-----
Original Message -----
Sent: Sunday, October 24, 2004 9:54 PM
Subject: [FREEDOMSFORUM] A1 MUST READ: The "Religious
Right" Holy War Mindset
THANKS to Cynthia for this one - CR
Note from CR: We are what
we believe, having become what we believed. Religious BS (Belief
System) is a religious right... one of our core Constitutional
freedoms. Few are those who understand how the entire Bush Family
"fascade" of the Crawford Texas "ranch" was created as a media prop to
position, package and promote Shrub for political gain... capitalizing
on the mainstream BS of "country folk" to subvert the democratic
process. Call it "mind control" or reptilian brain
"stimulus/response conditioning", you can see how the BUSHwhackers have
hijacked God government with their pandering to God-fearing people who
believe religiously in endless Holy War.
U.S. Founding Fathers
would be appalled with the direction of the current terror-for-tyranny
"currency" of "worth-ship" in this warmonger insanity perpetrated by
wolves in sheep's clothing at the highest level of government. By
God's grace, enough good people will get it "right" -- a LOVE-centric vision of
virtue for the victory of God government "of, by and for the people"...
worldwide.
- Christopher
There is no more
dangerous notion than that of America the Divine.
And the politicians are its
priests.
-
anonymous
The Religious "Belief System" (BS) in
"Patriotism, Right or Wrong":
"Religion is indeed a principal
thing, but too much is worse than none at
all. The world abounds with knaves and villains, but of all knaves, the
religious knave is the worst; and
villainies acted under the cloak of
religion are the most execrable." --
wise ole' Benjamin Franklin
EXCERPTS:
- Evangelical born-again
Christians of one stripe or another were then, and are now, 40% of the
electorate, and they support Bush 3-1.
- .
- Given fundamentalist
Christianity's inherent cultural isolation, it is nearly impossible for most
enlightened Americans to imagine, in honest human terms, what
fundamentalist Americans believe, let alone understand why we should all care.
- If perpetual war is what
it will take, then let it be perpetual.
- After all, perpetual war
is exactly what the Bible promised.
- Like it or not, this is
the reality (or prevailing unreality) with which we are faced... a holy
war, a covert Christian jihad for control of America and the
entire world. Millions
of Americans are under the spell of an extraordinarily dangerous
mass psychosis.
PREFACE from Cynthia:
- I received this today from a
friend who is a unity minister. this is the "other" America that
scares me, that haunts the background of dreams, that motivates me to
explore other countries to live in, that is producing millions of
people to be an audience for hundreds of "Ann Coulters", and that puts
books about the rapture in airports and libraries across the country.
- These are the Christians of
the "inquisition", of the Crusades and holy wars. These are the
present day "Kill for Christ" Christians. If Jewish people think that
these "born again" types are ok as they support the state of Israel,
think again and be clear about their motivation. "They" are
"giving" you a second chance at the second coming which they are not
giving anyone else. They are not "for" a Jewish state unless it
becomes a "Christian" Jewish state. "They" support the war in Iraq
precisely because they believe it is a holy war. "They"
would like to see more "holy wars" because that is a sign of the
imminence of the "rapture". You can not argue with the
defense "that God is on our side"; just look at history if you are at
all tempted to try.
- This is not an idle, small. or
back woods group of people. It is not a group of people,
that people from where I come from, know a lot about.
- .
- Love, Cynthia
----------- another preface note
from Cynthia's friend John:
- This piece is well worth the 7
minute read. A stark piece about the depth and breadth of the
Christian fundamentalist conspiracy to steer the country into their
bizarre view of - and desire to actualize - the prophesies of the
Bible as they see it. Even if Kerry wins, the real war
for the heart and soul of America is taking place behind the scenes,
and will continue.
- Bageant is from a family of
Christian fundamentalists and seems to know whereof he speaks.
- John
----------------------- article
follows:
The Covert Kingdom: Thy
Will be Done, On Earth as It is in Texas
by Joe Bageant
Not long ago I pulled my car up alongside a tiny wooden church in the
woods, a stark white frame box my family built in 1840. And as always,
an honest-to-god chill went through me, for the ancestral ghosts
presumably hovering over the graves there. From the wide open front
door the Pentecostal preacher's message echoed from within the plain
wooden walls: "Thank you Gawd for giving us strawng leaders like
President Bush during this crieeesis. Praise you Lord and guide him in
this battle with Satan's Muslim armies."
If I had chosen to go back down the road a mile or so to the
sprawling new Bible Baptist church, complete with school
facilities, professional sound system and in-house television
production -- I could have heard approximately the same exhortation.
