Putin, Russia, The Religious Right – And The Trump Base

One of the less well-reported stories of Russia’s role in American public life is the relationship between Moscow and key players of movement conservatism – particularly among those of the Religious Right. Indeed, it may very well explain how the president may be maintaining his popularity among one of his core constituencies.

As recent as a decade ago if any objective political observer were to have warned about an admiration of Russian political motives by anyone on the American Right, the commentary would have been met with highly audible guffaws. Not anymore. This is not your father’s Russia.

Indeed, Russia is clearly on the path to becoming an authoritarian state tinged with Mussolini-style fascism.

President Putin has displayed a particular disdain for Western liberal democracy, evidenced by the way he has surrounded himself with, vehemently anti-liberal thinkers. Alexander Dugin immediately comes to mind. It is in Dugin’s writings and pronouncements that we begin to understand why many fringe conservatives; especially those of the Religious Right would admire Putin’s increasingly authoritarian agenda.

To understand the severity of Dugin’s teachings – and their possible allure to the most strident of the Religious Right — just consider this passage to be found on Dugin’s website:

We need to return to the Being, to the Logos, to the foundamental- ontology (of Heidegger), to the Sacred, to the New Middle Ages – and thus to the Empire, religion, and the institutions of traditional society (hierarchy, cult, domination of spirit over matter and so on). All content of Modernity – is Satanism and degeneration. Nothing is worth, everything is to be cleansed off. The Modernity is absolutely wrong — science, values, philosophy, art, society, modes, patterns, “truths”, understanding of Being, time and space. All is dead with Modernity. So it should end. We are going to end it.

In the December 13, 2016 edition of New York magazine, Ed Kilgore identified some of Putin’s American Religious Right’s admirers as “Evangelical leader Franklin Graham, National Organization for Marriage leader Brian Brown and American Family Association spokesperson Bryan Fischer.” Continuing directly, Kilgore further observed, “In almost every case it has been his distinctive combination of homophobia and Islamophobia that has made Putin one of the Christian right’s favorite international figures.”

Paleo-conservative icon (and über-traditionalist Catholic) Patrick Buchanan went as far as to declare, “In the culture war for the future of mankind, Putin is planting Russia’s flag firmly on the side of traditional Christianity.”

A decade ago I began to write about Opus Dei Catholics. Many of the subjects I have written about were embedded within the neo-conservative movement. A constant theme among this group of political activists was a disdain for modernity. They opined about what they viewed was the breakdown of traditional marriage and increasing rights for those in the LGBT community. Their pronouncements often seem exclusionary and harsh. Still, there were no calls for violence. But what others and myself wrote about back then is pale in comparison to the poison that now emanates from Moscow. It is a crusade against modernity now jacked-up on steroids.

Consider this passage from a recent piece in Politico by Casey Michel:

Before 2014 Russia was largely seen as an importer for Christian fundamentalists, most especially from the U.S. But as the Kremlin dissolved diplomatic norms in 2014, Moscow began forging a new role for itself at the helm of the global Christian right.

And Moscow’s grip at the tiller of a globally resurgent right has only tightened since. Not only have Russian banks funded groups like France’s National Front, but Moscow has hosted international conferences on everything from neo-Nazi networking to domestic secessionists attempting to rupture the U.S. Meanwhile, American fundamentalists bent on unwinding minority protections in the U.S. have increasingly leaned on Russia for support—and for a model they’d bring to bear back home, from targeting LGBT communities to undoing abortion rights throughout the country.

As well as:

“In the same sense that Russia’s [anti-LGBT] laws came about in 2013, we’ve seen similar sorts of laws proposed in Tennessee, for example,” Cole Parke, an LGBT researcher with Political Research Associates, told me. “It’s difficult to say in a chicken-and-egg sort of way who’s inspiring whom, but there’s definitely a correlation between the two movements.”

Many pundits and ordinary folk are still amazed that Trump’s base has stood by him despite mounting evidence that his campaign may have colluded with Moscow during the 2016 presidential election. And that is to say nothing of the president’s refusal to criticize Putin for almost any transgression.

Or perhaps no one should be surprised.

First among the ancient Greek mathematician Euclid’s five general axioms is this: Things that are equal to the same thing are equal to each other. If equals are added to equals, the wholes (sums) are equal. If equals are subtracted from equals, the remainders (differences) are equal. This applies as well to politics.

