Jesus Camp, More from the Bush Video Originators

This is indoctrination of children.. something I don't see Pres. Obama doing, but I have seen from the "religious right" over and over again.

This is what we should be afraid of, and this is what we should be preaching against. Instead of being afraid of what Pres. Obama wants to talk to our children about in school, this is what we should be afraid of.

Look at the faces of these children, some of them are scared to death. They talk of war, they talk of fear and retaliation. They talk of winning the battle, destroying enemies.

They tell them all their heroes and books are evil and should not be read or allowed. So these children feel guilty for everything they do or say.

Watch this 10 minute video and imagine what your 6 and 7 year old child would feel like.. some of these children aren't even that old.



This just disgusts me. I am sorry if I offend anyone, but as I say.. this is disgusting. If they were really teaching them the word of God it would be different, but they aren't. The one woman is trying to teach them to speak tongues. I am offended by that, because that is a gift from God, that is not something that one person can teach another. This is all fakery from human beings, not from God.

These are on YouTube and there are more there... All you have to do is search and you can find them. They are really out there. This was a movie.. I haven't seen the entire movie and don't think I want to.

Thank You to my friend "K" at Citizen K, pointed it out to me the other day after I posted the Pres. Bush worship video. After he said he thought it was from the movie called Jesus Camp, I got to thinking about it. Since I had a little free time from the weeds today...lol, I thought I would look it up to see what I could find. Lo and behold, this is the first one I found.. So, Thanks again "K".

Oh, and you should really check out his blog too.

Opposition to Health-Care Reform Revives Christian Right

I have written about Max Blumenthal's book just a couple of days ago, and in the past I wrote about "C" Street and "The Family" the book by Jeff Sharlet who was featured on Rachel Maddow's show and writes for Harper's Magazine.

Here is a piece he did for Harper's where it is titled Six Questions for Jeff, Following up on "The Family". Some excerpts include this:

When I was working on that story, I remember debating how much Hitler we should put in the piece. That is, we wondered how fair it was to dwell on The Family’s invocations of Hitler as a model of “total commitment.” As it turns out, it was quite fair. After I left Ivanwald, a team of researchers and I spent years combing through hundreds of thousands of documents in archives around the country. We discovered that as far back as the 1940s, when The Family began organizing congressmen, the group’s founder, Abraham Vereide, was praising Hitler’s “youth work” as a model to be adopted by Americans. He denounced Hitler himself, but he admired fascism’s cultivation of elites, crucial to what he saw as a God-ordained coming “age of minority control.”

-snip-

The fetish for strongman leadership has continued with Vereide’s successor, Doug Coe, who leads the group today. Throughout his letters in the Billy Graham Center Archive at Wheaton College, I found references to the leadership model of Hitler. In one sermon, variations of which he’s given many times, Coe says: “Jesus said ‘You got to put Him before mother-father-brother-sister.’ Hitler, Lenin, Mao, that’s what they taught the kids. Mao even had the kids killing their own mother and father. But it wasn’t murder. It was for building the new nation. The new kingdom.”

I am telling you, this is really scary stuff, and it just gets worse... yet these are the same people who want to call our President, Hitler? That's just a smoke screen.

In answer to a question about how he feels about the secrecy and betrayal Jeff says this:

I used my real name, I took notes openly, I told them I was a journalist and that I was working on a book (my first), about unusual religious communities around the country. I told them the title, too, Killing the Buddha. Maybe they thought I meant it literally. Regardless, they had a pretty full dossier on me. I even talked about writing and betrayal with them—I tend to agree with Joan Didion’s assessment that “writers are always selling somebody out.” It’s inherent in the process. “Undercover” is a funny word, in that many people think it means the journalist has some kind of secret identity, maybe a fake mustache. I didn’t—it wasn’t necessary. The Family couldn’t imagine that someone might learn to speak their language without sharing their beliefs.

That sentiment is reflected in a letter I found in The Family’s archive, from an inner circle leader to a South African operative. “The Movement,” he writes, “is simply inexplicable to people who are not intimately acquainted with it.” The Family’s political initiatives, he goes on, “have always been misunderstood by ‘outsiders.’” Then he talks about how whole projects have been hurt when Family members leak information to the public. “Thus,” he writes, in conclusion, “I would urge you not to put on paper anything relating to any of the work that you are doing… [unless] you know the recipient well enough to put at the top of the page, ‘PLEASE DESTROY AFTER READING.’”

