All Comments (195)

In an age when the mass slaughters on campuses are now an almost monthly occurance,and the bodies of female students kidnapped from their dorms in the night turn up on an almost weekly basis, miss Susan wraps her arms around all this youthful blood,with eyes closed shut,while declaring that it is kids who are members of "campus crusade" that are part of a "dangerous delusion".
It is very apparent to me just whom is dangerously deluded.

Great Article, I just watched the interview Bill Moyer had with Susan Jacoby on PBS. She brings to light the dumbing down of American Society by Politics , Media, religion and the actions of unreason. Plus I enjoyed Charles Barkley's statement "Fake Christians" on CNN. The religious right are not real believers, they should go read Adams book "God's Debris". The religious right supports big business and tax cuts for the rich. Jesus Christ most likely would be a Socialist. Honesty I wouldn't want full blown Socialism. Capitalism can't survive when wealth leans on one side. Jesus called for the re-distribution of wealth in times when the balance is to extreme degrees like today. But Conservatives can't understand economics much as they do the teachings of Jesus Christ.
The best thing this country can hope for is a Obama victory , and he picks free thinkers like Susan Jacoby as an adviser to educate this national back to reality.

Freestinker--- This is the problem with your logic. An atheists opinions have no force behind them besides their own opinion. Thus, there really is no reason for people like Jacoby and yourself to object to the "personal opinions" and beliefs of Hitler or Stalin. They both believed what they did was right in their own minds. If you believe that there is no absolute truth outside each person's brain then there is absolutely no reason expect everyone else to believe in human rights and justice. A significant portion of the population is going to be for power, money, and racism.

Anonymous,
Good post. It was needed. I agree with everything in your post, and yes, everyone that cares about the future of this country should read "American Fascists." They should also read Susan Jacoby, Christopher Hitchens, David Neiwert among others. I read and follow all of them and have for many years. I also happen to live within a five minute drive of Rod Parsely's World Harvest Church - which I have attended several times to observe. I also was raised in an evangelical background (I'm approaching 50).

What I can tell you about this movement, in my opinion, is this...The most radical people people in this movement are Boomers with some overlap into older Xers. The Party generation - the Recovery generation. So much of this movement is wrapped up in guilt, shame and "redemption" regarding reckless choices made in youth and young adulthood. Go into any one of these evangelical churches, anywhere in the nation, and you'll see refugees from the party culture of the last 40 years or so...ex - hippies, club kids, druggies, alcoholics, sexual atheletes, serial divorcees, etc. It plays a big part in this picture. I know (and know of) scores and scores of people that I came of age with that were essentially liberal, rational, secular - even anti-religious that are now just the opposite. They attend fundamentalist churches, socialize only with others that believe as they do and embrace the whole irrational right-wing agenda. Talk or reference of their lives before their conversion is strictly off-limits. Their lives begin at the point of their conversion. They live in their own world with its own rules - and question any of it, and you are accused of persecution and cut off. It's been a totally surreal experience to watch this transformation of people I though I knew so well. So these particular people are not victims of a failed educational system. This is something else. An internal psychodrama that involves deep denial, suspension of rational, crtical thinking in order to function in the strict, highly structured world they inhabit. They need their highly structured world, because they were so out of control and unstructured as youth and young adults.

In 2004 or 2005 I was very concerned. It really did seem like we were about to become some sort of Christofascist nation. With George Bush being swept into office with a huge evangelical turnout and the possibility of Ken Blackwell as our governor, it really did seem like there would be no end in sight for the Republican hegemony. I had always thought for years the evangelical movement would burn itself out like so many movements before - but it didn't seem like it was happening. I thought perhaps that the events of 9/11 had something to do with it. The amplification of fear and turning to the tribal mythologies for comfort. But then cracks started to appear - and then more cracks. I noticed particularly that many evangelicals felt they had gained nothing from the Republican Party except a couple of ambiguously conservative Supreme Court Judges. Their desire to implement a Christian agenda in public education and government was not panning out as they had anticipated. Rhetoric and symbolic gesture were wearing thin and disillusionment seemed to be setting in. At the same time many saw the policies of the Republican Party affecting their communities and families negatively. On top of that, they saw many of their own leaders caught up in corruption and scandal while many of their young people were leaving the church for the more liberal-minded "emergent church."

That's what I see happening. The energy that was so much a part of this movement for so long doesn't seem to be there anymore. People are wandering off - some coming to their senses, others proclaiming politics is not worthy of a true christian. The energy that is left is angry and feels ripped-off. Certainly not enthusiastic and anticipatory. The enthusiaism and anticipation is on the Left now. Rational people are speaking up - becoming conscious of exactly what is happening to our culture and starting to take action. I really think this will build upon itself in the next few years. I think it is also quite possible that 20 or 30 years from now irrational fundamentalism will be as discredited as it was in the mid-20th century. That is much more likely than a theocracy, in my opinion.

We're doomed.

Dear Susan, just one more thing I failed to mention in my last message. I too am a Christian and a follower of Our Lord Jesus. Those who believe in Christ, whether they are Black or White, Gay or Straight, Male or Female, are as Paul said: "One before God." I enjoin you radicals, be you on the Left or the Right, to read Christ's "Sermon on the Mount" and to think, and think hard. We are all brothers and sisters in Christ, are we not? He came to spread Mercy, Compassion, Tolerance and Love, and NOT Righteousness and Hate. Old Soldier, Frank Libbon

Susan Jacoby - you are indeed a fine Lady. Thank you for your article and for telling the Truth. The Christian Right Radicals are indeed a danger to be aware of and to be countered. I served 43 years in and with the US Army, taking the Oath to Defend the Constitution from all enemies, foreign & domestic. The public should be aware that those of the Radical Right who would subvert and change our Constitution for their own selfish and bigotted aims - are in essence "the domestic enemies." Frank Libbon

Susan Jacoby - you are indeed a fine Lady. Thank you for your article and for telling the Truth. The Christian Right Radicals are indeed a danger to be aware of and to be countered. I served 43 years in and with the US Army, taking the Oath to Defend the Constitution from all enemies, foreign & domestic. The public should be aware that those of the Radical Right who would subvert and change our Constitution for their own selfish and bigotted aims - are in essence "the domestic enemies." Frank Libbon

Susan Jacoby - you are indeed a fine Lady. Thank you for your article and for telling the Truth. The Christian Right Radicals are indeed a danger to be aware of and to be countered. I served 43 years in and with the US Army, taking the Oath to Defend the Constitution from all enemies, foreign & domestic. The public should be aware that those of the Radical Right who would subvert and change our Constitution for their own selfish and bigotted aims - are in essence "the domestic enemies." Frank Libbon

