Mn-prog-events Mailing List: Progressive Calendar 10.13.05

[David Shove (shove001]

              P R O G R E S S I V E   C A L E N D A R    10.13.05

1. Big boxes/bus barn  10.13 9:30am
2. MN national guard   10.13 9:30am
3. Park board forum    10.13 6:30pm CANCELLED

4. Counter recruitment 10.14 12noon
5. Palestine vigil     10.14 4:15pm
6. Queer boyz nite     10.14 8pm

7. Michael Doliner - Killing democracy the Straussian (totalitarian) way
8. Chris Hedges    - The Christian right and the rise of American fascism
9. PC Roberts      - How to end the war
10. ed             - Bush is the headlights (poem)

--------1 of 10--------

From: Jesse Mortenson <jmortenson [at] macalester.edu>
Subject: Big boxes/bus barn 10.13 9:30am

The big box stores looking to move into the Bus Barn site on I94 and
Snelling (Lowes and Best Buy) have made a leap forward by signing a
developer agreement with CM Debbie Montgomery (which just came to light
the other day) which will come before the city council next Wednesday.

http://www.startribune.com/stories/535/5666149.html

There will be a press conference Thursday 10.13 morning at 9:30am put on
by University United, Community Stablization Project and Jewish Community
Action. This is a way, way, way, important move to try to stop. It would
be one more enormous betrayal of quality of life and economic development
for the Midway neighborhood and all of St. Paul.

[Big box business giving us the business, as usual. With the aid an
all-too-easy council member, who with any luck will be doing something
else after the 2007 election.  -ed]


--------2 of 10--------

From: wamm <wamm [at] mtn.org>
Subject: MN national guard 10.13 9:30am

WAMM St. Joan of Arc Peacemakers and Veterans for Peace are holding a
press regarding the obligation of state government to protect its citizen
soldiers of the Minnesota National Guard called to active duty.

9:30am Thursday October 13
Room 125, Minnesota State Capitol

Contact: Jim Steinhagen  612-722-1112


--------3 of 10-------

From: Dorie Rae Gallagher <hoboanne [at] velotel.com>
Subject: Park board forum 10.13 6:30pm CANCELLED

There will be a PARK BOARD Forum/Debate October 13 6:30PM at the Minnehaha
United Methodist Church. 3701 East 50th Street Minneapolis.  CANCELLED
CANCELLED CANCELLED CANCELLED CANCELLED CANCELLED CANCELLED CANCELLED


--------4 of 10--------

From: sarah standefer <scsrn [at] yahoo.com>
Subject: Counter recruitment 10.14 12noon

Counter Recruitment Demonstration
Our Children Are Not Cannon Fodder
Fridays   NOON-1
Recruiting Office at the U of M
At Washington and Oak St.  next to Chipolte
for info call Barb Mishler 612-871-7871


--------5 of 10--------

From: peace 2u <tkanous [at] hotmail.com>
Subject: Palestine vigil 10.14 4:15pm

Every Friday
Vigil to End the Occupation of Palestine

4:15-5:15pm
Summit & Snelling, St. Paul

There are now millions of Palestinians who are refugees due to Israel's
refusal to recognize their right under international law to return to
their own homes since 1948.

--------6 of 10--------

From: paulino brener <mail [at] paulino.info>
Subject: Queer boyz nite 10.14 8pm

Queer Boyz Nite Cabaret (and everybody's welcome!)
October 14 & 15 8 pm
Patrick's Cabaret
3010 Minnehaha Ave
Minneapolis, MN 55406
Tickets: $6
Reservations: 612 721-3595

www.patrickscabaret.org

More than a decade ago Patrick Scully began the tradition of Queer Boyz
Nite. One of the Cabaret's most sucessful events, QBN is far from a
separatist event, everybody is welcome. Now Scully has turned it over to
the next generation, and Paulino Brener is the weekend's curator and host.
Brener, a wild man from Argentina, tall enough to give Scully the queer
eye eye to eye, has worked around town with Teatro del Pueblo, Trece Lunas
Arts Collective, Theatre de la Jeune Lune, and Ethnic Dance Theatre. He is
now working on his new adventure, a one-man-show for children "The
Adventures of Don Quixote". For more info visit
www.adventuresofdonquixote.com

For QBN Seņor Brener has put together five performing acts and a visual
art sale:

Gerry Girouard just left Argentina, where Spring is arriving, and returned
to Minneapolis. He's bringing us "Acrobatic Tango - Direct from Buenos
Aires to You".

