothers' film, The Matrix: "The defining dramatic moment in the film occurs just after Morpheus invites Neo to choose between a red pill and a blue pill. The red pill promises 'the truth and nothing more.' Neo takes the red pill and awakes to reality - something utterly different from anything Neo, or the audience, could have expected. What Neo had assumed to be reality turned out to be only a collective illusion, fabricated by the Matrix and fed to a population that is asleep, cocooned in grotesque embryonic pods. In the Matrix world, true reality and perceived reality exist on entirely different planes."
In Moore's Matrix metaphor, doses of 'red pill' allow us to comprehend the true reality of what is happening as opposed to an illusion deliberately created by the wealthy, ruling elite. As Morph tells Neo, "The Matrix is the world that was pulled down over your eyes to hide you from the truth As long as the Matrix exists, humanity cannot be free." Television and radio stations, news channels and most newspapers are owned by the ruling, wealthy elite who control the matrix. They dispense "blue pills" in the form of matrix propaganda, deliberately formulated to conceal the truth. While there are honourable journalistic exceptions, generally we have to look elsewhere for the 'red pill'. Thankfully, it is becoming more readily available and less difficult to find. In this article I will quote from, and refer to, numerous 'red pill' articles and books.
It has personally taken many years of slow awakening from the matrix narcolepsy for me to find an inverted reality where what I thought was the truth was a dream, and what I have awakened to is the reality of a true nightmare. Too many people believe fascism is only about goose-stepping, jack-booted Nazis. Too many people believe that American democracy is so strong that fascists could never take control of America. If you are sympathetic to those views, I invite you to consider the possibility that you are mistaken - invite you to sample a small dose of 'red pill'.
My first dose of 'red pill' came in the early 1970s when I returned from voluntary service in Central Africa. I had worked alongside American Peace Corps volunteers and would sit with them under the beautiful African night sky, discussing that devastated continent and the reasons for the starvation and death that surrounded us there. On my returned from Malawi, I discovered that a number of those supposedly dedicated Peace Corp volunteers were US intelligence agency personnel. What they were doing in Africa was not, in actual reality, delivering American aid or goodwill, but fermenting huge trouble with their clandestine activities. I later read the 'red pill' book, Killing Hope, [2] about US Military and CIA Interventions since WWII and realised it was describing American activities which exhibited the very worst elements of fascism.
Perhaps the only one way to understand fascism in America today is to trace its historical development there over the last century. "History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived. But if we rise up to meet it head-on, then history need not be re-lived. When we as a people fail, or worse yet, refuse to stand up to the injustice of historical past, then that injustice becomes an ever-present constant in our daily lives." - Cia Bannar, film maker and human rights activist.
According to the matrix, powerful men of wealth who controlled America in colonial days, were replaced after the revolution by genuinely democratic representatives of the people. Every American school-child is taught that the fifty five "Founding Fathers" prepared a solid foundation of democracy upon which the Great Republic was built, and that Abraham Lincoln's stirring Gettysburg address on "government of the people, by the people, for the people" meant what it said.
'Red pill' reality is very different, however as Richard K. Moore writes [3]: "The legislatures, unfortunately, mostly appointed their delegates [Founding Fathers] from among their local wealthy elite. The delegates then ensconced themselves in secret session and proceeded to betray the charter under which they had been assembled. They discarded the Articles, and began debating and drafting a wholly new document, one that transferred sovereignty to a relatively strong central government. The delegates reneged on the States that had sent them, and took it upon themselves to speak directly for "We the People". Thus begins the preamble to their Constitution. In effect they accomplished a coup d'etat. They managed to design a system that would enable existing elites to continue to run the affairs of the new nation, as they had before under the Crown, under a Constitution that for all the world seems to embody sound democratic principles. The system was consciously designed to facilitate elite rule and that is how it has functioned ever since."
It was not until 1850 that most white adult males could vote; a time when the ideal of the "poor boy made good" was coming to be seen as the American dream. One such dreamer was John D. Rockefeller, born in the US in 1839, the son of a quack conman who sold expensive "miracle cures" (Seneca oil) to people with cancer. Rockefeller inherited his father's business ethics and became a war profiteer during the Civil War. While hundreds of thousands were dying for their cause, he amassed wealth by selling liquor at vast profit to Federal troops. With the proceeds Rockefeller bought into small oil concerns and by 1870, had enough money to set up the Standard Oil Company.
Over the next thirty years, Rockefeller also bought up railroads and banks and acquired a near monopoly of the US petroleum industry. By the turn of the century, he was counted among the richest men in the world. He financed numerous fine churches and institutions, including the University of Chicago. Matrix perception was of an extremely generous, Christian benefactor and philanthropist, but actual 'red pill' reality was very different. Journalist Ida Tarbell wrote that Rockefeller was involved in many illegal activities and in her book, The History of The Standard Oil Company, published in 1904, [4] exposed how big corporations were controlling the press and government. "Its power [Standard Oil] in state and federal government, in the press, in the college, in the pulpit, is generally recognized."
In the early 20th century, President George W. Bush's great grandfather, Samuel Bush, owned a steel factory producing rail-car parts. His son, Prescot Bush, attended the prestigious Yale University where in his final year in 1917, he was inducted into the secret society known as "The Order of Skull and Bones". To this day a mere fifteen young men of "good birth" are pre-selected each year to Skull and Bones from the entire 11, 250 student population of Yale. Rockefellers were also members of Skull and Bones.
Skull and Bones has its roots in the teachings of German philosopher, George Hegel. The Nazis loved Hegel's philosophy and Hitler used it, along with Nietzsche and others, to begin creating his "New World Order." In the US in the 1920s, Hegelian philosophy was supported by John D. Rockefeller, who funded the notorious Eugenics Records Office, with its idea of mass sterilisation of blacks and other "inferiors" as a means of social control.
Prescot Bush was a member of Skull and Bones with his friend, Roland "Bunny" Harriman, son of the massively wealthy Harriman family. This Harriman - Bush connection is discussed in George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography, [5] "The Harrimans would become the sponsors of the Bushes, to lift them onto the stage of world history."
Several years after leaving Yale, Prescot Bush was made director of Harriman's bank; Brown Brothers Harriman. It was the largest private investment bank in the world (the bank's website today boasts reserves of almost $3 billion). In the early 20th century, John D. Rockefeller and his friends, including Harriman, had taken control of American politics and politicians. Using their wealth from banking, oil, railroads and weapons manufacture, Rockefeller and Harriman had politicians in their pocket. They placed individuals such as Samuel Bush in senior government positions, enabling the siphoning off of huge amounts of federal funds.
With World War 1 raging in Europe, large profits were there for the taking. Sam Bush, the rail-car parts manufacturer, with no relevant experience whatsoever in weapons procurement, was made chief of ordnance for the War Industries Board. Bush was handed government control of small arms and ammunition purchasing and liaised with big armaments firms to supply the war effort. Rockefeller owned the Remington Arms Company and received huge government orders from Bush. Remington supplied over half of the ammunition and 69% of the rifles used by the US in World War 1. Tarpley and Chaitkan [5]write: "The US and British arms companies owned by these international financiers, poured out weapons abroad in deals not subject to the scrutiny of any electorate back home. The same gentlemen later supplied weapons and money to Hitler's Nazis."
In 1921, the elite founded the American branch of the Council on Foreign Relations - CFR - an organisation which, to this day, controls the world economy and most of its politics. According to its website, CFR is "A non-partisan center dedicated to a better understanding of the world and the foreign policy choices facing the US and other governments." In 'red pill' reality it is a front for the elite to use their wealth to subvert nation states. In the 1930s they invested in German corporations which began building Hitler's war machine. Walter Lipmann, a young man on President Woodrow Wilson's team was charged with running the CFR. Lipmann, a man of extreme views, spoke of "the rascal multitude" of the people as "ignorant and meddlesome outsiders, a herd which has to be controlled by an intellectual specialist class."
President Wilson also appointed John Edgar Hoover as Assistant Attorney General. Hoover was another man with extreme views and instigated the war on the "red scare" where espionage and sedition acts were used to launch a campaign against radicals and any left wing organizations. Thousands of innocent citizens were arrested and many forcibly shipped to Russia. J. Edgar Hoover was later appointed Director of the national police organization the FBI, and served as such from 1924 until his death in 1972. The US newspaper industry was controlled by the elite and Hoover ensured that the newly emerging radio stations would voice no opinion critical of the government - Hoover controlled the issue of broadcasting licences.
In 1926, Prescot Bush was made vice president of Harriman's Union Banking Corporation of New York. It was becoming a Bush family affair - President of the bank was Bert Walker (George W. Bush's maternal great-grandfather). Union Banking had been set up by Harriman in partnership with the immensely wealthy Thyssen family of Germany. Funds were transferred back and forth to Germany through a Thyssen subsidiary bank in Holland. Fritz Thyssen was the prime sponsor of Adolf Hitler's Nazi movement.
"Hitler who promised a "New World Order" had the backing of banks, industrialists, and transnational corporations, including those controlled or directed by America's leading families, and the father of George H. W. Bush." R. Joseph, America Betrayed [6].
Tapley and Chaitkan write [5], "In May 1933, just after the Hitler regime was consolidated, an agreement was reached in Berlin for the coordination of all Nazi commerce with the USA. The Harriman International Co was to head a syndicate of 150 firms and individuals, to conduct all exports from Hitler Germany to the United States. This pact had been negotiated in Berlin between Hitler's economics minister, Hjalmar Schacht, and John Foster Dulles, international attorney for dozens of Nazi enterprises."
John Foster Dulles and his brother, Alen Dulles, were the lawyers looking after Bush family fortunes and investments in Nazi Germany. John Dulles would later become the US Secretary of State and the great power in the Republican Party of the 1950s. Allen Dulles would become head of the CIA.
Rockefeller's Standard Oil Co. built large oil refineries in Germany for the Nazis and continued to supply them during the Second World War. In October 1942 the Bush banking operations in New York were investigated by the US government under the Trading with the Enemy Act. The capital trading stock of the Union banking Corporation, owned by Prescot Bush, Bunny Harriman and three German Nazi executives, was seized.
A number of prominent and wealthy Americans, including the Bush and Rockefeller families, helped support and build the fascist regimes of Franco, Mussolini and Hitler, with nearly 70 percent of the money that flooded into Germany during the 1930s coming from investors in the US. Henry Ford was building cars and trucks in his German factories for Hitler's war effort, while simultaneously making huge fortunes at home in America. Hitler awarded Ford the German Grand Cross for his efforts. IBM was similarly involved.
In the inter-war years the Kennedy clan, another of America's rich elite families, was making huge fortunes on the stock market and through bootlegging. Joseph Kennedy, multi-millionaire father of president to be, John F. Kennedy, was a friend of President Roosevelt and made large contributions to his election funds. Roosevelt appointed Kennedy Ambassador to Britain in early 1938 and while there, he befriended Viscountess Nancy Astor, the Nazi supporter. As fiercely anti-communist as they were anti-Semitic, Astor and Kennedy, like so many of their contemporaries, looked upon Hitler as a possible solution to both these "world problems."
A small cabal of immensely wealthy families, friends and golf acquaintances who had either financed and armed Hitler or otherwise supported his rise to power, would go on to dictate almost every facet of American politics and global economics in the second half of the 20th century.
In 1951, Prescot Bush reclaimed Union Bank from the US Alien Property Custodian and went off to the Senate as the Republican for Connecticut. (He was re-elected in 1956 and again in 1963.) In 1953, Dwight Eisenhower, yet another old friend and favourite golf partner of Prescot Bush, became President and filled his government with Rockefeller men. His first Secretary of State was John Foster Dulles, the Bush family lawyer from the Nazi days. Brother, Allen Dulles, who had legally represented the Nazi Thyssen bank in Holland, was appointed US Intelligence chief in post war Germany. Back in 1937, Dulles had been hired by Prescot Bush to "cloak" his Union Bank accounts. Effectively, any information in post-war Germany regarding Bush and American complicity with the Nazis was now silenced.
Eisenhower's vice president, Richard Nixon, was groomed for Presidency from early days by the elite. In 1950 Nixon chaired the House Un-American activities committee investigating "The Communist threat" in America and with great relish re-commenced the "red scare" witch hunt of earlier years. This witch hunt, where thousands of decent, honest citizens were hounded unmercifully, was enthusiastically continued by Senator Joe McCarthy.
In the election following Eisenhower's two terms, Joe Kennedy's son, John F. Kennedy, defeated Richard Nixon. Kennedy immediately drafted Rockefeller men in to his administration. Dean Rusk, head of the Rockefeller Foundation, was installed as Secretary of State. His vice president, Lyndon Johnson, was a close friend of J. Edgar Hoover.
Kennedy seriously upset plans the elite had to "neutralize" President Castro of Cuba. The elite blamed Kennedy for the Bay of Pigs disaster and told him to "muster his courage" for both a second attempt at invading Cuba, and an escalation in Vietnam. Kennedy appeared reluctant on both counts and fired Allen Dulles director of the CIA and his CIA deputy, Charles Cabell. Cabell's brother, coincidentally, was mayor of Dallas in 1963 when Kennedy was shot. One commentator wrote, "Kennedy was beginning to act like a man who thought he was President of the United States." Lyndon Johnson was sworn in immediately after Kennedy's assassination and, incredible as it now seems, drafted the sacked Allen Dulles onto the controversial Warren Commission to "investigate" Kennedy's assassination.
Johnson served as President until 1969, when Richard Nixon was installed. (JFK's brother, Bobby Kennedy, who had a good chance of taking the Presidency in '69, was also assassinated.)
Five years later, in 1974, Richard Nixon's Vice President Spiro Agnew was forced to resign following trumped up charges allegedly organised by Nelson Rockefeller. Rockefeller, Governor of New York. (Rockefeller had been "elected" Governor in 1958 and re-elected in '62, '66 and '70. He unsuccessfully sought the Republican Presidential nomination in 1960, '64 and '68.) Nelson Rockefeller's ego was straining the elite's most precious asset of anonymity to its limit. He believed the Presidency should be his and, despite being constantly advised otherwise, made every attempt to get it. Nixon, under pressure to nominate him as his Vice President, refused and chose Gerry Ford instead.
Prescot Bush's son, George W. H. Bush, a Yale Skull and Bones member like his father, was an insider and member of the Nixon administration. Bush, who had his own off-shore oil company in the Gulf of Mexico, was made director of the CIA.
Nixon resigned the Presidency after the Watergate affair blew up. (Numerous commentators now suggest that he had no involvement with the break in at Democratic Party offices and believe that Watergate was nothing more than a contrivance designed by the elite (Rockefeller) to be found and to point the blame at Nixon and bring him down.) Gerald Ford was installed as President of the United States without ever having faced the electorate. He chose Nelson Rockefeller as his Vice President. Two unelected individuals were now running the country with Rockefeller now a mere heartbeat away from the position he so coveted. During his time as President, Ford survived two assassination attempts.
Throughout the Nixon and Ford presidencies, Henry Kissinger, a Rockefeller man and influential council member of Rockefeller's Council on Foreign Relations, was in charge of US foreign policy. Kissinger had been on the private payroll of Rockefeller as his personal "foreign policy adviser" for many years.
Jimmy Carter (Democrat) followed Gerald Ford from 1977-81, then Ronald Reagan (Republican) from 1981-89. Prescot Bush's son, George W. H. Bush, a Yale Skull and Bones man, followed Reagan from 1989 until '93.
Bill Clinton, Democrat, followed Bush from 1993 to 2001 and he too filled his cabinet with the elite's place-men. Clinton was taught in the School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University, by his favourite historian, Professor Carroll Quigley. In 1966, Quigley had written a book [7] on the elite's control of world affairs which had caused them a considerable degree of anxiety. While Quigley's book was entirely sympathetic to their aims of world domination, the elite were extremely upset that it allowed ordinary people a forbidden glimpse of the workings of the matrix:
"The powers of financial capitalism have another far-reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole. The system is controlled in a feudalistic fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert and by secret agreements arrived at in frequent private meetings and conferences. I know of the operations of the network because I have studied it for twenty years and was permitted for two years, in the early 1960s, to examine its papers and secret records. I have no aversion to it or to most of its aims and have, for much of my life been close to it and many of its instruments My chief difference of opinion is that it wishes to remain unknown, and I believe its role in history is significant enough to be known."
The elite reacted quickly when the book was published, ensuring it was pulled from the bookshelves nationwide and "recalled faster than exploding Easter bunny" Although it was never published again, second hand copies are available from Amazon.com.
Following two-term Clinton, came the grandson of Prescott Bush (and son of President George H. W. Bush); Skull and Bones member George Walker Bush. Four years later, Bush became a second term president when he defeated Democrat Senator John F. Kerry. Kerry, almost unbelievably, is yet another member of Skull and Bones.
In the US Presidential elections it matters little to the elite if the successful candidate is Democrat or Republican; indeed it is all part of their absurd deception and pretence of democracy since they control both. The deception does not come cheap; during the most recent presidential primary season, $360 million of elite money went to George W. Bush, and $318 million elite money to John Kerry. (Each received a further $74.6 million from the public purse.) A candidate independent of the elite has no chance whatsoever of reaching the White House. Ralph Nader in 2004, for example, had the relatively paltry sum of $4 million dollars to launch and conduct his campaign.
Interesting though the background of each of the individual millionaire US Presidents might be, the real power in America lies with the Rockefeller dynasty and the three organisations it controls: The Council on Foreign Relations, which helped build the Nazi war machine in the 1930s - Chairman emeritus; David Rockefeller. The Trilateral Commission, founded in 1973 by David Rockefeller. The Bilderberg club formed in 1954 - most active member, David Rockefeller.
These three organisations are interlinked and, in 'red pill' reality, work in tandem to achieve world domination by the elite. Members of each have been listed by Robert Gaylon Ross in his book, Who's Who of the Elite [8]. He writes: "They occupy key positions in government, the mass media, financial institutions, multinational corporations, the military, and the national security apparatus." The two families who are really in charge are the Rockefellers and, in the UK and Western Europe, the House of Rothschild. In 1998 Rockefeller was reputedly worth $11.5 trillion and Rothschild over $100 trillion.
The Bilderberg club (named after the hotel in which its first meeting was held) is the high chamber of the high priests of capitalism. Every member pledges absolute secrecy on what has been discussed at annual meetings. The online Asia Times, 2003, provides a very rare glimpse into the Bilderberg club in a column headed "The Masters of the Universe" [9]: "Expert strategists attend to polish and reinforce a virtual consensus; an illusion that globalization, defined under their terms - that what's good for banking and big business is good for everybody else - is inevitable and for the greater good of humankind. Bill Clinton in 1991 and Tony Blair in 1993 were invited to attend and duly 'approved' by the club before they took office.
"The club mingles central bankers, defence experts, press barons, government ministers, prime ministers, royalty and international financiers. Guests this year, along with Rumsfeld and Perle (US Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz is also a member) included David Rockefeller, Henry Kissinger, Queen Beatrix, Queen Sofia and King Juan Carlos of Spain. The Bilderberg does not invite - or accept - Asians, Middle Easterners, Latin Americans, or Africans." (Prime Minister Tony Blair attended when Shadow Home Secretary and his close friend, adviser and confidant, Peter Mandelson now attends the Bilderberg club. Mandelson, now Britain's man in Europe, is also a member of Rockefeller's Trilateral Commission.)
David Rockefeller and his long time right hand man, Henry Kissinger, are the major players in this cabal. It has been said of Kissinger that "only the ignoramus and sycophant can glorify this man whose heartlessness and guile wrought terrible agony and human loss in the third world." A small, but typical example of Kissinger's contempt for humanity came when he was Secretary of State in the Ford administration in 1976; a time when the slaughter of so-called Marxists in Argentina, and the erasure of much of Argentina's left, was at its height. Trade union organisers, student activists and their families and sympathisers were systematically tortured and by the end of the dictatorship, about 30,000 people had been disappeared. The US gave both money and high-level political endorsement to the generals in their murderous campaign. Kissinger congratulated the Junta on their "very good results": "Our basic attitude is that we would like you to succeed. I have an old fashioned view that friends ought to be supported The quicker you succeed the better."
