Saturday, October 24, 2009

Meet the Senators in the Creepy Right-Wing Cult Trying to Defeat Health Care Reform


By Adele M. Stan, AlterNet. Posted October 20, 2009.


The Family has spent decades consolidating power within the GOP and may have come to dominate the party even among those who do not belong to the cult.

In Special Coverage

Belief:
An Atheist's Review of the Book of Genesis Illustrated by a Legendary Comics Artist
Greta Christina

Corporate Accountability and WorkPlace:
After the Billionaires Plundered Alabama Town, Troops Were Called in ... Illegally
Mark Ames

DrugReporter:
President Obama And Gov. Paterson Get Love For Recent Drug Policy Reforms
Tony Newman

Environment:
McKibben Versus Hedges' Clash of Worldviews: How Do We Solve the Environmental Crisis?
Chris Hedges, Bill McKibben

Health and Wellness:
Rape Is a Pre-Existing Condition? The Heartlessness of the Health Insurance Industry Exposed
Danielle Ivory

Immigration:
A Death in Texas Casts Cold Light on America's Privatized Immigration Prisons
Tom Barry

Media and Technology:
8 Reasons Fox Is Not a News Organization
Adele Stan

Movie Mix:
Barack Obama Must See Michael Moore's New Movie (and So Must You)!
Arianna Huffington

Politics:
Rachel Maddow Mocks the Idea of Bush as a Motivational Speaker

Reproductive Justice and Gender:
A National Treasure -- The Memoirs of Gay Rights Pioneer Martin Duberman
Doug Ireland

Rights and Liberties:
Obama Is Keeping Bush's Worst "War on Terror" Policies Firmly In Place
Julian Sanchez

Sex and Relationships:
How I Realized I'm Bisexual
Rabbit White

Take Action:
G-20 Meetings: Nothing Much Happened in the Suites, and There Was Too Much Punch in the Streets
Laura Flanders

Water:
Southeast Water Scarcity Blamed on Overpopulation

World:
Will Anyone Actually Vote in Afghanistan's Much Anticipated Run-Off Election?
Hafizullah Gardesh

More stories by Adele M. Stan

In the heat of summer, a din of voices arose from the U.S. Senate in opposition to the health care reform legislation that was taking shape in both houses of Congress. Overlooked in media coverage of the health care brouhaha is the membership of many of the senators who most vociferously oppose the legislation in the right-wing religious cult known as The Family.

With the Senate Finance Committee's passage last Tuesday of its version of health care legislation, expect the debate to flare again as the bill moves to the Senate floor. The Family's point men -- "key men" in the cult's theological lexicon -- will likely try once again to defeat reform in the service of their Supply-Side Jesus.

You could chalk it up to nothing more than pure partisanship, this obstructionism on the part of these Republicans. Or you could say that the ideology-cum-theology of The Family, which has spent decades consolidating power within the GOP, has at last come to dominate the party even among those who do not belong to the cult.

While leaders of religious right we've come to know assert their claim to "a place at the table," The Family sets its table for only a select few. They are the nation's powerful: senators, congressmen, business executives and the strong-armed leaders of Third World countries. Together, in secret, they worship a Jesus unrecognizable to most practicing Christians. (In their secret theology, the leadership model of Adolf Hitler is one of which Jesus would approve.)

The people of South Carolina, Oklahoma, Iowa, Nevada, Kansas and Wyoming find themselves represented by at least one U.S. senator who belongs to The Family. If he subscribes to the theology of the cult of which he is a member, the senator believes himself to be anointed to his lofty position by Jesus himself -- a Jesus who tells him that his constituents' health care dilemmas are of no consequence to God; they are just the natural order of things as deemed by him.

The Jesus worshiped by The Family is neither Jesus the peacemaker, the champion of the poor, nor even Christ the personal savior. He is Jesus the power broker, who works his will through well-situated men committed to free enterprise of a most unregulated sort.

Things are as they are in the world because that's the way God wants them. The poor are poor because God ordained it to be so -- a condition that they may have earned through disobedience to the creator. The powerful are powerful -- be they murderous dictators or corporate polluters -- because they are God's chosen. Any regulated economic system, according to this theology, is less than godly, because regulation forestalls the exercise of free will.

Sens. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, and Mike Enzi, R-Wyo., Family members who did their bit to slow down reform in their roles on the negotiating team for the Senate Finance Committee health care reform bill, remain unmoved by the 865 preventable deaths suffered each week by people without access to proper health care.

The God of The Family's teaching would never hold Grassley or Enzi -- or any other official -- to account for those deaths, because Grassley and Enzi are key men in God's plan.

Even Grassley's dishonest campaign to convince his constituents that President Barack Obama is looking to use health care reform to "pull the plug on Grandma" -- God is just fine with that, because Grassley is doing exactly what God wants him to do, preserving the social order.

Not His Brother's Keeper

It's that theology that led The Family, over the years, to aid and abet such dictators as Haiti's Francois "Papa Doc" Duvalier, Indonesia's Haji Muhammad Suharto, Chile's Augusto Pinochet, and the brutal Angolan rebel Jonas Savimbi, who among them killed more than a million people.

The Family seems to be fond of "revolutions" of a particular type: Those that overthrow socialists or any kind of leftists, even those, like Chile's Salvador Allende, who were democratically elected. As Jeff Sharlet explains in his masterful book, The Family, "God chooses his key men according to His concerns, not ours ..."

Other Family members, identified as such by Sharlet, loom large in the health care debate. Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., said right-wingers could "break" Obama by defeating health care reform. Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., told NBC's David Gregory that members of Congress had "earned" the threats of violence they were receiving at town-hall meetings focused on the health care bill.


Digg! Share on facebook submit to reddit Bookmark on Delicious Stumble This TweetThis

See more stories tagged with: al franken, grassley, inhofe, the family, the fellowship, health-care reform, doug coe, coburn, ensign, enzi, supply-side jesus

Adele M. Stan AlterNet's Washington bureau chief.

No comments: