Looking Back Through the Key Hole: Be Afraid, Be VERY Afraid!


One of my favorite TV shows of the last ten years was West Wing. I loved the topics, the writing and the acting on it. I also loved that in a nation that seemed to be getting increasingly conservative, it had the moral courage to stand up and provide a platform for those people, like my wife and I, who didn’t subscribe to the “belief” system being perpetrated on the nation. As the Clinton administration continued to crumble, partly due to the unwarranted crusade of Ken Starr, partly due to Clinton’s own personal failings as a man, the show actually set a standard that regardless of ideology served as a power of example for how all administrations should conduct themselves.

In one particular episode, Josh Lyman – the Deputy Chief of Staff for those of you not familiar with the show or its cast – is having a conversation with a Republican congressman. “It’s interesting,” Josh says, “how you people want to reduce the size of government just small enough so it can fit through a keyhole.” Josh had a habit of leaving his bedside manner home when it came to talking about such topics.

The scene got me thinking, though, about how different the Republican Party is from what it used to be. I’m not that old but I remember a time when learned men like William F. Buckley would vehemently argue for conservative capitalism and rage against oppressive government control and regulation. I remember watching him on his show, Firing Line, in the ‘80s and early ‘90s. While I agreed with some of his points, and strongly disagreed with the rest, I remember thinking how the argument was always about the role of government in the economy. Social conservatives, it was thought, were irrelevant. They were tolerated, only in as far as they could be counted on to get out the vote in certain strategic places in the South.

That was then, this is now. As some would say, this ain’t your daddy’s Republican party anymore. The party that espoused laissez-fair (which literally means let them do or hands off) economics has now been kidnapped by a gang of men whose goal is anything other than hands off. As Josh would say they want to peek through your keyhole to see if you’ve been naughty or nice.

Some of these men are very familiar within the conservative Right. The key players are Pat Robertson, James Dobson and Tony Perkins. I was going to mention Jerry Falwell, but alas nature took care of that.

Pat Robertson, born March 22, 1930, is the founder and chairman of the Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN) and hosts the controversial program The 700 Club where he expresses his opinions on a regular basis. Some of the more notable have been as follows:

On January 14, 1991, on The 700 Club, Pat Robertson attacked a number of Protestant denominations when he declared: "You say you're supposed to be nice to the Episcopalians and the Presbyterians and the Methodists and this, that, and the other thing. Nonsense. I don't have to be nice to the spirit of the Antichrist."[20] He has never recanted this statement, though he has supported the election of certain Episcopalians. [1]

On the June 8, 1998 edition of his show, Robertson denounced Orlando, Florida and Disney World for allowing a privately sponsored "Gay Days" weekend. Robertson stated that the acceptance of homosexuality could result in hurricanes, earthquakes, tornadoes, terrorist bombings and "possibly a meteor."[25] The resulting outcry prompted Robertson to return to the topic on June 24, where he quoted the Book of Revelation to support his claims.[2]

While discussing the Mark Foley scandal on the October 5, 2006 broadcast of the show, Robertson condemned Foley saying he "does what gay people do".[26][3]

On his November 10, 2005 broadcast of The 700 Club, Robertson told citizens of Dover, Pennsylvania that they had rejected God by voting out of office all seven members of the school board who support intelligent design.

"I'd like to say to the good citizens of Dover: if there is a disaster in your area, don't turn to God, you just rejected Him from your city", Robertson said on his broadcast. And don't wonder why he hasn't helped you when problems begin, if they begin. I'm not saying they will, but if they do, just remember, you just voted God out of your city. And if that's the case, don't ask for His help because He might not be there."[39] [4]

The lead story on the January 5, 2006, edition of The 700 Club was Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's hospitalization for a severe stroke. After the story, Robertson said that Sharon's illness was possibly retribution from God for his recent drive to give more land to the Palestinians. He also claimed former prime minister Yitzhak Rabin's 1995 assassination may have occurred for the same reason.[41] [5]

But the crowning achievement of his theology came on the August 22, 2005 broadcast of The 700 Club, when Robertson said of Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez: “I don't know about this doctrine of assassination, but if he thinks we're trying to assassinate him, I think that we really ought to go ahead and do it. It's a whole lot cheaper than starting a war, and I don’t think any oil shipments will stop.” [6]

I could go on and on. On the March 21, 2006 broadcast of The 700 Club, while reviewing The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America by David Horowitz, the subject of which is radical academics in American universities, Robertson went on to say that the 101 professors named in the book are only but a few of "thirty to forty thousand" left-wing professors in the United States, all of whom he accused of being "racists, murderers, sexual deviants and supporters of Al-Qaeda", further labeling them as "termites that have worked into the woodwork of our academic society".