Chris Hedges, a graduate from seminary at Harvard Divinity School, in his book, American Fascists, gives a chilling account of the Christian Right’s frightening goals and a dire warning to everyone not take them lightly:

What is happening in America is revolutionary. A group of religious utopians, with the sympathy and support of tens of millions of Americans, are slowly dismantling democratic institutions to establish a religious tyranny, the springboard to an American fascism. [39]

The power brokers in the radical Christian Right have already moved from the fringes of society to the executive branch, the House of Representatives, the Senate and the courts. The movement has seized control of the Republican Party. Christian fundamentalists now hold majority of seats in 36 percent of all Republican Party state committees, or 18 of 50 states, along with large minorities in the remaining states. Forty five senators and 186 members of the House of Representatives earned approval ratings of 80 to 100 percent from the three most influential Christian Right advocacy groups: the Christian coalition, Eagle Forum, and Family Resource Council. [23]

Dominionism, born out of a theology known as Christian reconstructionism, seeks to politicize faith. It has, like all fascist movements, a belief in magic along with leadership adoration and a strident call for moral and physical supremacy of a master race, in this case American Christians. [11]

The dominionist movement, like all totalitarian movements, seeks to appropriate not only our religious and patriotic language but also our stories, to deny the validity of stories other than their own, to deny that there are other acceptable ways of living and being. There becomes, in their rhetoric, only one way to be a Christian and only one way to be and American.

Dominionism is a theocratic sect with its roots in a radical Calvinism… It teaches that American Christians have been mandated by God to make America a Christian state. A decades-long refusal by most American fundamentalists to engage in politics at all following the 1925 Scopes trial has been replaced by a call for Christian “dominion” over the nation and eventually over the earth itself. Dominionism preaches that Jesus has called on Christians to build the kingdom of God in the here and now, whereas previously it was thought that we would have to wait for it. America becomes, in this militant Biblicism, an agent of God, and all political and intellectual opponents of America’s Christian leaders are viewed, quite simply, as agents of Satan. Under Christian dominion, America will be no longer a sinful and fallen nation but one in which the 10 commandments form the basis of our legal system, creationism and “Christian values” form the basis of our educational system, and the media and the government proclaim the Good News to one and all. [12]

The racist and brutal intolerance of the intellectual godfathers of today’s Christian Reconstructionism is a chilling reminder of the movement’s lust for repression. The Institutes of Biblical Law by R. J. Rushdoony, written in 1973, is the most important book for the dominionist movement. Rushdoony calls for a Christian society that is harsh, unforgiving and violent. His work draws heavily on the calls for a repressive theocratic society laid out by Calvin in Institutes of the Christian Religion, first published in 1536 and one of the most important works of the Protestant Reformation. Christians are, Rushdoony argues the new chosen people of God and are called to do what Adam and Eve failed to do: create a godly, Christian state. The Jews, who neglected to fulfill God’s commands in the Hebrew Scriptures, have in this belief system, forfeited their place as God’s chosen people and have been replaced by Christians. The death penalty is to be imposed not only for offenses such as rape, kidnapping and murder, but also for adultery, blasphemy, homosexuality, astrology, incest, striking a parent, incorrigible juvenile delinquency, and, in the case of women, “unchastity before marriage.” The world is to be subdued and ruled by a Christian United States. [13]

This ideology, made more palatable for the mainstream by later disciples such as Francis Schaeffer and Pat Robertson, remains at the heart of the movement. Many of its tenets are being enacted through the Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, currently channeling billions in federal funds to groups such as National Right to Life and Pat Robertson’s Operation Blessing, as well as to innumerable Christian charities and organizations that do everything from running drug and pregnancy clinics to promoting sexual abstinence-only programs in schools.

While traditional fundamentalism shares many of the darker traits of the new movement-such as blind obedience to a male hierarchy that often claims to speak for God, intolerance toward nonbelievers, and disdain for rational, intellectual inquiry-it has never attempted to impose its belief system on the rest of the nation. And it has never tried to transform government, as well as all other secular institutions, into an extension of the church. The new radical fundamentalisms amount to a huge and disastrous mutation. Dominionists and their wealthy, right-wing sponsors speak in terms and phrases that are familiar and comforting to most Americans, but they no longer use words to mean what they meant in the past. They engage in a slow process of “logocide,” the killing of words. The old definitions of words are replaced by new ones. Code words of the old belief system are deconstructed and assigned diametrically opposed meanings. Words such as “truth,” “wisdom,” “death,” “liberty,” “life,” and “love” no longer mean what they mean in the secular world. “Life” and “death” mean life in Christ or death to Christ, and are used to signal belief or unbelief in the risen Lord. “Wisdom” has little to do with human wisdom but refers to the level of commitment and obedience to the systems of belief. “Liberty” is not about freedom, but the “liberty” found when one accepts Jesus Christ and is liberated from the world to obey him. But perhaps the most pernicious distortion comes with the word “love,” the word used to lure into the movement many who seek a warm, loving community to counter their isolation and alienation. “Love” is distorted to mean an unquestioned obedience to those who claim to speak for God in return for the promise of everlasting life. The blind, human love, the acceptable of the other, is attacked as inferior love, dangerous and untrustworthy. [14]

While the radical Christian movement’s leaders pay lip service to traditional justice, they call among their own for a legal system that promotes what they define as “Christian principles.” The movement thus is able to preserve the appearance of law and respect for democracy even as its leaders condemn all opponents-dismissed as “atheists,” “nonbelievers” or “secular humanists”-to moral and legal oblivion. Justice, under this process of logocide, is perverted to carry out injustice and becomes a mirage of law and order. The moral calculus no longer revolves around the concept of universal human rights. Its center is the well-being, protection and promotion of “bible-believing Christians.” Logocide slowly and stealthily removes whole segments of society from the moral map. As Joseph Goebbels wrote: “The best propaganda is that which, as it were, works invisibly, penetrates the whole of life without the public having any knowledge of the propagandistic initiative.” [17]

Followers in the movement are locked within closed systems of information and indoctrination that cater to their hates and prejudices. Tens of millions of Americans rely exclusively on Christian broadcasters for their news, health, entertainment and devotional programs. [26]

As American history and the fundamentalist movement itself have changed, so have the objects of fundamentalist hatred. Believers were told a few decades ago that communists were behind the civil-rights movement, the antiwar movement and liberal groups such as the ACLU. They were racist and intolerant of African Americans, Jews and Catholics. Now the battle against communism has been reconfigured. The seat of Satan is no longer in the Kremlin. It has been assumed by individuals and institutions promoting a rival religion called “secular humanism.” [27]