Usually offered at the end of a prayer for sons and daughters of
members in the congregation serving in Iraq, it can be heard in any
of the thousands upon thousands of praise temples across our
republic.
After a lifetime of identity conflict, I have come to accept that,
blood-wise, if not politically or spiritually, these are my people.
And as a leftist it is very clear to me these days why urban liberals
not only fail to understand these people, but do not even know they
exist, other than as some general lump of ignorant, intolerant voters
called "the religious right," or the "Christian
Right," or "neocon Christians." But until
progressives come to understand what these people read, hear, are told
and deeply believe, we cannot understand American politics, much less
be effective. Given fundamentalist Christianity's inherent cultural
isolation, it is nearly impossible for most enlightened Americans to
imagine, in honest human terms, what fundamentalist Americans believe, let alone understand why we should all
care.
For liberals to
examine the current fundamentalist phenomenon in America is accept some
hard truths. For
starters, we libs are even more embattled than most of us choose to
believe. Any significant liberal and progressive support is
limited to a few urban pockets on each coast and along the upper edge
of the Midwestern tier states. Most of the rest of the nation, the
much-vaunted heartland, is the dominion of the conservative and
charismatic Christian.
Turf-wise, it's pretty much their country, which is to say it
presently belongs to George W. Bush for some valid reasons. Remember: He did not have to steal the
entire election, just a little piece of it in Florida. Evangelical born-again Christians of
one stripe or another were then, and are now, 40% of the
electorate, and they support Bush 3-1. And as long as their clergy and
their worst instincts tell them to, they will keep on voting for him,
or someone like him, regardless of what we view as his arrogant folly
and sub-intelligence.
Forget about changing their minds. These Christians do
not read the same books we do, they do not get their information
from anything remotely resembling reasonably balanced sources,
and in fact, consider even CBS and NBC super-liberal networks of porn
and the Devil's lies. Given how fundamentalists see the modern world,
they may as well be living in Iraq or Syria, with whom they share approximately
the same Bronze Age religious tenets. They believe in God,
Rumsfeld's Holy War and their absolute duty as God's chosen nation to
kick Muslim ass up one side and down the other.
In other words, just because millions of
Christians appear to be dangerously nuts,
does not mean they are marginal.
Having been born into a Southern Pentecostal/Baptist family of many
generations, and living in this fundamentalist social landscape means
that I gaze into the maw of neocon Christianity daily. Hell, sometimes
hourly. My brother is a fundamentalist preacher, as are a couple
of my nephews, as were many of my ancestors going back to
god-knows-when. My entire family is born-again; their lives are
completely focused inside their own religious community, and on
the time when Jesus returns to earth -- Armageddon and The
Rapture.
Only another liberal born into a fundamentalist clan can
understand what a strange, sometimes downright hellish family
circumstance it is -- how such a family can love you deeply, yet
despise everything you believe in, see you as a humanist instrument
of Satan, and still be right there for you when your back goes
out or a divorce shatters your life. As a socialist and a half-assed
lefty activist, obviously I do not find much conversational fat
to chew around the Thanksgiving table. Politically and spiritually, we
may be said to be dire enemies. Love and loathing coexist side by side.
There is talk, but no communication. In fact, there are times when it
all has science fiction overtones, times when it seems we are speaking
to one another through an unearthly veil, wherein each party knows it
is speaking to an alien.
There is a sort of high eerie mental whine in the air. This is
the sound of mutually incomprehensible worlds hurtling toward
destiny, passing with great psychological friction, obvious to all, yet
acknowledged by none.
Between such times, I wait rather anxiously and strive for
change, for relief from what feels like an increased stifling of
personal liberty, beauty, art, and self-realization in America.
They wait in spooky calmness for Jesus.
[For Christ's sake, when
will they find Him within their hearts... and consider endless LOVE an
alternative to endless war??? -CR]
They believe that, until
Jesus does arrive, our "satanic humanist state and federal legal
systems" should be replaced with pure "Biblical Law."
This belief is called Christian Reconstructionism. Though it has always been around in
some form, it began expanding rapidly about 1973, with the
publication of R. J. Rushdoony's, Institutes of Biblical Law
(Vallecito, CA: Ross House Books, 1982). Time out please.
In a nod toward fairness and tolerance, begging the question of whether
liberals are required to tolerate the intolerant, I will say this: Fundamentalists
are "good people." In daily life, they are warm-hearted and
generous to a fault.