This is one of my favorite documents out of the hundreds of thousands I reviewed because A, it’s funny—the recipient immediately wrote back to say that he understood and he’d made multiple copies of the letter for all of his associates, one of which I now have; B, it reveals the sense of persecution and victimhood which undergirds so much of that culture of secrecy on the right.

This secrecy is pragmatic—“The more you can make your organization invisible,” preaches Doug Coe, “the more influence it will have”—but it’s also a way for these very influential people to conceive of themselves as akin to the Christians of the first century, struggling nobly against a dominant culture of secularism. Family members imagine themselves as revolutionaries, even as they function as defenders of status quo power.

That kind of self-deception allows a writer only two real responses—deference, or betrayal.

As I said, these people are scary, they are very powerful members of Congress, of big business and of "high society".

The last question, "So is your book a betrayal?" and Jeff says:

According to their belief in themselves as a “new chosen,” an anointed elite that have replaced the Jews in God’s esteem, I am still a member of The Family. And yet here I am, baring their secrets to the world. Does that make me a journalist, or a traitor? You need to enter the moral gray zone between those two terms if you’re going to really explore the inner workings of power. You have to be an insider and an outsider at the same time.

I remember one day Jeff C., one of the house leaders, said, “You oughtta write a book about us. But nobody would believe it.” It was like he was daring me, but he felt safe doing so because he didn’t think the truths of The Family would translate to the outside world. They believe Christ had one message for those closest to him, and then another, diluted message for the rest of the twelve, and so on out to the masses.

One of the brothers called me up after we published “Jesus Plus Nothing” to explain to me that they weren’t upset by the details of what I’d written, all of which he thought were more or less accurate, but by the fact that I’d written anything at all. That, he said, was the betrayal—telling the truth about The Family.

That's just a part of the 6 questions that are asked of Jeff in this article.. You can click on the link above to see the full article and a quick search on Google or whatever search engine you like will find more for you.. I got 236,000 hits on my search using Google..

But, that's just one portion of the problem. There is also the other parts of the Christian Right we have to worry about.

They are the Gary Bauer's and the James Dobson's and the Liberty University portion of the debate, if you can call it that.

Washington Post had an article that detailed a good portion of it yesterday..

The Christian right, facing questions before the presidential election about its continuing potency as a force for cultural and political change, has found new life with Barack Obama in office, particularly around health care.

As the president prepares to address a joint session of Congress on Wednesday night to press for health-care reform, conservative Christian leaders are rallying their troops to oppose him, with online town hall meetings, church gatherings, fundraising appeals, and e-mail and social networking campaigns. FRC Action, the lobbying arm of the Family Research Council, has scheduled a webcast Thursday night for tens of thousands of supporters in which House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) and other speakers will respond to the president's health-care address.

That's just the first paragraphs.. there is much more..

Polls show that the health-care packages on the Hill are widely unpopular among evangelicals. More than seven in 10 white evangelical Protestants in the most recent Washington Post-ABC News poll said they are dissatisfied or angry about the Democratic reform proposals.

A coalition of three dozen conservative Christian organizations, representing 5 million people and calling itself the Freedom Federation, announced its formation last month. It has taken on opposition to health-care reform as its first issue.

"We're not having to build a grand new organization. We're using the strengths of other organizations that understand the needs of their particular constituencies," said Mathew Staver, dean of the Liberty University School of Law and an organizer of the Freedom Federation.

Christian right leaders say it is too soon to tell whether health-care reform will trigger a flood of donations, but they are encouraged by the response they are seeing in other ways.

Gary Bauer, who heads the socially conservative group American Values, said that the list of addresses to which he sends his daily e-mail alerts was down to 170,000 and that he was getting only 50 requests a week to sign up for it before the election. Now, he said, the e-mail list is up to 225,000, and he is getting 1,000 or more requests a week asking to be added.

"The passion that was so evident in the Obama campaign right now, at least, has shifted to our side," he said.

Ok, got your attention? Read the rest at the link above.. I am telling you, we have to fight this.. If we don't get busy and call our Congress persons and get some kind of good Health Care Reform through Congress NOW, we are in for the rethugs taking back Congress and the White House.. and if that's not enough to scare the shit out of you nothing will...

More on the Max Blumenthal Book From Frank Schaeffer

Sunday I posted a video from Democracy Now with an interview of Max Blumenthal about his new book Republican Gommorah. It is a must see and the book is a must read.

