When Rev. Sun Myung Moon died last month, media coverage left much to be desired. He had been a catalytic figure in the modern conservative movement generally and the Religious Right in particular. As Moon lay dying, I interviewed one of Moon's most prominent critics, Steven Hassan. I did not manage to get the interview published at the time, but it remains fresh and relevant -- particularly as the term "cult" is so frequently misused as an undefined, all-purpose epithet. Hassan's adult life has been defined by the term and all that it means to the lives of so many. -- FC
When Rev. Sun Myung Moon died in Korea at age 92, he was already one of the most controversial religious, political and business leaders of the 20th century. But control over his sprawling legacy of weapons and auto plants and universities and media outlets-including The Washington Times newspaper-is up for grabs, and portends further controversy well into this century. As significant as all this will be, the controversy for which the Unification Church of Sun Myung Moon was best known, will also live on. And that is the issue of cult mind control.
Steven Hassan, who for two and a half years in the 70s, looked to him as the Messiah, the True Father, the man and who would complete the failed mission of Jesus, is one of those who has helped to define Moon's legacy of cultism. Hassan left the group and came not only to be one of Moon's most prominent critics, but a man who will continue to define Moon's history and legacy of cultism. But in some important ways, Hassan and Moon defined each others lives and legacies in ways neither of them could have anticipated.
Monsignor John A. Ryan was a leader in the development of Catholic economic thought who also greatly influenced the New Deal -- an economic paradigm that a small but influential group of Catholic neocons and economic libertarians has been trying to destroy.
Now, Walter J. Collins and I have started a production company, Social Impact Films in order to create socially conscious documentaries. Our first effort will be to set the record straight about Catholic economic teaching by telling Monsignor Ryan's story. But in order to get this project off the ground, we need your help.
In July 2011, after the horrendous massacre in Norway that took the lives of 77 -- mostly youngsters attending a Workers' Youth League summer camp -- radio talk show host Glenn Beck commented: "And then there was a shooting at a political camp, which sounds a little like, you know, the Hitler youth or whatever. I mean, who does a camp for kids that's all about politics? Disturbing."
While you were blithely spending the summer with your children swimming and building sand castles at Orchard Beach, riding the Giant Dipper roller coaster at the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk Amusement Park, water-parking, and/or hiking in the wild, a bunch of conservative parents - with support from Beck -- were having their kids schooled in the Constitution and American history at Patriot Camps across the country.
It's almost Halloween, so I guess it's not surprising that some of the rhetoric by opponents of marriage equality is getting very scary.
Consider this gem by Pastor Robert J. Anderson of Colonial Baptist Church in Randallstown, Md. Speaking of gay people, Anderson said: "Those who practice such things are deserving of death."
[image, right: Gen. Augusto Pinochet (bottom) and fellow Chilean military officers whose 1973 coup launched a dictatorship that pioneered both a pension privatization approach favored by Paul Ryan, and also cutting-edge torture techniques later used at Abu Ghraib, in Iraq]
"The victims were humiliated, threatened, and beaten; exposed to extreme cold, to heat and the sun until they became dehydrated; to thirst, hunger, sleep deprivation; they were submerged in water mixed with sewage to the point of asphyxiation; electric shocks were applied to the most sensitive parts of their bodies; they were sexually humiliated, if not raped by men and animals, or forced to witness the rape and torture of their loved ones."
-- From the Valech Commission Report, on torture under the regime of Augusto Pinochet
While the Republican Party and its wealthy plutocrat backers have been accused of waging an elitist virtual war against the American majority, both Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan have financial and ideological ties to rich Latin American elites who have waged real wars against average citizens in their countries.
"Life is that gift from God that I think even if life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to happen" - Richard Mourdock
We've been here before - in 1990, Republican Clayton Williams, vying with for Ann Richards for the Texas governor's seat, erased his narrow lead and handed Richards the election by suggesting that women being raped should just "relax and enjoy it."