In his book, The Trial of Henry Kissinger, Christopher Hitchins [10] has pieced together some of the most odious of Kissinger's actions which "merit the basis of prosecution for crimes against humanity, war crimes and offences against International Law."
This then, is the man who has had such incredible power and influence in America, indeed the entire world, for the best part of forty years. Perhaps the fact that President George W. Bush appointed him chairman of the commission instructed to investigate the September 11 attacks, tells us something. (Kissinger quickly resigned when he learned it would require giving details of his business connections.)
Today, Rockefeller's Trilateral Commission web pages present the following mission statement on its website [11]: "The Trilateral Commission was formed in 1973 by private citizens of Europe, Japan and North America to help think through the common challenges and leadership responsibility of the democratic industrialised area in the wider world."
Apart from this matrix lie, the website provides some interesting reading and unwittingly gives us a small dose of 'red pill' reality: on the 25th Anniversary meeting on December 1, 1998, tributes and toasts to David Rockefeller were the order of the day. I have edited the worst excesses, but they can be read on the website, if so desired, in their full, sycophantic glory.
George Berthoin, former European Chairman of The Trilateral Commission: "We know, for sure now, that the future will involve more than the three corners of our triangle [North America, Western Europe, Japan]. Technology has abolished time and space as the traditional basis of governance. A new form has to emerge and with more actors. The qualities of innovation we demonstrated for the last twenty-five years are challenged again. The moment is coming when it will be clear to all, in particular to us - friends and members of the Trilateral Commission - that the best, maybe the only way, to defend the interests, traditions, and hopes we cherish will be to place them resolutely within the context offered by the disciplines and opportunities of a genuine world order, genuine because created and recognised by all as fair and legitimate. The first global history of mankind is about to start. A new window is opening. The challenge is clear."
Henry Kissinger: "David [Rockefeller], he is now over 80, has done great things in his life, but he is a little bit naïve. He believes that any good idea can be implemented. And, by God, you have to be a little bit innocent to do great things. Cynics don't build cathedrals. David's function in our society is to recognize great tasks, to overcome the obstacles, to help find and inspire the people to carry them out, and to do it with remarkable delicacy David, I respect you and admire you for what you have done with the Trilateral Commission. You and your family have represented what goes for an aristocracy in our country - a sense of obligation not only to make it materially possible, but to participate yourself in what you have made possible and to infuse it with the enthusiasm, the innocence, and the faith that I identify with you and, if I may say so, with your family. And so I would like to propose a toast that this be preserved to us for a long time."
On a separate occasion, David Rockefeller stated: "We are grateful to the Washington Post, the New York Times, Time magazine and other great publications whose directors have attended our meetings and respected their promise of discretion for almost 40 years It would have been impossible for us to develop our plan for the world if we had been subject to the bright lights of publicity during those years. But the world is now more sophisticated and prepared to march towards world government. The super national sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers is preferable to the national auto-determination practiced in past centuries."
Perhaps the best description of how the elite operate comes from the late Senator Barry Goldwater, Presidential candidate of the Republican Party back in 1964. Senator Goldwater, a close friend of both JFK and Joe McCarthy, was considered a saber rattling, extreme right wing conservative. Following his death, the Washington Post wrote: "Unlike nearly every other politician who ever lived, anywhere in the world, Barry Goldwater always said exactly what was on his mind. He spared his listeners nothing." This eulogy appears to be confirmed in one of Goldwater's books, With no Apologies, [12] in which he presents an astonishingly frank exposé of the unfettered power and aspirations of the elite:
"The Council on Foreign Relations has placed its members in policy-making with the State Department and other federal agencies. Every secretary of State since 1944, with the exception of James F Byrnes, has been a member of the council. Almost without exception, its members are united by a congeniality of birth, economic status and educational background. I believe that the Council on Foreign relations and its ancillary elitist groups are indifferent to communism. They have no ideological anchors. In their pursuit of a New World Order, they are prepared to deal without prejudice with a communist state, a socialist state, a democratic state, a monarchy, an oligarchy - it's all the same to them.
"When we change presidents, it is understood to mean that the voters are ordering a change in national policy. Since 1945, three different Republicans have occupied the White House for 16 years, and four democrats have held this most powerful post for 17 years. With the exception of the first seven years of the Eisenhower administration, there has been no appreciable change in foreign or domestic policy. There has been a great turnover in personnel, but no change in policy. Example: during the Nixon years, Henry Kissinger, a council member and Nelson Rockefeller protégé, was in charge of foreign policy. When Jimmy Carter was elected, Kissinger was replaced by Zbigniew Brzezinski, a council member and David Rockefeller protégé.
"Whereas the Council on Foreign Relations is distinctly national, representation is allocated equally to Western Europe, Japan and the United States. It is intended to act as the vehicle for multinational consolidation of the commercial and banking interests by seizing control of the political government of the United States.
"Zbigniew Brzezinski and David Rockefeller screened and selected every individual who was invited to participate in shaping and administering the proposed New World Order The Trilateral organization created by David Rockefeller was a surrogate - its members selected by Rockefeller, its purpose defined by Rockefeller, its funding supplied by Rockefeller Examination of the membership roster establishes beyond question that all those invited to join were members of the power elite, enlisted with great skill and singleness of purpose from the banking, commercial, political and communications sectors In my view, the Trilateral Commission represents a skilful, coordinated effort to seize control and consolidate the four centers of power - political, monetary, intellectual and ecclesiastical.
"The Trilateral Commission even selects and elevates its candidates to positions of political power. David Rockefeller and Zbigniew Brzezinski found Jimmy Carter to be an ideal candidate, for example. They helped him to win the Democratic nomination and the Presidency [1977]. To accomplish their purpose, they mobilized the money power of the Wall Street bankers, the intellectual influence of the academic community - which is subservient to the wealthy of the great tax-free foundations - and the media controllers represented in the membership of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Trilateral Commission. It was no accident that Brzezinski and Rockefeller invited Carter to join the commission in 1973. But they weren't ready to bet all their chips on Carter. They made him a founding member of the commission but to keep their options open they also brought in Walter Mondale and Elliot Richardson, a highly visible Republican member of the Nixon administration, and they looked at other potential nominees."
Goldwater's testimony is all the more astonishing coming from a man with considerable knowledge of the core of the matrix and who was no radical of the left. Goldwater was the only Republican Presidential candidate not to be the CFR choice for the presidential nomination in the last 50 years.
The elite inner-circle members of the Bilderberg club, Council on Foreign Relations and Trilateral Commission, conspire to politically, and economically, dominate the entire world under their New World Order, or Globalisation as they now prefer to name it.
Since the Second World War, Rockefeller's Council on Foreign Relations has filled key positions in virtually every administration. Since Eisenhower, every man who has won the nomination for either party (except Goldwater in 1964) has been directly sponsored by Rockefeller's CFR.
Before defining the characteristics of fascism, we should look at the neo-conservatives who run the US government on behalf of the elite. In her book, Leo Strauss and the American Right, [13] Shadia Drury, professor of political theory at the University of Calgary, Canada, names current politicians, political advisers, administration and Supreme Court officials, who were followers of the teachings of the fascist Leo Strauss.
Leo Strauss (1899- 1973) was a philosopher at the University of Chicago (built by Rockefeller money) where he taught many of those currently involved in the US administration. Strauss left Nazi Germany in 1934 having been given a Rockefeller Foundation bursary and is considered to be the "fascist godfather" of today's neo-cons.
According to Jeffery Steinberg in Executive Intelligence review [14]: "A review of Leo Strauss' career reveals why the label 'Straussian' carries some very filthy implications. Although nominally a Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany (he actually left for a better position abroad, on the warm recommendation of Nazi jurist Carl Schmitt), Strauss was an unabashed proponent of the three most notorious shapers of the Nazi philosophy: Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger, and Carl Schmitt. Recent biographies have revealed the depth of Heidegger's enthusiasm for Hitler and Nazism.
"The hallmark of Strauss's approach to philosophy was his hatred of the modern world, his belief in a totalitarian system, run by 'philosophers' who rejected all universal principles of natural law, but saw their mission as absolute rulers, who lied and deceived a foolish 'populist' mass, and used both religion and politics as a means of disseminating myths that kept the general population in clueless servitude."
Professor Shadia Drury [15] provides a fascinating glimpse into the mindset of the neocons "Leo Strauss was a great believer in the efficacy and usefulness of lies in politics. Public support for the Iraq war rested on lies about Iraq posing an imminent threat to the United States - the business about weapons of mass destruction and a fictitious alliance between al-Qaeda and the Iraq regime. Now that the lies have been exposed, Paul Wolfowitz [Straussian] and others in the war party are denying that these were the real reasons for the war.
"The idea that Strauss was a great defender of liberal democracy is laughable. I suppose that Strauss's disciples consider it a noble lie. Yet many in the media have been gullible enough to believe it. The ancient philosophers whom Strauss most cherished believed that the unwashed masses were not fit for either truth or liberty, and that giving them these sublime treasures would be like throwing pearls before swine A second fundamental of Strauss's ancients has to do with their insistence on the need for secrecy and the necessity of lies. In his book Persecution and the Art of Writing, Strauss outlines why secrecy is necessary. He argues that the wise must conceal their views for two reasons - to spare the people's feelings and to protect the elite from possible reprisals. The people will not be happy to learn that there is only one natural right - the right of the superior to rule over the inferior, the master over the slave and the wise few over the vulgar many.
"I never imagined when I wrote my first book on Strauss that the unscrupulous elite that he elevates would ever come so close to political power, nor that the ominous tyranny of the wise would ever come so close to being realised in the political life of a great nation like the United States. But fear is the greatest ally of tyranny."
Shadia Drury is by no means alone in her desperate concern. Francis A. Boyle, Professor of Law, University of Illinois law school writes [16]: "I entered the University of Chicago in September of 1968 shortly after Strauss had retired. But I was trained in Chicago's Political Science Department by Strauss's foremost protégé, co-author, and literary executor Joseph Cropsey. Based upon my personal experience as an alumnus of Chicago I concur completely with Professor Drury's devastating critique of Strauss. I also agree with her penetrating analysis of the degradation of the American political process by Chicago's Straussian cabal.
"Chicago routinely trained me and numerous other students to become ruthless and unprincipled Machiavellians. That is precisely why so many neophyte neo-con students gravitated towards the University of Chicago. The University of Chicago became the 'brains' behind the Bush Jr. Empire and his Ashcroft Police State. Attorney General John Ashcroft received his law degree from the University of Chicago in 1967. Many of his 'lawyers' at the Department of Injustice [sic] are members of the right-wing, racist, bigoted, reactionary, and totalitarian Federalist Society (aka 'Feddies'), which originated in part at the University of Chicago.
"According to his own public estimate and boast before the American Enterprise Institute, President Bush Jr. hired about 20 Straussians to occupy key positions in his administration Just recently the University of Chicago officially celebrated its Bush Jr. Straussian cabal. Only the University of Chicago would have the Orwellian gall to publicly claim that Strauss and Bloom [a Strauss protégé] cared one whit about democracy let alone comprehend the 'ideals of democracy'.
"Do not send your children to the University of Chicago where they will grow up to become warmongers like Wolfowitz or totalitarians like Ashcroft! The neo-con cabal, currently ruling America and in charge of pursuing the New World Order agenda is, according to Professors Drury and Boyle, "a tyranny of warmongers and unscrupulous elites from an intellectual and moral cesspool."
What are the implications of this "New World Order", or "Globalization" as it is now called? Richard K. Moore [17] writes: "The course of world events, for the first time in history, is now largely controlled by a centralised global regime. This regime has been consolidating power ever since World War II and is now formalising that power into a collection of centralised institutions and a new system of international 'order'. Top western political leaders are participants in this global regime, and the strong Western nation state is rapidly being dismantled and destabilised. The global regime serves elite corporate interests exclusively. It has no particular regard for human rights, democracy, human welfare, or the health of the environment. The only god of this regime is the god of wealth accumulation.
"In two centuries the Western world has come full circle from tyranny to tyranny. The tyranny of monarchs was overthrown in the Enlightenment and semi-democratic republics were established. Two centuries later those republics are being destabilised and a new tyranny is assuming power - a global tyranny of anonymous corporate elites. This anonymous regime has no qualms about creating poverty, destroying nations, and engaging in genocide.
"Humanity can do better than this - much better - and there is reason to hope that the time is ripe for humanity to bring about fundamental changes We can oust the elites from power and reorganise our economies so that they serve the needs of the people instead of the needs of endless wealth accumulation. This is our Revolutionary Imperative. Not an imperative to violent revolution, but an imperative to do something even more revolutionary - to set humanity on a sane course using peaceful, democratic means."
Bottom line, are the neo-cons driving this agenda neo-fascist? Dr. Lawrence Britt, a political scientist, published research on fascism [18] in which he examined the fascist regimes of Hitler, Mussolini, Franco, Suharto and several Latin American regimes. Britt found 14 defining characteristics common to each fascist State:
1. Powerful and Continuing Nationalism - Fascist regimes tend to make constant use of patriotic mottos, slogans, symbols, songs and other paraphernalia. Flags are seen everywhere as are flag symbols on clothing and in public displays.
2. Disdain for the recognition of Human Rights - Because of fear of enemies and the need for security, the people in fascist regimes are persuaded that human rights can be ignored in certain cases because of "need." The people tend to look the other way or even approve of torture, summary executions, assassinations, long incarceration of prisoners, etc.
3. Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause - The people are rallied into a unifying patriotic frenzy over the need to eliminate a perceived common threat or foe: racial, ethnic or religious minorities; liberals; communists; socialists; terrorists, etc.
4. Supremacy of the Military - Even when there are widespread domestic problems, the military is given a disproportionate amount of government funding, and the domestic agenda is neglected. Soldiers and military are glamorized.
5. Rampant sexism - The government of fascist nations tend to be almost exclusively male-dominated. Under fascist regimes, traditional gender roles are made more rigid. Divorce, abortion and homosexuality are suppressed and the state is represented as the ultimate guardian of the family institution.
6. Controlled Mass Media - Sometimes the media is directly controlled by the government, but in other cases, the media is indirectly controlled by government regulation, or sympathetic media spokespeople and executives. Censorship, especially in war time, is very common.
7. Obsession with National security - Fear is used as a motivational tool by the government over the masses.
8. Religion and Government are intertwined - Government in fascist nations tend to use the most common religion in the nation as a tool to manipulate public opinion. Religious rhetoric and terminology is common from government leaders, even when the major tenets of the religion are diametrically opposed to the government's policies or actions.
9. Corporate Power is Protected - The industrial and business aristocracy of a fascist nation are often the ones who put the government leaders into power, creating a mutually beneficial business/government relationship and power elite.
10. Labor Power is suppressed - Because the organizing power of labor is the only real threat to a fascist government, labor unions are either eliminated, or are severely restricted.
11. Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts - Fascist nations tend to promote and tolerate open hostility to higher education, and academia. It is not uncommon for professors and other academics to be censored or even arrested. Free expression in the arts and letters is openly attacked.
12. Obsession with Crime and Punishment - Under fascist regimes, the police are given almost limitless power to enforce laws. The people are often willing to overlook police abuses and even forego civil liberties in the name of patriotism. There is often a national police force with virtually unlimited power in fascist nations.
13. Rampant Cronyism and Corruption - Fascist regimes almost always are governed by groups of friends and associates who appoint each other to government positions and use governmental power and authority to protect their friends from accountability. It is not uncommon in fascist regimes for national resources and even treasures to be appropriated or even outright stolen by government leaders.
14. Fraudulent Elections - Sometimes elections in fascist nations are a complete sham. Other times elections are manipulated by smear campaigns against or even assassinations of opposition candidates, use of legislation to control voting numbers or political district boundaries, and manipulation of the media. Fascist nations also typically use their judiciaries to manipulate or control elections.
Benito Mussolini - who knew something about fascism - had a more straightforward definition: "Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power."
Abraham Lincoln stated, "I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me, and causes me to tremble for the safety of our country. Corporations have been enthroned, an era of corruption will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people, until wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the republic is destroyed."
The small, but ruthless, group of men, the "money power" described by Lincoln, has stolen democracy from the American people. An ever-growing number of informed Americans, however, are fighting a brave, but desperate rear-guard action to retrieve that democracy. Will we give them our total support now, or simply sit back and watch as the entire planet is taken back to the dark ages? "The only thing necessary for evil to flourish is for good men to do nothing."
Jim Macgregor is a 57 year old retired doctor. For many years he was a family practitioner and visiting Medical Officer to Glenochil Prison, one of Scotland's high security prisons. Through his prison work, he developed a special interest in miscarriages of justice and is a member of the Miscarriage of Justice Organisation. MOJO (Scotland). You can contact Jim at gairmoj@aol.com
This article was first published at www.surfaceonline.org
References
1 Richard K. Moore, Escaping the Matrix, www.cyberjournal.org
2 William Blum, Killing Hope, US Military & CIA Interventions since World War II, Zed Books, London. www.zedbooks.demon.co.uk
3 Richard K. Moore, Escaping the Matrix - Global Transformation: Why we need it and how we can get it, www.cyberjournal.org
4 Ida Tarbell, The History of the Standard Oil Company, 1904, McClure, Phillips and Co., (out of print). Converted to electronic format by Nalinda Sapukotana, University of Rochester. www.history.rochester.edu/fuel/tarbell/main.htm
5 Webster G. Tarpely & Anton Chaitkin, George Bush: The Unauthorised Biography, (currently in reprint). Electronic format: www.tarpley.net/bushb.htm
6 R Joseph, PhD. America Betrayed: Bush, Bin Laden, and 9/11. University Press.
7 Carroll Quigley, Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in Our Time. Macmillan company 1966. Out of print.
8 Robert Gaylon Ross, Who's who of the Elite: Members of the Bilderbergs, Council on Foreign Relations and Trilateral Commission, Ross International Enterprises.
9 Pepe Escobar, The Roving Eye, Asia Times online, May 22nd 2003 www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/EE22Ak03.html
10 Christopher Hitchins, The Trial of Henry Kissinger, Verso press, 2001.
11 Trilateral Commission website, www.trilateral.org
12 Barry Goldwater, The Personal and Political Memoirs of United States Senator Barry M. Goldwater, New York: Morrow, 1979.
13 Shadia Drury, Professor of Politics, University of Calgary, Leo Strauss and the American Right, May 1999 Isbn; 0333772296.
14 Jeffrey Steinberg, Executive Intelligence Review, March 21, 2003. www.larouchepub.com/other/2003/3011profile_strauss.html
15 Shadia Drury, May 2003 interview transcript: www.informationclearinghouse.info/article5010.htm
16 Francis A. Boyle, Professor of Law, University of Illinois. 2003 interview, CounterPunch.com, August 2, 2003.
17 Richard K. Moore, www.newdawnmagazine.com/articles.html
18 Dr. Lawrence Britt article in Free Inquiry journal of secular humanist thought http://www.secularhumanism.org

