From the end of World War II through 1979, the gains in productivity in the U.S. were shared between workers and owners, “and both benefited as wages rose along with company profits.” That was before Reagan and “trickle-down” economics. Ted McLaughlin shows us how unregulated capitalism has led to a “hoarding’ of productivity, resulting in a vast inequality in wealth and income, and has put us on the path to a second Great Depression.
The Republicans’ callousness about health care
By Lamar W. Hankins / The Rag Blog / September 19, 2011
Now that the Republican nomination for president is in full swing, we once again return to the topic of health care, especially the role of government in assuring that all Americans have access to that life necessity.
Living adequately in a modern society requires many things — transportation, housing, food, income, security from crime, education, water, fire protection, fuel for home needs and vehicles, and information about what is going on in our community, state, and nation.
Few people disagree with this list, but when health care is added to it, some people become uncomfortable — some almost apoplectic.
The government at all levels helps provide everything on the list, as does the private sector. We have a mixed economy. Usually, government and the private sector cooperate in providing needed goods and services. Sometimes the government takes the lead role; sometimes it is the private sector leading. Few, if any, vital services are provided exclusively by the private sector.
I may buy natural gas from a private company, but the transmission of that natural gas to my home requires the assistance of government to assure that it is done with sufficient care that no one is put at risk. The public highways and streets are used by the gas company to provide the service. Public rights of way are used for the natural gas lines. The government inspects the company’s installation and maintenance of the company’s gas lines to insure that they are safe and citizens are protected. It is a cooperative endeavor that benefits all of us.
Neither the government nor the company is perfect, however. Mistakes are made by both on occasion, but the system works about as well as any human enterprise can be expected to work. When there is a failure, the causes are determined and actions are taken to correct the deficiencies in the system. If the failures are too great, changes in leadership occur in either the government, the private company, or both.
Few goods and services are provided in our society without this sort of cooperation, coordination, and connectedness between the private sector and government. In fact, I am unable to think of a single 100% private-sector activity; that is, an activity that does not use some resource of the government or the public to carry out its purpose. If you come up with one, please share it.
This system works, more or less, for all of the needs of modern life. But when we start discussing health care, people who believe strongly in self-sufficiency and rugged individualism posit the notion that health care needs must be entirely the responsibility of the individual. This happened at one of the recent Republican presidential nomination debates, as described by The Washington Post’s Eugene Robinson:
The lowest point of the evening — and perhaps of the political season — came when moderator Wolf Blitzer asked Ron Paul a hypothetical question about a young man who elects not to purchase health insurance. The man has a medical crisis, goes into a coma and needs expensive care. “Who pays?” Blitzer asked. “That’s what freedom is all about, taking your own risks,” Paul answered. … Blitzer interrupted: “But Congressman, are you saying that society should just let him die?” There were enthusiastic shouts of “Yeah!” from the crowd.
Paul then mentioned that the churches would take care of such people. Most listeners and watchers to that debate probably missed the irony in this exchange between Paul and Blitzer. Jay Bookman, a columnist and blogger for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, explained in 2008 what Paul has ignored and Blitzer likely did not know:
Kent Snyder, 49, served as Paul’s 2008 campaign manager but died of complications from pneumonia two weeks after Paul withdrew from the ‘08 race. … However, Snyder did not have health insurance. According to his mother, he had a pre-existing condition that made it financially impossible to buy it on his own. (Interestingly, Snyder is credited with raising $19.5 million for the Paul campaign in the fourth quarter of 2007 alone, but none of that money was apparently used to buy insurance for campaign staffers.)
Because we treat health care as a de facto right in this country, Snyder did get at least some health care, racking up $400,000 in unpaid medical bills before he died. A fundraising effort after his death — the charity approach advocated by Paul — produced only $35,000 toward paying off those bills.
That’s not an unusual story. … [Patients such as Snyder don’t] come close to having the resources to pay off their bills. But somebody paid them. You did, and I did, and we paid Kent Snyder’s bill as well. It’s a convoluted, extremely irrational, unnecessarily expensive and inefficient system, and the only two approaches that show any promise of rationalizing it are the individual mandate or single-payer.
When Bookman writes that “we paid Kent Snyder’s bill,” what he means is that Snyder’s bill was absorbed into the rate structure that all of us who have health insurance support. We pay for all the Snyders by increased premiums and increased co-pays.
