Hillary’s Nasty Pastorate

There’s a reason why Hillary Clinton has remained relatively silent during the flap over intemperate remarks by Barack Obama’s former pastor, Jeremiah Wright. When it comes to unsavory religious affiliations, she’s a lot more vulnerable than Obama.

You can find all about it in a widely under-read article in the September 2007 issue of Mother Jones, in which Kathryn Joyce and Jeff Sharlet reported that “through all of her years in Washington, Clinton has been an active participant in conservative Bible study and prayer circles that are part of a secretive Capitol Hill group known as the “Fellowship,” aka The Family. But it won’t be a secret much longer. Jeff Sharlet’s shocking exposé, The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power will be published in May.

Sean Hannity has called Obama’s church a “cult,” but that term applies far more aptly to Clinton’s “Family,” which is organized into “cells” – their term – and operates sex-segregated group homes for young people in northern Virginia.  In 2002, writer Jeff Sharlet joined the Family’s home for young men, foreswearing sex, drugs, and alcohol, and participating in endless discussions of Jesus and power. He wasn’t undercover; he used his own name and admitted to being a writer. But he wasn’t completely out of danger either. When he went outdoors one night to make a cell phone call, he was followed. He still gets calls from Family associates asking him to meet them in diners – alone.

The Family’s most visible activity is its blandly innocuous National Prayer Breakfast, held every February in Washington. But almost all its real work goes on behind the scenes – knitting together international networks of rightwing leaders, most of them ostensibly Christian. In the 1940s, The Family  reached out to former and not-so-former Nazis, and its fascination with that exemplary leader, Adolph Hitler, has continued, along with ties to a whole bestiary of murderous thugs. As Sharlet reported in Harper’s in 2003:

During the 1960s the Family forged relationships between the U.S. government and some of the most anti-Communist (and dictatorial) elements within Africa's postcolonial leadership. The Brazilian dictator General Costa e Silva, with Family support, was overseeing regular fellowship groups for Latin American leaders, while, in Indonesia, General Suharto (whose tally of several hundred thousand “Communists” killed marks him as one of the century's most murderous dictators) was presiding over a group of fifty Indonesian legislators. During the Reagan Administration the Family helped build friendships between the U.S. government and men such as Salvadoran general Carlos Eugenios Vides Casanova, convicted by a Florida jury of the torture of thousands, and Honduran general Gustavo Alvarez Martinez, himself an evangelical minister, who was linked to both the CIA and death squads before his own demise.

At the heart of the Family’s American branch is a collection of powerful rightwing politicos, who include, or have included, Sam Brownback, Ed Meese, John Ashcroft, James Inhofe, and Rick Santorum. They get to use the Family’s spacious estate on the Potomac, the Cedars, which is maintained by young men in Family group homes and where meals are served by the Family’s young women’s group. And, at the Family’s frequent prayer gatherings, they get powerful jolts of spiritual refreshment, tailored to the already-powerful.

Clinton fell in with the Family in 1993, when she joined a Bible study group composed of wives of conservative leaders like Jack Kemp and James Baker. When she ascended to the senate, she was promoted to what Sharlet calls the Family’s “most elite cell,” the weekly Senate Prayer Breakfast, which included, until his downfall, Virginia’s notoriously racist Senator George Allen. This has not been a casual connection for Clinton. She has written of Doug Coe, the Family’s publicity-averse leader, that he is “a unique presence in Washington: a genuinely loving spiritual mentor and guide to anyone, regardless of party or faith, who wants to deepen his or her relationship with God."

Furthermore, the Family takes credit for some of Clinton’s rightward legislative tendencies, including her support for a law guaranteeing “religious freedom” in the workplace, such as for pharmacists who refuse to fill birth control prescriptions and police officers who refuse to guard abortion clinics.

What drew Clinton into the sinister heart of the international right? Maybe it was just a phase in her tormented search for identity, marked by ever-changing hairstyles and names: Hillary Rodham, Mrs. Bill Clinton, Hillary Rodham Clinton, and now Hillary Clinton. She reached out to many potential spiritual mentors during her White House days, including new age guru Marianne Williamson and the liberal Rabbi Michael Lerner. But it was the Family association that stuck.

