article: "The Covert Kingdom"

This is a scary article by Joe Bageant, which Mig suggested we read. It is about the Christian Right: how they think, and how strong their network is. He says they command 40% of the voters. I hope that's too high an estimate. Lakoff suggests there are a lot of more moderate Christian swing voters, who might come back to Dems if we frame our values better. Complete article is at http://www.counterpunch.org/bageant05252004.html

excerpts: "just because millions of Christians appear to be dangerously
nuts, does not mean they are marginal."
"There now stretches a network of dozens of campuses across the nation, each with its strange cultish atmosphere of smiling Christian pod people, most of them clones of Jerry Fallwell's Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia. But how many outsiders know the depth and specificity of political indoctrination in these schools? For example, Patrick Henry College in Purcellville, Virginia, a college
exclusively for Christian home-schoolers, offers programs in strategic government intelligence, legal training and foreign policy, all with a strict, Bible based "Christian worldview." Patrick Henry is so heavily funded by the Christian right it can offer classes below cost.

In the Bush administration, seven percent of all internships are handed out to Patrick Henry students, along with many others distributed among similar religious rightist colleges. The Bush administration also recruits from the faculties of these schools, i.e. the appointments of right-wing Christian activist Kay Coles James, former dean of the Pat Robertson School of government, as director of the U.S. office of personnel. What better position than the personnel office from which to recruit more fundamentalists? "...