Steven John Koob layers sound in multiple layers from his keytar to bring
out the gay spirit in everything.

Jimmy Lee is an accomplished boxer from Chicago (Cabrini-Green), and he's
gonna knock your socks off with "Tales from hood presented by the devil
himself (featuring Jimmy Lee Williams)" Oh yeah, he's a model, actor and
barber, too.

On his way from from Juarez to Minneapolis, Jaime Carrera spent some time
in Kansas writing music. He's not in Kansas anymore, but his music will
take us places.

Take a deep breath. John Armstrong and Dennis Yelkin are going to dance
together in a piece called "From Masochism to Openness".

As a new part of the Queer Boyz Nite, work will be for sale by visual
artists Robert Guttke, Colin Kulow, Jim Berenson and Dennis Yelkin. Sale
proceeds go to benefit Patrick's Cabaret.


--------7 of 10--------

Killing Democracy The Straussian Way
Shadia B. Drury's Leo Strauss and the American Right
by Michael Doliner
Book Review

Drury, Shadia B.: Leo Strauss and the American Right, Palgrave Macmillan,
February 1999, ISBN 0-31221-783-8, 256 pages, $29.95 (hardcover)

(Swans - October 10, 2005)   Will the backlash from Katrina's destruction
and the Bush Administration's woeful response to it finally do in the
neocons? If you think so you don't know whom you are dealing with. Many
have connected the name of Leo Strauss with the Neoconservatives, but
almost nowhere do I find the actual content of this connection. Strauss
was a professor. What did he profess? It is not sufficient merely to use
Strauss's name with a sneer, for his actual thought is likely far more
daring than you can imagine. The neocons are more than just the usual
hacks serving the imperial masters. They share Strauss's dark vision.

Shadia Drury, a professor of philosophy at the University of Regina has
written an excellent book about Strauss, Leo Strauss and the American
Right. According to Drury, Strauss's attitude towards liberal democracy
was at the root of this thought. "Strauss abhorred liberal democracy
because he associated it with the Weimar Republic whose constitution was
drafted at the end of World War I." Many Jewish European expatriates, who,
like Strauss, survived World War II, identified American liberal democracy
with the Weimar Republic, and the weakness and decadence of Weimar with
the rise of Nazism. Strauss persuaded students such as Allan Bloom, Henry
Jaffa, Irving Kristol, Paul Wolfowitz, and many others of this connection.
He convinced them that liberalism was the root of Nazism and therefore
abhorrent.

Liberalism, as Drury makes clear later on, boils down to the belief not
that everyone is equal, but that everyone should be given an equal
opportunity to make what he can of himself. It extols individual
development at the expense of community; its principle is meritocracy.
Liberalism, dedicated to individual development, has no absolutes, and
tolerates such things as abortion, one step from Hitler's gas chambers.
Because it has no absolutes, individuals dedicated to their own
advancement only with difficulty unite into communities with common
beliefs. Consequently liberal democracies are weak and a demagogue can
easily overwhelm them. The weakness and nihilism of Weimar led to, or even
became, Nazi Germany. For Strauss, American liberal democracy, Weimar
revived, is an evil threatening all truly human existence.

But Drury claims that Strauss disliked liberalism not only because he
thought it might lead to nihilism and therefore Nazism. "It was the ideals
of liberalism itself -- secular politics, human rights, equal dignity, and
human freedom -- that he did not relish." These too he would abolish, for
they were the very opposite of what he considered to be the good society.
His vision was of a hierarchical society based on natural inequalities and
welded together with the fanatical devotion state religion engenders.