Sharlet generously attributes Clinton’s involvement to the underappreciated depth of her religiosity, but he himself struggles to define the Family’s theological underpinnings. The Family avoids the word Christian but worship Jesus, though not the Jesus who promised the earth to the “meek.” They believe that, in mass societies, it’s only the elites who matter, the political leaders who can build God’s “dominion” on earth. Insofar as the Family has a consistent philosophy, it’s all about power – cultivating it, building it, and networking it together into ever-stronger units, or “cells.” “We work with power where we can,” Doug Coe has said, and “build new power where we can't.”

Obama has given a beautiful speech on race and his affiliation with the Trinity Unity Church of Christ. Now it’s up to Clinton to explain – or, better yet, renounce – her longstanding connection with the fascist-leaning Family.

Comments

[roger]

jeff sharlet in the comment section of the nation:

" I'm grateful to Barbara Ehrenreich for reading my book and recommending it here in The Nation, but I'd jump in on this regardless. She's right to describe a group whose leader distorts Jesus like so--"You say, hey, you know Jesus said, 'You got to put Him before mother-father-brother-sister'? Hitler, Lenin, Mao, that's what they taught the kids. Mao even had the kids killing their own mother and father. But it wasn't murder. It was for building the new nation. The new kingdom"--as "fascist-leaning."

What do you think of public officials seeking spiritual solace in a group that repeatedly praises Hitler as a leadership model? They're not Nazis--they consider Hitler an evil man. The problem, they believe, is that he put himself where Jesus should be. Huh. Somehow, I don't imagine Jesus wanted to be a führer. There's no conspiracy here; just some very dangerous theology. And that's plenty bad enough. "

jeff: can you give us any type of documentation. is there a reference. is there a link. at least for jeremiah wright we had video. otherwise i can easily understand the depictions and references by myself and others to the piece as gossip and conspiracy.

http://www.thenation.com/bletters/20080331/ehrenreich

[A new fan]

This is the an excellent example of sarcasm and would be most appropriate for April 1.

[Anarcissie]

Carol Novack: '... The Republicans lap up rumors like this. If Obama supporters continue to tarnish HRC and Clinton supporters continue to tarnish BO, the Republicans will get their war mongering candidate elected. Articles like this are helping Mc Cain.'

I believe McCain may have a problem of his own in this area.

[lc2]

Barbara, your jealousy is showing .... and is not very flattering I might add.

[Laurie Corzett]

Rev. Wright strikes me as a person whose consciousness developed in the 60's. He sounds like all the other black preachers of the civil rights era. As far as I can tell (what I've seen in the media) what he says is true, and said by everyone with that mentality -- not specifically racist, but anti-establishment of Christian White Men and their mainstream brain-whitewash. Rather than in any sense condemn Senator Obama for association with this man, I can see where it would be an effective influence to his evolving social thought. It would be a fine dialectic: mainstream "white" politics vs. agitative "civil rights" politics coalescing into "seeing people as individuals rather than indulging in 'group think."

This preacher was preaching about justice and wrongdoings and the need for people to not complacently follow bad policies, but to remember history (including immediate history) and think critically. I have not checked out everything this preacher said. Perhaps there is much I would disagree with. However, what I have seen looks pretty normal to me for that exhortative kind of ministry. I do find so very much to disagree with in the preachings of the so-called Christian Right, much more hate mongering and ugliness. I find this whole outcry just another tempest in a highly agitated teapot of electoral politics.

[Laurie Corzett]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-fuller/barack-obama-and-the-poli_b_91649.html

Barack Obama and the Politics of Dignity
Posted March 14, 2008 | 06:39 PM (EST)

[Thomas Roche]

When did HRC become a hard-right fundamentalist? She never claims to be such, and her views and public stances, votes on bills, political platform, etc., are substantively opposite those of Falwell and his successors, let alone some sort of quasi-fundamentalist cult such as 'The Family'. This is nutty--a kingdom divided against itself cannot stand.

[Gar Lipow]

I've been following stories about "The Family" or "The Fellowship" for a long time. If anything, the article understates what a dangerous group it is. I would like to hear Hillary's side before I assume she buys into everything it believes. But "The Family" is NOT just another right wing Evangelical Church. It is not even just a right wing Evangelical church with a lot of powerful people. It is Christian Dominionist (though it avoid the term Christian) - believing that a chosen few, members of "The Family", should rule. That is not just something preached by one preacher in that organization. It is at the core of their beliefs.

