I am posting some of the best articles and posts written across the internet over the past couple of decades by scholars, journalists and researchers who do a stellar job of putting this all in perspective for those who are seeking answers to the questions above.

We must go beyond Wikipedia to get an accurate picture. Even though the contributors have expanded the definition over the months to incorporate the broad-base way in which I began using this term nearly 3 years ago – it is subject to a tug-and-pull by those who argue the “correctness” in defining Dominionism.

I have intentionally used it as an umbrella term for a radical Christian sect whose goal is to take “dominion” over all things secular and then spin this Nation into a Christian Nationalist country run by a theocratic government. Putting it VERY simply…

“Defined in its simplest form, Christian Dominionism is a political approach to Christian faith based on a literal interpretation of Genesis Chapter 1 verses 26 – 28 of the Christian Bible. Believers perceive themselves as the “chosen” or the “elect”, commanded by God to “subdue” the earth and “have dominion” over all living creatures.

The goal of Christian Dominionism in the United States is to abolish Separation of Church and State, establishing it as a distinctively Christian Nation based upon Old Testament Mosaic Law.

Dominionism is an umbrella term that harbors many divergent franchise groups claiming a foundation in Christianity.

You must be “born again” ~ accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Saviour ~ and profess your personal relationship with Christ.” ~ Leah L Burton

Dominion = take over = ANY type of Christian who believes that their theology trumps anyone else’s and work to impose their brand of twisted Christianity on the rest of the world – period.

Simple? Yes. But it is understandable. This is a minority of those who call themselves Christian. To put it succinctly…

All Christians are NOT Dominionists ~ But ~ All Dominionists CLAIM Christianity

Here is one of the very BEST expanded definitions of Dominionism I have seen anywhere, by renowned Dominionist expert researcher/author and blogger at www.discernementministries.com as well as www.herescope.com. With her permission I am posting the captures of her Newsletter. If you find this difficult to read in this format you can always click on any one of the panels below to view her pdf that will allow you to enlarge the article.

Many, many thanks to Sarah Leslie for letting me post this entire article here for all of you to read. As I say, she is a renowned authority on Dominionism and her work has contributed to  those like myself getting involved in this fight against a Scripture-twisted co-opting of the Christian faith to use as a vehicle to take control over our lives and erode our freedoms falsely using the name of Jesus Christ.

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The following is an article posted at Newsvine.com in May 2009 by my fellow researcher, Alex Bird who writes as “dogemporer”:

Over the past few days, I’ve written articles for Wayang Party on the international involvement of Joel’s Army groups in the steeplejack of AWARE 1 and the actual agenda of the American-based “Christian Nationalist” group Focus on the Family 2. From the responses received here, it’s obvious that steeplejacking and the growth of “Christian Nationalism”–especially the Joel’s Army variety–is of such a national concern that even the Home Affairs Minister has issued a statement warning of the threat to the secular state 3.

In this particular article, I wish to present essentially a layman’s guide to the internal mythology of “Joel’s Army”–and how it tends to radically differ from mainstream Christianity or even evangelical Christianity.

A “Joel’s Army” mythological primer

Firstly, just to note–in this particular sense, I’m using the term “myth” in the way sociologists use it, not in the term that it’s used in common parlance. Basically, in social sciences, “mythology” and “myths” are used to refer to stories people tell to teach a certain cultural and spiritual path–there’s no value judgement made on this. (I note this, as an aside, because people in modern living faith systems sometimes get offended when sociologists refer to their religious or spiritual paths as “mythology” or “myths”.)

Anyways, much like other faith systems (including mainstream Christianity), “Joel’s Army” groups have their own faith system that is often at radical odds with mainstream Christianity.

One area where the Joel’s Army groups diverge from mainstream Christianity is with the common Christian story of the fall of man from grace–where Eve and Adam were tempted to eat the fruit despite God’s warning. Joel’s Army groups tend to teach that at this moment Satan was given dominion over the world 4–this becomes very important later, because it can be argued the whole general theme of Joel’s Army theology is dominion–literally a Biblical mandate to take over the world.

The Wagner-linked Joel’s Army groups, as well as some of the older Assemblies-linked “Joel’s Army” groups, go even further and promote concepts not noted in the Bible at all. Specifically, they rely on a very odd claim by William F. Branham 5–an early “Latter Rain” preacher (“Latter Rain” was a sort of proto-”Joel’s Army” movement popular in the 30s and 40s)–that claims that Eve made love to the Serpent and that Cain and his descendants were, literally, sons of the Devil.

Branham’s concept of interspecies and interplanar adultery–what he termed the “Serpent Seed” theology–ended up going in two different directions. One branch, promoted by racists (Branham was a known member of the Ku Klux Klan) became the racist theology known in the US as Christian Identity; the other branch–which held that people who opposed the “Latter Rain” and its agenda were the “sons of the Devil”–became what we know now as Joel’s Army or Elijah’s Army. (Interestingly, Branham himself may have well coined the “Elijah’s Army” branding–he promoted himself as a reincarination of the prophet Elijah. 6)

This isn’t the only area at variance with traditional Christian eschatology. In traditional Christian belief, Jesus’ death and resurrection ultimately defeated the devil. “Joel’s Army” churches have a decidedly neutered interpretation of this–usually they preach that Jesus was tortured in hell or wrestled the devil in hell for three days (the so-called “Harrowing of Hell”), and his death and resurrection only merely bought the keys for man to take back dominion–and it is “Joel’s Army”, acting as “regents for Christ”, who must reclaim the world and society for God. (Yes, you’re reading this right; essentially these groups promote Christ as being too weak to free humanity. Christians may be free to be utterly mortified at this.)

In “Joel’s Army” theology, the world is at perpetual war, with the “Army of God” at one end, the literal sons of the devil at the other, and most of humanity and humanity’s diverse societies seen as literal battlefield “territory” to be “named and claimed”. This is, in part, why there’s such a heavy emphasis on steeplejacking and taking over institutions (including other churches) from within–in their viewpoint (as I’ll note in the next few paragraphs), the people within aren’t really “Saved” and thus are seen as legitimate territory to “name and claim”. 7

In addition, the “Joel’s Army” groups tend to be neopentecostal (often labeled as “charismatic” in denominations that aren’t traditionally part of the pentecostal movement)–and these tend to have some rather unique claims regarding salvation, especially those close to traditionally neopentecostal denominations.

Most mainstream Christian churches either believe one is saved at baptism (the Baptists and a number of other “adult baptism” Protestant groups) or upon confession and formal dedication to the church including first Communion (Catholics, Anglicans, and most of the Christian denominations that practice infant baptism). Most Christian churches also tend to believe that once one has been saved, one retains that salvation short of really messing up (things like mortal sins like murder, etc. or outright conversion to another religion).

“Joel’s Army” groups, and neopente groups in general, are a little different. In these groups, you are not seen as truly saved unless one has had an additional “baptism in fire” or “baptism in the Holy Spirit”–and in these groups, the invariable sign of this is some form of supernatural manifestation. In pentecostal churches, this has traditionally been “speaking in tongues” (usually without someone translating what is being spoken, and usually noted as being a “heavenly language”); in the “charismatic” groups in “non-denominational” churches and steeplejacked churches, this tends to be in regards to other “divine gifts” (usually someone being a prophet or an “apostle”)–you hear a lot about something called the “fivefold ministry” 8, which is a term used for a specific division of “divine categories” of preachers and pastors in these groups.

Even in the mainstream churches that do accept “speaking in tongues” and divine gifts of the Spirit, the practice is a lot different. Typically “speaking in tongues” requires the tongue to be in an earthly language and translated to be accepted (for example, this is how it works in evangelical Methodist churches in the US); other divine gifts also have similar “testing of the fruits of the Spirit”. There is little or none of this testing in churches infected with Joel’s Army theology; in fact, people who attempt to do so are often accused of “denying the river” or of being possessed by the Devil and trying to “rob God’s blessing” 9.

In general, there is a huge emphasis (compared to mainstream Christian churches) of “signs and wonders”–up to and including claims that the “outbreaks of miracles” are proof that these groups are the only ones truly saved, and that only they have the “key” to thwarting the Devil and unlocking all the blessings that are rightfully theirs (as direct descendants of God via Adam). In Singapore itself, this imagery has even included references to the “red packets” traditionally given out at Lunar New Year’s 10.

Conversely, it’s also taught that it is very easy to lose salvation, to “backslide”, to even lose one’s blessing if it is not aggressively “named and claimed”. This leads to things like 40-day “fasting and prayer marathons” (where they don’t eat for 40 days in fasting that is more severe than Puasa/Ramadhan fasting) where people pray for wealth or healing, the “prophetic conferences”–and massive calls for censorship of anything that could be opposed to their theology, because the mere act of being exposed to such things can lead to “demonic oppression”–essentially remaining not-rich and in strife–or even frank possession by the devil. (This, incidentially, may be why AWARE itself was targeted–not only is LGBT tolerance considered controlled by demons, but feminism in and of itself is promoted as being controlled by “Jezebel spirits”.) The term for this is “deliverance ministry”, and in practice tends to lead to people being isolated from all info sources other than that led by the church 11.

It’s not only what you do that may mess things up as well. Even “saved” people can be “demonically oppressed” due to the actions of their ancestors up to seven generations back, according to their theology–there’s even a term for it called “generational curses”. (Those of you who have respect for the ancestors are free to be rightfully horrified.) This has led to literal purges of pre-Christian cultural references en masse in some countries (sub-Saharan Africa in particular as well as in Guatemala 12).

This has led to another thing at wide variance to mainstream Christianity–the practice of Joel’s Army exorcisms 13. Most Christian churches do not conduct the rite of exorcism, or tend to have only specific people trained in the rite who have also had psychological training to be able to differentiate mental illness from potential “spiritual illness”; Catholic priests trained in the Rite of Exorcism are essentially to a one licensed psychologists in their countries. “Joel’s Army” groups conduct it all the time, and for such perceived things as being a feminist (and thus being possessed by “Jezebel spirits”) or a child being “willful” or someone being depressed; this has led to suicides and worse in the US and elsewhere 14.

The demon-haunted world of Joel’s Army also directly leads to their “mandate from God” to steeplejack everything.

In Joel’s Army theology (unlike mainstream Christianity, which typically teaches–even in its evangelical variants–that the kingdom of God is not one of this world) it’s taught that businesses and countries and entire cultures, just like people, can gain and lose God’s blessing depending on how strictly they follow the “battle plan”–and that just like people, businesses and countries and cultures can be literally possessed by Satan en masse. (In the States, it’s popularly promoted by Joel’s Army groups that Moslems as a whole are possessed; this, despite large populations of moderate Moslems in Singapore and Malaysia.)

In order to secure not only their own “blessing” but “blessings for their nation”, Joel’s Army groups feel they must take over all institutions, essentially “exorcise” them, and “name and claim” them for God–converting everything to a Joel’s Army owned-and-operated tool for theocracy that, taken to its ultimate extent, forces non-NAR people–including Christians not part of steeplejacked churches–to submit or die. (And yes, they have stated rather blatantly internally this is the intent.) There are even specific seminars on this subject–the “Transformation” conferences (of which a branch is held in Singapore sponsored by LOVE Singapore) promote a particular branding of this strategy called the “Seven Mountains Strategy” 15 that goes into rather graphic detail on how not only governments but NGOs, schools, entertainment industries, the military, and all pillars of society must be taken over as “strongholds from the enemy”.

Other uniquely “Joel’s Army” theologies

The evidence of “Joel’s Army” and “Christian Identity” groups being “brothers” shows up in other ways as well that don’t show up in any other group claiming to be Christian.

“Joel’s Army” groups have been documented promoting the “Phinehas Priesthood” (named after a famous Israeli priest who impaled a man and his Midianite lover in the temple, led a bloody revolution, and went on to almost cause fully a fourth of the tribes in Israel to be slaughtered over a misunderstanding over building a second temple) as an example of the levels of dedication needed to take over the world 16; there’s a Christian Identity group in the US that has used the same name as a call for extermination of interracial couples (and has occasionally committed pro-racist domestic terrorism here in the US) 17.

In addition, the endtime theology of these groups is so variant that it deserves a special mention.

Most mainstream Christian groups tend to fall in one of three categories regarding their concept of the end of the world: postmillenial (meaning that Jesus reigns for 1000 years and then the end of the world comes), premillenial (meaning that Jesus “raptures up” the Faithful, seven years of literal hell on earth breaks out in what is called the Tribulation, and then evil is defeated and Jesus reigns for 1000 years) or amillenial (in which the millenial reign is seen as rather irrelevant and the important thing is “doing what Jesus would do”). Typically most Protestant groups trend towards postmillenial or amillenial thought, with evangelical groups trending towards either being postmillenial or premillenial.