Nazification of Germany vs.
Nazification of America
by Norman D. Livergood


German Nazification Phase 1
Seizure of Power
1933: January 30
Hitler is appointed Chancellor by Hindenburg
Weimar Republic President Paul von Hindenburg appointed Adolph Hitler Chancellor even though the Nazis were only a small minority in the German government. On his first day as chancellor, Hitler manipulated Hindenburg into dissolving the Reichstag and calling for the new elections he had wanted - to be held on March 5, 1933. President Hindenburg had fallen under Hitler's spell and was signing just about anything Hitler put in front of him. Hitler began immediately to orchestrate the complete takeover of all mechanisms of governance and functions of state, to make Nazi Germany a totalitarian dictatorship.
February 3, 1933
In a speech to the leading army and navy commanders, Hitler revealed his Lebensraum program for the conquest of "living space" for the German people, rearmament, and resistance to the Versailles Treaty. He spoke of the importance of the military and promised not to involve it in domestic political disputes.

American Nazification Phase 1
Seizure of Power
1999: November
Bush is appoinited President by the Supreme Court
Bush is foisted on the American public through a coup d'etat of the Supreme Court after massive election fraud perpetrated by his brother in Florida
Thousands of voters were illegally disqualified in the 2000 election in the state of Florida, when Jeb Bush and his Secretary of State compiled a false list of felons who would not be allowed to vote.
The Supreme Court was packed with reactionary right-wingers several of whom had conflicts of interest because of their ties to the Bush family.
Dubya appoints convicted criminals, racists, and corporate-controlled underlings to his cabinet.
January, 2000
Bush pushes his tax cuts for the wealthy through Congress, begins his assaults on the environment, and commands the FBI to stop investigations concerning the Bin Laden family and other suspected terrorist cells.


Phase 2
An Atrocity to Subdue the People
February 27, 1933
The Reichstag Fire
On the night the German Parliament Building--the Reichstag-- burned down, Hitler was at Goebbels's apartment having dinner. They rushed to the scene where they met Göring who was already screaming false charges and making threats against the Communists. At first glance, Hitler described the fire as a beacon from heaven. "You are now witnessing the beginning of a great epoch in German history. . . This fire is the beginning," Hitler told a news reporter at the scene.

While not all historians agree on who actually perpetrated the Reichstag Fire, writers such as Klaus P. Fischer feel that most likely the Nazis were responsible.
A dazed Dutch Communist named Marinus van der Lubbe was found at the scene and charged with arson. He was later found guilty and executed.
On February 28, 1933--the day after the Reichstag fire--President Hindenburg and Chancellor Hitler invoked Article 48 of the Weimar Constitution, which permitted the suspension of civil liberties in time of national emergency.
A Decree of the Reich President for the Protection of the People and State abrogated the following German constitutional protections:
Free expression of opinion
Freedom of the press
Right of assembly and association
Right to privacy of postal and electronic communications
Protection against unlawful searches and seizures
Individual property rights
States' right of self-government
A supplemental decree created the SA (Storm Troops) and SS (Special Security) Federal police agencies.

Phase 2
An Atrocity to Subdue the People
September 11, 2001
The Terrorist Attacks
When the Word Trade Center and the Pentagon were attacked, Bush was reading to grade school children in Florida. When informed of the attack by his associates , he continued reading. He then flew to a security bunker in Nebraska before finally returning to the White House.
No military aircraft had been scrambled to intercept the four hijacked planes, though there was plenty of time to do so.
The fact that there has been no genuine investigation into the 9/11 terrorist attack on American citizens creates the odor of a cover-up of gigantic proportions. Some news analysts point to the possibility that the Bush administration could have been complicit.
Hundreds of suspects were immediately jailed, without benefit of habeas corpus or other rights. Some of these suspects have already been found guilty of the crime.
The Bush junta forced the Patriot Act bill through Congress, suspending essential civil liberties. Excusing oppression as essential to the "war on terrorism," and maintaining that dissent was treason.
The Patriot Act abrogated the following American constitutional protections:
Free expression of opinion
Freedom of the press
Right of assembly and association
Right to privacy of postal and electronic communications
Protection against unlawful searches and seizures
Individual property rights
States' right of self-government
Presidential decrees make it possible for military forces to be used to monitor and control the civilian population, in abrogation of the posse comitatus act.
The Reichstag Fire Syndrome occurs whenever a democracy is destroyed by creating a law-and-order crisis and offering as a "solution" the abdication of civil liberties and state's rights to a powerful but unaccountable central dictator. The men of wealth who put the tyrant into power are then able to reap obscene war profits.

Phase 3
The Dictator Destroys Elections and Appoints Himself Dictator
March 24, 1933
The Enabling Act
On March 24, 1933, the Reichstag passed the Law for Terminating the Suffering of People and Nation, also known as the Enabling Law, essentially granting Adolph Hitler dictatorial power. There was no further need for elections because the Fuhrer/Dictator made all the decisions!
Since the Nazis had only been able to gain a 44% plurality in the Reichstag in the March 5, 1933 elections, Hitler looked for another way to establish a full dictatorship.
Herman Göring--later to become the head of Germany's armed forces--declared that there was no further need for State governments. So Over the next few weeks, in each of the legal Weimar states the local Nazi organizations instigated riiots and then summarily replaced the elected state government by appointed Nazi Reich Commissioners to quell the disorder.
The Nazi legislators sponsored the Enabling Act, a bill that gave Hitler dictatorial powers for four years. To make sure the law passed, the Nazis imprisoned Communists and created propaganda campaigns to influence public opinion. Just days before the vote on the bill, the Nazis held a staged ceremony in Potsdam in which Hitler was depicted as a conservative national leader, not the head of a radical party. Hitler promised that the Enabling Act would only benefit the German people.
The moment the bill passed, however, the German democratic constitution was abrogated and Nazi Party rule became absolute. Hitler immediately invoked the new law to rescind the democratic freedoms of the Weimar Republic and to dissolve political parties and organizations.
The Dictator Established
Death Camps
March 22, 1933
Dachau slave labor death camp established
The Hitler regime established the first concentration camp about 15 kilometers northwest of Munich, dedicated on March 20 by Heinrich Himmler. It held about 5,000 prisoners, mostly Communists, Social-Democrats, and homosexuals. Bavarian police guarded the prisoners until April 11, when the SS took over. The slave-labor death camps, so hideous in their reality that Germans didn't want to hear about them, became an efficient tool in silencing opponents of the regime. Dachau was a "political camp" and the first Jewish detainees were among the best-known political opponents of the Nazi regime. More than 10,000 Jews from all over Germany were interned there after the Kristallnacht pogrom. When the systematic genocide of Jews began, the Jewish prisoners were deported from Dachau and other camps in the Reich to the extermination camps in the East.

Phase 3
The Leader Destroys Elections and Appoints Himself Dictator
November, 2002
The Homeland Security Act
In the 2000 and now again in the midterm 2002 elections, electronic voting has meant that our democratic right to have our votes counted fairly and accurately has been taken from us by the Bush junta.
Since we now suffer under the situation where there is no opposition to the criminal Bush regime--most Democrats having effectively become pawns of the Republicans--then none of the state election frauds will be investigated. We can't be sure that key races such as that of Mondale in Minnesota and Carnahan in Missouri were not the result of massive vote fraud. We can be sure that the Florida gubernatorial race was completely fixed.
This sinister phase 3 of the nazification of America is best understood by reviewing some of the information that Greg Palast has made available. Palast is the investigative reporter for BBC and the Observer who first exposed the 2000 Florida vote crimes.
94,000 people -- over half of them African American --were on a "scrub list" in Florida, resulting in their being blocked from voting in the 2000 election. Did Florida rectify this mistake before the 2002 election? Fuhgeddaboudit! Those voters won't be reinstated in Florida until January 2003--if ever. Electronic, touch screen voting is the basis for election fraud:
votes can easily be lost through "software glitches"
Democratic votes can become Republican votes and no one is the wiser
The "touch" screens are made by ES&S, the vendor chosen by Katherine Harris, Florida Secretary of State and current congressional candidate. The lobbyist who sold that company's system to Jeb and Katherine is Sandy Mortham, founder of Women for Jeb and Harris'
predecessor as Secretary of State. Mortham was the person who instigated the scam in 1998 to find black voters who could be disqualified.
ES&S machines, not surprisingly, failed to work in Black precincts in 2002. And of course with electronic voting there is no paper ballot back-up.
In the 2002 mid-term "elections" the Republicans gained control of all branches of government:
executive, legislative, and judicial. Just as in Hitler's Enabling Act, so Bush Jr. forced the Homeland Security bill through Congress which gave him complete dictatorial powers:
the President is able to make any decision he wishes without judicial or legislative restraint
the executive branch can now carry on its meetings in secret, without scrutiny from the press or the people
the "homeland security" agents can now intrude in any part of citizen's life
slipped into the Homeland Security bill at the last moment
allows police to conduct Internet or telephone eavesdropping willy-nilly with no requirement to ask a court's permission first
demands life sentences for hackers that 'recklessly' endanger lives
allows Net surveillance to gather telephone numbers, IP addresses, and URLs or e-mail information, where an 'immediate threat to a national security interest' is suspected
permits ISPs to hand users' records over to law enforcement authorities, overturning current legislation that outlaws such behaviour
the Homeland Security Information Awareness Office will be run by a former convicted felon
up to 850,000 jobs will be privatized, knocking out union and civil service oversight
On November 14, 2002, as the Senate was being pressured to pass a hastily-prepared homeland security bill, Senator Byrd spoke out vehemently against the bill as Bush's grab for dictatorial power--the worst act of tyranny, he said, in the fifty years he's been in Congress.
Secret US Police Concentration Camps
In a revealing admission in June, 1997, the Director of Resource Management for the U.S. Army confirmed the validity of a memorandum relating to the establishment of a civilian inmate labor program under development by the Department of the Army. The document states, "Enclosed for your review and comment is the draft Army regulation on civilian inmate labor utilization" and the procedure to "establish civilian prison camps on installations."
Amid widespread rumors, Congressman Henry Gonzales clarified the question of the existence of civilian detention camps. In an interview, Gonzalez stated, "The truth is yes -- you do have these stand by provisions, and the plans are here...whereby you could, in the name of stopping terrorism...evoke the military and arrest Americans and put them in detention camps."
On Sunday, November 10th, the New York Times announced that 200,000 to 250,000 troops would be used to attack Iraq, while 265,000 National Guard and Reserve personnal would be called to active duty--MOST OF WHICH WILL BE DEPLOYED IN THE UNITED STATES! Is Bush at war with Iraq or with American citizens?

Phase 4
Who knows???