Later in the broadcast, he went on to say, "these guys are out and out communists, they are radicals, they are, you know, some of them killers, and they are propagandists of the first order... you don’t want your child to be brainwashed by these radicals, you just don’t want it to happen. Not only brainwashed but also beat up, they beat these people up, cower them into submission."[66] [7]

And last but not least, in May 2006, Robertson declared that storms and possibly a tsunami would hit America's coastline sometime in 2006. Robertson supposedly received this revelation from God during an annual personal prayer retreat in January. The claim was repeated four times on The 700 Club.

On May 8, 2006 Robertson said, "If I heard the Lord right about 2006, the coasts of America will be lashed by storms." On May 17, 2006 he elaborated, "There well may be something as bad as a tsunami in the Pacific Northwest."[67] While this claim didn't garner the same level of controversy as some of his other statements, it was generally received with mild amusement by the Pacific Northwest media. It should also be noted that the History Channel's initial airing of its new series, Mega Disasters: West Coast Tsunami, was broadcast the first week of May. [8]

And these are only the highlights, imagine the low lights!

Tony Perkins, born March 20, 1963, has been the president of the Family Research Council, a conservative Christian think-tank and public policy foundation, a political offshoot of James Dobson's Focus on the Family since September 2003.

Perkins was one of the organizers and hosts of the 2005 Justice Sunday event organized by the Family Research Council and Focus on the Family, along with James Dobson and R. Albert Mohler, Jr. The event was organized to mobilize the evangelical Christian base in putting pressure on Democrats to end the use of the filibuster to block the confirmation of nominees to the federal judiciary by President George W. Bush. [9]

Perkins has come under fire from various organizations for having appeared in 2002 as a speaker at the Louisiana chapter of the Council of Conservative Citizens, a group sometimes considered white supremacist in orientation. [3]

The Nation claims that in 1996 Perkins paid former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard David Duke $82,000 for use of his mailing list. At the time, Perkins was campaign manager for Louis E. "Woody" Jenkins, a Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate in Louisiana. The Federal Election Commission fined the Jenkins campaign $3,000 for attempting to hide the money paid to Duke."[2] [10] While both Perkins and The Family Research Council call the article’s claims false, stating that the Duke “connection was not known until 1999,” it is hard to believe that no one in the campaign knew of David Duke or his views.

Like many conservative evangelicals, Perkins is not a fan of the environmentalist movement. He was quoted as saying that global warming was “part of a leftist agenda that threatened evangelical unity. We're not going to allow third parties to divide evangelicals, and I think that is what is happening in part with the global warming issue." [11] Perkins was also one of the many conservative evangelicals who signed a letter in January of 2006 demanding that Richard Cizik, the Vice President for Governmental Affairs of the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE), be restrained from putting forth his views on global warming. The following year, James Dobson – more on him later – called for Cizik to resign.

Perkins attended Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University and when Falwell died earlier this month, said of him in his blog, “As a spiritual giant in the political world, Dr. Falwell stood for family, faith, and freedom—even when the stands he took were unpopular.” One of those “unpopular” stands occurred after the September 11, 2001 attacks, when Falwell said on The 700 Club, "I really believe that 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.'" [12]

And now for the granddaddy of them all.