The denominations that spawned “Joel’s Army” (the Assemblies of God and Foursquare) started out as premillenial–and some of the unique quirks in their versions of premillenial theology come from a particular reference bible called the Scofield Reference Bible 18. Premillenial theology, more often termed premillenial dispensationalism, is actually pretty young as a theology (dating back to John Darby in the 1820s and with what would become the Brethren), and Scofield’s version even younger than that (1907 at its earliest). Much of Scofield’s version did become the basis for the theology promoted in “Assemblies linked” groups like Campus Crusade and FGBMFI, and later on Youth With A Mission.

The Wagner line started out as postmillenial–with a unique twist, based on a version of Latter Rain theology called “Manifest Sons of God”, that claimed that in essence the church was the “corporate Christ” and that the millenial reign could not begin until everything was “named and claimed”.19

There’s been quite a lot of cross-fertilisation, and now the dominant theology can’t really be said to be premillenial or postmillenial–more of “quasi-premillenial” theology that goes something like this 20:

a) Satan has dominion over most of the world, so “strongholds” and in particular spiritually powerful areas known as “gates” have to be secured, purged of Satanic influence, and converted to “Godly strongholds” to secure blessings for those peoples in the area. (Of note: Singapore has been mentioned as a “gate” in Wagner’s “Joel’s Army” groups 21.)

b) Areas “named and claimed” will be sites of great miracles and “outpourings” which will cause people to convert en masse, adding foot soldiers to “Elijah’s Army”. It’s taught that until a critical mass of people are converted (“every nation”, and/or 144,000 Jewish people, and/or 1/3rd of the human population total–there’s a huge emphasis on “second billion” (as in “second billion Christians”) in some Joel’s Army circles) Jesus cannot return–hence there’s the whole “regents and holding army for Christ” thing going on.

c) Rapture happens, two people convert post-Rapture and are martyred in Jerusalem (where every Jewish person in the world has been herded by the Russians–this is one of the Scofield weirdnesses that was originally a reference to Tsarist progroms) and this causes a massive revival about three and a half years into the
Tribulation

d) At the end of the Tribulation, all the Raptured along with General Jesus descend from Heaven and join the convertees, who all proceed to slaughter the rest of humanity, consign them to Hell, and are granted a “new heaven and new earth” as reward.

Amazingly enough, this very scenario has been laid out for public view in a book series. Tim LaHaye, who has not only written several books on this particular endtime scenario but has co-published (along with Jerry Jenkins) what amounts to Joel’s Army fanfiction (the “Left Behind” series). It’s a wildly popular series among the Joel’s Army set in the US, and a writer called “Slacktivist” has been conducting a read-through including notes on the rather bizarre theology promoted therein (at least from a mainstream Christian viewpoint) 22.

Scofield’s contributions bear special note. Among other things, Scofield is directly responsible for claims that Russia and Iran will go to the Final War with the US and Israel; this was used to frighteningly good effect by early Joel’s Army groups who promoted themselves as “anti-Communist” (and now are being promoted as “anti-Islamist” as well, though being arguably as dangerous). This has led to some very interesting conspiracy theory, including claims that the United Nations is run by the Russians or is otherwise secretly a Soviet plot. In addition, Scofield’s view of how the world will end can literally be described as a sort of “Hopscotch with the Bible”–hopping to one verse, then another, then another, often in separate testaments much less books or chapters, and typically taking verses wildly out of context 23. (This has often led to even evangelical Christians wondering just where they’re getting this stuff.)

In addition, Joel’s Army groups also have a heavy emphasis on “divine revelation” completely outside of the Bible altogether–they put as much stock in utterances of “prophets” and “apostles” (as long as their utterances fall under the general “party line” of the Joel’s Army group in question) as the Bible itself, and if the “prophecy” is justified at all it’s often in terms of other “prophecies” or a Bible verse taken out of context. (There’s an amazing amount of examples of this “in action” over at the main Joel’s Army site online, “Elijah’s List” 24.)

All in all, Joel’s Army groups can legitimately be said to be about as divorced from mainstream Christianity–or even mainstream, non-NAR evangelical Christianity–as, say, the Unification Church or other “Bible-based” groups. (Many Biblical scholars at the least state they should be essentially treated as a third denominational grouping separate from Catholicism/Orthodoxy and Protestantism; some have more recently argued that these groups should be considered a religion wholly separate from historical Christianity 25.)

You will find a complete listing of all of her footnotes to this article by going to Newsvine where this article was first published.

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There are many, many knowledgeable researchers, writers, teachers, ex-Dominionist theologians and more who have written about the dangers of this extremism and it is impossible to list them all here – but I will provide links to some of the most notable articles that are well wroth taking the time to read.

• The Despoiling of America by Katherine Yurica – Yurica Report.com
• Dominionism & the Rise of Christian Imperialism by Sarah Leslie
• A Collection of Articles by Dr. Orrel Steinkamp
• A Collection of Contributors at Theocracy Watch.org

I will add more over time…but this should sufficiently overwhelm any first time reader of Christian Dominionism in American politics. Stay with me! We need everyone to become aware of this extremism. It is our own homegrown version of what the Muslim world has dealt with for years when they are all lumped in with the Islamic extremists.

Mainline Christians are no more Dominionists than all Muslims are Muslim extremists.

I hope you will all take the time to read every word of this posting even though it is quite long. This is so important for all of us to understand, Christians and non-Christians alike. Conservatives and liberals. ALL Americans! And please…once you have read this, pass it on to as many people as you possibly can! We can stop this theocratic runaway train from becoming a train wreck that changes our country and the world forever!

Today’s thoughts revolve around countering the Dominionist conservative perspective that justifies outrageous defense spending at the expense of proposing catastrophic social services cuts that protect our most vulnerable in America.

LET’S TALK ABOUT WAR

By Howard Bess

At every level of governmental organization, our nation is talking about budgets.

Budgets are revealing of the values of our nation.  Budgets are just as much moral statements as the Ten Commandments or the Sermon on the Mount.  The language that is used may be different, but the essence is plain for the reader, who reads with thoughtful consideration.

Dwight Eisenhower was the first candidate for U.S. President for whom I voted.  I believed he was not just a war hero but also a man of high moral integrity.  While history has shown him to have his flaws, I remember him for two things.  He proposed and initiated the building of the interstate highway system.  I have driven the interstate highways from California to Maine and from Florida to Washington.  As I have driven this magnificent system, I recalled Eisenhower and his grand dream.

The second thing for which I remember Eisenhower is his comments about war weaponry.  Many people remember his comment about the dangers of the American military/industrial complex.  America built the highway but did not listen at all to his warning about the partnership between American industry and American military.

His more important statement about military weaponry is longer, harder to remember, but equally ignored.  “Every gun that is made, every warship that is launched, every rocket fired, in the final sense, is a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.  This world in arms is not spending money alone.  It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.”

I had respect for General Eisenhower as a war leader in World War II, but that was an exercise in destruction.  Dead Americans on the beaches of Normandy were his nightmare.  The building of the interstate highway system was an exercise in building in which Eisenhower must have found great satisfaction.  The great sadness of his life must be an America that has not listened to his warnings about the cost of weapons that robs every vulnerable American citizen.

The budgets that continue to feed an American military monstrosity are moral documents that fail every test of decency and moral sensitivity.

In the discussions about our federal budget, few people are willing to attack the military portion of the budget.  With attitudes that would please Ayn Rand, legislators are willing to cut appropriations for health care, education, the arts and public television, while leaving intact military expenditures.

Americans have become obsessed with the nation’s military strength.  Just as the alcoholic is addicted to alcohol and the drug addict is addicted to his drug of choice, Americans are addicted to military spending.  Here in Alaska we cannot imagine life without Elmendorf Air Force Base, Fort Richardson, and Eielson Air Force Base.  They are billed as being essential for American defense.  In truth, second only to oil, military spending is one of the economic driving forces of the Alaskan economy.  Alaskans love military spending because it benefits the Alaska economy.

Slated for elimination from the federal budget is funding for Alaska’s Denali Commission.  What does the Denali Commission do?  It builds water and waste systems for the native villages that dot our vast state.  It builds health clinics and provides basic dental care for the benefit of the residents of those same villages.

And the words of Eisenhower ring in my ears.

As we examine military spending, the great folly is not military spending, it is war itself.  War is about killing human beings.  The winner of wars is the nation that is willing to kill people beyond the tolerance of its foe.  As obscene as military spending by America might be, it is nothing compared to the loss of life that accompanies every war.

Our current war in Afghanistan has claimed the lives of over 6,000 Americans.  An additional 40,000 have been wounded.  Those who will suffer psychological problems for the remainder of their lives are added to the human toll.  The casualties of allies and enemies far exceed the losses suffered by Americans.  While President Obama has promised withdrawal of American troops, the killing and the injuries to life will continue.

When we talk of the human costs of war, the conversation takes a different turn.  If our legislative bodies voted on the military budget in terms of life, rather than dollars, would the vote be altered?  Voting 300 billion dollars for the Afghanistan War is acceptable.  Would voting another 3,000 dead Americans and another 10,000 wounded Americans clarify the vote?

Jim Wallis, editor of Sojourners Magazine, has recently pointed out that the issue of the human cost of war does not move the power brokers of America.  Since the draft was set aside in favor of an all volunteer military, middle and upper class Americans have almost disappeared from the enlisted ranks of the U.S. military.  Americans who are doing the dying are from the ranks of America’s minorities and poor.

As we examine war and its costs, its unacceptability becomes even more dramatic.  The true costs of war are being hidden in an unassailable federal budget.  We are deluded if we think budgets are not moral statements.

THE END

The Rev. Howard Bess is a retired American Baptist minister, who lives in Palmer, Alaska.

 

Here is why this is a wake up call to those of us in America who truly are moderates – whether liberal or conservative; Democrat or pre-Religious Right Republican; believer or non-believer – MOST Americans do not want to live in a theocracy. A theocracy is a government that is run by a religious authority.

I make this point because, as I have said so often throughout the years I have written on this post, the current incarnation of the Republican Party is controlled by Christian Dominionists. Because of that, my focus as a staunch advocate of the separation of church & state focuses in on the Dominionist politicians because they are such a serious threat to our freedoms.

Of those many politicians and candidates, Palin is but one. Left unchecked and taken very seriously she will careen headlong into the nomination. Romney and Huntsman will NEVER win because they are Mormon…might as well be Pagan in this GOP crowd. Newt, aside from being a royal jack ass, liar, fraud, narcissist, etc. he would have done better to revert back to his Southern Baptist Convention roots instead of choosing to become an Opus Dei Catholic…again might as well be Pagan. Santorum…Catholic…Pagan…

So who are we left with?

The time has come to review who we have so far gathering in the GOP 2012 Zoo. I will be posting this as a series because there are more characters in this gathering than most of us may realize. A hat tip and thank you to Republican Candidates.org for doing the leg work to assemble them in one place. You can see the alphabetical list on their site, but I will add to it below, beginning with the first 5 in the Declared or Exploring category. Our commentary is provided for by my trusty researcher, Alex Bird and we will be honing these assessments for you over the coming months ahead:

Herman Cain - basically a Dominionist preacher who also is owner of Godfather Pizza and largely ran that chain into the ground. As the former CEO of Godfather’s Pizza (a regional pizza chain that has all but gone out of business) who became known in GOP circles when he was involved in the deliberate sabotage of the Clinton attempts to pass healthcare reform in 1993/1994; he was primarily a radio host and, most recently, a commentator on the Fox News Business channel and a syndicated columnist.

Gary E. Johnson is basically a bone being thrown out for the Ron Paul fanboys; he’s run primarily as a pseudo-libertarian.  He’s best known for pushing heavily for school vouchers so as to divert tax dollars to sectarian schools. He’s also called for marijuana decriminalisation, so it’s doubtful he will actually get the nomination; he’s probably being nominated primarily because his example when he was governor of New Mexico could be described primarily as drowning government in a bathtub (he actually set records for vetos whilst in office). 

Johnson is one of the few who is not an overt NARasite or Dominionist per se, he is a hardcore Ayn Rand-oid and is friendly towards the crazier segments of libertarianism. Has been known to partner with Dominionist GOP members in what amounts to “marriages of convenience” and would be popular among the neocon and uber-libertarian wings (basically, the guy is trying to be in the same general mold as Ron Paul, and his candidacy is designed to appeal to those who’d be big Ron Paul fans).