When we consider the admiration that many Religious Right leaders have for the Russian president it may not be that difficult to understand a good portion of Trump’s continued support from his base — especially those of the Conservative Christian rank-and-file. For these folks any collusion between Trump and Putin that may be eventually proven could very well not be a reason to impeach but to re-elect.

Is Bannon Fifth-Columning the Pope?

In December 2016 I wrote about how White House chief strategist Steve Bannon, who likes to flash his Catholic credentials when it comes to economics, displays no interest in actual Catholic teachings on economics. Perhaps that his because his position is at odds with that of Pope Francis, and as recent news reports suggest, he may also have joined forces with Vatican opponents of the Pope’s emphasis on refugees, tolerance and spiritually.

On February 7, 2017 The New York Times published an article that suggests “Steve Bannon Carries Battles to Another Influential Hub: The Vatican.” The story outlined how Bannon appears to be now engaging in a Fifth Column action within the Vatican in support of ultra-traditionalist forces who are unhappy with the Pope’s social justice message. These forces take issue with Francis’s more tolerant tone towards Syrian refugees, his call for economic fairness and his pro-environmental stances, particularly when it comes to climate change.

This reactionary “Shadow Church” features some familiar names. First and foremost is the former Archbishop of St. Louis, Missouri, Cardinal Raymond Burke. And there is strong circumstantial evidence that the shadow church may include The Dignitatis Humanae Institute (Institute for Human Dignity); a Catholic lay organization led by Benjamin Harnwell, whom The Times describes as “a confidant of Cardinal Burke.” Indeed, it was Harnwell who introduced Bannon to Burke.

The Times reported that Harnwell invited Bannon to speak before the Institute’s summer 2014 conference on poverty. Bannon, then-the editor of Breitbart News (not long before he joined the Trump presidential campaign), used the occasion to launch into a rallying call to culture war replete with broad allusions to what he believed is a coming clash of civilizations between the Christian West and Islam:

And we’re at the very beginning stages of a very brutal and bloody conflict, of which if the people in this room, the people in the church, do not bind together and really form what I feel is an aspect of the church militant, to really be able to not just stand with our beliefs, but to fight for our beliefs against this new barbarity that’s starting, that will completely eradicate everything that we’ve been bequeathed over the last 2,000, 2,500 years.

Cardinal Burke is also on the record stating his belief that Christianity and Islam are incompatible.

I think that in order to understand what may going on here we need to be aware of the idea of Fourth Generational Warfare (4GW for short). It is a term and a set of ideas that are likely to start getting more attention. What may look like a reign of confusion emanating from Bannon’s perch in the White House is more likely a well-thought-out strategy. You might say there may be a method to the madness — designed to “overwhelm, disorient and disrupt” progressives, moderates and even some centrist conservatives. The more confusion that is sown, the better.

And it is not too difficult to understand why Pope Francis would be a target . It is all-too-common for Catholics such as Bannon who have no true grasp of Catholic social justice teachings to confuse Marxism with the Church’s economic teachings. As sociologist Dr. James Scaminaci noted:

A sub-component of 4GW is William Lind’s conspiracy theory of the internal war for supremacy between what he called “cultural Marxists” and their ideology of “Political Correctness” or “multiculturalism” and the “traditional American culture” or “Judeo-Christian culture.” Lind argued that “cultural Marxists” hate America’s “Judeo-Christian culture” and were seeking to destroy it. The losers were to be rich, white, conservative, Christian, heterosexual men.

Nevertheless, some have pooh-poohed the idea of a possible “rad-trad” alliance against Pope Francis. However, as one article from NPR has pointed out, Breitbart News has made it quite clear where they come down in the battle between Pope Francis and the clique of radical traditionalists:

A year ago, Francis criticized candidate Donald Trump for wanting to build a wall along the border with Mexico, saying, “A person who thinks only about building walls … and not building bridges is not Christian.”