James Dobson, born April 21, 1936, is the chairman of the board of Focus on the Family, a nonprofit organization he founded in 1977. In this function, he produces the daily radio program Focus on the Family, which is broadcast in more than a dozen languages and on over 7,000 stations worldwide, and heard daily by more than 220 million people in 164 countries.[1] [2] Focus on the Family is also carried by about 60 U.S. television stations daily.[1] [13]

Dobson's Family Research Council is identified as an dominionist organization by TheocracyWatch[20][21], which says that the Congressional scorecard of the Family Research Council illustrates its success and the strength of dominionists in Congress.[22] Dominionism describes a movement among socially conservative Christians to gain influence or control over secular civil government through political action — seeking either a nation dominated by Christians or a nation dominated by a Christian understanding of biblical law. The use and application of this terminology is matter of controversy.[1][2][3][4][5] [14] Chris Hedges described Dobson as "perhaps the most powerful figure in the Dominionist movement" and "a crucial player in getting out the Christian vote for George W. Bush." [15]

Although Dobson initially remained somewhat distant from Washington politics, in 1981 he founded the Family Research Council as a political arm through which Biblical values could achieve greater political influence.

In late 2004, Dobson led a campaign with social conservatives to block the appointment of Arlen Specter to head of the judiciary committee because of Specter's stance on abortion. Responding to a question by Alan Colmes, of Fox News’ Hannity & Colmes, on whether he wanted the Republican Party to be known as a "big-tent party," he replied, "I don't want to be in the big tent... I think the party ought to stand for something."[3] In 2006, Family Research Council spent more than a half million dollars to promote a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage in its home state of Colorado.[4]

On January 1, 2005, The Washington Times reported that Dobson promised six Democratic senators "a battle of enormous proportions" if they filibustered conservative appointees to the U.S. Supreme Court. "He singled out six Democrats up for re-election in 2006: Ben Nelson of Nebraska, Mark Dayton of Minnesota, Robert Byrd of West Virginia, Kent Conrad of North Dakota, Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico and Bill Nelson of Florida." According to a 2005 Washington Times article, in 2004 Dobson played an important role in the defeat of then-Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle.[5] Five of the six senators went on to win reelection and the sixth, Dayton, was succeeded in office by another Democrat.

In November 2004, Dobson was described by the online magazine Slate.com as "America's most influential evangelical leader."[28] The article explained, "Forget Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, who in their dotage have marginalized themselves with gaffes... Dobson is now America's most influential evangelical leader, with a following reportedly greater than that of either Falwell or Robertson at his peak... Dobson may have delivered Bush his victories in Ohio and Florida.[28] Further, "He's already leveraging his new power. When a thank-you call came from the White House, Dobson issued the staffer a blunt warning that Bush 'needs to be more aggressive' about pressing the religious right's pro-life, anti-gay rights agenda, or it would 'pay a price in four years.' [16]

Dobson has sometimes complained that the Republican party may take the votes of social conservatives for granted, and has suggested that evangelicals may withhold support from the GOP if the party does not more strongly support conservative family issues: "Does the Republican Party want our votes, no string attached--to court us every two years, and then to say, 'Don't call me, I'll call you'--and not to care about the moral law of the universe? ... Is that what they want? Is that the way the system works? Is this the way it's going to be? If it is, I'm gone, and if I go, I will do everything I can to take as many people with me as possible."[2]

However, in 2006, Dobson said that, while "there is disillusionment out there with Republicans" and "that worries me greatly," he nonetheless suggested voters turn out and vote Republican in 2006. "My first inclination was to sit this one out," but according to The New York Times, Dobson then added that "he had changed his mind when he looked at who would become the leaders of Congressional committees if the Democrats took over."[29]

The Council for National Policy, of which Dobson is a member, emerged from a February 2007 meeting dissatisfied with the current crop of candidates for the Republican nomination for president in 2008.[30] On May 17, 2007 Dobson announced that if Rudy Giuliani were to receive the Republican party nomination, he would not vote for him. "I cannot, and will not, vote for Rudy Giuliani in 2008. It is an irrevocable decision." [31] [17]

Besides his myopic views on politics and the environment, Dobson has some rather interesting things to say about women, education, and tolerance.

Women: While women are not inferior to men because both are created in God’s image, the wife must submit to her husband’s authority. He overtly advocates male leadership with regard to the Christian family and he functions in exactly the same way with regard to Focus on the Family's office, as if he believes there is a divine order in which men are ordained to lead corporations."[8] [18]

Education: Dobson is a staunch supporter of private school vouchers and tax credits for religious schools. His organization has consistently called for the removal of any mention of evolution from the public education system and has called for the teaching of intelligent design as a science, as well as school prayer. Curiously, Dobson favors student-led prayer in public school but doesn’t support teacher-led prayer for fear that a teacher would encourage students “to pray to Allah, Buddha, or the goddess Sophia against the wishes of the parents and/or students.”[2] [19] Apparently, it has never occurred to Dobson that there might be Muslim or Buddhist students in the school system who might actually enjoy praying to their God, and whose parents might actually WISH for that!