Strauss's political program is designed to counter the ills of liberalism.
He believed in, and proposed, a state religion as a way of reviving
absolutes, countering free thought, and enforcing a cohesive unity.
Strauss argued against a society containing a multiplicity of coexisting
religions and goals, which would break the society apart. He thought that
ordinary people should not be exposed to reason. To rely on reason is to
look into the abyss, for reason provided no comforting absolutes to shield
one against the blank sky. Strauss opposed not reason itself, but reason
stripped of its secrecy. Reason is for the few, not the many. The
Enlightenment, the exposing of reason, was the beginning of the disaster.
A reliance on reason, as opposed to religion, produced "modernity" which
is nothing more than nihilism made political.

The visible leaders of this state are the "gentlemen." Drawn from the best
families, trained to appear like leaders, imbued with the language of
honor and piety, they are the Straussian State's figureheads. Although
Strauss advocated a single state religion for the hoi polloi, at the top
guiding the gentlemen, was a secret cabal of atheistic "philosophers."
Strauss knew, and believed that all great philosophers knew, that religion
is hokum. It was necessary for the masses, but not for the philosophers
who, Strauss thought, would secretly rule the state. These atheistic
philosophers would supply Machiavellian wisdom to the gentlemen. Drury
notes that in attributing wisdom to the philosophers Strauss is not a
conservative, for conservatives believe that the traditions of the
society, as they have developed over time, and not these philosophers, are
the repository of wisdom. The society Strauss envisions is really only
"good" for these philosophers. Everyone else is forced to live in
delusion. Of course, Strauss believed average people couldn't bear the
truth and needed the comfort of religion, so he argued that his
hierarchical state was good for them too.

Because they reason in secret, the Straussian philosophers must form a
secret society in which they reveal the truth to their students, "the
puppies." Their works will contain their real "esoteric" meaning hidden in
a diversionary "exoteric" meaning. And since these philosophers will be
political they will form a cabal in order to rule. Their job, at first, is
to wean America away from its "love affair" with liberalism. To do this
they will drive a wedge between liberalism and democracy. Strauss
distinguishes between the two. "Liberalism is concerned with securing the
greatest possible freedom for individuals. And this may very well be
accomplished with a constitutional monarchy. Democracy is the rule of the
people, or rule according to the will of the people or the majority." It
can easily be used to suppress liberalism. By demagogic manipulation
democracy, through a populist appeal, can be turned against liberalism.
Since the cabal tells the truth only to its own elite members, and
dissembles to everyone else for the purpose of welding together this rigid
hierarchical structure, lying to the public is a virtue. Indeed all the
gentlemen's speech to the public, supplied by the philosophers, is for the
purpose of manipulation.

The essential first task for the philosophers is to produce ideology that
the gentlemen will use to attack liberalism and gain power. Strauss's
hatred of liberalism is so virulent that he sees the struggle against it
as a war, and in war all is fair. For this reason Straussians will use
every dirty trick they can think of in the democratic arena in order to
defeat liberalism. While doing so they will corrupt democracy itself. But
since democracy is only a tool with which to defeat liberalism in order to
institute the true Straussian hierarchical society, this is of little
import. In the end they will jettison democracy if to do so is expedient.

After it defeats liberalism, the cabal will still have work to do to
institute the Straussian good society. Even with religion and the lies of
the philosophers, the society will not be stable. "Strauss thinks that a
political order can be stable only if it is united by an external threat,
and following Machiavelli, he maintains that if no external threat exists,
then one has to be manufactured." The fundamental political categories are
"us" and "them." A sense of perpetual crisis and war cements the society
together with absolute loyalty to the gentlemen. But the categories "us"
and "them" do not stop at external enemies. The sense of crisis makes the
struggle against internal enemies an even more desperate war of "us"
against "them."

Since domestic politics is also conceived in terms of war, the rules of
democracy must not be allowed to prevent victory. Opponents of the ruling
cabal, whatever their stripe, are "them." Indeed, since the cabal of
philosophers is deceiving everyone else, even those who have joined the
cause out of religious zeal are, in a real sense, "them." A small circle
of initiates who repel the advances of everyone else is a feature of the
Straussian State. These initiates are philosophers who rely on reason, and
nihilistic reason tells them there are no rules, none, in this domestic
battle.

