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With the coronation of George Bush as president in 2000, despite the fact hundreds of thousands more citizens had voted for his opponent, a new level of meanness has been introduced into America's domestic and international politics. America's claim to being a civilized nation is now very much in question.
George Bush has shown that America can be a bully, not only to the world but to its own citizens. He talks but doesn't make sense -- he says things that are patently ridiculous and nonsensical, yet the media hardly ever notices. He's discovered the power of being a bully, because there's nothing else persuasive about him. But he gets away with it because the media ?is, for whatever reasons, letting him get away with it.
Before Bush, leaders usually tried to rule by eloquence, by wit, by powerful arguments. But Bush wins by bullying and intimidation. And why not? It's a style that has served the four men we will be talking about here well over the years.
CONCLUSION - The American Taliban isn't that poor fellow from an idyllic Northern California who went off to fight with Osama Ben Laden in Afghanistan. It's George Bush, who is hellbent, you should excuse the malapropism, on giving us his bizarre brand of fundamentalist Christianity.
The conservatives and Christian fundamentalists have an agenda, to turn this country from pluralism and democracy to having a state religion. They prefer something more "religious."
On the furthest right end of the political spectrum the fanatics are Christian Identity, which is avowedly pro fascist, and next to these folks, Pat Robertson and Jerry Fallwell appear positively benign. The most powerful theology to emerge from the fanatics in Christian Identity provides the theological doctrines of the KKKs and militias of the United States.
So the Southern Baptist Convention isn't quite Christian Identity. But the Convention has an agenda: to eliminate the progress that was won by women in the '20s and [the] civil rights [movement] in the '60s. The major spokesmen of this theology are Pat Robertson and Jerry Fallwell.
Robertson is, of course, a media mogul whose Christian Coalition is possibly the most powerful of all Christian right organizations. Robertson has already announced that Bush will be "reelected" in 2004 because God has so ordained it. ?Jerry Fallwell is a pal.
It was Fallwell, on Robertson's show, who said that the destruction of the World Trade Center and a portion of the Pentagon was the fault of the homosexuals, pro abortionists and civil rights activists. These candid utterances came 48 hours after the attack. They came as Fallwell was guesting on Robertson's 700 Club program.
"Throwing God out successfully with the help of the federal court system, throwing God out of the public square, out of the schools" were part of the reason God was mad and allowed the attack, Fallwell averred. "The abortionists have got to bear some burden for this because God will not be mocked. And when we destroy 40 million little innocent babies, we make God mad."
He explained that, in particular, he blamed "the pagans and the abortionists and the feminists and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way - all of them who have tried to secularize America ... I point the finger in their face and say you helped this happen."
"Well, I totally concur," Robinson chimed in.
[This televised exchange] was so embarrassing that even one of the president's flacks had to say, "The president do
es not share those views."
Fallwell was born in Lynchburg, Virginia, in 1933 and he still heads the Thomas Road Baptist Church there, which he founded in 1956. Shortly after founding the church, he began broadcasting the "Old Time Gospel Hour" on radio and television. When he started the church, he had 35 members. Two decades later he had 16,000 members. He founded Lynchburg Baptist College in 1971, which he later renamed Liberty University.
?In 1979, he founded The Moral Majority, which waged war on abortion, pornography, feminism and homosexuality. It first flexed its political muscles during the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980.
Oddly enough, Fallwell used to criticize black ministers involved in Civil Rights because he said ministers shouldn't be politically active. But the Moral Majority was an invention of Fallwell and some other far right activists concerned about finding a way for the Republican party to unseat President Jimmy Carter, who was also an evangelical Baptist, but of a somewhat more benign sort.
Back in 1965, Fallwell had proclaimed "Preachers are not called to be politicians but soul winners," but when push came to shove, as it did in 1979, Fallwell became a politician.
In 1980, Fallwell told a fib, if you want to characterize it generously. He claimed insisted on a breakfast meeting with [President] Carter. Once at the meeting , Falwell insisted, he asked the President why he had homosexuals among his senior advisors. Carter supposedly responded he was the President "of all the American people." Fallwell had to later admit the exchange had never taken place.
He also had to backtrack after he said that "I do not believe that God answers the prayers of any unredeemed Gentile or Jew." He finally decided that maybe God did sometimes hear from others than just evangelical Christians. By 1985, he said he would stop talking about the need to "Christianize" America. He would use the term "Judeo-Christian." He still kept talking about "Christianizing" everything despite his vow.
Fallwell says he considers himself a good friend of the Jews, which brings to mind the old saw about with friends like this, who needs enemies?
Toward the beginning of the å90s, Fallwell developed an obsession about Hillary and Bill Clinton - regularly denouncing them almost as if they were the personal emissaries of Satan on earth. He was one of those who, like Limbaugh, pushed the notion that Clinton killed Vincent Foster.
No wonder Robertson of the Christian Coalition still invited Fallwell on his program -- Fallwell's Moral Majority had paved the way for the Christian Coalition.
When is the last time you talked politics with your dog?
In a 1979 book, America Can Be Saved, Fallwell openly proclaimed,
He thinks women "need to know Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior and be under His Lordship. They need a man who knows Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior and they need to be a part of a home where their husband is a god leader and where there is a Christian family."
He quotes scriptures to prove that ?"Because a woman is weaker does not mean that she is less important."
Only a true believer [like Falwell] could, with a straight face, utter some of the bizarre things he has uttered. Among his penchant for odd causes -- in 1999 he issued a "parents alert" that Tinky Winky, a character on the PBS children's show "Teletubies" was gay. An ABC News Web site asked the question "Is Tinky Winky gay, or is Jerry Fallwell crazy?" By 84.7 to 15.2 percent, people voted for the latter.