[Gar Lipow]

Since people are accusing BE of single sourcing, here is an older blog post that summarizes some of the past journalism on the subject:

http://www.sonoran-sunsets.com/jesus3.html

[Brian]

Neither Hillary, Obama, or McCain strike me as religious at all. Obama seems to be working that circut the best though, but as a Harvard trained lawyer I suspect he is more agnostic than anything else and that is why he has chosen to affiliate himself with politically active churches/pastors rather than something "higher". Hillary is the consumate agnostic as she seems unprincipled if you look at her checkered existance over the years, and McCain even though he had a horrible POW experience doesn't seem in the evangelical's clutches either. We have three agnostics running for office and it shows as there is nothing deep in any of them. They are superficial people who will do whatever it takes to get elected frankly. And in the end one of them will get to be the ultimate "shill" for the system. Evangelicals use clever ruses to gain political power in Washington much like Pharmaceutical companys use to use free lunches in hosptials for the medical interns and residents to get them indoctrinatate and on board with their products and free market program. Curious to me, is why people should let these three get away without addressing the substantive issues of social security, medicare, medicaid reform, building out new infrastructure, dealing with run away health and education costs, the devalued dollar, and all the real "bread and butter" issues. Slinging mud or claim religious insight tells you nothing about their potential competency to deal with "real" issues. Why do you all let them get away with this stuff. I don't care if a president consults his ouiji board to decide what to eat for dinner or where to go for vacation as long as he turns a serious sober focused eye on addressing the real issues we all face and have put off so long(decades). Bush claims religiousity but he has us mired in brutal killing wars in which torture is sanctioned and Cheyney says "so what?" when being asked if they care about what the public thinks of their policies. The whole religion thing is a bunch of fluff that tells you absolutely nothing about the candidate.

[Anarcissie]

Brian -- if you're a Harvard-trained lawyer you ought to know that assertions about our candidates' religions require some kind of evidence. I see no reason why the lot of them should not be true believers of one sort or another. In fact, I imagine people in politics may have an uncommon talent for belief and faith. At least, that's what the visible evidence indicates.

In any case, do not the religious affiliations so far discovered jibe well with the apparent characters of the candidates? Obama is associated with a church whose pastor was fond of fiery and sometimes contradictory rhetoric. In any case his church is an open organization -- anyone can show up and, as we have seen, make videos for YouTube. Clinton, on the other hand, belongs to a secretive, power-oriented, almost conspiratorial movement reminiscent of the old _Opus_Dei_. And this is widely reported to be her style of politics -- see, for example, numerous reports of her management of the health insurance fiasco during her husband's presidency. In the case of McCain, he is associated with a fellow who wants to start another Crusade to forcibly destroy Islam and convert all the Muslims -- which goes well with McCain's readiness to carry on imperial war for the next 100 years.

The reported religions fit the reported persons, I would say.

[lc2]

Um, why doesn't anyone here see the cells/breakfasts, etc. for what they really represent for Clinton -- networking opportunities? She has found a way to insert herself into every available power structure in Washington -- what's wrong with that? I read her book a while back and she mentions her prayer group participation several times. I'm not religious myself, but I can certainly understand why someone in her position would be.

As for the rest of the allegations in this piece .... it's all over the place. "Sex-segregated group homes" (I'm assuming for troubled teens) is a bad thing since when?

I'm sorry, but this piece reeks of paranoia and doesn't jibe w/Hillary Clinton's politics. She might be a lot of things, but she's not some wanna-be Hitler.

Is she an elitist? Of course!! So is every writer, every teacher, every speaker, every preacher, every actor, everyone who steps up on a soapbox. If any person in those roles didn't think they had some special purchase on the human experience, they wouldn't bother putting themselves out there. Show me a leader who doesn't think they have the goods! No one runs for political office by accident.

As for why Hillary C. stayed silent during the Wright issue, I believe it had nothing to do with her fear that her participation in this group would be exposed. She did it to let the conflict play itself out or escalate, whatever the case may be.

Way too much conspiracy-type thinking went into this one, in my opinion. Wil

[Brian]

I think you are in the throes of fantasical thinking regarding all the religious plotting and planning. The evidence is in their own words and actions that they are agnostic in my book. An agonstic can belong as a card carrying Christian etc and help finance their church or larger causes. Its convienent. They may partially believe in some concepts as not to means hell so they are told. What I don't see is any of the candidates really deep in any kind of religious thought. Obama is a secular humanist and church participant. Good. So is Hillary sort of, and McCain kind of. I am not a big conspiracy convert frankly though strange bedfellows surface now and then. The way the candidates use language just bellows agnosticism to me. I think you are reading too much into the latest interpretation of rumors and yet to be vetted facts as some real evidence of nefarious religiousity. I don't deny nefarious intent of the political self serving time, but I the reliousity thing just fails the sniff test for me.