They live with feet on the ground (albeit with eyes cast
heavenward) and with genuine love and concern for their neighbors. [unless they are Muslim or "suspiciously"
dark skinned -CR]
After spending 30 years in
progressive western cities such as Boulder, Colorado and Eugene,
Oregon, I would have to say that conservative Christians actually
do what liberals usually only talk about. They visit the sick and the
elderly, give generously of their time and money to help those in
need, and put unimaginable amounts of love and energy into their
families, even as Pat Robertson and Rush Limbaugh blare in the
background. Their good works extend internationally -- were it not for
American Christians, there would be little health care on the
African continent and other similar places.
OK, that's the best I can do in showing due respect for the
extreme Christian Right. Now to get back to the Christian
Reconstructionists... Establishing a Savage Eden Christian
Reconstruction is blunt stuff, hard and unforgiving as a gravestone. Capital punishment, central to the
Reconstructionist ideal, calls for the death penalty in a wide range of
crimes, including abandonment of the faith, blasphemy, heresy,
witchcraft, astrology, adultery, sodomy, homosexuality, striking
a parent, and ''unchastity before marriage'' (but for women only.)
Biblically correct methods
of execution include stoning, the sword, hanging, and burning. Stoning is preferred, according to Gary
North, the self-styled Reconstructionist economist, because stones are
plentiful and cheap.
Biblical Law would also eliminate labor unions, civil rights laws, and
public schools. Leading Reconstruction theologian David Chilton
declares, "The Christian goal for the world is the
universal development of Biblical theocratic republics"
Incidentally, said Republic of Jesus would not only be a legal hell,
but an ecological one as well; Reconstructionist doctrine calls
for the scrapping of environmental protection of all kinds, because
there will be no need for this planet earth once The Rapture
occurs.
.
You may not have heard of Rushdoony or Chilton or North, but
taken either separately or together, they have directly and
indirectly influenced far more contemporary American minds than Noam
Chomsky, Gore Vidal and Howard Zinn combined. A moreover covert
movement, although slightly more public of late, Christian
Reconstructionism and Dominionism have for decades exerted one
hell of an influence through its scores of books, publications
and classes taught in colleges and universities. Over the past 30
years their doctrine has permeated not only the religious right,
but mainstream churches as well, via the charismatic movement.
The radical Christian right's impact on politics and religion
in this nation has been massive, with many mainstream churches
pushed rightward by its pervasiveness without even knowing it.
Clearly the Methodist church down the street from my house does
not understand what it has become. Other mainstream churches with more
progressive leadership, simply flinch and bow to the radicals at every
turn. They have to, if they want to retain members these days.
Further complicating matters is that leading Reconstruction
thinkers, along with their fellow travelers, the Dominionists, are all
but invisible to non-fundamentalist America. (I will spare you
the agony of the endless doctrinal hair-splitting that comes with
making fundamentalist distinctions of any sort, I would not do
that to a dog. But if you are disposed toward self-punishment,
you can take it upon yourself to learn the differences between
Dominionism, Pretribulationism, Midtribulationism, and
Posttribulationism, Premillennialism, Millennialism I recommend the writings of the British
author and scholar George Monbiot, who has put the entire maddening
scheme of it all together, corporate implications, governmental and
psychological meaning, in a couple of excellent books.)
Fundamentalists such as my
family have no idea how thoroughly they have been orchestrated by
agenda-driven Christian media and other innovations of the past
few decades. They probably would not care now, even if they knew.
Like most of their tribe (dare we say class, in a nation that so
vehemently denies it has a class system), they want to embrace some
simple foundational truth that will rationalize all the conflict and
confusion of a postmodern world. Some handbook that will neatly
explain everything, make all their difficult decisions for them. And
among these classic American citizens, prone toward religious
zealotry since the Great Awakening of the 18th Century, what rock could
appear more dependable upon which to cling than the infallible Holy
Bible? >From there it was a short step for Christian Dominionist
leaders to conclude that such magnificent infallibility should be
enforced upon all other people, in the same spirit as the Catholic
Spanish Conquistadors or the Arab Muslim Moors before them.
It's an old,
old story, a brutal one mankind cannot seem to shake.
Christian Reconstruction and
Dominionist strategists make clear in their writings that
home-schooling and Christian academies have been and continue to
create the Rightist Christian cadres of the future, enabling them
to place ever-increasing numbers of believers in positions of
governmental influence. The training of Christian cadres is far
more sophisticated than the average liberal realizes. There now
stretches a network of dozens of campuses across the nation, each
with its strange cultish atmosphere of smiling Christian pod people,
most of them clones of Jerry Fallwell's Liberty University in
Lynchburg, Virginia. But how many outsiders know the depth and
specificity of political indoctrination in these schools?
