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Copyright (c) 2004 The Daily Star
Thursday, October 21, 2004
Rampant corruption could wreck postwar Iraq
Oil revenues 'vanish into pockets of western executives'
Compiled by Daily Star staff
The postwar reconstruction of Iraq could be ruined by rampant corruption, an international survey said on Wednesday.
The survey, an annual list of countries held to be the most corrupt in their business dealings, said the future of Iraq depended on transparency in the oil sector.
"Without strict anti-bribery measures, the reconstruction of Iraq will be wrecked by a wasteful diversion of resources to corrupt elites," said Peter Eigen, chairman of the Transparency International watchdog which produced the survey. Transparency in procurement contracts was essential, he added.
The survey found that Iraq scored 2.1 out of a scale ranging from 10, highly clean, to 0, highly corrupt.
The Daily Star reported yesterday that for the second consecutive year Lebanon occupied a low rank, scoring 2.7, the same as Algeria, and less than Egypt (3.2) and Syria (3.4).
The survey calculated that at least $400 billion is lost to corruption every year around the globe with oil-producing nations among the worst offenders. Bribery is rampant in 60 countries, it said.
The Berlin-based group, funded by grants from development agencies and foundations around the world, is made up of lawyers, economists, businessmen and academics.
It found the most corrupt countries were Bangladesh, Haiti, Nigeria, Chad, Myanmar, Azerbaijan and Paraguay.
Singled out for particular scorn were oil producers Angola, Azerbaijan, Chad, Ecuador, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Libya, Nigeria, Russia, Sudan, Venezuela and Yemen.
"In these countries, public contracting in the oil sector is plagued by revenues vanishing into the pockets of Western oil executives, middlemen and local officials," Eigen said.
He called on Western governments to oblige their oil companies to publish what they pay in fees, royalties and other payments to host countries and state oil companies. He said the payment of kickbacks to secure oil tenders has blighted the oil industry in transition and postwar economies. - With agencies
Copyright (c) 2004 The Daily Star
Thursday, October 21, 2004
John Kerry: The Rolling Stone Interview
John KerryThe Rolling Stone Interview By JANN S. WENNERFor two days in October, the John Kerry campaign came to a brief stop at a hotel and conference center on the high-plains sprawl of suburban Denver, where the candidate holed up with his staff and prepared for his second debate with George Bush. While the traveling press idled over endless buffets in one of the hotel dining rooms, Kerry and his closest advisers sequestered themselves behind closed doors, getting ready for the next night's crucial events.
The morning's calm was broken when Kerry's press advisers began circulating word that the candidate would soon be making a statement about the war in Iraq, a canny move to seize control of the day's news cycle, which was already full of bad news for President Bush: A government-commissioned report had concluded that Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction; Paul Bremer, until recently his chief administrator in Iraq, had been quoted as saying that the U.S. invasion of Iraq had been done with too few troops; and Donald Rumsfeld had conceded that there was no connection between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda. The press was herded out to a field in front of the hotel, chosen for its view of the mountains in the distance. When Kerry emerged, he was wearing his presidential blue suit, and with little fanfare or preamble he ripped into Bush with icy efficiency, saying how in light of the morning's news it was now clear that George Bush and Dick Cheney "may well be the last two people on the planet who won't face the truth about Iraq." After some questions from reporters, he disappeared, projecting the attitude that he had more important things to do.
A few minutes later, we were ushered up to Kerry's suite, where the candidate was tucking into a huge lunch. Gone was the crisp blue suit. He'd changed into khakis and running shoes and had dropped the formal manner. By the door stood a battered guitar case. Through an open door, one could see a framed picture of his wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry, on a bedside table. For the hour that we spoke with Kerry, he was conversational and forthright, relaxed but clearly wearing his game face.
You were tough out there today.
Well, I should be tough on him. This is an amazing moment in American history -- where a president of the United States is finding the rationale for invading another country after the fact.
The president has now given twenty-four reasons for going to war. Why do you think we really invaded Iraq?
Well, I think you've heard all the reasons. I can't psychoanalyze them. They were driven by ideology; they were driven by a fixation on Saddam Hussein. They took their eye off of Osama bin Laden and the real war on terror, and the consequences for our country are gigantic: $200 billion, and counting; the loss of credibility and prestige in the world; the loss of alliances that we need to be helping us. The American people are paying a very, very bitter price for their bad judgment -- no matter what the cause is.
Did you walk out of the first debate with the sense that you'd won?
You can't ever tell. We're the last people to ask -- the people on the stage. It's always tricky how people see it on TV. But I felt good, like I'd done the things I came to do, and I felt confident about the message.
How do you assess Bush's performance?
You don't have time to do that. I was listening very carefully and focusing on what I wanted to share with America, and it's a pretty intensive process of focusing.
The Bush administration says it's a certainty there will be more terrorist attacks. Is this a scare tactic?
They are privy to more intelligence and more analysis than I am. But I have had briefings, and I am deeply concerned about the potential of another attack. I think there's much more we can and should do to protect ourselves.
What has Bush failed to do to protect us?
The list of things undone by this president to make America safer is staggering. The 9/11 Commission report contains a full list of what a creative, proactive leadership should have done by itself -- rather than resist the 9/11 Commission, as they did.
On homeland security they've talked a good game, and not implemented or acted. Ninety-five percent of the containers that come into our country don't get inspected. Bridges and tunnels don't have the security and escape routes that ought to have been put in place. On planes, the baggage is X-rayed but not the cargo holds. It's absurd. Firehouses are understaffed. Police officers are being cut from the streets of America -- not added.
There are chemical, biological and nuclear plants around the country that don't have the protection that they ought to. The president actually gave in to the chemical industry and folded, instead of doing what was necessary for some of the chemical-plant protection.
Now, can any president guarantee the absence of any attack? The answer is no. I mean, if someone wants to blow themselves up, they can pretty much find a way to do it and hurt somebody. The question is: Are you doing all that's possible to protect against the greatest catastrophe? And there this administration has clearly failed.
Why do you think they've dropped the ball on this issue?
I think Senator Richard Lugar summed it up. He said their administration of the reconstruction funds has been incompetent, and I think their administration of the Homeland Security department has been incompetent.
What do you think of the color-coded terror alerts the Department of Homeland Security issues?
I think Americans, sadly, laugh at it. They don't know what to do.
Will you continue that program?
No. I'm going to find some more thoughtful way of alerting America. If we have to alert America, I think the most important thing to do is alert law enforcement more effectively across the country. Law enforcement doesn't have even a single, unified watch list yet. They still have separate watch lists, with different names and different people. This is the single, simplest, most important thing the Department of Homeland Security was supposed to do, and they haven't done it.
Doesn't it seem the threat level gets raised at key moments during the campaign?
Yeah. But you know what? I'm not going to question motivations that I can't . . .
Who's the enemy in the "War on Terror"?
Americans should have no doubts that there is a real enemy out there, one who wants to wreak destruction. And that enemy is a conglomeration of Al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden and radical, extreme -- mostly Muslim -- fundamentalist groups that want to create a radical Islamic state. These groups want to take over the perceived-to-be-moderate governments of the region, radicalize the populations and have a dominant presence, throughout the Middle East and parts of Europe. I mean, it is real, and it is a serious challenge to us.
Bush says, "They hate our freedoms and resent our democracy." Do you think their motives are so simple?
I think it's more complicated than that. There is a lot about us they don't like, but they believe that these moderate regimes in the Middle East have sold out. They are attacking the Saudi royal family, as they are attacking Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and King Abdullah of Jordan, because those leaders deal with the West and have a sense of engagement in the world.
There is also power involved. They're preaching a very different kind of power -- through the madrasas and otherwise -- to populations that are impoverished and uneducated, and disenfranchised in their countries. And they're offering them someone to hate.
Do you think it's directed at the United States?
It is now. Look, there's no negotiating with these guys. They don't hold territory; they don't have a kingdom; they don't have a government; they don't have a guiding philosophy -- they just hate. They hate what they are not. And they want everything to be what they are, and they want that kind of control.
They certainly view their struggle as a holy war. Do you think the White House does, as well?
You have to ask the White House. But, certainly, George Bush has described it like that, occasionally.
As a war between two fundamentalisms?
I think you're looking at a war right now against people who attacked the United States of America. And it is appropriate, and was appropriate, for us to invade Afghanistan and to go after Al Qaeda, and I'm glad we did. What I regret is that George Bush didn't do the job. When he had Osama bin Laden cornered in the mountains, he didn't do what was available to him -- which was use the best-trained military in the world to go after bin Laden and kill him or capture him. He turned to Afghan warlords and outsourced the job to them. I think that was a terrible judgment by the president.
What are the parallels between Iraq and Vietnam?
Right now there is one parallel that's very disturbing, and that is the leadership in Washington has not told the truth to the American people. Unless this president begins to change direction, and recognize his mistakes, and get the policy right in Iraq, he could create a whole lot more parallels. But it doesn't have to be. And that's what I'm trying to offer America right now -- a realistic way to get our troops home, with honor, by achieving our goals but by sharing the burden and risk.
I am convinced that we can do that, because the rest of the world has a stake in the outcome. A failed Iraq is not in the interests of Arab states, and it's not in the interests of the European states -- but they're absent from the kind of effort necessary to prevent that from happening. That's where leadership is going to be necessary.
That's the difference that I intend to make, and that I must make -- for the sake of our country. To make ourselves safe in the long term, we're going to have to rebuild relationships and re-establish American credibility. Bush's mistakes don't have to become America's misfortune for the long term, and it's my job to undo his mistakes and turn this into a success.
If you send troops into Iraq, how will you be able to tell them they're not risking their lives for a mistake?
Because I'm going to make it a success, 'cause we're going to win. We're going to do what we need to do to get this job done. And I'm committed to doing that -- and I know how to do it. I'll put a foreign-policy team together that talks the truth to the American people.
What do you mean when you say you know how to do it?
I've spent thirty-five years dealing with these kinds of issues. When I came back from fighting in a war, I fought against the war here in America. As a senator, I led the fight to stop Ronald Reagan's illegal war in Central America. I helped expose Oliver North and Manuel Noriega. I've been at this for a long time. You know, I led the initial efforts to change our policy on the Philippines -- which ultimately resulted in the elections, and became part of the process that helped get rid of Marcos.
I negotiated personally with the prime minister of Cambodia, to get accountability for the killing fields of the Pol Pot regime. I've negotiated with the Vietnamese to let me and John McCain in and put American forces on the ground to resolve the POW-MIA issue. I've spent twenty years on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee; I've been chairman of the Narcotics Terrorism Subcommittee. I have five times the experience George Bush does in dealing with these issues, and I know that I can get this done.
What is America's role in the world? What are you going to tell the world about the United States right now?
We are going to live up to American values in our foreign policy. Rather than building a new set of nuclear weapons, like President Bush is, we're going to lead the world in containing nuclear weapons -- with a whole new protocol for tracking and dealing with precursor chemicals and with nuclear fissionable materials. We're not going to wait to intervene in places like Liberia or Darfur, where another genocide is taking place.
An America that is not just there for its own goals and ends. We're going to re-engage with our Latin American neighbors in a positive way -- unlike this administration. We're going to implement the global AIDS initiative that I wrote four years ago, that this administration is still dawdling with. We're going to offer the moral leadership with respect to environmental catastrophes that are staring us in the face. We're going to go back to the table on global warming. We're going to deal with poverty and disease in the less-developed nations in a more effective way. Those things will help to bring nations to our side. That will make us more effective in the war on terror and make our country safer.
If you're elected, what would be your number-one environmental priority?
Number one is global warming.
How bad do you think that is? How real?
Very serious. The science is real.
Do you have a time frame for dealing with it?
Well, we can't meet the 1990 standards that we set, because we're too far beyond it now. So we're going to have to sit down with our scientists and our businesses and see what's feasible. But I intend to set America on the course of energy independence -- hopefully within ten years. And we're going to accelerate our research and development into alternative and renewable fuels.
We're going to greatly encourage the use of more fuel-efficient vehicles. We're not going to mandate them -- we're going to offer people choices that make sense economically. So we're going to give a big tax credit for people who purchase a fuel-efficient vehicle.
Al Gore says the era of the internal-combustion engine is ending. Do you see that? And how can we get beyond that?
I wouldn't make that kind of a bold pronouncement. I respect Al Gore's work on that stuff a lot. I mean, we're going to be drilling oil and natural gas for forty or fifty years to come, at least. But I've laid out a very aggressive energy policy. We're going to move rapidly to be independent of Mideast oil and reduce our fossil-fuel base as fast as we can. I'm going to create the incentives that excite the research and development. We're going to create a race for the new sources of energy -- whatever they may be.
How do you face the opposition of the oil and auto companies?
Let me tell you something: As gas prices go up, and fuel hits sixty bucks a barrel, I'm going to have a lot of allies. This does not have to be combative and confrontational. I'm going to reach out to the companies and offer them a very significant helping hand in the retooling and transformational costs.
I want American workers working; I want American cars made in America; I want American cars to be able to be sold anywhere in the world. I want to lead the world in these technologies. So I want these companies part of the solution -- not the problem. I think we can get there -- I really believe that.
How big a priority is that for you?
Huge. Creating jobs is one of the top five priorities of my administration. First of all, make America safe, and deal with nuclear proliferation and the global confrontation. Second, we have to create jobs and be fiscally responsible -- so that we're creating the framework for America to be strong at home.
Third, we have to have a system that provides health care for all Americans, and I have a plan to do that. Fourth, we're going to have education that works for everybody -- that lifts people up. Ongoing adult education -- a system that works. And fifth, we're going to have an environmental policy that leaves this planet to our kids in better shape than we got it from our parents.
That's it -- that's the agenda.
Why has environmental policy disappeared from the radar this election cycle?
I don't think it has.
But why do we hear so little about it?
Well, you have Iraq blowing up on the front pages of newspapers every day. But every speech I make, wherever I go, I talk about energy independence. I've talked about energy independence every single day of this campaign.
Will you communicate to the American people the size of the crisis we face?
I'm doing it in the course of this campaign. I'm already talking about it -- and I will as president. Look: I'm a person who has always believed that you tell people the truth and they'll make reasonable decisions. Truth is powerful.
This administration disrespects the truth, because they have a different credo. The truth unfortunately works against their interests, because their interests are in keeping power and in making money. And so they feed the drug industry, and they feed the oil industry, and they feed the big power companies.
And that's the difference between us. I'm fighting for the middle class -- he's fighting for a tax cut for people who earn more than $200,000 a year. He won't raise the minimum wage -- I'm going to raise the minimum wage. He won't give people extended unemployment benefits -- I will. He cut job training -- I'm going to restore job training. He's made it more expensive for kids to go to college -- I'm going to raise the Pell grants and the Perkins loans. He gave the drug industry a windfall profit of $139 billion -- while he was shutting down the ability of people to bring drugs in from Canada and shutting down Medicare's ability to negotiate a lower price for drugs. That's wrong -- morally and economically.
People say this is the most important election of our lifetime -- do you agree?
I believe it is. And I want your readers to stop in their tracks and consider what's at stake for them. Because not enough people connect the things they hate, or feel or want, to the power of their vote. And they've got to be willing to go out and work in these next couple of weeks.
How do you yourself feel? What burden does it place on you?
You know, I've been in public life all my life -- with one brief exception, when I was a lawyer and started a small business. I accept the weight, but I don't feel it. I've lived out so much frustration over the last few years that this is a liberating experience for me. I feel excited by it. I feel energized by it. I welcome it. And I just want other people to understand what's at stake here.
I mean, the next president may appoint three or four justices to the Supreme Court. The rights of Americans may be affected for the rest of our lives by what happens on November 2nd: whether or not we're going to have equal opportunity; whether we fight against discrimination; whether we're going to have equal pay for women; whether we protect women's right to choose; whether we're going to have a country in which people can grow up and live out the full measure of citizenship.
Why do you think you'd be a good president?
Because I'm a good executive, I'm a good leader, and I know what we have to do. I'm tough, I'm strong, I'm decisive. I know exactly what this country needs to do to move forward. All my life I've never shied away from standing up and telling people what I think, and what I think is true -- and I've taken the consequences of it. I'm even hearing about what I said in 1971.
What have you learned about yourself in this campaign?
That the intrusiveness is greater than I thought it would be. And there are parts of me that dislike that more than I thought I would, but it's something I have to put up with in order to achieve what I want to get done. I always knew that I was tough enough to do it; I always knew there'd be tough moments and I'd be tested -- because everybody is tested on the road to the presidency. But I think the intensity of it is greater than I could imagine. It is, actually, beyond description. You have to experience it to know what that is.
How did you feel when you first saw those Swift-boat ads?
Disappointed -- a sense of bitter disappointment. That people will stoop to those depths of lying -- for their personal reasons.
Did you get angry at Bush personally?
Look, I know politics is tough, and I don't spend a lot of time worrying about what they do to me. But I do worry, and I am angry, about what they do to the American people. That's what this race is about. It's not about me. I can take it -- I don't care. I've been in worse things. I was on those boats -- I got shot at. I can handle it.
What I worry about is that they lie to America. What I worry about is that they tell the middle class, "We're giving you a tax cut," and the top one percent of America gets more than eighty percent of the rest of the people. I worry that they are unwilling to do anything about the 5 million Americans who have lost their health care.
I worry that there are twenty-eight states in America where you can't go fishing and eat the fish, because of the quality of the water. I worry that they've gotten us into a war where young kids are dying, and they haven't done what's responsible to protect them. That's what I worry about. The rest of it is small pickings.
You don't get angry when Bush outright lies about you?
No, I don't get angry at it. I think it's sort of pathetic.
Were you surprised by how the Swift-boat thing blew up?
I was surprised that the media, even when they knew it was lies, continued to cover it and treat it as entertainment.
Looking back, do you think you handled it correctly?
I think so. Look, when people hold up something that's a complete and total lie, it takes a few days to show people and convince them. We did. They've been completely discredited.
How do you stay normal during a campaign?
Eat a hearty meal.
How do you stay fit?
I'm not. I'm in the worst shape I've been in in a few years. I'm not getting enough exercise.
You were criticized for wearing a windsurfing outfit.
It shows how pathetic and diversionary they are. They can't talk about having created jobs for America; they can't talk about giving people health care; they can't talk about having protected America and made it safer.
Did anyone say, "Senator, you shouldn't be wearing windsurfing clothes"?
Yeah, a few people said . . .
And you said, Fuck it?
You're damn right. I said, "I'm going to be who I am" -- I think people care about authenticity. There are much bigger issues.
What do you think of Karl Rove? Is he an evil genius?
I don't know him. I've met him once. I'll tell you November 3rd.
What do you think of the Vote for Change concerts that Bruce Springsteen organized?
I haven't been able to go. I'm jealous of everybody who is. It's separate from us -- they've done it by themselves. But I'm obviously elated. His music has been the theme song of our campaign from Day One. To have him out there is both a privilege and exciting. I hope it has an impact on the outcome.
