“Christians must begin to organize politically within the present party structure, and they must begin to infiltrate the existing institutional order.”
That statement, made by a "Christian Reconstructionist" leader in 1981, quoted by Paul Krugman today, marks the first signs of what amounts to the Christian Right's conspiracy to overturn secular government and the Constitution. Krugman writes:
The infiltration of the federal government by large numbers of people seeking to impose a religious agenda — which is very different from simply being people of faith — is one of the most important stories of the last six years. It’s also a story that tends to go underreported, perhaps because journalists are afraid of sounding like conspiracy theorists.
But this conspiracy is no theory. The official platform of the Texas Republican Party pledges to “dispel the myth of the separation of church and state.” And the Texas Republicans now running the country are doing their best to fulfill that pledge.
The result is not just a government which increasingly favors the rich, biased, outspoken, and poorly educated, but a government which suffers from incompetence and corruption at all levels.
For example, The Boston Globe reports on one Regent law school graduate who was interviewed by the Justice Department’s civil rights division. Asked what Supreme Court decision of the past 20 years he most disagreed with, he named the decision to strike down a Texas anti-sodomy law. When he was hired, it was his only job offer.
Or consider George Deutsch, the presidential appointee at NASA who told a Web site designer to add the word “theory” after every mention of the Big Bang, to leave open the possibility of “intelligent design by a creator.” He turned out not to have, as he claimed, a degree from Texas A&M.
The steady disintegration of the Bush administration can be blamed in large part by its dependence on people who, as Krugman notes, laid blame for 9/11 at the feet of “the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians...”
These are the same people whose teachings inspired the Bush's administration's hired hands from Regent University. Their proteges have been found to have, if anything, a lower aptitude for honesty and integrity than their "secular" colleagues.
There’s Ms. Goodling, of course. But did you know that Rachel Paulose, the U.S. attorney in Minnesota — three of whose deputies recently stepped down, reportedly in protest over her management style — is, according to a local news report, in the habit of quoting Bible verses in the office?
Or there’s the case of Claude Allen, the presidential aide and former deputy secretary of health and human services, who stepped down after being investigated for petty theft. Most press reports, though they mentioned Mr. Allen’s faith, failed to convey the fact that he built his career as a man of the hard-line Christian right.
Regent University, which has provided 150+ graduates to the Bush administration, Monica Goodling being the most noted in the group. The school is hardly a university -- it's much closer to being a trade school provides an education in a single field and in Regent's case, a single life's work.
The Boston Globe reports on one Regent law school graduate who was interviewed by the Justice Department’s civil rights division. Asked what Supreme Court decision of the past 20 years he most disagreed with, he named the decision to strike down a Texas anti-sodomy law. When he was hired, it was his only job offer.
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