Christian Right conspiracy-mongering

(Note 12/16/2012: this was a post of mine from around 2004-5 that somehow seems to have become lost in cyberspace. I'm re-posting it now.)

One of the more notable manifestations of Christian Right conspiracy theorizing was Pat Robertson's book The New World Order (1991). In it, he described a conspiratorial theory of Western history in which dark forces have been working against God and his Christian people since the French Revolution or so.

Michael Lind reviewed this tract in 1995 for the New York Review of Books: Rev. Robertson's Grand International Conspiracy Theory 02/02/95 issue (the online version is available only in the subscription archive). It's a shame the Review doesn't make this essay freely available on the Web, because it's a very good description of the dark side of the Christian Right brand of Christianity. Robertson's book is a collection of favorite far-right tales about the centuries-long conspiracy. If there are "classics" of such things, this could probably be considered a classic of what Richard Hofstadter famously described as "the paranoid style in American politics." And, as Lind points out, Robertson's brand of it, along with the organizational clout of his Christian Coalition group, has attracted some respectable Republican admirers (or at least panderers):

Among the conservative politicians and polemicists who have addressed the Christian Coalition's "Road to Victory" conferences are Bob Dole, Newt Gingrich, Jack Kemp, Oliver North, William Bennett, William Kristol, Jesse Helms, David Brock, and Dinesh D'Souza. Not only do mainstream conservatives avoid criticizing Robertson and his movement, they rush to their defense in print. When the Anti-Defamation League, in 1994, issued a report critical of the religious right, conservatives like William Bennett, Irving Kristol and his son, William, and Midge Decter denounced the supposed "anti-Christian" and "anti-religious" bias of the ADL and of the media in general. Bennett, for example, has written that "Christians active in politics are now on the receiving end of an extraordinary campaign of bias and prejudice."

William "I love Vegas" Bennett's comment about the "bias and prejudice" against Christians is one of the endless examples of the victimization whining by white Christian Republicans that is not only an example of the "paranoid style", but incredibly tedious as well as amazingly callous toward Christians in countries like Saudi Arabia or china where they really are persecuted. But, oh, what a Faustian bargain the country-club Republicans have made with Christian Right:

The chief motive for conservative appeasement of Robertson and the religious right is strategic; as the editor of a leading conservative magazine explained to me in 1992, "Of course they're mad, but we need their votes." Such conservatives are so impressed with the political power of the Christian Coalition that they even refrain from criticizing the religious right's "biblical" economic proposals, like the banning of usury and the abolition of debts in a periodic "year of jubilee." In addition, many Jewish neoconservatives value fundamentalist support for American military and economic subsidies to Israel. Writing in Commentary in 1984, Irving Kristol called on American Jews to recognize that American Protestant fundamentalists are "strongly pro-Israel." Excusing an evangelical leader who said that God does not hear the prayers of Jews, Kristol wrote: "Why should Jews care about the theology of a fundamentalist preacher?... What do such theological abstractions matter as against the mundane fact that this same preacher is vigorously pro-Israel?"

In fact, the "pro-Israel" position of the Christian Right normally translate into support for the settler movement (the biggest obstacle to a Middle East peace), advocacy for the hardlines positions of the Israeli Likud Party and bitter opposition to any meaningful attempt by an Israeli government to achieve a practical peace agreement with the Palestinians. But, in fact, the fundamentalist Christian supposed love for Israel is based on very traditional Christian attitudes toward Jews. Attitudes which historically have borne some very poisonous fruit. Lind quotes the Rev. Robertson's book:

Indeed, it may well be that men of goodwill like Woodrow Wilson, Jimmy Carter, and George Bush, who sincerely want a larger community of nations living at peace in our world, are in reality unknowingly and unwittingly carrying out the mission and mouthing the phrases of a tightly knit cabal whose goal is nothing less than a new order for the human race under the domination of Lucifer and his followers.

This Luciferian conspiracy to bring peace to the world began, in Robertson's view, with a group called the Illuminati, which successfully took over the Freemasons. Hofstadter credits the Anti-Masonic Party with being the first organized manifestation of the paranoid style in politics in the US. And how did peace on earth, good will to men and all that become a Hellish goal? With funding from Jewish financiers, the Illuminati/Masons caused the French Revolution. As Robertson describes it:

The slaughter that followed was not merely an assault on the king and the aristocracy—what was called the ancien regime - it was an assault against everyone, even the leaders of the Reign of Terror that followed on the heels of the revolution. The satanic carnage that the Illuminati brought to France was the clear predecessor of the bloodbaths and successive party purges visited on the Soviet Union by the communists under both Lenin and Stalin.

Then the Illuminati/Masons - with Jewish money, of course - incited the European revolutions of 1848, in this view. The Revolutions of 1848 are not that well known in the US, but those revolutions came close to sweeping away much of the old monarchical order in continental Europe. Even the Habsburgs had to abandon Vienna to the democratic revolutionaries for a while. These revolutions are one of the most important milestones in the history of democracy, in Europe and the world. To Robertson, they were a Luciferian plot bankrolled by Jewish money. In this paragraph, Lind points out one of the standard slimy verbal tricks of the Radical Right, one to keep an eye out for if you are ever trolling around the sewer to far-right ideology:

Marx and Engels, though, were given direction by another Jew, who happened also to be one of the early advocates of a Jewish state: "The precise connecting link between the German Illuminati and the beginning of world communism was furnished by a German radical named Moses Hess" (p. 69). (Note Robertson's use here, as in his descriptions of other Jews later, of the adjective "German" rather than "Jewish." This does not necessarily mean much, since the adjective "German" or "European" frequently refers to Jews in the American literature of anti-Semitism.) Just as the Rothschilds presided over the marriage of Illuminism and Freemasonry, so Moses Hess, the secret Illuminist, is the true father of world communism. This is the first mention in Robertson's book of that longstanding anti-Semitic myth, the Judeo-Bolshevik conspiracy. It is not the last.

One of the more vomit-inducing aspects of Robertson's account of the American struggle with this Jewish conspiracy is that he tries to make Andrew Jackson (who was a Mason, by the way) and Abraham Lincoln heroes of the fight against the Jew/Mason/Illuminati plot. Lind elaborates:

What was the goal of these international bankers who were controlled, ultimately, by Satan, through the invisible but powerful Illuminated Freemasons? Robertson's answer comes close to endorsing one of the gravest anti-Semitic slanders of all - the claim that wealthy, cosmopolitan Jews incite wars in order to make money as war profiteers.