But that’s not Bannon’s worldview. While most Breitbart reports on the pope have been neutral, headlines about the pope when Bannon was in charge included:

▪ “Seven Ways Pope Francis Slapped Conservatives in the United States”

▪ “A Vatican Expert: Pope Francis a ‘Friend of Islam'”

▪ “Pope Francis Slams Capitalism, Death Penalty, Immigration Law; No Real Mention of Abortion, Gay Marriage”

▪ “Pope Francis Threatens Legacy of Pope John Paul II, Ronald Reagan”

Perhaps Charles Pierce put it best. Writing in Esquire :

This isn’t just a matter of the cafeteria having a few new and unfamiliar faces in the buffet line. This is dragging elements of the Church into alliances with white supremacists all over the world, lining up parts of the Church with the likes of Marine Le Pen in France. This is entering into an alliance with forces so completely contrary to the Church’s stated mission that they might as well give Cardinal Burke an army and let him march against the Languedoc.

It may well turn out that Bannon is less of a racist at all — but something worse; a political opportunist. The presidential advisor is playing a dangerous game using previously marginalized political movements in order to advance his own agenda — with possibly unintended but entirely foreseeable consequences.

Betsy DeVos’s Mudsill View of Public Education

My Talk to Action colleague Rachel Tabachnick has been doing yeoman’s work in explaining Betsy DeVos’s long-term strategy for decimating universal public education. If you haven’t I strongly urge you to read her work, here, here, and here. DeVos, President Trump’s choice for Secretary of the Department of Education, is not there to strengthen that governmental agency but essentially, to destroy it. Indeed, her motives have been clear for a long time. DeVos’s family related philanthropies are longtime funders of Christian Right projects, particularly in the area of school privatization. Politico reports that DeVos has said her work in education is intended to “advance God’s kingdom.”

DeVos’s approach is one of the contemporary mindset that mixes libertarianism with the Christian Right agenda that has become dogma for contemporary conservatism. To that end, they claim that their approach is “liberty.” But another great American had a different term for it: Mudsill.

In a stunningly awful performance at here confirmation hearing before a select U.S. Senate committee, DeVos displayed an incredible lack of familiarity with basic terminology of educational principles. As senator after senator cross-examined her she exposed herself as a person unfit for her position.

Normally, this would be grounds for a president to withdraw her nomination. But it may be that she may be precisely the type of department head desired by many modern conservatives. DeVos has no interest in strengthening public education but in eviscerating it.

As Rachel Tabachnick observed:

[Dick] DeVos and his wife Betsy had already spent millions promoting voucher initiatives that were soundly rejected by voters. Pro-privatization think tanks had concluded that vouchers were the most politically viable way to “dismantle” public schools; the DeVoses persevered. Dick DeVos introduced his 2002 Heritage Foundation audience to a covert strategy to provide “rewards or consequences” to state legislators, learning from the activities of the Great Lake Education Project (GLEP) initiated by Betsy DeVos. Vouchers should be promoted by local “grass roots” entities and could not be “viewed as only a conservative idea.” DeVos added, “This has got to be the battle. It will not be as visible.”

There may be more than just an outright hostility towards public education at play here. Indeed, this is nothing less than libertarianism on steroids. I would suggest that this belief in private education is part of a more hierarchical, oligarchic conservatism. Contrary to the popular notion that conservatism is about independence it is in actuality more about creating a less knowledgeable working class.

As I have written in an earlier post:

The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines a “mudsill” as 1. a supporting sill (as of a building or bridge) resting directly on a base and especially the earth; 2. a person of the lowest social level). The economic theory gets its name from an 1858 defense of slavery by South Carolina Senator James Henry Hammond.

“In all societies that must be a class to do the menial duties, to perform the drudgery of life,” Hammond declared. He further argued that this perennial underclass is necessary for the rest of society to move forward. He said that this class requires “a low order of intellect and but little skill. Its requisites,” he said, “are vigor, docility, fidelity.” Hammond insisted that such a class is necessary to support “that other class which leads progress, civilization, and refinement. It constitutes the very mud-sill of society and of political government; and you might as well attempt to build a house in the air, as to build either the one or the other, except on this mud-sill.”

This view of economics and government brings us back to the origins of the Mudsill theory, which was primarily a justification of slavery that, in turn, is the root of modern libertarianism. “Mudsillism” allows for the select few to use other human beings to generate wealth without providing just compensation. And although we don’t call it that, Mudsillism is resurgent in America as wages are stagnant or in decline despite the increases in worker productivity. Increasingly, average Americans work longer and harder while shareholders and executives are rewarded far beyond their contributions. And personal indebtedness to financial institutions replaces wages that, in turn, replaces liberty with dependence. Indeed, if libertarian economics were to prevail, the result would be local theocracies, restricted education, and the hierarchical economic castes.