[Dawn]

Wow, I think Ralph Nader's looking better all the time!

Dawn

[Brian]

Ic2 makes good points. Bush also used politically savvy religous groups strategically in both presidential campaigns and with a lot of success. While Ashcrofts selection for Justice was payback to them, later on he didn't even put in that effort as chronicled by the "expose" of a White House liason which might be partly true and partly sour grapes. Pat Robertson was probably the last true believer who ran with Romney a close second as Mormons do put in a real one or two year stint after highschool to be missionarys and that shows real committment. Yes Ice2 Hillary is inserting herself into anything with umph and most transparently also. American churches are filled with millions of loyal agnostics who accept some aspects of their religon while rejecting or forgetting others. This leaves a sizable empty space for politics to brew inside syncopating various group interests and causes. Even within the Christian church there are dozen's of flavors from mere submission and acceptance to social action. O'Reilly keeps playing Obama's fiery pastor's speech ad nauseum, but if we belive in free speech at all, we should enourage people to simply speak the truth as they know it. Nothing that pastor has been recorded to say should surprise anyone as its preaching to the choir, music that invokes emotion of a sort really without degenerating into any real action. The fact that a whole industry has grown around it is just an iconic fact whether it be the disney culture or someone's church. I think now people learned that African-American churches are more complicated than just your routine ones most are use to. Yet even in the plain Methodist ministry there is a call to action for many causes, except they aren't fixed on the ethnocentric. America is great in pushing narcissistic causes and ethnocentric ones are just another version of buy this and look fantastic. Whether the emotion be esctatic or anger really matters little, but what it does do is fix social behavoir along narrow lines and certain expectations. From this you have one group calling another right or left, conservative or liberal, white or black, and it sets up a fulcrum for conflict as each group hangs onto its own narcissistic image of themselves which in shorthand means their superiority over their competition. Unfortunately this kind of thinking perpetuates a tremendous social distortions which manifest as misguided policy, misplaced energies, and unremitting grudges.

[Chickensh*tEagle]

Anarcissie: "In fact, I imagine people in politics may have an uncommon talent for belief and faith. At least, that's what the visible evidence indicates."

lc2: "Um, why doesn't anyone here see the cells/breakfasts, etc. for what they really represent for Clinton -- networking opportunities? She has found a way to insert herself into every available power structure in Washington -- "

Fascinating dynamic here. If Sharlet's account is right, this Fellowship is a secretive bunch with an agenda seeking power by sucking up to the already powerful.

The already powerful are like anyone else in that they have their own fears and insecurities and private demons, which under the right conditions could make them targets for manipulation. They are also on the lookout for those they think they can use. So it could be interesting to see just who gets the better use out of whom.

[WereBear]

Let me recap:

It's GOOD to know what religion a candidate follows, because it is a window onto their worldview and their moral precepts. So it's perfectly all right not only to bring up one's religion, but to emphasize how it shapes your decisions.

And...

It's BAD to discuss a candidate's religion, because that is a private matter that is nobody's business, and we are supposed to support the separation of church and state.

Only one thing is clear. You can't have it both ways.

Considering it has been an issue throughout American history (there was a reason JFK was the first Catholic President... and still, the only...) I find it highly ingenuous to protest that we can't talk about a person's religion. We can and we do. In a perfect world, we might not, but we don't live there.

And I defy anyone to claim honestly that they would NOT feel differently about a person who is an Episcopalian, and an identical person who follows Scientology.

It might not matter to us if they own a local hardware store.

It should matter to us if they are a family therapist and we are searching for someone to help our troubled teen.

Context, context, context! I think it is pertinent to consider a person's professed beliefs when we are considering them for an important leadership position that affects all our lives.

Their beliefs about foreign diplomacy and the proper use of force.

Their beliefs about how our children should be educated.

And, yes, their beliefs about fundamental issues of morality and law.

Hilary Clinton has herself said she has a spiritual leader, and this leader has some troubling viewpoints about democracy.