Visions of a holy war at once terrify and delight followers. Such visions peddle a bizarre spiritual Darwinism. True Christians will rise to heaven and be saved, and all lesser faiths and nonbelievers will be viciously destroyed by an angry God in an orgy of horrific, apocalyptic violence. The yearning for this final battle runs through the movement like an electric current. Christian Right firebrands employ the language of war, speak in the metaphors of battle, and paint graphic and chilling scenes of the violence and mayhem that will envelop the earth. War is the final aesthetic of the movement. [33]

Radical Christian dominionists have no religious legitimacy. They are manipulating Christianity, and millions of sincere believers, to build a frightening political mass movement with many similarities with other mass movements, from fascism to communism to the ethnic nationalist parties in the former Yugoslavia. [38]

They see criticism of their belief system, whether from scientists or judges, as vicious attempts by Satan to lure them back into the morass. [39]

They attacked liberalism because it seemed to them the principal premise of modern society; everything they dreaded seemed to spring from it: the bourgeois life, Manchesterism, materialism, parliament and the parties, the lack of political leadership. Even more, they sensed in liberalism the source of all their inner sufferings. Theirs was a resentment of loneliness; their one desire was for a new faith, a new community of believers, a world with fixed standards and no doubts, a new national religion that would bind all Germans together. All this, liberalism denied. Hence, they hated liberalism, blamed it for making outcasts of them, for uprooting them from their imaginary past, and from faith.
Fritz Stern, The Politics of Cultural Despair: A Study in the Rise of the German Ideology. [40]

In interview after interview, those in the movement spoke of desires for suicide before finding Jesus. Even if the feelings were fleeting and never acted upon, they indicate how terrible life had become before conversion. Despair is the most powerful force driving people into the movement. [49]

“Backsliding” is a sin. Doubt is a sin. Questioning is a sin. The only proper relationship is submission to those above you, the abandonment of critical thought and the mouthing of religious jargon that is morally charged and instantly identifies believers as part of the same, hermetic community. The psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton describes this heavily loaded language, the words and phrases that allow believers to speak in code, as “thought-terminating clichés.” “Jesus is my personal Lord and savior” or “ The wages of sin are death” are used , in this instance, to end all discussion. [57]

Dr. James Kennedy is one of America’s most public and vocal dominionists. [60]

He is fond of quoting John Jay, the Chief Justice of the first U.S. Supreme Court, who said that “God in His providence has given to us a Christian nation, and it behooves us as Christians to prefer and select Christians to rule over us.” Kennedy argues that this “was the Christian perspective of most of the founding fathers in the beginning of this country.

“Our Job is to proclaim America for Christ, whatever the cost,” Kennedy has said. “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.” [61]

There is a calculated destruction of individual conscience. All must submit to the will of those godly men who define the communal good. Sin, in short, is anything the leaders do not like. [71]

Kennedy insists that America was founded as a “Christian nation.” The denial of the Christian roots of the nation, he says, is a “great deception [that] has been used to destroy much of the religious freedom and liberty this country has enjoyed since its inception.” And Kennedy’s crusade is well funded and well organized. He is backed by with grants, often for millions of dollars, from conservative trusts such as the Orville D. and Ruth A. Merillat Foundation and the Richard and Helen DeVos Foundation. [73]

Believers are driven into a primitive state, a prenatal existence, a return to the womb and a life of submission. The assault on freedom, human equality and reason, however, also engenders feeling of omnipotence. [82]

“The goal of the movement is to create a theocracy, but they must dominate women first to keep the system in place.” Roberta Pughe says. “They want to have one nation under God, based on their view of God and on their interpretation of the rules that this peculiar God puts in place. They are doing this underground. They have huge networks. They are deeply connected, and they’re connecting with people who are very smart and savvy. They know how to put forward a public front that hides the private agenda… Their ticket to power is family values. That’s the hook. People are hungry for that. But with this church family comes the imposition of an extreme male power structure. First, they use this power structure to control the family, then the church, and finally the nation.” [89]

Those who adopt the belief system, who find in the dictates of the church and its male leaders a binary world of right and wrong, build an exclusive and intolerant comradeship that that subtly or overtly shuns and condemns the “unsaved.” People are no longer judged by their intrinsic qualities, by their actions or capacity for self-sacrifice and compassion, but by the rigidity of their obedience. This defines the good and the bad, the Christian and the infidel. [91]

The male leader governs through a divine mandate, a mandate that cannot be challenged since it comes from God. And these leaders speak often about taking their cues directly form God. [93]

The televangelists Benny Hinn and Pat Robertson rule their fiefdoms as despotic potentates. They travel on private jets, have huge personal fortunes and descend on the faithful in limousines and surrounded by a small retinue of burly bodyguards. These tiny kingdoms, awash in the leadership cult, mirror on a smaller scale the America they seek to create. There is no questioning. Followers surrender their personal and political power, in much the same way women and children surrender their power to the male at home. The divinely anointed male leader rules a flock of obedient and submissive sheep. All must hand over their freedom. All must cease to think independently.

The earnestness on the part of believers often gives the mass movement its air of honesty, sincerity and decency. Believers are not brainwashed. They are not mindless automatons. They are convinced that what they are doing is godly, moral and good. They work with the passion of the converted to bring this Christian goodness to everyone, even those who resist. They believe that what they promote is moral and beneficial. And just as they fear for their own souls, they fear for the souls of those around them who remain unsaved. This often well-intended earnestness, although employed for frightening ends, is a powerful engine within the movement. These idealists are willing to make great personal sacrifices for the cause of Christ. They justify the disempowerment and eradication of whole peoples, such as Muslims or those castigate as secular humanists, as mandated by God. Nonbelievers have no place on the moral map. It is a small step from this toxic rhetoric and exclusive belief system to the disempowerment and eradication of nonbelievers, a step frightened and enraged population could well demand during a period of prolonged instability or national crisis.