These days Hyde is listed as "an expert" on terrorism and is chairman of the House International Relations Committee. He's probably best known, however, for leading the impeachment of President Clinton when he headed up the House Judiciary Committee.
An Irish Catholic who grew up a Democrat, by 1952 he had switched parties to back Dwight D. Eisenhower for president.
His wife of 45 years died in 1992, leaving him four children and four grandchildren, but before she died he gave her a lot of trouble by hardly hiding his various affairs. Yet he was a sanctimonious morality leader, a worthy partner of Gingrich and the rest of the howling mob and demagogues bent on tearing Clinton from limb to limb for his "immorality."
That is until a man named Fred Snodgrass, a retiree living in Florida, said he nearly jumped out of his chair when he first saw Hyde on television talking about Clinton.
Hyde's committee was then deciding whether Clinton's fun and games with a White House intern should be referred to the entire House [of Representatives of the United States] for impeachment proceedings.
The 76-year-old Snodgrass said as he was listening to "these politicians ?... going on about how he (Hyde) should have been on the Supreme Court, what a great man he was, how we're lucky to have him in Congress in charge of this impeachment case!" Snodgrass couldn't help but think that this was the same hypocrite who broke up Snodgrass's family.
Hyde had carried on a five-year affair with Snodgrass's wife Cherie. Hyde admitted that the affair only ended when his own wife found out about it. Hyde was a rising star in Republican politics and Cherie Snodgrass was a beauty stylist. She was Hyde's trophy mistress, an attractive beautiful much younger woman that he flaunted for many years -- including some rather painful moments in front of Snodgrass.
Hyde eventually became a pious Roman Catholic defender of family values and strong opponent -- along with Fallwell ?and gang -- of abortion. He also was, not so incidentally, a strong supporter of Oliver North of Iran-Contra scandal fame, who made a virtue of lying to the Congress to protect
an illegal operation by the executive branch. During the impeachment attempt on Clinton, Hyde kept insisting that "lying must have consequences," a statement that would come to haunt him when the evidence of his own homewrecking ways were revealed.
Hyde was, like many such scoundrels, also attracted by money. He was involved in the spectacular failure of a Savings and Loan on the board of which he sat. The shenanigans there cost the U.S. taxpayers $67 million.
Clyde Federal Savings and Loan specialized in risky financial options, including buying certificates of deposit from a bank in the Cayman Islands which was notorious for money laundering.
Hyde was also known as the father of the "Hyde amendment," which kept federal funds from being used for abortions for the poor. Hyde opposes not just partial birth abortions, but abortion in general. He opposes the U.S. supporting family planning in its international aid. He voted to make it a crime to harm a fetus while committing another crime and voted for special funding to those health providers who don't provide information on abortions. And he wanted federal aid only to go to schools that have voluntary prayer.
Hyde provided the Catholic support of the Protestant fundamentalists. He doesn't much believe in the separation of church and state. Freedom of speech and the press are not high on his list. He talked about how some churches are "real," others are not.
Especially when you combine that with Hyde's strong support for Marine Colonel Oliver North and the Nicaraguan Contras and Iran-Contra, it's not an appetizing sight.
Mr. Snodgrass might not have such a benign view of Henry Hyde either. His wife had been the mother of his three children, but Hyde kept her out until the early morning, nightclubbing, lavishing her with jewelry and furniture, and eventually her own apartment.
Mrs. Snodgrass later said she realized she hadn't been Hyde's first mistress, nor the last. She said she eventually came to believe "he's bad for the country; he's too powerful, and he's hypocritical."
Hyde responded to the article exposing his shackup job in Salon by saying it didn't deserve the protection of the first amendment. Rather, he said, it constituted "a violation of federal criminal law."
Tom DeLay, another powerful Republican congressman, whose office sports signs about how today might be the first day of the End of Days, described the article as "a direct assault on the United States."
For Hyde's part, he denounced those who greeted the [subsequent] Slate magazine article about his indiscretion with the statement that "our most formidable opponent has been cynicism, the widespread conviction that all politics and politicians are by definition corrupt and venal."
He was right, in an ironic kind of way, of course.
LOS ANGELES, CA, USA - [Reprinted from the introduction to this series. - Ed.] They're the most unappetizing gang of hypocrites and liars ever, these spawn of the "Reagan Revolution." We're talking about Rush Limbaugh, Newt Gingrich, Jerry Fallwell and Henry Hyde.
Fallwell's biggest nemesis is public education. Public education, in his mind, teaches secularism, humanism and atheism. He wants to replace public schools with private church schools. Understand this and you will understand President Bush's relentless assault on public education. Fallwell makes no bones about blaming declining morality on public schools. "If we are going to save America and evangelize the world, we cannot accommodate secular philosophies that are diametrically opposed to Christian truth. We need to pull out all the stops and to recruit and train 25 million to become informed pro-moral activists whose voices can be heard in the halls of Congress," he said.
dogshatebush.com
"I hope I live to see the day, when, as in the early days of our country, we won't have any public schools. The churches will have taken them over again and Christians will be running them. What a happy day that will be!"
Fallwell gets particularly riled up about women's liberation. He thinks feminists are women who live "in disobedience to God's laws and have promoted their godless philosophy throughout our society."
Yet another member of this unholy alliance of four is Henry J. Hyde, the congressman from the suburbs of western Chicago since 1975 who, along with Gingrich, led the charge against Clinton's adultery.
LIONEL ROLFE is the author of Literary L.A., Fat Man on the Left and the forthcoming, "The Uncommon Friendship of Yaltah Menuhin and Willa Cather." Portions of this article will appear in Anna Nevenic's Hidden Agenda: Conservatives, Fundamentalists and the Republican Party.
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