What such situations point out to me is that many people in our political system are driven by an ideology that ignores the reality of our lives. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the health care debate. The indisputable facts are that the U.S. is alone among the advanced societies in failing to assure that health care is available to all its citizens.
Access to health care is controlled mostly by health insurance corporations and pharmaceutical giants so that these companies can rake off large profits at the expense of 50 million Americans who do not have insurance, as well as at the expense of every policy-holder.
One of those Americans without health insurance is a friend of mine who has had to take out crushing loans that could leave him penniless to pay for two essential surgeries and other medical procedures as a result of accidental injuries he sustained doing a good deed for another person. He can’t afford health insurance in the present system. Where are the churches that Ron Paul touts as the solution? Where is the compassion?
For the same amount of money we spend in this country for health care and health insurance, we could cover those 50 million uninsured and an equal number of poorly insured with one simple reform — a single-payer system. What we would miss out on is paying millions of dollars to health insurance and pharmaceutical companies to enrich their stockholders and executives for a service that adds nothing to the nation’s well-being and could be provided better by a single-payer system.
They have rigged our system with appeals to the kind of libertarian arguments made by Paul and others, while 45,000 Americans die needlessly each year because they can’t afford health insurance.
The U.S. health care system ranks 37th in the world in its quality of care and its efficiency according to the World Health Organization. It is this way only because too many people have bought the lie that we have a free enterprise system, which is falsely seen by them as the greatest idea in the world, more important even than all the world’s religions.
But we don’t have a free enterprise system. We have a cooperative enterprise system, and that system does not serve the people well when it comes to health care.
It is the government’s responsibility, acting on behalf of the people, to make our society work for the people’s benefit when any system becomes dysfunctional. When that dysfunctionality results in the unnecessary deaths of tens of thousands of Americans each year, that responsibility becomes an imperative.
I am not advocating that government pay everyone’s health care bill. I am advocating that government help create a health care system that everyone can afford to participate in. That’s not socialism, as some falsely charge; it’s American democracy.
For nearly 100 million Americans with no health insurance or inadequate coverage, having meaningful health insurance reform will do more than almost anything else to assure that the promises of the Constitution are fulfilled.
It is past time for us to have a government of, by, and for the people, not of, by, and for the giant corporations who now control access to the health care system. When ideology prevents our system of government from working as was intended by the founders, its adherents are ideologues, not patriots.
[Lamar W. Hankins, a former San Marcos, Texas, city attorney, is also a columnist for the San Marcos Mercury. This article © Freethought San Marcos, Lamar W. Hankins. Read more articles by Lamar W. Hankins on The Rag Blog.]
The Republicans’ callousness about health care
By Lamar W. Hankins / The Rag Blog / September 19, 2011
Now that the Republican nomination for president is in full swing, we once again return to the topic of health care, especially the role of government in assuring that all Americans have access to that life necessity.
Living adequately in a modern society requires many things — transportation, housing, food, income, security from crime, education, water, fire protection, fuel for home needs and vehicles, and information about what is going on in our community, state, and nation.
Few people disagree with this list, but when health care is added to it, some people become uncomfortable — some almost apoplectic.
The government at all levels helps provide everything on the list, as does the private sector. We have a mixed economy. Usually, government and the private sector cooperate in providing needed goods and services. Sometimes the government takes the lead role; sometimes it is the private sector leading. Few, if any, vital services are provided exclusively by the private sector.
I may buy natural gas from a private company, but the transmission of that natural gas to my home requires the assistance of government to assure that it is done with sufficient care that no one is put at risk. The public highways and streets are used by the gas company to provide the service. Public rights of way are used for the natural gas lines. The government inspects the company’s installation and maintenance of the company’s gas lines to insure that they are safe and citizens are protected. It is a cooperative endeavor that benefits all of us.
Neither the government nor the company is perfect, however. Mistakes are made by both on occasion, but the system works about as well as any human enterprise can be expected to work. When there is a failure, the causes are determined and actions are taken to correct the deficiencies in the system. If the failures are too great, changes in leadership occur in either the government, the private company, or both.
Few goods and services are provided in our society without this sort of cooperation, coordination, and connectedness between the private sector and government. In fact, I am unable to think of a single 100% private-sector activity; that is, an activity that does not use some resource of the government or the public to carry out its purpose. If you come up with one, please share it.