The ruling elite of the movement, the James Dobsons and Pat Robertsons, are at the same time very distant from the masses. They assume higher intelligence and understanding that give them a divine right to rule. These men are-writ large-the powerful, all-knowing father. Those they direct become as powerless, credulous and submissive as children. [94-95]

The Christian Right, with its constant need for scapegoats and satanic enemies to be defeated, use the state referendums to mobilize and energize followers, even as the most pressing social ills of the country are ignored. [110]

I facts can’t be made to fit, they are discarded or treated as misguided opinions. When facts are treated as if they were opinions, when there is no universal standard by which to determine truth in law, in science, in scholarship, or in the reporting of the events of the day, the world becomes a place where lies become true, where people can believe what they want to believe, where there is no possibility of reaching any conclusion not predetermined by those who interpret the official, divinely inspired text…This insistence on the primacy of personal opinion regardless of facts destabilizes and destroys the primacy of all fact. This process leads inevitably to the big lie. Facts are useful only if they bolster the message. [118]

All attempts to seek truth, however elusive and difficult, challenge the blind obedience and suppression of conscience championed by those who teach one “truth” and one way of being. When only one “truth” is allowed, empirical data becomes irrelevant. Intellectual, scientific and moral inquiry becomes unnecessary. In this new world followers are robbed of the capacity to think. The lies , however enormous and absurd, defy criticism and unmasking because the rational world is discredited and finally silenced. [131]

To tell men that they are equal has a certain sentimental appeal. But this appeal is small compared with that made by a propaganda that tells them they are superior to others, and that others are inferior to them
Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies, Vol. 1 [132]

The convention has brought together some 5,500 Christian broadcasters from radio and television, who reach, according to their figures, an estimated 141 million listeners and viewers across America. And they see themselves as both the persecuted and the powerful. [132]

Wealth, fame and power are manifestations of God’s work, proof that God has a plan and design for believers. [136]

And then he [Frank Wright] warns his listeners about the enemies at the gate, saying that “calls for diversity and multiculturalism are nothing more than thinly veiled attacks on anyone who is willing or desirous or compelled to proclaim Christian truth. Today, calls for tolerance are often a subterfuge, because they’ll tolerate just about anything except Christian truth.” [142]

The emphasis on personal renewal and commitment to Christ-the staples message of evangelists such as Billy Graham and Luis Palau-is and anachronism to the new class. While speakers demand that followers give their lives to Christ, and while the born-again experience is considered the dividing line between believers and nonbelievers, the conversion experience is no longer the dominant theme pounded home from the pulpit or across the airwaves. It has been replaced by the rhetoric of war, the demands of a warrior God who promises blood and vengeance, and by the rhetoric of persecution, by the belief that there are sinister forces that seek the destruction of believers. It has also been replaced by a conspicuous and unapologetic infatuation with wealth, power and fame. As the movement has shifted away from the focus on personal salvation to a focus on power, it has incorporated into its theology the values, or lack of them, of flagrant consumer society. [145]

In this version of the Christian Gospel, the exploitation and abuse of other human beings is a good. Homosexuality is an evil. And this global, heartless system of economic rationalism has morphed in the rhetoric of the Christian Right into a test of faith. The ideology it espouses is a radical evil, an ideology of death. It calls for wanton destruction of human beings, of the environment, of communities and neighborhoods, of labor unions, of a free press, of Iraqis, Palestinians or others in the Middle East who would deny us oil fields and hegemony, of federal regulatory agencies, social welfare programs, public education-in short, the destruction of all people and programs that stand in the way of a Christian America and its God-given right to dominate the rest of the planet. The movement offers, in return, the absurd but seductive promise that those who are right with God will rise to become spiritual and material oligarchs. They will become the new class. Those who are not right with God, be they poor or Muslims or unsaved, deserve what they get. In the rational world none of this makes sense. But believers have been removed from a reality-based world. They believe that through Jesus all is possible. It has become a Christian duty to embrace the exploitation of others, to build a Christian America where freedom means the freedom of the powerful to dominate the weak. [149]

They are energized by hate campaigns against gays or Muslims or liberals or immigrants. They walk willingly into a totalitarian prison they are helping to construct. They yearn for it. They work for it with passion, self sacrifice and a blinding self righteousness. “Evil when we are in its power is not felt as evil but as a necessity, or even a duty,” Simon Weil wrote in Gravity and Grace. And it is the duty of the Christian foot soldiers to bring about the Christian utopia. When it is finished, when all have been stripped of legal and social protection, it will be too late to resist. This is the genius of totalitarian movements. They convince the masses to agitate for their own incarceration. [150]

And those outside the Christian community are effectively made strangers. They are no longer worthy of being loved. The distinction creates a world where there are only two types of people. There are godly men and women who advance Christian values, and there are nonbelievers-many of them liberal Christians-who peddle the filth and evil of secular humanism. This dividing line is nothing other than the distinction between human and nonhuman, between the worthy and those unworthy of life, between saved and unsaved, between friend and foe. [154]

In this new binary world segments of the human race are disqualified from moral and ethical consideration. And because fundamentalist followers live in a binary universe, they are incapable of seeing others as anything more than inverted reflections of themselves. If they seek to destroy nonbelievers to create a Christian America, then nonbelievers must be seeking to destroy them. This belief system negates the possibility of the ethical life. It fails to grasp that goodness must be sought outside the self and that the best defense against evil is to seek it within. When people come to believe that they are immune from evil, that there is no resemblance between themselves and those they define as the enemy, they will inevitably grow to embody the evil they claim to fight. It is only by grasping our own capacity for evil, our own darkness, that we hold our own capacity for evil at bay. When evil is purely external, then moral purification always entails the eradication of others. [154]

Extremists never begin as extremists. They become extremists gradually. They move gingerly forward in an open society. They advance only so far as they fail to meet resistance. And no society is immune from this moral catastrophe.

The Christian Right, for now, is forced to function within the political system it seeks to destroy. Judges continue to judge. Teachers continue to teach. The media continues to report. Politicians continue to campaign. But in the world of fundamentalist rhetoric, only “bible-believing” judges are worthy of respect. Only Christian teachers are true educators. And only the pseudo-reporters seen and heard on Christian broadcasts, who portray the course of historical and world events as conforming to purported biblical prophecies, report the real news. Finally, it is only the men of God, those who champion the Christian state, who have the right to rule. The movement is creating a parallel system, complete with Christian organizations, to replace the old one. It is a slow and often imperceptible process. [155]

The accelerated Christian Education curriculum, one of the country’s three major publishers of Christian textbooks, defines “liberal” in its schoolbooks as “referring to philosophy not supported by Scripture” and “conservative” as “dedicated to the preserving of Scriptural principles.” [155]

In textbooks published by A Beka, one of the big fundamentalist publishing houses, African religious beliefs are described as “false.” Hinduism is “pagan” and evil.” The lack of Christian conversion among Africans is blamed on “Satan’s strong hold on these people,” according to Bob Jones University Press history textbook for seventh graders. A Beka’s high school world history textbook blames the poverty and political chaos in most of Africa on a lack of faith. It skips over the repressive colonial European regimes that exploited the continent and decimated the population in countries such as Congo. [156]

Rod Parsley says that liberals defend homosexuality to erode the moral fiber of the nation. Islam, he says, is “an anti-Christ religion” that intends to use violence to conquer the world. Allah, Parsley contends, is a demon spirit. And Christian America has been mandated by God to do battle and defeat all demons to usher in the reign of Christ. [161]

[Rod Parsley] collects his millions of dollars by promoting the gospel of prosperity, the promise that if his followers, mostly of modest means, tithe 10 percent of their salaries, God will reward them a hundredfold. This money is in addition to the collection he often solicits tow or three times during a service. He has, in the past urged followers to burn their household bills and give the money to him to be free from desbt.