Who are your favorite rock & roll artists?
Oh, gosh. I'm, you know, a huge Rolling Stones fan; Beatles fan. One of the most cherished photographs in my life is a picture of me with John Lennon -- who I met back in 1971 at an anti-war rally. But I love a lot of different performers.
Do you have a favorite Beatles song -- or Stones song?
I love "Satisfaction" and "Jumpin' Jack Flash" and "Brown Sugar." I love "Imagine" and "Yesterday."
You're a greatest-hits kind of guy.
My favorite album is Abbey Road. I love "Hey Jude." I also like folk music. I like some classical. I love guitar. Oh, God. I mean, you know -- Jimi Hendrix, Jimmy Buffett . . .
OK -- enough. Let's talk about movies quickly. Of the Vietnam movies you've seen, what's the most accurate? And your favorite?
The most powerful Vietnam movie, to me, was The Deer Hunter, which was more about what happened to the folks who went, and about their relationships . . . and about what happened to this small-town community. I thought it was a brilliant movie, because the metaphor of Russian roulette was an incredible way of capturing the fatalism about it all: the sense that things were out of your control. And it really talked to what happened to the folks who went. So I thought it was a very, very powerful movie. Also, Full Metal Jacket, Platoon, Coming Home, Born on the Fourth of July -- those are powerful too.
How about Apocalypse Now? Was that what it was like going up river, on those boats?
That's exactly how it was, man. Sitting in that river, waiting for someone to shoot you -- but the later part of the movie, after the point where they get to the bridge, then everything becomes a little psychedelic. That got a little distant from me.
Finally, if you were to look back over eight years of a Kerry presidency, what would you hope would be said about it?
That it always told the truth to the American people, that it always fought for average folks. And that we raised the quality of life in America and made America safer. I want to be the president who gets health care done for Americans. I want to be the president who helps to fix our schools and end this separate-and-unequal school system we have in America. And I want to be the president who re-establishes America's reputation in the world -- which is part of making us safer. There's a huge opportunity here to really lift our country up, and that's what I want to do.
(From RS 961)
The morning's calm was broken when Kerry's press advisers began circulating word that the candidate would soon be making a statement about the war in Iraq, a canny move to seize control of the day's news cycle, which was already full of bad news for President Bush: A government-commissioned report had concluded that Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction; Paul Bremer, until recently his chief administrator in Iraq, had been quoted as saying that the U.S. invasion of Iraq had been done with too few troops; and Donald Rumsfeld had conceded that there was no connection between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda. The press was herded out to a field in front of the hotel, chosen for its view of the mountains in the distance. When Kerry emerged, he was wearing his presidential blue suit, and with little fanfare or preamble he ripped into Bush with icy efficiency, saying how in light of the morning's news it was now clear that George Bush and Dick Cheney "may well be the last two people on the planet who won't face the truth about Iraq." After some questions from reporters, he disappeared, projecting the attitude that he had more important things to do.
A few minutes later, we were ushered up to Kerry's suite, where the candidate was tucking into a huge lunch. Gone was the crisp blue suit. He'd changed into khakis and running shoes and had dropped the formal manner. By the door stood a battered guitar case. Through an open door, one could see a framed picture of his wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry, on a bedside table. For the hour that we spoke with Kerry, he was conversational and forthright, relaxed but clearly wearing his game face.
You were tough out there today.
Well, I should be tough on him. This is an amazing moment in American history -- where a president of the United States is finding the rationale for invading another country after the fact.
The president has now given twenty-four reasons for going to war. Why do you think we really invaded Iraq?
Well, I think you've heard all the reasons. I can't psychoanalyze them. They were driven by ideology; they were driven by a fixation on Saddam Hussein. They took their eye off of Osama bin Laden and the real war on terror, and the consequences for our country are gigantic: $200 billion, and counting; the loss of credibility and prestige in the world; the loss of alliances that we need to be helping us. The American people are paying a very, very bitter price for their bad judgment -- no matter what the cause is.
Did you walk out of the first debate with the sense that you'd won?
You can't ever tell. We're the last people to ask -- the people on the stage. It's always tricky how people see it on TV. But I felt good, like I'd done the things I came to do, and I felt confident about the message.
How do you assess Bush's performance?
You don't have time to do that. I was listening very carefully and focusing on what I wanted to share with America, and it's a pretty intensive process of focusing.
The Bush administration says it's a certainty there will be more terrorist attacks. Is this a scare tactic?
They are privy to more intelligence and more analysis than I am. But I have had briefings, and I am deeply concerned about the potential of another attack. I think there's much more we can and should do to protect ourselves.
What has Bush failed to do to protect us?
The list of things undone by this president to make America safer is staggering. The 9/11 Commission report contains a full list of what a creative, proactive leadership should have done by itself -- rather than resist the 9/11 Commission, as they did.
On homeland security they've talked a good game, and not implemented or acted. Ninety-five percent of the containers that come into our country don't get inspected. Bridges and tunnels don't have the security and escape routes that ought to have been put in place. On planes, the baggage is X-rayed but not the cargo holds. It's absurd. Firehouses are understaffed. Police officers are being cut from the streets of America -- not added.
There are chemical, biological and nuclear plants around the country that don't have the protection that they ought to. The president actually gave in to the chemical industry and folded, instead of doing what was necessary for some of the chemical-plant protection.
Now, can any president guarantee the absence of any attack? The answer is no. I mean, if someone wants to blow themselves up, they can pretty much find a way to do it and hurt somebody. The question is: Are you doing all that's possible to protect against the greatest catastrophe? And there this administration has clearly failed.
Why do you think they've dropped the ball on this issue?
I think Senator Richard Lugar summed it up. He said their administration of the reconstruction funds has been incompetent, and I think their administration of the Homeland Security department has been incompetent.
What do you think of the color-coded terror alerts the Department of Homeland Security issues?
I think Americans, sadly, laugh at it. They don't know what to do.
Will you continue that program?
No. I'm going to find some more thoughtful way of alerting America. If we have to alert America, I think the most important thing to do is alert law enforcement more effectively across the country. Law enforcement doesn't have even a single, unified watch list yet. They still have separate watch lists, with different names and different people. This is the single, simplest, most important thing the Department of Homeland Security was supposed to do, and they haven't done it.
Doesn't it seem the threat level gets raised at key moments during the campaign?
Yeah. But you know what? I'm not going to question motivations that I can't . . .
Who's the enemy in the "War on Terror"?
Americans should have no doubts that there is a real enemy out there, one who wants to wreak destruction. And that enemy is a conglomeration of Al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden and radical, extreme -- mostly Muslim -- fundamentalist groups that want to create a radical Islamic state. These groups want to take over the perceived-to-be-moderate governments of the region, radicalize the populations and have a dominant presence, throughout the Middle East and parts of Europe. I mean, it is real, and it is a serious challenge to us.
Bush says, "They hate our freedoms and resent our democracy." Do you think their motives are so simple?
I think it's more complicated than that. There is a lot about us they don't like, but they believe that these moderate regimes in the Middle East have sold out. They are attacking the Saudi royal family, as they are attacking Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and King Abdullah of Jordan, because those leaders deal with the West and have a sense of engagement in the world.
There is also power involved. They're preaching a very different kind of power -- through the madrasas and otherwise -- to populations that are impoverished and uneducated, and disenfranchised in their countries. And they're offering them someone to hate.
Do you think it's directed at the United States?
It is now. Look, there's no negotiating with these guys. They don't hold territory; they don't have a kingdom; they don't have a government; they don't have a guiding philosophy -- they just hate. They hate what they are not. And they want everything to be what they are, and they want that kind of control.
They certainly view their struggle as a holy war. Do you think the White House does, as well?
You have to ask the White House. But, certainly, George Bush has described it like that, occasionally.
As a war between two fundamentalisms?
I think you're looking at a war right now against people who attacked the United States of America. And it is appropriate, and was appropriate, for us to invade Afghanistan and to go after Al Qaeda, and I'm glad we did. What I regret is that George Bush didn't do the job. When he had Osama bin Laden cornered in the mountains, he didn't do what was available to him -- which was use the best-trained military in the world to go after bin Laden and kill him or capture him. He turned to Afghan warlords and outsourced the job to them. I think that was a terrible judgment by the president.
What are the parallels between Iraq and Vietnam?
Right now there is one parallel that's very disturbing, and that is the leadership in Washington has not told the truth to the American people. Unless this president begins to change direction, and recognize his mistakes, and get the policy right in Iraq, he could create a whole lot more parallels. But it doesn't have to be. And that's what I'm trying to offer America right now -- a realistic way to get our troops home, with honor, by achieving our goals but by sharing the burden and risk.
I am convinced that we can do that, because the rest of the world has a stake in the outcome. A failed Iraq is not in the interests of Arab states, and it's not in the interests of the European states -- but they're absent from the kind of effort necessary to prevent that from happening. That's where leadership is going to be necessary.
That's the difference that I intend to make, and that I must make -- for the sake of our country. To make ourselves safe in the long term, we're going to have to rebuild relationships and re-establish American credibility. Bush's mistakes don't have to become America's misfortune for the long term, and it's my job to undo his mistakes and turn this into a success.
If you send troops into Iraq, how will you be able to tell them they're not risking their lives for a mistake?
Because I'm going to make it a success, 'cause we're going to win. We're going to do what we need to do to get this job done. And I'm committed to doing that -- and I know how to do it. I'll put a foreign-policy team together that talks the truth to the American people.
What do you mean when you say you know how to do it?
I've spent thirty-five years dealing with these kinds of issues. When I came back from fighting in a war, I fought against the war here in America. As a senator, I led the fight to stop Ronald Reagan's illegal war in Central America. I helped expose Oliver North and Manuel Noriega. I've been at this for a long time. You know, I led the initial efforts to change our policy on the Philippines -- which ultimately resulted in the elections, and became part of the process that helped get rid of Marcos.
I negotiated personally with the prime minister of Cambodia, to get accountability for the killing fields of the Pol Pot regime. I've negotiated with the Vietnamese to let me and John McCain in and put American forces on the ground to resolve the POW-MIA issue. I've spent twenty years on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee; I've been chairman of the Narcotics Terrorism Subcommittee. I have five times the experience George Bush does in dealing with these issues, and I know that I can get this done.
What is America's role in the world? What are you going to tell the world about the United States right now?
We are going to live up to American values in our foreign policy. Rather than building a new set of nuclear weapons, like President Bush is, we're going to lead the world in containing nuclear weapons -- with a whole new protocol for tracking and dealing with precursor chemicals and with nuclear fissionable materials. We're not going to wait to intervene in places like Liberia or Darfur, where another genocide is taking place.
An America that is not just there for its own goals and ends. We're going to re-engage with our Latin American neighbors in a positive way -- unlike this administration. We're going to implement the global AIDS initiative that I wrote four years ago, that this administration is still dawdling with. We're going to offer the moral leadership with respect to environmental catastrophes that are staring us in the face. We're going to go back to the table on global warming. We're going to deal with poverty and disease in the less-developed nations in a more effective way. Those things will help to bring nations to our side. That will make us more effective in the war on terror and make our country safer.
If you're elected, what would be your number-one environmental priority?
Number one is global warming.
How bad do you think that is? How real?
Very serious. The science is real.
Do you have a time frame for dealing with it?
Well, we can't meet the 1990 standards that we set, because we're too far beyond it now. So we're going to have to sit down with our scientists and our businesses and see what's feasible. But I intend to set America on the course of energy independence -- hopefully within ten years. And we're going to accelerate our research and development into alternative and renewable fuels.
We're going to greatly encourage the use of more fuel-efficient vehicles. We're not going to mandate them -- we're going to offer people choices that make sense economically. So we're going to give a big tax credit for people who purchase a fuel-efficient vehicle.
Al Gore says the era of the internal-combustion engine is ending. Do you see that? And how can we get beyond that?
I wouldn't make that kind of a bold pronouncement. I respect Al Gore's work on that stuff a lot. I mean, we're going to be drilling oil and natural gas for forty or fifty years to come, at least. But I've laid out a very aggressive energy policy. We're going to move rapidly to be independent of Mideast oil and reduce our fossil-fuel base as fast as we can. I'm going to create the incentives that excite the research and development. We're going to create a race for the new sources of energy -- whatever they may be.
How do you face the opposition of the oil and auto companies?
Let me tell you something: As gas prices go up, and fuel hits sixty bucks a barrel, I'm going to have a lot of allies. This does not have to be combative and confrontational. I'm going to reach out to the companies and offer them a very significant helping hand in the retooling and transformational costs.
I want American workers working; I want American cars made in America; I want American cars to be able to be sold anywhere in the world. I want to lead the world in these technologies. So I want these companies part of the solution -- not the problem. I think we can get there -- I really believe that.
How big a priority is that for you?
Huge. Creating jobs is one of the top five priorities of my administration. First of all, make America safe, and deal with nuclear proliferation and the global confrontation. Second, we have to create jobs and be fiscally responsible -- so that we're creating the framework for America to be strong at home.
Third, we have to have a system that provides health care for all Americans, and I have a plan to do that. Fourth, we're going to have education that works for everybody -- that lifts people up. Ongoing adult education -- a system that works. And fifth, we're going to have an environmental policy that leaves this planet to our kids in better shape than we got it from our parents.
That's it -- that's the agenda.
Why has environmental policy disappeared from the radar this election cycle?
I don't think it has.
But why do we hear so little about it?
Well, you have Iraq blowing up on the front pages of newspapers every day. But every speech I make, wherever I go, I talk about energy independence. I've talked about energy independence every single day of this campaign.
Will you communicate to the American people the size of the crisis we face?
I'm doing it in the course of this campaign. I'm already talking about it -- and I will as president. Look: I'm a person who has always believed that you tell people the truth and they'll make reasonable decisions. Truth is powerful.
This administration disrespects the truth, because they have a different credo. The truth unfortunately works against their interests, because their interests are in keeping power and in making money. And so they feed the drug industry, and they feed the oil industry, and they feed the big power companies.
And that's the difference between us. I'm fighting for the middle class -- he's fighting for a tax cut for people who earn more than $200,000 a year. He won't raise the minimum wage -- I'm going to raise the minimum wage. He won't give people extended unemployment benefits -- I will. He cut job training -- I'm going to restore job training. He's made it more expensive for kids to go to college -- I'm going to raise the Pell grants and the Perkins loans. He gave the drug industry a windfall profit of $139 billion -- while he was shutting down the ability of people to bring drugs in from Canada and shutting down Medicare's ability to negotiate a lower price for drugs. That's wrong -- morally and economically.
People say this is the most important election of our lifetime -- do you agree?
I believe it is. And I want your readers to stop in their tracks and consider what's at stake for them. Because not enough people connect the things they hate, or feel or want, to the power of their vote. And they've got to be willing to go out and work in these next couple of weeks.
How do you yourself feel? What burden does it place on you?
You know, I've been in public life all my life -- with one brief exception, when I was a lawyer and started a small business. I accept the weight, but I don't feel it. I've lived out so much frustration over the last few years that this is a liberating experience for me. I feel excited by it. I feel energized by it. I welcome it. And I just want other people to understand what's at stake here.
I mean, the next president may appoint three or four justices to the Supreme Court. The rights of Americans may be affected for the rest of our lives by what happens on November 2nd: whether or not we're going to have equal opportunity; whether we fight against discrimination; whether we're going to have equal pay for women; whether we protect women's right to choose; whether we're going to have a country in which people can grow up and live out the full measure of citizenship.
Why do you think you'd be a good president?
Because I'm a good executive, I'm a good leader, and I know what we have to do. I'm tough, I'm strong, I'm decisive. I know exactly what this country needs to do to move forward. All my life I've never shied away from standing up and telling people what I think, and what I think is true -- and I've taken the consequences of it. I'm even hearing about what I said in 1971.
What have you learned about yourself in this campaign?
That the intrusiveness is greater than I thought it would be. And there are parts of me that dislike that more than I thought I would, but it's something I have to put up with in order to achieve what I want to get done. I always knew that I was tough enough to do it; I always knew there'd be tough moments and I'd be tested -- because everybody is tested on the road to the presidency. But I think the intensity of it is greater than I could imagine. It is, actually, beyond description. You have to experience it to know what that is.
How did you feel when you first saw those Swift-boat ads?
Disappointed -- a sense of bitter disappointment. That people will stoop to those depths of lying -- for their personal reasons.
Did you get angry at Bush personally?
Look, I know politics is tough, and I don't spend a lot of time worrying about what they do to me. But I do worry, and I am angry, about what they do to the American people. That's what this race is about. It's not about me. I can take it -- I don't care. I've been in worse things. I was on those boats -- I got shot at. I can handle it.
What I worry about is that they lie to America. What I worry about is that they tell the middle class, "We're giving you a tax cut," and the top one percent of America gets more than eighty percent of the rest of the people. I worry that they are unwilling to do anything about the 5 million Americans who have lost their health care.
I worry that there are twenty-eight states in America where you can't go fishing and eat the fish, because of the quality of the water. I worry that they've gotten us into a war where young kids are dying, and they haven't done what's responsible to protect them. That's what I worry about. The rest of it is small pickings.
You don't get angry when Bush outright lies about you?
No, I don't get angry at it. I think it's sort of pathetic.
Were you surprised by how the Swift-boat thing blew up?
I was surprised that the media, even when they knew it was lies, continued to cover it and treat it as entertainment.
Looking back, do you think you handled it correctly?
I think so. Look, when people hold up something that's a complete and total lie, it takes a few days to show people and convince them. We did. They've been completely discredited.
How do you stay normal during a campaign?
Eat a hearty meal.
How do you stay fit?
I'm not. I'm in the worst shape I've been in in a few years. I'm not getting enough exercise.
You were criticized for wearing a windsurfing outfit.
It shows how pathetic and diversionary they are. They can't talk about having created jobs for America; they can't talk about giving people health care; they can't talk about having protected America and made it safer.
Did anyone say, "Senator, you shouldn't be wearing windsurfing clothes"?
Yeah, a few people said . . .
And you said, Fuck it?
You're damn right. I said, "I'm going to be who I am" -- I think people care about authenticity. There are much bigger issues.
What do you think of Karl Rove? Is he an evil genius?
I don't know him. I've met him once. I'll tell you November 3rd.
What do you think of the Vote for Change concerts that Bruce Springsteen organized?
I haven't been able to go. I'm jealous of everybody who is. It's separate from us -- they've done it by themselves. But I'm obviously elated. His music has been the theme song of our campaign from Day One. To have him out there is both a privilege and exciting. I hope it has an impact on the outcome.
Who are your favorite rock & roll artists?
Oh, gosh. I'm, you know, a huge Rolling Stones fan; Beatles fan. One of the most cherished photographs in my life is a picture of me with John Lennon -- who I met back in 1971 at an anti-war rally. But I love a lot of different performers.
Do you have a favorite Beatles song -- or Stones song?
I love "Satisfaction" and "Jumpin' Jack Flash" and "Brown Sugar." I love "Imagine" and "Yesterday."