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Fascism in America
Index of Website
Home Page

excerpted from the book
Friendly Fascism
The New Face of Power in America
by Bertram Gross
South End Press, 1980, paper

The Unfolding Logic

p161
... as I survey the entire panorama of contending forces, I can readily detect something more important: the outline of a powerful logic of events. This logic points toward tighter integration of every First World Establishment. In the United States it points toward more concentrated, unscrupulous, repressive, and militaristic control by a Big Business-Big Government partnership that-to preserve the privileges of the ultra-rich, the corporate overseers, and the brass in the military and civilian order-squelches the rights and liberties of other people both at home and abroad. That is friendly fascism.
p162
At any particular moment First World leaders may respond to crisis like people in a crowded night club when smoke and flames suddenly billow forth. They do not set up a committee to plan their response. Neither do they act in a random or haphazard fashion. Rather, the logic of the situation prevails. Everyone runs to where they think the exits are. In the ensuing melee some may be trampled to death. Those who know where the exits really are, who are most favorably situated, and have the most strength will save themselves.
Thus it was in Italy, Japan, and Germany when the classic fascists came to power. The crisis of depression, inflation, and class conflict provided an ideal opportunity for the cartels, warmongers, right-wing extremists, and rowdy street fighters to rush toward power. The fascist response was not worked out by some central cabal of secret conspirators. Nor was it a random or accidental development. The dominant logic of the situation prevailed.
Thus too it was after World War II. Neither First World unity nor the Golden International was the product of any central planners in the banking, industrial, political, or military community. Indeed, there was then-as there still is-considerable conflict among competing groups at the pinnacle of the major capitalist establishments. But there was a broad unfolding logic about the way these conflicts were adjusted and the "Free World" empire came into being. This logic involved hundreds of separate plans and planning committees-some highly visible, some less so, some secret. It encompassed the values and pressures of reactionaries, conservatives, and liberals. In some cases, it was a logic of response to anticapitalist movements and offensives that forced them into certain measures-like the expanded welfare state-which helped themselves despite themselves.
Although the friendly fascists are subversive elements, they rarely see themselves as such. Some are merely out to make money under conditions of stagflation. Some are merely concerned with keeping or expanding their power and privileges. Many use the rhetoric of freedom, liberty, democracy, human values, or even human rights. In pursuing their mutual interests through a new coalition of concentrated oligarchic power, people may be hurt-whether through pollution, shortages, unemployment, inflation, or war. But that is not part of their central purpose. It is the product of invisible hands that are not theirs.
For every dominant logic, there is an alternative or subordinate logic. Indeed, a dominant logic may even contribute to its own undoing. This has certainly been the case with many strong anticommunist drives as in both China and Indochina-that tended to accelerate the triumph of communism. If friendly fascism emerges on a full scale in the United States, or even if the tendencies in that direction become still stronger, countervailing forces may here too be created. Thus may the unfolding logic of friendly fascism-to borrow a term from Marx-sow the seeds of its destruction or prevention.
p163
A few years before his death, John D. Rockefeller III glimpsed- although through a glass darkly-the logic of capitalist response to crisis. In The Second American Revolution (1973) he defined the crises of the 1960s and early 1970s as a humanistic revolution based mainly on the black and student "revolts," women's liberation, consumerism, environmentalism, and the yearnings for nonmaterialistic values. He saw these crises as an opportunity to develop a humanistic capitalism. If the Establishment should repress these humanistic urges, he wrote, "the result could be chaos and anarchy, or it could be authoritarianism, either of a despotic mold or the 'friendly fascism' described by urban affairs professor Bertram Gross."
p167
A similar note of urgency is trumpeted by General Maxwell Taylor who, in contrast with Zoll's response to internal dangers, warns mainly against external dangers. "How can a democracy such as ours," he asks, "defend its interests at acceptable costs and continue to enjoy the freedom of speech and behavior to which we are accustomed in time of peace?" Although his answer is not as candid as Zoll's, he replies that such traditional and liberal properties must be dispensed with: "We must advance concurrently on both foreign and domestic fronts by means of integrated rational power responsive to a unified national Will''. Here is a distressing echo of Adolf Hilter's pleas for "integration" (Gleichschaltung) and unified national will.
p167
James Madison
"I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations."
p168
Although friendly fascism would mean total ruin of the American dream, it could hardly come suddenly- let alone in any precisely predictable year. This is one of the reasons I cannot go along with the old-fashioned Marxist picture of capitalism or imperialism dropping the fig leaf or the mask. This imagery suggests a process not much longer than a striptease. It reinforces the apocalyptic vision of a quick collapse of capitalist democracy-whether "not with a bang but a whimper," as T. S. Eliot put it, or with "dancing to a frenzied drum" as in the words of William Butler Yeats. In my judgment, rather, one of the greatest dangers is the slow process through which friendly fascism would come into being. For a large part of the population the changes would be unnoticed. Even those most alive to the danger may see only part of the picture-until it is too late. For most people, as with historians and social scientists, 20-20 vision on fundamental change comes only with hindsight. And by that time, with the evidence at last clearly visible, the new serfdom might have long since arrived.
p168
... in the movement toward friendly fascism, any sudden forward thrust at one level could be followed by a consolidating pause or temporary withdrawal at another level. Every step toward greater repression might be accompanied by some superficial reform, every expansionist step abroad by some new payoff at home, every well-publicized shocker (like the massacres at Jackson State, Kent State, and Attica, the Watergate scandals or the revelations of illegal deals by the FBI or CIA) by other steps of less visibility but equal or possibly greater significance, such as large welfare payments to multinational banks and industrial conglomerates. At all stages the fundamental directions of change would be obscured by a series of Hobson's choices, of public issues defined in terms of clear-cut crossroads-one leading to the frying pan and the other to the fire. Opportunities would thus be provided for learned debate and earnest conflict over the choice among alternative roads to serfdom . . .
The unifying element in this unfolding logic is the capital-accumulation imperative of the world's leading capitalist forces, creatively adjusted to meet the challenges of the many crises I have outlined. This is quite different from the catch-up imperatives of the Italian, German, and Japanese leaders after World War I. Nor would its working out necessarily require a charismatic dictator, one-party rule, glorification of the State, dissolution of legislatures, termination of multiparty elections, ultranationalism, or attacks on rationality.
As illustrated in the following oversimplified outline, which also points up the difference between classic fascism and friendly fascism, the following eight chapters summarize the many levels of change at which the trends toward friendly fascism are already visible.
Despite the sharp differences from classic fascism, there are also some basic similarities. In each, a powerful oligarchy operates outside of, as well as through, the state. Each subverts constitutional government. Each suppresses rising demands for wider participation in decision making, the enforcement and enlargement of human rights, and genuine democracy. Each uses informational control and ideological flimflam to get lower and middle-class support for plans to expand the capital and power of the oligarchy and provide suitable rewards for political, professional, scientific, and cultural supporters.
A major difference is that under friendly fascism Big Government would do less pillaging of, and more pillaging for, Big Business. With much more integration than ever before among transnational corporations, Big Business would run less risk of control by any one state and enjoy more subservience by many states. In turn, stronger government support of transnational corporations, such as the large group of American companies with major holdings in South Africa, requires the active fostering of all latent conflicts among those segments of the American population that may object to this kind of foreign venture. It requires an Establishment with lower levels so extensive that few people or groups can attain significant power outside it, so flexible that many (perhaps most) dissenters and would-be revolutionaries can be incorporated within it. Above all, friendly fascism in any First World country today would \ use sophisticated control technologies far beyond the ken of the classic fascists.
p177
Although American hegemony can scarcely return in its Truman-Eisenhower-Kennedy-Johnson form, this does not necessarily signify the end of the American Century. Nor does communist and socialist advance on some fronts mark American and capitalist retreat on all fronts. There are unmistakable tendencies toward a rather thoroughgoing reconstruction of the entire "Free World." Robert Osgood sees a transitional period of "limited readjustment" and "retrenchment without disengagement," after which America could establish a "more enduring rationale of global influence." Looking at foreign policy under the Nixon administration, Robert W. Tucker sees no intention to "dismantle the empire" but rather a continued commitment to the view that "America must still remain the principal guarantor of a global order now openly and without equivocation identified with the status quo." He describes America as a "settled imperial power shorn of much of the former exuberance." George Liska looks forward to a future in which Americans, having become more mature in the handling of global affairs, will at last be the leaders of a true empire.
p184
Amaury De Riencourt
"Caesarism can come to America constitutionally without having to break down any existing institution."
p184
... a friendly fascist power structure in the I United States, Canada, Western Europe, or today's Japan would be far more sophisticated than the "caesarism" of fascist Germany, Italy, and Japan. It would need no charismatic dictator nor even a titular head... it would require no one-party rule, no mass fascist party, no glorification of the State, no dissolution of legislatures, no denial of reason. Rather, it would come slowly as an outgrowth of present trends in the Establishment.
p189
Under the full-fledged oligarchy of friendly fascism, the Chief Executive network would become much more powerful than ever before. And the top executive-in America, the president-would in a certain sense become more important than before. But not in the sense of a personal despotism like Hitler's.
Indeed, the president under friendly fascism would be as far from personal caesarism as from being a Hirohito-type figurehead. Nor would a president and his political associates extort as much "protection money" from big-business interests as was extracted under Mussolini and Hilter. The Chief Executive would neither ride the tiger nor try to steal its food; rather, he would be part of the tiger from the outset. The White House and the entire Chief Executive network would become the heart (and one of the brain centers) of the new business-government symbiosis. Under these circumstances the normal practices of the Ultra-Rich and the Corporate Overlords would be followed: personal participation in high-Ievel business deals and lavish subsidization of political campaigns, both partly hidden from public view.
p190
This transformation would require a new concept of presidential leadership, one emphasizing legitimacy and righteousness above all else. As the linchpin of an oligarchic establishment, the White House would continue to be the living and breathing symbol of legitimate government. "Reigning" would become the first principle of "ruling". Only by wrapping himself and all his agents in the trappings of constitutionality could the President succeed in subverting the spirit of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. The Chief Executive Network, Big Business, and the UltraRich could remain far above and beyond legal and moral law only through the widely accepted image that all of them, and particularly the president, were fully subservient to law and morality. In part, this is a matter of public relations-but not the old Madison Avenue game of selling perfume or deodorants to the masses. The most important nostrils are those of the multileveled elites in the establishment itself; if things smell well to them, then the working-buying classes can probably be handled effectively. In this context, it is not at all sure that the personal charisma of a president could ever be as important as it was in the days of Theodore or Franklin Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower, or John F. Kennedy.
It is no easy task to erect a shield of legitimacy to cloak the illegitimate. Doing so would require the kind of leadership that in emphasizing the long-term interests of Big Business and the Ultra-Rich would stand up strongly against any elements that are overly greedy for short-term windfalls. Thus in energy planning, foreign trade, labor relations, and wage-price controls, for example, the friendly fascist White House would from time to time engage in activities that could be publicly regarded as "cracking down on business." While a few recalcitrant corporate overseers might thus be reluctantly educated, the chief victims would usually be small or medium-sized enterprises, who would thus be driven more rapidly into bankruptcy or merger. In this sense, conspicuous public leadership would become a form of followership.
p191
During the 1970s, as its forces slowly retreated from the Asian mainland, the U.S. military establishment seemed to dwindle. Even with veterans' and outer-space expenditures included, war spending declined as a portion of the GNP. Conscription ended in 1973. All proposals for overt military intervention in the Third World-whether in Angola, West Asia, Afghanistan, the Horn of Africa, the Caribbean, or Central America-were sidetracked. From an earlier high of 3.5 million people in 1968, the active military fell to 2 million at the beginning of the 1980s.
But in real terms the military establishment is enormous, much more than most people know To the million on active duty must be added another 2 million in the reserves, and a million civilians in the defense department. This 5-million-figure total is merely the base for a much larger number of people in war industries, space exploration, war think tanks and veterans' assistance. Behind this total group of more than 12 million-and profiting from intercourse with them-stands an elaborate network of war industry associations, veterans' organizations, special associations for each branch of the armed services, and general organizations such as the American Security Council and the Committee on the Present Danger. But there is something else that George Washington could never have dreamed of when he warned against an overgrown military establishment and that Dwight D. Eisenhower never mentioned in his warning against the military-industrial complex: namely, a transnational military complex. This American-led complex has five military components beyond the narrowly defined U.S. military-industrial complex itself:
1. The dozen or so countries formally allied with the United States through NATO
2. Other industrialized countries not formerly part of NATO, such as Spain, Israel, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand
3. A large portion of the Third World countries
4. Intelligence and police forces throughout the "Free World"
5. Irregular forces composed of primitive tribesmen, often operating behind the lines of the Second World countries.
All these forces are backed up by a support infrastructure which includes training schools, research institutes, foreign aid, and complex systems of communication and logistics.
If there is one central fact about this transnational military complex at the start of the 1980s it is growth. Paradoxically, every arms-control agreement has been used as a device to allow growth up to certain ceilings, rather than prevent it. And since those ceilings apply only to selected weapons systems, growth tends to be totally uncontrolled in all other forms of destruction. In the United States, total military expenditure has started to move upward at a rate of about 5 percent annual growth in real terms-that is, after being corrected for the declining value of the dollar. A drive is under way to register young people for a draft, while also providing alternative forms of civilian service (at poverty wages) for people objecting to military service on moral, religious, or political grounds. New weapons systems are being initiated-particularly the MX missile, which holds forth the promise of a "first strike" capability against the Soviet Union. Major steps are being taken to increase the military strength of all the other components of the transnational complex-
particularly through the expansion of both tactical and strategic nuclear weapons in Western Europe and the beefing up of the defense forces and nuclear capabilities of the Japanese. Above all, despite some internal conflicts on when and where, the leaders of the U.S. Establishment have become more willing to use these forces. Richard Falk of Princeton University presents this thesis: "A new consensus among American political leaders favors intervention, whenever necessary, to protect the resource base of Trilateralistic nations'-Europe, the United States and Japan-prosperity and dominance." 3 This has required strenuous propaganda efforts to overcome the so-called "post-Vietnam syndrome," that is, popular resistance to the sending of U.S. troops into new military ventures abroad. Equally strenuous efforts are made to convince people in Western Europe that as East-West tensions have been relaxing and East-West trade rising, the West faces a greater threat than ever before of a Soviet invasion.
The logic of this growth involves a host of absurdities. First of all, statistical hocus-pocus hides the overwhelming military superiority of the "Free World." One trick is to compare the military spending of the United States with the Warsaw Pact countries but to exclude NATO. Another trick is to compare the NATO countries of Europe with the Warsaw Pact countries, but to exclude the United States. Still another is to exclude not merely Japan, but also the huge Chinese military forces lined up on China's border with the Soviet Union. Any truly global picture shows that while the geographical scope of the "Free World" has been shrinking, its military capability has been expanding. This expansion has been so rapid that there may even be good reason for the nervous old men in the Kremlin to feel threatened.
Second, much of this expanding military power involves nothing more than overkill. Thus just one Poseidon submarine carries 160 nuclear warheads, each four times more powerful than the Hiroshima bomb. These warheads are enough, as President Carter stated in 1979, "to destroy every large and medium-sized city in the Soviet Union." Pointing out that the total U.S. force at that time could inflict more than fifty times as much damage on the Soviet Union, President Carter then went on to raise the level of overkill still higher.