The only valid question, for any candidate, is whether they agree with certain viewpoints of their self-professed spiritual leader.

After all, there are many Jews who eat cheeseburgers. There are many Catholics who practice birth control. And there are many Protestants who are not snake handlers.

The question has come up, and Obama has answered it.

I wait for the other candidates to be as candid.

[Brian]

I still have not been able to discern in the slightest what Obama or any of the three candidates religions are or what they believe outside of some populist Christiananity. Going to video-taped sermons is a social function and in that I can see all three are social people, nothing more. I haven't a clue as to what their believe's really are or even if they espouse any beyond a generic feel good secular humanism, that of course, God approves. Of course. In olden days they would be considered some kind of generic surface protestants. Today who knows. To his credit Obama has put in some effort to try and communicate with more and more of the countries people, but is that religious? Is the Reverand Wright particularly religous, or a stump speech maker? Does the pastor or preacher of your church invoke God to damn nations and people? That's stretching the idea of going to church more than a bit. Its just some kind of ethnocentric social meeting with fiery speeches against all the others of a different group. What I don't like is the need for supporters of crazy policies and candidates to resort to spin such as you say that Obama has answered the question. Why the question answered itself but that doesn't require any particular response. Stop the spin. Bush spun us into a six year war in a hellish region with people from hell and his administration spins its rationale every day not caring what the public who is paying for all this thinks. They speak as righteously as it gets, just like Reverand Wright. I would hope you can support your candidate without resorting to any ridiculous and transparent "spin" for a change. Perpetuating spin is reality is a crime in my book. Unless someone is kosher I don't get the problem with anyone eating cheeseburgers assuming they are a quality product and cooked well in a clean kitchen. The only reason to elect Obama is to decide if he will be a first rate manager and inspirer and be honest and sane in troubled times. Also he will still need the support of many who oppose him now. But the American population doesn't owe him the presidency. He owes them a good president. We really need a good president to clean up Bush jr's messes which lay all around our country and the world now. He is truely going to have to be a great manager. In fact that would help advance reconcilliation between the races more than anything. And the only way this will work is he will need a very supportive coalition of diverses people both inside and outside of government to push through the needed changes after he is elected. It is so wrong to make this campaign about race when what America needs is extra competent management to get off this stagnant dime we have been glued to.

[Anarcissie]

I think it is a big, big mistake to assume that people are insincere about their professed beliefs -- especially if they are your opponents, who are the last people you want to underestimate.

[Brian]

For the most part I am not saying religious candidates are insincere, as in their own minds they most definitely feel they are about as sincere as necessary. Its a utilitarian sincereness that sometimes feels sincere and other times feels awkward, but either way they do it or go through it. That is the normal state of affairs for most people and practically all the major social functions are organized around it from baptism, confirmation, marriage, death, and crises events so its conveinent and conventional and what is done. I notice some commentators on these boards have a very two dimensional understanding of abstract concepts and see them as in black and white concrete ways, rather than in ways of the world as we know it. Even bin laden cynically uses religion in his own power quest in his latest tape that sounds quite insincere and well phony to even a westerner as myself. Sad actually that belies him as a manipulator with a very mean agenda. I think its possible to talk yourself into beliving someone elses program versus what you see with your own eyes all too easily and that is your typical citizen of any state or ideology. Its very human and practical to do so and embeds you in a working network, gives you leverage to get people to help you and to get things done. It doesn't mean you sit there and plot how to manipulate others directly, but instead you intuitively bring the circus to them and ask them to pay its frieght in return. Leaders do that all the time, weather secular or religious. Its the pretense of being in the throes of a higher calling when you darn well are confused as its really something social not extra-spiritual that is dubious at best. There is a whole aspect of human fantasy life that is ripe for attributing extracorporeal and magical interpretations to so many facets of our life. Much of it is our own doing, not a special message from God. Some of it is synchronous with other intense events that we fuse together as one compound symbolic undertaking. Anyone can read a bible or Koran and say they believe it concretely as a fundamentalist, or as more philosophically or metaphorically as a "beliver". Then they can quote it as they ask or make people do things which sanctifys and removes their own personal responsibility for say "sending people to war." It all has a very special purpose in the social compact. If one were to have direct contact with God without the filter of a great book they would really have no need to stay here with a whole universe waiting. From a natural biology persepective the human nervous system that comprises the mind doesn't even track in real time what is happening in our physical world. Its all mathematically smoothed and averaged into endpoint events that occur in a log-linear sequence dependent on fluxuations of our biology to record and measure. This is nothing new, two scientists won the nobel prize in showing mathematicallly how neurons process signals and it is from that we projected them on our physical world and derived calculus as a tool for measuring small changes in rates and ratio's that aggregate into compilations that equal volumes and accelerations. But I digress. Our mammalian neurocontruct is really quite amazing in some ways while so inaccurate in others, hence our amazing fantasy life. Things in the great book are fantastical and things are specific. Its a projection of our nervous system again and that doesn't make it any less Godfull. Its a gradient upon which to grow, a tool given for us to yet develop, not to chain down and force others to rote it over and over. That is why when people talk about being so religious I can only wonder what it is they want from me. In the name of religion so many wars have been fought, empires built and deconstructed, people salvaged and savaged, and history so distorted along party lines. I am sure card carrying members of the third reich were every bit as convinced God was on their side and they were destiny as the most charismatic preacher you can find here. The winners criminalize the losers. And yes they were insane and vicious and genocidal and clearly thieves as fascists, but so is any pirate troop on the high seas looking for free cargo. In the end, a claim of religious immunity and God is on our side is just a call to duty for others to follow and get in line. Some who preach have unusually good insight and can be very helpful to a society, but we should never forget the role of religion in socializing and mobilizing a people and remember it should not be confused with some independent divine will when we ourselves decree who it is to be used, fatwah or not.