You're a greatest-hits kind of guy.
My favorite album is Abbey Road. I love "Hey Jude." I also like folk music. I like some classical. I love guitar. Oh, God. I mean, you know -- Jimi Hendrix, Jimmy Buffett . . .
OK -- enough. Let's talk about movies quickly. Of the Vietnam movies you've seen, what's the most accurate? And your favorite?
The most powerful Vietnam movie, to me, was The Deer Hunter, which was more about what happened to the folks who went, and about their relationships . . . and about what happened to this small-town community. I thought it was a brilliant movie, because the metaphor of Russian roulette was an incredible way of capturing the fatalism about it all: the sense that things were out of your control. And it really talked to what happened to the folks who went. So I thought it was a very, very powerful movie. Also, Full Metal Jacket, Platoon, Coming Home, Born on the Fourth of July -- those are powerful too.
How about Apocalypse Now? Was that what it was like going up river, on those boats?
That's exactly how it was, man. Sitting in that river, waiting for someone to shoot you -- but the later part of the movie, after the point where they get to the bridge, then everything becomes a little psychedelic. That got a little distant from me.
Finally, if you were to look back over eight years of a Kerry presidency, what would you hope would be said about it?
That it always told the truth to the American people, that it always fought for average folks. And that we raised the quality of life in America and made America safer. I want to be the president who gets health care done for Americans. I want to be the president who helps to fix our schools and end this separate-and-unequal school system we have in America. And I want to be the president who re-establishes America's reputation in the world -- which is part of making us safer. There's a huge opportunity here to really lift our country up, and that's what I want to do.
(From RS 961)
As God Is His Witness
As God Is His WitnessBush is no devout evangelical. In fact, he may not be a Christian at all.
By Ayelish McGarveyWeb Exclusive: 10.19.04
Print Friendly Email Article Late in the summer, at the Republican national convention in New York, a movie billed as the conservative alternative to Fahrenheit 9/11 debuted for the party faithful. The film, George W. Bush: Faith in the White House, opens with a montage of a billowing American flag, a softly lit portrait of Jesus in Gethsemane, and a shot of the tawny profile of our 43rd president with his eyes gazing heavenward. Myriad times throughout the film Bush is referred to reverently as a man of faith.
Like no president in recent memory, George W. Bush wields his Christian righteousness like a flaming sword. Indeed, hundreds of news stories and nearly half a dozen books have evinced a White House that, according to BBC Washington correspondent Justin Webb, “hums to the sound of prayer.” Yet for the past four years the mainstream press has trod lightly, rarely venturing beyond the biographical to probe the depth, or sincerity, of Bush's Christian beliefs. Bush has no doubt benefited from the media’s reluctance; Newsweek, for example, in the heat of the run-up to the Iraq War, ran a cover package on the president’s faith under the headline “Bush and God” -- a story whose timing lent the war the aura of having heavenly sanction. Even lefty believers like Jim Wallis, editor of Sojourners, and Amy Sullivan, journalist and Democratic adviser, politely maintain that Bush’s faith is strong, if misguided.
Indeed, in an 8,000-word lamentation appearing in The New York Times Magazine last weekend, Ron Suskind attempted to trace Bush’s lack of intellectual curiosity, and the policy disasters that have stemmed from that, back to his relationship with God. “That a deep Christian faith illuminated the personal journey of George W. Bush is common knowledge,” Suskind wrote. In other words, the devil, as it were, is lurking among the articles of faith, but not in the heart of the man.
This is a huge mistake, because when judged by his deeds, an entirely different picture emerges: Bush does not demonstrate a life of faith by his actions, and neither Methodists, evangelicals, nor fundamentalists can rightly call him brother. In fact, the available evidence raises serious questions about whether Bush is really a Christian at all.
Ironically for a man who once famously named Jesus as his favorite political philosopher during a campaign debate, it is remarkably difficult to pinpoint a single instance wherein Christian teaching has won out over partisan politics in the Bush White House. Though Bush easily weaves Christian language and themes into his political communication, empty religious jargon is no substitute for a bedrock faith. Even little children in Sunday school know that Jesus taught his disciples to live according to his commandments, not simply to talk about them a lot. In Bush’s case, faith without works is not just dead faith -- it’s evangelical agitprop
Richard Land directs the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the conservative Southern Baptist Convention, the nation’s largest Protestant denomination and a group that enjoys a close relationship with the Bush administration. In an interview for Frontline earlier this year, Land denounced the scriptural cherry-picking on the part of contemporary American Christians. “It's only been in the last half-century when you've had the rise of groups [in] modern Christendom who believe in what I call ‘Dalmatian theology,’” he explained. “The Bible's inspired in spots, and … [t]hey think they can reject large chunks of Christian Scripture and biblical revelation that they don't agree with … .”
But while Land’s censure was probably intended for liberals, so, too, does it apply to the president. For George W. Bush does not live or govern under the complete authority of the Bible -- just the parts that work to his political advantage. And evangelical leaders like Land who blindly bless the Bush White House don’t just muddy the division of church and state; worse, they completely violate Scripture.
Jesus, after all, didn’t do politics.
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The president’s storied faith journey began at the bottom of a bottle and led him all the way to the White House. But though these accounts ramble on for hundreds of pages about his steadfast leadership and prayerfulness, they all curiously rely on one single event to confirm that Bush is a man transformed by a deep Christian faith: He quit drinking and took up running instead. “I would not be president today," Bush himself told a group of pastoral social workers in 2003, "if I hadn't stopped drinking 17 years ago. And I could only do that with the grace of God."
But Christianity is more than teetotalism and physical fitness. Conservative believers liken a Christian conversion to a spiritual heart transplant -- one that completely transfigures a person’s motivations, sensibilities, relationships, and actions. In the Book of Ezekiel, God tells his children:
“I will give you a new heart, and put a new spirit in you. I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws … .” (emphasis added)Judging him on his record, George W. Bush’s spiritual transformation seems to have consisted of little more than staying on the wagon, with Jesus as a sort of talismanic Alcoholics Anonymous counselor. Bush came to his faith through a small group program created by Community Bible Study, which de-emphasizes sin and resembles a sort of Jesus-centered therapy session.
But sin is crucial to Christianity. To be born again, a seeker must painfully acknowledge his or her innate sinfulness, and then turn away from it completely. And though today Bush is sober, he does not live and govern like a man who “walks” with God, using the Bible as a moral compass for his decision making. Twice in the past year -- once during an April press conference and most recently at a presidential debate -- the president was unable to name any mistake he has made during his term. His steadfast unwillingness to fess up to a single error betrays a strikingly un-Christian lack of attention to the importance of self-criticism, the pervasiveness of sin, and the centrality of humility, repentance, and redemption. Indeed, it is impossible to imagine George W. Bush delivering an address like Jimmy Carter’s legendary “malaise” speech (in which he did not actually say the word “malaise”) in 1979. Carter sermonized to a dispirited nation in the language of confession, sacrifice, and spiritual restoration. Though it didn’t do him a lick of good politically, it was consonant with a Christian theology of atonement: Carter admitted his mistakes to make right with God and the American people, politics be damned. Bush, for whom politics is everything, can’t even admit that he’s done anything wrong.
Save for a few standout reporters, the press has done a dismal job of covering the president’s very public religiosity. Overwhelmingly lacking personal familiarity with conservative Christianity, political reporters have either avoided the topic or resorted to shopworn clichés and lazy stereotypes. Over and over, news stories align Bush with evangelical theology while loosely dropping terms like fundamentalist to describe his beliefs.
Once and for all: George W. Bush is neither born again nor evangelical. As Alan Cooperman reported in The Washington Post last month, the president has been careful never to use either term to describe his faith. Unlike millions of evangelicals, Bush did not have a single born-again experience; instead, he slowly came to Christianity over the course of several years, beginning with a deep conversation with the Reverend Billy Graham in the mid-1980s. And there is virtually no evidence that Bush places any emphasis on evangelizing -- or spreading the gospel -- in either his personal or professional life. Contrast this to Carter, who notoriously told every foreign dignitary he encountered about the good news of Jesus Christ.
If he is anything at all, Bush is nominally Methodist, the denomination of his home church in Dallas. John Wesley, Methodism’s founder, emphasized an emotional “warming of the heart” to Christ as fundamental to conversion. (That self-help ethos is evident in the resident’s “compassionate conservatism.”) But Wesley was equal part freedom fighter: As a pastor in 17th-century England, he was barred from the pulpit for crusading against the abhorrent evils of slavery. Wesley died a poor man, his life a testament to Christ’s exhortation of charity in the Gospel of Mark: “Sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven.”
Bush, on the other hand, is no ascetic firebrand. The president has a net worth of nearly $20 million, and there is no indication that he is on the brink of abandoning his fortune to live righteously with the poor. And unlike Wesley, Bush has never compromised his political standing to challenge the conservative status quo -- regardless of its Christian righteousness.
The president is, safe to say, a “Dalmatian” Methodist.
* * *
Two months prior to launching his first presidential campaign, Bush sat for an interview with The Dallas Morning News to discuss the role of religion in his life and his politics. He spoke evasively and didn’t seem comfortable discussing his Christian conviction. “I view my religion as very personal,” he explained. “I want people to judge me on my deeds, not how I try to define myself as a religious person of words.”
But the president’s supporters in Christendom cling to his words as prima facie evidence of his deep Christian faith. And though Bush is not an evangelical, he certainly talks like one. As has been often noted, Bush effortlessly speaks the language of the born again, and his remarks are loaded with subliminal messages to the nation’s 60 million white evangelicals. Ironically, the theology embedded in this language is not even the president’s own -- it belongs to Michael Gerson, Bush’s crack speechwriter, himself a devout Christian and a graduate of Wheaton College, the “evangelical Harvard.” Far too often, though, the press confuses Gerson’s words with Bush’s beliefs.
The distinction is critical, as the press, as well as many of Bush’s most ardent supporters, curiously points to the president’s words, not his deeds, as evidence of his deep Christian faith. In Alan Cooperman’s recent Washington Post article, David Frum, a (Jewish) former Bush speechwriter, said of the president’s religious beliefs, “If you want to know what George Bush really thinks, look at what he says.”
Ted Haggard, president of the National Association of Evangelicals, has met with the president and advised the Bush White House. “I sat down with [Bush],” he told me. “What I do know is that … [the president] is an honest guy who really believes what he says.”
Bush’s attraction to Jesus jargon is no accident. As an aspiring pol, he learned early on that religious language could give him the cowboy cred he needed to woo voters in Texas. Doug Wead is a close friend of the Bush family and a prominent evangelical motivational speaker. Wead worked closely with the president when he advised George Bush Senior during the 1988 presidential campaign. “There’s no question that [George W. Bush’s] faith is real, that it’s authentic … and there is no question that it’s calculated,” Wead told Frontline. “I know that sounds like a contradiction.”
Wead taught Bush Junior to “signal early and signal often” when he spoke to conservative Christians on behalf of Bush Senior. “George would read my memos, and he would be licking his lips saying, ‘I can use this to win in Texas,’” Wead told Guy Lawson in an article that appeared last year in GQ.
But in the Bible, Jesus Christ disdained insincere religious posturing. In the famed parable of the tax collector and the Pharisee, the penitent taxman prayed in a far corner of the temple and wept, hiding his face from God in shame. The Pharisee stood up, front and center, and exalted himself, thanking God that he was better than other men. Christ was unequivocal: “I tell you that [the tax collector], rather than the other, went home justified before God. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.”
The president has made sure to tell any Christian media outlet that would listen that he reads the Bible daily. Does he skip over the Gospel of Luke?
Bush’s defenders would argue that reproving the president’s Christian commitment is opportunistic and cheap, perhaps even sinful. They would say that an outsider could never appreciate the depths of the man’s private religious conviction.
But just as voters will judge his economic track record and his failed war in Iraq, so, too, must believers hold Bush’s actions as president to the standard of his professed Christian beliefs. After all, Bush made religious faith his characterological calling card from the outset of his very first campaign. Scripture says we have a right to scrutinize such claims; indeed, Scripture even obligates Christians to protect one another from creeping sinfulness. The author of the letters to the Hebrews in the New Testament left no room for interpretation on this point: “Take care, brethren, lest there should be in any one of you an evil, unbelieving heart … . But encourage one another day after day … lest any one of you be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.”
Just who will boldly hold the president accountable to Scripture? Sycophantic religious conservatives are heavily invested in politics; they dare not rock the boat. Religious liberals are cast aside as partisan. And as Amy Sullivan noted recently in The New Republic, Bush does not regularly attend church -- he doesn’t even have a pastor or fellow congregants to keep him on the straight and narrow.
For Bible-believing Christians, nothing in the entire world is more important than “walking” with Jesus; that is, engaging in a personal relationship with their savior and living according to his word. With this in mind, I recently asked Haggard, himself the pastor of a large church in Colorado, why the president, as a man of supposedly strong faith, did not publicly apologize for continually misleading Americans in the run-up to the Iraq War. Instead, Bush clung zealously to misinformation and half-truths. I asked Haggard why, as a man of Christian principle, Bush did not fully disavow Karl Rove’s despicable smear tactics and apologize for the ugly lies the Bush campaign spread over the years about Ann Richards, John McCain, and John Kerry, among others. After all, isn’t getting right with God -- whatever the political price --the most important thing for the sort of Christian Bush has proclaimed himself to be?
Haggard laughed as though my questions were the most naive he’d ever heard. “I think if you asked the president these questions once he’s out of office,” Haggard said, “he’d say, ‘You’re right. We shouldn’t have done it.’ But right now if he said something like that, well, the world would spin out of control!
“That’s why when Jimmy Carter ran, he [turned out to be] such a terrible president. Because when he [governed], he really tried to maintain [his integrity] and those types of values -- and that is virtually impossible.”
The pastor returned to my charges of Bush’s deceitfulness. “Listen,” he said testily, “I think [we Christian believers] are responsible not to lie [sic], but I don’t think we’re responsible to say everything we know.”
* * *
Bush’s religious backers like Haggard point to the president’s policy agenda as evidence of his spiritual ideals. The Christian spirit of compassionate conservatism, they say, infuses Bush’s commitment to policies like faith-based social services; many believers hold that a poverty of the spirit is at least partly to blame for such social ills as drug abuse and crime. Bush’s stance on abortion and other so-called life issues is also in concordance with the conservative Christian worldview. And the administration’s proposed constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, while theologically dubious, certainly resonates among more traditionalist believers. Even the war in Iraq, on which Bush famously consulted his heavenly (rather than earthly) father, was proffered as an Old Testament-style battle between the forces of good and The Enemy, as such Christians refer to Satan. “Our responsibility to history is already clear: to answer these attacks and rid the world of evil,” the president declared after September 11.
But the aforementioned issues are Christological softballs, as it were. After all, Bush’s positions on such matters land him safely in Republican territory. Never once has the president crossed party lines to uphold Christian principles such as aiding the poor or caring for the environment, for example. Much more of the president’s record reveals a man with a far deeper commitment to partisanship, or just simply being right -- even at the expense of clear biblical teaching.
Ironically, the Bush’s policy on embryonic stem-cell research, often described by its opponents as a triumph of theocracy over sound public policy, is better understood as just such a victory of partisanship over religious principle. It seems like a lifetime ago, but the debate over embryonic stem-cell research in the summer of 2001 was pitched as a battle between blinkered religiosity and scientific progress. On stem cells, Bush walked a fine line between two powerful constituencies early in his term: To his right, freshly empowered evangelicals and conservative Catholics vehemently opposed the destruction of live embryos, often referring to the cell clusters as “the tiniest human beings”; to his left stood the scientific community and, according to an ABC News/Beliefnet poll conducted at the time, 58 percent of Americans who supported the research.
On the campaign trail, Bush himself bandied about Catholic “culture of life” lingo while siding with religious conservatives who unequivocally opposed embryonic stem-cell research. "During the campaign, President-elect Bush ... said that as president he would oppose federally funded research or experimentation on embryonic stem cells that require live human embryos to be discarded or destroyed," spokesman Ari Fleischer told reporters in early 2001. The message was clear: Opposing embryonic stem-cell research was a matter of conscience for the new president.
But as Bush’s political viability waned, so, too, did his Christian conviction. By August of 2001, he had finally located the political sweet spot: The president ultimately approved federal financing for research on 60 stem-cell lines that had already been harvested, but prohibited the creation of any new ones. The resulting policy is neither scientifically nor religiously defensible. If the destruction of embryos is the moral equivalent of murder, it should be banned; if it is not, there is no reason to restrict federal funding to already extant stem-cell lines. The decisive ethical issue here concerns the status of the embryo and the legitimacy of its destruction. Bush's position amounts to saying that murder is OK as long as it isn't done with federal funds. But while there may be little that can be said in favor of Bush's position from a moral or research point of view, it's the perfect answer to the president's political program. His base gets messages like “[embryonic stem-cell research] leads down a slippery slope [toward] designer clones,” while a general audience recently received a communiqué from the Bush campaign bragging that he "delivered the first funding ever for embryonic stem-cell research."
Conservative Christians call this moral relativism. But in the simpler language that George W. Bush prefers, it’s a “flip-flop.”
* * *
In Exodus, the Ninth Commandment admonishes, “Thou shalt not bear false testimony against thy neighbor.” God wasn’t joking around there. But time and again, Bush and Rove have relied on repugnant lies to discredit their opponents. In the final days of the Texas governor’s race in 1994, barroom rumors swirled that Governor Ann Richards was a lesbian, and that she had appointed “avowed homosexuals” to her administration. Those rumors were lies, but Bush won the race.
In 2000, Bush squared off against John McCain in the hotly contested Republican presidential primary in South Carolina. Rather than go one on one with the war hero and popular pol, Bush let shady henchmen do his dirty work for him. In the final days before the showdown, Bush supporters waged whisper campaigns and distributed parking-lot handouts spreading the vilest of lies: that McCain was mentally unfit to serve after his long captivity in Vietnam; that his wife was a drug addict; that the senator had fathered a black daughter with a prostitute.
Bush won that race, too.
Little has changed this time around. When the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth emerged this summer to attack John Kerry’s admirable military service in Vietnam, veteran observers of past Bush campaigns immediately recognized Karl Rove’s handiwork. And with less than a month to go until November, the conservative Sinclair Broadcast Group abruptly preempted regularly scheduled television programming to air a propaganda film that denigrates Kerry’s war record. The media markets affected by this decision just happen to be in swing states.
Just how low will George W. Bush stoop for a victory?
For most candidates running for office, foul play is par for the course. But Bush is not like most other candidates. If he is a Christian, he is called to be the salt of the earth, the light of the world, a beacon of goodness and righteousness in a society havocked by moral depravity. In late May, Bush said as much to a group of Christian media players during a rare unscripted interview.
“I think a person's faith helps keep perspective in the midst of noise, pressure, sound -- all the stuff that goes on in Washington … ,” he explained. “It is one of the prayers I ask is that God's light shines through me as best as possible, no matter how opaque the window … .