And restricted education is a cornerstone element of Mudsillism. This is so self-evident that in a speech given in September 1859 Abraham Lincoln identified this threat. In that address Lincoln got right to the point:

By the “mud-sill” theory it is assumed that labor and education are incompatible; and any practical combination of them impossible. According to that theory, a blind horse upon a treadmill, is a perfect illustration of what a laborer should be–all the better for being blind, that he could not kick understandingly. According to that theory, the education of laborers, is not only useless, but pernicious and dangerous. In fact, it is, in some sort, deemed a misfortune that laborers should have heads at all. Those same heads are regarded as explosive materials, only to be safely kept in damp places, as far as possible from that peculiar sort of fire which ignites them. A Yankee who could invent strong handed man without a head would receive the everlasting gratitude of the “mud-sill” advocates.

Lincoln went on to attack Hammond’s Mudsill-based opposition to universal education. He observed, “According to that theory, the education of laborers, is not only useless, but pernicious and dangerous.” But Lincoln did not fear an educated working class. Indeed, he boldly enunciated what would become a core belief of contemporary liberalism, stating, “In one word Free Labor insists on universal education.”

Lincoln knew that in the absence of universal education, access to better knowledge and skills is a privilege accorded to the few who can afford to buy it, and that the result was greater economic inequality. This means that a greater segment is suited to only the most menial tasks. Doing away with public education is one of the surest ways to ensure that most less-affluent Americans become that “blind horse upon a tread-mill.”

And indeed privatization does make for a more ignorant working class. It doles the ability to think critically and make complex decisions. As a recent post in Bob Somerby’s Daily Howler website indicated, DeVos’s methods have had catastrophic results. Her methods were applied in the state of Michigan. And since those methods were introduced in 2002 student performance results dropped like a rock.

Let us heed Lincoln’s warning. What Betsy DeVos advocates is neither liberty nor freedom. It is not even an improvement in delivering educational services. It is instead, Mudsill – a direct route to making the American worker be nothing more than “a blind horse upon a treadmill.” But more importantly, it is precisely why Betsy DeVos has no business being the Secretary for the U.S. Department of Education.

Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone and Maureen Malarkey Share the 2015 Coughlin Award!

Originally <a href=http://www.talk2action.org/story/2015/12/30/134622/25”>posted at</a> Talk to Action.

Yes, folks it’s that time of the year again. It’s time for the presentation of the annual Coughlin Award. As it is every year, the competition was stiff, so much so that this year for the first time we have a tie!  This year’s award goes to <a href=”http://ncronline.org/news/faith-parish/archbishop-salvatore-cordileone-takes-divisive-action-san-francisco-archdiocese“>Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone</a> and <a href=”http://bilgrimage.blogspot.com/2015/01/maureen-mullarkey-strikes-again-and.html“>Maureen Malarkey</a>.

 

The Coughlin Award — affectionately known as “The Coughie” — is our way of recognizing the person who has best exemplified an exclusionary, strident interpretation of the Catholic faith in the preceding year. The award is named for <a href=”http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Coughlin“>Father Charles Coughlin</a>, the notorious radio priest of the 1930s who is the role model for today’s Religious Right radio and television evangelists, and other conservative media personalities.<p>

 

Best known for his diatribes against FDR, Judaism and open sympathy with the racist policies of Adolph Hitler, Coughlin’s advocacy was antithetical to the very definition of the word “catholic,” which, according to Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary means:<p><p>

 

<blockquote>Catholic Cath”o*lic\ (k[a^]th”[-o]*[i^]k), a. [L. catholicus, Gr. kaqoliko`s, universal, general; kata` down, wholly + “o`los whole, probably akin to E. solid: cf. F. catholique.]<p>

1. Universal or general; as, the catholic faith.<p>

Men of other countries [came] to bear their part in so great and catholic a war. –Southey.<p>

Note: This epithet, which is applicable to the whole Christian church, or its faith, is claimed by Roman Catholics to belong especially to their church, and in popular usage is so limited.<p><p>