Third, the advocates of new interventionism foster the delusion that military force can solve a host of intertwined political, economic, social, and moral problems. This delusion was evidenced in the long-term and highly expensive U.S. support for the Shah of Iran and the Somoza dictatorship in Nicaragua. As U.S. strike forces are being prepared for intervention in West Asia (whether in Saudi Arabia, Libya, or elsewhere) the presumption is that military action of this type would preserve the availability of petroleum for the West. What is blindly lost sight of is the high probability-and in the judgment of many, the certainty-that any such intervention would precipitate the blowing up of the very oil fields from which the deep thinkers in the White House, Wall Street, and the Pentagon want to get assured supplies.
Yet in the words of Shakespeare's Polonius, "If this be madness, yet there is method in it." It is the not-so-stupid madness of the growing militarism which is an inherent part of friendly fascism's unfolding logic. "Militarism," Woodrow Wilson once pointed out at West Point in 1916, "does not consist of any army, nor even in the existence of a very great army. Militarism is a spirit. It is a point of view." 10 That spirit is the use of violence as a solution to problems. The point of view is something that spills over into every field of life-even into the school and the family.
Under the militarism of German, Italian, and Japanese fascism violence was openly glorified. It was applied regionally-by the Germans in Europe and England, the Italians in the Mediterranean, the Japanese in Asia. In battle, it was administered by professional militarists who, despite many conflicts with politicians, were guided by old-fashioned standards of duty, honor, country, and willingness to risk their own lives.
The emerging militarism of friendly fascism is somewhat different. lt is global in scope. It involves weapons of doomsday proportions, something that Hitler could dream of but never achieve. It is based on an integration between industry, science, and the military that the old-fashioned fascists could never even barely approximate. It points toward equally close integration among military, paramilitary, and civilian elements. Many of the civilian leaders-such as Zbigniew Brzezinski or Paul Nitze-tend to be much more bloodthirsty than any top brass. In turn, the new-style military professionals tend to become corporate-style entrepreneurs who tend to operate-as Major Richard A. Gabriel and Lieutenant Colonel Paul L. Savage have disclosed-in accordance with the ethics of the marketplace. The old buzzwords of duty, honor, and patriotism are mainly used to justify officer subservience to the interests of transnational corporations and the continuing presentation of threats to some corporate investments as threats to the interest of the American people as a whole. Above all, in sharp contrast with classic fascism's glorification of violence, the friendly fascist orientation is to sanitize, even hide, the greater violence of modern warfare behind such "value-free" terms as "nuclear exchange," "counterforce" and "flexible response," behind the huge geographical distances between the senders and receivers of destruction through missiles or even on the "automated battlefield," and the even greater psychological distances between the First World elites and the ordinary people who might be consigned to quick or slow death.
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William W. Turner
"Leadership in the right has fallen to new organizations with lower profiles and better access to power . . . What is characteristic of this right is its closeness to government power and the ability this closeness gives to hide its political extremism under the cloak of respectability."
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Although most of these right-wing extremists avoid open identification with the classic fascists, the similarities with the early fascist movements of the 1920s are clear. Small clusters of highly strung, aggressive people think that if Hitler and Mussolini (both of whom started from tiny beginnings) could make it into the Big Time under conditions of widespread misfortune, fortune might someday smile on them too.
I doubt it. Their dreams of future power are illusory. To view them as the main danger is to assume that history is obliging enough to repeat itself in unchanged form. Indeed, their major impact-apart from their contribution to domestic violence, discussed in "The Ladder of Terror," (chapter 14)-is to make the more dangerous right-wing extremists seem moderate in comparison.
The greatest danger or the right is the rumbling thunder, no longer very distant, from a huge array of well-dressed, well-educated activists who hide their extremism under the cloak of educated respectability. Unlike the New Left of the 1960s, which reached its height during the civil rights and antiwar movements, the Radical Right rose rapidly during the 1970s on a much larger range of issues. By the beginning of the 1980s, they were able to look back on a long list of victories. Their domestic successes are impressive:
* Holding up ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment
* Defeating national legislation for consumer protection
* Defeating national legislation to strengthen employees' rights to organize and bargain collectively
* Undermining Medicare payments for abortions
* Bringing back capital punishment in many states
* Killing anti-gun legislation
* Promoting tax-cutting programs, such as the famous Proposition 13 in California, already followed by similar actions in other parts of the country
* Promoting limitations on state and local expenditures, which in effect (like the tax-cutting measures) mean a reduction in social programs for the poor and the lower middle-classes
* Undermining affirmative-action programs to provide better job opportunities for women, blacks and Hispanics
* Killing or delaying legislation to protect the rights of homosexuals
They have also succeeded in getting serious attention for a whole series of "nutty" proposals to amend the Constitution to require a balanced federal budget or set a limit on the growth of federal expenditures. By the beginning of 1980, about 30 State legislatures had already petitioned the Congress for a Constitutional convention to propose such an amendment; only 34 are needed to force such a convention, the first since 1787. The major purpose of this drive, however, was not to get a Constitutional amendment. Rather, it was to force the president and Congress to go along with budget cutting on domestic programs. By this standard it has been remarkably successful.
On foreign issues, the Radical Right came within a hair's breadth of defeating the Panama Canal Treaty and the enabling legislation needed to carry it out. They have been more successful, however, on these matters:
* Reacting to the Iranian and Afghanistan crises of 1979 with a frenetic escalation of cold war
* Helping push the Carter administration toward more war spending and more militarist policies
* Making any ratification of the SALT II treaty dependent on continued escalation in armaments
* Preventing Senate consideration, let alone ratification, of the pending UN covenants against genocide, on civil and political rights, and on economic, social, and cultural rights.
In a vital area bridging domestic and foreign policy, they provide a major portion of support for the drive to register young people for possible military service and then, somewhat later, reinstitute conscription.
Almost all of these issues are "gut issues." They can be presented in manner that appeals to deep-seated frustrations and moves inactive people into action. Yet the New Right leaders are not, as the Americans for Democratic Action point out in A Citizen's Guide to the Right Wing, "rabid crackpots or raving zealots." The movement they are building is "not a lunatic fringe but the programmed product of right wing passion, plus corporate wealth, plus 20th century technology-and its strength
This strength has been embodied in a large number of fast-moving organizations:
* American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC)
* American Security Council
* Americans Against Union Control of Government
* Citizens for the Republic
* Committee for Responsible Youth Politics
* Committee for the Survival of a Free Congress
* Committee on the Present Danger
* Conservative Victory Fund
* Consumer Alert Council
* Fund for a Conservative Majority
* Gun Owners of America
* Heritage Foundation
* National Conservative Political Action Committee
* National Rifle Association Political Action Committee (PAC)
* Our PAC
* Public Service PAC
* Right To Keep and Bear Arms Political Victory Fund
* Tax Reform Immediately (TRIM)
* The Conservative Caucus (TCC)
* Young Americans for Freedom/The Fund for a Conservative Majority
Many of these groups, it must be understood, include nonrabid crackpots and nonraving zealots. They are often backed up-particularly on fiscal matters-by the National Taxpayers Union and many libertarian groups which may part company from them on such issues as the escalation of war spending or the return of military conscription.
All of them, it should be added, seem to be the recipients of far more funds than were ever available to the less respectable extremists. Much of this money unquestionably seeps down, as the ADA insists, from corporate coffers. Some of it unquestionably comes from massive mail solicitations by Richard Viguerie, who has been aptly christened the "Direct Mail Wizard of the New Right." Since 1964, when he was working on Senator Goldwater's campaign for the presidency, Viguerie has been developing a mailing list operation which puts the New Right into touch with millions upon millions of Americans.
Today, the momentum of the Radical Right is impressive. It has defeated many well-known liberal candidates for reelection to national, state, and local offices. Having helped elect a quarter of the members of the House of Representatives in 1976, it looks forward to much greater influence by the mid-1980s. Like the American labor movement, which has always supported some Republicans as well as many Democrats, the Radical Right has no firm commitment to any one party. Its strength among Democrats is much larger than that of labor among Republicans. It supports candidates of the two major parties and is closely associated with small-party movements, which sometimes have a decisive impact on electoral or legislative campaigns. Its biggest success, however, is that many of its positions which first sounded outrageous when voiced during the Goldwater campaign of 1964 are now regarded as part of the mainstream. This is not the result of Radical Right shifts toward the center. On the contrary, it is the result of a decisive movement toward the right by the Ultra-Rich and the Corporate Overseers.
The unfolding logic of the Radical Right, however, is neither to remain static or to become more openly reactionary. "We are no longer working to preserve the status quo," says Paul Weyrich, one of its ablest leaders. "We are radicals working to overturn the present power structure." To understand what Weyrich means, we must heed Amo J. Mayer's warning-based on his study of classic fascism-that in a time of rapid change "even reactionary, conservative and counter-revolutionary movements project a populist, reformist and emancipatory image of their purpose." More populism of this type can be expected: in a word, more attacks on the existing Establishment by people who want to strengthen it by making it much more authoritarian and winning for themselves more influential positions in it.
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The routinized reiteration of this older conservative doctrine, however, is buttressed by a new ideological reformation that emphasizes the excellence of hierarchy, the wonders of technology, and the goodness of hard times. In The Twilight of Authority, Robert Nisbet makes an eloquent call for a return to the old aristocratic principle of hierarchy: "It is important that rank, class and estate in all spheres become once again honored rather than, as is now the case, despised or feared by intellectuals." If democracy is to be diminished and if rank, class, and estate are once again to be honored, the intellectuals at the middle and lower levels of the establishment must be brought into line on many points. Those who advocate a somewhat more egalitarian society must be pilloried as "levellers" who would reduce everybody to a dull, gray uniformity. They must be convinced that the ungrateful lower classes whom they hope to raise up are, in fact, genetically and culturally inferior. They must be flattered into seeing themselves as part of a society in which true merit, as defined by the powerful, is usually recognized and rewarded. The power of the Ultra-Rich and the Corporate Overlords must be publicly minimized and the endless plutocratic search for personal I gratification must be obscured by lamenting the self-gratifying hedonism | of the masses.
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A successful transition to friendly fascism would clearly require a J lowering of popular aspirations and demands. Only then can freer rein be given to the corporate drives for boundless acquisition. Since it is difficult to tell ordinary people that unemployment, inflation, and urban filth are good for them, it is more productive to get middle-class leaders on the austerity bandwagon and provide them with opportunities for increased prestige by doing what they can to lower levels of aspirations. Indeed, the ideology of mass sacrifice had advanced so far by the end of the 1970s that the most serious and best-advertised debate among New York liberals on the New York City fiscal crisis rested on the assumption that the level of municipal employment and services had to be cut. The only questions open for debate were "Which ones?" and "How much?" This ideology-although best articulated in general form by political scientists like Samuel Huntington and sociologists like Daniel Bell-also receives decisive support from Establishment economists.
Religious doctrines on the goodness of personal sacrifice in this world have invariably been associated with promises of eternal bliss in the next world. Similarly, the emerging ideologies on the virtues of austerity are bound to be supplemented by visions of "pie in the sky by and by." In their most vulgar form these ideologies may simply reiterate the economistic notion that reduced consumption now will mean more profitability, which will mean more capital investment that in turn will mean increased consumption later. In more sophisticated form, these ideologies take the form of a misty-eyed humanism. While moving toward friendly fascism we might hear much talk like Jean-Francois Revel's proclamation that "The revolution of the twentieth century will take place in the United States" or Charles Reich's view that the counterculture of the young will, by itself, break through the "metal and plastic and sterile stone" and bring about "a veritable greening of America." Indeed, work at such "think-tanks" as the Rand Corporation and Hudson Institute increasingly foregoes its old base in economics and related "dismal" disciplines for straight and unadulterated "humanism," the rhetorical promotion of which seems directly related to their involvement in dehumanized and dehumanizing technologies.
As with the ideologies of classic fascism, there is no need for thematic consistency in the new ideologies. An ideological menu is most useful when it provides enough variety to meet divergent needs and endless variations on interwoven melodic lines. Unlike the ideologies of classic fascism, however, these new ideologies on market virtue, hierarchic excellence, wondrous technology, and the goodness of hard times are not needed to mobilize masses to high peaks of emotional fervor. In contrast, they help prevent mass mobilization. Yet their growing function is to maintain the loyalty of intellectuals, scientists, and technicians at the Establishment's middle and lower ranks, thereby minimizing the need for systemic purges. On this score the two streams of conservative ideology have been remarkably effective. They have taken over the most commanding heights on the intellectual fronts, reducing to a "small section" those anti-Establishment intellectuals who try to swim against the main currents. Indeed, through a remarkable dialectic, the opponents of the so-called "new class" have themselves become a dominant new class of intellectuals who provide the moral and intellectual guidance on the harsh and nasty imperatives of imperial survival in the era of the stagflation-power tradeoff and the movement toward Super-America, Inc.
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TRIPLESPEAK
During the take-off toward a more perfect capitalism, the debasement of the language moved no slower than the abasement of the currency through creeping inflation. The myths of the cold war gave us the imagery of a "free world" that included many tyrannical regimes on one side and the "worldwide communist conspiracy" to describe the other. The "end of ideology" ideologies gave us the myth of all-powerful knowledge elites to flatter the egos of intellectuals and scientists in the service of a divided Establishment. The accelerating rise of scientific and pseudoscientific jargon fragmented social and natural scientists into small ingroups that concentrated more and more on small slices of reality, separating them more than ever before from the presumably unsophisticated (although functionally literate) working-buying classes.
In the early days of this process, George Orwell envisioned a future society in which the oligarchs of 1984 would use linguistic debasement as a conscious method of control. Hence the Party Leaders imposed doublethink on the population and set up a long-term program for developing newspeak. If Orwell were alive today, I think he would see that many of his ideas are now being incorporated in something just as sophisticated and equally fearful. I am referring to the new triplespeak: a three-tiered language of myth, jargon, and confidential straight talk.
Unlike Orwell's doublethink and newspeak, triplespeak is not part of any overall plan. It merely develops as a logical outcome of the Establishment's maturation, an essential element in the tightening of oligarchic control at the highest levels of the Golden International. Without myths, the rulers and their aides cannot maintain support at the lower levels of the major establishments, and the might itself-as well as the legitimacy of empire-may decay. Jargon is required to spell out the accumulating complexities of military, technological, economic, political, and cultural power. Straight talk is needed to illuminate the secret processes of high decision making and confidential bargaining and to escape the traps created by myth and jargon.
Herein lie many difficulties. With so much indirection and manipulation in the structure of transnational power, there is no longer any place for the pomp and ceremony that helped foster the effulgent myths surrounding past empires-no imperial purple, no unifying queen, king, or imperial council, no mass religion or ideology to fire the emotions of dependent masses. Hence the symbolic trappings of past empires must be replaced by smaller mystifications that at least have the merit of helping maintain the self-respect and motivations of the elites at the middle and lower levels of the national Establishments. Thus the operating rules of modern capitalist empire require ascending rhetoric about economic and social development, human rights, and the self-effacing role of transnational corporations in the promotion of progress and prosperity. The more lies are told, the more important it becomes for the liars to justify themselves by deep moral commitments to high-sounding objectives that mask the pursuit of money and power. The more a country like the United States imports its prosperity from the rest of the world, the more its leaders must dedicate themselves to the sacred ideal of exporting abundance, technology, and civilization to everyone else. The further this myth may be from reality, the more significant it becomes-and the greater the need for academic notables to document its validity by bold assertion and self-styled statistical demonstration. "The might that makes right must be a different right from that of the right arm," the political scientist, Charles Merriam, stated many years ago. "It must be a might deep rooted in emotion, embedded in feelings and aspirations, in morality, in sage maxims, in forms of rationalization . . .~, 30