“I'm in a world of … fakery and obfuscation, political back shots, and so I'm very mindful about the proper use of faith in this process And you can't fake your faith, nor can you use your faith as a shallow attempt to garner votes, otherwise you will receive the ultimate condemnation.” (emphasis added)
You can't, that is, if "ultimate condemnation" is your real concern. For the purposes of winning elections, it seems to do just fine.
Ayelish McGarvey is a Prospect writing fellow.
Copyright © 2004 by The American Prospect, Inc. Preferred Citation: Ayelish McGarvey, "As God Is His Witness", The American Prospect Online, Oct 19, 2004. This article may not be resold, reprinted, or redistributed for compensation of any kind without prior written permission from the author. Direct questions about permissions to permissions@prospect.org.
By Ayelish McGarveyWeb Exclusive: 10.19.04
Print Friendly Email Article Late in the summer, at the Republican national convention in New York, a movie billed as the conservative alternative to Fahrenheit 9/11 debuted for the party faithful. The film, George W. Bush: Faith in the White House, opens with a montage of a billowing American flag, a softly lit portrait of Jesus in Gethsemane, and a shot of the tawny profile of our 43rd president with his eyes gazing heavenward. Myriad times throughout the film Bush is referred to reverently as a man of faith.
Like no president in recent memory, George W. Bush wields his Christian righteousness like a flaming sword. Indeed, hundreds of news stories and nearly half a dozen books have evinced a White House that, according to BBC Washington correspondent Justin Webb, “hums to the sound of prayer.” Yet for the past four years the mainstream press has trod lightly, rarely venturing beyond the biographical to probe the depth, or sincerity, of Bush's Christian beliefs. Bush has no doubt benefited from the media’s reluctance; Newsweek, for example, in the heat of the run-up to the Iraq War, ran a cover package on the president’s faith under the headline “Bush and God” -- a story whose timing lent the war the aura of having heavenly sanction. Even lefty believers like Jim Wallis, editor of Sojourners, and Amy Sullivan, journalist and Democratic adviser, politely maintain that Bush’s faith is strong, if misguided.
Indeed, in an 8,000-word lamentation appearing in The New York Times Magazine last weekend, Ron Suskind attempted to trace Bush’s lack of intellectual curiosity, and the policy disasters that have stemmed from that, back to his relationship with God. “That a deep Christian faith illuminated the personal journey of George W. Bush is common knowledge,” Suskind wrote. In other words, the devil, as it were, is lurking among the articles of faith, but not in the heart of the man.
This is a huge mistake, because when judged by his deeds, an entirely different picture emerges: Bush does not demonstrate a life of faith by his actions, and neither Methodists, evangelicals, nor fundamentalists can rightly call him brother. In fact, the available evidence raises serious questions about whether Bush is really a Christian at all.
Ironically for a man who once famously named Jesus as his favorite political philosopher during a campaign debate, it is remarkably difficult to pinpoint a single instance wherein Christian teaching has won out over partisan politics in the Bush White House. Though Bush easily weaves Christian language and themes into his political communication, empty religious jargon is no substitute for a bedrock faith. Even little children in Sunday school know that Jesus taught his disciples to live according to his commandments, not simply to talk about them a lot. In Bush’s case, faith without works is not just dead faith -- it’s evangelical agitprop
Richard Land directs the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the conservative Southern Baptist Convention, the nation’s largest Protestant denomination and a group that enjoys a close relationship with the Bush administration. In an interview for Frontline earlier this year, Land denounced the scriptural cherry-picking on the part of contemporary American Christians. “It's only been in the last half-century when you've had the rise of groups [in] modern Christendom who believe in what I call ‘Dalmatian theology,’” he explained. “The Bible's inspired in spots, and … [t]hey think they can reject large chunks of Christian Scripture and biblical revelation that they don't agree with … .”
But while Land’s censure was probably intended for liberals, so, too, does it apply to the president. For George W. Bush does not live or govern under the complete authority of the Bible -- just the parts that work to his political advantage. And evangelical leaders like Land who blindly bless the Bush White House don’t just muddy the division of church and state; worse, they completely violate Scripture.
Jesus, after all, didn’t do politics.
* * *
The president’s storied faith journey began at the bottom of a bottle and led him all the way to the White House. But though these accounts ramble on for hundreds of pages about his steadfast leadership and prayerfulness, they all curiously rely on one single event to confirm that Bush is a man transformed by a deep Christian faith: He quit drinking and took up running instead. “I would not be president today," Bush himself told a group of pastoral social workers in 2003, "if I hadn't stopped drinking 17 years ago. And I could only do that with the grace of God."
But Christianity is more than teetotalism and physical fitness. Conservative believers liken a Christian conversion to a spiritual heart transplant -- one that completely transfigures a person’s motivations, sensibilities, relationships, and actions. In the Book of Ezekiel, God tells his children:
“I will give you a new heart, and put a new spirit in you. I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws … .” (emphasis added)Judging him on his record, George W. Bush’s spiritual transformation seems to have consisted of little more than staying on the wagon, with Jesus as a sort of talismanic Alcoholics Anonymous counselor. Bush came to his faith through a small group program created by Community Bible Study, which de-emphasizes sin and resembles a sort of Jesus-centered therapy session.
But sin is crucial to Christianity. To be born again, a seeker must painfully acknowledge his or her innate sinfulness, and then turn away from it completely. And though today Bush is sober, he does not live and govern like a man who “walks” with God, using the Bible as a moral compass for his decision making. Twice in the past year -- once during an April press conference and most recently at a presidential debate -- the president was unable to name any mistake he has made during his term. His steadfast unwillingness to fess up to a single error betrays a strikingly un-Christian lack of attention to the importance of self-criticism, the pervasiveness of sin, and the centrality of humility, repentance, and redemption. Indeed, it is impossible to imagine George W. Bush delivering an address like Jimmy Carter’s legendary “malaise” speech (in which he did not actually say the word “malaise”) in 1979. Carter sermonized to a dispirited nation in the language of confession, sacrifice, and spiritual restoration. Though it didn’t do him a lick of good politically, it was consonant with a Christian theology of atonement: Carter admitted his mistakes to make right with God and the American people, politics be damned. Bush, for whom politics is everything, can’t even admit that he’s done anything wrong.
Save for a few standout reporters, the press has done a dismal job of covering the president’s very public religiosity. Overwhelmingly lacking personal familiarity with conservative Christianity, political reporters have either avoided the topic or resorted to shopworn clichés and lazy stereotypes. Over and over, news stories align Bush with evangelical theology while loosely dropping terms like fundamentalist to describe his beliefs.
Once and for all: George W. Bush is neither born again nor evangelical. As Alan Cooperman reported in The Washington Post last month, the president has been careful never to use either term to describe his faith. Unlike millions of evangelicals, Bush did not have a single born-again experience; instead, he slowly came to Christianity over the course of several years, beginning with a deep conversation with the Reverend Billy Graham in the mid-1980s. And there is virtually no evidence that Bush places any emphasis on evangelizing -- or spreading the gospel -- in either his personal or professional life. Contrast this to Carter, who notoriously told every foreign dignitary he encountered about the good news of Jesus Christ.
If he is anything at all, Bush is nominally Methodist, the denomination of his home church in Dallas. John Wesley, Methodism’s founder, emphasized an emotional “warming of the heart” to Christ as fundamental to conversion. (That self-help ethos is evident in the resident’s “compassionate conservatism.”) But Wesley was equal part freedom fighter: As a pastor in 17th-century England, he was barred from the pulpit for crusading against the abhorrent evils of slavery. Wesley died a poor man, his life a testament to Christ’s exhortation of charity in the Gospel of Mark: “Sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven.”
Bush, on the other hand, is no ascetic firebrand. The president has a net worth of nearly $20 million, and there is no indication that he is on the brink of abandoning his fortune to live righteously with the poor. And unlike Wesley, Bush has never compromised his political standing to challenge the conservative status quo -- regardless of its Christian righteousness.
The president is, safe to say, a “Dalmatian” Methodist.
* * *
Two months prior to launching his first presidential campaign, Bush sat for an interview with The Dallas Morning News to discuss the role of religion in his life and his politics. He spoke evasively and didn’t seem comfortable discussing his Christian conviction. “I view my religion as very personal,” he explained. “I want people to judge me on my deeds, not how I try to define myself as a religious person of words.”
But the president’s supporters in Christendom cling to his words as prima facie evidence of his deep Christian faith. And though Bush is not an evangelical, he certainly talks like one. As has been often noted, Bush effortlessly speaks the language of the born again, and his remarks are loaded with subliminal messages to the nation’s 60 million white evangelicals. Ironically, the theology embedded in this language is not even the president’s own -- it belongs to Michael Gerson, Bush’s crack speechwriter, himself a devout Christian and a graduate of Wheaton College, the “evangelical Harvard.” Far too often, though, the press confuses Gerson’s words with Bush’s beliefs.
The distinction is critical, as the press, as well as many of Bush’s most ardent supporters, curiously points to the president’s words, not his deeds, as evidence of his deep Christian faith. In Alan Cooperman’s recent Washington Post article, David Frum, a (Jewish) former Bush speechwriter, said of the president’s religious beliefs, “If you want to know what George Bush really thinks, look at what he says.”
Ted Haggard, president of the National Association of Evangelicals, has met with the president and advised the Bush White House. “I sat down with [Bush],” he told me. “What I do know is that … [the president] is an honest guy who really believes what he says.”
Bush’s attraction to Jesus jargon is no accident. As an aspiring pol, he learned early on that religious language could give him the cowboy cred he needed to woo voters in Texas. Doug Wead is a close friend of the Bush family and a prominent evangelical motivational speaker. Wead worked closely with the president when he advised George Bush Senior during the 1988 presidential campaign. “There’s no question that [George W. Bush’s] faith is real, that it’s authentic … and there is no question that it’s calculated,” Wead told Frontline. “I know that sounds like a contradiction.”
Wead taught Bush Junior to “signal early and signal often” when he spoke to conservative Christians on behalf of Bush Senior. “George would read my memos, and he would be licking his lips saying, ‘I can use this to win in Texas,’” Wead told Guy Lawson in an article that appeared last year in GQ.
But in the Bible, Jesus Christ disdained insincere religious posturing. In the famed parable of the tax collector and the Pharisee, the penitent taxman prayed in a far corner of the temple and wept, hiding his face from God in shame. The Pharisee stood up, front and center, and exalted himself, thanking God that he was better than other men. Christ was unequivocal: “I tell you that [the tax collector], rather than the other, went home justified before God. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.”
The president has made sure to tell any Christian media outlet that would listen that he reads the Bible daily. Does he skip over the Gospel of Luke?
Bush’s defenders would argue that reproving the president’s Christian commitment is opportunistic and cheap, perhaps even sinful. They would say that an outsider could never appreciate the depths of the man’s private religious conviction.
But just as voters will judge his economic track record and his failed war in Iraq, so, too, must believers hold Bush’s actions as president to the standard of his professed Christian beliefs. After all, Bush made religious faith his characterological calling card from the outset of his very first campaign. Scripture says we have a right to scrutinize such claims; indeed, Scripture even obligates Christians to protect one another from creeping sinfulness. The author of the letters to the Hebrews in the New Testament left no room for interpretation on this point: “Take care, brethren, lest there should be in any one of you an evil, unbelieving heart … . But encourage one another day after day … lest any one of you be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.”
Just who will boldly hold the president accountable to Scripture? Sycophantic religious conservatives are heavily invested in politics; they dare not rock the boat. Religious liberals are cast aside as partisan. And as Amy Sullivan noted recently in The New Republic, Bush does not regularly attend church -- he doesn’t even have a pastor or fellow congregants to keep him on the straight and narrow.
For Bible-believing Christians, nothing in the entire world is more important than “walking” with Jesus; that is, engaging in a personal relationship with their savior and living according to his word. With this in mind, I recently asked Haggard, himself the pastor of a large church in Colorado, why the president, as a man of supposedly strong faith, did not publicly apologize for continually misleading Americans in the run-up to the Iraq War. Instead, Bush clung zealously to misinformation and half-truths. I asked Haggard why, as a man of Christian principle, Bush did not fully disavow Karl Rove’s despicable smear tactics and apologize for the ugly lies the Bush campaign spread over the years about Ann Richards, John McCain, and John Kerry, among others. After all, isn’t getting right with God -- whatever the political price --the most important thing for the sort of Christian Bush has proclaimed himself to be?
Haggard laughed as though my questions were the most naive he’d ever heard. “I think if you asked the president these questions once he’s out of office,” Haggard said, “he’d say, ‘You’re right. We shouldn’t have done it.’ But right now if he said something like that, well, the world would spin out of control!
“That’s why when Jimmy Carter ran, he [turned out to be] such a terrible president. Because when he [governed], he really tried to maintain [his integrity] and those types of values -- and that is virtually impossible.”
The pastor returned to my charges of Bush’s deceitfulness. “Listen,” he said testily, “I think [we Christian believers] are responsible not to lie [sic], but I don’t think we’re responsible to say everything we know.”
* * *
Bush’s religious backers like Haggard point to the president’s policy agenda as evidence of his spiritual ideals. The Christian spirit of compassionate conservatism, they say, infuses Bush’s commitment to policies like faith-based social services; many believers hold that a poverty of the spirit is at least partly to blame for such social ills as drug abuse and crime. Bush’s stance on abortion and other so-called life issues is also in concordance with the conservative Christian worldview. And the administration’s proposed constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, while theologically dubious, certainly resonates among more traditionalist believers. Even the war in Iraq, on which Bush famously consulted his heavenly (rather than earthly) father, was proffered as an Old Testament-style battle between the forces of good and The Enemy, as such Christians refer to Satan. “Our responsibility to history is already clear: to answer these attacks and rid the world of evil,” the president declared after September 11.
But the aforementioned issues are Christological softballs, as it were. After all, Bush’s positions on such matters land him safely in Republican territory. Never once has the president crossed party lines to uphold Christian principles such as aiding the poor or caring for the environment, for example. Much more of the president’s record reveals a man with a far deeper commitment to partisanship, or just simply being right -- even at the expense of clear biblical teaching.
Ironically, the Bush’s policy on embryonic stem-cell research, often described by its opponents as a triumph of theocracy over sound public policy, is better understood as just such a victory of partisanship over religious principle. It seems like a lifetime ago, but the debate over embryonic stem-cell research in the summer of 2001 was pitched as a battle between blinkered religiosity and scientific progress. On stem cells, Bush walked a fine line between two powerful constituencies early in his term: To his right, freshly empowered evangelicals and conservative Catholics vehemently opposed the destruction of live embryos, often referring to the cell clusters as “the tiniest human beings”; to his left stood the scientific community and, according to an ABC News/Beliefnet poll conducted at the time, 58 percent of Americans who supported the research.
On the campaign trail, Bush himself bandied about Catholic “culture of life” lingo while siding with religious conservatives who unequivocally opposed embryonic stem-cell research. "During the campaign, President-elect Bush ... said that as president he would oppose federally funded research or experimentation on embryonic stem cells that require live human embryos to be discarded or destroyed," spokesman Ari Fleischer told reporters in early 2001. The message was clear: Opposing embryonic stem-cell research was a matter of conscience for the new president.
But as Bush’s political viability waned, so, too, did his Christian conviction. By August of 2001, he had finally located the political sweet spot: The president ultimately approved federal financing for research on 60 stem-cell lines that had already been harvested, but prohibited the creation of any new ones. The resulting policy is neither scientifically nor religiously defensible. If the destruction of embryos is the moral equivalent of murder, it should be banned; if it is not, there is no reason to restrict federal funding to already extant stem-cell lines. The decisive ethical issue here concerns the status of the embryo and the legitimacy of its destruction. Bush's position amounts to saying that murder is OK as long as it isn't done with federal funds. But while there may be little that can be said in favor of Bush's position from a moral or research point of view, it's the perfect answer to the president's political program. His base gets messages like “[embryonic stem-cell research] leads down a slippery slope [toward] designer clones,” while a general audience recently received a communiqué from the Bush campaign bragging that he "delivered the first funding ever for embryonic stem-cell research."
Conservative Christians call this moral relativism. But in the simpler language that George W. Bush prefers, it’s a “flip-flop.”
* * *
In Exodus, the Ninth Commandment admonishes, “Thou shalt not bear false testimony against thy neighbor.” God wasn’t joking around there. But time and again, Bush and Rove have relied on repugnant lies to discredit their opponents. In the final days of the Texas governor’s race in 1994, barroom rumors swirled that Governor Ann Richards was a lesbian, and that she had appointed “avowed homosexuals” to her administration. Those rumors were lies, but Bush won the race.
In 2000, Bush squared off against John McCain in the hotly contested Republican presidential primary in South Carolina. Rather than go one on one with the war hero and popular pol, Bush let shady henchmen do his dirty work for him. In the final days before the showdown, Bush supporters waged whisper campaigns and distributed parking-lot handouts spreading the vilest of lies: that McCain was mentally unfit to serve after his long captivity in Vietnam; that his wife was a drug addict; that the senator had fathered a black daughter with a prostitute.
Bush won that race, too.
Little has changed this time around. When the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth emerged this summer to attack John Kerry’s admirable military service in Vietnam, veteran observers of past Bush campaigns immediately recognized Karl Rove’s handiwork. And with less than a month to go until November, the conservative Sinclair Broadcast Group abruptly preempted regularly scheduled television programming to air a propaganda film that denigrates Kerry’s war record. The media markets affected by this decision just happen to be in swing states.
Just how low will George W. Bush stoop for a victory?
For most candidates running for office, foul play is par for the course. But Bush is not like most other candidates. If he is a Christian, he is called to be the salt of the earth, the light of the world, a beacon of goodness and righteousness in a society havocked by moral depravity. In late May, Bush said as much to a group of Christian media players during a rare unscripted interview.
“I think a person's faith helps keep perspective in the midst of noise, pressure, sound -- all the stuff that goes on in Washington … ,” he explained. “It is one of the prayers I ask is that God's light shines through me as best as possible, no matter how opaque the window … .
“I'm in a world of … fakery and obfuscation, political back shots, and so I'm very mindful about the proper use of faith in this process And you can't fake your faith, nor can you use your faith as a shallow attempt to garner votes, otherwise you will receive the ultimate condemnation.” (emphasis added)
You can't, that is, if "ultimate condemnation" is your real concern. For the purposes of winning elections, it seems to do just fine.
Ayelish McGarvey is a Prospect writing fellow.
Copyright © 2004 by The American Prospect, Inc. Preferred Citation: Ayelish McGarvey, "As God Is His Witness", The American Prospect Online, Oct 19, 2004. This article may not be resold, reprinted, or redistributed for compensation of any kind without prior written permission from the author. Direct questions about permissions to permissions@prospect.org.