This system works, more or less, for all of the needs of modern life. But when we start discussing health care, people who believe strongly in self-sufficiency and rugged individualism posit the notion that health care needs must be entirely the responsibility of the individual. This happened at one of the recent Republican presidential nomination debates, as described by The Washington Post’s Eugene Robinson:
The lowest point of the evening — and perhaps of the political season — came when moderator Wolf Blitzer asked Ron Paul a hypothetical question about a young man who elects not to purchase health insurance. The man has a medical crisis, goes into a coma and needs expensive care. “Who pays?” Blitzer asked. “That’s what freedom is all about, taking your own risks,” Paul answered. … Blitzer interrupted: “But Congressman, are you saying that society should just let him die?” There were enthusiastic shouts of “Yeah!” from the crowd.
Paul then mentioned that the churches would take care of such people. Most listeners and watchers to that debate probably missed the irony in this exchange between Paul and Blitzer. Jay Bookman, a columnist and blogger for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, explained in 2008 what Paul has ignored and Blitzer likely did not know:
Kent Snyder, 49, served as Paul’s 2008 campaign manager but died of complications from pneumonia two weeks after Paul withdrew from the ‘08 race. … However, Snyder did not have health insurance. According to his mother, he had a pre-existing condition that made it financially impossible to buy it on his own. (Interestingly, Snyder is credited with raising $19.5 million for the Paul campaign in the fourth quarter of 2007 alone, but none of that money was apparently used to buy insurance for campaign staffers.)
Because we treat health care as a de facto right in this country, Snyder did get at least some health care, racking up $400,000 in unpaid medical bills before he died. A fundraising effort after his death — the charity approach advocated by Paul — produced only $35,000 toward paying off those bills.
That’s not an unusual story. … [Patients such as Snyder don’t] come close to having the resources to pay off their bills. But somebody paid them. You did, and I did, and we paid Kent Snyder’s bill as well. It’s a convoluted, extremely irrational, unnecessarily expensive and inefficient system, and the only two approaches that show any promise of rationalizing it are the individual mandate or single-payer.
When Bookman writes that “we paid Kent Snyder’s bill,” what he means is that Snyder’s bill was absorbed into the rate structure that all of us who have health insurance support. We pay for all the Snyders by increased premiums and increased co-pays.
What such situations point out to me is that many people in our political system are driven by an ideology that ignores the reality of our lives. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the health care debate. The indisputable facts are that the U.S. is alone among the advanced societies in failing to assure that health care is available to all its citizens.
Access to health care is controlled mostly by health insurance corporations and pharmaceutical giants so that these companies can rake off large profits at the expense of 50 million Americans who do not have insurance, as well as at the expense of every policy-holder.
One of those Americans without health insurance is a friend of mine who has had to take out crushing loans that could leave him penniless to pay for two essential surgeries and other medical procedures as a result of accidental injuries he sustained doing a good deed for another person. He can’t afford health insurance in the present system. Where are the churches that Ron Paul touts as the solution? Where is the compassion?
For the same amount of money we spend in this country for health care and health insurance, we could cover those 50 million uninsured and an equal number of poorly insured with one simple reform — a single-payer system. What we would miss out on is paying millions of dollars to health insurance and pharmaceutical companies to enrich their stockholders and executives for a service that adds nothing to the nation’s well-being and could be provided better by a single-payer system.
They have rigged our system with appeals to the kind of libertarian arguments made by Paul and others, while 45,000 Americans die needlessly each year because they can’t afford health insurance.
The U.S. health care system ranks 37th in the world in its quality of care and its efficiency according to the World Health Organization. It is this way only because too many people have bought the lie that we have a free enterprise system, which is falsely seen by them as the greatest idea in the world, more important even than all the world’s religions.
But we don’t have a free enterprise system. We have a cooperative enterprise system, and that system does not serve the people well when it comes to health care.
It is the government’s responsibility, acting on behalf of the people, to make our society work for the people’s benefit when any system becomes dysfunctional. When that dysfunctionality results in the unnecessary deaths of tens of thousands of Americans each year, that responsibility becomes an imperative.
I am not advocating that government pay everyone’s health care bill. I am advocating that government help create a health care system that everyone can afford to participate in. That’s not socialism, as some falsely charge; it’s American democracy.
For nearly 100 million Americans with no health insurance or inadequate coverage, having meaningful health insurance reform will do more than almost anything else to assure that the promises of the Constitution are fulfilled.