Fred Karger – Nomination is as likely as the New Jersey Devils moving to downtown Hades.  Openly gay ex-Republican, could not even get nominated, is running as an independent; has been in VERY active spats with Mitt Romney over the LDS’s support of Proposition 8; of Jewish descent (and presumably part of a Reform or Restoration congregation, as Orthodox Jews tend to be anti-LGBT).  I would hesitate to even consider him a Republican at this point, as the Log Cabin Republicans have been all but pushed out of the party and he HAS pretty much de facto (if not de jure) left the GOP…A prime example of working against ones own interests.

Right Wing Extremists Anoint Sarah Palin as the Chosen One

Posted on September 18, 2010 by Sarah Jones

Sarah Palin is a religious extremist. She does believe she is divinely ordained to lead this country. But the problem isn’t just her enormously inappropriate ego or the dangerous extremism combined with her willful lack of knowledge regarding this country’s government and laws. That’s just scratching the surface.

The real problem with someone who holds Palin’s beliefs is that they believe in End Times, which explains Palin’s constant war mongering and utterly insane threats to Muslim nations. Palin believes the wars we are fighting are Holy Wars and that she was mantled to come into office to finish the Muslims off for good, bringing about End Times at which point, she and the chosen will be uplifted to Heaven through a portal in Alaska.

No, this isn’t a joke.

The myth of Palin as savior of the world is based upon utter fallacy and fantasy. Palin presents herself to us as the “alternative” to the “DC boys”, but Palin as a leader was actually more corrupt, less fiscally responsible, and more morally bankrupt than even your average Republican. But her followers couldn’t care less about how Palin governed or that she was a socialist. They care about the myth and the fantasy.

The myth of Palin is that she is every right wing male’s ultimate woman; she’s hot, she cooks up home-cooked stews from animals she shot and killed and cleaned herself, all while spitting out baby after baby and running around the country setting Americans on the morally straight road. Wow. That’s some woman. [...] read entire article here…

You have nailed this! And your last sentence, oddly enough, is the one that sends CHILLS through my body!

All of us who are not desirous of waking up in an America whose laws are rooted in biblical mosaic law had best quit scoffing, mocking and dismissing the Christian Dominionist Movement in this country and VOTE! This is NOT partisan politics…this is a fight between the majority of us in America who are NOT Christian Dominionists, and the 60-80 million that are. And they are casting their nets far and wide to embrace thousands who are mired in ideologies that allow them to be persuaded to “play” on their political playground. After all, it is all about the “win”. The ends justify the means – and they truly mean it.

We no longer have the luxury of quibbling over liberal versus conservative issues. It is not about the socially compassionate versus fiscally prudent (and those span both Parties over the years). We took a HARD Right turn in the early 90s when the GOP was steeplejacked by Christian Dominionists.

Elections in America are now down to this…

- Democracy NOT Theocracy! -

Please….VOTE! I don’t care if you have to hold your nose! Please…VOTE!

I, like so many reasonable, rational and intelligent Americans have been outraged by the antics of not ONLY a minority of Muslim-identified extremists who perpetrated this horror on us on 9-11-2001…but equally as distressed by the horrific antics of some who self-identify as Christian in America who ignorantly seek to elevate their own twisted agendas to gain recognition and notoriety…aka Terry Jones ( a fellow classmate of Rush Limbaugh and like-minded lock-step brother with Fred Phelps); and then the likes of Sarah Palin who chimes in with her uncontrollable diarrhea of the mouth to dare give a dictate to the Islamic World to “Stand Down” after fabricating a threat of death by Islamic Leaders to U.S. children.

But THEN….

And even FURTHERMORE…

We have this irresponsible adulterer, who in his zealous pursuit of the White House in 2012…forfeits any sense of COMMON sense for not only his fellow Americans! But the world as a whole – who puts out this propoganda that incites and ignites the “conservative” base in this country on the anniversary of 9/11…

You tell me…YOU TELL ME…that this is not as irresponsible, ignorant and dangerous as the ridiculous dog and pony show we just witnessed with Jones’ threat to burn the Qur’ans!!

Newt stands there with his current wife (#3 who he left wife #2 for and looks like a clone of Cindy McCain) and flashes images of President Obama respectfully nodding a bow to a Muslim world leader, flashes an image of the Dome of Omar with all surrounding landscape in gray scale – save for the Dome of Omar (which sits on what the Christian Dominionists consider the absolute piece of real estate that MUST have the Temple of Solomon re-built before the 2nd coming of Christ), engages a sympathetic messianic Jew to add ‘credibility’ to his garbage and that is simply the TRAILER!

Am I upset?? You BET I am!

Given that we are now seeing how great the numbers of uneducated (and that includes educated idiots with degrees) voters we have in this country…and the sheer numbers of Sheeples that will absorb anything conveyed to them as long as you preface it with “God”; and the hate and intolerance brewing faster than tea bags can be produced…I am beyond ALARMED!

Listen to the way that Rachel Maddow juxtoposes both President Obama’s message yesterday and the clips by Bush, Jr. about how we are NOT at war with Islam…

I am not suggesting that we should NOT be taking the antics of Christian Dominionist zealots any less seriously than we take a threat from Islamic extremists. They are indeed BOTH extremists!

But we also MUST take the dangerous and inflammatory rhetoric by the current incarnation of the GOP/Tea Nation politicians as seriously as we do the Terry Jones, Fred Phelps, Jim Jones, David Koresh, Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, Dr. Sun Myung Moon (who owns the Washington Times by the way) or any OTHER self-aggrandizing representative of “godly values” equally as seriously as we do any threat from other religions.

These zealots are equally committed to dominating the minds and souls of people world-wide in the name of “Christ”. They proudly call their pursuits, “soul harvesting”. They openly rail about the 7 Mountains Mandate (this weeks’ latest as I am so fortunate to get the weekly updates) where the 7 spheres are to be dominated which are…

Education – Religion – Family – Politics/Government – Arts/Entertainment – Media – Business & Banking

Though I am widely criticized for pointing out what they proudly proclaim, the fact remains that these are their goals. I don’t make this vile up…I couldn’t. I just have the unpleasant task of falling upon their dangerous agenda and am left with no choice but to do all that I can to expose them. And for those who think that this all sounds unbelievable, I urge you to revisit the hundreds of blogs I have written that all contain links to their own very expertly and very expensively produced message.

It is unbelievable. I agree. But if we don’t push back, we will be sitting here wondering how in the hell this happened. America as a theocratic State.

There IS one message that I share with the blasphemous Gingrich…WAKE UP AMERICA!

Well…I don’t know how to get this across any more directly than to play the words that are falling straight out of the horse’s mouth!

Enter Queen Esther…

Hooboy! I am tellin’ya…I should get combat pay for just watching all this! Her snarky, smirking arrogance is unpalatable. For one thing, “In God We Trust” was first introduced during the American Civil War, but did not become an official motto until 1956. Christian zealots then and now continue to assert falsely that America was founded as a Christian nation, and they often cite this motto as evidence.

Palin's 2 Cents

Palin’s 2-cents worth (In God We Trust first appeared on the 2 cent coin) is as relevant as the 2 cent piece. During the 1950s when this issue was again brought up in politics, America was hysterical about the “red scare” of communism. Now – we have millions of mis-informed alarmists scurrying to and fro shouting “socialism”, “Marxism”, “facsism” and “communism”!

Palin inarticulately feeds this frenzy and adds her Christian Dominionist propaganda to the mix. She throws out words like worldview, founding fathers, Christian nation, and unalienable like she actually knows what they all mean. She doesn’t. But let me tell you what she is driving at. She is becoming more and more bold at revealing her beliefs…beliefs that would lead to America as a theocracy under the rule of Christian Dominionists.

I read a great article on “News That Matters” and am re-posting this snippet from their post:

By Jeff Green

(Palin quoted from the O’Reilly Show)

“I think we should keep this clean, keep it simple, go back to what our founders and our founding documents meant. They’re quite clear that we would create law based on the God of the Bible and the 10 commandments, it’s pretty simple.”

So said Sarah Palin on FOX the other night and I’m willing to agree. Let’s go back and rewrite the entirety of US Federal and local laws based on Leviticus.

So, here we go:

• From now on you will be paid on the day you’ve worked, no more of this every two weeks crap.
• It will be an insult before God to cut your hair,
• Or to wear two different fabrics at the same time.
• If you get caught wearing any of those cotton/poly blends you will be stoned to death. And I don’t mean with a mean Thai stick, but with real rocks thrown by your god-fearing neighbors, none of whom have committed sins.
• In order to save money at home you may now sell your daughters into slavery.
• All your debts will be forgiven every seven years.
• All our laws will be thrown out and rewritten every seven years.
• For you farmers and gardeners, you’ll leave the corners of your fields and the fruit that has fallen off your trees unharvested so that those who are hungry may come and eat.
• You will no longer be able to have a cheeseburger and a shake, doing so will get you stoned to death.
• If you have sex out of wedlock, both of you will be killed and please, don’t have sex with your mom.
• Clams? Shrimp? Pork Sirloin? Just for the heathens – who will be killed.
• Masturbation? Oy vey! You are unclean and anything you’ve touched will be unclean. In order to make clean you must take two doves and ritually sacrifice them. Then you’re kosher again.
• Woman having their periods? For seven days you are unclean and again, anything you touch will also be unlcean. And in order to get clean again… yeah, get those doves ready.
• If you plant corn and beans in the same garden plot you will be killed.
• And lastly, you have to be nice to immigrants.

I said it last week and I’ll say it again, Sarah Palin is the stupidest woman we’ve ever let go before a microphone. ~ News That Matters

Preachin' Palin

They really think the rest of us do not still have our Bibles and know how to read them? I know how ludicrous this sounds, but seriously…exactly WHAT part of the Bible is Palin & Co. suggesting we base our laws on? And what portions are we to believe they are omitting? It is all very frightening, indeed…

Since we know that this is just a sampling of the violent and retributive biblical law laid out in the Bible I would like to ask all of you to add more to this list. It is important to show just how extreme this notion is, and while still in the midst of having to answer hate mail from “Christian Patriots” telling me how violent the Koran is – they do seem to completely ignore how violent the Old Testament is!

When it is unfolding right before our eyes, it is time to stop doubting and start pushing back.

My next post will elaborate further on Palin’s appearance at the “Women of Joy” conference that O’Reilly showed a very brief clip of in his “interview” above.

Yeah, right! These holier-than-thou hypocrites are un-be-lievable!!!

Hypo-homophobe

“I have spent much time as a mental health professional and as a Christian minister helping and lovingly caring for people identifying themselves as ‘gay.’ My hero is Jesus Christ who loves even the culturally despised people, including sexual sinners and prostitutes. Like Jesus Christ, I deliberately spend time with sinners with the loving goal to try to help them,” wrote Rekers.

Where IS that lightening bolt when you need it???

“Like John the Baptist and Jesus, I have a loving Christian ministry to homosexuals and prostitutes in which I share the Good News of Jesus Christ with them (see I Corinthians 6:8-11). Contrary to false gossip, innuendo, and slander about me, I do not in any way ‘hate’ homosexuals, but I seek to lovingly share two types of messages to them, as I did with the young man called ‘Lucien’ in the news story: [1] It is possible to cease homosexual practices to avoid the unacceptable health risks associated with that behavior, and [2] the most important decision one can make is to establish a relationship with God for all eternity by trusting in Jesus Christ’s sacrifice on the cross for the forgiveness of your sins, including homosexual sins. If you talk with my travel assistant that the story called ‘Lucien,’ you will find I spent a great deal of time sharing scientific information on the desirability of abandoning homosexual intercourse, and I shared the Gospel of Jesus Christ with him in great detail.”

K…K…K ( I know I am starting to sound like Joe Pesci from Lethal Weapon) but is anyone else more than just a little disturbed by this? And are you not growing as tired as I by the quick, “Oh! But he is not one of us!” proclamations anytime that one of their own is discovered to step outside their box. I do recall doing a post on this on www.theopalinism.com/blog…http://www.theopalinism.com/blog/2009/06/27/grand-ol-party-i-dont-think-this-is-what-they-meant/

I have been thinking to myself recently that I must ha am ready for that, have all my ducks in a row…no my facts…articulate them…and be poised for opposition. Well, I really am ready for all of the above. And when I see these lunatics I realize…why in the hell am I in the least bit concerned about push-back?? They will oppose what ever I bring to the table, and I am not going to change their agenda.