And he quotes Robertson on this topic:

The money barons of Europe, who had established privately owned central banks like the Bank of England, found in war the excuse to make large loans to sovereign nations from money that they created out of nothing to be repaid by taxes from the people of the borrowing nations. The object of the lenders was to stimulate government deficit spending and subsequent borrowing. War served that purpose nicely, but from 1945 to 1990 the full mobilization for the Cold War and the resultant massive national borrowings accompanied the result just as well without a full-scale shooting war. [p. 122, emphasis added {by Lind}]

Yes, according to Robertson, even the Cold War was part of the Big Jewish Plot. Well, you get the drift. The Council on Foreign Relations, one of the stock bogeymen of the John Birch Society crowd, figures in Robertson's theory as one of the main instruments of the grand conspiracy, which unites international (Jewish) banking to Communism and war profiteering. Quoting Robertson again:

In fact, is there not a possibility that the Wall Street bankers, who have so enthusiastically financed Bolshevism in the Soviet Union since 1917, did so not for the purpose of promoting world communism but for the purpose of saddling the Soviet Union with a totally wasteful and inefficient system that in turn would force the Soviet government to be dependent on Western bankers for its survival?

Are you following this? Yes, this is how one of the most influential Christian Right leaders in America sees the grand sweep of history. It's worth listening closely whenever Christian Right types start talking about Jews. In The New World Order, Robertson says that the Holocaust was a warm-up job by Satan for what he intends to do to Christians in America, a process Robertson thought was well under way in the US in 1991. This would be back when Old Man Bush was president. And the apocalyptic notions promoted by the Christian Right - based on a reading of the Scriptures that is anything but "literal" - is often the vehicle for some of their most appalling notions. Lind:

In his book The New Millennium, published in 1990, Robertson explicitly set forth his views about Jews and Israel. In the rapidly approaching Last Days, Israel will be destroyed: "That tiny little nation will find itself all alone in the world. Then according to the Bible, the Jews will cry out to the one they have so long rejected...." The destruction of Israel will only be possible, however, because of American acquiescence: "One day a vote against Israel will come in the United Nations when the United States neither abstains or uses its veto in the Security Council to protect Israel."

The US will abandon Israel, it seems, because American Christians, despite warnings by their leaders against anti-Semitism, will turn in wrath against the "cosmopolitan, liberal, secular Jews" who want "unrestricted freedom for smut and pornography and the murder of the unborn." Robertson writes of "the ongoing attempt of liberal Jews in America to undermine the public strength of Christianity" and notes that "the liberal, wealthy Jews voted for Democratic candidates Carter, Mondale, and Dukakis, not Reagan and Bush." ... Robertson's argument is that the destruction of Israel in the near future, though ordained by God, may be hastened if "wealthy" and "cosmopolitan" Jews foolishly provoke America's Christian majority, which is represented today, it must be presumed, by Robertson's own Christian Coalition.

And Lind also observes about fundamentalist apocalyptic thinking:

Apart from its emphasis on the United States rather than Nazi Germany, Robertson's elaborate conspiracy theory of world politics differs from populist and fascist conspiracy theories in one significant respect: it does not resort to overt anti-Semitism. This last reflects the influence of premillennial Protestant fundamentalism, which holds that the reestablishment of the State of Israel is the prelude to the Last Days, when most Jews will be destroyed and when the remnant will convert to Christianity. But the conservative Jews who defend Robertson in Commentary apparently do not realize that fundamentalist support for Israel is not incompatible with dislike and resentment of American Jews, especially liberal Jews, of a kind that Robertson has repeatedly expressed. (my emphasis)

I would say that "not incompatible", which certainly accurate is a mild description of the relationship of this theory to anti-Semitism. In fact, it comes from the aspect of Christian tradition that was most deeply hostile to Jews and Judaism. As the highlighted passage just quoted shows, this fundamentalist view assumes that God has designed an End of Days scenario in which "most Jews will be destroyed." It's safe to say than any view that looks forward to the day when "most Jews will be destroyed" is a fundamentally anti-Semitic theory. Lind in his review compares at some length parallel claims about the Jewish conspiracy in history to that of William Guy Carr in a book called Pawns in the Game, which Lind calls "a post - World War II defense of Hitler and fascism." Although Robertson doesn't explicitly defend the latter, Lind shows with long quotations how much Robertson embraces the same lines of argumentation. Lind's concluding paragraphs are well worth noting:

The evidence most relevant to the question of whether Robertson is an anti-Semite is found in the details of his conspiracy theory as set forth in The New World Order. Between the Illuminati and the Freemasons the link is the Frankfurt branch of the Rothschild family. "Lord Rothschild" - presumably Nathan Mayer Rothschild, who became a peer in 1885 - was the key link connecting the Judeo-Masonic conspiracy with the British Empire, through the Milner circle and Cecil Rhodes. Between world Freemasonry and world communism, the critical link is provided by Moses Hess. Between the Judeo-Masonic-Bolshevik "European bankers," the Ivy League American establishment, and Lenin's revolutionary Bolsheviks, the key links are two Jews, Paul Warburg and Jacob Schiff. Not only does the "octopus" control everything, but many of the major "tentacles" turn out to be Jews.

Robertson's theories about Jewish bankers and Jewish revolutionaries are central to his conspiracy theory, which in turn is central to his vision of his own destiny, his movement, and his ambitions for the American Right and the Republican party and the United States of America. Not since Father Coughlin or Henry Ford has a prominent white American so boldly and unapologetically blamed the disasters of modern world history on the machinations of international high finance in general and on a few influential Jews in particular. And not since Huey Long, with his Share Our Wealth movement, has there been a radical populist movement as powerful in American politics as Robertson's Christian Coalition.

Much has been written in the American press about neo-fascist movements in Italy, Germany, Japan, and France. But the United States is the only industrial democracy in which a far-right political leader in one of only two major parties has created a base of support so powerful that conventional politicians and intellectuals in his party feel they must defend him from charges of anti-Semitism. They have so far managed to ignore the fact that his best-selling book purveys the Illuminati–Freemason–Communist–High Finance conspiracy theory of world history familiar from generations of anti-Semitic propaganda. What would such conservatives, particularly Jewish neo-conservatives, be saying if Louis Farrakhan had written a book that made the New York Times best-seller list and claimed that Jewish financiers like the Rothschilds, Paul Warburg, and Jacob Schiff were leaders in a two-century old Freemason-Communist-Banker conspiracy to exploit American taxpayers and the members of the armed forces in America by stirring up deficit-funded wars?