Thus, in 1975 and 1976, while the long right arm of the American presidency was supporting bloody dictatorships in Chile, Brazil, Indochina, and Iran (to mention but a few), Daniel P. Moynihan, the U.S. ambassador at the United Nations, wrapped himself in the flag of liberty and human rights. His eloquent rhetoric-deeply rooted in emotion and embedded in feelings and aspirations-set a high standard of creative myth-making. At that time, his superiors in Washington failed to realize that Moynihan's approach was, in Walter Laqueur's terms, "not a lofty and impractical endeavor, divorced from the harsh realities of world endeavor, but itself a kind of Realpolitik." Within two years, however, the next president, Jimmy Carter, seized the torch from Moynihan's hand and, without thanks or attribution, set a still higher standard by clothing the might of his cruise missile and neutron bomb in human-rights rhetoric even more deeply rooted in morality, sage maxims, and forms of rationalization.
Domestic myths are the daily bread of the restructured Radical Right and the old-style and new-style conservatives. Many of the ideologies discussed in the last section of this chapter serve not only as cover-ups for concentrated oligarchic power. They provide code words for the more unspoken, mundane myths that define unemployed people as lazy or are brought into being.
unemployable, women, blacks and Hispanics as congenitally inferior to other people. Presidential candidates invariably propagate the myth that Americans are innately superior to the people of other countries and that therefore they have a high destiny to fulfill in the leadership of the world's forces for peace, freedom, democracy, and-not to be forgotten- private corporate investment and profitability. Trying to flatter the voting public as a whole, they ascribe most of America's difficulties to foreign enemies or a few individuals at home-like Richard Nixon-who have betrayed the national goodness. Not so long ago, General Westmoreland went much further when, to reassure the more naive members of the American officer corps, he soberly declared that "Despite the final failure of the South Vietnamese, the record of the American military of never having lost a war is still intact." 33 With the arrival of friendly fascism, myths like these would no longer be greeted, at least not publicly, with the degree of skepticism they still provoke. Instead, the Establishment would agree that the domestic tranquility afforded by these convenient reassurances qualified them, in contrast to more critical, less comforting diagnoses, as "responsible." As old myths get worn out or new myths punctured, still newer ones (shall we call them "myths of the month"?) are brought into being.
The momentum of jargon would not abate in a friendly fascist society but move steadily ahead with the ever-increasing specialization and subspecialization in every field. New towers of Babel are, and would be, continuously erected throughout the middle and lower levels of the Establishment. Communication among the different towers, however, becomes increasingly difficult. One of the most interesting examples is the accumulation of complex, overlapping, and mystifying jargons devised by the experts in various subdivisions of communications itself (semiotics, semantics, linguistics, content analysis, information theory, telematics, computer programming, etc.), none of whom can communicate very well with all the others. In military affairs, jargon wraps otherwise unpleasant realities in a cloak of scientific objectivity. Thus, "surgical strike," "nuclear exchange," and even the colloquial "nukes" all hide the horrors of atomic warfare. The term "clean bomb" for the new neutron bomb hides the fact that although it may not send much radioactive material into the atmosphere it would kill all human life through radiation in a somewhat limited area; this makes it the dirtiest of all bombs. Similarly, in global economics the jargon of exchange rates and IMF conditions facilitates, while also concealing, the application of transnational corporate power on Third World countries. The jargon of domestic economics, as 1 have already shown, hides the crude realities of corporate aggrandizement, inflation, and unemployment behind a dazzling array of technical terms that develop an esprit de corps which unites the various sectors of Establishment economics.
Rising above the major portion of jargon and myth is straight talk, the blunt and unadorned language of who gets what, when and how. If money talks, as it is said, then power whispers. The language of both power and money is spoken in hushed whispers at tax-deductible luncheons or drinking hours at the plushest clubs and bars or in the well-shrouded secrecy of executive suites and boardrooms. Straight talk is never again to be recorded on Nixon-style tapes or in any memoranda that are not soon routed to the paper shredders.
As one myth succeeds another and as new forms of jargon are invented, straight talk becomes increasingly important. Particularly at the higher levels of the Establishment it is essential to deal frankly with the genuine nature of imperial alternatives and specific challenges. But the emerging precondition for imperial straight talk is secrecy. Back in 1955, Henry Kissinger might publicly refer to "our primary task of dividing the USSR and China." * By the time the American presidency was making progress in this task, not only Kissinger but the bulk of foreign affairs specialists had learned the virtues of prior restraint and had carefully refrained from dealing with the subject so openly. It may be presumed that after the publication of The Crisis Democracy, Samuel Huntington learned a similar lesson and that consultants to the Trilateral Commission will never again break the Establishment's taboos by publicly calling for less democracy. Nor is it likely that in discussing human rights the American president will talk openly on the rights and privileges of American-based transnationals in other countries. Nor am I at all sure that realists like Irving Kristol, Raymond Aron, George Liska, and James Burnham will continue to be appreciated if they persist in writing boldly about the new American empire and its responsibilities. Although their "empire" is diligently distinguished from "imperialism," it will never be allowed to enter official discourse.
For imperial straight talk to mature, communication must be thoroughly protected from public scrutiny. Top elites must not only meet together frequently; they must have opportunities to work, play, and relax together for long periods of time.
Also, people from other countries must be brought into this process; otherwise there is no way to avoid the obvious misunderstandings that develop when people from different cultural backgrounds engage in efforts at genuine communication. If the elites of other countries must learn English (as they have long been doing), it is also imperative for American elites to become much more fluent in other tongues than they have ever been in the past. In any language there are niceties of expression-particularly with respect to money and power-that are always lost or diluted if translated into another language. With or without the help of interpreters, it will be essential that serious analysis, confidential exchanges, and secret understandings be multilingual. Thus, whether American leadership matures or obsolesces, expands or contracts, English can no longer be the lingua franca of modern empire. The control of "Fortress America" would require reasonable fluency in Spanish by many top elites (although not necessarily by presidents and first ladies). Trilateral Empire, in turn, imposes more challenging-but not insuperable- linguistic burdens.
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Daniel Fusfield
"There is a subtle three-way trade-off between escalating unemployment together with other unresolved social problems, rising taxes, and inflation. In practice, the corporate state has bought all three."
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What will daily life be like under friendly fascism?
In answering this question I think immediately of Robert Theobald's frog: "Frogs will permit themselves to be boiled to death. If the temperature of the water in which the frog is sitting is slowly raised, the frog does not become aware of its danger until it is too late to do anything about it."
Although I am not sure it can ever be too late to fight oppression, the moral of the frog story is clear: as friendly fascism emerges, the conditions of daily life for most people move from bad to worse-and for many people all the way to Irving Kristol's "worst."
To Fusfeld's trio of more unemployment, taxes, and inflation, however, we must also add a decline in social services and a rise in shortages, waste and pollution, nuclear poison and junk. These are the consequences of corporate America's huge investment in the ideology of popular sacrifice and in the ``hard times" policies that have US "pull in the belts" to help THEM in efforts to expand power, privilege, and wealth.
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Slogan of the Medici family
"Money to get power, power to protect money."
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Capital has always been a form of power. As physical wealth (whether land, machinery, buildings, materials, or energy resources), capital is productive power. As money, it is purchasing power, the ability to get whatever may be exchanged for it. The ownership of property is the power of control over its use. In turn, the power of wealth, money, and ownership has always required both protection and encouragement through many other forms of power. Businessmen have never needed theorists to tell them about the connection. It has taken economic theorists more than a century to develop the pretense that money and power are separate. Indeed, while Establishment militarists persistently exaggerate the real power of destructive violence, the same Establishment's economic policymakers increasingly present destructive economic policies as though they have no connection with power.
The vehicle for doing this is becoming the so-called "tradeoff" policy. The more conservative Establishment notables argue that the way to fight inflation is to curtail growth, even though the inescapable side effect is recession and higher unemployment. Their more liberal colleagues politely beg to differ, arguing that the way to cope with unemployment is to "reflate" the economy. For scientific support, both sides habitually refer to a curve developed by A. W. Phillips on the relation between unemployment and changing money rates in England from 1861 to 1957. Giving modern support to part of Karl Marx's theory on the "reserve army of the unemployed," Phillips showed that when more people were jobless, there was less chance of an increase in money wage rates. Phillips also made a sharp distinction between wages and prices, mentioning prices only to point out in passing that a wage increase does not by itself require a proportionate increase in prices. On this side of the Atlantic, Paul Samuelson and various colleagues applied Phillips's curve to prices instead of wages, and hiding their biases behind Phillips's data, developed the current tradeoff theory.
In its more virulent form at the beginning of the 1980s, this theory means the following: Recession is needed to bring the rate of inflation down below the double-digit level-that is, to less than 10 percent. The most naive backers of the theory suggest that once this is done, the "back of inflation will be broken," inflationary expectations will be buried, never to rise again, and the country can return to the good old days of Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon.
Many liberal opponents of this theory, in turn, accept on good faith the credentials of the self-styled inflation fighters. Apparently operating on the premise that economic policymaking is a technical exercise in puzzlesolving, they argue that the conservatives are simply mistaken in their understanding of economic behavior, and in failing to see that untold millions may be injured by pro-recession policies. In my judgment, however, the liberals who take this view fail to understand or face up to the nature of Establishment power.
In a world of many divergent objectives that must be reconciled with each other, the leaders of any Establishment are continuously engaged in complex juggling acts. Whether developing global investment policies or apportioning economic or military aid around the world, everything cannot be done at the same time. Above all, in planning for corporate profitability, compromises must continuously be made. Profitability in one area is often accompanied by unavoidable losses in another. Short-term profits must often be sacrificed in the interest of the greater profitability that can come only from the fruition of long-term investment programs. Above all, the maintenance or strengthening of the power to protect future profitability often requires the sacrifice of some present, even future, profits. Neither market power nor the political power supporting it are free goods. They too cost money-and in periods of stagflation they tend to cost more money than before.
Toward the end of 1979, more than 100 corporate executives attended a meeting of the Business Council at Hot Springs, Virginia. Almost to a man, they enthusiastically supported the recessionary policies of the Federal Reserve Board and the Treasury. "The sooner we suffer the pain," stated Irving S. Shapiro, chairman of Du Pont, "the sooner we will be through. I'm quite prepared to endure whatever pain I have to in the short term." Steven Rattner, the reporter for The New York Times, pointed out that signs of suffering were nowhere in sight: "The long black limousines and private jet planes were still evident in abundance." Rattner also suggested that Shapiro was apparently referring not to any loss in his personal income but rather to the "pain" that might be inflicted on Du Pont's profits.
How much profit a company like Du Pont might lose in the short run is a matter of conjecture. Unlike American workers, a giant corporation can engage in fancy tax-juggling that pushes its losses on to ordinary taxpayers. Unlike middle-class people, the Ultra-Rich billionaires and centimillionaires can shift the costs of recession or social expenditures to the lowly millionaires, who in turn can pass them along to the middle classes. Above all, the hyenas of economic life can get theirs from recession as well as inflation.
Any serious effort to control stagflation either its recession side or its inflation side-would require serious limitations on both Big Business and the support given to it by Big Government. Any such limitations, in turn, would have to be backed up by anti-Establishment coalition including, but not limited to, organized labor. The other side of this coin may now be seen in stark clarity: The price of preventing any such coalition and of preserving, if not expanding, Establishment power, is to choose continuing stagnation as the price that must be paid to protect future profitability. The real tradeoff by the big-time traders is not between price stability and high employment. Rather, it is the sacrifice of both in order to curtail union power, dampen rising aspirations among the population at large, and take advantage of both inflationary windfalls and recessionary bargains.
Indeed, not only the U.S. Establishment but the Golden International as a whole has in practice accepted the realities of continuing stagflation (with whatever ups and down may materialize in the proportions of combined inflation and unemployment) as the new economic order of the "Free World." This has long been the operating doctrine of the International Monetary Fund in Third World countries. It is now emerging as a doctrinal strategy for the 1980s in the entire First World.
In the 1960s and early 1970s no one ever dreamed that Americans could become accustomed to levels of either inflation or official unemployment as high as 6 or 7 percent a year. As the Big Business-Big Government partnership becomes closer, the levels previously regarded as unacceptable will-like the hot water to which a frog has become accustomed-be regarded not only as normal but as objectives of official policy. Indeed, 8 percent unemployment is already being regarded as full employment and 8 percent inflation as price stability. Under the emerging triplespeak-in a manner reminding us of "War Is Peace" and "Freedom Is Slavery" in Orwell's 1984-the norm for unemployment could reach and the norm for inflation far exceed the double-digit level of ten apiece. When the two are added together, this provides what I call a "limited misery index"-limited because no similar arithmetic value can be given to such things as job insecurity, crime, pollution, alienation, and junk. The so-called "tradeoff" theory merely tells us that either of the two elements in the index may go down a little as the other one goes up. What the tradeoffers fail to point out is that despite fluctuations the long-term trend of the two together is upward. Thus in the opening months of the 1980s, even without correcting for the official underestimation of unemployment, the limited misery index approached 20. Under friendly fascism it would move toward 30....
MORE MONEY MOVING UPWARD
As the limited misery index creeps or spurts ahead, a spiraling series of cure-alls are brought forth from the Establishment's medicine chest. Logically, each one leads toward the others. Together, apart from anyone's intentions, the medicines make the malady worse.
To cure inflation, interest rates are raised. This cannot be done by bankers alone. Intervention by central banks, acting on their behalf, is necessary. This results in a quick upward movement in prices and a further increase in government spending on new debt service. The companion step is to cut government spending on most social services- education, health, streetcleaning, fire and police protection, libraries, employment projects, etc. The deepest cuts are made in the lowest income areas, where the misery is the sharpest and political resistance tends to be less organized.
To cure stagnation or recession, there are two patent medicines. The first is more Big Welfare for Big Business-through more reductions in capital gains taxes, lower taxes on corporations and the rich, more tax shelters, and, locally, more tax abatement for luxury housing and office buildings. These generous welfare payments are justified in the name of growthmanship and productivity. Little attention is given to the fact that the major growth sought is in profitability, an objective mentioned only by a few ultra-Right conservatives who still believe in straight talk. Less attention is given to the fact that the productivity sought is defined essentially as resulting from investment in capital-intensive machinery and technology that displace labor and require more fossil fuels. The second patent medicine, justified in terms of national emergencies with only sotto voce reference to its implications for maintaining employment, is more spending on death machines and war forces. This, in turn, spurs the growth of the federal deficit.
To keep the deficit within limits and provide enough leeway for alleviation of the worst cuts in social services, higher taxes are required. This is done by a hidden national sales tax. The preparations for this have already been made by preliminary legislative action toward the imposition of the so-called Value Added Tax (VAT), already in force in France and England. VAT takes a bite out of every stage of production. At the end of the line, this means higher prices for consumers.... And so the dismal round continues-higher interest rates, cuts in social services, more tax subsidies for Big Business, and higher sales taxes hitting the middle- and lower-income groups.
Over the short run (which may be stretched out longer than some expect), the net effect of this cycle is to move purchasing power upward toward the most privileged people. This compensates in part for the paradox that making money by raising prices reduces the value of the money made. Over the longer run, however, it intensifies the older contradiction of capitalism, namely, that profit maximization undermines the mass purchasing power required for continued profitability.
p219
The major responsibility of corporate executives, so long as they are not constrained by enforced law, is to maximize their long-term accumulation of capital and power no matter what the cost may be to ... people or physical resources.