I AM reminded that it is the 70% of the rest of America that truly concerns me. Think about all the people you know…no matter the political persuasion. No matter their denial of political interest or affiliation at all. No matter whether they are religious, non-religious or somewhere in between, This is about all the rest of us in America who have not drunk the Kool Aid! Republicans (secular), Dems, non-partisan, a-political, etc…I can’t say it enough! Start talking to those around you. Even if seems inconsequential.

An undeniable duo

We ARE making a difference…we WILL win…and a sign of that is to watch tomorrow as poor lil’ Franklin Graham is relegated to public grounds outside the Pentagon (where he should have been all along) as he does his prayer as though in some sort of defiance of our President and government.

He will be having a virtual tantrum for all the world to see because even after going to his “daddy”, Obama would not cow-tow to his foot-stomping, “but I wanna!”

Ah shucks, Frankie…AMEN!

Bob Cesca is climbing on board with the “we can’t ignore them just because they are nuts” train of thought now. His article at the Huffington Post on one of the leading wingnuts in this brigade, Glenn Beck is worth reading…

Exposing Glenn Beck as a Dangerous Fraud

by Bob Cesca April 7, 2010

[...] “But to underestimate Glenn Beck as just some sort of random extra from Cuckoo’s Nest, as I admittedly have done, is a mistake as it barely scratches the surface of what his scam is all about. A schizoid raving street loon tends to command attention purely for the freak show curiosity of passers by, yet the nonsense is rarely taken seriously.

This isn’t the case with Glenn Beck. Several million people every day take his word for it. They’re suckered into buying the ruse. And it’s bad for America.

What his regular viewers haven’t grasped yet is that he’s putting on a show. He’s playing a role. He’s tricking his audience. Unlike a left-leaning audience, Beck’s audience is mostly composed of white conservative Christians who pride themselves on taking certain things on faith, and who often act against their own financial interests for the sake of patriotic cheerleading. It’s an audience that embraces gun ownership and tends to be more reactionary and militaristic. (Incidentally, there’s no equivalent to this on the “other side” simply because it’s not in the nature of liberals to be, you know, conservative.)[...]” ~ HuffPo

And NEXT! Moving along to a screeching duo who flocked together with another notable fabrication of untruth and self-adulation, we have to visit the Palin/Bachmann/Hannity Road Show that graced the air space of Minneapolis, Minnesota April 7, 2010. I have to tell you, it is work to endure listening to these women speak under the best circumstances, but to endure them both together is truly inhumane! The pitch and delivery of their complete and utter nonsense makes my job even more challenging…as if their message was problematic enough.

Dressed in her “granny-flapper” look as though she was in between her job as a librarian and a flapper in the early 1900s, Palin prominently wore her cross and screeched about the power of the GOP women. Gesturing as though holding up the rendering of a pink elephant and announcing, “Look! It’s a girl!” she sent chills down my spine. Adding, “we proudly cling to our guns and religion!”

The woman just cannot pass up an opportunity to stoke the fires of those who believe we are on the verge of a civil war and by golly everybody had better start packin’! She is dangerous. Bachmann is dangerous. They cannot be ignored any more than Beck and Co.

“The Bachmann-and-Palin combo is a huge draw. The Minnesota GOP distributed more than 10,000 tickets to a Minneapolis Convention Center rally, with tickets available only for those who pledge to volunteer for six or more hours of campaign work this year. The duo will appear at a $500-a-plate dinner fundraiser in Minneapolis. People who donate $10,000 get to take a picture with the two.”

This is what I am talking about. When I repeatedly tell people that even if this woman NEVER ran for another elected office, it is this type of influence that concerns me. In a midterm election year where the neoconservatives are losing their minds at the success of Obama, her ability to rally the frightened and terribly uninformed fringe cannot be dismissed any more than Beck and his contributions to the misguided and violent agendas of domestic terrorist militias in America.

I watch them as a former student of Social Psychology and remember studying the characteristics of groups in Abnormal Psych classes with a false sense of security that most of the prominent examples were from a) a historical perspective; b) some other country and culture; or c) a combination of a and b. But alas, here they are…right smack in front of us!

Other than pure unadulterated horror that we truly do have this many sheeples in America…what is my purpose for this post?

Do NOT dismiss them! Do not right them off. Do not minimize them because they are intellectually challenged. Do not view them as nothing more than insignificant annoying narcissists. Pay attention.

And….tomorrow…you can stream C-SPAN and watch Queen Esther at the Southern Republican Leadership Conference…hooboy! The fun just keeps coming!

Texas is the 2nd largest purchaser of textbooks in the U.S. behind California. Because of that buying power, they have tremendous influence in what is edited out, and added in to textbooks that are distributed to all 50 states.

Just a FEW proposed changes

Texas school districts are able to buy books that the state board rejects but designates as containing at least half the required curriculum — but they’ll have to use their own money to do so. Almost all currently use state funds to buy textbooks off the approved list, said Suzanne Marchman, a spokeswoman for the Texas Education Agency.

One publisher said Tuesday that changes in technology, including the introduction of online components, make it easier and cheaper to tailor textbooks to specific states and requirements, and downplayed the impact that Texas’s decisions would have on the rest of the country.

“We now have the ability to deliver completely customized content” to different states, said Joseph Blumenfeld, spokesman for Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, one of three major publishers that supply Texas with most of its social studies textbooks.

But some historians weren’t so certain. Fischer, who is a historian at University of Northern Colorado, noted that first-year teachers fall back on what’s most readily available to them — their textbooks.

This is clearly not simply a problem for students in Texas and we must all get involved in fighting this distortion of American history before the final board vote in May.

Alex and I are working diligently on preparing a series of posts on the “Texas 11″ who voted to approve some 100 changes to history textbooks that will push a perception that we were founded as a Christian nation; removal of the word “democratic” to insert “constitutional republic”; strip Thomas Jefferson because he is seen as secular (which = anti-Christian to these zealots) and inserting John Calvin; add Newt Gingrich and Phyllis Schlafly, but remove Ted Kennedy and Caesar Chavez…and the horrific list of ReBiblican changes goes on and on.

When we start posting our “Texas 11″ series in the next day or so, you will see clearly how this ties into the 7 Mountain Mandate that I have been telling you about. For those who are unfamiliar, please click on the video to the right of this post and watch the their own promo of the 7MM. To give you an idea of what I am referring to with the members themselves here is what Cynthia Dunbar is spewing…thanks to this article that you can read in its entirety at RightWingWatch.org…

“Faith 2 Action‘s Janet Porter continues to move ahead with her organizing for the “May Day: a Cry to God for Our Nation in Distress” prayer rally at the Lincoln Memorial on May 1:has explained that the event is designed to break the curse that our nation is under for having elected President Obama, and now she’s picking up some interesting new supporters for her effort:

Porter said Cynthia Dunbar, a lawyer who serves on the Texas State Board of Education, will attend and ask God for forgiveness for how the nation has removed Him from American schools.

“She is going to come to May Day and repent for how we have taught our children lies, not only in revisionist history but also evolution, how we’ve kicked God out of school,” Porter said. “She will repent on behalf of the education system, and she’s also going to welcome God back in.”

Dunbar played a central role in Texas’ recent rewriting of its social studies requirements in order to make them better reflect the conservative worldview and, given her views, it is no surprise that she would team up with the likes of Porter:

In 2008, Cynthia Dunbar published a book called “One Nation Under God,” in which she stated more openly than most of her colleagues have done the argument that the founding of America was an overtly Christian undertaking and laid out what she and others hope to achieve in public schools. “The underlying authority for our constitutional form of government stems directly from biblical precedents,” she writes. “Hence, the only accurate method of ascertaining the intent of the Founding Fathers at the time of our government’s inception comes from a biblical worldview.”

Then she pushes forward: “We as a nation were intended by God to be a light set on a hill to serve as a beacon of hope and Christian charity to a lost and dying world.” But the true picture of America’s Christian founding has been whitewashed by “the liberal agenda” — in order for liberals to succeed “they must first rewrite our nation’s history” and obscure the Christian intentions of the founders. Therefore, she wrote, “this battle for our nation’s children and who will control their education and training is crucial to our success for reclaiming our nation.”

After the book came out, Dunbar was derided in blogs and newspapers for a section in which she writes of “the inappropriateness of a state-created, taxpayer-supported school system” and likens sending children to public school to “throwing them into the enemy’s flames, even as the children of Israel threw their children to Moloch.” (Her own children were either home-schooled or educated in private Christian schools.)

You have to remember, Christian Dominionists literally call public schools, “Institutions of Satan”. This is their terminology, not mine.

When I asked, over dinner in a honky-tonk steakhouse down the road from the university, why someone who felt that way would choose to become an overseer of arguably the most influential public-education system in the country, she said that public schools are a battlefield for competing ideologies and that it’s important to combat the “religion” of secularism that holds sway in public education.[...]

Here is the video promoting this “May Day is Pray Day 2010″ event as they rally to reclaim America for Christ.

As I say, if anyone thinks that Dominionism is fabricated, exaggerated, or a conspiracy theory…we need look no further – right now – than the Texas 11 and what they are doing as we speak. Education is one of their most sought after of the 7 Mountains!

How people get recruited into coercive groups: A view from an ex-Quiverfull survivor

by dogemperor

Wed Mar 17, 2010 at 10:07:53 AM PDT

Probably one of the main questions–right next to “How do we stop dominionists?”–I’m asked when writing is “Why do into coercive religious groups in the first place?”

One thing to note is that, in general, people less join a coercive group and more are recruited into a coercive group or are raised in a coercive group.

A new article by Jonathan Rice and Vyckie Garrison–the latter of whom runs No Longer Quivering, a support forum for ex-Quiverfull survivors–gives a glimpse of how coercive group recruitment works from a first-hand view.

A glimpse on a disturbing dominionist movement

Some of my longterm readers may be familiar with the term “Quiverfull”–I’ve mentioned it in my series on religiously motivated child abuse in relation to Michael and Debi Pearl (a series that is, unfortunately, timely again due to the recent death by chastening rod of a seven-year-old girl) and particularly in regards to my writing on Bill Gothard’s “Bible-based” coercive group empire.

For those uninitiated, “Quiverfull” is a movement within both “independent fundamentalist Baptist” and neopentecostal-dominionist (including New Apostolic Reformation/Joel’s Army) circles that promotes the idea of dispensing with any form of contraception whatsoever–even the rhythm method is prohibited–and actively attempting to have as many children “as God will allow”.

In NAR circles in particular, this is explicitly seen as a method to breed as many future members of “God’s Army” as possible using justification not dissimilar to that of the King of England in “Braveheart” (“If we can’t burn them out, we’ll breed them out”); segments of the Quiverfull movement also increasingly push for home births without medical assistance and even “unregistered births” (where the birth is never registered with the state Department of Human Resources or other state birth registries and where the child is never signed up for Social Security).

In fact, the term in its modern use does have NAR-ish roots–the term “Quiverfull” denotes having a “full quiver” of arrows to defeat The Enemy (in this case, secular society)–only in this case, the metaphorical “arrows” are children who are reared from birth onwards in a regimented, socially isolated manner.  (In general, the only typical contacts kids in “Quiverfull families” have are with families of other members of the movement.)  The term ultimately stems from a scripture-twisting of Psalms 127:4-5:

[4] Like arrows in the hand of a warrior
are the sons of one’s youth.
[5] Happy is the man who has
his quiver full of them!
He shall not be put to shame
when he speaks with his enemies in the gate.

(RSV.  In context, this is a psalm of Solomon stating that true protection is in the hands of God and that true preparedness and security only comes from God.  Prior verses explicitly note that a watchman’s duty is in vain unless God is the foundation of the country, among other things.)

Promotion of “Quiverfull” is commonly done via dominionist correspondence-school circles promoting themselves as “Christian homeschooling”; the Pearls’ and Gothard’s empires have largely grown, in fact, through dominionist correspondence-school support networks.

A related phenomenon is that of “purity balls”–also written about in part one of my series on religiously motivated child abuse–where daughters sometimes as young as four are symbolically “married” to their fathers until such time as they are married legally–often to an arranged spouse.