It is past time for us to have a government of, by, and for the people, not of, by, and for the giant corporations who now control access to the health care system. When ideology prevents our system of government from working as was intended by the founders, its adherents are ideologues, not patriots.
[Lamar W. Hankins, a former San Marcos, Texas, city attorney, is also a columnist for the San Marcos Mercury. This article © Freethought San Marcos, Lamar W. Hankins. Read more articles by Lamar W. Hankins on The Rag Blog.]
Retired history prof Don Swift paints an alarming picture of Dominionism and what he calls its “threat to American liberties.” “Both Rick Perry and Michele Bachmann have clear ties to the Christian Dominionists,” he warns, “who do not believe in the separation of church and state.” He tells us what dominionism is, how it works, and the influence it is having on today’s religious right.
By Kate Braun / The Rag Blog / September 19, 2011
“We can’t return we can only look behind
From where we came…” — The Circle Game
Friday, September 23, 2011 is Mabon, Harvest Home, the Fall Equinox.
Friday is Frigga’s day; her power combines with Lady Moon’s waning energies to achieve the harmony traditional to this celebration of balance. When the hours of daylight and darkness are equal, as they are twice a year, there is a quantifiable balance which can be measured. Harmony comes from within and is an immeasurable quality in our lives.
With the loss of homes and trees to wildfires, with the disruption of the rhythms of our lives, not only balance but also harmony is being lost. I strongly recommend making the time on September 23 to perform whatever actions or rituals are helpful to restoring feelings of both balance and harmony. Only then will we be able to create plans for moving forward.
Use the colors red, orange, russet, maroon, brown, deep gold, and violet; select from gourds, pine cones, acorns, apples, dried seeds, grapes, autumn leaves, horns of plenty, cauldrons, and ivy for your decorations; drape your table and clothe yourself in textured fabrics such as velvet, velour, and corduroy.
This is a season sacred to Cerridwen, a Celtic Goddess of Autumn. Her symbol is the cauldron; her fruit is the apple; all nuts and seeds are sacred to her. Lore tells us that when souls leave the body they go to Cerridwen’s cauldron, where she stirs the brew that helps the souls within the cauldron make good sense of the lives they have left. When that lesson is learned, then the soul is ready for the next lesson in another body, another life, another time.
Such is the seasonal progression of the soul, measured in lifetimes, not months, and just as rhythmical as the turning of the Wheel of Life.
Change is inevitable. It will come when it will come, not always when we choose. As we should now be mindful of the needs of others, we should also be mindful of the changes in our lives and not be too quick to label them negative changes. In Brother Cadfael’s Penance: the Twentieth Chronicle of Brother Cadfael, of the Benedictine Abbey of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, at Shrewsbury (Mysterious Press, 1994), Ellis Peters writes:
The year proceeds not in a straight line through the seasons, but in a circle that brings the world and man back to the dimness and mystery in which both began, and out of which a new seed-time and a new generation are about to begin.
Out of the ashes of homes and forests a new beginning shall rise.
[Kate Braun‘s website is www.tarotbykatebraun.com. She can be reached at kate_braun2000@yahoo.com. Read more of Kate Braun’s writing on The Rag Blog.]
Influential writer and political activist Carl Davidson joins Thorne Dreyer on Rag Radio for a lively discussion about the Mondragon Corporation and its role in the international workers’ cooperative movement. They also discuss the burgeoning cooperative movement in the U.S., and Carl’s illuminating vision for a 21st century socialism that incorporates a commitment to ecological sustainablity, a recognition that markets will be a part of any future socialist society, and the fact that human rights are a “natural attribute of our humanity.” You can listen to the show here. The Rag Blog brought Carl to Austin to give a multi-media presentation on Mondragon at the 5604 Manor community center.
Former SDS president Carl Oglesby died of cancer on Tuesday, Sept. 13. Author and scholar Mike Davis, who was also active in SDS and the 60s peace movement, discusses Oglesby’s rare oratorical skills, referring to his “unadorned eloquence and moral clarity,” and the “profound role he played in deepening our commitment to the anti-war movement.”