One thing the philosophers will not have to do is philosophize. Strauss
believed that all the great (ancient) philosophers agreed on all
fundamental points. There is really not much philosophizing left to do,
for the truth is obvious to anyone who has discovered or been let in on
the secret. The real truth is that justice is the rule of the stronger,
who act to help "us" and hurt "them." Thus the idea of an objective good
and evil that Strauss thinks necessary for social cohesion is a lie
foisted upon the hoi polloi. It is just part of the religion. The
philosophers are philosophers because they are in the know. They bask in
the realization that Strauss thought them worthy of receiving the
revelation. The good news is that philosophy is erotic. It is the pursuit
of Metis, Zeus's sexy first wife.

Eventually the philosophers can become political actors themselves by
becoming philosopher-prophets, philosophers with a religious message
promulgated for political purposes. At this point they can dispense with
the gentlemen, who had been their tools, and lead openly. Strauss
identifies these philosopher-prophets with Nietzsche's Overman, his vision
of the highest human type. This figure's religion is a creation, a work of
art, not a vision of truth.

Such, in outline, is Drury's description of the Straussian political map.
Drury is a careful thinker and willingly admits that some of Strauss's
insights are accurate. She grants him liberalism's weakness and
democracy's vulnerability to demagogues. But she rejects the necessary
devolution of liberalism into Nazism, and finds the aspects of liberalism
Strauss finds distasteful good.

After viewing the outline of Strauss's good society I wondered what he had
against Hitler. Strauss was a Jewish nationalist without being a Zionist.
He thought it was essential for Jews to be without a country and advocated
that Jews embrace their suffering as eternal foreigners as an essential
part of Judaism. If suffering is good for Jews, war is essential, and
everything is permitted in war, what did Hitler do wrong?

There is much more to this book, and Drury does an excellent job of
exposing the caricatures of liberalism and democracy and the fantasies of
the overman that go into the Straussian picture. But what I think most
important is an understanding of just what these people are up to. They
are not, as some think, merely agents of Israel. Nor was the war fought
merely for oil. They did not ally themselves with the religious right
merely for expedience. They do not seek primarily to further the fortunes
of Halliburton and Bechtel. All these are real motives, but they are
peripheral motives. Their goal is to turn America into the Straussian
State and rule it perpetually. Consequently, the debacle in Iraq does not
seriously affect their plans. Even the Katrina aftermath might not shake
them. A Straussian society needs an endless war to supply a "them" against
which "we" will do endless battle. The endless war, such a horrible
prospect for the rest of us, provided the political glue to transform the
United States of American from a liberal democracy to a Straussian
totalitarian state.

Straussians would rip up American traditions starting from the Declaration
of Independence, an Enlightenment document if there ever was one. Nothing
could be more repellent to them than the rights to life, liberty, and the
pursuit of happiness. That is a description of decadent liberalism. They
prefer death, bondage, and the fear of God (for others.) Straussians are
orders of magnitude more subversive than any communist ever was.
Paradoxically, Straussians do think that Cindy Sheehan's son Casey died
for a noble cause, the transformation of the United States of America into
the Straussian State. But of course they can never say so for their goal
must remain a secret one. It must remain secret because the Straussian
state is the good society only for the philosophers. Everyone else remains
deluded and oppressed. While the "philosophers play with their puppies"
the rest of us slave away or go off to die.

Because Straussians think they are fighting for human life itself they
will not give up. Loss of popularity will not affect them. Gaining and
holding political power is a life and death matter for them. They know
perfectly well that Americans are "in love with liberalism," so any public
objection to their program from this source is to be expected. Liberal
criticisms will not sway Strauss's followers. The failure of the Iraq war
and the growing American isolation in the world do not worry them. They
want an endless war and the more embattled Americans feel the more
inclined they will be to accept a strong ruler and the rest of the
Straussian program. Nor do they mind natural disasters like Katrina's
aftermath if they can use it to tighten the control of the gentlemen.
Those who suffer are, after all, "them."