As I’ve noted, the movement is heavily connected with dominionism and would constitute a coercive group in and of itself.  As the article notes:

These children are homeschooled for the most part, in the hopes that they’ll become an army of the Lord’s mighty warriors who, through sheer demographic force, reclaim America for God. Females are kept in perpetual servitude from earliest childhood, wherethey are considered the property of their fathers and spend their days caring for younger siblings. When a girl reaches puberty she must pledge her virginity/purity to her father (often in writing). Once the father finds a suitor to his liking, he transfers his ownership of the young lady to her husband. Adult women in the movement are not allowed to work outside the home, and usually forbidden to speak in church (obviously, they can never be ordained!). And based upon a quirky interpretation of an obscure biblical passage (Isaiah 3:12), they are also forbidden to vote.

Lurking beneath the QF/CP lifestyle lies the teachings of R.J. Rushdoony, the leading exponent of a dire and militant form of Calvinism called “Christian Reconstructionism.” In his massive tome Institutes of Biblical Law, he advocated the overthrow of modern democracy, replacing it with a theocratic state in which all the laws of Leviticus are imposed (including the death penalty for disobedient children, adulterers and homosexuals). Also, as per his reading of the Bible, the theocratic state would reintroduce slavery. Hard-line QF/CP believers think that creating a population explosion of their own is the most effective means of bringing this dystopic vision to fruition.

It is not an exaggeration in some cases–particularly Gothard’s program–to compare the general setup to a dominionist version of Taliban-era Afghanistan.

* * *

Surprisingly enough, most people have seen a Quiverfull family on TV–though they might not have known it.

And, of note, there is at least one Quiverfull family that has become famous–the Duggar clan, who are known Gothard acolytes and whom are presented as pretty much the poster children for the Quiverfull movement.

Another Quiverfull family, alas, became quite infamous.  This was, unfortunately, the family of Andrea Yates–who was involved in a dominionist church that promoted Quiverfull theology, and who ultimately ended up drowning five of her young children as a result of postpartum depression complicated by what may well have been cult-related complex PTSD.

* * *

As with most coercive religious movements, there are walkaway networks for support.  The best known by far is No Longer Quivering, run by Vyckie Garrison (who is herself not only an ex-Quiverfull survivor, but prior to walking away was a major promoter in the movement).  The images one gets are of a highly patriarchial, overtly female-hostile, coercive religious movement (and it does meet the characteristics of an overt coercive religious group, particularly in its isolation of members) in which women are expected to give all, up to and including their bodies and health, for the whim of their leaders.

And it’s through these forums that we get a rare glimpse into what it is like to be recruited into a Bible-based cult.

Like a frog being boiled in water

People have asked me repeatedly how folks get recruited into coercive groups.  As I am a multigenerational walkaway–that is, I was raised in a coercive group rather than joining one as a teen or adult–it’s hard for me to answer this personally; pretty much, most of my life “Jesus Camp life” was all I knew, and my experiences have been more of essentially resocialising myself (not unlike a kid who was raised by wolves and having to figure out human culture).

Johnathan W. Rice’s recent article in Salon Magazine, Fear And Loathing In Jesusland, describes a story I’ve heard across ex-cult forums from recruitees who became walkaways–that you’re never given the “Full Monty” straightaway but are gradually inducted.

The big difference, here, is that–for one of the first times since Matt Taibbi’s “The Great Derangement”–this is talking about a non-negligible part of the dominionist movement:

In mid-February 2010, a thread title on the forum caught my eye: How did you get yourself into this mess? The author, a female refugee from the movement, was wondering how she and so many others could have fallen for it in the first place.

After reading it, I again realized how closely the QF/CP movement intersects with mainstream evangelicalism and fundamentalism; and how easily I too could have been recruited, given the wrong circumstances. How, one may ask, do people get into such a seemingly bizarre religious movement? And how had I (in the past) been in danger of being sucked in myself?

The answer boils down to one simple word: “gradually.”

The substance of my gradual experience, which I’ll summarize here, is the shared story of countless rank & file believers who come under the broad labels “Pentecostal,” “charismatic,” “evangelical,” and “fundamentalist.”

In the beginning, as a teen in the mid 1970s, my cousin, followed by my mother, became born-again Christians. It was really positive in those days: God loves you and has a wonderful plan, and so forth. It was all about having a new life, full of purpose and meaning. A life in which the very Creator of the Universe actually cared about little people like us!

Among other things, a big thing that the more coercive groups in the movement (including not just Campus Crusade and YWAM, but the infamous Maranatha) were involved in was “love-bombing”–smothering people with affection, making them feel wonderful and loved.  The author himself experienced some of this, and also describes how after the “love-in” the indoctrination started to trickle in, eventually becoming a torrent:

It was all really positive in those early, idealistic years. Loving Jesus, hoping to save the world, helping homeless people, having an abundance of real friends who stood with me through thick and thin: it was all good; really good. The song that often brought tears to my eyes in the early days was written by Keith Green immediately upon his conversion (before he’d entered into his extremist phase): Like waking up from the longest dream How real it seemed Until your love broke through

But gradually…

A radio program called Focus on the Family that I used to hear doling out advice to crisis-wracked families, was becoming politicized. Through the show, and then through the warnings of Tim LaHaye and others, I began learning of sinister threats being hatched against us by people called “Secular Humanists.” LaHaye, in a breathless, frenzied spiel, warned of the threat as follows. Humanists, he said: have been “planted” in strategic places in the United Nations, they teach children in public schools “to read the words scientific humanism as soon as they’re old enough to read,” and 275,000 humanists control the American government, education, and media.[2]

As conspiracy-paranoia mounted, politics in church began to subvert the innocent, Jesus-loving expressions of faith I’d known in the beginning. Our churches started distributing candidates’ score cards in the foyers, telling us to vote accordingly.

And then there was a radio preacher, William Steuart McBirnie, whose Voice of Americanism program daily rehashed senator McCarthy’s and Carl McIntire’s Red Scare fundamentalism, updating it for the mid-1980s. We had much to fear and many to loathe.

([2] Tim LaHaye, The Battle For the Mind (Old Tappan, NJ: Revell, 1980), pp. 27, 74, 97, 179. Summarized in George M. Mardsen, Understanding Fundamentalism and Evangelicalism ( MI: Wm.B. Eerdmans Publishing Co, 1991), p. 109.)

In addition to describing a phenomena I’ve witnessed myself–the increasing radicalisation of “Christian Contemporary” performers, including Steve Taylor and Carmen (the latter of whom actually co-published (with Ron Luce of Teen Mania Ministries, an infamous NAR group targeting–naturally–teenagers) a guide for teenagers on how to recruit fellow teens into Bible-based coercive groups using love-bombing and harassment)–he notes personally meeting Francis and Frank Shaeffer, two major leaders of the dominionist movement in the late 70s and early 80s.  (Frank Schaeffer later left the dominionist movement and has written a tell-all book, “Crazy for God”, describing his own experiences; reportedly, per the book, he initially recruited his own father into the movement.)

Of note, the author almost makes a point I have been writing about for well over five years–that dominionism is less a political movement and more of a series of Bible-based cults that have as a common goal the establishment of a dominionist-supremacist government:

Most cults have a well-planned program for the indoctrination of new recruits, in which they deceitfully hide their more bizarre teachings from seekers (an exoteric/esoteric truth divide). The new convert is only taught the vision piecemeal; gradually gaining deeper (and weirder) knowledge over a period of months or years.

But with us, although it may have appeared that way, it wasn’t exactly so. I later realized I was living in the midst of a drastic change in popular American Christianity. The movement still really was (for the most part) benign when I joined. The resentful loathing was added gradually, not as a planned indoctrination program, but because the church genuinely was in the midst of radical transition during 1980s and ‘90s.

I myself would agree and disagree with his statement–what he may not have been aware of is that, particularly during the 80s and 90s, there was an organised campaign (beginning as early as the waning days of the Latter Rain movement in the 40s) to explicitly steeplejack the non-Christian-Nationalist segment of the evangelical movement.  Legitimate “Charismatic” movements in Catholic and Protestant denominations were taken over from within by neopentecostal “cuckoo churches”.

In this case, the cult recruitment was less of individual people and more of a takeover-from-within and indoctrination of a very large chunk of the evangelical movement–one particularly mediated by New Apostolic Reformation groups as well as a group calling itself the Institute for Religion and Democracy that was closely connected to Christian Reconstructionists.  (Probably the prototypical example, in fact, was the ultimately successful steeplejacking of the Southern Baptist Convention–formerly a conservative but relatively mainline denomination, it has gone hard-dominionist and is now quite possibly undergoing a second “consolidation” steeplejack by NAR-linked groups.)

The NAR takeovers and plans for steeplejacks–particularly of non-NAR-linked charismatic worship groups–is, to this day, woefully under-documented (about the only people who’ve written on this regularly are myself, Bruce Wilson, Rachel Tabachnik, and Katherine Yurica and to a lesser extent Sara Diamond), so that’s an understandable lapse–to someone who didn’t grow up in one of the major foci of the NAR movement (as I did), it would appear that the evangelical movement just “radicalised slowly”.

Interestingly, it turns out I’m not the only one to make that argument–theologian Richard T. Hughes noted in a recent article the likelihood that the evangelical movement had essentially been steeplejacked by Christian Reconstructionists and the NAR for purposes of promoting “Christian supremacy”:

This definition of the kingdom of God as a kingdom of political power helps explain why so many fundamentalist and evangelical Christians lent such broad support to America’s war against Iraq. It also helps explain the rise of the Christian Reconstruction Movement led by the late R. J. Rushdoony, a Calvinist who argued that Christians should control civil government and that biblical law should govern the United States. It also helps explain a large and thriving contemporary network, closely akin to the Christian Reconstruction Movement, called the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR) — a network that works through business, politics, religion, and the media to promote Christian control of the United States and even the world.

And by 1985–and definitely by 1992–Rice was experiencing a classic hallmark of coercive religious groupthink: An “us versus them” seige mentality, a Culture Of Fear, that every researcher on coercive religious groups from Robert J. Lifton on has defined as a red flag warning of a cult:

And thus by 1985, my original faith, though still there, was mixed with anger, resentment and fear—a sense of being under siege.

After another few years, the Rev. Don Wildmon, who Max Blumenthal would later describe as “churlish,”[4] started telling us to boycott Mennon Speed Stick deodorant because it was advertised on a TV show which he, and therefore God, didn’t approve of.

Then, in 1990, James Dobson openly began using the language of civil war: “Nothing short of a great Civil War of Values rages today throughout North America. Two sides with vastly differing and incompatible world views are locked in a bitter conflict that permeates every level of society.”[5]

Whether the timing of Dobson’s drum beating was cunning or just plain lucky, I don’t know. But it certainly was fortuitous.
. . .
Civil War. What a great idea! Brother against brother. A woman against her coworker. Neighbor against neighbor. Divide and conquer. A nation’s unity destroyed. And when all was said and done, Dobson emerged from the fray as the new Republican Kingmaker.

In such a milieu, those negative traits of resentment and fear had become almost central, my original faith being sickly, barely alive and far beneath the surface. We were now in the midst of full-blown culture-war. And all that the churches and Christian mailing list materials were trumpeting was also confirmed by an outside source: The Rush Limbaugh show.

By 1992 I’d made the full transition from a spirituality of awe, joy and wonder to one of hatred, fear and all-around loathing. We Christians were under siege.

“They” were taking away our freedoms. “They” had planted Secular Humanist agents in every ‘government school,’ brainwashing the next generation. Not only that, The New Age Movement (painted as a well-organized conspiracy rather than the loosely knit spiritual fad that it was) was out to forge a One World Government and wipe the final vestiges of Christianity from the face of the earth.

([5] James Dobson, Children at Risk (Dallas: Word Publishing, 1990), pp. 19-20.)

In noting that the movement was increasingly trending towards “two-minute hates”, Rice also notes how the “Rambo Jesus” meme was becoming increasingly popularised:

As the content of our faith changed, so did our conceptualization of Jesus. He was no longer a God of love, but a muscle-bound tyrant. Speaking of the Christian Right in 2009, journalist Max Blumenthal’s following description also summarizes the view of Jesus that was gaining ascendancy among us in the 1990s:

The movement’s Jesus is the opposite of the prince of peace. He is a stern, overtly masculine patriarch charging into the fray with his sword raised against secular foes; he is “the head of a dreadful company, mounted on a white horse, with a double-edged sword, his robe dipped in blood,” according to movement propagandist Steve Arterburn. [Mega-church pastor] Mark Driscoll…stirs the souls of twenty-something evangelical men with visions of “Ultimate Fighting Jesus…”

A portrait of virility and violence, the movement’s omnipotent macho Jesus represents the mirror inversion of the weak men who necessitated his creation. As [Erich] Fromm explained, “the lust for power is not rooted in strength, but in weakness [italics in original]. It is the expression of the individual self to stand alone and live. It is the desperate attempt to gain secondary strength where genuine strength is lacking.” [8]

([8] Max Blumenthal, Republican Gomorrah, pp. 9, 10.)