Carl Oglesby sadly left this world Tuesday morning after a long bout with cancer. President of SDS from 1965-66, he was a passionate American radical and one of the New Left’s most eloquent speakers and critical thinkers. I made several trips to Antioch College in the 1960s just to pick his brain. His main books then were Containment and Change and The Yankee-Cowboy War, from which many of us learned to look at our society in a deeper way, to be better able to change it. — Carl Davidson / The Rag Blog
By Mike Davis / The Rag Blog / September 15, 2011
In my lifetime I’ve heard two speakers whose unadorned eloquence and moral clarity pulled my heart right out of my chest.
One was Bernadette Devlin (nee McAlliskey), speaking from the roof of the Busy Bee Market in Andersonstown in Belfast the apocalyptic day that Bobby Sands died.
The other was Carl Oglesby, president of SDS in 1965. He was 10 years older than most of us, had just resigned from Bendix corporation where he had worked as a technical writer, and wore a beard because his face was cratered from a poor-white childhood. His father was a rubber worker in Akron and his people came from the mountains.
I’m not capable of accurately describing the kindness, intensity, and melancholy that were alloyed in Carl’s character, or the profound role he played in deepening our commitment to the anti-war movement. He literally moved the hearts of thousands of people.
He was also for many young SDSers — like myself and the wonderful Ross Altman (original UCLA SDSer and Carl’s close friend, whom I salute) – both a beloved mentor but also leader of the wild bunch. At a crucial moment in the tragic history of this desert country, he precisely and unwaveringly defined our duty. He was a man on fire.
To those who knew him, I send my deepest love and solidarity — as I do to those yet to discover this great, tormented, and most-old-fashionedly American radical.
[Mike Davis is a Distinguished Professor in the Department of Creative Writing at the University of California, Riverside. An urban theorist, historian, and social activist, Davis is the author of City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles and In Praise of Barbarians: Essays against Empire. Read more articles by Mike Davis on The Rag Blog. This tribute was originally published by counterpunch.]
Also see:
[Carl Oglesby, a former president of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and perhaps the New Left’s most eloquent orator, died Tuesday of lung cancer. He was 76.]
In 1965 those of us in SDS confronted shifting our focus from organizing the poor and disenfranchised to taking on the war in Vietnam. It was a momentous decision because we understood that the full weight of the government security apparatus would persecute us individually and try to destroy our collective movement.
At our national meeting, in the best Socratic tradition, the debate about our future moved back and forth, with one articulate and persuasive speaker after another arguing with passion. I still remember that none was more articulate or persuasive than Carl Oglesby.
And his intellect was matched by a soaring vocal cadence that hinted of balmy nights spent at tent revivals with preaching that served as entertainment (pre-internet and cell phones), and choirs with music that could uplift you into heaven.
A lanky, almost raw boned, South Carolinian, Carl was the only white organizer I heard who could match the speaking power of the best civil rights leaders. Years later, I asked how he had learned to speak so well. He answered that it wasn’t tent revivals but that, as a boy sitting in the woods around campfires, he was captivated by the richness and cadence of stories told by the older working men.
That year Carl was elected president of SDS and I was elected vice president. It signaled a gravitational shift in SDS from leadership of sons and daughters of East Coast progressive families to people who were nurtured in but rejected the sensibilities of the right-wing heartland. SDS and our country as a whole were experiencing seismic shifts.
Carl and I hiked down to Lake Kewadin to talk over what we should do. In no time we were throwing stones and challenging each other to see who could throw the furthest. As I remember, Carl was a rangy centerfielder on a semi-pro baseball team and I had been a pitcher who tore up his shoulder in high school.
This moment gave me great confidence. Here we are at the gathering of the white hot center of American radicalism throwing rocks into the lake. Our physical competition seemed so grassroots, so American. I knew for sure in that moment that Carl was the real deal; the embodiment of the heartland we had to touch and organize.
I just took down an old album and looked at photos of my friends at that SDS meeting. Carl looked just a touch older than the rest of us.
But God! We all were so young and… so innocent. And dare I say — so right.
[Jeff Shero Nightbyrd was national vice president of SDS and later was active with the Yippies. Jeff helped start Austin’s original underground newspaper, The Rag, and edited RAT in New York. Jeff now directs Acclaim Talent, one of the largest talent agencies in the Louisiana/Texas region.]
Also see:
Carl also discussed the thriving cooperative movement in the United States, as well as his concept of 21st century socialism and how it differs from the socialism of the last two centuries. Socialism for a new century, he said, must incorporate ecological thinking and sustainable development; must acknowledge that markets will be a part of any socialist society; and must affirm human rights as a natural “attribute of our humanity.”