Rachel Maddow has been talking with Frank Schaeffer quite often about the Republican's and the Religious Right and the fringe of the party and how polarized they have become. The group at "C" Street that Jeff Sharlet has written about that has been on Rachel's show quite often lately and I have written about is part of that group.

So is James Dobson of the Focus on the Family fame. You know that name of course, if for no other reason, than he endorsed Sarah Palin, remember, not John McCain, but Sarah Palin.

Frank has a new blog up and in his post today he writes about Max's book. Of course Frank knows the religious right very well, since he was one of the founders of it. We can't really call him a founding father, but he is a founding son...lol

One of the best parts of Frank's piece today was this little gem...

But with a few exceptions (like my late father) most of the people described in Blumenthal's book have no "other side" to them. They are the sick bedrock of what, at any moment, may become a full-blown American fascism. (Sharlet has done great work on showing how these Religious Right folks have also invaded the US Military, especially the chaplaincy ranks.)

My one -- very slight -- criticism of Republican Gomorrah is that Blumenthal neglected to do something that would have bolstered his arguments and given them deeper credibility: introduce a bit of paradox and nuance into his book. He could have made a better case for the left by frankly looking at some of the extremism on the left that has played into the hands of the cynics who control the Religious Right

-snip-

Why should Blumenthal's book to be taken seriously? Take it from this former "insider" he knows what he's talking about. His thesis is less about politics than about the deviant psychology that people like Dobson have cashed in on by feeding delusion, victimhood and failure as a means through which to build a political movement. What Blumenthal reveals is the heart of the most dysfunctional and truly dangerous -- not to mention armed -- darkest reaches of our country.

What should we "do"? Read the book! Then fight like hell to keep Republicans out of power come what may. And maybe (note to progressives!) be a little less critical of President Obama and a little more grateful that he's in the White House!

Once in a while a book comes along about which one can say: If you love our country read this! Republican Gomorrah is one such book. One other thing: if you know any sane Republicans that would like to save what's left of their party beg them to read this book. If you have to beg them in the name of Jesus!

Of course that is my emphasis, but I felt it needed to be pointed out, we have been so critical of Pres. Obama lately. You can read the rest of Frank's blog by going here to Frank Schaeffer. He calls this entry, At Last Dobson is Done in by the Truth.

Frank has done several other really great blog posts and I have mentioned him before. As I said he has been on Rachel's show several times, and he is a great source for all things in the religious field.

With the problems facing our country, with the attacks on our President, now more than ever we need to learn and understand what is going on with the people on the right side of politics. This is something we can do by reading, studying and watching these people. This book by Max is just one more example of the things we are up against.

Be advised, this is a fight, a fight for our lives, for our jobs, for our country. Look what was done to Van Jones, look what they have done to the Health Care Reform battle. Look at the fight we are facing for the ACES bill to even get past committee in the Senate... All because of the so called religious right fighting it.

That's what we are fighting... and we have to be informed to fight and win... So it's time to start preparing. It's a scary thought, but we can't let them win... we have to stand strong and keep fighting them.

Democracy Now Interviews Max Blumenthal

Democracy Now has a wonderful interview with Max Blumenthal that is a must see. He has a new book out called "Republican Gommorah" and it sounds like a must read.

From the introduction to the show:

Fifty years ago, Republican President Dwight Eisenhower issued a warning against the rise of extremist movements within his own party. During his presidency, Eisenhower had endured attacks by Senator Joseph McCarthy, the radical right John Birch Society and others. In a 1959 letter to a World War II veteran, Eisenhower wrote, quote, “Many prominent officials, possessing no standing or expertness as they themselves claim it, attempt to further their own ideas or interests by resorting to statements more distinguished by stridency than by accuracy.”

Half a century later, in a summer of town hall disruptions and birth certificate controversies, what Eisenhower had warned against has come true: that the Republican Party has been captured by its extremist wing. At least that’s what award-winning journalist Max Blumenthal argues in his new book, Republican Gomorrah: Inside the Movement that Shattered the Party.

The book examines the transformation of the GOP from the party of Dwight Eisenhower to the party of Sarah Palin and how this sets the stage for the future of American politics. Max Blumenthal is a Puffin Foundation writing fellow at the Nation Institute. He joins us today for his first extended interview about his book, Republican Gomorrah.

Like I said, the book sounds like a must read..and the interview is great. This is why the attacks are so strong on the President, this is why the Republicans are so deep into the religion and this is why they are so involved in "C" Street. This is another glimpse into the mind of the party that thinks Sarah Palin was Presidential Material.

This is what we are fighting.