Rice also notes that he now considers himself lucky that he was not within proximity of the more charismatic promoters of Quiverfull–as he, already inducted within what he has all-but-admitted was a coercive religious group, would have been the perfect recruit:

I knew three Quiverfull families back in those days, though I didn’t yet know the term. Two of them had become discredited in my sight, one badly so. The other had moved far across the country to the Bible Belt, and thus their influence on me was minimal.

But: supposing a well-spoken, polished QF/CP promoter, who in outward appearance had an exemplary life and family, had befriended me then. And supposing this theoretical person had possessed a charismatic personality. Had this happened, I very well could have bought into the QF/CP vision.

The angry and ever-intensifying Christian Right machine had changed our churches into pre-stocked ponds in which QF/CP and other extremists fished. I was one of those pre-stocked fish.

I just happened (by no virtue of my own at the time) to always be on the other side of the pond when people like Nancy Campbell, R.C. Sproul Jr., Doug Phillips, et al., went fishing.

That’s why I find it no surprise that so many of the former QF/CP people (like Vyckie Garrison, for example) are so smart and articulate. People don’t join the movement because they’re idiots. On the contrary, they join because they’re thoughtful, intelligent human beings who really care about their country; who are concerned about the kind of world in which their children and grandchildren will live.

But these same good qualities became a curse when cunning fascist leaders subtly began to channel them for their ends. And thus over the gradual course of time—sometimes even a decade—we (both “regular” believers and QF/CP Christians) became foot soldiers in a zombie-army, doing the political bidding of our Christian Right masters.

In other words…the process of recruitment is a gradual one.  People generally don’t join knowing the “full deal”–they are recruited with something innocuous, then the indoctrination begins over time until they’ve been recruited and are marching lockstep to a leader’s command.

The process is not unlike the old yarn on how to boil a frog.  Put a frog in boiling water, he’ll jump right out (just like nobody would willingly join a coercive religious group if they knew it was coercive).

Put a frog in body-temperature water, though, and slowly turn up the heat…by the time the frog realises what’s going on, he’s cooked.

And so it is with recruitment in coercive religious groups…and the “Bible-based” coercive groups at the heart of the dominionist movement are absolute masters at turning up the water very, very slowly for a whole kettle of frogs.

And how the frog realises, “oh dear, I’m in a pot”

Interestingly, Rice ended up walking away in a similar way to myself–only in his case, he ended up going to the Emerald City of the dominionist movement, Colorado Springs, and saw for himself that the Emerald City isn’t nearly as pretty without the glasses on:

As I headed toward Colorado in a U-Haul van, my knowledge of that city was minimal. I knew it was America’s new evangelical Mecca, populated with scores of Christian organizations; and I loved the beautiful Front Range Mountains I’d seen on my visit a month before.

But my main source of information was a book I’d read seven years prior, Ted Haggard’s, Primary Purpose: Making It Hard for People to Go to Hell from Your City.[9] In it, I’d read the amazing story of how Haggard and his initially small band of followers had transformed the supposedly pagan, anti-Christian city into God’s own country. Through spiritual mapping (identifying the ruling demons in a given area) and systematic warfare-prayer walks through each neighborhood (in which those demons were expelled from the region, presumably to resettle in Washington state, California, New York and Massachusetts), Colorado Springs was now the godliest place in America: truly a city that was “hard to go to Hell from.”

Or so I thought…

Although the organization that employed me was benign and apolitical, through my involvement with it I was exposed to the other big ministries in the area. Year after year I witnessed countless episodes of hypocrisy and self-congratulatory backslapping amongst Christian Right leaders.

I soon felt uneasy amongst people I’d once greatly admired. The church we attended turned out to be a de facto outpost of the Republican Party, and according to the pastor’s bizarre interpretation of an Isaiah passage, God had foreordained Republican Jesus to defeat Babylonian Saddam Hussein.

By 2005, the church was showing a smiling picture of Sam Brownback each Sunday on the large overhead screen. The pastor would then instruct us to stretch forth our hands and pray fervently for him. Brownback, dubbed “God’s Senator” by Jeff Sharlet, was a near-perfect embodiment of America’s new civil religion. He was a syncretic marvel who could glide effortlessly between his (Fundamentalist) Topeka Bible Church, Roman Catholicism, and a smattering of Orthodox Judaism.

One cold winter Sunday, the pastor excitedly told us of the senator’s latest mystical experience: Brownback, the pastor claimed, had just been to Valley Forge with a group of prayer leaders. There, he knelt at the exact spot where George Washington had once famously prayed. While on his knees in the snow, Brownback had received “the spiritual mantle of George Washington,” an anointing which would send him to the Whitehouse in 2008—but only if God’s people prayed long and hard enough.

Growing weary of weekly political rallies, we soon dropped out of the church. As the Iraq War went sour and the federal deficit went into the trillions under the “godly” Bush, I became increasingly disillusioned. Then came wave upon wave of varied Republican scandals; so many that they soon became an endless blur in my mind, and would have remained so to this day had Max Blumenthal not compiled them all under one cover in Republican Gomorrah.

I realized that we’d been duped by the Christian Right: the politicians they promoted were not godly at all. They’d exploited a few causes that people felt passionately about, using them to con millions of voters. It had nothing to do with God’s will, only the will to power.

([9] Florida: Creation House, 1995.  Of note, the book wass a major “how to” guide for NAR churches, though a bit less so now due to Haggard’s outing as gay.)

In addition to finding out that the local dominionist churches were essentially doing political stumping disguised as sermons, he also made the unhappy discovery (through his daughter, no less) that Colorado Springs was considered the methamphetamine capital of Colorado; even worse, around the time he left (in 2007) a major scandal broke regarding a human-trafficking ring where Asian women were being kidnapped and forced to work as de facto indentured servants in massage parlors.

More to the point, his breaking point was, interestingly, the same as mine–discovering that the moral crusaders were lying out their teeth:

During that season I also learned we’d been lied to. Contrary to the jeremiads of the Christian Right’s propaganda industry, it wasn’t “America’s godless, secular intelligentsia” who had removed the Bible and the knowledge of God from our educational system. In reality, Christians themselves had caused it nearly 200 years ago.

By the 1820s, America’s public schools were in a dilemma. Calvinists wanted the schools to teach only Calvinism, but Arminians (mostly Methodists) wanted them to teach only their doctrines. Several other sects were making demands of their own. And all of them agreed that no matter which version of Christianity won out in the classrooms, it should never be Roman Catholicism, which they all abhorred with equal passion. The endless infighting overwhelmed school authorities, who eventually gave up on the teaching of religion, substituting a vague, generic moral science in its place.[10]

The same thing goes for taking Bible reading out of public schools. No, it wasn’t a cabal of Secular Humanists in the early 1960s, but Christians themselves who brought it about, through viscous infighting between Protestants (most of whom championed the King James Bible) and Catholics who could only accept the Douay-Rheims translation.

Speaking of the “Bible Wars” in the mid-nineteenth century, Stephen Prothero writes, “The most visible battlefield in these early culture wars was Philadelphia, where Protestant-Catholic riots over whose Bible would be read in public schools left over a dozen people dead and Catholic churches burned to the ground in 1844.”[11] In addition to outright violence and murder, the endless polemical clashes between these groups caused school administrators to become weary and wary. As a result, by the 1870s, public schools in many states had not only done away with Christian education, but Bible reading and hymn singing as well.

Contrary to what we’d learned from the Christian Right, the rulings of 1962 and ’63 were merely the final few nails in the coffin—not the beginning of a cultural decline engineered by Secular Humanists.
. . .
Living in Colorado Springs and learning what I did there was like Neo swallowing the red pill. I’d seen the truth about The Matrix. I could never go back; life couldn’t continue as it had before.

([10]  Stephen Prothero, Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know—And Doesn’t (New York: HarperCollins, 2007), pp. 109-120.
[11] Ibid, pp. 121-127.)

It was much the same with me–finding out I was being lied to was the “red pill” that eventually led me to reality in the end.

And it is precisely this breeding of a Culture of Fear that causes thousands–if not millions–of children to be subjected to religiously motivated child abuse; the same one that forces women to live under a system of religiously motivated patriarchy that places them at grave risk of religiously motivated spousal abuse…

…and it can be said that the Fear Engine, at its core, and the hypermasculine bravado is the very engine running the dominionist movement.

UPDATE:  And if you are wondering where in the hell I have been..

I apologise I’ve been scarce here for the past, oh, year on DailyKos.  There’s actually a good reason, though. :3

Specifically, I’m in the process of writing a book (actually, a whole series of books to be co-authored) and working on the formative stages of a new NGO.

First, the books:

Presently working with Leah Burton (author of Close Call) on an upcoming book on Palin’s dominionist connections (tentatively titled “Palin’s Brain”) and a wider expose of the GOP’s takeover by dominionists (working title: “God’s Own Party”).

After that, I’m going to be working on a dedicated book on the subject of religiously motivated domestic abuse (with an emphasis on religiously motivated child abuse) with Burton and Vyckie Garrison of No Longer Quivering.

In the meantime, myself and a mess of other folks (including Vyckie) are in the organisational stages of a new NGO–the Take Heart Project, the first NGO worldwide to focus on assisting women and children wishing to escape from coercive patriarchial groups, particularly the Quiverfull movement.  (We’re not just focusing on direct assistance but things like educating therapists, pastors, doctors, legal personnel, social workers, and so on who may interact with ex-Quiverfull survivors; there are a lot of overlapping issues including custody issues, mental health issues, medical neglect issues, and so on.)

Incidentially, we’re also looking for a few folks to help out, particularly therapists and persons who have accounting experience (particularly people who have accounting experience who have worked the books with a nonprofit organisation in past).  If you may be able to help out (especially with the accounting) please contact Vyckie at her blog.

Let’s start with Neal…Horsley…and the name is not made up, which you might think it is after reading this:

Neal Horsley, anti-abortion activist from Georgia, christiangallery.org, called for the arrest of all homosexuals. Horsely admitted on the Fox News Radio’s The Alan Colmes Show May 2006, that he’s had sex with mules. He told the San Francisco Examiner about the sex he’s had with other men… and with a watermelon.  He would kill his own son if he tried to prevent him from seceding from the union. Horsley thinks the best way pro-life advocates can overturn Roe v. Wade is to “take over a state, then hole up and wait for the United States army to come for a kind of Alamo last stand.”  to secede from the Union. Horsely put photographs on his Web site of naked men engaging in homosexual acts and a nude woman engaging in bestiality amid shots of grotesquely maimed fetuses. As a drug dealer he was convicted of possession of hashish with intent to sell. He calls for “the establishment of a new government, one that can obey God’s plan for government.”

He was fired when he made national headlines for setting up the Nuremberg Files site that listed the addresses and phone numbers of abortion doctors, and crossed off their names as they were killed. The efforts to shut him down went all the way to the Supreme Court.

He is also embraced proudly by a militant anti-abortion hate group called the Army of God. I will not link to them directly. It is a horrific site. But the Wiki page gives you basic information.

So what is Mr. Studdly up to now, you might ask?

By Mike Morris from the Atlanta Journal

Neal Horsley was taken into custody Wednesday in Carrollton by members of the Atlanta police fugitive squad and U.S. Marshal’s office, according to Carrollton police.

Horsley was booked into the Fulton County Jail, charged with terroristic threats, criminal defamation and using the Internet to disseminate threats. During a hearing Thursday morning at the jail, Magistrate Judge James Altman set bond for Horsley at $40,000 on all three charges.

As a condition of his bail, Horsley must remain at the home of his son, Nathanael Horsley of Gainesville, Altman said. In addition, there must be a land-line in the home.

Thomas More Legal Center is a particularly pernicious group that was founded by ultramontane Catholic Thomas Monaghan (who also funded the Army of God-linked Operation Rescue when he was CEO of Domino’s and who now is trying to set up an ultramontane-Catholic-only gated community in Florida).