For example, Patrick Henry College in Purcellville, Virginia, a college
exclusively for Christian home-schoolers, offers programs in strategic
government intelligence, legal training and foreign policy, all
with a strict, Bible-based "Christian worldview." Patrick Henry is
so heavily funded by the Christian right it can offer classes
below cost.
In the Bush administration, seven percent of all internships are handed
out to Patrick Henry students, along with many others distributed
among similar religious rightist colleges. The Bush administration
also recruits from the faculties of these schools, i.e. the
appointments of right-wing Christian activist Kay Coles James, former
dean of the Pat Robertson School of government, as director of the U.S. office of
personnel. What better position than the personnel
office from which to recruit more fundamentalists? Scratch any of these
supposed academics and you will find a Christian zealot. I know
because I have made the mistake of inviting a few of these folks to
cocktail parties.
One university department head told me he is moving to rural
Mississippi where he can better recreate the lifestyle of the
antebellum South, and its "Confederate Christian values." It
gets real strange real quick.
Lest these Christians be underestimated, remember that it
was their strategists whose "stealth ideology" managed the
takeover of the Republican Party in the early 1990s. That
takeover now looks mild in light of today's neocon Christian
implantations in the White House, the Pentagon and the Supreme Court
and other federal entities. As much as liberals screech in
protest, few understand the depth and breadth of the Rightist
Christian takeover underway. They catch the scent but never
behold the beast itself.
Yesterday I heard a liberal Washington-based political pundit on
NPR say the Radical Christian right's local and regional political
action peak was a past fixture of the Reagan era. I laughed out
loud (it was a bitter laugh) and wondered if he had ever driven 20
miles eastward on U.S. Route 50 into the suburbs of Maryland,
Virginia or West Virginia. The fellow on NPR was a perfect example of
the need for liberal pundits to get their heads out of their asses, get
outside the city, quit cruising the Internet and meet some Americans
who do not mirror their own humanist educations and backgrounds.
If they did, they would grasp the importance The Rapture has taken on in American national
and international politics. Despite the media's shallow interpretation
of The Rapture's significance, it is a hell of a lot more than just a
couple hundred million Left
Behind books sold.
The most significant thing about the Left Behind series is that, although they are classified as
"fiction," most fundamentalist readers I know accept the
series as an absolute reality soon coming to a godless planet near you.
It helps to
understand that everything is literal in the Fundamentalist voter
universe.
I'll Fly Away, Oh
Lordy (But you
won't.) Yes, when The Rapture comes Christians with the right
credentials will fly away. But you and I, dear reader,
will probably be among those who suffer a thousand-year plague of
boils. So stock up on antibiotics, because according to the "Rapture
Index" it is damned near here.
See for yourself at _http://www.raptureready.com._ (http://www.raptureready.com./)
Part gimmick, part fanatical obsession, the index is a compilation
of such things as floods, interest rates, oil prices, global
turmoil. As I write this the index stands at 144, just one point below
critical mass, when people like us will be smitten under a sky filled
with deliriously happy naked flying Christians.
But to blow The Rapture off as amusing-if-scary fantasy is not being
honest on my part. Cheap glibness has always been my vice, so I
must say this: Personally, I've lived with The Rapture as the
psychologically imprinted backdrop of my entire life. In fact, my own
father believed in it until the day he died, and the last time I
saw him alive we talked about The Rapture. And when he asked me,
"Will you be saved?" - Will you be there with me on Canaan's
shore after The Rapture?" I was forced to feign belief in it to give a
dying man inner solace. But that was the spiritual stuff of families,
and living and dying, religion in its rightful place, the way it is
supposed to be, personal and intimate -- not political. Thus,
until the advent of the of the new radical Christian influence,
I'd certainly never heard The Rapture spoken about in the context
of a Texan being selected by God to prepare its way.
Now however, this apocalyptic belief, yearning really, drives
an American Christian polity in the service of a grave and unnerving
agenda. The
pseudo-scriptural has become an apocalyptic game plan for earthly
political action:
To wit, the
messiah can only return to earth
after an apocalypse in Israel called Armageddon,
which the fundamentalists are promoting with all
their power so that The Rapture can take place.
The first requirement was
establishment of the state of Israel. Done. The next is
Israel's occupation of the Middle East as a return of its
"Biblical lands," which in the radical Christian scheme of
things, means more wars.
These
Christian conservatives believe peace cannot ever lead to The
Rapture,
and indeed impedes the 1,000-year Reign of Christ.