*Not narrow-minded, partial, or bigoted; liberal; as, catholic tastes.<p>

*Of or pertaining to, or affecting the Roman Catholics; as, the Catholic emancipation act.</blockquote><p><p>

In order to win a Coughie, a candidate must complete three qualifying tasks: 1) Make the faith decisively less inclusive 2) Engage in incendiary behavior and 3) Ultimately embarrasses the Church. This year’s winners — as usual — have risen to the challenge.<p>

 

This year there were so many exemplars of the Coughlin tradition, our judges had a hard time deciding whom to choose. For example, there was Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ), the Tea Partying, climate change denying gun rights activist who published a screed on <i>Townhall.com</i> entitled, “Why I Am Boycotting Pope Francis’ Address to Congress.” And then there was (and <a href=http://www.talk2action.org/story/2014/12/30/82455/131”>last year’s winner</a>), Archbishop Charles J. Chaput of Philadelphia — whose strident divisiveness always makes him a contender. But as the nominating committee pointed out — neither of them can hold a candle to this year’s co-winners.

 

Since it is my belief that chivalry is not dead, ladies first.

 

<b>Maureen Mullarkey</b>

 

Our first award winner is Maureen Mullarkey, the <a href=http://bilgrimage.blogspot.com/2009/02/dana-rudolph-educational-challenge-of.html”>painter</a>-cum-political writer who

topped the charts of high-minded commentary about the current pontiff with <a href=http://thefederalist.com/2015/09/24/che-guevaras-pope/”>Che Guevara’s Pope </a>.

 

As I <a href=http://www.talk2action.org/story/2015/9/21/131542/062”>

observed</a> in September 2015 :

 

<blockquote>Then there is conservative writer Maureen Mullarkey who recently inked a poison pen piece entitled, <a href=”http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/mullarkey/2015/01/francis-political-illusion“>”Francis and Political Illusion”</a> in which she describes Francis as “an ideologue and a meddlesome egoist.” Mullarkey subsequently published a piece entitled, <a href=”http://thefederalist.com/2015/01/26/pope-francis-is-a-leftist-and-must-be-called-out/“>”Pope Francis Is A Leftist And Must Be Called Out”</a>. In it, she complains that Francis is not being harsher on Islam “when innocents are slaughtered in Paris by the same forces that are shedding Christian blood in the Middle East… .”<p>

Such ranting should be no surprise coming from Mullarkey who is a contributor to the journal <a href=”https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Things“><i>First Things</i></a>, the well-known outlet for Catholic and Evangelical neoconservatives.</blockquote>

 

But Mullarkey had gone too far — even for <i>First Things</i>, which took down her last piece and fired her as a contributing writer. Editor R.R. Reno explained, <a href=https://www.firstthings.com/blogs/firstthoughts/2015/09/no-more-tirades”>No More Tirades</a>:

 

<blockquote> I’ve criticized Pope Francis and his encyclical, <i>Laudato Si</i>. However, Maureen’s commentary on Francis goes well beyond measured criticism. She consistently treats him as an ideological propagandist, accusing him of reducing the faith to secular political categories. This is her way of reducing him to the political terms she favors. And those terms are the ones used by radio talk-show hosts to entertain the public with mock-battles against various Empires of Evil. I don’t want First Things to play that game.</blockquote>

 

That, readers, was the Coughie clincher!

 

<b>Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone</b>

 

But in 2015 Coughlin Award-winning divisiveness was not the sole domain of Maureen Mullarkey. In fact, this year’s co-winner is a culture warrior, <i>par excellence</i>!

 

In 2012 Pope Benedict installed Salvatore Cordileone as the archbishop of San Francisco. To say that he was not a good fit for the progressively tolerant City by the Bay is an understatement. The archbishop is both a strong proponent of the Latin mass as well as being a signatory to the anti-marriage equality manifesto known as <a href=http://www.politicalresearch.org/2013/07/23/christian-right-seeks-renewal-in-deepening-catholic-protestant-alliance/#sthash.savcOVUH.dpbs”>the Manhattan Declaration</a>.  (He went on to chair the US Conference of Catholic Bishops’ committee on the promotion and defense of marriage.)

