One of the problems with public perceptions about crazed TV preacher Pat Robertson is that most perceive him as just a crazed TV preacher. He’ll go on his crazed daily television show (The 700 Club), offer crazed commentary just about everything, and then make crazed rationalizations for his lunacy. The media marvels at his madness, but generally overlooks the bigger problem: Robertson laid out an ambitious agenda years ago, and he’s succeeding.
Thanks to the prosecutor purge scandal, and former Alberto Gonzales aide Monica Goodling’s role in it, the public is learning about Robertson’s Regent University, which, as Slate’s
Dahlia Lithwick noted over the weekend, is doing exactly what it set out to do.
Goodling is only one of 150 graduates of Regent University currently serving in this administration, as Regent’s Web site proclaims proudly, a huge number for a 29-year-old school. Regent estimates that “approximately one out of every six Regent alumni is employed in some form of government work.” And that’s precisely what its founder desired. The school’s motto is “Christian Leadership To Change the World,” and the world seems to be changing apace. Former Attorney General John Ashcroft teaches at Regent, and graduates have achieved senior positions in the Bush administration. The express goal is not only to tear down the wall between church and state in America (a “lie of the left,” according to Robertson) but also to enmesh the two.
The law school’s dean, Jeffrey A. Brauch, urges in his “vision” statement that students reflect upon “the critical role the Christian faith should play in our legal system.” Jason Eige (’99), senior assistant to Virginia Attorney General Bob McDonnell, puts it pithily in the alumni newsletter, Regent Remark: “Your Resume Is God’s Instrument.”
As Christopher Hayes
explained in The American Prospect, more than two-thirds of Regent students identified themselves as Republicans, but the numbers aren’t as important as the school’s mission. As Hayes noted, “what students are taught at a place like Regent, or even Calvin and Wheaton, is to live out a Christ-centered existence in all facets of their lives. But what they learn is to become Republicans.”
<...>
Thanks to Robertson’s minions infiltrating Bush’s Justice Department, religious right activists are literally helping
drive federal law enforcement, particularly when it comes to civil rights and picking U.S. Attorneys.
moreEdited to add:
I am also not claiming that a full blown theocratic dystopia a la
The Handmaid's Tale is likely in America's future. However, the theocrats have managed to undermine the separation of church and state in numerous different ways. Many of the goals of the theocrats, which were considered utterly crackpot, are now considered fit for mainstream discussion. Some examples include the establishment of an office of "faith-based initiatives," the utterly substance-less "intelligent design" creationism, the advocacy of a minimalist federal government, the opposition to the U.N. and multi-lateralism, the establishment of a false dichotomy between a dominant "secularism" and a persecuted Christianity, the attempt to undermine and eliminate Social Security, and the placement within the American government, at all levels, of political operatives fully committed to destroying American liberalism.
By "American liberalism" I am not referring specifically to those of us who call ourselves "liberals" but something far broader. The goal of the theocrats is to replace the Englightenment liberal idea of a nation of laws and the consensus of the governed with a government of self-described superior beings who claim they derive their power directly from God.
Such claims immunize rulers from criticism or accountability from the people. Such claims are made, in many different ways, by the Bush administration. Only Bush, of all presidents, at least in recent history, has explicitly claimed that the reason he took the country to war was because God told him to. Furthermore, Bush has never discouraged his far right base from claiming he is God's avatar on earth. (If anyone doubts this, I'll gladly provide links.) But sometimes the claim that "God commands it" is minimized or simply assumed, in the theocrats' support of such far-right goals as the elimination of Social Security, income tax, or participation in the UN.
These are extremely dangerous trends. Due to a highly sophisticated public relations campaign, the extent of christianist undermining both of American civic values AND the very infrastructure of American government (as with Goodling) has been grossly underestimated by the mainstream.
Why should we worry? Well, when you have an American president who follows God's will rather than the will of the people, you end up quagmired in insane, immoral wars as in Iraq. You end with an erosion of scientific expertise. And you end up with a federal government which holds itself accountable to no earthly law or lawmaker.In short, you end up with precisely the situation we face today with the Bush administration and, at the local level, with christianist incursions into state, county, and city government.
That's for starters. As bad as Bush is, if the theocrats aren't beaten back to the fringes of American politics, it will get a lot worse.
more
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