Pat Robertson has written such a book. He has not repudiated a single word of it. Ralph Reed and the conservatives who dominate the newly ascendant Republican party would prefer that we continue to ignore it. (my emphasis)

That description of Robertson's poisonous ideology is a good one to remember the next time you hear some OxyContin Radio jock ranting about anti-Semitism in Europe, pretending to be against it. Anyone who ignores this deep strain of ugly religious bigotry in the Christian Right is just closing their eyes to reality.

Tags: anti-semitism, christian right, new world order, pat robertson, radical right

The Christian Right and Haiti

California Attorney General and gubernatorial candidate Jerry Brown encourages people to donate to help Haiti and be careful about fraud when doing so: Brown Encourages Californians to Donate to Haitian Relief Effort, but Warns Donors to Avoid Charity Scams 01/14/09. His article provides links to California State information resources on charities.

Just as a tragedy like that in Haiti touches the best impulses with most people, it brings out the worst in others. Scamming is one example. Blatant racial and religious bigotry is another. Below is a list of links providing information on the bizarre accusation by Pat Robertson and on similar hate-spewing incidents.

Robertson is a high-profile Christian Right leader still with real influence among fundamentalist and Pentecostal Christians (see Tristero's heated rant linked below). But it some ways it's more concerning to me to see our old friend Brother Al Mohler endorse this territorial demonology, which is normally more at home in Pentecostal congregations than in those of Brother Al's Southern Baptist Convention (SBC).

Brother Al doesn't have to TV presence or notoriety of Pat Robertson. But he is the president of the SBC's flagship Baptist Theological Seminary, and I've seen him called the leading theologian of today's SBC. The SBC remains the single largest Protestant denomination in the United States, counting at one time former Presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton and elected President Al Gore among its members. I don't know about Clinton or Gore, but Carter has separated from the SBC over the hardline, dogmatic fundamentalism and political radicalism of their leadership.

Although the SBC likes to point to its traditional of the local autonomy of its churches, that doesn't mean that national Convention doesn't exercise considerable doctrinal discipline. On the contrary, deviations from fundamentalist positions are viewed with great suspicion in the SBC and its pastors and teachers know that much straying from the national positions can severely limit their careers in the denomination. All of this is a long-winded way of saying that Brother Al's position are taken very seriously by many people in the country's largest Protestant denomination.

Brother Al holds forth in Does God Hate Haiti? AlbertMohler.com 01/14/09.
Here's Brother Al's explanation of why the Pact With The Devil myth is framed in a mealy-mouthed way so that he can deny he explicitly endorsed the notion. But it's hard to see how any reading of this passage could come to a conclusion other than that he's saying very clearly it's a legitimate interpretation. And he puts this one forward before his alibi explanation of how God works in mysterious ways and really does love all those awful demon-worshipping black people down yonder and so on.

In truth, it is hard not to describe the earthquake as a disaster of biblical proportions. It certainly looks as if the wrath of God has fallen upon the Caribbean nation. Add to this the fact that Haiti is well known for its history of religious syncretism -- mixing elements of various faiths, including occult practices. The nation is known for voodoo, sorcery, and a Catholic tradition that has been greatly influenced by the occult.

Haiti's history is a catalog of political disasters, one after the other. In one account of the nation's fight for independence from the French in the late 18th century, representatives of the nation are said to have made a pact with the Devil to throw off the French. According to this account, the Haitians considered the French as Catholics and wanted to side with whomever would oppose the French. Thus, some would use that tradition to explain all that has marked the tragedy of Haitian history -- including now the earthquake of January 12, 2010.

Does God hate Haiti? That is the conclusion reached by many, who point to the earthquake as a sign of God's direct and observable judgment.

God does judge the nations -- all of them -- and God will judge the nations. His judgment is perfect and his justice is sure. He rules over all the nations and his sovereign will is demonstrated in the rising and falling of nations and empires and peoples. Every molecule of matter obeys his command, and the earthquakes reveal his reign -- as do the tides of relief and assistance flowing into Haiti right now.

A faithful Christian cannot accept the claim that God is a bystander in world events. The Bible clearly claims the sovereign rule of God over all his creation, all of the time. We have no right to claim that God was surprised by the earthquake in Haiti, or to allow that God could not have prevented it from happening. [my emphasis in bold]

To me, the most striking part of that comment is, "Haiti is well known for its history of religious syncretism -- mixing elements of various faiths, including occult practices. The nation is known for voodoo, sorcery, and a Catholic tradition that has been greatly influenced by the occult."

Despite political alliances with conservative Catholics, it's still not unusual for cracks like this to show up from fundamentalists indicating they don't think Catholics are real Christians. But Brother Al's accepting of the occult as a real spiritual force capable of shaping the forces of nature is really striking. Without digging too much into the weeds of conservative Protestant doctrine, most Christian ministers in the US would presumably take some form of the position while occult/New Age/esoteric practices fall somewhere between harmless fun and a potential psychologically damaging obsession. Conservative but non-fundamentalist Christians would be inclined to take a harder line, i.e., only those who accept Jesus as their Savior (Christians, in other words) will spend eternity in Heaven and everyone else goes to Hell. In that scheme, any belief system including occultism that leads a person not to be a Christian has unpleasant consequences for one's soul.

But Christianity has also pretty much from the start distinguished between religion and superstition. And the idea that you can conjure the Devil to kill your enemies is just plain old superstition. Now, from Robertson's and Brother Al's versions, that old pact with the Devil back in the day didn't seem to deliver much positive for Satan's alleged Haitian pact-partners. But Brother Al says it's personally reasonable to believe that God decided to make an earthquake to punish those dirty black Satan-worshippers. After all, says Brother Al, "We have no right to claim that God was surprised by the earthquake in Haiti, or to allow that God could not have prevented it from happening."