excerpted from the book
Friendly Fascism
The New Face of Power in America
by Bertram Gross
South End Press, 1980, paper


p331
Karl Popper
""It can't happen here" is always wrong: a dictatorship can happen anywhere."
p331
IMPOSSIBILITY: IT COULDN'T HAPPEN
The thought that some form of new fascism might possibly-or even probably-emerge in America is more than unpleasant. For many people in other countries, it is profoundly disturbing; for Americans, it is a source of stabbing anguish. For those who still see America as a source of inspiration or leadership, it would mean the destruction of the last best hope on earth. Even for those who regard America as the center of world reaction, it suggests that things can become still worse than they are.
An immediate-and all too human-reaction among Americans, and friends of America, is to deny the possibility. In other countries it might happen-but not here. In the Communist world, dictatorships of the proletariat or the Party . . . Military juntas in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Nigeria, and many other places . . . Other dictatorial styles in India, Pakistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the Philippines . . . But nothing like this in the prosperous, enlightened nations of Western civilization and the Judeo-Christian traditi

sorry repeat post

excerpted from the book
Friendly Fascism
The New Face of Power in America
by Bertram Gross
South End Press, 1980, paper


p331
Karl Popper
""It can't happen here" is always wrong: a dictatorship can happen anywhere."
p331
IMPOSSIBILITY: IT COULDN'T HAPPEN
The thought that some form of new fascism might possibly-or even probably-emerge in America is more than unpleasant. For many people in other countries, it is profoundly disturbing; for Americans, it is a source of stabbing anguish. For those who still see America as a source of inspiration or leadership, it would mean the destruction of the last best hope on earth. Even for those who regard America as the center of world reaction, it suggests that things can become still worse than they are.
An immediate-and all too human-reaction among Americans, and friends of America, is to deny the possibility. In other countries it might happen-but not here. In the Communist world, dictatorships of the proletariat or the Party . . . Military juntas in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Nigeria, and many other places . . . Other dictatorial styles in India, Pakistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the Philippines . . . But nothing like this in the prosperous, enlightened nations of Western civilization and the Judeo-Christian tradition. Above all, not in the United States of America, not in the land of the free and the home of the brave . . .
But why not? Why is it impossible?
Many of the arguments purporting to demonstrate impossibility actually demonstrate little more than an unwillingness to "think the unthinkable." Some people try to protect their sensibilities behind a tangle of terminological disputation. The word "fascism," they say, is an emotion-laden term of abuse, as though the brutal, inhuman realities behind other terms-whether "manipulatory authoritarianism," "bureaucratic collectivism," or "military junta"-do not also evoke deep human emotions. Some people argue that the future threat in America is socialist collectivism, not fascism, implying that those who detect a fascist danger are spreading leftist propaganda for the purpose of bringing on a different form of despotism. Others merely react to exaggerated claims that fascism is already here or is inevitable.
Nonetheless, there are at least three serious arguments used by those who think that it could not happen here.
One of the most subtle arguments is "American capitalism does not need fascism."
On this point, let me quote from Corliss Lamont, who grew up as a member of one of the families most closely associated with the Morgans and other titans of American banking:
The capitalist class in the United States does not need a fascist regime in order to maintain its dominance. The radical and revolutionary movements are weak and disunited. A large majority of the trade unions are conservative, and are actually part of the establishment . . . I do not see in the offing any constellation of forces that could put fascism across here.
To buttress his case, Lamont points out that the threat to American civil liberties was much greater during the periods of the notorious Palmer raids after World War I and of McCarthyism after World War II. He also cites various judicial victories in recent civil liberties cases. Unfortunately, he does not deal directly with the structure of the "capitalist class" and the Establishment, nor with any of the domestic and international challenges to American capitalism. Moreover, his thesis on the weakness of "radical and revolutionary movements" and the conservatism of trade unions is a double-edged argument. True, these factors are no serious challenge to capitalist dominance. By the same token, they could not be regarded as serious obstacles to creeping fascism. On this matter, Lamont leaves himself an escape clause to the effect that he does not see the necessary constellation of forces "in the offing."
A similar escape clause has been carved out by Theodore Draper. In a scholarly critique of an earlier article of mine on the subject, he added as an afterthought that he did not intend to give "assurances that we will not follow the German pattern of history into some form of fascism." And then he added that although the Republic is not "immediately in danger, if worse comes to worse, we may yet get some form of fascism.
A more widespread argument is "American democracy is too strong."
It is true, of course, that old-fashioned fascism never took root in a country with a solid tradition and history of constitutional democracy. The kind of democracy that grew up in both England and the United States was too much of a barrier to the Oswald Mosleys, the Huey Longs, and the Father Coughlins of a past generation. Even in France, the rise of the French fascists under Petain occurred only after military conquest by the Nazis.
But this kind of argument boils down to nothing less than the identification of obstacles. It provides no evidence to suggest that these obstacles are immovable objects that cannot be overcome or circumvented in the future.
In the early 1970s this argument took a more exhilarating-albeit occasionally flatulent-form. The democratic forces are becoming stronger.
In The Greening of America, Charles Reich predicted a "revolution of the new generation." He saw in the counterculture of youth a movement that would break through the metal and plastic forms of the Corporate State (which he held was already here) and bring forth a new flowering of the human spirit. This optimistic spirit was repeated in global terms by Jean Francois Revel a year later. In Without Marx and Jesus, Revel pointed out that dissent has always thrived in America and that the new dissenters are building not merely a counterculture but a counter-society that rejects nationalism, inequality, racial and sexual discrimination, and all forms of authoritarianism. As the first and best hope of the world, America will soon produce "a homo novus, a new man very different from other men."
I have never laughed at these salvationist predictions. They are based on an honest perception of many of the things that are not merely good, but wonderful, in my country. In fact, as I demonstrate in "The Democratic Logic in Action" (chapter 20), neither Reich nor Revel, nor other celebrants of America's potentialities have done sufficient justice to the variety of these hopeful currents. But they have tended to exaggerate their strength, perhaps on the theory that a strongly presented prophecy might be self-fulfilling.
I think it imperative to articulate more fully hopeful visions and to ground them on the more hopeful parts of the present. But in doing so, it would be highly misleading to ignore the fact that the new democratic currents represent a threat to all those elements in the Establishment that look forward to a more integrated power structure. This means conflicts whose outcomes cannot be predicted. Revel himself writes that America is "composed of two antagonistic camps of equal size-the dissenters and the conservatives." Writing before the rise of the new Radical Right, he then hazarded the guess that "the odds are in favor of the dissenters." Nonetheless, he accepted the possibility of the authoritarian suppression, sidetracking, or co-opting of the dissenters. I think he would agree with me today that if this should happen there would be many subspecies of the new man-and new woman-faceless oligarchs, humanoid technocrats, and comatose addicts of loveless sex, drugs, madness, and cults.
A third argument is that "While possible, a new form of fascism is too unlikely to be taken seriously."
I see this view as a tribute that blindness pays to vision. It is merely a sophisticated way of conceding possibility while justifying inaction. The outside chance, after all, rarely deserves to be a focus of continuing attention. In terms of its implications, therefore, "unlikely" may be the equivalent of either "impossible" or "so what?"
In daily life, of course, people and groups do take precautionary action to protect themselves or others against some unlikely events. This is the basis of the vast insurance industry in the capitalist world, which provides protection for some people against some of the monetary losses resulting from ill health, accidents, theft, fires, earthquakes, or floods. In all these cases of unlikely "bads," not insurance but prevention is the best protection. In the case of friendly fascism, it is the only protection.
Yet prevention is always difficult and requires entry into many fields. The prevention of disease and the prolongation of life go far beyond mere medical services; they involve nutrition, exercise, housing, peace of mind, and the control of pollution. The prevention of theft and corruption goes far beyond anything that can be done by police, courts, and jailers; it involves employment opportunities, working conditions, the reduction of discrimination and alienation, and a cleaning of higher-level corruption. The record is also discouraging in the case of all the unlikely major calamities of the modern age: power blackouts, the disposal of radioactive wastes from nuclear power plants, the control of plutonium from fast-breeder reactors, the spread of nuclear weapons, and the escalation in ever-deadlier forms of nuclear, chemical, and bacteriological overkill. Here preventive action spreads into other fields, going far beyond anything that can be done by "fail-safe" mechanisms. It involves nothing less than alternative forms of energy, human as well as solar, and the destruction of the deadliest weapons, if not the elimination of war itself as a mode of resolving conflicts.
There are two natural reactions in the face of the difficulties of prevention. One is to push the possibility into the background by mathematically based arguments that the statistical probability is very low. The other is to exaggerate both the horror and the probability of the calamities to be avoided, justifying such exaggeration on the grounds that it alone can move people to action.
I cannot accept either. As in the following chapters, I prefer to deal with preventive action directly. I do so because in my considered judgment, the coming of some new form of fascism in the United States- and other First World countries-is not only more likely than the extreme catastrophe, but it would also contribute to conditions under which most of the others would become less unlikely. At times, I find myself saying that friendly fascism is a two-to-one probability well before the end of the century. Then I stop and remind myself that in diagnosing broad historical trends no quantitative calculus is really possible. A more balanced statement is that friendly-or even unfriendly-fascism is a truly significant, not an insignificant possibility. Perhaps it is even highly probable.
INEVITABILITY: IT WILL HAPPEN
When Herbert Marcuse writes about "incipient fascism," when Kenneth Lamott used ``para-fascism" to describe California as the "distant warning system for the rest of the United States," when Michael Parenti talks about "creeping fascism," the main purpose is to identify present tendencies and future dangers. Similar use might be made of "proto-fascism" or-better yet-"pre-fascism." These are unwhispered words of warning, often engulfed by the vast silences on such subjects by the mass and elite media.
But the ambiguity of these words is often a weakness, one not to be overcome by stridency. They are wide open to anyone's interpretation that what creeps down the road will necessarily get to the road's end, that the latent must become full-blown. The "womb of history" metaphor used so vigorously by Marx tends to suggest that a little fascism is like a little pregnancy. With a strange innocence concerning the possibility of miscarriage or abortion, it can then be assumed that the pre- and the para- must eventually become the real thing itself.
But even without the use of such words I have found that any strong argument on the possibility of neofascism in America leads many people to conclude that it is inevitable. For some, both the logical case and the empirical evidence in present-day tendencies appear overwhelming. The fact that friendly fascism may come in a variety of forms and circumstances-rather than in some single guise and scenario-strengthens the sense of high probability. For others, perhaps, the judgment of inevitability heightens whatever masochistic pleasure people may get from premonitions of doom, or provides justification for personal escapism from any form of political activism or commitment. For still others, I suspect, the sense of inevitability is intensified by disenchantment with liberalism, socialism, and communism. Many of the very people who in previous periods were attacked as agents of "creeping socialism" or "creeping communism,, now feel that if either were to arrive in America-unlikely though this possibility may be-the result might not be too much different from the fruition of "creeping fascism." Indeed the possible convergence of neofascist state-supported capitalism and high-technology state socialism tends to give the impression that there are few alternatives to some form of repressive collectivism as the profile of man's fate by the end of this century.
The power of modern determinism lies in its "if-then" formulation: "If one does A, then B will result." In truly scientific terms the "will result" is generally a probability statement. But in the real world of political or managerial control, there is always a strong tendency to let the probabilistic tone fade into the background and to exploit the propagandistic potentialities of a more deterministic mood. In the work of many self-styled Marxists, this has led to an interesting contradiction. On the one hand, the collapse of capitalism under the battering ram of a proletarian revolution is often seen as inevitable. On the other hand, the leaders of the working class must not merely ride the waves of an inevitable future. Rather, they must work strenuously to bring the inevitable into being. Expressing the essence of a long stream of philosophic thought from Kant through and past Hegel, Engels put this powerfully in his cryptic thesis that "freedom is the recognition of necessity." While anti-Marxists are always eager to attack the alleged determinism of Karl Marx, they are rarely unloath to voice their own form of determinism. Thus Friedrich Hayek vigorously argues that (1) it was the socialist trends in Germany that led to German fascism, (2) a little bit of socialism leads inevitably to large-scale collectivism, and (3) socialism inevitably leads to fascism. In other words: "If s, then f."
Finally, in modern science there is a large strain of hope and faith in the eventual discovery and elucidation of deterministic laws of social control. B. F. Skinner has expressed this hope and faith more frankly than most of his colleagues in psychology and other disciplines. His critics have argued cogently that his views have a totalitarian bent-and I have already suggested how Skinnerian reinforcements could be used to help economize on terror and develop what Stephen Spender once called "fascism without tears." Another critical comment is in order, however. The very idea of deterministic control tends to spread inner feelings concerning the inevitability of some repressive form of collectivism- whether Skinner's type or some other. In turn, the sense of inevitability tends to undermine any serious efforts to develop alternatives or fight. The prediction that "It must happen"-particularly if the subjective feeling is more powerful than the rationalistic qualifications and "ifs" that most self-respecting intellectuals will automatically tack on to it- can contribute to a sense of hopelessness and the apathetic acceptance of the unfolding logic. It thus holds forth the potentiality of possibly-not inevitably-becoming a self-confirming prophecy.
p337
IRREVERSIBILITY: ETERNAL SERVITUDE OR HOLOCAUST
To shake people out of apathy toward some future danger, the self-destroying prophecy is often attempted. Its essence is the confident prediction of doom, either confined or unconfined. Thus the coming of neofascism to the United States may be seen as the maturation of an invincible oligarchy, or even as prelude to the global holocaust of all-out nuclear warfare.
I am peculiarly sensitive to this temptation. When a few of my students argued a decade ago that fascism would shake Americans from torpor and prepare the way for a more humanist society, I countered one irrationality with another by arguing that the "improbability of any effective internal resistance" to neofascism would doom all hopes of a humanist future. I drew an exaggerated parallel with the past by pointing out that after all serious internal resistance had been liquidated by the German, Japanese, and Italian fascists, "the only effective anti-fascism was defeat by external powers." Since the "only war that could defeat a neofascist America would be a nuclear war, a holocaust from which no anti-fascist victors would emerge," I concluded with the prophecy: "Once neofascism arrives, the only choice would be fascist or dead." 6
My phrasing at that time was an echo of Franklin D. Roosevelt's wartime rhetoric: "We, and all others who believe as deeply as we do, would rather die on our feet than live on our knees."-itself borrowed from the exhortation of the communist leader, Dolores Ibarruri ("La Pasionaria") in rallying the Loyalist forces against the Franco uprising in Spain. It was an effort to suggest "better dead than fascist." The aim in each case, of course, was to stress the urgency of vigorous and dedicated opposition to tyranny-indeed, to give up one's life, if necessary, to prevent the victory of tyranny.
Today, while still agreeing with Roosevelt that there arc things worth dying for, I would rephrase the ancient rhetoric this way: "Better alive and fighting tyranny in any form than dead and unable to fight." If neofascism should come to America, people may have to learn how to fight on their knees. The guiding rhetoric should be Churchill's statement that "We shall fight in the fields and in the streets; we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender." ~ To paraphrase: "We shall face
p349
William H. Hastie
"Democracy is a process, not a static condition. It is becoming rather than being. It can easily be lost, but is never fully won. Its essence is eternal struggle."
p351
"Sure, we'll have fascism, but it will come disguised as Americanism." This famous statement has been attributed in many forms to Senator Huey P. Long, the Louisiana populist with an affinity for the demagogues of classic European fascism. If he were alive today, I am positive he would add the words "and democracy."
p356
Mary Parker Follett
"We are not wholly patriotic when we are working with all our heart for America merely; we are truly patriotic only when we are working also that America may take her place worthily and helpfully in the world of nations . . . Interdependence is the keynote of the relations of nations as it is the keynote of the relations of individuals within nations."
p359
James Fenimore Cooper
"The vulgar charge that the tendency of democracies is to leveling, meaning to drag all down to the level of the lowest, is singularly untrue; its real tendency being to elevate the depressed to a condition not unworthy of their manhood."
p359
Louis D. Brandeis
"We can have democracy in this country or we can have great wealth in a few hands, but we can't have both."
p382
Mahatma Ghandhi
"For me patriotism is the same as humanity. I am patriotic because I am human and humane. It is not exclusive. I will not hurt England or Germany to serve India . . . My patriotism is inclusive and admits of no enmity or ill-will."
p383
George Washington, Farewell Address
"Guard against the impostures of pretended patriotism."
p384
In his Militarism, USA, a sober critique based on years of experience in the U.S. Marine Corps, Colonel James A. Donovan:
identifies the dangerous patriot: "the one who drifts into chauvinism and exhibits blind enthusiasm for military actions. He is a defender of militarism and its ideals of war and glory. Chauvinism is a proud and bellicose form of patriotism . . . which identifies numerous enemies who can only be dealt with through military power and which equates the national honor with military victory."
p384
In The Reason for Democracy, published after his death in 1976, Kalman Silvert of New York University provided another pungent description of false patriots:
"People who wrap themselves in the flag and proclaim the sanctity of the nation are usually racists, contemptuous of the poor and dedicated to keeping the community of 'ins' small and pure of blood, spirit and mind."
p386
In Germany today the true patriots are those who, among other things, are trying to come to grips with the essence of past Nazi horrors. In the Soviet Union the true patriots are those who try to understand the nature and roots of Stalinism and the Stalinist legacy, rather than simply uttering some words about "the cult of personality" and running away from the subject. In America the true patriots are those who face the fact that Americans have always been both right and wrong and, instead of trying to squelch criticism, calmly take the position "My country right and wrong." They are those who defend the good, the true, and the beautiful in American life. They are willing to take risks in attacking what is wrong...

Peter,

You are absolutely right on the topic of The Christian Fascists. My research leads
me to believe that several former leaders of The Council For National Policy including
Nelson Bunker Hunt and his ICDCC: The International Council for the Defense of Christian
Culture, Rev. Tim LaHaye and his wife's groups, as well as Edwin F. Meese, III, Alton
Ochsner, Jr. of Iran Contra fame and Thomas F. Ellis, III and his Pioneer Fund of Wickliffe
Draper led the efforts in the 1960's to first assassinate the character of JFK then later to murder
him. The Cardinal Mindszenty Foundation from St. Louis was instrumental in creating the
first perceived US-Russia Gap Paranoia. Phyllis Schlafly pressed the Mind Control Gap
issues after seeing the affects of Mind Control on Mindszenty. Then came the Sputnik Gap,
the A-Bomb Gap, then the ICBM Missile Gap and finally McCarthyism and Viet Nam.

David Boylan of this forum has done some excellent work on The Christian Right
and we should encourage him to post more of what he has written about The
Christian Defense League. I was raised a Christian (Catholic) and know only too
well about how the Vatican was aligned against the insurgent Communists for
fear of loss not of immortal souls but of the immoral collection baskets.

The forefather of the Christian Fascist Movement Rev. Gerald L K Smith was overheard
at The Richard Giesbrecht Winnipeg Airport Incident discussing payoffs for the JFK murder
in February of 1964. He was there with Anastase Vonsiatsky and either Ronald Gostick
or another member of CACL, the Canadian Anti-Communist League: Patrick Walsh also
of The Liberty Lobby. Smith miraculously came into $1,000,000 in the Spring of 1964
to fund his Christ of the Ozarks theme park and statue when he only had $5,000 to his
name as of December 1963 according to his biographer Glenn Jeansonne. Suspicious?

It is in Eureka Springs, Arkansas I believe and is patterned after the Rio de Janeiro
statue of Jesus overlooking the harbor. More on him later.

Thanks for reviving a quiescent thread. You mention some names unfamiliar to me, if you care to expand. Yes, I think some of this polical-religious philosophy was behind some involved in the JFK Assassination, not all...but am m
re worried 
by where it is now in the heart of the current Administration and Power Structur
, Military, Etc.
Even Blackwater plays into all this. Olliver North was one of this crowd and when he was working on Rex-84, they had special red Christian crosses that allowed access to denied areas via some security chip. There are currently several lawsuits in the military about soldiers being forced to attend such sectarian prayer sessions, or forfeit promotion, etc. The phenomenon has grown to a cancer IMO, under Bush-the younger. I have no problem with real humansistic non-literalist Christians. MLK is my hero and I listen to his sermons all the time [I'm an atheist, of Jewish heritage] and worked with the Christic Institute. But, these 'other' ones frighten me, as I think they should everyone. 'God help us from 'their' god of vengence!'

An interesting article on religiosity in America today.

What Americans Really Believe
And Why Faith Isn't As Universal As They Think
by George Bishop

The following article is from Free Inquiry magazine, Volume 19, Number 3.

Public opinion polls in the United States have repeatedly demonstrated that Americans are a highly religious people. One of the most widely cited indicators of this religiosity is the extremely high percentage of Americans who say they believe in God, as measured by the standard Gallup Poll question, "Do you believe in God, or a universal spirit?" According to the Gallup organization's most recent reading (December 1994), 96% of U.S. adults said they believed in God. [1] Furthermore, this figure appears to be exactly the same as it was 50 years earlier, when the question was first asked November 1944. The lowest level of belief in God, as documented by Gallup, occurred in 1947 and 1978, when it dipped to 94%; the highest in 1953-54, when it reached an almost perfect 99%. [2] Thus the impression has grown of Americans' uniform and unwavering belief in God, since these figures and others (such as Gallup's data showing 75% of Americans believing in life after death) have been reported time and again in academic journals, professional publications, and in the mass media. [3]

So pervasive has the impression of this religiosity in our society become that various scholars and folk psychologists have theorized there may be an evolutionary biological basis for religious belief [4] and that religion must therefore satisfy a universal human need for hope, comfort, and a sense of purpose in facing the inevitability of our mortality. [5] Such is the power of the religious impulse in American thought.
Is Faith Universal?

This impression of the universality of religious belief, however, becomes much less solid when we look at survey data from other developed nations, comparing findings on religious beliefs from two cross-national surveys conducted in 1991 and 1993 for the International Social Survey Program (ISSP), which is currently based at the National Opinion Research Center (NORC), University of Chicago. [6] The data from these surveys shows that the degree of religious belief is not nearly as widespread, persistent, and universal as it appears from the perspective of the American culture, suggesting theoretical explanations other than a simple biological one.

The figures in tables 1-7 from the 1991 ISSP survey provide a pretty good indication of just how variable religious beliefs can be when viewed with a crossnational lens. The certainty of belief in God, for example, varied substantially across nations. Americans, who appear to be among the most religious people in the sample-along with the Irish, the Polish, and the Filipinos - were twice as likely as Austrians, three times as likely as Norwegians, and nearly seven times as likely as East Germans to claim "I know God exists and I have no doubts about it" (Table 1). Though a majority of Americans (62.8%) felt certain of the existence of God, they expressed a greater degree and variety of agnostic beliefs (and nonbeliefs) with this NORC version of the question than has been captured by the standard Gallup question. [7] So, while the great majority of Americans say they believe in God, regardless of how the question is worded, there is some doubt about the validity of the frequently cited Gallup figure (95%) that is often taken as the empirical gospel on what Americans believe.

Much the same pattern is evident when we look at beliefs about life after death (Table 2). On this score Americans were more certain of a hereafter than anyone else (55%): twice as sure as people from The Netherlands or Great Britain, five times as confident as the Hungarians, and nine times as convinced of it as the East Germans. But once again, too, Americans expressed more uncertainty about the afterlife with this ISSP version of the question than with the standard Gallup question - "Do you believe there is a life after death?" - to which about 75% of Americans generally say "Yes." This should be still another reminder, if one is needed, that the wording of survey questions about even such core beliefs as the existence of God and the afterlife can make a significant difference in the conclusions a pollster would draw about the nature and distribution of religious belief systems.

The data in (Table 3) tell a similar tale: Americans were among the most likely of peoples to believe that "The Bible is the actual word of God and it is to be taken literally word for word" - three times more likely than the Norwegians and nearly five times more likely than the British. They were also the least likely of any people surveyed to believe that "The Bible is an ancient book of fables, legends, history, and moral precepts recorded by man" (14.6% ) - a belief that was much more common in other nations, such as Israel, Hungary, Russia, and Great Britain. These beliefs, particularly biblical literalism, as we will see, turn out to be among the most useful predictors of the persistence of a "pre-scientific" worldview in American society.

We are also among what some would call the most superstitious people in the developed world, if the figures in (Table 4) are any indication. Americans were more likely than any other people to say they definitely believed in "the devil" (45.4 %): more than twice as likely as the Italians, three times as likely as the Poles, about five times as likely as the West Germans, and more than ten times as likely as the Hungarians.