Wednesday, October 20, 2004
"We're Not Going to Have Any Casualties"
Comment: I don't know what is more unsettling: The idea that Bush said this to Robertson, or that a huge number of voters are so blinded by their worldview, or uninformed, or just so corrupted by the gravy train that they want this deeply flawed man to continue as the leader of what once was called the "free world".
"We're Not Going to Have Any Casualties"
By Atrios
Pat Robertson claims that's what Bush said to him:
"And I warned him about this war. I had deep misgivings about this war, deep misgivings. And I was trying to say, 'Mr. President, you had better prepare the American people for casualties.' "Robertson said the president then told him, "Oh, no, we're not going to have any casualties."Of course, Bush also said:
I've been to war. I've raised twins. If I had a choice, I'd rather go to war.
"We're Not Going to Have Any Casualties"
By Atrios
Pat Robertson claims that's what Bush said to him:
"And I warned him about this war. I had deep misgivings about this war, deep misgivings. And I was trying to say, 'Mr. President, you had better prepare the American people for casualties.' "Robertson said the president then told him, "Oh, no, we're not going to have any casualties."Of course, Bush also said:
I've been to war. I've raised twins. If I had a choice, I'd rather go to war.
Label Avoidance
Comments: Arrrrrrrg!, Oh no I'm sounding like a Deaniac. It's no surprise that I think the Author is off-base in a major way, and that his rhetoric can be countered completely with common sense rebuttal.
In short, as an "any mammal but Bush" voter, I would say that as a conservative leaning peace lover, I can think of many "liberal" politicians who have rightly been singled out for their "liberal" views, causes, and voting records. However, as many other honest intellectual conservatives have explained in making a stand against Bush, the real person who has betrayed conservative values in our world today is GW.
Label Avoidance
By R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr.
Published 10/14/2004 12:05:55 AM
WASHINGTON -- Where else but in an American presidential campaign can a candidate declare with solemnity that "labels don't matter" or, for that matter, with persuasiveness. When Senator Jean-Francois Kerry denies the significance of the "label" being applied to him, is he trying to pull a fast one on the poor credulous voter? Are he and his surrogates convincing when they insist that "labels" are nothing but pieces of trickery deployed by the hellish Republicans? Well, if labels do not matter, pay no attention to the label on that bottle over there, Senator, the label marked "poison," or "dangerous to nursing mothers," or "do not take when windsurfing." Of course, the label that the Massachusetts Braggart is objecting to is the label "liberal." For some reason he considers it unfair when his opponent calls him a liberal, though the nonpartisan magazine, National Journal, catalogues him as a liberal, in fact the most liberal senator in Washington. Presumably the National Journal had merely savored the Boastful One's twenty years in the Senate where he has been on the self-congratulatory liberal side of every issue. Moreover, does anyone doubt that when this long drink of water ambles onto a university campus or into a media newsroom -- say the CBS newsroom -- he boldly declares with timpani rumbling offstage: "Yes, I am a liberal. And proud of it, come hell or high Perrier"? Why is it that in presidential campaigns liberals, upon accepting the Democratic nomination, scurry from the label liberal? Actually, it is very disingenuous for them to object to "labels"?Labels are one of the liberals' favorite remedies. They demand labels on tobacco, ardent spirits, children's toys -- anything that offends their constituents and might assist in their election. I would not be surprised to hear that they had fashioned labels for basketballs ("Bounce With Care") or condoms ("Keep Away From Needles and Other Sharp Objects," "Do Not Use With Alcoholic Beverages," or "May Cause Drowsiness"). Labels are the consumerists' best friend, at least when prohibition is impossible. Yet now out there on the campaign trail the Democrats' cosmopolitan presidential candidate is objecting to "labels." He and his surrogates insist that labels are meaningless. It is another admission by them that the words they use and the positions they take at election time are unserious. They, who pride themselves in their high intellectual commitment, actually seem to believe that they can persuade voters that the philosophical and political positions they have taken over the years should not matter to us when we vote. Well, what does matter, the senator's windsurfing skills? George W. Bush's cowboy boots? In this campaign Senator Kerry has tried to reduce the issues to style and sophistries. Frankly his style is pompous and oafish, and his sophistries are unconvincing. His brand of economics leads to slow growth and probably high inflation. His brand of foreign policy leads to the United Nations where he admits he will take us for endless debates with corrupt foreign hucksters and dignitaries who hate America and its interests. It has now been many decades during which liberals have believed that liberalism is the morally and intellectually superior position. Conservatives are in the liberals' reckoning philistines, materialists, racists, and uncouth. Yet it has been at least three decades since a Democratic presidential nominee faced the nation and proclaimed himself a liberal. Does this mean that the Democratic candidates consider themselves morally and intellectually superior to the rest of the nation? I think it does. In fact they think themselves so intellectually superior -- and the rest of us so obtuse -- that they believe they can conceal their many years of liberal politicking from the electorate. Like participants at a masked ball, they practice masked politics in presidential campaigns. Unfortunately the American people are serious about matters of national security and economic growth. Faced with a windsurfer, a spandex-clad cyclist, and a potential bungee jumper, I think they will choose a leader. Someday soon, the Democrats are going to have to face up to the sham that is their kind of liberalism. They are right about one thing; it is unpopular across America.R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr. is editor in chief of The American Spectator and a contributing editor to the New York Sun. He is also an adjunct scholar at the Hudson Institute and the author of Madame Hillary: The Dark Road to the White House (Regnery Publishing).
In short, as an "any mammal but Bush" voter, I would say that as a conservative leaning peace lover, I can think of many "liberal" politicians who have rightly been singled out for their "liberal" views, causes, and voting records. However, as many other honest intellectual conservatives have explained in making a stand against Bush, the real person who has betrayed conservative values in our world today is GW.
Label Avoidance
By R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr.
Published 10/14/2004 12:05:55 AM
WASHINGTON -- Where else but in an American presidential campaign can a candidate declare with solemnity that "labels don't matter" or, for that matter, with persuasiveness. When Senator Jean-Francois Kerry denies the significance of the "label" being applied to him, is he trying to pull a fast one on the poor credulous voter? Are he and his surrogates convincing when they insist that "labels" are nothing but pieces of trickery deployed by the hellish Republicans? Well, if labels do not matter, pay no attention to the label on that bottle over there, Senator, the label marked "poison," or "dangerous to nursing mothers," or "do not take when windsurfing." Of course, the label that the Massachusetts Braggart is objecting to is the label "liberal." For some reason he considers it unfair when his opponent calls him a liberal, though the nonpartisan magazine, National Journal, catalogues him as a liberal, in fact the most liberal senator in Washington. Presumably the National Journal had merely savored the Boastful One's twenty years in the Senate where he has been on the self-congratulatory liberal side of every issue. Moreover, does anyone doubt that when this long drink of water ambles onto a university campus or into a media newsroom -- say the CBS newsroom -- he boldly declares with timpani rumbling offstage: "Yes, I am a liberal. And proud of it, come hell or high Perrier"? Why is it that in presidential campaigns liberals, upon accepting the Democratic nomination, scurry from the label liberal? Actually, it is very disingenuous for them to object to "labels"?Labels are one of the liberals' favorite remedies. They demand labels on tobacco, ardent spirits, children's toys -- anything that offends their constituents and might assist in their election. I would not be surprised to hear that they had fashioned labels for basketballs ("Bounce With Care") or condoms ("Keep Away From Needles and Other Sharp Objects," "Do Not Use With Alcoholic Beverages," or "May Cause Drowsiness"). Labels are the consumerists' best friend, at least when prohibition is impossible. Yet now out there on the campaign trail the Democrats' cosmopolitan presidential candidate is objecting to "labels." He and his surrogates insist that labels are meaningless. It is another admission by them that the words they use and the positions they take at election time are unserious. They, who pride themselves in their high intellectual commitment, actually seem to believe that they can persuade voters that the philosophical and political positions they have taken over the years should not matter to us when we vote. Well, what does matter, the senator's windsurfing skills? George W. Bush's cowboy boots? In this campaign Senator Kerry has tried to reduce the issues to style and sophistries. Frankly his style is pompous and oafish, and his sophistries are unconvincing. His brand of economics leads to slow growth and probably high inflation. His brand of foreign policy leads to the United Nations where he admits he will take us for endless debates with corrupt foreign hucksters and dignitaries who hate America and its interests. It has now been many decades during which liberals have believed that liberalism is the morally and intellectually superior position. Conservatives are in the liberals' reckoning philistines, materialists, racists, and uncouth. Yet it has been at least three decades since a Democratic presidential nominee faced the nation and proclaimed himself a liberal. Does this mean that the Democratic candidates consider themselves morally and intellectually superior to the rest of the nation? I think it does. In fact they think themselves so intellectually superior -- and the rest of us so obtuse -- that they believe they can conceal their many years of liberal politicking from the electorate. Like participants at a masked ball, they practice masked politics in presidential campaigns. Unfortunately the American people are serious about matters of national security and economic growth. Faced with a windsurfer, a spandex-clad cyclist, and a potential bungee jumper, I think they will choose a leader. Someday soon, the Democrats are going to have to face up to the sham that is their kind of liberalism. They are right about one thing; it is unpopular across America.R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr. is editor in chief of The American Spectator and a contributing editor to the New York Sun. He is also an adjunct scholar at the Hudson Institute and the author of Madame Hillary: The Dark Road to the White House (Regnery Publishing).
The Derrida Achievement
Comment: Ok, I'm out of my element here. I admit I didn't know who Derrida was until his obit. I'm pretty sure that I think I disagree with the Author, but I have to say I appreciate, with my limited exposure, the article as an honest attempt to discuss the subject.
Copyright © 2002 Spectator.org. All Rights Reserved.
The Derrida Achievement
By Mark Goldblatt
Published 10/14/2004 12:05:28 AM
NEW YORK -- Jacques Derrida, the controversial French philosopher often called "the father of deconstruction," died last Friday at 74. Obituaries over the weekend duly noted not only his influence on literary theory, film criticism, linguistics, anthropology, psychology, sociology and even law, but also the ongoing debate over the ultimate value of his work. The New York Times, for example, pointed out that Derrida "was the target of as much anger as admiration," adding, "For many Americans, in particular, he was the personification of a French school of thinking they felt was undermining many of the traditional standards of classical education, and one they often associated with divisive political causes." This is no doubt true. Many traditionalists, in and out of academia, were put off by the political implications of Derrida's theories -- as well as the actual consequences of deconstruction as a critical tool. But such objections miss the point. It's not my intention to speak ill of the dead, but Derrida's special significance lies not in the fact that he was subversive but in the fact that he was an outright intellectual fraud -- and that he managed to dupe a startling number of highly educated people into believing he was on to something. For example, there is no more self-evident truth than the law of non-contradiction: P cannot simultaneously be both Q and not Q. It is a sine qua non of rational discourse. When I assert the proposition "Socrates is mortal," I must simultaneously deny the logical contradictory, "Socrates is not mortal." If Socrates' mortality doesn't rule out his non-mortality, what does the initial proposition "Socrates is mortal" mean? The law of non-contradiction is implicitly invoked in every rationally meaningful proposition. Yet in Of Grammatology, Derrida describes one of his signature concepts, the arche-trace, as "contradictory and not acceptable within the logic of identity." Yet the particular "logic of identity" to which Derrida refers is simply logic; it is not one logic among many. And since rational discourse entails accepting the law of non-contradiction, Derrida's insistence that his concept is unacceptable within the "logic of identity" amounts to a declaration of nonsense. In fact, a reasonable paraphrase of Derrida's words might be: The concept of the arche-trace makes no sense whatsoever, but play along anyway. (Derrida's disciples often point to the sense of "play" in his work.) To be sure, Derrida himself embraces the senselessness of the concept: "The trace is in fact the absolute origin of sense in general. Which amounts to saying once again that there is no absolute origin of sense in general." The trace is what it is not. It would perhaps be credible to read Derrida's remarks about the arche-trace as mere rhetorical flourishes, or even burlesques of traditional reasoning, except the context belies such a reading: he builds on the concept of the arche-trace. Nor are his remarks in Of Grammatology isolated instances. In Dissémination Derrida states: "It is thus not simply false to say that Mallarmé is a Platonist or a Hegelian. But it is above all not true. And vice versa." As the critic John Ellis has pointed out, the key to the Mallarme passage surely lies in the final sentence, in the apparent throwaway "vice versa." Attempting to make sense of Derrida's words, a reader might well allow a distinction between saying that a proposition is "simply false" and "not true": a proposition that is absurd ("The invisible elephant looks pink") might be deemed "not true" yet not "simply false." Still, the "vice versa" undermines any attempt to get at what Derrida's means. THE PROBLEM OF INTELLIGIBLE meaning in Derrida's writing arises again in his book Positions. He begins, typically, with a checklist of his "undecidables": "supplement," "hymen," "spacing," "incision," etc. These are concepts which, he declares, "can no longer be included within philosophical (binary) opposition, but which, however, inhabit philosophical opposition, resisting and disorganizing it." Thus, for example, "the supplement is neither a plus nor a minus, neither an outside nor the compliment of an inside, neither accident nor essence." How any of this resists and disorganizes "philosophical opposition" is never made clear since the phrase itself is never defined. If the "philosophical opposition" Derrida seeks to resist and disorganize is comprised of the rules of logic, such as the law of non-contradiction, then it should be noted that he has not set up logical contradictories in his pairings -- as would be the case if the "supplement" were neither accident nor non-accident. That would indeed resist and disorganize logic; it would overthrow the law of excluded middle. (P must be either Q or not Q.) Still, a reader will necessarily inquire on what grounds Derrida bases his pronouncements in the first place. His method, insofar as it can be delineated, is to free-associate with a given word until he is able to tease out a connotation that belies the original sense of the word; but does this mean that he has undermined traditional logic? Whence the "is" in Derrida's declaration "the supplement is …"? Finally, however, none of these questions seem to matter. For Derrida winds up his analysis with another logical throwaway: "Neither/nor, that is, simultaneously either or." In other words, whatever Derrida is affirming, he is also simultaneously denying. From a logical perspective, the only way to read Derrida on his own terms is mentally to insert the phrase "or not" after every one of his statements. Again, the man is dead. That is an empirical truth of the sort Derrida himself liked to deconstruct; it is an empirical truth the majority of us have been taught to respect. The fact that he achieved, ex nihilo, the stature he did in the humanities speaks to the cognitive capacities of college professors and artists. It does not speak to whether Jacques Derrida was a good man or lived a good life. That is a question better addressed by those who knew and worked with him. As an observer to the Derrida phenomenon, I only bid him farewell. May he rest in peace. Mark Goldblatt (mgold57@aol.com) is the author of Africa Speaks, a satire of black urban culture. He teaches history of ideas at Fashion Institute of Technology of the State University of New York.
Copyright © 2002 Spectator.org. All Rights Reserved.
The Derrida Achievement
By Mark Goldblatt
Published 10/14/2004 12:05:28 AM
NEW YORK -- Jacques Derrida, the controversial French philosopher often called "the father of deconstruction," died last Friday at 74. Obituaries over the weekend duly noted not only his influence on literary theory, film criticism, linguistics, anthropology, psychology, sociology and even law, but also the ongoing debate over the ultimate value of his work. The New York Times, for example, pointed out that Derrida "was the target of as much anger as admiration," adding, "For many Americans, in particular, he was the personification of a French school of thinking they felt was undermining many of the traditional standards of classical education, and one they often associated with divisive political causes." This is no doubt true. Many traditionalists, in and out of academia, were put off by the political implications of Derrida's theories -- as well as the actual consequences of deconstruction as a critical tool. But such objections miss the point. It's not my intention to speak ill of the dead, but Derrida's special significance lies not in the fact that he was subversive but in the fact that he was an outright intellectual fraud -- and that he managed to dupe a startling number of highly educated people into believing he was on to something. For example, there is no more self-evident truth than the law of non-contradiction: P cannot simultaneously be both Q and not Q. It is a sine qua non of rational discourse. When I assert the proposition "Socrates is mortal," I must simultaneously deny the logical contradictory, "Socrates is not mortal." If Socrates' mortality doesn't rule out his non-mortality, what does the initial proposition "Socrates is mortal" mean? The law of non-contradiction is implicitly invoked in every rationally meaningful proposition. Yet in Of Grammatology, Derrida describes one of his signature concepts, the arche-trace, as "contradictory and not acceptable within the logic of identity." Yet the particular "logic of identity" to which Derrida refers is simply logic; it is not one logic among many. And since rational discourse entails accepting the law of non-contradiction, Derrida's insistence that his concept is unacceptable within the "logic of identity" amounts to a declaration of nonsense. In fact, a reasonable paraphrase of Derrida's words might be: The concept of the arche-trace makes no sense whatsoever, but play along anyway. (Derrida's disciples often point to the sense of "play" in his work.) To be sure, Derrida himself embraces the senselessness of the concept: "The trace is in fact the absolute origin of sense in general. Which amounts to saying once again that there is no absolute origin of sense in general." The trace is what it is not. It would perhaps be credible to read Derrida's remarks about the arche-trace as mere rhetorical flourishes, or even burlesques of traditional reasoning, except the context belies such a reading: he builds on the concept of the arche-trace. Nor are his remarks in Of Grammatology isolated instances. In Dissémination Derrida states: "It is thus not simply false to say that Mallarmé is a Platonist or a Hegelian. But it is above all not true. And vice versa." As the critic John Ellis has pointed out, the key to the Mallarme passage surely lies in the final sentence, in the apparent throwaway "vice versa." Attempting to make sense of Derrida's words, a reader might well allow a distinction between saying that a proposition is "simply false" and "not true": a proposition that is absurd ("The invisible elephant looks pink") might be deemed "not true" yet not "simply false." Still, the "vice versa" undermines any attempt to get at what Derrida's means. THE PROBLEM OF INTELLIGIBLE meaning in Derrida's writing arises again in his book Positions. He begins, typically, with a checklist of his "undecidables": "supplement," "hymen," "spacing," "incision," etc. These are concepts which, he declares, "can no longer be included within philosophical (binary) opposition, but which, however, inhabit philosophical opposition, resisting and disorganizing it." Thus, for example, "the supplement is neither a plus nor a minus, neither an outside nor the compliment of an inside, neither accident nor essence." How any of this resists and disorganizes "philosophical opposition" is never made clear since the phrase itself is never defined. If the "philosophical opposition" Derrida seeks to resist and disorganize is comprised of the rules of logic, such as the law of non-contradiction, then it should be noted that he has not set up logical contradictories in his pairings -- as would be the case if the "supplement" were neither accident nor non-accident. That would indeed resist and disorganize logic; it would overthrow the law of excluded middle. (P must be either Q or not Q.) Still, a reader will necessarily inquire on what grounds Derrida bases his pronouncements in the first place. His method, insofar as it can be delineated, is to free-associate with a given word until he is able to tease out a connotation that belies the original sense of the word; but does this mean that he has undermined traditional logic? Whence the "is" in Derrida's declaration "the supplement is …"? Finally, however, none of these questions seem to matter. For Derrida winds up his analysis with another logical throwaway: "Neither/nor, that is, simultaneously either or." In other words, whatever Derrida is affirming, he is also simultaneously denying. From a logical perspective, the only way to read Derrida on his own terms is mentally to insert the phrase "or not" after every one of his statements. Again, the man is dead. That is an empirical truth of the sort Derrida himself liked to deconstruct; it is an empirical truth the majority of us have been taught to respect. The fact that he achieved, ex nihilo, the stature he did in the humanities speaks to the cognitive capacities of college professors and artists. It does not speak to whether Jacques Derrida was a good man or lived a good life. That is a question better addressed by those who knew and worked with him. As an observer to the Derrida phenomenon, I only bid him farewell. May he rest in peace. Mark Goldblatt (mgold57@aol.com) is the author of Africa Speaks, a satire of black urban culture. He teaches history of ideas at Fashion Institute of Technology of the State University of New York.