Carl Davidson, a regular contributor to The Rag Blog, is a co-chair of the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism, a national board member of Solidarity Economy Network, and a local Beaver County, PA member of Steelworkers Associates. In the 1960s, he was a national leader of SDS and a writer and editor for the Guardian newsweekly. He is also author of several books, including, with Jerry Harris, CyberRadicalism: A New Left for a Global Age, and New Paths to Socialism, essays on worker coops, Marxism, and the green economy.
Rag Radio — hosted and produced by Rag Blog editor Thorne Dreyer — is broadcast every Friday from 2-3 p.m. (CDT) on KOOP 91.7-FM in Austin, and streamed live on the web. The show, which has been aired since September 2009, features hour-long in-depth interviews and discussion about issues of progressive politics, culture, and history. After broadcast, all episodes are posted as podcasts and can be downloaded at the Internet Archive. Rag Radio is also rebroadcast on Sundays at 10 a.m. (Eastern) on WFTE, 90.3-FM in Mt. Cobb, PA, and 105.7-FM in Scranton, PA.
Both Rick Perry and Michele Bachmann have clear ties to the Christian Dominionists, who do not believe in the separation of church and state.
By Don Swift / The Rag Blog / September 14, 2011
[This is the first in a series on Dominionism by Don Swift.]
In 1960, Senator John F. Kennedy, then a candidate for the presidency, found it necessary to explain to assembled Baptist ministers in Houston that he would respect the American principle of separation of church and state and that he would not let the Catholic bishops dictate policy to him.
In 2008, many were troubled by the views of Senator Barack Obama’s pastor, the Reverend Dr. Jeremiah Wright, who had a direct way of putting things and sometimes seemed too influenced by racial bitterness. Obama had to distance himself from his friend and leave the congregation.
In this presidential election cycle, two of the leading Republican candidates for the presidency, Rick Perry and Michelle Bachmann, have clear ties to the Christian Dominionists, who do not believe in the separation of church and state. Should one of them become the Republican standard bearer, he or she should be required to answer some probing questions about the separation of church and state and the attitudes of his or her Dominionist friends.
These people are not friends of democracy. Sarah Palin, a very influential Republican who seems to be weighing the possibility of running for the nomination, also is tied to the Dominionists.
In addition, there is The Family or The Fellowship, a semi-secret religious organization comprised almost entirely of Republican politicians who work behind the scenes to translate their religious beliefs into public policy. By all accounts this secretive brotherhood possesses great power and has connections and influence throughout our society.
Although many have claimed these people are Dominionists, it is not at all clear that their ultimate goal is to exclude non-Christians from office. They seem perfectly content to guide others in exercising power. They might better be designated soft Dominionists, but their lust for autocratic power is no less frightening than the desires of the hard Dominionists. Like the hard Dominionists, they see themselves as a spiritual royalty or elite who have a special claim to the right to shape the nation’s affairs.
Their clandestine operations and mingling of religion and politics are not a healthy development and are inconsistent with the separation of church and state.
Dominionism is an academic term that applies to the belief that the saved must battle to take over the world in God’s name and rule it according to Biblical principles and injunctions. It refers to a conservative Protestant movement that is both political and religious.
The basis for Dominionism is found in Genesis 1: 26-27, where God gave Adam dominion over all earthly things. Though Adam and his progeny lost that power through the fall, it is believed that baptism restored that power to true believers. They were meant to rule, and governance by people they consider non-Christians is a kind of sacrilege.
There is a tendency among them to delegitimate other Christian religions and to even hold that demons run some other churches. Some Dominionists hold that unbelievers can be compelled to accept salvation. They adhere to some unusual beliefs that many say are unbiblical. For example, they teach that some of their leaders can somehow incarnate Christ and exercise his power in this world.
In 1994, Frederick Clarkson wrote that Dominionism and Social Darwinism are of the same cloth. Social Darwinism is misnamed; it really goes back to Thomas Malthus, a misguided preacher who thought that intense competitiveness and self-interest were the essence of social evolution. Rejecting any compassion, he thought it right and natural that the strong benefit at the expense of the weak.
Charles Darwin did not think this way and wrote about how compassion and kindness were necessary and part of human nature. The Dominionists believe it is sinful for people in distress to look to government for help; God will provide. Like our Puritan ancestors, they thought that the rich were blessed by God, and the poor deserved their fate.