But the 2012 election has been especially notable for explosive Republican statements about rape, which might well determine which party will control the U.S. Senate on November 7th.
For the better part of the past decade, Catholic organizations have played a major role funding anti-gay marriage ballot initiatives across the country. According to a new report by the Human Rights Campaign, the Catholic Church and related groups are providing more than half of the funds that have been raised so far in this year's fight against marriage equality in Minnesota, Maryland, Washington, and Maine.
A large chunk of that funding is coming from the leadership of the Knights of Columbus, which has, over the past few years, become a major funder in the war against equality.
A remarkable story has been developing about Christian Right pol, Missouri GOP Senate candidate Todd Akin's roots in antiabortion militancy. Investigations by, among othrs, RightWingWatch and Salon.com found that Akin was arrested with Operation Rescue activists in the late 80s, and had political connections with a local militia group in the 90s.
As it happens, the focus of these stories is one Tim Dreste, who epitomized the profound overlap between the then-nascent militia movement, and advocates of antiabortion violence -- a connection originally documented by my colleagues at Planned Parenthood Federation of America and I in the mid 90s. I later detailed this convergence in a pair of stories for Intelligence Report, the magazine of the Southern Poverty Law Center. These articles have been cited as sources in several stories on the growing scandal.
Two things stand out for me about this story. It is not so much the buzz of political excitement about the latest revelations about Akin -- but that a pol like Akin, a senior member of the House of Representatives, could have come so far, and no one had previously noticed all this. I think this is part of the way that as as a culture -- political, journalistic, scholarly -- we tend to drop the ball and lose track of these things. Anyone who now thinks it is important to know that Rep. Todd Akin has disturbing ties to the militia movement and proponents of anti-abortion violence, really should consider the role of research and deeper understandings of the history, players, and ideology of the political and religious right.
As of October 18, 2012, when I reported in my story Graham's Romney Endorsement Accidentally Spreads "Mormonism is a cult" Meme to Millions - about superstar evangelist Billy Graham's disastrous effort to woo Protestant evangelical voters to vote for Mormon Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney in the 2012 election, I was unaware that the meme might, by then, already have spread to over a million disgruntled evangelicals who had reportedly pledged to vent their anti-Mormon (and anti-Obama) ire at the ballot box this November 6th.
On Thursday and Friday Billy Graham's BGEA ran high-profile full page ads, in 2012 election battleground state newspapers, encouraging voters to support "Biblical values" - foremost among which, according to the ads, is opposition to same-sex marriage. Then, on late Friday, the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association pulled the plug on the over-$75 million dollar a year nonprofit organization's website, in a striking counterpoint to the BGEA's byline: "Always Good News".
Christian Right leaders are worried about Maryland and the three other states where there are marriage related initiatives on the ballot. And although African-American anti-marriage equality clergy seem to have been getting most of the attention, there are also plenty of African-American clergy who support marriage equality. This is highlighted in a short You Tube video by Marylanders for Marriage Equality, and featured by the United Church of Christ News.
Guess who is under investigation by his conservative Christian college over a report that he had a woman (who was not his wife) with him in a hotel room after speaking at a late-September conference in Spartanburg, South Carolina called "Truth for a New Generation?"
Dinesh D'Souza, a longtime conservative fact-twisting polemicist, prolific writer, president of The King's College -- a "Christian liberal arts" school -- and the man behind the enormously successful Obama-bashing documentary 2016: Obama's America, that's who!
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whose 1973 coup launched a dictatorship that pioneered both a pension privatization approach favored by Paul Ryan, and also cutting-edge torture techniques later used at Abu Ghraib, in Iraq]
superstar evangelist Billy Graham's disastrous effort to woo Protestant evangelical voters to vote for Mormon Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney in the 2012 election, I was unaware that the meme might, by then, already have spread to over a million disgruntled evangelicals who had reportedly pledged to vent their anti-Mormon (and anti-Obama) ire at the ballot box this November 6th.