 

 

Archbishop Cordileone is such a polarizing figure that a hundred prominent Bay area Catholics took out a full page ad in the <i>San Francisco Chronicle</i> calling for his resignation. <a href=http://ncronline.org/news/faith-parish/influential-catholics-call-removal-san-francisco-bishop-full-page-ad”>

According to</a> the <i>National Catholic Reporter</i>:

 

<blockquote>In an April 16 <a href=http://ww2.kqed.org/news/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2015/04/cordileonead.jpg”>full-page advertisement</a> in the <i>San Francisco Chronicle</i>, more than 100 signers say the embattled archbishop pursues “a single-issue agenda,” coercing teachers with a “morality code which violates individual consciences as well as California labor laws” and “[isolating] himself from our community” as he “relies … on a tiny group of advisors recruited from outside of our diocese and estranged from their own religious orders.”</p>

 

Referring to themselves as “committed Catholics inspired by Vatican II,” signers include well-known philanthropists in the archdiocese, members of school and university boards, the former director of Catholic Charities CYO, high-profile attorneys and physicians, major figures in the business and corporate world, and officials of trusts, foundations and charitable organizations.</blockquote>

 

Part of what triggered all this was Archbishop Cordileone’s attempt to add a morality clause to the local Catholic high school teachers’ handbooks. As the <i>San Francisco Chronicle</i> <a href=http://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/S-F-archbishop-s-morality-clauses-run-counter-6063227.php”>reported</a> earlier this year, “It contains a 2,000-word section calling for staff members — in their professional and private lives — to honor church teachings. He specifically cited opposition to abortion, contraception, homosexuality, artificial insemination, cloning and same-sex marriage, not to mention masturbation, fornication and pornography.”

 

Then, as if to outdo himself, in February 2015 a “morality pamphlet” was distributed to elementary School level parochial students within the diocese. Its shocking contents <a href=http://www.cbsnews.com/news/star-of-the-sea-school-morality-pamphlet-backlash-parents/”>were reported</a> by <i>CBS News</i>:

 

<blockquote>Questions included, “Did I participate or approve of a mercy killing?” “Did I perform impure acts by myself (masturbation) or with another (adultery, fornication or sodomy)?” …  Star of the Sea parish pastor Father Joseph Illo said when he realized in December the adult content of the pamphlets in December, he halted their distribution.</blockquote>

 

The many examples of the Archbishop’s Coughie-worthy achievements include <a href=http://ncronline.org/news/people/surprise-resignation-stuns-california-seminary-students-faculty”>the sacking of popular priests</a> and the use of <a href=http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2015/03/19/3635964/what-would-jesus-do-definitely-not-this/”>sprinklers to keep the homeless away</a> from St. Mary’s Cathedral.  Archbishop Cordileone may not be a Pope Francis Catholic — but he may be a Maureen Mullarkey Catholic!

 

So then you have it ladies and gentlemen; I give you Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone and Maureen Mullarkey our 2015 Coughlin Award co-winners!

 

 

 

 

What Catholic Neo-Confederates Don’t Want You To Know About Secession

Originally posted at Talk to Action.

During the summer of 2013 I wrote several posts about Catholic Neo-Confederates. My purpose was to explain the activities of libertarians such as Tom Woods, Thomas DiLorenzo and an organization known as the League of the South: all of whom advocate for the secession and nullification as tools to be used by the Christian Right.

To that end, they perpetuate the myth of an antebellum South that was united in its belief in and desire for secession. They paint a portrait of Old Dixie as both an orthodox Christian and libertarian paradise for all its inhabitants that was spoiled by a foreign intruder: thus their claim that the conflict of 1861 to 1865 was not a Civil War initiated by a faction of Southern planters — but a war of Northern aggression.

Bullfeathers and balderdash!

In an August 6, 2015 article Sarah Posner interviewed author Julie Ingersoll about her book on Christian Reconstructionism, Building God’s Kingdom was asked about the influence the movement’s founder, R. J. Rushdoony has had upon the Neo- Confederate movement. Ingersoll explained:

I’ve tried to handle this delicately and in detail in the book and a brief answer is really difficult. This is partly because neither of these movements has clear-cut membership requirements and it depends what you mean by Neo-Confederates. There are numerous organizations that identify as Reconstructionist and Neo-Confederate that hold lectures and conferences—there is a lot of cross-fertilization among them…

What’s important, I think, is the larger way in which Rushdoony and the Reconstructionists helped build a resurgence of interest in and affection for, a pre-civil war vision of society. They did this, in part by promoting the work of Southern Presbyterian theologian R. L. Dabney and the view that the civil war was not about slavery but was a religious war to preserve a godly southern culture from the tyranny of a secularizing North.