“I just love to talk about money,” Parsley once said. “I just love to talk about your money. Let me be very clear-I want your money. I deserve it. The church deserves it.”

He peddles “covenant sword” and “prayer cloths” that he claims will bring the buyer freedom from financial troubles as well as from physical or emotional ailments. He has written that “one of the first reasons for poverty is a lack of knowledge of God and his Word”, and that “the Bible says that to withhold the tithe is to rob God.” Parsley lives lavishly in a 7,500-square-foot house valued at more than $ 1 million. He refuses to disclose information about the church’s income or expenditures and has fought off several allegations from former employees charging gross misuses of church funds.

Parsley is one of the masters at peddling this message of greed, hatred and intolerance as gospel truth. The Christian rhetoric, on the surface, is often the same. It is comfortable and predictable. The gestures are familiar. The reverence to God and nation, the deference to the authority of the Bible, do not appear to have changed. But the heart of the Christian religion, all that is good and compassionate within it, has been tossed aside, ruthlessly gouged out and thrown into a heap with all the other inner organs. Only the shell, the form, remains, its empty carcass wrapped around these wolves like a cloak. Christianity is of no use to Parsley, Blackwell and the others. In its name they kill it. [166]

To put trust in secular institutions is to lack faith, to give up on God’s magic and miracles. The message being preached is one that dovetails with the message of neoconservatives who want to gut and destroy federal programs, free themselves from government regulations and taxes and break the back of all organizations, such as labor unions, that seek to impede maximum profit.

The popular Christian textbook America’s Providential History cites Genesis, which calls for mankind to “have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth” (Genesis 1:26-27) as evidence that the Bible calls for “bible-believing Christians” to take dominion of America and the world: “When God brings Noah through the flood to a new earth, he reestablishes the Dominion Mandate but now delegates to man the responsibility for governing other men.” The authors write that God has called the United States to become a Christian nation and “makes disciples of all nations.”

The book fuses the Christian message with the celebration of unrestricted capitalism. It denounces income tax as “idolatry” and property tax as “theft,” and in a chapter titles “Christian Economics,” calls for the abolishment of inheritance taxes. This indoctrination is designed to form a cadre of young believers who will follow biblical rather than secular law. They are told that when the two laws clash, they as believers must defy secular authorities. And they are taught to judge others not by what they do but by their fidelity to Christian doctrine. [183]

The book also teaches students that a Christian’s primary responsibility is to create material wealth. God will oversee the increase and protection of natural resources. America’s Providential History belittles secular environmentalists, who see natural resources as fragile and limited, and says of those who hold these concerns that they “lack faith in God’s providence and consequently, men will find fewer natural resources…. The Christian knows that the potential in God is unlimited and that there is no shortage of resources in God’s earth.” The book blithely dismisses the global warming and overpopulation, saying , “Christians know that God has made the earth sufficiently large with plenty of resources to accommodate all the people.” [183]

In the totalitarian world, there are those worthy of love and those unworthy of it. In the totalitarian world, the private sphere becomes the concern of the state. This final restriction of the freedom to love-the freedom of a Christian to love a Muslim or the freedom to of love those branded by the state as the enemy-heralds the death of the open society. The promises of Christian harmony, unity, happiness-in short a utopia-held forth by the dominionists have a seductive quality that will never be countered by the tepid offerings of democrats, who at best can offer citizens the opportunity to seek their own happiness and construct their own meaning. [200]

Those arrayed against American democracy are waiting for a moment to strike, a national crisis that will allow them to shred the Constitution in the name of national security and strength. And those in the movement often speak about such a moment with gleeful anticipation. [205]

This movement is bent on our destruction. The attempts by many liberals to make peace would be humorous if the stakes were not so deadly. These dominionists hate the liberal, enlightened world formed by the Constitution, a world they blame for the debacle of their lives. They have one goal-its destruction. [205]

The hate-crimes legislation now stalled in Congress because of bitter opposition from the Christian Right must be made law. [206]

The accelerated rate of global warming could, within a decade, bring about epic destruction involving extreme weather, floods, droughts, epidemics and killer heat waves. To face this challenge, to do something about it, is to embrace a theology of hope, of life. To do nothing about it, to paint these ecological catastrophes as messages from an angry God rather than the folly of humankind, to believe blithely that global warming is a fiction and God alone determines human fate, is to accept this theology of despair, this radical evil. [206]

The radical Christian Right calls for exclusion, cruelty and intolerance in the name of God. Its members do not commit evil for evil’s sake. They commit evil to make a better world. To attain this better world, they believe, some must suffer and be silenced, and at the end of time all those who oppose them must be destroyed. The worst suffering in human history has been carried out by those who preach such grand, utopian visions, those who seek to implant by force their narrow, particular version of goodness. This is true for all doctrines of personal salvation, from Christianity to ethnic nationalism to communism to fascism. Dreams of universal good create hells of persecution, suffering and slaughter. [209]

I do not deny the right of Christian radicals to be, to believe and worship as they choose. But I will not engage in a dialogue with those who deny my right to be, who delegitimize my faith and denounce my struggle before God as worthless. All dialogue must include respect and tolerance for the beliefs, worth and dignity of others, including those outside the nation and the faith. When this respect is denied, this clash of ideologies ceases to be merely a difference of opinion and becomes a fight for survival. This movement seeks, in the name of Christianity and American democracy to destroy that which it claims to defend. [211]

The attacks by this movement on the rights and beliefs of Muslims, Jews, immigrants, gays, lesbians, women, scholars, scientists, those the dismiss as “nominal Christians,” and those they brand with the curse of “secular humanist” are an attack on all of us, on our values, our freedom and ultimately our democracy. Tolerance is a virtue, but tolerance coupled with passivity is a vice. [211]

Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them. In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be most unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument; but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. We should claim that any movement preaching intolerance places itself outside the law, and we should consider incitement to intolerance and persecution as criminal, in the same way as we should consider incitement to murder, or to kidnap, or to the revival of the salve trade, as criminal.
Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies. [1]

Buy the book.

