America’s Crumbling Theocracy

We want . . . as soon as possible to see a majority
of the Republican Party in the hands of pro-family
Christians by 1996. (Pat Robertson, Denver Post, 10/26/92)

 “Somehow, somewhere along the way, faith stopped being used to bring us together and started being used to drive us apart. It got hijacked,”

–Barack Obama

 

America’s Crumbling Theocracy
by
Tom Saunders

“Another high-ranking George W. Bush administration official has resigned. The Department of Veterans Affairs Undersecretary for Benefits Daniel Cooper quit Thursday amid mounting criticism over a backlog of disability claims for injured veterans that runs six months long and an appearance he made in a fundraising video for an evangelical Christian organization where he said Bible study was more important than doing his job.” (Aaron Glantz, Inter Press Service.)

Since Homeland Security took over the ”Faith Based Initiatives” programs, over a hundred and fifty graduates of Pat Robertson’s Regent University, and mounting others from the Christian Right, have failed to serve their country, and failed at their jobs. God will not run the country, that is a job for men, who understand the fundamental principles and a free republic, and liberal democracy.

”Bob Altemeyer is a Yale-trained social psychologist who teaches and pursues his research at the University of Manitoba. Altemeyer has studied authoritarianism for the past 40 years, and is considered by his peers to be a leading authority on the subject, not to mention a cutting-edge researcher in the field.” Altemeyer serves to explain why people follow such a corrupt polarization of spiritual seekers.

Altmeyer states in regard to the followers of the Christian Right and their quest to attain political power, why the Religious Right is so inclined to follow authoritarianism….

”Because of one of their great vulnerabilities, which the manipulative dominators exploit. Authoritarian followers have basically copied the ideas of the authorities in their lives. They haven’t thought about things to any great degree and then decided what they believe in. To maintain their beliefs in a world of challenging discoveries and conflicting beliefs, they associate as much as possible with others who agree with them. They travel in small circles, getting booster shots of faith from one another. They rely upon social support, rather than evidence or logic, to keep on believing what in many cases they’ve simply memorized. But this makes them quite vulnerable to manipulators who tell them what they want to hear. Experiments show that they’re so glad to find another person who will tell them that they are right, that they don’t consider that the newcomer might have ulterior motives. All you have to do to get into their “in-group” is tell them they are right, even if you don’t believe a word of it. Since the in-group is made up of followers clinging to each other and looking for a leader, it’s pretty easy for an unscrupulous person to take over– provided he can outmaneuver the other dominators trying the same thing.”
http://writ.news.findlaw.com/dean/20061020.html

The Christian Right has been organized by the idea that people can take their profound faith, with their hands outstreched, and their eyes closed in deep devotion and become an icon for God.

”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.”http://www.theocracywatch.org/about_us2.htm

Jeremy Leaming, writing in Church and State says, “American Vision produces reams of material that push Christian Reconstructionism, a form of fundamentalism that argues for a re-writing of American history, dismantling secular democracy and constructing an America governed by ‘biblical law.”

As Altmeyer points out in the statement by Adolf Hitler..”What good fortune for those in power that people do not think.” Plato said it best, in regard to sophistry. ”But the art of sophistry, which the Greeks cultivated, is a fantastic power, which makes false opinions like true by means of words. For it produces rhetoric in order to persuasion, and disputation for wrangling. These arts, therefore, if not conjoined with philosophy, will be injurious to everyone. For Plato openly called sophistry an evil art.”

Monica Goodling, Kathleen Harris, John Hostettler (R-Indiana), Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX), U.S. Sen. James Talent (R), MO, U.S. Rep. Ernest “Jim” Istook (R), OK., Anne Northup, a Republican KY., and a host of whole programs have failed in attempts to use God, to do their jobs for them. Americans don’t need more prayer meetings, they need real professionals who can deliver real goods and services.

Recently, several books have been written about the attempts of the Christian right to dominate politics like, ”Tempting Faith,” by David Koa. ”American Theocracy,” by Kevin Phillips, and ”Faith and Politics,” by John Danforth. All outline the political goals of the religious right to influence the Bush, and Christian Rights agenda. All confirm the corruption of the Faith Based Initiative programs. They confirm the intrusion into the American military, the Department of Education, and others. The extent is somewhat shocking to those who are not aware that this intrusion is a ‘real’ conspiracy.

Organizations like Americans for the Separation of Church and State, Mikey Weinstein’s Military Religious Freedom Foundation, have volumes of cases that represent the national attempt of the Christian Right to virtually ‘take over,’ the country, and in essence the Constitutional and religious rights of citizens.
The Christian Right, and the Evangelical movement has made the country weaker by trying to impose their obviously delusional image of themselves as ‘Vice Regents of God.’

The impact of the rise and fall of the American theocracy is that it leaves a huge void in American social policy and ‘funding.’ The breakdown in social services, reflects a breakdown in the Legislative, and Judicial branches of government, and an abused economy. All can be directly related to the abandonment of rights supposed to be guaranteed by Constitutional protections.

My advice to Americans is to take a copy of the United States Constitution into your next visit to worship, and have the clergy put the document on top of the Bible, Koran, etc., and bless it

……….

“The Secular, Pagan, Feminist,
Lesbian Abortionists Did It!”
From “Jerry & Pat’s Looney Tunes Hour”
(two days after 9/11)