Berserk Stewart
Comment: Mr. Macomber adds his name to the list of "Hacks"!
Berserk Stewart
By Shawn Macomber
Published 10/18/2004 12:06:39 AM
All the praise and attention the media have spent the past four years lavishing on The Daily Show has finally gone to Jon Stewart's head. The cover of Newsweek, on-air heart-to-hearts with Bill Moyers, a Number One New York Times bestseller, and old institutional hands like Tom Brokaw and Dan Rather groveling at his feet in every possible forum have all conspired to launch the comedian into a celebrity stratosphere where the air is so thin he forgot it was humor and impeccable comedic timing that opened the door to this particular kingdom, not his political acumen.
A sure sign of Stewart's atrophying sense of humor was his Friday afternoon appearance on CNN's Crossfire. Much lauded out in the hazy blips of the blogosphere, the appearance was nevertheless a boring, soulless, and, worst of all, completely humorless exercise in hubris. From the get-go it was apparent Stewart had no interest in telling jokes or even busting out any of his trademark understated cerebral mocking. He began by explaining he thought the show was "bad" and accusing the hosts of "partisan hackery," before launching into his main self-righteous dialogue between…well, mostly between himself and his sizable ego.
"I wanted to come here today and say stop, stop, stop, stop hurting America," Stewart admonished hosts Tucker Carlson and Paul Begala. "And come work for us, because we, as the people...need your help. Right now, you're helping the politicians and the corporations. And we're left out there to mow our lawns."
When did Stewart suddenly become the established voice of "we, the people"? It looks as if the "fake news anchor" has decided to combine Ralph Nader-esque populism and vague conspiracy theories about spectral capitalism-spawned bogeymen with sarcastic humor. A registered letter from Michael Moore's attorney cannot be far behind.
BUT, THEN, WHAT'S annoying about the newly minted Stewart the Crusader isn't that he's taking serious political stands. The best political comedians -- Mort Sahl, Bill Hicks, Dennis Miller -- have always been true believers with a core of seriousness and righteous indignation at the center of their humor. The problem with Stewart is that he demands respect but is unwilling to take responsibility for the things he says. When it is time for a Stewart lecture, there is no room for kidding around. But when his conclusions or statements are questioned, it's suddenly time to roll his eyes and morph back into the Teflon comedian. On Crossfire, for example, after pleading with a straight face for the hosts to "stop, stop, stop hurting America" and praising his own show for its level of "civilized discourse," Stewart summarily shot down Carlson's questions about the kid-glove handling of John Kerry on The Daily Show last month.
"If you want to compare your show to a comedy show, you're more than welcome to," Stewart said, adding snarkily that he didn't realize that, "news organizations look to Comedy Central for their cues on integrity." When Carlson protested that he thought Stewart was going to be funny, Stewart shot back acidly, "I'm not going to be your monkey." Blogs everywhere exploded with glee at this verbal coup de grace, but -- like it or not -- Carlson was making a valid point. When Stewart had John Kerry on the couch, he grilled him with questions such as, "How are you holding up? Is it hard not to take the attacks personally?" and "Have you ever flip-flopped?" Fine. No one expects Leno, Letterman, or any other late night entertainer suddenly to begin channeling Chris Matthews.
Stewart wants it both ways, however. He'll lightheartedly lob softballs at Democrats he openly endorses for office, but when a conservative voice comes on there are few smiles and fewer mercies. In a recent post-debate interview with Rudy Giuliani, Stewart barely let the mayor finish a single sentence. Over and over it was, "But I think what John Kerry was saying was…" reducing Stewart to a pinch hitter for Mary Beth Cahill. Similarly, Ralph Reed's views on the war in Iraq were dismissed out of hand during his visit to The Daily Show.
It's worth noting that we didn't hear Stewart protesting that he was just a comedian when a Kerry spokeswoman told the Washington Post, "Jon Stewart understands perfectly all the important issues facing this country right now." In fact, in the same article, Daily Show executive producer Ben Karlin seemed to be taking the comedy show's campaign coverage exceedingly seriously.
"All of us [on The Daily Show] are just blown away by the turn the campaign has taken," he said. "We cannot believe that this is what is being talked about at this juncture. It's so astounding to us. We are trying to work through our amazement and to conduct a meaningful conversation absent of incredulity."
ABOVE ALL, THIS IS one comedy show no one is allowed to make any jokes about: When Bill O'Reilly suggested earlier this year that Stewart's audience was made up of "stoned slackers," Comedy Central couldn't let such an accusation impugn the credibility of its "fake news show" and was soon feverishly issuing press releases pointing to studies that showed viewers of The Daily Show were more politically savvy and better educated than those who spend every night in the No Spin Zone. Likewise, when Carlson suggested that Stewart was "more fun" on The Daily Show, Stewart -- scion of "civilized discourse" -- said, "You know what's interesting, though? You're as big a dick on your show as you are on any show." Umm, touché?
In the midst of this even Paul Begala's patience, typically limitless with liberals, was tested. "Let me get this straight," Begala said. "If the indictment is -- and I have seen you say this -- that... Crossfire reduces everything to left, right, black, white…Well, it's because, see, we're a debate show…It's like saying The Weather Channel reduces everything to a storm front." Earlier in the show, Stewart had demanded Begala say something nice about George W. Bush, which he graciously did. The whole thing reeked of hypocrisy. When was the last time Stewart followed his own advice? It's a free country and any of us can say as much good or bad as we like, but don't be a partisan jerk all the time and then lecture others on the beauty of non-partisanship. It makes you sound like Pat Leahy.
It's all selective behavior, of course. When an interviewee with a shared viewpoint is on, it's time to "conduct a meaningful conversation," a "civilized discourse." But when someone they don't agree with is on, it's time to raze the village. All of which is all well enough. It's how the game is played. But when you preach your own virtues and lecture others about their deficiencies, you become a target. Maybe Bill O'Reilly and Stewart have something in common after all.
Shawn Macomber is a reporter for The American Spectator. He runs the website Return of the Primitive.
Berserk Stewart
By Shawn Macomber
Published 10/18/2004 12:06:39 AM
All the praise and attention the media have spent the past four years lavishing on The Daily Show has finally gone to Jon Stewart's head. The cover of Newsweek, on-air heart-to-hearts with Bill Moyers, a Number One New York Times bestseller, and old institutional hands like Tom Brokaw and Dan Rather groveling at his feet in every possible forum have all conspired to launch the comedian into a celebrity stratosphere where the air is so thin he forgot it was humor and impeccable comedic timing that opened the door to this particular kingdom, not his political acumen.
A sure sign of Stewart's atrophying sense of humor was his Friday afternoon appearance on CNN's Crossfire. Much lauded out in the hazy blips of the blogosphere, the appearance was nevertheless a boring, soulless, and, worst of all, completely humorless exercise in hubris. From the get-go it was apparent Stewart had no interest in telling jokes or even busting out any of his trademark understated cerebral mocking. He began by explaining he thought the show was "bad" and accusing the hosts of "partisan hackery," before launching into his main self-righteous dialogue between…well, mostly between himself and his sizable ego.
"I wanted to come here today and say stop, stop, stop, stop hurting America," Stewart admonished hosts Tucker Carlson and Paul Begala. "And come work for us, because we, as the people...need your help. Right now, you're helping the politicians and the corporations. And we're left out there to mow our lawns."
When did Stewart suddenly become the established voice of "we, the people"? It looks as if the "fake news anchor" has decided to combine Ralph Nader-esque populism and vague conspiracy theories about spectral capitalism-spawned bogeymen with sarcastic humor. A registered letter from Michael Moore's attorney cannot be far behind.
BUT, THEN, WHAT'S annoying about the newly minted Stewart the Crusader isn't that he's taking serious political stands. The best political comedians -- Mort Sahl, Bill Hicks, Dennis Miller -- have always been true believers with a core of seriousness and righteous indignation at the center of their humor. The problem with Stewart is that he demands respect but is unwilling to take responsibility for the things he says. When it is time for a Stewart lecture, there is no room for kidding around. But when his conclusions or statements are questioned, it's suddenly time to roll his eyes and morph back into the Teflon comedian. On Crossfire, for example, after pleading with a straight face for the hosts to "stop, stop, stop hurting America" and praising his own show for its level of "civilized discourse," Stewart summarily shot down Carlson's questions about the kid-glove handling of John Kerry on The Daily Show last month.
"If you want to compare your show to a comedy show, you're more than welcome to," Stewart said, adding snarkily that he didn't realize that, "news organizations look to Comedy Central for their cues on integrity." When Carlson protested that he thought Stewart was going to be funny, Stewart shot back acidly, "I'm not going to be your monkey." Blogs everywhere exploded with glee at this verbal coup de grace, but -- like it or not -- Carlson was making a valid point. When Stewart had John Kerry on the couch, he grilled him with questions such as, "How are you holding up? Is it hard not to take the attacks personally?" and "Have you ever flip-flopped?" Fine. No one expects Leno, Letterman, or any other late night entertainer suddenly to begin channeling Chris Matthews.
Stewart wants it both ways, however. He'll lightheartedly lob softballs at Democrats he openly endorses for office, but when a conservative voice comes on there are few smiles and fewer mercies. In a recent post-debate interview with Rudy Giuliani, Stewart barely let the mayor finish a single sentence. Over and over it was, "But I think what John Kerry was saying was…" reducing Stewart to a pinch hitter for Mary Beth Cahill. Similarly, Ralph Reed's views on the war in Iraq were dismissed out of hand during his visit to The Daily Show.
It's worth noting that we didn't hear Stewart protesting that he was just a comedian when a Kerry spokeswoman told the Washington Post, "Jon Stewart understands perfectly all the important issues facing this country right now." In fact, in the same article, Daily Show executive producer Ben Karlin seemed to be taking the comedy show's campaign coverage exceedingly seriously.
"All of us [on The Daily Show] are just blown away by the turn the campaign has taken," he said. "We cannot believe that this is what is being talked about at this juncture. It's so astounding to us. We are trying to work through our amazement and to conduct a meaningful conversation absent of incredulity."
ABOVE ALL, THIS IS one comedy show no one is allowed to make any jokes about: When Bill O'Reilly suggested earlier this year that Stewart's audience was made up of "stoned slackers," Comedy Central couldn't let such an accusation impugn the credibility of its "fake news show" and was soon feverishly issuing press releases pointing to studies that showed viewers of The Daily Show were more politically savvy and better educated than those who spend every night in the No Spin Zone. Likewise, when Carlson suggested that Stewart was "more fun" on The Daily Show, Stewart -- scion of "civilized discourse" -- said, "You know what's interesting, though? You're as big a dick on your show as you are on any show." Umm, touché?
In the midst of this even Paul Begala's patience, typically limitless with liberals, was tested. "Let me get this straight," Begala said. "If the indictment is -- and I have seen you say this -- that... Crossfire reduces everything to left, right, black, white…Well, it's because, see, we're a debate show…It's like saying The Weather Channel reduces everything to a storm front." Earlier in the show, Stewart had demanded Begala say something nice about George W. Bush, which he graciously did. The whole thing reeked of hypocrisy. When was the last time Stewart followed his own advice? It's a free country and any of us can say as much good or bad as we like, but don't be a partisan jerk all the time and then lecture others on the beauty of non-partisanship. It makes you sound like Pat Leahy.
It's all selective behavior, of course. When an interviewee with a shared viewpoint is on, it's time to "conduct a meaningful conversation," a "civilized discourse." But when someone they don't agree with is on, it's time to raze the village. All of which is all well enough. It's how the game is played. But when you preach your own virtues and lecture others about their deficiencies, you become a target. Maybe Bill O'Reilly and Stewart have something in common after all.
Shawn Macomber is a reporter for The American Spectator. He runs the website Return of the Primitive.
The Geek Factor
Comment: This article comes from the American Spectator website, which most would consider a far right wing outfit. However, in seeking the understand what the dynamics are that leads voters to support a fraud like unelected Pres. GW, I think this article may have some truth.
The Geek Factor
By Pamela Yates
Published 10/20/2004 12:04:22 AM
George W. Bush is a throwback to the strong male that, until 30 years ago, was the accepted norm. It is only because America's sexual culture has become genderless that Bush's normal masculine qualities are treated with suspicion. The election this November will determine whether the nation still wants to be led by an Alpha male.The only place to showcase one's gender these days are in the fields of entertainment, fashion, and pornography. Men and woman are confused, with men acting like women -- "girlie men" -- and women acting like men.Parity and equality between the sexes is a moral imperative, but denying Mother Nature is a formula for disaster. As a member of the boomer generation, I spend more than my share of time with children of the '60s. Their romanticizing of those days sets my blood to boiling. The advent of the Age of Aquarius set our country on a path of moral, ethical and sexual destructiveness. As a society we have decided it is of the utmost importance to embrace our feminine side. Consequently, we deny the most obvious and elemental differences between male and female. But after 9/11 this delusion is impossible to sustain. The feminists' social engineering project only complicates our ability to think clearly and retain our uniquely American approach to life.When it comes to making strategic decisions, soft men are useless. More preoccupied with emotion than reason, they seek to please everyone rather than solve the problem. And what do they do when they need to show they're real men? They don't show it; they talk about it. Can one imagine Winston Churchill or Dwight Eisenhower flaunting their war experiences in the Boer War or World War II in order to prove that they were real men?We are in a chaotic time of social and cultural confusion in which women want to be dominant and men are expected to be nurturing and empathetic. It has gotten so absurd that there is now even an action figure called "The Geek." In my day, a geek or nerd was someone who was weak and introverted. Now the geek is cool, the male desirable to dominant women.Strong woman, soft men, "Geekman" sex symbols -- it is a dizzying time in this new millennium. George W. Bush's "bring it on," in your face, real guy approach vs. the more feminine model of international consensus-building and "sensitivity" in John Kerry raises the question: Could the latter instill the leadership and inspiration necessary to lead our troops into battle? And why would a "sensitive" coalition builder like John Kerry sprint outside to make cowardly, defamatory statements to the press after the courageous and hopeful speech that the new Iraqi Prime Minister Allawi recently made before the U.S. Congress? The laws of Alpha behavior are the backbone not only in the world of animals but also of men. Alpha types come in all forms, good and evil, male and female. They are born, not created. They have common traits such as focus, egocentricity, high energy, and strong wills. Great success, in high stake games, is usually the result of Alpha types. Leaders, not followers, shape this world. As in nature, a predator -- the Alpha type -- instinctively smells out weakness and vulnerability. No nation that expects to be respected and feared can be led by anyone other than a true Alpha-type personality. To quote Arnold Schwarzenegger, "Girlie men make bad choices." But the self-anointed, wealthy, liberal intelligentsia in this country have convinced themselves and a percentage of the American population that excessive hand-wringing, debating, and agonizing over a situation makes one somehow more caring, intelligent, and insightful. Will squishy consensus-building capture our country's imagination and confidence?I, for one, will not find it refreshing or comforting to have a president fecklessly taking the pulse of the Third World and our enemies in the United Nations while a "Thorny Rose" of a First Lady tells reporters to "Shove it." Perhaps the wrong Kerry ran for the Presidency.Pamela Yates is a writer in Wyoming, New York. Her book, The Gift of More, will be published by FaithWalk Publishing next spring.
The Geek Factor
By Pamela Yates
Published 10/20/2004 12:04:22 AM
George W. Bush is a throwback to the strong male that, until 30 years ago, was the accepted norm. It is only because America's sexual culture has become genderless that Bush's normal masculine qualities are treated with suspicion. The election this November will determine whether the nation still wants to be led by an Alpha male.The only place to showcase one's gender these days are in the fields of entertainment, fashion, and pornography. Men and woman are confused, with men acting like women -- "girlie men" -- and women acting like men.Parity and equality between the sexes is a moral imperative, but denying Mother Nature is a formula for disaster. As a member of the boomer generation, I spend more than my share of time with children of the '60s. Their romanticizing of those days sets my blood to boiling. The advent of the Age of Aquarius set our country on a path of moral, ethical and sexual destructiveness. As a society we have decided it is of the utmost importance to embrace our feminine side. Consequently, we deny the most obvious and elemental differences between male and female. But after 9/11 this delusion is impossible to sustain. The feminists' social engineering project only complicates our ability to think clearly and retain our uniquely American approach to life.When it comes to making strategic decisions, soft men are useless. More preoccupied with emotion than reason, they seek to please everyone rather than solve the problem. And what do they do when they need to show they're real men? They don't show it; they talk about it. Can one imagine Winston Churchill or Dwight Eisenhower flaunting their war experiences in the Boer War or World War II in order to prove that they were real men?We are in a chaotic time of social and cultural confusion in which women want to be dominant and men are expected to be nurturing and empathetic. It has gotten so absurd that there is now even an action figure called "The Geek." In my day, a geek or nerd was someone who was weak and introverted. Now the geek is cool, the male desirable to dominant women.Strong woman, soft men, "Geekman" sex symbols -- it is a dizzying time in this new millennium. George W. Bush's "bring it on," in your face, real guy approach vs. the more feminine model of international consensus-building and "sensitivity" in John Kerry raises the question: Could the latter instill the leadership and inspiration necessary to lead our troops into battle? And why would a "sensitive" coalition builder like John Kerry sprint outside to make cowardly, defamatory statements to the press after the courageous and hopeful speech that the new Iraqi Prime Minister Allawi recently made before the U.S. Congress? The laws of Alpha behavior are the backbone not only in the world of animals but also of men. Alpha types come in all forms, good and evil, male and female. They are born, not created. They have common traits such as focus, egocentricity, high energy, and strong wills. Great success, in high stake games, is usually the result of Alpha types. Leaders, not followers, shape this world. As in nature, a predator -- the Alpha type -- instinctively smells out weakness and vulnerability. No nation that expects to be respected and feared can be led by anyone other than a true Alpha-type personality. To quote Arnold Schwarzenegger, "Girlie men make bad choices." But the self-anointed, wealthy, liberal intelligentsia in this country have convinced themselves and a percentage of the American population that excessive hand-wringing, debating, and agonizing over a situation makes one somehow more caring, intelligent, and insightful. Will squishy consensus-building capture our country's imagination and confidence?I, for one, will not find it refreshing or comforting to have a president fecklessly taking the pulse of the Third World and our enemies in the United Nations while a "Thorny Rose" of a First Lady tells reporters to "Shove it." Perhaps the wrong Kerry ran for the Presidency.Pamela Yates is a writer in Wyoming, New York. Her book, The Gift of More, will be published by FaithWalk Publishing next spring.