Libertarian and traditionalist Catholic author Thomas E. Woods, Jr. is correct that the Civil War is surrounded by mythology. But with that said, the real myths are the ones Woods believes in and teaches in his homeschooling courses and in his books. The war was not about the North against the South, but patriot against secessionist. And for our purposes, many of those patriots included Southerners – a fact that today’s secessionist faction all-too-conveniently ignores.

Take for example Woods’s claims about the Civil War in his heavily criticized work – from both the left and the right, The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History. Woods starts out his chapter on the Civil War by claiming it should be more accurately described as a “War Between the States.”

Strictly speaking, there never was an American Civil War. A civil war is a conflict in which two or more factions fight for control of a nation’s government. The English Civil War of the 1640s and the Spanish Civil War of the 1930s to classic examples; in both cases, two factions sought to control the government. This was not the case in the United States between 1861 and 1865. The seceding Southern states were not trying to take over the United States government; they wanted to declare themselves independent.

But contrary to this assertion, secession was, as it is today, a tool of factionalism. As Civil War hero, General Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain noted, “The flag we bore into the field was not that of particular States, no matter how many nor how loyal, arrayed against other States. It was the flag of the Union, the flag of the people, vindicating the right and charged with the duty of preventing any factions, no matter how many nor under what pretense, from breaking up this common Country.”

Chamberlain’s statement cuts the heart out of Tom Woods’s central argument, that Southern secession was not a factious action. In fact, the majority of American Southerners did not support the secession.

Two excellent books on secession and nullification pose a challenge to Woods and his ilk: The South Vs. The South: How Anti-Confederate Southerners Shaped the Course of the Civil War by William W. Freehling and David Williams’s Bitterly Divided: The South’s Inner Civil War. On page 7 of the introduction of the latter, Williams makes two important points:

It seems to gratify the pride of most southerners, at least white southerners, to think that the wartime South was united. It seems also to gratify the pride of many northerners to think their ancestors defeated a united South. Few northerners seem willing to consider that’s the Union may not have been preserved, the chattel slavery would not have ended when it did, without the service of nearly half a million Southerners in Union blue

And:

Our skewed image of the Civil War South also stems in part from the ways in which we emphasize the era’s military and political aspects. The great mass of literature dealing with the war years focuses largely on battles and leaders. Such studies are crucial, to be sure. By focusing so much of our collective attention on those aspects, tends to foster the myth of sectional unity, minimizing dissent or ignoring it altogether. In doing so, we paint all southerners, all white southerners at least, with a broad brush of rebellion. This oversimplified an often not-so-subtle effort to, in a sense, generally demonize white southerners as led to the mistaken idea that the terms “Southern” and “Confederate” are interchangeable during the war. They are used as such in most texts to this day. That firmly embedded misconception leaves little room in the popular and, too often, professional imagination for the hundreds of thousands of southern whites who opposed secession and worked against the Confederacy.

Williams documents how secessionist factions seized control many of the state conventions called to decide whether or not to leave the Union. Over and over again the author cites examples of secessionist intimidation designed to prevent the participation in these meetings of those who chose loyalty to the United States. Williams said in a 2008 interview:

That’s right. In late 1860 and early 1861, there were a series of votes on the secession question in all the slave states, and the overwhelming majority voted against it. It was only in the Deep South, from South Carolina to Texas, that there was much support for secession, and even there it was deeply divided. In Georgia, a slight majority of voters were against secession.

He also said:

The popular vote [in Georgia] didn’t decide the question. It chose delegates to a convention. That’s the way slaveholders wanted it, because they didn’t trust people to vote on the question directly. More than 30 delegates who had pledged to oppose secession changed their votes at the convention. Most historians think that was by design. The suspicion is that the secessionists ran two slates — one for and one supposedly against — and whichever was elected, they’d vote for secession.