Excellent post Mr. Brynes - great analysis. I also must take issue that social order is necessarily linked to an organized religious faith. Just because many Western European countries have state churches doesn't mean that their post WWII social order is based on "faith."

I truly think this issue will resolve itself in time and will be seen as yet another attempt by a reactionary right-wing movement to dominate it's culture. Reactionaries never win - the last time they did, it was called the Dark Ages. In over 500 years of Western history - and especially since the Enlightenment, the status quo has never held. The clock has never been turned back. Rightist reactionaries most always carry within them the seed of their own corruption and destruction. The Pharisees, Avignon, the Puritans, Prohibitionists....it's archetypical. That's no reason for secularists not to be vocal and vigilant, though. It all works together in the process.

I would also caution those who are using a pre -1960s template to define their conception of morality (which is quite natural for those born before 1963 or so). Like the old Victorians in the 1920s, you may be convinced that the moral code has broken down completely and irrecoverably since the 1890s. And you would be right - to a point. The structure (social order, values) is destroyed, but the basic moral foundation remains. A new social order is built on the foundation. The counter culture won the Culture War. The Reaction is waning and we are left with the result..a new order. A new social order requires us to revisit, amend and redefine the parameters of social experience. That's where we are at now. We are all contributing to this dialouge that will define the values of this new social order. That's why it's so noisy. That's what makes our peculiar democracy so dynamic and fascinating! Unfortunately for Boomers and those older, it will be young people who ultimately decide what the result will be . They have no stake in the old order and within the next 15 or 20 years will be fully in charge. They are already reshaping the institutions of their age level to reflect this new order. If you look there - at these youngster's institutions and culture - you can catch a glimpse of the values of the new social order. If you persist in holding up the 1950s as your moral template, though, you may be disappointed - even scandalized - just as a Victorian would have been by many aspects of the 1950s. ;)

Good article. It's nice to see a ration article on the dangers of the religious right, rather than the irrational rantings of people like Dan. Liberals are not close minder. Conservatives are. In fact close mindedness is the greatest trait of conservatives as Dan has demonstrated.

The writer is sooo predictably liberal and close-minded in her thinking that she accuses anyone that does not share her opinions, likes and dislikes as being "anti-rational". soooo cliche. Ms. Jacoby, stick to your athiest tea parties.

Tom Byrnes:

Thanks for an excellent and thoughtful comment. I only have two additional points.

I've just completed "Broken Government" by John Dean, who as a lifelong Republican merits a read regarding that demonstration of morals and the supposed ethical running of our government, beginning with the Republican dominance with Nixon onward. It's a saddening, but frightening read. We would all do well to know of the machinery and mechanisms of the Republican party.

Second, as far as ultimately "faith" being the foundation upon which a moral society runs, I would really need to be convinced with numbers, according to the world we live in today, to coorelate those governments and nations where faith is a major component compared to those who are more secular. At least in past readings, on almost every measurable index of life quality, those nations with more "faithful" adherents fell far below those with more "secular" adherents.

It's a good question, and at this time in our history I think it should really be addressed. We probably have the means to accomplish finally answering whether or not a more intentional separation of church and state really is better.

A response to Brian's comment on accurate reporting: According to the Better Business Bureau, Campus Crusade has 6463 paid employees.

Dear Kevin Perrotta,

I'm sure Ms. Jacoby appreciated your feedback.

As a teacher, I thought I might point out that "ususally" is normally spelled "usually."

--Mama Bear
Ohio

I grew up in the 50's when the moral center was anchored in the Sermon on the Mount. The New-Left of the 60's was grounded in the Sermon, the old Left Marxists believed in Das Kapital. The New Left was spiritual, the Old Left was all about system.

After the social revolution of the late 60's, particularly after 1973, the Christian Right moved its center to the Book of Revelations and ignored or perverted the meaning of the Sermon.

After Roe v. Wade the Republicans took advantage of the religious to press their economic and foreign policy agendas; the Democrats just gave them the back of their hands. My guess is that the majority of Christians in this country prefer the Sermon with its hopeful road-map to a better world over a dark and gloomy Apocalypse.

If moderate religious believers and secularists need to form an alliance they can't be the same people, which means that the true secularists are in a small minority in a society where most people claim to have some religious belief, moderate or not. At that rate, why should the secularists' views be so privileged? I consider myself a massively moderate religious, but I think that the complete separation of Church and State is not entirely achievable. Zionism, with which I do not agree, is only partly a religious movement, though I agree that Christian Zionism has become an important force on the religious right and deserves some attention from those who share Susan's point of view. But even as a non-Zionist I'm sorry to see suggestions that Jews are greedier than the rest of us and suchlike undesirable words. Jews are just like the rest of us in moral merit and fault. So are Arabs.

Ms Jacoby notes (quite rightly in my opinion) the social turmoil and excesses of the 60’s as creating the soil from which the fundamentalists and evangelicals took root. One can argue that both the religious right and the republican dominance of the past 50 years are outgrowths of the remarkable social upheavals of the 60’s and 70’s. Nixon’s Silent Majority paved the way for Falwell and Weyrich’s Moral Majority. The turmoil of the 60’s and effrontery of the counterculture helped create the palpable discomfort with dissent and what was widely seen as moral dissipation and social chaos. Unlike other fears which have been the staple of conservatives (communism, terrorism, or the threats posed by immigrants), this threat is neither external nor easily identifiable. The seeds of the entropic 60’s and 70’s lay somewhere within ourselves and our own society. Despite the irrationality of the response by the cultural right, there is still a discernable rationale. The implicit reasoning is that social order presumes morality, and morality implies religious faith. And in times of social tumult, faith should by literal, straightforward, moralistic, severe, simplistic, or in a word, like theirs.

The point is that the underlying conditions which fed the growth of the religious right have to do with a vague fear (warranted or not) of declining morality and collapsing social order. And to that extent, I agree that the response to the Christian right need not be a countervailing religious left. Still, it is a good thing that the faithful of liberal persuasion are now challenging the facile equating of moral order with the Christian right’s loopy moralism, or of faith with their sheer abandonment of rationality. At this point the most ardent of the Christian right are not likely to be persuaded either by secularists or the liberal faithful. Yet for many in the middle, both seculars and the faithful, their sympathies with the Christian ideologues has been with some sense of predictable order and stability. Accordingly, liberals will have to demonstrate greater care in presenting their social policies as sustaining order and upholding moral behavior. As importantly, liberals have failed to indicate how the “Christian” and Republican programs could lead to irresponsible and immoral policies, or to significant departures from hallowed American traditions.