One of the more notorious cases Thomas More Law Center has been involved in was Planned Parenthood vs American Coalition of Life Activists.  (ACLA, of note, was the group behind the Neal Horsley “Nuremburg Files”–an Army of God-authored hit-list of clinic workers and their families, including dossiers of travel, personally identifying info including license plate registration info and surveillance of homes, and so on; when a clinic worker would be assassinated by an Army of God domestic terrorist, their name would be struck through. It’s widely considered among researchers in anti-abortion domestic terrorism that the ACLA operated as a barely legal wing of the Army of God domestic terror network.)  Planned Parenthood eventually brought a RICO suit (under the then-new FACE Act); Thomas More Law Center defended ACLA.  (ACLA lost, and they were forced to take the material down and disband. The content has since been mirrored on another Army of God-linked site at christianliberty.net; the site owner is a close associate of David Leach, himself linked with Scott Roeder and a similar “Nuremburg Files”-esque website that explicitly targeted Dr. George Tiller and workers at his clinic.)

I am heartened to see that more and more attention is being dedicated to understanding that there is a 3rd Party afoot even if they have to concede that in order to win nationally they will have to sit under the elephant.

I have been shouting into a virtual vacuum, all the while met with dismissive gestures and remarks about the very real impact Palin is more than likely to have on the quest to regain political seats across the country for the 2010 elections. I am talking local, state, and national. Do not for one moment sit comfortably back on your haunches, comforted by the thought that Palin is too much of a buffoon to be a player. Go to your nearest book store and immediately buy “Bush’s Brain”, and you will sit up and pay attention.

So I submit again…the following article…

There is a political “shoe” (Party) that is ready-made for Sarah Palin, the Political Dominionists and all the extreme followers that she appeals to – it is the Constitution Party. And by NO coincidence, the Alaska Chapter is none other than the Alaska Independence Party that Todd Palin is known to have been a member of until Sarah’s political career was launched and their affiliation was seen as a potential liability.

For those of you who are hearing of the Constitution Party for the first time the following snippets are directly from their web pages:

The Constitution Party

“The Democrats and Republicans have squandered the Founders’ legacy of liberty and justice under the Constitution. Countless government officials in the legislative, executive, and judicial branches of government ignore their oath to uphold and defend the Constitution.

Join the Constitution Party in its work to restore our government to its Constitutional limits and our law to its Biblical foundations.”

Preamble of the Constitution Party

“The Constitution Party gratefully acknowledges the blessing of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ as Creator, Preserver and Ruler of the Universe and of these United States. We hereby appeal to Him for mercy, aid, comfort, guidance and the protection of His Providence as we work to restore and preserve these United States.

This great nation was founded, not by religionists, but by Christians; not on religions but on the Gospel of Jesus Christ. For this very reason peoples of other faiths have been and are afforded asylum, prosperity, and freedom of worship here.

The goal of the Constitution Party is to restore American jurisprudence to its Biblical foundations and to limit the federal government to its Constitutional boundaries.

The Constitution of these United States provides that “no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.” The Constitution Party supports the original intent of this language. Therefore, the Constitution Party calls on all those who love liberty and value their inherent rights to join with us in the pursuit of these goals and in the restoration of these founding principles.

The U.S. Constitution established a Republic rooted in Biblical law, administered by representatives who are Constitutionally elected by the citizens. In such a Republic all Life, Liberty and Property are protected because law rules.”

Now marvel at the attached video by Sarah Palin, delivered behind her desk in the Governor’s office in summer of 2008 praising the Alaska Independence Party and their shared ideologies.

“I’m Governor Sarah Palin and I am delighted to welcome you to the 2008 Alaskan Independence Party Convention in the golden heart city of Fairbanks.  Your party plays an important  role in our state’s politics.  I’ve always said that competition is so good, and that applies to political parties as well.  I share your party’s vision of upholding the constitution of our great state.  My administration remains focused on reining in government growth so individual liberty and opportunity can expand.  I know you agree with that.  We have a great promise to be a self-sufficient state, made up of the hardest-working, most grateful Americans in our nation.  So as your convention gets underway I hope that you all are inspired by remembering that all those years ago, it was in this same city that Alaska’s constitution was born.  And it was founded on hope and trust and liberty and opportunity.  I carry that message of opportunity forward in my administration, as we continue to move our state ahead and create positive change.  So I say good luck on a successful and inspiring convention. Keep up the good work, and God bless you.”

She and her representatives have made numerous statements of denial about the Palin’s affiliation with this organization that emphasizes secession as one of their founding platform issues.

Furthermore, view this video of the AIP 2008 Conference in Fairbanks, Alaska with the Vice-Chair Dexter Clark speaking about Palin, and their strategy for winning widespread elected offices using stealth AIP candidates. Talk about laying it ALL out there…they are so cocky they are overtly brazen!

The sound quality can be hard to understand so I have provided written transcription for the most pertinent points.

“Our current governor, we mentioned at the last conference, the one we were hoping would get elected, Sarah Palin, did get elected. There’s a joke, she’s a pretty good looking gal, there’s a joke goes around we’re the coldest state with the hottest governor.  [laughter] And there was a lot of talk about her moving up.”

“She was an AIP member before she got the job as a mayor of a small town — that was a non-partisan job.  But to get along and go along — she eventually joined the Republican Party, where she had all kinds of problems with their ethics, and well, I won’t go into that. She also had about an 80% approval rating, and is pretty well sympathetic to her former membership.If there is ever a time that is right for change, this is it.  In our own situation, we discussed several options.  Do we try and get our case into the International Court of Justice, or to the World Court?  Several Native Alaskan organizations are taking that route, independent of us. They want to do it on their own terms.  They haven’t realized, in my mind, the potential of their own political party.  The pitfalls of an organized political party – you don’t have any control over who joins that party.  They put the X next to it on the registration form, and if they join the — go into the primary, and win that primary, they’re your candidate, like it or not.

I think Ron Paul has kind of proven that. He’s a dyed -in-the-wool Libertarian. He came to Alaska and spoke as a Libertarian. And he…

…put the Republican label on to get elected. That’s all there is to it. And any one of your organizations should be using that same tactic to infiltrate. I know that Christian Exodus is in favor of it, I know that the Free State Movement is in favor of it.

I don’t know that they even care which party it is.

Which ever party you see where you can get something done, get into that political party, even though it does have it’s problems. Right now that is one of the only avenues. If you can get a few people on the city council, or a town board, you can have some effect.

It is obvious when you read the entire Constitution Party Platform, then watch the Alaska Independence Party video, read the excerpts and visit the Alaska Independent Party web site, that to accept Palin as a loyal republican just is NOT accurate!

I am certain by now that most of us have become quite familiar with seeing the “Don’t Tread on Me!” banners flying about at various “Hatriot” teabagging events in the past several months…well, it is hard to miss the graphic connection between those banners and the AIP logo depicting Alaska in the mouth of the snake.

As I have stated in a previous blog…keep your eyes on SarahPAC.com as a barometer indicating her allegiance and intentions. In fact, straight from the mouth of SarahPAC…

“We’re going to work as Commonsense Conservatives for everyday, hardworking Americans by tackling issues that you care about and by helping candidates who will stand up for our nation. We’ll help candidates (regardless of party) who have the courage to go to Washington or serve statewide and make the tough decisions needed to get our country back on track.” ~ “Sarah’s Pen”

Currently it states an alliance with the Republican Party in its opening statement…and with the way some of them are publicly elevating their own profiles on the news of Palin’s “higher calling”.

Recently Palin made this statement in a speech to an Arkansas auditorium (only a third of the seats filled) when asked about the viability of the Tea Party…

Apparently that is essentially the message he has conveyed to the his constiuents and all of America, the news media and even the congressional GOP senate majority as well, including McConnell who has NO control over the apparent senile rantings of Bunning either.

The Ugly Face of Conservatism - Tweedle-Dee

“On February 25 2010 Bunning began a filibuster of unemployment insurance, COBRA, and other federal programs, citing that this extension was not pay-as-you-go. His amendment sought to find the funds from the Stimulus Bill of 2009, and declared that he supported the unemployed, but a bill such as this only adds to the growing deficit and should be paid for immediately. Senator Bob Corker joined Bunning, while other senators worked to break his filibuster until 11:48 PM EST. When Senator Jeff Merkley urged him to drop his objections to vote on a 30-day extension of benefits, Bunning responded “tough shit.” In Bunning’s closing comments to the senate floor he said Democrats were remiss in causing him to miss the Kentucky basketball game vs South Carolina.”

The following is from my own Kentucky insider, a very well-informed source…

a) Bunning, like Ronald Reagan, was pretty much elected on the basis of personality–he was apparently a big baseball star and largely got into office [as a result].  The main folks who are KEEPING him in office tend to be in rural, heavily dominionist-dominated parts of the state, particularly eastern Kentucky (the same part of the state that was one of the single reddest parts of the US–almost totally voting for McCain; that part of the state is also infamously *racist*, having literal “sundown towns” up to the late 80s, probably STILL having them in the deeper parts).

And let’s see…they also share a commonality of governing while in the early stages of dementia.

Reportedly, “Bunning bristles when people bring up his increasing derangement and fragile physical, mental and emotional health[...]“

We really need to start screening for this and I am not being sarcastic. Look at the power that they can wield affecting the entire country! It becomes an issue of “unfit for office”! Why aren’t we employing that?

b) The big thing with Bunning–it has been widely rumoured for a few years running now that he is quite possibly going senile (I’ve heard more than one speculation he’s actually suffering Alzheimer’s or some other dementing illness).  He’s also not running for re-election (partly because he knows Kentuckians are sick of his shit, but it’s also widely speculated again that he isn’t running due to having some form of dementia) so he pretty much no longer gives a [...] even for party unity (as it is, reportedly even some of the GOP were telling him to play nice and he reportedly told them to STFU).

McConnell being one of them who continues to allow Bunning to carry on like a spoiled child, even though the animosity from Bunning to McConnell is palpable. It is all about getting back at the Obama and the democrats – NO MATTER THE COST!

(NOTE: in the following, NAR = New Apostolic Reformation)

Early Detection!

The senility thing comes into play as it’s widely suspected that pretty much his instructions on votes are coming from the KY GOP–which, as I’ve noted, is pretty much a NARasite/SBC-dominionist camp and has been since the late 70s; pretty much the state GOP all but gets their marching orders from Frank Simon (an INFAMOUS NARasite leader here, head of the state AFA affiliate, and deacon of the VERY dominionist church I walked away from–and probably one of the most vociferously anti-LGBT dominionist leaders in the US.

The church I walked away from and Simon both are known to have links to “Watchmen At The Walls” leaders, among others, and they’ve promoted the Holocaust-revisionist trash “The Pink Swastika” since the book was published by Lively).  There’s now influence from a Focus on the Family affiliate linked to a NARasitised “Independent Christian Church” in Lexington, but it’s still pretty much Frank Simon’s show here, and if he’s not getting at least some marching orders from Frankie et al I’ll eat my [...]‘ hat.

The SOLE good thing about this mess, of note, is that he’s VERY likely to throw us at least one Democratic senator (if not two; McConnell is also on some very thin ice)–even as much as Kentucky pretty much considers college basketball a de facto state religion, we have a *reported* 10.9% unemployment rate and an actual unemployment rate probably closer to 25-30 percent (if you count the folks who couldn’t get anything but consultancy work or part-time work at Wal-Mart and got conveniently laid off JUST before the ten-week cutoff period, or are self employed and thus ineligible, or are 1099 contractors who got laid off and are thus ineligible–that kind of shit is extremely common here, by the way).

Reportedly Bill Clinton had this to say about Bunning who has been ranked the second-most conservative senator behind ReBiblican Jim DeMint of South Carolina…

“He said Bunning, a former baseball player, was so mean-spirited that he repulsed even his fellow know-nothings. ‘I tried to work with him a couple times,’ said Clinton, ‘and he just sent shivers up my spine….I know you’re a baseball fan and everything, and you don’t like to hear it, but this guy is beyond the pale.’

Mean-spirited indeed! Bunning has been told by his own cohorts that he will not be allowed to run for another term so this is his vindictive nasty way of getting back at them, while harming millions of Americans in the process. He lashed at his buddy McConnell in 2009 over the issue of not supporting Bunning for another term and Bunning responded with…

“Bunning continued to lash out at his home-state colleague, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell over his Senate leadership, calling him a “control freak” and said he would be better off politically without his support.”

Ugly Face #2 - Tweedle-Dumb

McConnell, for his part, declined to endorse Bunning on “FOX News Sunday” last week and hardly mentioned his Kentucky colleague at the state’s Lincoln Day Dinner earlier this month. Bunning has said he still plans on running for a third term, but Kentucky Secretary of State Trey Grayson and Rand Paul have both formed Senate exploratory committees in case he changes his mind.

