Evening Coffee

There has been alot of commentary in the blogosphere concerning the miserable state of our union and can we get out of the structural problems we have. The gloom is most pronounced on the Left than the Right, which mobilizes its cohorts against socialism, black men and God knows what else.

A book I will write about in the near future is Sheldon S. Wolin's Democracy, Inc.: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism (Princeton, 2008). Prof. Wolin has had a long and distinguished career in academia, writing definitive books on the democratic process. For years, a long time contributor to the New York Review of Books until his critiques of our corporate capitalist society got too pointed even for the review. In effect, this book is how large financial entities have bought the entire political system and manipulate it for their purposes, destroying the fabric of American society in the process. This edition of the book adds a new preface expressing admiration for the election of Barack Obama but sounding a deeply pessimistic note whether he can make any significant difference to our structural problems. He says that Obama seems to want to go back to the status quo ante, the time before our system was dominated by the cult of the free market. He claims that isn't likely to happen and that he must articulate a new paradigm for our political economy before it's too late. Wolin has progressed over the years from being a liberal political scientist to one that now seems to be sounding alarm bells from the Left. His notion of inverted totalitarianism is very intriquing and worth exploring. The problem I have is that what he says is not untrue.

After the 2004 election, Michelle Goldberg, a self-styled secular Jew, decided to investigate the rise of Christian Nationalism and the threats it poses to our pluralistic, secular society. What she produced is an excellent examination of how the Christian Right has infiltrated local communities with the spefic agenda of taking hold of charities, community organizations and school boards. We have seen this in the Texas School Board case. She broadens her scope to include the resurgence of the John Birch Society and the Reconstructionists. She shows how these extreme elements have been successfully eroding our legal system and its protections for minorities of all types. Kingdom Coming (W.W. Norton, 2007) has been updated to provide ways the ordinary American can organize and fight back. Having immersed myself in the scholarly literature on this subject, I think she does a good job in getting the players right and their intellectual heritage correct.

One redeeming note in all this is that 88% of the children of fundamentalists drift away and either join a normal denomination or become secularized. The almost frenetic pace of their proselytizing is due to an internal mechanism that they know, if they are honest, that they are in jeopardy of dying out as a potent force. They may be our next "bubble".

The Young Turks interviewed Rachel Tabachrick , a researcher on fundamentalists, the other day. She talked about the New Apostolic Reformation and the Neo-Charismatics. She claimed this movement was as large as the Southern Baptist Convention, almost 15 million people, and had large ambitions both for domestic and foreign missions. She claimed they had organizations in all 50 states and around the year 2000 they carved out missionary areas abroad. She maintains they aim to take control of communities and claim they can gain influence over government through their charities. They believe there is no need for a theocratic takeover of the government; that they can obtain their goals through democratic means. She talked about a vast media empire they have built through GOD TV, a series of magazines and a series of "transformation" movies. They have introduced a new structure of a post-denominational church and intend to eliminate denominations at the end time.

She claims that this movement represents a sea change in evangelical efforts and that it was the brainchild of a Dr. Peter Wagner, who was a specialist in missions and a veteran of Billy Graham's organization. In the late 1980s, Wagner had developed the strategy to missionize the world by the year 2000, joining in the millenial hype. The movement sees themselves as involved in "spiritual warfare" and have developed a sophisticated demonology for their end-time beliefs. They will forego the Rapture and be the warriors for God against the Anti-Christ. They are multiethnic and multiracial and proclaim the need for martyrs. This was especially true when they campaigned against gay marriage in California.

Their importance in some ways comes from their leading star in the political culture--Sarah Palin. We saw Sarah Palin blessed by the Kenyan preacher at her Wassila Assembly of God Church, a moment captured on Youtube. But what we never learned during the campaign that she had joined the so-called "prayer warrior" network through Mary Glazier in Alaska some twenty years before. We also never learned of Sarah Palin's extensive contacts with Apostolic Reformation people abroad. It was only after the election did Charisma magazine, the periodical of the movement, write about it at length. No wonder they refer to her as Esther.