Ms Jacoby is undoubtedly correct that much of the institutional infrastructure created by the religious right remains. My optimism that the apex of the Christian right has passed is in part the service rendered by George W. Bush (and to a lesser extent, Tom Delay, Jack Abramhoff, Mark Foley etc) in showing how disastrous, socially irresponsible and at times distressingly immoral their policies could be. The task of liberals in demonstrating the potential disruption to social order or disregard of significant moral dimensions of contemporary life is considerably easier now.

Erik asks:
"This is what I want to understand. As an atheist, what right does she have to say anybody's beliefs are good or bad. There is no morality. Why is it wrong for the religious right to want to take over America? In an atheist world, no one's actions should be criticized because there is no moral basis for opposition based on anything more than Jacoby's own opinion."

Erik,

She has the same right to free speech as everyone else, that's what right she has! Her morality is based on her opinions just like yours is based on your opinions. All morals are based on someone's opinion. So of course atheists have morals, they just aren't derived from religious opinions. What's so hard to understand about that?

Johnny Come Lately...

Let me tell you a story, one not told much YET... but well known and simmering.

Carl Rove, from day one in the administration,
made it his goal to build a "republican majority"
to last for 100 years.

Part of his plan was to get the Jewish money...the huge amount of campaign money used to buy the democratic party for years. In many years it was the single most amount of money given in an election cycle. AIPAC, etc.Also well known.

He has been somewhat successful, has he not? But he and the administration had to pay alot,
had to give AIPAC, the neocons, the Israel Firsters whever they wanted...

He did, the Iraq war, plans for Iran, still, billions for Israel, including cluster bombs they used in Lebanon, and arms that would stagger the US taxpayer (making Americans world hatred and in deep peril, still)...
Laws regarding the greedy Wall Street types were absolutely suspended...the cabinet agencies ignoring all kinds of rules on allk kinds of things (you see the result)..on and on. No punishment for those leaking classified stuff to Israel.

But of course Rove had partnered with an ancient experienced and greedy bunch. History is full of it.
Got out of his control
And there we are today.

But, just like in history, everybody knows. Americans detest the war, and know who conned us into it. They detest by 3-1 the Bush admnistration, and congress ad the media...they know well why Wall Street and their mortgages have blown up. THey know, polls show, and they are not happy.

The WAPO and Times are running around in circles with pro israel stories and columns. But most posts, unless they are censured like GANDHI, show it to be backfiring.

Anybody disagree?

Brian Mann:

Well said, well done. It is good to know that decent journalism has not yet been killed off by major news organizations like CNN and Fox turning into tabloids.

Arminius

This is what I want to understand. As an atheist, what right does she have to say anybody's beliefs are good or bad. There is no morality. Why is it wrong for the religious right to want to take over America? In an atheist world, no one's actions should be criticized because there is no moral basis for opposition based on anything more than Jacoby's own opinion.

This is what I want to understand. As an atheist, what right does she have to say anybody's beliefs are good or bad. There is no morality. Why is it wrong for the religious right to want to take over America? In an atheist world, no one's actions should be criticized because there is no moral basis for opposition based on anything more than Jacoby's own opinion.

My name is Brian Mann. I'm a journalist and often cover conservative culture -- Christian and otherwise.

One of the things that dismays me is the generally crummy quality of journalism that even the best journals bring to religion.

I mention it in the context of your essay because of this assertion:

"The group, which had only 109 employees in 1960, is now a proselytizing international organization with more than 27.000 paid staff members and 225,000 volunteers."

It's possible that I'm mistaken, but my first blush response is -- nonsense.

You're suggesting that this organization is an employer on par with Citigroup?

Journalists often inflate (or accept inflated) numbers involving "mega-churches" and other Christian movements.

Big numbers suggest Big relevance.

But when you put forward an assertion that dizzying, we need footnotes or attribution.

Brian

Donttypelies,

And just how did liberalism almost kill you? Do tell.

Maybe you just weren't doing it right?

HEY HOFFER!

I am a recovering agnostic left wing liberal.

Spent most of my life as one.

Liberalism almost killed me. I am done with it. You will be mugged soon too.

Anonymous,

Please enlighten us, what are the ambitions of the religious left?

Is this similar to the "homosexual agenda"?

I'm betting that you think it is. LOL!

Anonymous,

Do you have an actual point to make or do you just enjoy calling people names instead of making a substantive argument?

Exactly what ambitions do the "left religious" have that you object to?

WEll, we have a very angry little jewess, (zionist, neocon, whatever) writing here.

Or is angry an oxymoron in this case?

Is it arrogance to the enth degree, or funny that she proposes to give "enlightnment" and nobody comes.

I am second to none in dismay at the far right religious. THE ONLY thing more
disgusting and frightening in their political
ambitions are the ms. jacoby's of the world, the "left religious".

Jeff,

You are spot on regarding the Republican Congress. They let decades of playing second fiddle morph itself into a frenzy of spending and revenge. Not unlike ourselves, they should be held accountable for their actions, and they were, with a number of them thrown out of office. Their failure was so bad that they were replaced by Democratic opponents who, for the most part, could only offer a platform of "change" and "end the Iraq war", neither of which has happened to any degree.

The wisdom of our founders (those who created our Constitution) was the realization that in order to protect any church, ALL churches must be protected. That was their goal, to PROTECT religious expression, not BAN it. They rightly saw that the original colonists came to America to escape religious persecution, only to practice it here from the majority position.
I read recently that there are some 20,000 individual Christian denominations, each claiming exclusive rights to salvation. Personally, my definition of Hell would be to spend a weekend, let alone Eternity, with very many of these people, but that is just my opinion.
Meanwhile, regarding religion, I am struck by the number of times that I find the "Christian Right" to be neither. I am still looking for the chapter and verse where Jesus says "go out and KILL for me".

Att: "B-MAN"
att: PAGANPlace,
att: ARMENIUS,
Att: PAGANS,
Att: WiCHES,
Att: WICCANS,
Att: VOODOO MAN & MOMS, etc

Semiramis [B-MAN, et al} was the instigator in forming the false religion aimed at supporting their rule,

Semiramis [ARMENiUS, et al] was the instigator in forming the false religion aimed at supporting their rule,

Semiramis [PAGANPLACE, et al] was the instigator in forming the false religion aimed at supporting their rule,....

Shame Disgusting Shame!