Moonies knee-deep in faith-based funds
Moonies knee-deep in faith-based funds Pushing celibacy, marriage counseling under Bush plan
Don Lattin, Chronicle Religion Writer
Sunday, October 3, 2004 now part of stylesheet -->
President Bush has some new troops in his crusade to promote "healthy marriage" and teen celibacy with federal funds -- followers of the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, the controversial Korean evangelist and self-proclaimed new world messiah.
At least four longtime operatives of Moon's Unification Church are on the federal payroll or getting government grants in the administration's Healthy Marriage Initiative and other "faith-based" programs.
Two of those Moon associates were in Oakland last week leading dozens of local pastors and social workers enrolled in a "Certified Marriage Education Training Seminar" at the Holiday Inn next to the Coliseum.
In some ways, Moon is an unlikely ally for President Bush's crusade to promote traditional family values.
The 85-year-old Korean is perhaps best known for presiding over mass marriage ceremonies for devotees whose unions are arranged by Moon or other church leaders. After marriage, Unification Church couples are given detailed instructions for their honeymoon, right down to the sexual positions they are supposed to assume during their first three conjugal couplings.
According to Unification Church teachings, the children born from these marriages are "blessed children,'' who, unlike the rest of humanity, are born without original sin.
At the Oakland seminar, Josephine Hauer, a graduate of the Rev. Moon's Unification Theological Seminary in New York and a newly hired "marriage specialist" with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, worked the crowd of ministers and church workers packed into a stuffy room.
"Family is a good thing," said Hauer, holding a cordless microphone in one hand and her PowerPoint remote in the other. "I want to make this a marriage culture again -- a healthy marriage culture.''
As Hauer spoke, the Rev. Bento Leal, another graduate of the seminary and the associate minister at the Bay Area Family Church, a Unification Church congregation in San Leandro, checked a list of names at the door.
Before her new federal job, Hauer was the director of marriage education at the University of Bridgeport in Bridgeport, Conn. That school was taken over in 1992 by the Professors World Peace Academy, a Moon-affiliated group, and its current president, Neil Salonen, is a former president of the Unification Church in America.
After less than three days, attendees of the Sept. 23-25 seminar in Oakland were awarded a "Certified Marriage Education Professional Document of Completion," issued by Moon's University of Bridgeport.
"Sixteen hours of training won't make you the best marriage educator," Hauer told her students. "But it takes all kinds of work to save marriage -- people to run the sound system, write the press releases.''
During a seminar break, Hauer declined to answer any questions about her ties to the Unification Church.
"I'm a professional. I don't talk about my religion or my politics," she said. "My religion is not an issue.''
Bush administration officials agreed.
"We don't ask people's religious affiliation before we hire them,'' said Wade Horn, assistant secretary for children and families at the Department of Health and Human Services.
"But if someone uses federal funds to proselytize, that would be a violation,'' Horn said. "It doesn't matter whether they are Baptist, Presbyterian, Jewish, or even members of the Unification Church."
Last week's crash course on marriage education was sponsored by the California State Healthy Marriage Initiative, an organization founded two years ago by the Rev. Dion Evans, pastor of Chosen Vessels Christian Church in Oakland.
Last month, Evans and his partners won a $366,179 grant from the Bush administration's Compassion Capital Fund -- part of the latest $45 million in social service contracts given to churches and community groups from the program this year.
"For four years, I did this work with no government funds,'' said Evans, adding that he has not yet received his first check from the Compassion Capital Fund. Evans said he partnered with the University of Bridgeport because "acknowledgement from a university gives them (seminar participants) support.''
"We had to settle for the University of Bridgeport,'' he said. "This is the last time we will be using them."
Critics say the Oakland program shows how difficult it is to give money to religious organizations while maintaining separation of church and state.
"Moon has been a big backer of the faith-based initiative,'' said the Rev. Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for the Separation of Church and State. "But it's beyond belief that you can have the University of Bridgeport issuing marriage education certificates and claim that is secular.''
Lynn said the Oakland program also shows how "there is virtually no monitoring of where this money is going.''
"Money goes out and nobody knows how it's used and nobody knows what it's for,'' he said.
Following the money from the federal government to the streets of Oakland is not easy.
The organization that actually received the federal grant is the Institute for Contemporary Studies, a conservative think tank in Oakland and one of Evans' key partners in the California Healthy Marriage Initiative. That partnership comes through another recently founded organization, the Bay Area Inner City Leadership Alliance.
It was founded by the Rev. Walter L. Humphrey, the pastor of Moriah Christian Fellowship Baptist Church in Oakland, and Robert Hawkins Jr., president of the Institute for Contemporary Studies. Board members include Evans and Leal, the Unification Church minister. Leal said the Institute for Contemporary Studies, not the Unification Church, applied for the federal funding for the marriage education training.
"Unificationism is my own faith," Leal said. "This just gives me a chance to work with clergy who are also interested in this issue.''
Hawkins, the director of the Institute for Contemporary Studies, said Moon's teachings were not part of the marriage education program.
"Bento (Leal) has never proselytized, and I didn't know Josie (Hauer) was a Moonie,'' he said. "I just looked at her curriculum and thought it was good. ''
Hawkins said the project is designed to give pastors of smaller inner city churches new skills for "marriage and family strengthening." He added, "It's an experiment. You have to start somewhere.''
Moon has also partnered with the Bush administration in support of the Korean evangelist's strong teachings against premarital sex.
Free Teens USA, an after-school program in New Jersey promoting abstinence until marriage, has been given $475,000 by the federal Health Resources and Services Administration, another part of the Department of Health and Human Services. Free Teens is led by Richard Panzer, another alumnus of Unification Theological Seminary. Panzer was also a leader in the American Constitution Committee, one of many political organizations affiliated with Moon.
Panzer insists that his program is "devoid of any religious content.''
"I am a Unificationist, but I am also a professional,'' he said. "The purpose of Free Teens is not to bring young people to any one religious faith. ''
Another longtime political operative in Moon front groups, David Caprara, now directs the Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives for the federal government's Corporation for National and Community Service. That agency runs, among other things, AmeriCorps Vista, which works with community organizations in low-income neighborhoods, and has emerged as a key player in Bush's faith-based initiative, handing out $61 million to faith-based organizations in fiscal year 2003.
Caprara is the former president of the American Family Coalition, a "grassroots leadership alliance" funded by the Washington Times Foundation and founded by Moon in 1984. Caprara declined to comment on his Unification Church ties, referring questions to his press secretary, Sandy Scott.
"We don't inquire about employee's personal religious beliefs,'' Scott said. "What inspires David's work is a dedication to fighting poverty.''
During the 1970s, Moon's Unification Church was widely accused of deceptively recruiting and "brainwashing" idealistic converts on street corners and college campuses across the nation.
In 1982, Moon made headlines around the world when he presided over a mass marriage ceremony involving 2,075 couples in New York's Madison Square Garden.
Late that decade, Moon spent a year in federal prison after being convicted of income tax evasion.
For the past three decades, his controversial sect has struggled to make the leap from "cult" to "religion," to win credibility among political and religious leaders in the United States and around the world.
Through such publications as the Washington Times, a church-financed, conservative daily newspaper in the nation's capital, and through alliances with priests and pastors across the theological spectrum, Moon and company have spent a fortune courting the opinion-makers of church and state.
Moon showed an early interest in the Bush administration's faith-based initiative. In the spring of 2001, the American Leadership Conference, a project of the Caprara's American Family Coalition and Washington Times Foundation, sponsored a "Faith-Based Initiative Summit," a conference that was transmitted via satellite to 40 gatherings in churches and hotel meeting rooms across the country.
That summit came just months after one of President Bush's strongest supporters in the Christian Right, TV evangelist Pat Robertson, warned that religious cults would soon be eligible for federal funds.
In the Feb. 20, 2001, broadcast of his "700 Club" television show, Robertson said the president's faith-based initiative "could be a real Pandora's box."
"What seems to be such a great initiative can rise up to bite the organizations as well as the federal government," said Robertson, who expressed particular concern about federal money going to the Church of Scientology, the Hare Krishas and "the Moonies."
Robertson and Bush have since come to a meeting of minds on the president's faith-based initiative.
Another of the 145 recipients in the most recent outlay of the Compassion Capital Fund was Robertson's charity, Operation Blessing International, which got $500,000 from the Department of Health and Human Services.
E-mail Don Lattin at dlattin@sfchronicle.com.
Don Lattin, Chronicle Religion Writer
Sunday, October 3, 2004 now part of stylesheet -->
President Bush has some new troops in his crusade to promote "healthy marriage" and teen celibacy with federal funds -- followers of the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, the controversial Korean evangelist and self-proclaimed new world messiah.
At least four longtime operatives of Moon's Unification Church are on the federal payroll or getting government grants in the administration's Healthy Marriage Initiative and other "faith-based" programs.
Two of those Moon associates were in Oakland last week leading dozens of local pastors and social workers enrolled in a "Certified Marriage Education Training Seminar" at the Holiday Inn next to the Coliseum.
In some ways, Moon is an unlikely ally for President Bush's crusade to promote traditional family values.
The 85-year-old Korean is perhaps best known for presiding over mass marriage ceremonies for devotees whose unions are arranged by Moon or other church leaders. After marriage, Unification Church couples are given detailed instructions for their honeymoon, right down to the sexual positions they are supposed to assume during their first three conjugal couplings.
According to Unification Church teachings, the children born from these marriages are "blessed children,'' who, unlike the rest of humanity, are born without original sin.
At the Oakland seminar, Josephine Hauer, a graduate of the Rev. Moon's Unification Theological Seminary in New York and a newly hired "marriage specialist" with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, worked the crowd of ministers and church workers packed into a stuffy room.
"Family is a good thing," said Hauer, holding a cordless microphone in one hand and her PowerPoint remote in the other. "I want to make this a marriage culture again -- a healthy marriage culture.''
As Hauer spoke, the Rev. Bento Leal, another graduate of the seminary and the associate minister at the Bay Area Family Church, a Unification Church congregation in San Leandro, checked a list of names at the door.
Before her new federal job, Hauer was the director of marriage education at the University of Bridgeport in Bridgeport, Conn. That school was taken over in 1992 by the Professors World Peace Academy, a Moon-affiliated group, and its current president, Neil Salonen, is a former president of the Unification Church in America.
After less than three days, attendees of the Sept. 23-25 seminar in Oakland were awarded a "Certified Marriage Education Professional Document of Completion," issued by Moon's University of Bridgeport.
"Sixteen hours of training won't make you the best marriage educator," Hauer told her students. "But it takes all kinds of work to save marriage -- people to run the sound system, write the press releases.''
During a seminar break, Hauer declined to answer any questions about her ties to the Unification Church.
"I'm a professional. I don't talk about my religion or my politics," she said. "My religion is not an issue.''
Bush administration officials agreed.
"We don't ask people's religious affiliation before we hire them,'' said Wade Horn, assistant secretary for children and families at the Department of Health and Human Services.
"But if someone uses federal funds to proselytize, that would be a violation,'' Horn said. "It doesn't matter whether they are Baptist, Presbyterian, Jewish, or even members of the Unification Church."
Last week's crash course on marriage education was sponsored by the California State Healthy Marriage Initiative, an organization founded two years ago by the Rev. Dion Evans, pastor of Chosen Vessels Christian Church in Oakland.
Last month, Evans and his partners won a $366,179 grant from the Bush administration's Compassion Capital Fund -- part of the latest $45 million in social service contracts given to churches and community groups from the program this year.
"For four years, I did this work with no government funds,'' said Evans, adding that he has not yet received his first check from the Compassion Capital Fund. Evans said he partnered with the University of Bridgeport because "acknowledgement from a university gives them (seminar participants) support.''
"We had to settle for the University of Bridgeport,'' he said. "This is the last time we will be using them."
Critics say the Oakland program shows how difficult it is to give money to religious organizations while maintaining separation of church and state.
"Moon has been a big backer of the faith-based initiative,'' said the Rev. Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for the Separation of Church and State. "But it's beyond belief that you can have the University of Bridgeport issuing marriage education certificates and claim that is secular.''
Lynn said the Oakland program also shows how "there is virtually no monitoring of where this money is going.''
"Money goes out and nobody knows how it's used and nobody knows what it's for,'' he said.
Following the money from the federal government to the streets of Oakland is not easy.
The organization that actually received the federal grant is the Institute for Contemporary Studies, a conservative think tank in Oakland and one of Evans' key partners in the California Healthy Marriage Initiative. That partnership comes through another recently founded organization, the Bay Area Inner City Leadership Alliance.
It was founded by the Rev. Walter L. Humphrey, the pastor of Moriah Christian Fellowship Baptist Church in Oakland, and Robert Hawkins Jr., president of the Institute for Contemporary Studies. Board members include Evans and Leal, the Unification Church minister. Leal said the Institute for Contemporary Studies, not the Unification Church, applied for the federal funding for the marriage education training.
"Unificationism is my own faith," Leal said. "This just gives me a chance to work with clergy who are also interested in this issue.''
Hawkins, the director of the Institute for Contemporary Studies, said Moon's teachings were not part of the marriage education program.
"Bento (Leal) has never proselytized, and I didn't know Josie (Hauer) was a Moonie,'' he said. "I just looked at her curriculum and thought it was good. ''
Hawkins said the project is designed to give pastors of smaller inner city churches new skills for "marriage and family strengthening." He added, "It's an experiment. You have to start somewhere.''
Moon has also partnered with the Bush administration in support of the Korean evangelist's strong teachings against premarital sex.
Free Teens USA, an after-school program in New Jersey promoting abstinence until marriage, has been given $475,000 by the federal Health Resources and Services Administration, another part of the Department of Health and Human Services. Free Teens is led by Richard Panzer, another alumnus of Unification Theological Seminary. Panzer was also a leader in the American Constitution Committee, one of many political organizations affiliated with Moon.
Panzer insists that his program is "devoid of any religious content.''
"I am a Unificationist, but I am also a professional,'' he said. "The purpose of Free Teens is not to bring young people to any one religious faith. ''
Another longtime political operative in Moon front groups, David Caprara, now directs the Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives for the federal government's Corporation for National and Community Service. That agency runs, among other things, AmeriCorps Vista, which works with community organizations in low-income neighborhoods, and has emerged as a key player in Bush's faith-based initiative, handing out $61 million to faith-based organizations in fiscal year 2003.
Caprara is the former president of the American Family Coalition, a "grassroots leadership alliance" funded by the Washington Times Foundation and founded by Moon in 1984. Caprara declined to comment on his Unification Church ties, referring questions to his press secretary, Sandy Scott.
"We don't inquire about employee's personal religious beliefs,'' Scott said. "What inspires David's work is a dedication to fighting poverty.''
During the 1970s, Moon's Unification Church was widely accused of deceptively recruiting and "brainwashing" idealistic converts on street corners and college campuses across the nation.
In 1982, Moon made headlines around the world when he presided over a mass marriage ceremony involving 2,075 couples in New York's Madison Square Garden.
Late that decade, Moon spent a year in federal prison after being convicted of income tax evasion.
For the past three decades, his controversial sect has struggled to make the leap from "cult" to "religion," to win credibility among political and religious leaders in the United States and around the world.
Through such publications as the Washington Times, a church-financed, conservative daily newspaper in the nation's capital, and through alliances with priests and pastors across the theological spectrum, Moon and company have spent a fortune courting the opinion-makers of church and state.
Moon showed an early interest in the Bush administration's faith-based initiative. In the spring of 2001, the American Leadership Conference, a project of the Caprara's American Family Coalition and Washington Times Foundation, sponsored a "Faith-Based Initiative Summit," a conference that was transmitted via satellite to 40 gatherings in churches and hotel meeting rooms across the country.
That summit came just months after one of President Bush's strongest supporters in the Christian Right, TV evangelist Pat Robertson, warned that religious cults would soon be eligible for federal funds.
In the Feb. 20, 2001, broadcast of his "700 Club" television show, Robertson said the president's faith-based initiative "could be a real Pandora's box."
"What seems to be such a great initiative can rise up to bite the organizations as well as the federal government," said Robertson, who expressed particular concern about federal money going to the Church of Scientology, the Hare Krishas and "the Moonies."
Robertson and Bush have since come to a meeting of minds on the president's faith-based initiative.
Another of the 145 recipients in the most recent outlay of the Compassion Capital Fund was Robertson's charity, Operation Blessing International, which got $500,000 from the Department of Health and Human Services.
E-mail Don Lattin at dlattin@sfchronicle.com.
Project for the Old American Century
In "Fascism Anyone?," Dr. Lawrence Britt, a political scientist, identifies 14 characteristics common to fascist regimes. His comparisons of Hitler, Mussolini, Franco, Suharto, and Pinochet yielded this list of 14 "identifying characteristics of fascism."
1.) Powerful and Continuing NationalismFascist regimes tend to make constant use of patriotic mottos, slogans, symbols, songs, and other paraphernalia. Flags are seen everywhere, as are flag symbols on clothing and in public displays.
and let's not forget the failed "Bring 'em on!"
2.) Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights Because of fear of enemies and the need for security, the people in fascist regimes are persuaded that human rights can be ignored in certain cases because of "need." The people tend to look the other way or even approve of torture, summary executions, assassinations, long incarcerations of prisoners, etc.
House bill looks to legalize torture by foreign operatives
Ashcroft refuses to give Congress torture memo
July 1, 2003: U.S. Suspends Military Aid to Nearly 50 Countries: The United States on Tuesday suspended military assistance to nearly 50 countries, because they have supported the International Criminal Court and failed to exempt Americans from possible prosecution.
Outsourcing Torture: Contractors act as interrogators: Defense Department turned to private sources to question prisoners for intelligence gathering.
US has at least 9000 prisoners in secret detention
al-Qaida Detainees 'Disappeared' : At least 11 al-Qaida suspects have "disappeared" in U.S. custody, and some may have been tortured, Human Rights Watch said in a report issued Monday.
President Bush today distanced himself from his administration’s quiet effort to push through a law that would make it easier to send captured terror suspects to countries where torture is used.
Guantanamo Eyes Possible Execution Chamber
Bush Civil Rights report released: "...the administration has failed to exhibit leadership or define a clear focus, relegating civil rights to a low priority."
3.) Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause The people are rallied into a unifying patriotic frenzy over the need to eliminate a perceived common threat or foe: racial, ethnic or religious minorities; liberals; communists; socialists, terrorists, etc.
Cheney warns that if Kerry is elected, the USA will suffer a "devastating attack"
A scared populace is a compliant populace Terrorists are likely planning U.S. attacks, a U.S. Homeland Security official said Friday.