UPDATE: Per Manu, Bunning also challenged Lexington Herald-Leader editor John Stamper to an arm wrestling match after Stamper asked him whether he would release his medical records to show he was fit to serve. ~ Politico

If this isn’t an example of their arrogance and complete and total disregard for “rell” America – I don’t know what is! This guy is a has-been baseball celeb. He has been a nobody since his hey-day the year that JFK was shot. He has milked that sports persona ad nauseam! And now this prima donna is throwing a self-indulgent tantrum on the backs of people in this country who are already struggling.

“Here’s what’s happening. Ninety-nine of the Senate’s 100 members have agreed that people whose benefits are set to run out should be allowed to continue receiving them past the February 28 deadline. One senator–Bunning–disagrees. He says the benefits should only be extended if they’re paid for with stimulus dollars. Democrats don’t like that at all.

If Bunning were to relent, the extensions would be granted automatically. But, per the Senate rules, any single member can throw a wrench into an otherwise universal agreement.

Bunning couldn’t care less about any of it: “I have missed the Kentucky-South Carolina game that started at 9:00 and it’s the only redeeming chance we had to beat South Carolina since they’re the only team that has beat Kentucky this year,” he said on the Senate floor.

At one point in the discussion, Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), asked Bunning to drop his objection. Bunning, according to Politico, had a two word answer for his colleague: “Tough shit.”

Republicans, for their part, may not have given Bunning their blessing. But they’re not doing anything to stop him, and instead are blaming Democrats for not scheduling a vote earlier. ~ TPM 3/2010

Here is a statement from a republican strategist ONE YEAR AGO! February 2009…

“Republican strategist Phil Musser told MSNBC yestreday that although Bunning was “a great baseball player,” his time is up and the Republicans should get a primary opponent to get his embarrassing dead ass out of the Senate. “We need a Grand New Party; we need a new generation of leadership… He’s increasingly erratic. His public statements are an embarrassment.” ~ TPM 2/2009

And the topper? The rest of the good ol’ boys in the GOP are rallying behind him. So who else is senile in this pack of animals? It is no wonder that REAL republicans can’t get far enough away from these jackasses.

Finally, to the Bunning family…have you no shame? Have you know pride? Since Jim is incapable of recognizing what is happening in context, do you not think that it is a wise idea to

1) get the man screened;

2) bring him home and preserve what shred of dignity you might be able to salvage with a high paid spin docter;

3) and if 1 & 2 aren’t appearing as viable options for you…get yourselves screened and leave the rest of us be!

****THIS JUST IN!****

You have to watch this! As I said…is it in the water in Kentucky politics? OMG! These people are truly in a different world! Listen to what brings Republican Minority Leader McConnell to tears…and I can tell you right off that it isn’t the plight of the American people!Watch for the first 3 minutes to know who he is talking about; jump to 7:15 for a minute; then to 10:35 for a minute; and you gotta watch 14:30 on.

Is this…honestly…is THIS what they are there for? Is this what they deem worthy of taking up floor time in the Senate Chambers? If you didn’t know better, you would think that Kyle was being shipped to the heart of war, or shipping off to solitary confinement somewhere, or dying of some horrible terminal disease! But no! Guess where Kyle is going?

Kyle is going no where. He will continue to be in the halls and the congressional offices as much if not more than before…because…Kyle is becoming a lobbyist!!! For the love of god…we must change this.

This near miss was because ReBiblican Colorado Senator David Schultheis could not even argue his own kool aid drenched points in Committee for a Bill he introduced. His arguments for this 7 Mountains Bill were so weak that it found a quick and appropriate death before ever reaching a floor discussion in the Colorado Legislature. Phew!

Let’s take a look at this gem! Colorado Senate Bill SB089 introduced by Schultheis and nine other Colorado Senators as well as fellow Political Dominionist Representative Sonnenberg. SB089 was introduced in the Senate and assigned to the Judiciary Committee where it has “been postponed indefinitely”.

Here is the Bill summary:

“The bill establishes the “Religious Bill of Rights for Individuals Connected to Public Schools Act” (act), which requires the State Board of Education (state board) to adopt a religious bill of rights for public school students and parents and a religious bill of rights for public school teachers and employees (religious bills of rights) outlining each party’s respective inalienable individual religious rights.

Just Call it What it is - a State Christian School

The state board shall distribute the religious bills of rights to school district boards of education (local boards), and each local board shall adopt policies and procedures to implement the act, including the annual distribution of the religious bills of rights to students, parents, teachers, and employees of the school district.

Additionally, local boards of education shall provide opt-out provisions to individuals for classes or course materials that are in conflict with the individual’s religious beliefs.

The bill provides that individual members of local boards are personally liable for lawsuits brought under the act if the local board fails to adopt policies and procedures to implement the act or to ensure compliance with the act.”

A Religious Bill of Rights. (And notice how they cleverly omitted precisely just which religion they have in mind).

I know reading the legalese of legislation is not enjoyable, but this piece of work is written pretty straightforward. They really lay it all out there for God and everybody to see. The only reason they get away with it at all, as blatant as they are, is because we haven’t been paying attention. But now we are all wising to their antics…liberals, moderates of all parties, old school republicans and people of all and no faith.

We need to increase the spotlight and make it uncomfortable for them at every turn. Monitoring what bills are introduced on the sly in your local legislatures is a powerful way to catch these 7 Mountains Bills before the ink dries.

Notice that they sanctimoniously assume that religion = Christianity? And what really amazes me is that they do not see their own mirror images when they look into the eyes of the Islamic extremists that they wail so loudly about.

Freedom OF Religion

There is NO doubt in my mind that these lawmakers (and let’s not forget that they are just that – lawmakers) are not envisioning, female American Muslims wearing the traditional hijab head scarf; or a Jewish man from wearing a yarmulke; or a Mennonite from wearing a bonnet and fighting for their rights to do so. This is about the “Religion Mountain” of the 7 Mountains Mandate.

Liam Fox of News Junkies expressed this in an article about SB089…

“Two of the three most common religions globally, don’t require observance by their adherents alone.  Christianity and Islam. They require obedience and observance by our entire society. They are dictatorial and tyrannical and anathema to a democracy. Their religion requires them to evangelize, to witness, and to spread the word of god in order to convert the non-believers. Their religion has rules and doctrines for society that they are commanded to demand. It is the duty of Christians, or followers of Jesus and it is the same for Muslims and the devotees of Islam. They must be imperialistic and work to convert or coerce others to follow the doctrines and dictates of their religion. That is their role. The public sphere is not a place of acceptance, tolerance and cooperation where they seek only to coexist, but a place to be evangelized and bend to their will”. ~ Liam Fox

He is right. The Christian extremists are doing exactly what the Islamic extremists are doing…the message by both is the same. 1) our way is the only way; 2) everyone else’s god is a false god; 3) if you are not with us you are against us…and 4) if you are against us you shall perish.

This would not leave any wiggle room for the rest of us not dunked in their definition of Christian. Schulertheis’ efforts, with the help of his cohorts, may have fallen flat this time but they are relentless and will continue to redress the pig until it looks more appealing. Remember the Texas Board of Education and what they are (and have been) up to.

Ilene PRoctor

Press Contact: Ilene Proctor
Direct Line: (310) 858 6643
Cell: (310) 721.2336
E-mail: proctor@artnet.net

Ilene Proctor Proudly Presents
#36 in the
Great Mind Series, A NON-TEA PARTY*

LEAH BURTON

A Foremost Authority on who and what powers SARAH PALIN – the alpha bitch, the titular head of the know-nothing ( “keep your government hands off my Medicare,”) party and quite possibly, the most dangerous person  in America. Leah is the author of godsownparty.com/blog, a joint project for 2011, “God’s Own Party? ~ Keep Your Bible OFF My Ballot!” as well and the Upcoming “Palin’s Brain“.

The criticism of Sarah Palin by the media and the progressive blogosphere has been intense, but their focus has missed what is important: it’s not the writing on her hand, it’s the writing on the wall.

Leah will reveal everything you need to know about Sarah Palin:  her pathological anti-Semitism, her vampirey and relentless decades-long positioning for capturing the White House, her secret pact with the religious right that believes Armageddon is the best and only exit strategy, etc.

This is a must-attend event for progressives.  Dismiss Palin at our own peril. She is a flash in the pan that we will be feeling the reverberations from for many years if we do not wake up. And behind her? Variations on “Palin Politics” are waiting in the wings. If we do not take her seriously and extinguish the machine that got her here? We will be facing devastating losses that will make the latest Supreme Court decision to give personhood status to corporations look friendly to democracy.

Remember – evil triumphs when good men do nothing.

When: Friday,  March 5th, 2010
Time: 7:30 to 9:00 PM
Moderator: Cenk Uygur , Host  The Young Turks *

Sirius XM Satellite Radio & Young Turks on You Tube & TYT Interviews on You Tube
Watch the best show on earth at www.theyoungturks.com

At the home of Jan and Jerry Manpearl,, 939 San Vicente Blvd., Santa Monica 90403 (on the corner of San Vicente and Larkin) CA

RSVP a Must (310) 310) 458-7213 OR Ilene: 310 858 6643

Refreshments will be served, but no tea

Tickets: 20.00
Leah L. Burton is a multi-generational Alaskan, former lobbyist, and currently a researcher/writer on Christian Dominionism in American politics. She studied Social Psychology at the University of Alaska, and received her Life Coaching Education at Erickson College in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.

Leah grew up as a Protestant Lutheran and as witness to the growth of the pilgrimage of neo-pentacostals to Alaska beginning in the mid 1960’s, which has become “ground zero” for the Christian Dominionist movement in the very area targeted most intensely by their operatives.

She is increasingly sought to speak before college classes, political groups and organizations; and in the media through radio and television interviews. Because of her ever-growing expertise in this virtually unknown area of research, Leah’s writings and strategies are finding their way onto numerous sites and into periodicals. Her work is being quoted and referenced as a source regarding the fight against Christian Nationalism and the preservation the separation of church and state.

She is currently serving on the Board of Directors for the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, working closely with founder Mikey Weinstein to assure that military personnel of all faiths and no faith are treated fairly and with respect. That they are allowed to serve their country and defend the U.S. Constitution without the constant barrage of unsolicited proselytizing by Christian Dominionists within the military.

As a lobbyist Leah dedicated years of experience fighting for the rights of families and children, on numerous issues including domestic violence, child custody, support, abandonment and neglect. She now devotes that same intensity toward exposing religious extremism in America.

Cenk Uygur is host of The Young Turks, the first ever live, daily web television talk show. The Young Turks are on XM Satellite Radio 8-9PM ET (XM 167, America Left) and on Sirius Left 146. The Young Turks is one of the Top 100 You Tube Partners, with over 13 million views a month on their You Tube Channel.

The Young Turks recently won the Best Political Podcast 2009 at the Podcast Awards and Best Political News Site 2009 at the Mashable Awards.

The Young Turks premiered on Sirius Satellite Radio in the first quarter of 2002 as the platform’s first original program before moving to XM Satellite Radio in 2006. The show was also the first nationwide progressive radio show during its tenure at Sirius.

Cenk Uygur is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania – Wharton School of Business and Columbia University Law School. He worked as a lawyer, television writer and television host before starting The Young Turks. Cenk also blogs on Huffington Post, Daily Kos, ABC News and Politico.

The Young Turks presents a smart, funny and irreverent take on politics, pop culture and news.

A sampling of recent guests include Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, President Jimmy Carter, Presidential Candidate Ralph Nader, DNC Chair Howard Dean, Porn Star Mary Carey, Presidential Candidate Pat Buchanan, Actor Matt Dillon, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, Supreme Allied Commander General Wesley Clark, Actor Mel Brooks, Brian Williams of NBC News, Sam Donaldson of ABC News, Professor of Linguistics at MIT Noam Chomsky, Actor Richard Dreyfuss, Political Commentator Mary Matalin, Political Commentator Arianna Huffington, among numerous.

This is going to be great fun and I am looking forward to opening eyes to the realities of why Palin is no joke. Whether Queen Esther ever runs for political office again or not is not our only focus. It is who and what she influences behind the scenes with her money and frightening rhetoric.

We are seeing 2010 turning into a potential nightmare for progressives and moderate republicans alike with the resignations of numerous Congress members, allowing for a vigorous and vitriolic challenge by zealous Dominionist candidates. Then enter the fringe tagalongs that throw themselves on the Palin & Co. petard, and the new breed republicans who oppose anything put forward by the other side of the aisle – we have an explosive recipe for disaster.

Whether liberal or conservative, it will take all of us, using common sense and level heads to push back against this political train wreck. I wish you could ALL join us!