[Anarcissie]

Brian -- Strange as it may seem, the fact that we may think religions are irrational and invalid doesn't mean other people don't sincerely believe as well as profess them and act on their beliefs. The same is true of other seemingly crazy ideologies.

I've read articles from the 1930s explaining that Hitler couldn't possibly believe in the anti-Semitism he was spouting. No, he was an intelligent fellow who was just pandering to the prejudices of the masses. He was also supposed to be too smart to go to war with Great Britain, France, and the rest of the world, in spite of his belligerent talk.

All too often, people mean exactly what they say.

[Brian]

I don't see religions as irrational, but as a depth psychology lens into a fusion of psyche and culture, in essence a mandala composed of the prima materia of what we as mammal's are in mind. There are lots of interpretations of this concept by others expert in this whether they be Jung or Campbell or Hillman. So if religion is a lens into the mind of the species who project it outward from their own unique biology, current memmory, and stored memmory in the form of archetypal manifestations(godhead, the god stuff, the it) then all it does is focus the separate elements of the species down a particular focused corridor that is allowed(quantum as the natural world really is). Some would say this gives people's fantasy-reality involvement a special meaning, and certain depth psychology attempts to do this through a series of coded revelations that liberates blocked and diverted counterproductive energies looped into what is loosely called complexes. I remember seeing some footage of Hitler in his retreat with a princely look on his face with his eyes transfixed on a realization of his great germanic historical calling and in his own mind he was the called upon king to lead a people in a time in history. It was all there in his face, insane, dangerous, call it what you will, but it was a realization in his mind that plunged the entire world into a war that cost 20 million other peoples lives. Such is the power of fantasy backed up by a tank, or todays wmd's. In his youthful boarding house days, yes, he was homeless in munich as a portrait painter before he hit the rooming house circut, he had shared some of his earnings with Jews and others living there depending on the circumstance. To really know evil its interesting to see its innocent beginnings and how it sprouts wings and suddenly turns fascist. Even the Manson Family(gang) moved through an innocent flower child period in the 1960's to "evolve" suddenly into a paranoid group of car and credit card theives and drug dealers who burned their suppliers and clients to a convicted mad crew of 7 horrible murders of the power class for reasons nobody understands even today. Both Hitler and Manson, or Jim Jones or David Koresh, etc etc went through humble beginnings to a charismatic phase attracting fawn like devotees to paranoid lunatics in which a lot of lives were taken and lost for no good reason, yet at the time they would tell there was. But all of these groups were highly dedicated highly indoctrinated after careful vetting and then asked then demanded to make the ultimate sacrifice for their founders paranoia. They were all religions, but ones that went mad because the people believed too deeply and were vulnerable to a cult of personality and the leadership was entrained in determined paranoia(the worst kind). One thing the leaders all had in common was either they were deeply fanatically religious(Jones, Koresh) or had served time in prison at one point in their lives(Hitler, Manson). The difference between the current list of 3 candidates is they are not fanatical believers, but rather secular humanists with high narcissistic needs subjugated to some sense of doing public good and have spouses. Its kind of funny actually, but certainly true. Regarding Hitler being smart after having read transcripts of what the traditional German Generals thought of him, it was clear he totally self-destructed by taking over command and literally drove their military into one brick wall after another after the original quick blitzkreigs over neighboring weak and unprepared countries. France for instance stayed loyal to the horse calvary while Germany broke all its World War 1 treaties and built tanks and organized its army into a mechanized infantry. Stalin's Russia was blessed to be so big and wide they were able to move all their industrial factorys from western russia to eastern russia and wake up and build huge numbers of fast moving tanks to keep