The cancer within

I finally got off my lazy ass. Well, technically got on it, and wrote about malignant fundamentalism in the US.

While people are worrying about Iraq, Iran, NKorea, global warming, etc. ad nauseam, something is happening right under their noses. Perhaps each incident seems isolated, but it isn't.

Fundies are infiltrating anything they can such as the UN.

A collection of advocates for right-wing think tanks and fundamentalist groups now populate U.S. delegations to the UN. For example, the official U.S. women’s delegation includes: Nancy Pfoten- hauer, president of the Independent Women’s Forum, which is opposed to spending tax dollars to relieve violence against women and opposes women’s comparable pay efforts and affirmative action programs; and Winsome Packer, former executive assistance to the vice president of the Heritage Foundation.

Bush’s appointments to non-governmental organization (NGO) observer status to the UN come from right-wing religious groups, such as the following:
Janet Parshall, author of Tough Faith: Trusting God in Troubled Times and Light in the City: Why Christians Must Advance and Not Retreat, hosts a conservative talk show and frequently attacks women’s rights advocates, such as Gloria Steinem and Patricia Ireland.
A devout Presbyterian, Patricia P. Brister served as chair of the Republican Party of Louisiana and chair of Bush/Cheney ‘04 in Louisiana.
Susan B. Hirschmann, a lobbyist, is a former chief of staff for Tom DeLay and former executive director of Phyllis Schlafly’s Eagle Forum, a conservative political action group that helped defeat the Equal Rights Amendment and is a vociferous opponent of the feminist movement.

Such appointments illustrate a religious focus on foreign policy that is a break with the traditional separation of church and state, a policy that began to change with Pat Robertson and the creation of the Moral Majority. Backed by social conservatives, neoconservative ideologues, and the religious right, Ronald Reagan declared that foreign policy would henceforth rest on moral clarity combined with military might.

How about the Baptist Convention, Republican Party and the US military?

I’ve just finished reading a long and somewhat alarming essay titled Infiltrating the U.S. Military: Gen. Boykin’s “Kingdom Warriors by Katherine Yurica. The essay puts forth a very compelling argument that the hard-line Christian Right has been working towards infiltrating and usurping control over various institutions for decades starting with the Southern Baptist Convention then the Republican Party and more recently the U.S. Military all with the aim “to dominate and control American institutions, the American government, and the American culture by ‘Christians’ of the hard right.”

Then there are the Ivy League schools.

A story in the New York Times (registration required) today highlights the efforts of the fundagelical movement to prostitute, I mean proselytize, themselves on the campusus of the Ivy League.

Now a few affluent evangelicals are directing their attention and money at some of the tallest citadels of the secular elite: Ivy League universities. Three years ago a group of evangelical Ivy League alumni formed the Christian Union, an organization intended to "reclaim the Ivy League for Christ," according to its fund-raising materials, and to "shape the hearts and minds of many thousands who graduate from these schools and who become the elites in other American cultural institutions."

As a graduate of an Ivy League institution, I don't for one minute believe the Ivy League or any other group of educational institutions need to be 'reclaimed for Christ.' How about just allowing them to continue to educate?

And we have the public schools.

The Dover school board had required teachers to present intelligent design as an alternative to evolution in high school biology classes. Statements from board members made clear, however, that they were not as concerned with teaching good science as with infiltrating religion into the public schools.

The judge in the case, U.S. District Judge John E. Jones III, acknowledged the school board's agenda: "The secular purposes claimed by the Board amount to a pretext for the Board's real purpose, which was to promote religion in the public school classroom," he said.

I could go on if I weren't so lazy. The stories I've found include this cancer growing on local school boards, city councils, many legislative bodies, hospitals, NGOs, the Boy Scouts, governmental bodies at all levels including Capitol Hill aides, police forces and day care centers.

What the fundies can't seem to grasp is someone can be quite "saintly" and I use that word reluctantly, but it conveys the picture I need, even if you recognize no diety at all. You can live a far more perfect life than most, with strong morals and acceptance in your heart and hold a cow as sacred.

But what they absolutely refuse to entertain is the notion freedom of religion implicitly means freedom from your religion.

In other words, the cancer is in every institution that has any sort of say about your life and it is often launched at the most fundamental levels. You did notice I mentioned day care centers up there? Just asking.