Scholars have noted that Social Darwinism is frequently associated with authoritarian mindsets and strong suspicion of others. In the case of the Dominionists, they use a distorted form of Christianity and Social Darwinism to define themselves as an elite and to define others in such a negative way that it is easy to generate considerable hostility toward them.
Clarkson added that they expect women to be submissive and stay at home. This outlook has changed because there are so many females among the Dominionist leadership. Even Michele Bachmann, who once defended submission, is now busy defining it away.
Dominionism always involves an element of elitism and more than a small dose of authoritarianism. These people think they have been selected by God to rule. Especially empowered in that way, they tend to think that whatever they do is justified. They see those who disagree as agents of the forces of evil.
The 75 year-old Family or Fellowship, based in the Washington, D.C. area, is an organization that reflects this elitism and authoritarian outlook. Its views smack heavily of theocracy, but a careful student of the cult could conclude that they worship power itself.
No one knows how many Dominionists there are in the United States. Some of them speak in terms numbering half of one percent of the population. Others claim a growth rate of 9 million a year, which is very unlikely. The number of people who would claim this label is probably small, but Dominionists’ influence among conservative Christians is substantial and growing. They thoroughly understand the mindset of conservative Christians and are very adept at inserting their ideas into many parts of it.
This world of Dominionism can be assessed through television networks like GODTV, DayStar, and the Trinity Broadcasting Network. Dominionists are clearly active, zealous, and well organized, and their numbers appear to be growing among evangelical Protestant clergy. Their ideas are clearly cross-fertilizing with other forms of conservative Protestant Christianity.
Some see Dominionism as a sort of Christian Wahabism They all think that true Christians were given by God a right to rule all human institutions. If one doubts that these people lack influence, recall Senator Charles Grassley’s efforts to look into six religious organizations that were accused of converting religious funds to personal use. He backed off, and his staff recommended that the IRS repeal the rule preventing churches from electioneering.
Dominionists have substantial influence among today’s Tea Party Republican leaders. Recently there were several carefully researched articles on Dominionism, and CNN’s Jack Cafferty even had an essay on it. There followed a stream of articles by right-wing publicists reassuring us that no Christians want to take over government, that they just want to have some influence in it.
Michael Gerson, one of the most capable Republican spokesmen, took the lead in distancing Tea Party leaders from Dominionism. He attributes fear of the Dominionists to the anti-religious attitudes of many liberals. Lisa Miller, Newsweek’s religion editor, also said fear of the Dominionists is unwarranted. And Ralph Reed has said that the Dominionists do not exist: “The notion that Bachmann, Perry or other candidates secretly harbor ‘dominionist’ theology is a conspiracy theory largely confined to university faculty lounges and MSNBC studios.”
Recently, some Dominionist clergymen came forward to say that they really are not seeking a “theocracy.” On the other hand, more than a few respected evangelical spokesmen state that the fears are not unwarranted, and they distinguish between themselves and the Dominionists. Some of them must have read enough to realize that the Dominionists intend to take over their denominations.
Dominionists think God intervenes regularly in earthly matters. Some think that the terrible Japanese earthquake was God’s punishment for not heeding one of God’s decree. On the other hand, they say that God ended mad cow disease in Germany and a drought in Texas. It is said among them that Jezebel and three minor demons run the Democratic Party. In Texas, they have strange ceremonies with plumb lines and branding irons; and they are said to have driven inscribed stakes into the ground in every county.
Michele Bachmann half-joked that God might have sent Hurricane Irene to show his displeasure that Americans have not fixed their debt problem. She seems to think that God has very clear ideas about public policy. On a Truth in Action ministries video, she said that God taught that no tax money should be spent on social welfare. It should all come from charity.
Dominionists present a serious danger to the Republic because they do not believe in the separation of church and state and because they consider themselves a royal priesthood entitled to rule. People who think they are that special will do anything to gain power and will misuse it when they want.
Of course, there are other groups out there who also think they are that special. A problem is that the Dominionists, including the soft Dominionists in The Family or The Fellowship, have a way of allying with these other power-hungry groups such as the corporate elite and extremists in the intelligence and military communities.
[Don Swift, a retired history professor, also writes under the name Sherman DeBrosse. Read more articles by Don Swift on The Rag Blog.]
Thorne Webb Dreyer, Editor