What threats do these people pose? They do not believe in religious pluralism at all. And they try to "demonize" others such as gays and secular types who do not share their worldview. In doing some background, another dimension to Glenn Beck's attack on Jim Wallis of the Sojourners is Wallis' background fighting these groups. He is considered a dangerous enemy because he is an evangelical himself.

Concretely, let's take the case of Rev. Hagee's Christian Zionists out of Ohio. He is one of the leaders of this movement. With his group Christians for Israel, he has managed to gain entry to leading American politicians, including Joe Lieberman, and Israeli cabinet members, including Bibi Netanyahu. While his theology is anti-semitic (all Jews are exterminated in the end-time) and anti-Catholic, he supports and encourages financial support of the extreme right in Israel to build more Jewish settlements on Palestinian lands. His activities run directly against American foreign policy and are inflammatory and directly jeopardize the hopes of any Middle East Peace Agreement.

With the "Hataree" Militia, the people of "God's Army" , another militia group affiliated with the fundamentalists have come forward to condemn the plot against the Michigan policemen. Yet it was also clear that they wanted the public to know they existed.

Michelle Goldberg reminds us in her book that Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims and other religious groups only make up 4% of the American society and that all of them are vulnerable to Christian extremism. By the time of his book, the Pew Foundation conducted a poll that showed that the number of avowed Christians in the country had dipped to 77%, but if radicalized can threatened the remaining population through these efforts to winnow into community structures, subvert the courts and cultivate powerful friends on the Hill. Ms. Goldberg shows how the reproductive rights of women have been severely limited through a succession of moves by the Religious Right without the overturning of Roe V. Wade. She warns us that we can become a meaner,repressed society with severely limited options if we let these people gain any more influence.

But here in the Commonwealth of Virginia, I don't have to worry about this now that Governor Bob McConnell announced this month as "Confederate History Month", something the previous two governors refused to do. The Governor acted on the request of the Sons of the Conferacy who stated that the civil war was intended as a "second American Revolution" to "preserve freedom and liberty". This is the man who ran on the platform to bring jobs to Virginia. His sidekick the Attorney General has filed suit against the EPA to prevent them from regulating carbon emissions, filed another suit to prevent the healthcare bill from affecting Virginians, and issued,along with the Governor, orders not to protect the rights of gays and lesbians in the university and college system. And ,instead of declaring "Civil War History Month", the Governor just sounded the dog whistle for racism.

Our friend and champion of Indian Rights, Wilma Mankiller , the first woman Paramount Chief of the Cherokee Nation, has died at the age of 64 from cancer. I wrote about her and her declaration of sickness in a previous post.

I'll end on an upbeat note. Chris Van Hollen, the chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), which handles the house races, made it clear that there will be no repeat of 1994 this year in the mid-terms. Apparently, he sat down in january with two former chairs--Vic Fazio and Martin Frost--to game out a strategy to avoid such a dire scenario. While he went into the weeds in describing the precinct by precinct approach and the democrats capitalizing on the mayhem the tea party has created for the Republicans, he pointed to a renewal of Democratic enthusiasm after the health care bill and signs that Democrats are being galvanized into action by none other than Sarah Palin's attacks on Democratic congresspeople. As for their part, the RNC lost a few more members today as pressure mounts of Michael Steele to quit. People at the RNC privately fear that the economy will improve and that the Obama network will significantly turn out the vote for the mid-terms. In that case, the Republicans feel they will lose or at least seem to fail.

Karl Rove made a strange appearance for the Census. Right-wing attacks on the census have led to dramatic drop-offs in responses from Republican areas, thereby jeopardizing congressional districts. This has been particularly true in Texas. Karl Rove's appearance was mean to be reassuring to the right-wingers so they don't boycott the Census entirely.

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