For those of us cursed with an actual interest in theology, it can be endlessly fascinating to hash over issues like theodicy, the question of the origins of evil. But if your religious outlook excludes the laws of plate tectonics, something is really wrong. Brother Al would have us believe in something like an inverted Santa Claus theory of God, in which He tallies up whose been naughty and nice. And if he sees too many voodoo-loving black people walking around in a place like Haiti, he giggles the earth and kills off a few tens of thousands of them. In traditional religious terms, this is a magical rather than a religious conception, magic in this sense meaning the idea that human beings can conjure divine forces into doing certain things. In the context of the Haitian Pact With The Devil myth, it's kind of a reverse conjuring with God doing the opposite of what the people might want. But it's still literally childish, a little child's sense that if something bad happens, someone must have done something naughty.

In other words, Brother Al and his followers need to grow the hell up in their thinking about God.

A more sensible, and entirely orthodox, Christian view would be to say that in some fundamental sense, all of creation is grounded in God. And that in some way that we don't understand and don't need to understand, God set physical creation in motion. But he set in in motion with its own laws that work the way they work. Including plate tectonics that generate earthquakes. Divine interventions into those laws occurred during Biblical times for the purposes of revelation of God's presence. Official Catholic theology allows for the possibility of such interventions taking physical form, even now, but view the Age of Miracles as having closed with Biblical times. Theologians that embraced a more fully modern paradigm, like the great Protestant theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher, are willing to understand the physical miracles described in the Scriptures as essentially literary/mythological symbols. Symbols which convey important truths but cannot and should not be taken as equivalent to a present-day technical description of physical events.

And Jesus, Mary and Joseph! The point of the Exodus story is not that God made locusts attack Egypt and parted the waters of the Red Sea. The point is that the slaves escaped from their slavery and that God was on their side in doing so! The Haitian Pact With The Devil pseudohistory that Brother Al is defending was a propaganda story invented by defenders of slavery to smear slave revolting for their freedom. Slaves rejecting their master and seeking freedom, that would be the side God supports. According to the Christian Bible. So why is Brother Al defending an anti-God story like that?

Brother Al is a tad slicker in doing so than Pat Robertson. But the story he's defending is still a big, stinking, superstitious, white racist pile of horse manure. I'm just sayin'.

This article in the Christian Post, Robertson Chided for 'Arrogance,' 'Ignorance' Behind Haiti Curse Remark by Jennifer Riley 01/14/09, uses Brother Al's God-works-in-mysterious-ways comments in that article after the paragraphs quoted above to make it sound as though Brother Al was completely rejecting Robertson's statements. But, as I've just explained, that's not at all the case.

Links on the Pact With The Devil story and the religious bigots who are pushing that and other racist sleaze about Haiti:

Haitian Catastrophe: For Racists, a Good Laugh by Mark Potok SPLC Hatewatch 01/14/10

Pat Robertson Is Far More Important Than You Will Ever Be by tristero Hullabaloo

Pat Robertson Not Alone in Demonizing Haiti by Rachel Tabachnick TalktoAction 01/14/10

America and the Devil's (Robertson) Curse by Frank Schaffer Frank Schaffer Blog 01/14/09 (article also appears at the Huffington Post)

The Religion Dispatches site has a number of pieces on the fundamentalist/Pentacostalist demonology over Haiti, including one by the invaluable Sarah Posner:

Pat Robertson and the Curse of Unyielding Ignorance by Anthea Butler 01/13/09 (The term "militant ignorance" also works well for this phenemenon.)

The Theo-logic Behind Pat Robertson's Offense By Matt Recla 01/14/09

Judging Pat Robertson’s Influence by Sarah Posner 01/14/09

“Biblical” Disaster: Understanding Religion in Haiti by Michelle Gonzalez Maldonado 01/13/09

Pat Robertson: No Longer a Relevant Player by Becky Garrison 01/14/09. Good analysis of his message but she understates his continuing influence among conservative white Christians in America.

Tags: albert mohler, christian right, pat robertson, white racism

Pat Robertson's career

Check out this biographical sketch by Bill Sizemore, a reporter who has a track record with Brother Pat Robertson, The Christian with Four Aces Virginia Quarterly Review Spring 2008:

Since Jerry Falwell’s death, Robertson is the most visible evangelical leader in America. A recent public opinion survey conducted by Christian pollsters the Barna Group found that Robertson was the only religious figure besides Billy Graham—who has retired from preaching—known to at least half the population. Perhaps of most import for the nation and the world, he has pioneered a unique marriage between theology and politics. This is a man who ran for president because, he said, God told him to, but that brief campaign twenty years ago would be merely a footnote in American political history were it not for the potent legacy it spawned. ...

Out of the ashes of the Robertson presidential campaign came an army of Bible-believing religious fundamentalists which has won a degree of political power unprecedented in modern times.

Sizemore's long article also includes an update on Jim Bakker, Tammy Faye's husband, who's still around and doing business in the name of the Lord.

Jim Bakker, it turns out, was with Robertson from his early days in Christian [sic] broadcasting. They even discovered the prosperity gospel together, it seems:

To keep calls coming, Robertson repeatedly emphasized the "prosperity gospel" - the belief, common among televangelists, that Christians are entitled to claim financial rewards as evidence of God’s favor. Robertson likes to call it the Law of Reciprocity, telling viewers that if they are true-believing Christians, financial rewards are theirs for the asking. ("We are to command the money to come to us," he once wrote.) As a result, Robertson never had to feign guilt over indulging in the just financial rewards of his spiritual successes. Today, he lives in a $3 million, 6,600-square-foot house with six and a half bathrooms, and he is partial to Corvettes. "You can be just as holy when you are financially comfortable as you can be when you are poor," Robertson has written. "Poverty is a curse, not a blessing."

One of the best ways to strengthen both piety and pocketbook, Robertson liked to remind his audience, was by donating to his ministry. To this day, The 700 Club features frequent stories about viewers who claim to have enjoyed dramatic financial gains after becoming regular donors. It’s no surprise, then, that the prosperity gospel which originally had drawn Robertson to evangelical Christianity became cemented in the financially shaky early days of his TV ministry, when he and Bakker would sometimes stay on the air until 4 a.m., hoping the phone would ring one more time with another donation.

And here is something that I didn't realize, that God offers His very own personalized real estate services!

One night, Bakker failed to show up for work, and Robertson was tempted to fire him. But as he was on his way out the studio doors, Robertson wrote later, he heard the voice of God say, “Don’t fire Jim Bakker,” so he relented. But eventually Bakker decided to leave on his own—or, as he told me in his Branson office, God told him to resign. “He said, ‘I want you to move, and I want you to resign.’ I said, ‘But God, I don’t have another job.’ He said, ‘I told you to resign.’ I said, ‘God, you sell the house, and then I’ll resign ...’ I put the sign out, and within three days ... God sold the house. Just sold it, just like that.”