Strauss is certainly anything but stupid. His ideas when laid out may be a
bookworm's fantasy of power, a fantasy that is now in danger of being
realized, but this only proves that intellectuals can have enormous
influence. Drury, a professor of philosophy herself, offers sharp but fair
criticism. When Strauss accuses liberalism of trivializing life and
turning it into a pursuit of cheap pleasures he has a point. And when he
says that the average man cannot face nihilism and needs religion to
endure existence, he may be right. But Drury denies that religion can do
what Strauss thinks it can. Institutionalized religion ossifies and loses
its spiritual power. When it is reduced to a political tool it is
corrupted. And Drury also reminds us of the good things about liberalism.

But Drury does more than that. Although Drury disapproves of Strauss, she
is willing to recognize the validity of many of his perceptions. It is not
sufficient for liberals to merely find reasons why Strauss is wrong, it is
also important to ask about why the United States of America has fallen so
very far short of its ideals. Liberal democracy, with all its good points,
has become monstrous. Why?

To explain how Heidegger, whom he admired, could have embraced Hitler,
Strauss argued that Heidegger perceived the problem but had no cure.
Perhaps we can look at Strauss in the same way. The Straussian vision is
an awful one, but is it awful because we are "in love with" liberal
democracy? Strauss knew that secrecy about his ideas was essential to his
success. Even if we could defeat him through exposure, that would still
leave an enormous real problem to solve. Why has liberal democracy in
America proved so murderous? My own feeling is that class warfare has
destroyed the United States far more than liberalism has, but I must admit
that even if America shared its wealth fairly, it has produced something
tawdry and mean. This is not to say there isn't much that is wonderful,
but most of it, in my opinion, was created in opposition to the dominant
culture. It may just be that Strauss is right that liberalism will result
in a subhuman society. Would America have been different if the rich had
not engaged in relentless class warfare? I would say so, but nothing can
now demonstrate it. The cheap tawdry pleasures Americans who have
succeeded waste their wealth on only demonstrate Strauss's point. That no
clear alternative to Strauss's vision is easily available to us shows that
this crisis of culture is ours as well as his.

Drury, Shadia B.: Leo Strauss and the American Right, Palgrave Macmillan,
February 1999, ISBN 0-31221-783-8, 256 pages, $29.95 (hardcover)


--------8 of 10--------

{This is an article by Chris Hedges that no major publication will print.)

The Christian Right and the Rise of American Fascism
Chris Hedges
http://www.theocracywatch.org/chris_hedges_nov24_04.htm
15 Nov 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 the establishment 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 cites 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 abolition 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 9th 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.


--------9 of 10--------

How to End the War
Natural Born Liars
By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS
CounterPunch
October 11, 2005

George W. Bush is a natural born liar. He lied us into a war, and now he
is lying to keep us there. In his October 6 self-congratulatory speech at
that neoconservative shrine, the National Endowment for Democracy, the
President of the United States said: "Today there are more than 80 Iraqi
army battalions fighting the insurgency alongside our forces."

Eighty Iraqi battalions makes it sound like the US is just lending Iraq a
helping hand. I wonder what Congress and the US commanders in Iraq thought
when they heard there were 80 Iraqi battalions that American troops are
helping to fight insurgents? Just a few days prior to Bush's speech,
Generals Casey and Abizaid told Congress that, as a matter of fact, there
was only one Iraqi battalion able to undertake operations against
insurgents.

I wonder, also, who noticed the great contradiction in Bush's speech. On
the one hand, he claims steady progress toward freedom and democracy in
Iraq. On the other hand, he seeks the American public's support for
open-ended war.

In her Princeton speech, Condi Rice made it clear that Iraq is just the
beginning: "We have set out to help the people of the Middle East
transform their societies. Now is not the time to falter or fade."

On October 5 Vice President Cheney let us know how long this commitment
was to last: "Like other great duties in history, it will require decades
of patient effort."

Who's going to pay for these decades of war to which the Bush
administration is committing Americans? Already the US is spending $7
billion a month on war in Iraq alone. The nonpartisan Congressional
Research Service says that if the Iraq war goes on another five years, it
will cost at least $570 billion by 2010.

Bush's war has already doubled the price of gasoline and home heating.

Americans are being laid off right and left as corporations outsource
their jobs to China, India, and Eastern Europe.

With US forces bogged down in Afghanistan (invaded October 7, 2001) and
Iraq (invaded March 20, 2003), Bush is plotting regime change in Syria and
conspiring to set up Iran for attack.