So anyone promoting peace is an
enemy, a tool of Satan,
hence the fundamentalist support for any and all wars Middle
Eastern, in which their own kids die a death often viewed by
Christian parents as a holy martyrdom of its own kind. "He (or she) died protecting this
country's Christian values." One hears it over and over
from parents of those killed.
The final scenario of the Rapture has the "saved" Christians
settling onto a cloud after the long float upward, from whence they
watch a Rambo Jesus wipe out the remnants of the human race. Then
in a mop-up operation by God, the Jews are also annihilated,
excepting a few who convert to Christianity.
The Messiah returns to earth. End of story.
Incidentally,
the Muslim version,
I was surprised to learn recently,
is almost exactly the same,
but with Muslims doing the cloud-sitting.
If we are lucky as a nation, this
period in American history will be remembered as just another
very dark time we managed to get through. Otherwise, one shudders
to think of the logical outcome.
No wonder the left is depressed. Meanwhile, our best thinkers
on the left ask us to consider our perpetual U.S. imperial war as
a fascist,
military/corporate war, and indeed it is that too. But tens of millions of hardworking, earnest
American Christians see it as far more than that. They see a war
against all that is un-Biblical, the goal of which is complete world conquest, or
put in Christian terminology, "dominion."
They will have no less
than the "inevitable victory God has promised his new
chosen people," according to the Recon masters of the
covert kingdom. Screw the Jews, they blew their chance.
If perpetual war is what it will take, then let it be perpetual.
["Bring it on!" as Bush
said -CR] After all,
perpetual war is exactly what the Bible promised.
Like it or not, this is the reality (or prevailing unreality)
with which we are faced. The 2004 elections, regardless of outcome,
will not change that.
Nor will it necessarily bring ever-tolerant liberals to openly
acknowledge what is truly happening in this country, the thing that has
been building for a long, long time -- a holy war, a covert
Christian jihad for control of America and the entire world. Millions of Americans are under the
spell of an extraordinarily dangerous mass psychosis.
Pardon me, but religious
tolerance be damned. Somebody had to say it.
###
Joe Bageant is a senior editor at the Primedia History Group and
writes from Winchester, Virginia. He may be contacted at
_bageantjb@netscape.net_ (mailto:bageantjb@netscape.net)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
BOTTOM LINE
"The matrix is a choice but not an illusory choice between
blue pill (absolute love
of power that corrupts absolutely)
or red pill (absolute power of love
with no 'judgement' at all);
it's a choice for an on-going process that cultures wisdom
through a Space Age electronic TeLeComm
upgrade of our
horse-and-buggy representation system and Bill of Rights,
providing holistic checks and balances between the extremes
while continually moving us towards wholEness with LOVE.
- Christos
Lightweaver
The Worldwide LOVE
Foundation / Blueprint
for a Golden Age;
The Heart of G.O.D.~LOVE
Government
ARTICLE FOOTNOTES:
- "The Psychology of Mass
Subservience to Tyranny"
- www.heartcom.org/psychtyranny.htm
- Heaven knows that civilizations as
well as individuals are condemned to repeat history if they don't learn
from it. The big drama of World War II can be seen reemerging in
clear trends and patterns for those who have eyes to see the
handwriting on the wall of the Internet media collage. Discover the
political intrigue and treachery of our day in context of "unthinkable"
historical parallels.
- .
- "The Necessity for Enlightened
Thinking" by Norman D. Livergood
- http://www.hermes-press.com/etch1.htm
- We've been conditioned to see
Germany under Hitler as an unquestionably horrible example of
dictatorial tyranny and inhuman barbarity--and to see our present
American culture as completely opposite to that of Nazi Germany. And we
like to think that if a tyranny such as that in Germany under the Nazi
regime were present and growing in America we'd unquestionably be able
to see it. So it's a shock when we realize: most people living in
Nazi Germany didn't see the tyranny! They thought it was the best time
of their lives! Sobering parallels.
- .
- "A kinder, gentler fascism"
- http://www.theemailactivist.org/newKGB.htm
- Each and every one of us should be
aware of what is occurring in the United States, under the name of
terrorism and security. (...) "Like the Bush administration, the Nazis
were funded and ultimately ushered into power by wealthy
industrialists." Another "long, hideous nightmare" may result if enough
good people don't do enough.
- .
- "Listen Little Man"
- http://www.hermes-press.com/reich.htm
- This is an excellent book review
on the psychology of the "little man" in all of us who readily bonds
with benevolent tyrants even as the German people bonded with Hitler.
The Saint of Calcutta, Mother Theresa, once said that there was a
little Hitler in all of us. Understanding "how so" is critical to
preventing fascism in our day.