Robertson branched out his media operations to the Middle East sometime after the Six-Day War of 1967:

In order to prepare for the imminent Second Coming—which Robertson believes will occur on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem according to biblical prophecy—he acquired METV (Middle East Television), a station then based in southern Lebanon that could broadcast into Israel. Straub was given marching orders to be ready to televise Christ’s return. CBN executives drew up a detailed plan to broadcast the event to every nation and in all languages. Straub wrote: “We even discussed how Jesus’ radiance might be too bright for the cameras and how we would have to make adjustments for that problem. Can you imagine telling Jesus, ‘Hey, Lord, please tone down your luminosity; we’re having a problem with contrast. You’re causing the picture to flare.’”

I wonder how divine luminosity would play on YouTube. Do you think we would be able to save to a hard drive with Real Player?

Sizemore describes Operation Blessing, a project for which Robertson raised funds to help victims of the savage civil war in Rwanda:

What Robertson didn’t tell viewers was what I learned from two pilots who flew the planes: The airstrip was actually built so the planes could bring in equipment to dredge diamonds from a remote jungle riverbed for the African Development Company, a for-profit owned by Robertson and registered in Bermuda, where there is no corporate income tax and business regulations are lax. The three planes, two of which were registered to Operation Blessing, were used almost exclusively for a mine deep in the jungle, the pilots told me. Only one or two of more than forty flights were charitable. Chief pilot Robert Hinkle, a former Peace Corps volunteer, said he became so embarrassed by what he considered the duplicity of the operation that he had Operation Blessing’s name removed from the planes’ tail fins. His account was backed up by notes he kept during most of the flights. On one day that Robertson was a passenger, the notes read, “Prayed for diamonds.” (my emphasis)

Now this is a brand of Christian piety than even Dick Cheney could relate to!

Sizemore also discribes the way many graduates from Roberton's Regent University wound up being hired in the Bush Justice Department, where they became a key part of the astonished corruption and politicization of justice that is one of the worst features of the worst Presidential administration in American history. It was one of them, the now-notorious Monica Goodling, who was in charge of "the expenditure of $8,000 on drapes to conceal the partially nude Art Deco statues of Justice in the department’s Great Hall."

But, of course, she and her fellow Regent graduates had more substantial achievements:

Under Ashcroft’s instructions, the department pushed out numerous career lawyers. Goodling, who ultimately resigned in the scandal over the politicization of US attorney appointments, appears to have been among a handful of people who oversaw the politically tinged firings. Granted limited immunity from prosecution, she admitted to the House Judiciary Committee in May 2007 that she “may have gone too far” in applying a partisan litmus test not only to political appointees but also to career Justice Department employees - a possible violation of the Hatch Act. These more seasoned lawyers were replaced by attorneys who had announced memberships in conservative or Christian groups, many of whom were placed in the Civil Rights Division. Since the housecleaning began in 2001, the Division, created to protect African Americans from voter and workplace discrimination, has brought no voting cases and only one employment case on behalf of an African American. The new focus, instead, has been on cases of discrimination against Christians. As late as February 2007, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales authorized a new initiative called the First Freedom Project (so named because religion is the first freedom addressed in the Bill of Rights) and a Religious Freedom Task Force to commit the department to "even greater enforcement of religious rights for all Americans."

Tags: christian right, christianism, pat robertson

Sleaze

Margaret Sanger, a bugaboo of the Christianists

I knew the Radical Right liked to trash birth control pioneer Margaret Sanger (1879-1966). But I don't recall seeing this particular ugly angle, at least not explained so bluntly: I'll Bet You Think This Day is About You Right Wing Watch (People for the American Way) 01/22/08.

The blog post also provides a link to a Planned Parenthood fact sheet about Sanger addressing the trashy misrepresentations of Sanger's record.

This kind of dishonesty is practiced and encouraged by leaders of the Christian Right like Pat Robertson and Tony Perkins. It shows what a bunch of con-men so many of them are.

As Ezra at Right Wing Watch puts it, "Ranting about the supposed secret plans of early birth-control advocate Margaret Sanger is a frequent tactic on the Right."

The hatred and contempt for Martin Luther King that drips from Pat Robertson in this 2006 video clip from Ezra's blog post is a good glimpse of what the Christianist movement largely is: unreconstructed white segregationists.



Notice that Robertson suggests that Sanger may have secretly recruited King to participate in a "black genocide" conspiracy. This kind of diseased conspiracy- and hate-mongering was standard operating procedure for the segregationists of the 1950s and 1960s. And their current incarnation in the Christianist movement is no different. For more on Robertson's own grand Jewish Conspiracty theory of Western history, see my post Pat's paranoia - and bigotry 07/15/05.

Tags: christian fundamentalism, christian right, christianism, margaret sanger, pat robertson, tony perkins

Christianist McCarthyism

Another illustration of the dishonesty and demogoguery of the Christian(ist) Right comes from Ezra at Right Wing Watch, Pat Robertson: Bolshevism Behind Ruling Against Missionaries in Classroom 01/11/08.

The topic of Robertson's goofy comment was a court ruling that Gideons would not be permitted to hand out Christian Bibles in elementary schools. The suit was filed by Christians.

Tags: christian fundamentalism, christian right, christianism, mccarthyism, pat robertson

Future Ron Paul voter?

Did you know there is a Web site called GodTube.com? Neither did I, until I saw a link to the following video in Sarah Posner's "FundamentList" column of 11/14/07 at The American Prospect Online. Their home page as of this writing was featuring a video of a Catholic priest suggesting that Britney Spears is not "a friend of God." (I'm telling you, the fundis hate her!) The video below is of a fundi guy condemning Pat Robertson for endorsing Benito Giuliani for the Republican Presidential nomination.

I'm not posting this because I think it's unintentionally humorous, or because the guy has any particular insight. But I think it is a useful glimpse at a set of attitudes that is very common among grassroots Christian Rightists. He evidently hasn't picked up on the idea which most people learned in, oh, the 1970s, that "girl" is usually not the appropriate description for an adult female.



This guy did have a bit of a problem around the fact that Robertson is a successful evangelist who presumably saved many souls from Hail. But he reconciled it by saying, "Let's face it. According to the Bible, God spoke through a jackass". Lordy, it almost sounds like he thinks Robertson has become a, a ... liberal!!!