Tolerance: Dobson has been steadfast in his contention that tolerance and diversity are nothing more than buzzwords for the homosexual agenda. He recently went after the We Are Family Foundation founded by R&B artist Nile Rodgers on the grounds that because it promotes tolerance, diversity, respect, and multiculturalism among individuals of all ages, it has encouraged the very doctrines that have led to the decline of western civilization. Despite having no proof, Dobson has said of the Foundation that “childhood symbols are apparently being hijacked to promote an agenda that involves teaching homosexual propaganda to children." [20] In actuality, The We Are Family Foundation celebrates the vision of a global family by creating and supporting programs that inspire and educate people about mutual respect, understanding, and appreciation of cultural diversity. [21]

So there you have it, the three unwise men. Like I said I was going to include Falwell in this and refer to them as the Fabless Four, but timing is everything. Still, you get the picture. These are the key role players in the power struggle within our country. Their obsession with homosexuality, evolution, abortion and anything that smacks of pluralism has blinded them to the true goals of Christ. They are more concerned with whether Rosie O’Donnell is a fit mother than whether a single mother can support her child. They care more about whether a child prays in school than whether he or she has enough food to eat; they care more about the interests of corporate America rather than worrying about how corporate America continues to destroy the very planet we are entrusted with protecting.

They have kidnapped the Republican party, put on stain on our faith, and severely divided and weakened a country that has been bitterly polarized for almost a decade. They are watching you and me and their agenda is obvious. They want to turn the United States into a theocracy. They have little or no regard for a constitutional form of government, since such a form of government would rest power in the hands of the people and their elected officials. In their narrow-minded view, only a Christian-based form of government is fit to rule over us, and any one who disagrees is threatened and intimidated. In their society, they would be the perfect arbiters of acceptable behavior.

A look at the latest round of political debates between the various candidates in both parties was most illuminating. The Democrats seemed to engage the issues and had some real ideas about how to lead; the Republicans seemed overly concerned that their answers appeal to their base. Guess which side was quaking in its boots?

It is not too late to stop these ideologues. People of good conscious, be they Christian or not, can and must stand up to them. The last two years have given hope to those of us who still believe in democracy. As the Bush administration continues to plunder its political capital and bring about its own mini division among prominent Republicans, the Democrats must seize the opportunity. They cannot run away from God like it’s a dirty word, and hence be thought of as the party that opposes God; rather they must embrace their own form of spirituality and remind the nation that the Religious Right does not have a monopoly on faith or, for that matter, even speaks on behalf of the millions of God-fearing people, both Christian and non. The choice in ’08 cannot and must not be between James Dobson’s world-view and atheism. I fear that if that is the choice than we may have lost the war after all, and I’m not talking about Iraq.

In the meantime, look back through the keyhole. Be afraid, but be resolute. Pray to God. Write your congressman, senator, governor, whomever you can. Remind them that not all Christians believe or behave as these modern-day Pharisees do. Also remind them that your vote counts as much as any one’s and that you’re looking for real leadership. There’s always a light at the end of the tunnel; sometimes it’s not even a train!

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[1] From Pat Robertson, Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia, see link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pat_Robertson.
[2] ibid.
[3] ibid.
[4] ibid.
[5] ibid.
[6] ibid.
[7] ibid.
[8] ibid.
[9] From Tony Perkins, Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia, see link, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Perkins_(evangelical_Christian_figure)
[10] ibid.
[11] Global Warming Gap Among Evangelicals Widens, CNN reports, see link http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/03/14/evangelical.rift/index.html?eref=rss_topstories
[12] From Jerry Falwell, Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia, see link, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_Falwell.
[13] From James Dobson, Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia, see link, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Dobson.
[14] From Dominionism, Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia, see link, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominionism
[15] From James Dobson, Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia.
[16] Ibid.
[17] ibid.
[18] ibid.
[19] ibid.
[20] ibid.
[21] We Are Family Foundation, Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia, see link, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_Are_Family_Foundation