Jeff Wismer’s Theory of…

 

Theocrats Agitating Government (T.A.G.)

 

According to Wikipedia:

TAG is an informal playground game that usually involves two or more players attempting to "tag" other players by touching them with an object, usually their hands. Played throughout the world,[1] tag is inherently simple — most forms require neither teams, nor scores, nor sports equipment such as balls — but it may be made more complex with various rule modifications.

I propose that in this light, Theocrats started playing the game of taking over the U.S. government at least 30 years ago, when Pat Robertson, Billy Graham, and Jerry Falwell publicly declared the game was on, and the first theocrat to the presidency wins. 

 

BACKGROUND READING:

 

Jilting Justice for Jesus

By Tim Mitchell

Monica Goodling, Fundamentalist Education, and the Impact on Religious Civil Liberties

 

http://www.talk2action.org/story/2007/5/21/8329/01731

 

 

HYPOTHESIS:

 

Quoting the late Saul Alinsky, who was renowned for his community organizing skills, let it be noted that it only takes 2% of society to make change if it is a well-organized, fully committed cadre. "The other 98% is pretty inert."

 

 

THE MATH:

 

Failed Voting System + Ignorance + Apathy thru Comfort = Theocracy in motion

 

 

THE METHODOLOGY:

 

  1. Obtain Power
  2. Use Power to promote others with the same agenda
  3. Institute a government to your liking

 

To quote Marci Hamilton:

 

“When religious individuals believe that they need not abide by the law, because their religious identity (as opposed to their religious beliefs) demands it, we become a religiously divided society--at a time when the variety of religious beliefs is expanding geometrically. The logical result is Balkanization of the worst kind. ... At the same time, religious devotion is trivialized, because it is treated as though it needs special treatment in order to survive. Religion has become a hothouse flower, and the law its prop. ... I now believe this concern should be uppermost in each and every American's mind. When protection for religious belief is transformed into protection for mere religious identity, we create a caste society far removed from the dream of disestablishment and liberty envisioned by the Framers.”

 

 

 

EXPERIMENT:

 

Cram as many theocrats into positions of power from various learning institutions and universities such as Theocrat In Training Stations, a.k.a. T.I.T.S…and Academic Studies Sending Evangelical Sycophants a.k.a. A.S.S.E.S.

http://maxblumenthal.com/archives/78

Monica Goodling, One of 150 Pat Robertson Cadres in the White House

Monica Goodling, a previously unknown Justice Department official who served as liaison to the White House, has become a key figure in the Attorneygate scandal. When newly released emails revealed the prominent role Goodling played in engineering the firing of seven US Attorneys, Goodling pled the Fifth Amendment, refusing to testify under oath.

Josh Marshall writes that Goodling may be “afraid of indictment for perjury because she has to go up to Congress and testify under oath before the White House has decided what its story is.”

Goodling’s involvement in Attorneygate is not the only aspect of her role in the Bush administration that bears examination. Her membership in a cadre of 150 graduates of Pat Robertson’s Regent University currently serving in the administration is another, equally revealing component of the White House’s political program.

Goodling earned her law degree from Regent, an institution founded by Robertson “to produce Christian leaders who will make a difference, who will change the world.” Helping to purge politically disloyal federal prosecutors is just one way Goodling has helped fulfill Robertson’s revolutionary goals.

Regent has assiduously cultivated close ties to the administration and its Republican outriders. Gonzales’s predecessor, John Ashcroft, is currently cooling his heels at Regent as the school’s “Distinguished Professor of Law and Government.” Christian right super-lawyer Jay Sekulow, who also teaches at Regent and shares a Washington office with Ashcroft, participated in regular briefings with the White House on court appointments. In 1998, he leased a private jet through Regent to fly Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia to speak at the school’s 20th anniversary (Though Sekulow regularly argues cases before the Supreme Court, he apparently did not view hobnobbing with Scalia as an ethical breach).

When the Bush administration came into power, it looked to Regent for a reliable pool of well-groomed Republican ideologues eager to wage the culture war from the inside. The former dean of Regent’s Robertson School of Government, Kay Coles James, was promptly installed as the Director of the Office of Personnel Management.

According to her bio, from 2001 to 2005, James was “President Bush’s principal advisor in matters of personnel administration for the 1.8 million members of the Federal civil service.” In that role, James rolled back the power of unions in the federal sector. Now that she’s out of government, James is back among her Christian right allies, appearing frequently as a guest on James Dobson’s Focus on the Family radio show.

Another Regent figure who impacted White House policy is Jim David, the current Assistant Dean for Administration in the Robertson School of Government. David was inserted in the Justice Department in 2003 as yet another sop to the Christian right; he served as deputy director of the department’s Task Force for the Faith-Based & Community Initiative.

Since leaving the DoJ, David has spent a considerable portion of his spare time writing opinion pieces that appear on Regent’s website. One of his most noteable screeds, penned in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, described a bright spot in the destruction of New Orleans. “We do not grieve, however, for the flooded and destroyed sex clubs that filled men with lust and degraded women,” David wrote. “We do not miss the casinos that preyed upon individuals whose lack of self-control deprived families of needed food and shelter. We do not lament the destruction of voodoo stores prevalent in New Orleans before the flood.”

At Regent, Goodling was drilled in the importance of unflinching loyalty to the Republican program. Once in the Justice Department, she proved an able cog in the Bush administration’s political machine, meeting with Republican activists in 2006 to help plot the firing of New Mexico’s prestigious US Attorney David Iglesias, a fellow Republican who “chafed” against administration initiatives.

But as scrutiny of her actions intensifies, the evangelical Goodling resorts to the 5th Amendment — man’s law — to avoid breaking the biblical commandment against lying. Only the goodly and godly Pat Robertson could have prepared her to make such a decision.

 

THE RESULTS:

·        RLUIPA: Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act

·        RFRA: Religious Freedom Restoration Act

·        Faith Based Initiatives

·        USDOJ First Freedom Project (http://www.firstfreedom.gov/)

·        U.S. Department of Justice
Civil Rights Division:

Special Counsel for Religious Discrimination

(http://www.usdoj.gov/crt/religdisc/religdisc.html)

·        The Kay Coles James “effect” on the Office of Personal Management (OPM):

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kay_Coles_James)

(http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A64452-2005Jan10.html)

·        Samuel Alito & John Roberts elected to Supreme Court

I’ll stop there, but the list goes on and on….and that’s the results after only Six (6) years of theocratic influence on the U.S. Government.

Now that the door has been opened by Bush it will not be shut easily, and most likely will not be shut now that it has been shown to be advantageous to an eager politician who cares only for short term goals, and pleasing his/her constituents (most of which are probably Christian). 

There are only a small percentage of Americans who actively stand in defiance of theocratic tyranny and oppression, and they are the least well-funded group in America (atheists, secular humanists, and free thinkers) so the odds are firmly against their success.  Yet they continue to fight this subliminal well-calculated on-going theocratic coo of the U.S. Government.  The ironic thing is that most Americans wouldn’t even vote for these freedom fighters. 

 

CONCLUSION:

Now that the theocrats have been emboldened because they have not encountered much resistance from the American people, they will continue to push their theocrats into positions of power throughout the United States, and to a greater extent the world.  This is only the beginning…