This guy admits to the semi-scandalous act of having once voted for a Democrat himself. He's pushing Mike Huckabee here to beat "the odious Hillary Clinton". Speaking of Brother Huckabee, Matt Taibbi just profiled him in Mike Huckabee, Our Favorite Right-Wing Nut Job 11/14/07 Rolling Stone.

Tags: authoritarianism, christian right, matt taibbi, mike huckabee, pat robertson

Time-travel blogging from 1992: rightwing Republicanism

"The time machine convention? That was yesterday."

Back before blogs had been invented, before I even had a personal e-mail, I used to write stuff out occasionally in a notebook. Yes, I'm old enough to remember when we wrote stuff by hand. It was okay, actually. I still do it now and then to keep in practice.

So, blogging directly from the past, here is an entry from 09/09/1992, while Old Man Bush was still President:

********
One of the more dramatic examples of religious bigotry in America lately came from Pat Robertson. I call it religious bigotry, though it's specifically antifeminist, because he claims religious inspiration for his outlook. Robertson this summer wrote a letter supporting the opposition to a state ballot Equal Rights Amendment in Iowa. He wrote:

The feminist agenda is not about equal rights for women. It is a about a socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians. (Quoted in the San Francisco Chronicle 07/07/1992)

********

And here's one from 10/11/1992 reminding us that sleaze-slinging in national politics hardly started with George W. Bush and the Scalia Five. I have to explain, though, that American English has changed since then, in that the color red now stands for the Republican Party; in those long-ago times, "red" stood for Communist. The KGB was the spy service for a since-disappeared country called the Soviet Union. Also, back then Maria Shriver was a reporter, not the First Lady of Cal-i-for-ni-a. Straight from the time machine:

********
The Republican redbaiting this past week, with Bush himself picking up McCarthyist assertions that [Bill] Clinton worked for the KGB in 1969, has been truly appalling. To make up something totally fake like this and repeat it at the highest level is really unethical.

It reminded me of a quote from Republican Party chairman Rich Bond, from August or early September, to Maria Shriver:

We [Republicans] are America. Those other people [Democrats] are not America. (Quoted Mark Shields column Liberal Opinion 09/07/1992)

********
I'm kind of embarrassed by that last one, though. But in those simple days, I was actually surprised by the fact that Old Man Bush was using something like that himself.

Now our current Bush and everyone else in his Party that still supports the war routinely accuses war critics of treason and aiding the enemy.

Can it be that it was all so simple then?
Or has time re-written every line?

Tags: authoritarianism, christian fundamentalism, christian right, george h. w. bush, pat robertson, republican party

Even when he apologizes, he's weird

Pat Robertson offered an apology for his comment on God punished Ariel Sharon for being too liberal with the Palestinians. Kinda sorta: Robertson Apologizes for Comments on Sharon Christian Post 01/13/06.

Christian Broadcaster Pat Robertson apologized for comments he made on television suggesting that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's massive stroke last week was a result of God's wrath for ceding land to Palestinians.

The letter followed an announcement by Israel's Tourism Ministry that it had cut Robertson from plans to build a Christian heritage center near the Sea of Galilee. In the letter addressed to Sharon's son, Omri, and dated Jan. 11, Robertson expressed sympathy over Sharon's condition and asked for forgiveness.

"I ask your forgiveness and the forgiveness of the people of Israel for remarks I made at the time concerning the writing of the holy prophet Joel and his view of the inviolate nature of the land of Israel," he wrote. He added that his comments were, in retrospect "inappropriate and insensitive."

So, Robertson makes a bizarre comment about Ariel Sharon. But he apologizes to the ancient prophet Joel? I think this may be a brand new variation on the "non-apology apology".

Also, one of Robertson's fundamentalist critics over his earlier comment about Sharon said, "I doubt that God sovereignly is punishing him." As opposed to just reguarly punishing him?

Pat's paranoia - and bigotry

One of the more notable manifestations of Christian Right conspiracy theorizing was Pat Robertson's book The New World Order (1991). In it, he described a conspiratorial theory of Western history in which dark forces have been working against God and his Christian people since the French Revolution or so.

Michael Lind reviewed this tract in 1995 for the New York Review of Books: Rev. Robertson's Grand International Conspiracy Theory 02/02/95 issue (the online version is available only in the subscription archive). It's a shame the Review doesn't make this essay freely available on the Web, because it's a very good description of the dark side of the Christian Right brand of Christianity.

Robertson's book is a collection of favorite far-right tales about the centuries-long conspiracy. If there are "classics" of such things, this could probably be considered a classic of what Richard Hofstadter famously described as "the paranoid style in American politics."

And, as Lind points out, Robertson's brand of it, along with the organizational clout of his Christian Coalition group, has attracted some respectable Republican admirers (or at least panderers):

Among the conservative politicians and polemicists who have addressed the Christian Coalition's "Road to Victory" conferences are Bob Dole, Newt Gingrich, Jack Kemp, Oliver North, William Bennett, William Kristol, Jesse Helms, David Brock, and Dinesh D'Souza. Not only do mainstream conservatives avoid criticizing Robertson and his movement, they rush to their defense in print. When the Anti-Defamation League, in 1994, issued a report critical of the religious right, conservatives like William Bennett, Irving Kristol and his son, William, and Midge Decter denounced the supposed "anti-Christian" and "anti-religious" bias of the ADL and of the media in general. Bennett, for example, has written that "Christians active in politics are now on the receiving end of an extraordinary campaign of bias and prejudice."

William "I love Vegas" Bennett's comment about the "bias and prejudice" against Christians is one of the endless examples of the victimization whining by white Christian Republicans that is not only an example of the "paranoid style", but incredibly tedious as well as amazingly callous toward Christians in countries like Saudi Arabia or china where they really are persecuted.

But, oh, what a Faustian bargain the country-club Republicans have made with Christian Right:

The chief motive for conservative appeasement of Robertson and the religious right is strategic; as the editor of a leading conservative magazine explained to me in 1992, "Of course they're mad, but we need their votes." Such conservatives are so impressed with the political power of the Christian Coalition that they even refrain from criticizing the religious right's "biblical" economic proposals, like the banning of usury and the abolition of debts in a periodic "year of jubilee." In addition, many Jewish neoconservatives value fundamentalist support for American military and economic subsidies to Israel. Writing in Commentary in 1984, Irving Kristol called on American Jews to recognize that American Protestant fundamentalists are "strongly pro-Israel." Excusing an evangelical leader who said that God does not hear the prayers of Jews, Kristol wrote: "Why should Jews care about the theology of a fundamentalist preacher?... What do such theological abstractions matter as against the mundane fact that this same preacher is vigorously pro-Israel?" (my emphasis)

In fact, the "pro-Israel" position of the Christian Right normally translate into support for the settler movement (the biggest obstacle to a Middle East peace), advocacy for the hardlines positions of the Israeli Likud Party and bitter opposition to any meaningful atttempt by an Israeli government to achieve a practical peace agreement with the Palestinians. But, in fact, the fundamentalist Christian supposed love for Israel is based on very traditional Christian attitudes toward Jews. Attitudes which historically have borne some very poisonous fruit.

Lind quotes the Rev. Robertson's book:

Indeed, it may well be that men of goodwill like Woodrow Wilson, Jimmy Carter, and George [H.W.] Bush, who sincerely want a larger community of nations living at peace in our world, are in reality unknowingly and unwittingly carrying out the mission and mouthing the phrases of a tightly knit cabal whose goal is nothing less than a new order for the human race under the domination of Lucifer and his followers.

This Luciferian conspiracy to bring peace to the world began, in Robertson's view, with a group called the Illuminati, which successfully took over the Freemasons. Hofstadter credits the Anti-Masonic Party with being the first organized manifestation of the paranoid style in politics in the US. And how did peace on earth, good will to men and all that become a Hellish goal?

With funding from Jewish financiers, the Illuminati/Masons caused the French Revolution. As Robertson describes it:

The slaughter that followed was not merely an assault on the king and the aristocracy - what was called the ancien regime - it was an assault against everyone, even the leaders of the Reign of Terror that followed on the heels of the revolution. The satanic carnage that the Illuminati brought to France was the clear predecessor of the bloodbaths and successive party purges visited on the Soviet Union by the communists under both Lenin and Stalin.

Then the Illuminati/Masons - with Jewish money, of course - incited the European revolutions of 1848.

The Revolutions of 1848 are not that well known in the US, but those revolutions came close to sweeping away much of the old monarchical order in continental Europe. Even the Habsburgs had to abandon Vienna to the democratic revolutionaries for a while. These revolutions are one of the most important milestones in the history of democracy, in Europe and the world. To Robertson, they were a Luciferian plot bankrolled by Jewish money.

In this paragraph, Lind points out one of the standard slimy verbal tricks of the Radical Right, one to keep an eye out for if you are ever trolling around the sewer to far-right ideology:

Marx and Engels, though, were given direction by another Jew, who happened also to be one of the early advocates of a Jewish state: "The precise connecting link between the German Illuminati and the beginning of world communism was furnished by a German radical named Moses Hess" (p. 69). (Note Robertson's use here, as in his descriptions of other Jews later, of the adjective "German" rather than "Jewish." This does not necessarily mean much, since the adjective "German" or "European" frequently refers to Jews in the American literature of anti-Semitism.) Just as the Rothschilds presided over the marriage of Illuminism and Freemasonry, so Moses Hess, the secret Illuminist, is the true father of world communism. This is the first mention in Robertson's book of that longstanding anti-Semitic myth, the Judeo-Bolshevik conspiracy. It is not the last.

One of the more vomit-inducing aspects of Robertson's account of the American struggle with this Jewish conspiracy is that he tries to make Andrew Jackson (who was a Mason, by the way) and Abraham Lincoln heroes of the fight against the Jew/Mason/Illuminati plot.

Lind elaborates:

What was the goal of these international bankers who were controlled, ultimately, by Satan, through the invisible but powerful Illuminated Freemasons? Robertson's answer comes close to endorsing one of the gravest anti-Semitic slanders of all - the claim that wealthy, cosmopolitan Jews incite wars in order to make money as war profiteers.

And he quotes Robertson on this topic:

The money barons of Europe, who had established privately owned central banks like the Bank of England, found in war the excuse to make large loans to sovereign nations from money that they created out of nothing to be repaid by taxes from the people of the borrowing nations. The object of the lenders was to stimulate government deficit spending and subsequent borrowing. War served that purpose nicely, but from 1945 to 1990 the full mobilization for the Cold War and the resultant massive national borrowings accompanied the result just as well without a full-scale shooting war. [p. 122, emphasis added]

Yes, according to Robertson, even the Cold War was part of the Big Jewish Plot.

Well, you get the drift. The Council on Foreign Relations, one of the stock bogeymen of the John Birch Society crowd, figures in Robertson's theory as one of the main instruments of the grand conspiracy, which unites international (Jewish) banking to Communism and war profiteering. Quoting Robertson again:

In fact, is there not a possibility that the Wall Street bankers, who have so enthusiastically financed Bolshevism in the Soviet Union since 1917, did so not for the purpose of promoting world communism but for the purpose of saddling the Soviet Union with a totally wasteful and inefficient system that in turn would force the Soviet government to be dependent on Western bankers for its survival?

Are you following this? Yes, this is how one of the most influential Christian Right leaders in America sees the grand sweep of history.

It's worth listening closely whenever Christian Right types start talking about Jews. In The New World Order, Robertson says that the Holocaust was a warm-up job by Satan for what he intends to do to Christians in America, a process Robertson thought was well under way in the US in 1991. This would be back when Old Man Bush was president.

And the apocalyptic notions promoted by the Christian Right - based on a reading of the Scriptures that is anything but "literal" - is often the vehicle for some of their most appalling notions. Lind:

In his book The New Millennium, published in 1990, Robertson explicitly set forth his views about Jews and Israel. In the rapidly approaching Last Days, Israel will be destroyed: "That tiny little nation will find itself all alone in the world. Then according to the Bible, the Jews will cry out to the one they have so long rejected...." The destruction of Israel will only be possible, however, because of American acquiescence: "One day a vote against Israel will come in the United Nations when the United States neither abstains or uses its veto in the Security Council to protect Israel."

The US will abandon Israel, it seems, because American Christians, despite warnings by their leaders against anti-Semitism, will turn in wrath against the "cosmopolitan, liberal, secular Jews" who want "unrestricted freedom for smut and pornography and the murder of the unborn." Robertson writes of "the ongoing attempt of liberal Jews in America to undermine the public strength of Christianity" and notes that "the liberal, wealthy Jews voted for Democratic candidates Carter, Mondale, and Dukakis, not Reagan and Bush." ...