And on and on the story goes for our beliefs in "hell" (Table 5), "heaven" (Table 6), and "religious miracles" (Table 7). We are either first in the faith, or a very close second - with Ireland and Northern Ireland (especially the latter) being the nations most like ours. [8]

Indeed, when we average across the rankings in tables 1-7, the United States turns out to be the most religious nation (average ranking = 1.71), followed by Northern Ireland (2.43), the Philippines (3.29), Ireland (4.14), Poland (5.21), Italy (5.86), New Zealand (8.0), Israel (8.29), Austria (10.57), Norway (11.0), Great Britain (11.57), The Netherlands (11.86), West Germany (12.07), Russia (12.71), Slovenia (13.86), Hungary (14.13), and East Germany (16.29), respectively. Notice too that the other nations ranked toward the top have substantial Catholic populations, and those toward the bottom are all former Soviet bloc countries. But even European nations such as West Germany, The Netherlands, Great Britain, and Norway are rather different in their religious beliefs from the United States, though they might seem quite similar as developed countries in other ways (e.g., standard of living). This ranking of developed nations might best be thought of, then, as defining an underlying dimension of religious cultural fundamentalism vs. modern secularism.
Why?

It should be more than obvious from these crossnational comparisons that religious beliefs of the type measured in the ISSP vary considerably among developed nations and that there is probably no biological propensity per se to hold such beliefs. While there may well be an evolutionary psychological disposition of Homo sapiens toward anthropomorphic interpretations of the world, [9] as well as other cognitive biases, such dispositions must necessarily interact with the availability of religious (and nonreligious) interpretations of the world provided by various cultures. For religion, as E.O. Wilson reminds us, is essentially a form of tribalism, whether it takes the form of Christianity, Buddhism, Marxism, or other kinds of "isms." [10] So the content and prevalence of religious beliefs in America may say more about our national history and culture than any human universals, thus making sociocultural explanations all the more plausible, most of which have been developed by sociologists of religion.

Andrew Greeley, [11] among other sociologists of religion, has argued that the persistence of the belief in life after death and other religious beliefs and practices over time in the United States are the result of a greater "supply" of religious services in the competitive American "marketplace" which, unlike most European nations, has not had a history of an established church. [12] While he offers some suggestive, indirect evidence to support his supply side hypothesis from a cohort analysis of belief in an afterlife among various religious and ethnic groups in the United States, he does not indicate any way of directly measuring the variability in the "supply of religious services" across nations or over historical periods. So it is a rather difficult proposition to test, however plausible it might seem and however compelling it might be as compared to the standard "secularization" and "modernization" models. [13] Such models would predict an inevitable decline in religious beliefs over time in the United States - one that has yet to materialize in any noticeable way, with the possible exception of a decline in literal acceptance of the Bible among older birth cohorts [14] and a recent drop in church attendance (see below).

It is also difficult to see how the supply side model can explain, for example, the similarity of religious beliefs in Northern Ireland, the Philippines, Ireland, and Poland to that of the United States (or to each other), none of which are anywhere near as religiously heterogeneous and as "competitive" for customers as the United States. Ireland and Poland, for example, are nations characterized essentially by noncompetitive, religious monopolies. The larger explanation, then, must lie in the national history and culture, which generate the huge variances we find in these crossnational tables, variances that swamp by comparison any of the usual differences we typically observe between demographic subgroups (age, race, sex, education, etc.) within nations such as ours. And it is a tall theoretical order, indeed, to think of the relevant dimensions along which the various nations in tables 1-7 differ that might help explain the variance in their religiosity. Penetration of what Freud called the scientific "Weltanschauung," however, is one such theoretical candidate. [15]

A plausible explanation of these crossnational differences lies in the influence of education on religious beliefs, particularly the effects of scientific literacy in a society. The data from a recent survey of American scientists by Larson and Witham indicates that there is a substantial split between scientists and the general public on beliefs about human evolution when they have been asked the same Gallup Organization question. [16] Only 5% of American natural and physical scientists, for example, believed in the biblical creationist view, as compared to the typical 45-50% of the U.S. public. [17] A majority of the scientists (55%) endorsed the Darwinian, naturalist position versus just 10% of the American adult population, though a surprising number of them (40%) took the theistic evolutionist perspective - about the same percentage as in the U.S. public. Thus it seems plausible that much of the difference between American scientists and the general public results from the effects of scientific knowledge about human evolution, in particular, and socialization more generally into the scientific worldview. [18]

Differences in public knowledge of evolution should also be a fairly good predictor of differences in the religious worldview across nations. The 1991 ISSP did not include any measures of public scientific knowledge. The 1993 ISSP, however, did ask a number of questions about environmental and scientific knowledge in 21 nations around the world, including 16 of the same nations that had participated in the 1991 survey on religion. One of the 12 knowledge items that was asked (in a four-point scale: Definitely true, Probably true, Probably not true, Definitely not true) dealt directly with the subject of human evolution: "In your opinion, how true is this? ... Human beings developed from earlier species of animals."

Table 8 [19] shows that Americans were ranked last: the least knowledgeable of any of the 21 nationalities surveyed about this basic scientific "fact" (note again the similarity of Northern Ireland and Poland to the United States), though there is admittedly a fine line here between belief and knowledge. Furthermore, as might be expected, when we correlate the ranking of nations by correct responses to this item (using the 16 nations common to the 1991 and 1993 ISSPs) with the corresponding rankings for the various religious belief items in tables 1-7, we find a sizable, inverse relationship between knowing the scientific fact of human evolution and beliefs in God.

Responses to the question about evolution can therefore be regarded as a rough indicator of the extent to which the scientific worldview has penetrated a given society and given causal impetus to a decline in the religious worldview. Tom Smith has also argued in his analysis of the evolution question that much of the difference in knowledge of human evolution between Americans and Europeans stems from the strength in recent years of the fundamentalist movement in our society, such that even the normally beneficial effects of higher education on evolutionary knowledge are significantly diluted among those identifying themselves with fundamentalist religious denominations. [20] Differences in the religious environments in America and Europe, he argues, thus produce differences in knowledge of the simple fact of human evolution. As one of the leaders of the "scientific creationists," Henry M. Morris, has described the struggle in America: "There are only two possible world views - evolutionism or creationism." [21] So the strength of the fundamentalist movement (and the new religious Right) may explain not only the stability of American beliefs about human evolution observed in the Gallup Poll over the past couple decades, [22] but also the apparent persistence of the religious worldview in American society more generally, thus offsetting the rising percentage of college-educated adults in the American population.

Greeley has also furnished evidence on the growth of fundamentalist denominations and the decline of mainline Protestants in the United States throughout this period. [23] But devising a direct test of this influence-of-fundamentalism hypothesis is more easily said than done as all the appropriate measures of relevant variables are often not contained in the same surveys that have been conducted over the past several decades. Furthermore, Inglehart has made a persuasive, contrary case that fundamentalism has actually declined in advanced industrial societies such as ours and that it represents a counter-reaction by religious minorities whose values and way of life are threatened by the secular trends in modern cultures. Among other evidence, he points to the decline in church attendance and a decrease in the percentages saying that "God is important in their lives," from 1981 to 1990, in the United States and in other developed nations. [24] The most recent data from George Gallup's Princeton Religious Research Center (March 1997) would to seem to confirm Inglehart's predictions, showing that weekly church attendance in the United States (as of 1996) has dropped to the lowest point in nearly six decades: 38% (the all-time highs were in 1955 and 1958 when it reached 49%). So we may, if Inglehart is on the right theoretical track, just now be witnessing the incipient decline of the religious worldview in America, one that will become more and more evident in the surveys conducted in the coming decade of the new century.

To explain the persistence of the religious worldview in America we also need to consider the possibility that much of its public expression, with survey interviews being one such social situation, is driven by what Noelle-Neumann argues is the individual's fear of isolation that sets in motion a "spiral of silence." [25] As a people we are frequently reminded in the mass media and elsewhere that we are a "nation under God," [26] that the vast majority of us (95% or so) believe in God - as Gallup tells us periodically - and that we are one of the most religious societies in the developed world. So it should seem quite plausible that many Americans may be reluctant to publicly express agnostic or atheistic beliefs for fear of giving offense to someone who may well be a member of that (purported) "vast majority" in our society, thereby incurring his or her disapproval. And this fear of interpersonal or social isolation should have the effect of maintaining the conformity of public beliefs so frequently observed in our public opinion polls as well as in many other social situations in life.
Conclusion

Not surprisingly perhaps, the religious worldview appears to be nearly universal in the United States, so much so that it has become theoretically plausible to some that there is an evolutionary biological basis for religious belief. The data from other developed nations in the ISSP [27] (1991 and 1993) presented here, however, tell us that the degree of religious belief is nowhere near as universal as it seems to be from the perspective of the American culture. The similarity of the United States to nations such as Ireland, Northern Ireland, the Philippines, and Poland and its striking dissimilarity to countries like The Netherlands, West Germany, Great Britain, and Norway - not to mention the antithetical, former Soviet bloc nations - suggest that any biological propensity toward animistic or anthropomorphic interpretations, for example, must necessarily interact with the cultural availability of such explanations, religious and otherwise (e.g., "New Age" spiritualism). As E. O. Wilson might put it, it is this gene-culture co-evolution that may account for the widespread persistence of supernatural and other transcendental worldviews. [28] But such worldviews are not inevitable, and are probably best thought of as incidental, cultural by-products of more basic evolved psychological mechanisms that have some adaptive function. An imitation mechanism producing conformity of religious (and other) beliefs and behavior within one's societal group, for example, would bestow both survival and reproductive benefits to their carriers. [29]

Socioculturally speaking, the persistence of the religious worldview in America may be due in significant measure, as some scholars have argued, to the strength of the cultural fundamentalist movement in our society in recent years that has succeeded in getting its message and agenda into the public schools, the mass media, and other social institutions. One powerful indicator of the success of this movement is the low level of scientific literacy about human evolution in American society as compared to other developed nations. But this movement may represent, as Inglehart and others have argued, the throes of a religious minority whose traditional values and way of life are deeply threatened by the relentless secularization of our culture and the steady growth of the scientific worldview. The persistence of the religious worldview in America may be, moreover, the result of a "spiral of silence" that surrounds the expression of agnosticism, atheism, and alternative "spiritual" beliefs-particularly as we say, in polite company.

It was Sigmund Freud who probably best argued that the scientific worldview would eventually replace the "religious stage" of superstitious (and other unscientific modes of) thinking in the evolution of human civilization. [30] In Austria, where he spent much of his career, in the land of Darwin and Huxley, where he spent his final years, and in much of the modern world, the religious worldview seems to have declined significantly, as he would have predicted. But the decline has yet to materialize in America where the scientific worldview has still, as Stephen Jay Gould puts it, to "Complete Darwin's Revolution." [31]
Tables

Table 1. Percentage Saying "I know God exists and I have no doubts about it" by Nation in the 1991 International Social Survey

Table 2. Percentage Saying They Definitely Believe in "Life after Death," by Nation in the 1991 International Social Survey

Table 3. Percentage Saying They Definitely Believe "The Bible is the actual word of God and it is to be taken literally, word for word," by Nation in the 1991 International Social Survey

Table 4. Percentage Saying They Definitely Believe in "The Devil," by Nation in the 1991 International Social Survey

Table 5. Percentage Saying They Definitely Believe in "Hell," by Nation in the 1991 International Social Survey

Table 6. Percentage Saying They Definitely Believe in "Heaven," by Nation in the 1991 International Social Survey

Table 7. Percentage Saying They Definitely Believe in "Religious Miracles," by Nation in the 1991 International Social Survey

Table 8. Ranking of 21 Nations on Knowledge Question about Human Evolution, 1993 International Social Survey
Notes
George Gallup, Jr., "Religion in America: Will the Vitality of Churches Be the Surprise of the Next Century?" The Public Perspective 6 (1995): 1-8; "Weekly Church Attendance Dips to Lowest Level in Six Decades," Emerging Trends, vol. 19 March 1997, Princeton Religious Research Center. The author would like to thank Maura Strausberg of the Gallup Organization for her help in locating these Gallup Poll data on trends in Americans' belief in God.
For a more skeptical view of the wording of the Gallup question, see George F. Bishop, "What Americans Believe About Evolution and Religion." Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Association for Public Opinion Research, St. Louis, May 1998a.
See: George Gallup, Jr., and Jim Castelli, The Peoples Religion: American Faith in the 90s (New York: Macmillan, 1989); Andrew M. Greeley, "Pie in the Sky While You're Alive: Life After Death and Supply Side Religion." Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association, Toronto 1997a; Brian Harley and Glenn Firebaugh, "Americans' Belief in an Afterlife: Trends Over the Past Two Decades." Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 32 (1993): 269-78; Barry S. Kosmin and Seymour P. Lachman, One Nation Under God: Religion in Contemporary American Society (New York: Crown Publishers, Inc., 1993); Russell Shorto, "Belief by the Numbers." New York Times Magazine, December 7, 1997; Garry Wills, Under God: Religion and American Politics (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1990).
See Stewart Guthrie, "Why Religion? A Cognitive and Evolutionary Approach." Paper presented at the New York Academy of Sciences Meeting on "The Science of Religion" December 4-6, 1998; see E. O. Wilson's sociobiological perspective in On Human Nature (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1978) and Consilience (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998); "The God Module," Skeptic News in Skeptic Magazine 5 (1997):31.
For a sociological assertion of this assumption see Greeley, 1997a, op cit.
The data used in this chapter from the International Social Surveys in 1991 and 1993 were based on multistage, stratified probability samples in each nation (with some sampling variations by country). The data were provided through the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) at the University of Michigan, which should be consulted for any further documentation of the survey designs, sampling, and data collection procedures used in each country.
See Bishop 1998a, op cit. Unlike the standard Gallup question, the NORC question on the belief in God includes multiple response alternatives that allow survey respondents to express various forms and degrees of agnosticism or nonbelief, such as, "I find myself believing in God some of the time, but not at others," or "I don't believe in a personal God, but I do believe in a higher power of some kind." In this paper we focus on just those who are certain of God's existence. Similarly, we focus on just those who are certain of life after death, and other religious beliefs reported in tables 1-8 below, excluding those who express various degrees of uncertainty or disbelief. For the exact wording of all these questions, see the codebook for the 1991 ISSP archived at the ICPSR at the University of Michigan.
See Ronald Inglehart's two-dimensional model of cultural and religious influences, which also shows the remarkable similarity of Ireland and Northern Ireland to the United States, in Modernization and Postmodernization (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), pp. 98-100; see also Andrew M. Greeley's report on the similarities and differences in religious beliefs and practices among the peoples of Britain, Ireland, Northern Ireland, and the United States in "Religion in Britain, Ireland, and the USA." In British Social Attitudes: The Ninth Report, eds. Roger Jowell, et al. (Aldershot, England: Gower, 1992).
Guthrie, "Why Religion? A Cognitive and Evolutionary Approach."
Wilson, Consilience.
Greeley, "Pie in the Sky While You're Alive."
Rodney Stark and Laurence R. Iannaccone, "A Supply-Side Reinterpretation of the 'Secularization' of Europe." Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 33 (1994): 230-52.
Inglehart, Modernization and Postmodernization.
Andrew M. Greeley, "A Sketch of Religion in 20th Century America." Paper prepared for the ASA meetings, first draft 1997b. NORC, University of Chicago.
Sigmund Freud, "The Question of a Weltanschaung." In New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis, ed. James Srachey (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1933, 1965).
Edward J. Larson and Larry Witham, "Scientists Are Still Keeping the Faith," Nature 386 (1997): 435; Larry Witham, "Many Scientists See God's Hand in Evolution," Washington Times, April 11, 1997, p. A8.
George F. Bishop, "The Religious Worldview and American Beliefs About Human Origins," The Public Perspective 9 (1998b): 39-44.
Louis Harris and Associates and American Museum of Natural History, Science and Nature Survey, 1994.
Tom Smith, "Environmental and Scientific Knowledge Around the World." GSS Cross-National Report No. 16, January 1996. NORC, University of Chicago.
Tom Smith, "Some Aspects of Measuring Education." Social Science Research 24 (1995): 215-42.
Alice B. Kehoe, "Scientific Creationism: World View, Not Science." In Cult Archaeology & Creationism, eds. Francis B. Harrold and Raymond A. Eve (Iowa City: Iowa University of Iowa Press, 1995).
Bishop, "The Religious Worldview and American Beliefs about Human Origins."
Greeley, "A Sketch of Religion in 20th Century America."
Inglehart, op cit., chapter 9.
Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann, The Spiral of Silence (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993).
Kosmin and Lachman, op cit. and Wills, op cit.
International Social Survey Program, 1991 and 1993. Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research, University of Michigan.
Wilson, Consilience.
For an overview of an evolutionary social-psychological theory of human behavior, see David M. Buss and Douglas T. Kenrick, "Evolutionary Social Psychology." In Daniel T. Gilbert, Susan T. Fiske, and Gardner Lindzey, eds., The Handbook of Social Psychology, vol. 2, 4th ed. (Boston: McGraw-Hill Co., 1998).
Sigmund Freud, The Future of an Illusion, trans. W.D. Robson-Scott (New York: Doubleday & Co., 1927); Freud, 1933 op cit.
Stephen Jay Gould, "Can We Complete Darwin's Revolution?" In Dinosaur in a Haystack (New York: Crown Publishing Co., 1995).
http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.ph...f=88&t=7618 [as the reference numbers didn't copy]