Slander: Liberal Lies About the American Right
How U.S. Attorney-General, a Christian Evangelist With Anti-Islamic Views On Record, Is Waging War On American Muslims
Dr. James J. Zogby: A co-ordinated and bigoted assault The anti-Arab campaign being waged today in the U.S. is an organised multi-pronged effort targeting a variety of Arab leaders, institutions and Islam.
Congressman: Muslims 'enemy amongst us'
4.) Supremacy of the MilitaryEven when there are widespread domestic problems, the military is given a disproportionate amount of government funding, and the domestic agenda is neglected. Soldiers and military service are glamorized.
If you haven't seen the Oreo flash animation yet, see it here
5.) Rampant SexismThe governments of fascist nations tend to be almost exclusively male-dominated. Under fascist regimes, traditional gender roles are made more rigid. Opposition to abortion is high, as is homophobia and anti-gay legislation and national policy.
Bush refuses to sign U.N proposal on women's "sexual" rights
Partial Birth Abortion Act of 2003 failed to provide any exception if a woman's health is at stake.
Justice Dept. Demands Abortion Records
W. David Hager chairman of the FDA's Reproductive Health Drugs Advisory Committee does not prescribe contraceptives for single women, does not do abortions, will not prescribe RU-486 and will not insert IUDs. Hager believes that headaches, PMS and eating disorders can be cured by reading Scripture.
Bush Administration to Extend Health Coverage to Fetuses but Not to Pregnant Women
The State Department has awarded an explicitly anti-feminist U.S. group part of a US$10 million grant to train Iraqi women in political participation and democracy.
Bush calls for constitutional ban on same-sex marriages
6.) Controlled Mass MediaSometimes the media is directly controlled by the government, but in other cases, the media is indirectly controlled by government regulation, or sympathetic media spokespeople and executives. Censorship, especially in war time, is very common.
In bed with the republicans and banning antiwar songs: Clear channel
The White House recently called the president of NBC News, to discourage that network from broadcasting interviews with author of book about the Bush family
Anti-Kerry film to air in prime-time Nation's largest TV chain orders all 62 stations to show movie without commercials right before election
US seizes webservers from independent media sites
Fibbing It Up at Fox
If it's allowed to stand, an FCC ruling will feed media merger mania
Articles published by American outlets suppressed in their own country
Reporters in chains: Under Homeland Security orders, journalists from England, Sweden, Holland and other friendly countries are being detained at U.S. airports, strip-searched and deported.
Bush releases another fake news video See an excerpt from the Education Department fake news propaganda video here (realplayer)
7.) Obsession with National SecurityFear is used as a motivational tool by the government over the masses.
Bush Aides ADMIT 'stoking fear' for political gain
GOP convention in a nutshell (quicktime)
8.) Religion and Government are IntertwinedGovernments in fascist nations tend to use the most common religion in the nation as a tool to manipulate public opinion. Religious rhetoric and terminology is common from government leaders, even when the major tenets of the religion are diametrically opposed to the government's policies or actions.
Falwell says evangelical Christians now in control of Republican Party
Religious networks broadcasting Bush's White House prayer event
Thou shalt be like Bush: What makes this recently established, right-wing Christian college unique are the increasingly close - critics say alarmingly close - links it has with the Bush administration and the Republican establishment.
Presidential Prayer Team
US is 'battling Satan' says general
US soldiers in Iraq asked to pray for Bush
Park Service Continues to Push Creationist Theory at Grand Canyon and other nat'l parks
9.) Corporate Power is ProtectedThe industrial and business aristocracy of a fascist nation often are the ones who put the government leaders into power, creating a mutually beneficial business/government relationship and power elite.
Halliburton, Bechtel, and the Carlyle group: Why were lied into war
Bush's talent for cronyism: foxes guarding the henhouse
Bush Administration Exempts Oil Industry From Clean Water Act
Controversial drilling method may be protected Energy bill compromise would exempt 'hydraulic fracturing'
10.) Labor Power is SuppressedBecause the organizing power of labor is the only real threat to a fascist government, labor unions are either eliminated entirely, or are severely suppressed.
Organized labor locks horns with White House Union leaders are working to displace GOP candidates
President Bush Attacks Organized Labor Bush attacked organized labor Saturday, issuing orders effectively reducing how much money unions can spend for political activities and opening up government contracts to non-union bidding.
March 2001: President Bush signed his name to four executive orders on organized labor last month, including one that cuts the money unions will have for political campaign spending.
Congress and the Department of Labor are trying to change the rules on overtime pay, eliminating the 40 hour work week, taking eligibility for overtime pay away from millions of workers, and replacing time and a half pay with comp days.
11.) Disdain for Intellectuals and the ArtsFascist nations tend to promote and tolerate open hostility to higher education, and academia. It is not uncommon for professors and other academics to be censored or even arrested. Free expression in the arts is openly attacked, and governments often refuse to fund the arts.
Bush's new economic plan cuts funding for arts, education
NEA vows to undo President Bush's education programs
Artists from all over the world are being refused entry to the US on security grounds.
In a highly unusual use of the USA Patriot Act, which its creators say was designed to prevent terrorist attacks in the United States, The New York Times reports that three artists have been served subpoenas to appear before a federal grand jury June 15
12.) Obsession with Crime and PunishmentUnder fascist regimes, the police are given almost limitless power to enforce laws. The people are often willing to overlook police abuses and even forego civil liberties in the name of patriotism. There is often a national police force with virtually unlimited power in fascist nations
U.S. Patriot Act Summary of fascist parts
EFF Analysis of "Patriot II"
13.) Rampant Cronyism and CorruptionFascist regimes almost always are governed by groups of friends and associates who appoint each other to government positions and use governmental power and authority to protect their friends from accountability. It is not uncommon in fascist regimes for national resources and even treasures to be appropriated or even outright stolen by government leaders.
Bush Cronyism: Foxes Guarding the henhouse
Iran-Contra Felons Get Good Jobs from Bush
Big Iraq Reconstruction Contracts Went To Big Donors
The companies making the most off the new Medicare contracts also donated the most to the GOP
14. Fraudulent ElectionsSometimes elections in fascist nations are a complete sham. Other times elections are manipulated by smear campaigns against or even assassination of opposition candidates, use of legislation to control voting numbers or political district boundaries, and manipulation of the media. Fascist nations also typically use their judiciaries to manipulate or control elections.
RNC funds voter suppression efforts in at least 5 states
Republican judge upholds RNC efforts to supress Democratic party voters
Bush campaign chairman quits over illegal phone jamming
the 2000 election
How To Rig An Election In The United States
Scoop: Diebold Memos Disclose Florida 2000 E-Voting Fraud
Election officials all over the country are erecting illegal barriers to keep young voters from casting ballots. From New Hampshire to California, officials have designed complex questionnaires that prevent college students from registering, hired high-powered attorneys to keep them off the rolls, shut down polling places on campuses and even threatened to arrest and imprison young voters
This picture is what stopped the ballot recounts in Florida shortly after it seemed that legitimate President Gore had a lead. The "citizens" started what was later called "the preppy riot". Screaming, yelling, pounding on the walls, these "outraged citizens" intimidated the polling officials to halt the court mandated recount. A closer look reveals who they really were. They were bussed and flown in at Republican lawmakers expense. Some even flew in on Tom Delay's private plane.
more election fraud information
If Mussolini defines fascism as "the merger of corporate and government power" what does that make the Republican party?
Related Articles:
"Now and Then"- Part 1 A 3 part series by W David Jenkins III on the similarities between America now and Germany post Reichstag fire
"Now and Then"- Part II: The Propaganda Machine
Now and Then- Part IIIHitler's Playbook: Bush and the Abuse of Power
The Road to FascismMake that roads, and three great libertarians explained them, says Roderick T. Long.
Is America Becoming Fascist?
Eternal Fascism:Fourteen Ways of Looking at a Blackshirt
The Danger of American Fascism:With a fascist the problem is never how best to present the truth to the public but how best to use the news to deceive the public into giving the fascist and his group more money or more power.
Sheila Samples: Freedom To Fascism -- A Bumpy Ride: Republicans don't seem to realize that they are no longer individual members of a coherent "party," but are merely part of a mean-spirited and dangerous movement that is threatening to sweep away democracy as we know it.
Germany In 1933: The Easy Slide Into Fascism
The Brownshirting of America: Bush’s supporters demand lock-step consensus that Bush is right. They regard truthful reports that Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction and was not involved in the September 11 attack on the US – truths now firmly established by the Bush administration’s own reports – as treasonous America-bashing.
Three women kicked out of Bush rally for wearing t-shirts that say "Protect Our Civil Liberties."
1.) Powerful and Continuing NationalismFascist regimes tend to make constant use of patriotic mottos, slogans, symbols, songs, and other paraphernalia. Flags are seen everywhere, as are flag symbols on clothing and in public displays.
and let's not forget the failed "Bring 'em on!"
2.) Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights Because of fear of enemies and the need for security, the people in fascist regimes are persuaded that human rights can be ignored in certain cases because of "need." The people tend to look the other way or even approve of torture, summary executions, assassinations, long incarcerations of prisoners, etc.
House bill looks to legalize torture by foreign operatives
Ashcroft refuses to give Congress torture memo
July 1, 2003: U.S. Suspends Military Aid to Nearly 50 Countries: The United States on Tuesday suspended military assistance to nearly 50 countries, because they have supported the International Criminal Court and failed to exempt Americans from possible prosecution.
Outsourcing Torture: Contractors act as interrogators: Defense Department turned to private sources to question prisoners for intelligence gathering.
US has at least 9000 prisoners in secret detention
al-Qaida Detainees 'Disappeared' : At least 11 al-Qaida suspects have "disappeared" in U.S. custody, and some may have been tortured, Human Rights Watch said in a report issued Monday.
President Bush today distanced himself from his administration’s quiet effort to push through a law that would make it easier to send captured terror suspects to countries where torture is used.
Guantanamo Eyes Possible Execution Chamber
Bush Civil Rights report released: "...the administration has failed to exhibit leadership or define a clear focus, relegating civil rights to a low priority."
3.) Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause The people are rallied into a unifying patriotic frenzy over the need to eliminate a perceived common threat or foe: racial, ethnic or religious minorities; liberals; communists; socialists, terrorists, etc.
Cheney warns that if Kerry is elected, the USA will suffer a "devastating attack"
A scared populace is a compliant populace Terrorists are likely planning U.S. attacks, a U.S. Homeland Security official said Friday.
Slander: Liberal Lies About the American Right
How U.S. Attorney-General, a Christian Evangelist With Anti-Islamic Views On Record, Is Waging War On American Muslims
Dr. James J. Zogby: A co-ordinated and bigoted assault The anti-Arab campaign being waged today in the U.S. is an organised multi-pronged effort targeting a variety of Arab leaders, institutions and Islam.
Congressman: Muslims 'enemy amongst us'
4.) Supremacy of the MilitaryEven when there are widespread domestic problems, the military is given a disproportionate amount of government funding, and the domestic agenda is neglected. Soldiers and military service are glamorized.
If you haven't seen the Oreo flash animation yet, see it here
5.) Rampant SexismThe governments of fascist nations tend to be almost exclusively male-dominated. Under fascist regimes, traditional gender roles are made more rigid. Opposition to abortion is high, as is homophobia and anti-gay legislation and national policy.
Bush refuses to sign U.N proposal on women's "sexual" rights
Partial Birth Abortion Act of 2003 failed to provide any exception if a woman's health is at stake.
Justice Dept. Demands Abortion Records
W. David Hager chairman of the FDA's Reproductive Health Drugs Advisory Committee does not prescribe contraceptives for single women, does not do abortions, will not prescribe RU-486 and will not insert IUDs. Hager believes that headaches, PMS and eating disorders can be cured by reading Scripture.
Bush Administration to Extend Health Coverage to Fetuses but Not to Pregnant Women
The State Department has awarded an explicitly anti-feminist U.S. group part of a US$10 million grant to train Iraqi women in political participation and democracy.
Bush calls for constitutional ban on same-sex marriages
6.) Controlled Mass MediaSometimes the media is directly controlled by the government, but in other cases, the media is indirectly controlled by government regulation, or sympathetic media spokespeople and executives. Censorship, especially in war time, is very common.
In bed with the republicans and banning antiwar songs: Clear channel
The White House recently called the president of NBC News, to discourage that network from broadcasting interviews with author of book about the Bush family
Anti-Kerry film to air in prime-time Nation's largest TV chain orders all 62 stations to show movie without commercials right before election
US seizes webservers from independent media sites
Fibbing It Up at Fox
If it's allowed to stand, an FCC ruling will feed media merger mania
Articles published by American outlets suppressed in their own country
Reporters in chains: Under Homeland Security orders, journalists from England, Sweden, Holland and other friendly countries are being detained at U.S. airports, strip-searched and deported.
Bush releases another fake news video See an excerpt from the Education Department fake news propaganda video here (realplayer)
7.) Obsession with National SecurityFear is used as a motivational tool by the government over the masses.
Bush Aides ADMIT 'stoking fear' for political gain
GOP convention in a nutshell (quicktime)
8.) Religion and Government are IntertwinedGovernments in fascist nations tend to use the most common religion in the nation as a tool to manipulate public opinion. Religious rhetoric and terminology is common from government leaders, even when the major tenets of the religion are diametrically opposed to the government's policies or actions.
Falwell says evangelical Christians now in control of Republican Party
Religious networks broadcasting Bush's White House prayer event
Thou shalt be like Bush: What makes this recently established, right-wing Christian college unique are the increasingly close - critics say alarmingly close - links it has with the Bush administration and the Republican establishment.
Presidential Prayer Team
US is 'battling Satan' says general
US soldiers in Iraq asked to pray for Bush
Park Service Continues to Push Creationist Theory at Grand Canyon and other nat'l parks
9.) Corporate Power is ProtectedThe industrial and business aristocracy of a fascist nation often are the ones who put the government leaders into power, creating a mutually beneficial business/government relationship and power elite.
Halliburton, Bechtel, and the Carlyle group: Why were lied into war
Bush's talent for cronyism: foxes guarding the henhouse
Bush Administration Exempts Oil Industry From Clean Water Act
Controversial drilling method may be protected Energy bill compromise would exempt 'hydraulic fracturing'
10.) Labor Power is SuppressedBecause the organizing power of labor is the only real threat to a fascist government, labor unions are either eliminated entirely, or are severely suppressed.
Organized labor locks horns with White House Union leaders are working to displace GOP candidates
President Bush Attacks Organized Labor Bush attacked organized labor Saturday, issuing orders effectively reducing how much money unions can spend for political activities and opening up government contracts to non-union bidding.
March 2001: President Bush signed his name to four executive orders on organized labor last month, including one that cuts the money unions will have for political campaign spending.
Congress and the Department of Labor are trying to change the rules on overtime pay, eliminating the 40 hour work week, taking eligibility for overtime pay away from millions of workers, and replacing time and a half pay with comp days.
11.) Disdain for Intellectuals and the ArtsFascist nations tend to promote and tolerate open hostility to higher education, and academia. It is not uncommon for professors and other academics to be censored or even arrested. Free expression in the arts is openly attacked, and governments often refuse to fund the arts.
Bush's new economic plan cuts funding for arts, education
NEA vows to undo President Bush's education programs
Artists from all over the world are being refused entry to the US on security grounds.
In a highly unusual use of the USA Patriot Act, which its creators say was designed to prevent terrorist attacks in the United States, The New York Times reports that three artists have been served subpoenas to appear before a federal grand jury June 15
12.) Obsession with Crime and PunishmentUnder fascist regimes, the police are given almost limitless power to enforce laws. The people are often willing to overlook police abuses and even forego civil liberties in the name of patriotism. There is often a national police force with virtually unlimited power in fascist nations
U.S. Patriot Act Summary of fascist parts
EFF Analysis of "Patriot II"
13.) Rampant Cronyism and CorruptionFascist regimes almost always are governed by groups of friends and associates who appoint each other to government positions and use governmental power and authority to protect their friends from accountability. It is not uncommon in fascist regimes for national resources and even treasures to be appropriated or even outright stolen by government leaders.
Bush Cronyism: Foxes Guarding the henhouse
Iran-Contra Felons Get Good Jobs from Bush
Big Iraq Reconstruction Contracts Went To Big Donors
The companies making the most off the new Medicare contracts also donated the most to the GOP
14. Fraudulent ElectionsSometimes elections in fascist nations are a complete sham. Other times elections are manipulated by smear campaigns against or even assassination of opposition candidates, use of legislation to control voting numbers or political district boundaries, and manipulation of the media. Fascist nations also typically use their judiciaries to manipulate or control elections.
RNC funds voter suppression efforts in at least 5 states
Republican judge upholds RNC efforts to supress Democratic party voters
Bush campaign chairman quits over illegal phone jamming
the 2000 election
How To Rig An Election In The United States
Scoop: Diebold Memos Disclose Florida 2000 E-Voting Fraud
Election officials all over the country are erecting illegal barriers to keep young voters from casting ballots. From New Hampshire to California, officials have designed complex questionnaires that prevent college students from registering, hired high-powered attorneys to keep them off the rolls, shut down polling places on campuses and even threatened to arrest and imprison young voters
This picture is what stopped the ballot recounts in Florida shortly after it seemed that legitimate President Gore had a lead. The "citizens" started what was later called "the preppy riot". Screaming, yelling, pounding on the walls, these "outraged citizens" intimidated the polling officials to halt the court mandated recount. A closer look reveals who they really were. They were bussed and flown in at Republican lawmakers expense. Some even flew in on Tom Delay's private plane.
more election fraud information
If Mussolini defines fascism as "the merger of corporate and government power" what does that make the Republican party?
Related Articles:
"Now and Then"- Part 1 A 3 part series by W David Jenkins III on the similarities between America now and Germany post Reichstag fire
"Now and Then"- Part II: The Propaganda Machine
Now and Then- Part IIIHitler's Playbook: Bush and the Abuse of Power
The Road to FascismMake that roads, and three great libertarians explained them, says Roderick T. Long.
Is America Becoming Fascist?
Eternal Fascism:Fourteen Ways of Looking at a Blackshirt
The Danger of American Fascism:With a fascist the problem is never how best to present the truth to the public but how best to use the news to deceive the public into giving the fascist and his group more money or more power.
Sheila Samples: Freedom To Fascism -- A Bumpy Ride: Republicans don't seem to realize that they are no longer individual members of a coherent "party," but are merely part of a mean-spirited and dangerous movement that is threatening to sweep away democracy as we know it.
Germany In 1933: The Easy Slide Into Fascism
The Brownshirting of America: Bush’s supporters demand lock-step consensus that Bush is right. They regard truthful reports that Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction and was not involved in the September 11 attack on the US – truths now firmly established by the Bush administration’s own reports – as treasonous America-bashing.
Three women kicked out of Bush rally for wearing t-shirts that say "Protect Our Civil Liberties."
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