Is there a single person in the Office of Management and Budget, the US
Treasury, the Congressional Budget Office, or the Federal Reserve who
thinks the US, already drowning in red ink, has the resources to fight
wars for decades?

And where will the troops come from? The US cannot replace the losses in
Iraq. We know about the 2,000 American troops killed, but we do not hear
about the large number of wounded. UPI correspondent Martin Sieff reported
on October 7 that US wounded jumped from 16.3 per day at the end of
September to 28.5 per day at the beginning of October. Multiply that daily
rate by 30 days and you get 855 wounded per month. Approximately half of
these are wounded too seriously to return to combat.

Has anyone in the administration pointed out to Bush, Cheney and Condi
Rice what decades of casualties at these rates mean?

Insurgents are killing Iraqi security personnel who are collaborating with
the US occupation at the rate of two or three hundred per month. The
wounded numbers are much higher.

Last month suicide bombers killed 481 Iraqis and wounded 1,074.

Has anyone in the administration put these numbers in a decades long
context?

Apparently not. Once these numbers are put on paper, not even Bush
administration speech writers can continue to pen rhetorical
justifications for war and more war.

The neoconservative Bush administration prides itself on not being
"reality based." Facts get in the way of the administration's illusions
and delusions. Bush's "80 Iraqi battalions" are like Hitler's secret
weapons. They don't exist.

Iraqis cannot afford to collaborate with the hated Americans or with the
puppet government that the US has put in place. Out of desperation, some
do, but their heart is not in it. Few Iraqis are willing to die fighting
for the United States and Likudian Israel.

When the 2nd Iraq Battalion graduated from US training camp on January 6,
2004, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld and US commander in Iraq, Gen. Ricardo
Sanchez, expressed "high expectations" that Iraqi troops, in the general's
words, "would help us bring security and stability back to the country."

Three months later when the 2nd Battalion was brought up to support the US
invasion of Fallujah, the battalion refused to fight and returned to its
post. "We did not sign up to fight Iraqis," said the troops.

Readers write in frustration: "Tell us what we can do." On the surface it
doesn't look like Bush can be stopped from trashing our country.

The congressional mid-term elections are a year away. Moreover, the
Democrats have failed as an opposition party and are compromised by their
support for the war. Bush has three more years in which to mire America in
wider war. If Bush succeeds in starting wars throughout the Middle East,
his successor will be stuck with them.

Congressional Democrats and Republicans alike have made it clear that they
are going to ignore demonstrations and public opinion. The print and TV
media have made it clear that there will be no reporting that will hold
the Bush administration accountable for its deceit and delusion.

There still is a way to bring reality to the Bush administration. The
public has the Internet. Is the antiwar movement well enough organized to
collect via the Internet signatures on petitions for impeachment, perhaps
one petition for each state? Millions of signatures would embarrass Bush
before the world and embarrass our elected Representatives for their
failure to act.

If no one in Congress acted on the petitions, all the rhetoric about war
for democracy would fall flat. It would be obvious that there is no
democracy in America.

If the cloak of democracy is stripped away, Bush's "wars for democracy"
begin to look like the foreign adventures of a megalomaniac. Remove Bush's
rhetorical cover, and tolerance at home and abroad for Bush's war would
evaporate. If Bush persisted, he would become a pariah.

Americans may feel that they cannot undercut a president at war, in which
case Americans will become an embattled people consumed by decades of
conflict. Americans can boot out Bush or pay dearly in blood and money.

Paul Craig Roberts has held a number of academic appointments and has
contributed to numerous scholarly publications. He served as Assistant
Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. His graduate
economics education was at the University of Virginia, the University of
California at Berkeley, and Oxford University. He is coauthor of The
Tyranny of Good Intentions. He can be reached at:
paulcraigroberts [at] yahoo.com


--------10 of 10--------

 Bush is the headlights,
 we the deer. The belt takes us
 to the killing floor.


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

   - David Shove             shove001 [at] tc.umn.edu
   rhymes with clove         Progressive Calendar
                     over 2225 subscribers as of 12.19.02
              please send all messages in plain text no attachments