Robertson's argument is that the destruction of Israel in the near future, though ordained by God, may be hastened if "wealthy" and "cosmopolitan" Jews foolishly provoke America's Christian majority, which is represented today, it must be presumed, by Robertson's own Christian Coalition.

And Lind also observes about fundamentalist apocalyptic thinking:

Apart from its emphasis on the United States rather than Nazi Germany, Robertson's elaborate conspiracy theory of world politics differs from populist and fascist conspiracy theories in one significant respect: it does not resort to overt anti-Semitism. This last reflects the influence of premillennial Protestant fundamentalism, which holds that the reestablishment of the State of Israel is the prelude to the Last Days, when most Jews will be destroyed and when the remnant will convert to Christianity. But the conservative Jews who defend Robertson in Commentary apparently do not realize that fundamentalist support for Israel is not incompatible with dislike and resentment of American Jews, especially liberal Jews, of a kind that Robertson has repeatedly expressed. (my emphasis)

I would say that "not incompatible", which certainly accurate is a mild description of the relationship of this theory to anti-Semitism. In fact, it comes from the aspect of Christian tradition that was most deeply hostile to Jews and Judaism. As the highlighted passage just quoted shows, this fundamentalist view assumes that God has designed an End of Days scenario in which "most Jews will be destroyed." It's safe to say than any view that looks forward to the day when "most Jews will be destroyed" is a fundamentally anti-Semitic theory.

Lind in his review compares at some lenght parallel claims about the Jewish conspiracy in history to that of William Guy Carr in a book called Pawns in the Game, which Lind calls "a post - World War II defense of Hitler and fascism." Although Robertson doesn't explicitly defend the latter, Lind shows with long quotations how much Robertson embraces the same lines of argumentation.

And Lind's concluding paragraphs are well worth noting:

The evidence most relevant to the question of whether Robertson is an anti-Semite is found in the details of his conspiracy theory as set forth in The New World Order. Between the Illuminati and the Freemasons the link is the Frankfurt branch of the Rothschild family. "Lord Rothschild" - presumably Nathan Mayer Rothschild, who became a peer in 1885 - was the key link connecting the Judeo-Masonic conspiracy with the British Empire, through the Milner circle and Cecil Rhodes. Between world Freemasonry and world communism, the critical link is provided by Moses Hess. Between the Judeo-Masonic-Bolshevik "European bankers," the Ivy League American establishment, and Lenin's revolutionary Bolsheviks, the key links are two Jews, Paul Warburg and Jacob Schiff. Not only does the "octopus" control everything, but many of the major "tentacles" turn out to be Jews.

Robertson's theories about Jewish bankers and Jewish revolutionaries are central to his conspiracy theory, which in turn is central to his vision of his own destiny, his movement, and his ambitions for the American Right and the Republican party and the United States of America. Not since Father Coughlin or Henry Ford has a prominent white American so boldly and unapologetically blamed the disasters of modern world history on the machinations of international high finance in general and on a few influential Jews in particular. And not since Huey Long, with his Share Our Wealth movement, has there been a radical populist movement as powerful in American politics as Robertson's Christian Coalition.

Much has been written in the American press about neo-fascist movements in Italy, Germany, Japan, and France. But the United States is the only industrial democracy in which a far-right political leader in one of only two major parties has created a base of support so powerful that conventional politicians and intellectuals in his party feel they must defend him from charges of anti-Semitism. They have so far managed to ignore the fact that his best-selling book purveys the Illuminati–Freemason–Communist–High Finance conspiracy theory of world history familiar from generations of anti-Semitic propaganda. What would such conservatives, particularly Jewish neo-conservatives, be saying if Louis Farrakhan had written a book that made the New York Times best-seller list and claimed that Jewish financiers like the Rothschilds, Paul Warburg, and Jacob Schiff were leaders in a two-century old Freemason-Communist-Banker conspiracy to exploit American taxpayers and the members of the armed forces in America by stirring up deficit-funded wars?

Pat Robertson has written such a book. He has not repudiated a single word of it. Ralph Reed and the conservatives who dominate the newly ascendant Republican party would prefer that we continue to ignore it. (my emphasis)

That description of Robertson's poisonous ideology is a good one to remember the next time you hear some OxyContin Radio jock ranting about anti-Semitism in Europe, pretending to be against it.

Anyone who ignores this deep strain of ugly religious bigotry in the Christian Right is just closing their eyes to reality.

Tags: anti-semitism, authoritarianism, christian fundamentalism, christian right, christianism, michael lind, pat robertson

Pat Robertson suggests blowing up State Department

Providing yet another example of the Christian Right's version of Christian love and patriotism, Pat Robertson announces that he thinks blowing up the State Department would be dandy. Interviewing a rightwing author of a book very critical of the State Department, Robertson had this to say on his flagship 700 Club program:

"I read your book," Robertson said, according to a transcript of the interview posted on his Christian Broadcasting Network's website (www.cbn.com).

"When you get through, you say, 'If I could just get a nuclear device inside Foggy Bottom [the State Department], I think that's the answer'," he said.

"I mean, you get through this, and you say, 'We've got to blow that thing up.' I mean, is it as bad as you say?" Robertson asked.

The standard reaction for rightwingers who get embarassed by having stuff like this publicized outside their fan base is to start furiously parsing the words to say he shouldn't be criticized for saying what he said.

The State Department took what strikes me as an unusual step of making a formal complaint to Robertson. Department spokesporson Richard Boucher said Robertson's comment was "despicable," an accurate characterization. Also, an anonymous "senior department official" claimed that "a protest had been made 'at the higest level'."

I don't know if "highest level" in this case means the President, but presumably it means at least Secretary of State Colin Powell.

As much as I dislike Robertson's extremist politics, his fanatical religion and his anti-Semitic conspiracy-theory view of history, there's something disturbing about the fact that the State Deparment made it so public that they had greeted his raving with such high-level responses. Why didn't they just publicly dismiss him as an extremist kook? Or refer the remark to law enforcement for review? After all, if most of us had made a remark like that on television, we might well receive a visit from the Secret Service or the FBI.

Maybe we should at least be happy that, in this case, some Administration officials are willing to criticize a prominent Republican leader for "hate speech."

Tags: authoritarianism, christian right, christian fundamentalism, christianism, pat robertson