Republican Gomorrah: The Shattered GOP, Taken Over by Authoritarian Radicals, Is Incapable of Compromise | Politics | AlterNet

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Max Blumenthal, author of Republican Gomorrah, argues the right is incapable of anything but scorched-earth politics, and are trying to delegitimize the Obama presidency -

R.J. Rushdoony was a survivor of the Armenian genocide, who came to this country and became a theologian. He's the descendant of six generations of high priests, and he laid out a plan in several tomes for replacing the federal government, the secular government, with a totalitarian theocracy in which functions like road building and medical care and schooling would be provided by the church. The criminal justice system would be turned over to the church and run according to Leviticus case law, so disobedient children, adulterers, loose women, etc., would all be executed.

Most of the leaders among the Christian right would deny that Rushdoony has any influence at all on them because of the controversial, radical nature of his work.

However, Marvin O'Lasky, who helped inspire George W. Bush's faith-based initiative, has footnoted and cited Rushdoony in some of his early work. And you see some of Rushdoony's ideas reflected in the faith-based initiative which has replaced government social services with services performed by the church and funded groups, including abstinence-only groups, with taxpayer money.

So, Rushdoony has at least loosely inspired that initiative, which continues into the Obama administration. I also see it in initiatives funded by one of Rushdoony's acolytes, his financial angel who I write about in my book, Howard F. Ahmanson Jr., who is the son of the famous philanthropist Howard Ahmanson, from Southern California. And at age 18, Howard F. Ahmanson Jr. inherited $300 million after his father died. His mother died soon after and he literally went crazy, spending two years in a mental institution.

When he came out of the mental institution, he became a born-again Christian and encountered Rushdoony, who became his - practically his surrogate father. And in return, Ahmanson funded Rushdoony's political empire and then funded some very successful Christian right initiatives. For example, the intelligent design movement - Howard F. Ahmanson Jr. has donated at least $2.8 million to the Discovery Institute in Seattle, which created the intelligent design curriculum.

James Dobson, who's commonly and wrongly referred to by some pundits as Reverend James Dobson when in fact, he's not a religious leader. He's not a theologian. He has no religious credentials - even though he's the most influential leader of a religious movement, the Christian right, and also the most popular.

He is a child psychiatrist, and James Dobson understands that behind the right's politics of resentment is a culture of personal crisis that he's been catering to and cultivating since he became a public figure in the early '70s. And what Dobson does and where his strength comes from, is the correspondence in his organization Focus On the Family, based in Colorado Springs, which rakes in about $150 million every year. The correspondence department there handles so many letters and so many phone calls that they have their own zip code in Colorado Springs.

The letters basically are people pleading for advice on basic problems - from their child's bedwetting problem to marital strife. And they will receive, in short order Dobson-approved advice. But then their personal information is entered in a database and they're bombarded with political mailings, telling them that the source of these problems and the source of societal decay is liberalism, is the homosexual agenda, feminism, etcetera.

Dobson's radio show, which is one of the top five radio shows in the country, operates the same way. And so, what Dobson has done and why he's a central character in my book is he has helped cultivate the sensibility of the movement that controls the Republican Party, and with these people who view him not just as a political leader or a religious leader, they view him as a magic helper who's helped save them from personal problems.

They will do whatever he commands at election time and he's been able to set his shock troops against Republican moderates and against vulnerable Democrats. He was credited for helping re-elect Bush in 2004, and I credit him as a major reason why Sarah Palin was named vice presidential nominee in 2008, of John McCain - and has a lot to do with the fact that James Dobson said, on his radio show, that he would not vote for John McCain unless he named a suitable vice presidential candidate.

While I was writing my book, I discovered a letter by Dwight Eisenhower to a dying veteran of World War II who had terminal cancer. The veteran Robert Biggs wrote to Eisenhower that he felt from his recent speeches the feeling of hedging and a little uncertainty, and that he waited for someone to speak for us and we'll back him completely if the statement is made in truth. And it seemed to me and to Eisenhower that Biggs was sort of suggesting that he would prefer a more authoritarian leader, at least a more heavy-handed leader, someone more like George W. Bush.

And Eisenhower decided to respond to Biggs, when he could've just tossed the letter in the trash can or he could have just issued a canned response. And Eisenhower's response I think was really remarkable and somewhat eerie because at the time he was under attack from the radical right of his day, the John Birch Society, which had named him and many of his cabinet members as communist agents - and Joseph McCarthy. And he wanted to guard his Republican Party and its big tent philosophy against its right flank.

So Eisenhower responded with his vision of the open society, remarking that, you know, the unity that Biggs was asking for was only logical in a military organization, but in a democracy, debate is the breath of life. Eisenhower bemoaned the fact that there were people who had experienced mental stress and burden, who viewed this form of government, democracy, as possibly dispensable, because it places too much pressure on them. And he recommended a book called "The True Believer" by Eric Hoffer - really interesting figure who was a self-educated philosopher, who was a dockworker. And the central thesis of Hoffer's book, which is an analysis of the mentality of the true believer, is that faith in a holy cause is really a substitute for lost faith in ourselves. And this book was passed down through the Eisenhower family and helped inform Eisenhower as he warned against the rise of the radical right and its influence on the Republican Party. And I included this letter in my book because my book shows the Republican Party ignoring Eisenhower's warning and realizing his worst fears.

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http://www.alternet.org/politics/143148/republican_gomorrah:_the_shattered_gop,_taken_over_by_authoritarian_radicals,_is_incapable_of_compromise/?page=1

http://www.alternet.org/politics/143148/republican_gomorrah:_the_shattered_gop,_taken_over_by_authoritarian_radicals,_is_incapable_of_compromise/?page=1