throwing at the Germans bogged down in western Russia. Hitler was a one man wreaking crew of the German military, and in some ways, in slow motion so is our own military being degraded in our current multiple conflicts. The Air Force needs to build new planes of many classes, the navy new ships, and the army new equipment, fresh troops, deeper training,and restock supplies. Our Army is being used as a glorified police force in Iraq, a giant swat team really. I don't think was particularly smart, but the German people were easy to organize and they adopted modern technology faster than their neighbors, and they had certain efficencys in their industrial base, and had no problem instituting marital law every where they went and using slave labor. I don't think that is more a style than any real adaptive intelligence. In fact the British, the Russians, and the Americans were much more adaptive to the immense challenges and in shorter time than the Iraq war completely overwhelmed the German war machine and abolished that country from the map of history forever. Its shocking to read about just how terribly used the German Army and Airforce and Navy outside of the uboats by their leaders. Its shocking actually. Hitler lost the war even before his tanks crossed the russian border and his generals were powerless to so advise him. Anybody could have looked at the requirements of fuel, resupply, and the coming shortage of tanks and see it was an impossible task. Actually short of the early successes of Hitler's party, reorganizing of industry and coopting of the public, and overrunning of his neighbors with gas powered vehicles he was a terrible terrible leader of a land with such limited resources to carry on a protracted war. The lesson to us is we need to slow down and rebuild our industrial base and public infrastructure and frankly our military on many levels. This will take ten years to just turn around and a generation to complete two thirds of it. It will mean a whole new generation of nuclear power plants, whole new fleets of planes and ships and ground vehicles, a complete rebuilding of our power and water infrastructure, a turn around of our energy industries to face a declining global oil supply. Issues such as financial stability, nationwide availability of "affordable" health care, revamping of retirement in an era of people living longer(much bigger than tweaking social security and medicare) a way of either saving or substituting "something" for medicaid(going broke), environmental sustainability, and an education base to feed all of these needs. Frankly our social(societal needs) cannot be adequately addressed without a big makeover as a nation on a rather large scale. We won't be able to do this if greed and concentration of power into fewer and fewer hands continues at the current rate. If that happens we will become two countries. One for the haves and one for the have nots. The inequalty will destroy our freedoms as we even know them now as a hardened police state takes over to maintain tight order. I agree with Bill Richardson and think enough of this bush clinton bush clinton constipation. Its time for a younger generation to take over, and one that is well eductated indeed.

[roger]

brian: " Is the Reverand Wright particularly religous, or a stump speech maker? Does the pastor or preacher of your church invoke God to damn nations and people? That's stretching the idea of going to church more than a bit. "

the danger for obama is that white americans will assume that this rhetoric is what all black americans say about whites in private. its less about belief and more about race.

[roger]

richardson as judas: " Mr. Richardson’s endorsement came right around the anniversary of the day when Judas sold out for 30 pieces of silver, so I think the timing is appropriate, if ironic,” Mr. Carville said, referring to Holy Week. "

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/22/us/politics/22richardson.html?_r=2&ei=5090&en=31393242dd61f808&ex=1363924800&oref=slogin&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=print&oref=slogin

[roger]

" I do have confidence that the Senator will cast his net widely in search of men and women of diverse, open-minded views and of superior intellectual qualities to assist him in the wide range of responsibilities that he must superintend. "

http://www.slate.com/blogs/blogs/convictions/archive/2008/03/23/endorsing-obama.aspx

apparently we indeed have a need for a ruling class. it is apparently unwise to cast off the chains of rule and turn the leadership of this country over to the proletariat.