===
Friday, December 21, 2007

Excerpt: "Michael Polk [neo-PAGAN/WICCAN LEADER] is serving time for aggravated assault and robbery. He filed a lawsuit against corrections officials in federal court, accusing them of denying him religious items that he says are necessary to practice the Asatru religion.

Polk says he has been a member of the Asatru faith since 2005, and in order to properly practice it he needs items including: a Thor's Hammer, a prayer cloth, a Mead Horn used for drinking Wassail, a drum made of wood and boar skin, a rune staff and a sword.

http://altreligion.about.com/b/2007/06/05/inmate-may-sue-for-thors-hammer.htm
===

Please See your PAGAN's & WICCANS 'Mother Of HARLOTS" of which ye know now what ye worship suckers, on two Links. Thank You.

1); http://reclaiming.org/

Excerpt: "Welcome to Reclaiming: a Community of People, a Tradition of Witchcraft, and a 501(c)3 non-profit Religious Organization in the San Francisco Bay Area. [caters mostly to lost Homosexuals & lost Lesbians (PEDEPHILES) or those who No Church, Synogogue, temple accepts them for their careless Life-Syles, that affects Us STRAIGHTS!).

Reclaiming is a community of women and men working to unify spirit and politics. Our vision is rooted in the religion and magic of the Goddess, the Immanent Life Force. We see our work as teaching and making magic; the art of empowering ourselves and each other. In our classes, workshops, and public rituals, we train our voices, bodies, energy, intuition, and minds. We use the skills we learn to deepen our strength, both as individuals and as community, to voice our concerns about the world in which we live, and bring to birth a vision of a new culture.

AND:

Brambleton,

Thanks for sharing your efforts for our community. I am grateful for those, and although I am not a believer, I too have served in many of those same endeavors over the years. I'm glad people of good will can come together to help the unfortunate regardless of creed (or lack thereof.)

I was raised in Republican country with an extremely Republican family, but over the years I've found the party generally very self-serving, so it is refreshing to see there are still some genuine conservatives out there who care about people.

However I will argue one point: it is not up to some future generation to determine whether or not our government functions adequately, ethically, and with justice, following the spirit of the Constitution with an adequate balance of powers. It's up to us, now.

The Republican Congress was open for business two days a week during their tenure. I think there's absolutely no excuse for that, it's a crime--it was an opportunity to rubber-stamp legislation without debate, consideration, and thought. It didn't allow representation of the people of the United States. We will be paying the cost of the mistakes of this administration for years to come. Carter hasn't cost my loved ones a thing.

Susan Jacoby is performing an invaluable service with her columns and is part of the process of the diminishment of the Radical Right - as are all of the comments and other discussions on this board and the discussions all across the country concerning this issue. It's really hard to see this diminishment happening when you are in the thick of it, so to speak. It's hard to be objective when you are part of anything. Many people mistake the rallying and thrashings of a dying movement as signs of strength when in reality the opposite is true.

Mike Huckabee's "strength" in the Republican primaries only underscores the marginalzation the Radical Right is undergoing. Moderates and independents are flocking to the Democrats - leaving the very conservative base of Republicans to duke it out among themselves. Of course, the base is conflicted and split among various social, fiscal and martial radicals - yes, radicals. This infighting only goes to show how radicalized the Republican party has become. The fact that John McCain is considerd "liberal" by the base only underscores this fact. If John McCain is liberal, then what was Ronald Reagan? Like I said, it's hard to be objective when you are part of something. The radicalzation of the Republicans happened slowly, but surely. Those of us who were adults as this happened were, to some extent desensitized, distracted or deluded into thinking this was nothing to worry about. Slowly, but surely, the crtical mass of our society accepted this radicalism and allowed it to thrive. We legitimized the likes of Limbaugh, O'Reily, Hannity, Coulter, Ingram, etc, etc by allowing them into the national discourse. The fact that these radicals are howling so loudly tells me they are on the run.

Another thing is that younger people - those under 30 especially, haven't grown accoustomed to the radicalzation of The Republican party. They have a different perspective. They can objectively compare this time period to that which came before and draw some obvious conclusions that maybe those of us who are older can't really see because we are entagled in the facilitation and rationalzation of what happened to the Republican party. Younger people, generally, sense and feel a real threat to our secular republic. That's why they are so involved in this election. They are the catalyst in the diminishment of the Radical Right.

Lastly, the Radical Right isn't going to curl up and die and go away on some strict timetable. A post-Radical Right world isn't going to be free of radicals within a year or so. It took many years for this phenomenon to develop - and it will take many years to it to wane. An example I like to use is the Prohibition movement. It was also a radical Christian fundamentalist movement. It took several decades to become a dominant force by the time the Volstead Act was passed. When Prohibition was repealed in 1933 prohibitionists didn't give up and just walk away. Indeed, they fought on and fielded a candidate......until the 1960 election. It took the '60s to finally kill the movement. So from begining to end, the movement lasted 80 to 90 years. So, I think our expectations should fall in line with other, similar historical movements in the past rather than with our "instant gratification" culture we inhabit today. Although, I would say it's possible that communication and technology could possibly shorten this particular movement's lifespan in ways that wasn't possible before. In the end, I believe the climax of the Radical Right was 2004-2005 and we will see their power diminish slowly but surely over the next few years as a more rational, more modern generation enters the public discourse.

Langs,

You said, "Clinton caught and prosecuted the terrorist that attacked us under his watch."

Really, I don't know whether this is comical or sad. Congrats on catching the guy that carried out the crime. Unfortunately, we completely ignored the people that funded and trained the culprit. And we ignored the same people who were arming and training thousands of others to commit the exact same crime. Good job!

And can you recall President Clinton's response to the AMERICAN embassies being bombed in Kenya and Tanzania? Yeah, he fired a single cruise missile at a pharmaceutical plant in Egypt. Wow! Way to strike a blow against terrorism. You can attack and kill american citizens, but be prepared to lose a textile plant or other vacant building!!

ARrgghh! Woof! Woof! Awooo! SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE! Arf! Arf! Grrrrrrr! AWFUL CHRISTIANS! Arf! Woof! Arf! Frothhh! CHRISTIANS BAD! Woof! Woof! ATHEISTS GOOD! Arf! Arf! Huff! Huff! Pant! Pant! RELIGIOUS NO LOGICAL ATHEIST VERY LOGICAL YOU BETCHA! Awoooooooo!

Talley,

You might end up being right about President Bush, but only someone who is incredibly naive would think they could judge the legacy of a President while he/she was still in office. Ever heard of Abraham Lincoln?

And how did President Carter work out for you?