In that same interview Williams commented, “It seems like the common folk were very much ignored and used by the planter elite. As a result, over half a million Americans died.” Such behavior does not describe a reasoned citizenry justifiably seeking independence but a poisonous faction trampling on the rights of the many.

Indeed, a close examination of Confederate society as well as of the Antebellum South exposes the weaknesses of economic libertarianism, especially of the Austrian School laissez-faire variety. And as both authors esoterically point out, it was devotion to libertarianism that ultimately did in the Confederacy.

As both authors point out the Confederate Army never had enough food to feed their soldiers. The problem was not enough farming but no government planning that would require the plantations to produce certain amounts of food. Instead, the plantation class exercised “their freedom” and concentrated on growing cotton and tobacco simply because those products were far more profitable. Woods, DiLorenzo and other Neo-Confederates often speak of the Confederacy and the Antebellum South as if they were paradise. That may have been true for the plantation class, but not for slaves and poor white farmers.

As David Williams points out in Bitterly Divided, plantation owners used slavery not only to exploit African-American labor also to control poor white dirt farmers. Slavery was used to keep wages artificially low by creating a surplus of cost-free labor. It also allowed the wealthier members of Southern society to build economic empires against which any smaller free labor enterprise had to struggle to compete with (at page 11, Williams states that on the eve of the Civil War half of the South’s personal income went to just over 1000 families). The planters used their economic muscle to outbid poor whites for the best farmland – and in the process, drove up prices. And to control them politically, devices such as literacy tests and poll taxes were used to keep poor whites from voting – the same devious devices that would later be employed to keep African-Americans from exercising their right to vote.

How unpopular was the Confederacy in the South? Those “nearly half a million Southerners in Union blue” more than replaced the 364,511 Federal soldiers and sailors killed in action. Our nation would not have been preserved without the sacrifice of hundreds of thousands of Southern whites and blacks dressed in blue uniforms, along with the countless others who engaged in everything from civil disobedience to out right guerilla activity.

As I have previously written, libertarian economic s is not about freedom per se but the freedom to oppress others:

This is libertarianism ‘s inherent fatal flaw: Its sole emphasis upon the liberty of the more powerful individual and its striking indifference to the rights of others. It fails to account for externalities — when a third person is affected by an occurrence or transaction to which he is not a party. It is a philosophy of governance that refuses to consider that the individual’s well-being is linked to the well-being of all within a given society

And this brings us back to the mythology pedaled by Rushdoony and the Reconstructionists — that of an idyllic pre-Civil War Southern society and notion that the war was not about slavery but was a religious war to preserve a godly Southern culture from the tyranny of a secularizing North. It was not. It was more about preserving a caste system society based upon Mudsill economics — a libertarian model that has more in common with feudalism than with capitalism.

Secession and nullification have regained currency with elements of the Christian Right in recent years, as Rachel Tabachnick and I have reported. They now rise, zombie-like, and threaten true economic and religious freedom. One way to expose the fraudulent foundations upon which secession and nullification are built, is to look at our own history — and to give long overdue credit to the brave American Southerners who helped to preserve the Union.

The Francis Trajectory.

Originally posted at Talk to Action.

The recent dust-up over the meeting between Pope Francis and culture warrior Kim Davis has caused the Pontiff’s stock to fall somewhat among liberals. Many of us felt let down by the pope’s opposition to marriage equality after his uplifting talk and formal declarations about confronting the causes of both global warming and economic inequality.

But with that said, it is for wiser to look at the Pope’s actions as opposed to individual statements. And for that reason he has put the Catholic Church on the trajectory for positive change.

As a liberal Catholic I can fully understand this disappointment many progressives felt when they learned that the pope and met with Kentucky marriage license clerk Kim Davis. On issues such as birth control, choice, and embryonic stem cell research I am in disagreement with the current pontiff. Those differences of theological opinion also extend to marriage equality.

Yet, I am not about to call it quits on this pope. His leadership on economics and the environment are historic and possibly world changing (That is certainly his goal).  That is why I reject the recent claim of MSNBC host, Christopher Hayes that, “The Pope does not have your politics.”

And as a liberal and a cradle Catholic, I have learned to how to listen to the sometime esoteric meanings in discussions by Catholic clergy including those in the hierarchy as well as the many private conversations I have had with priests and nuns. And I combine that experience with the concept of trajectory: in politics or religion very few persons remain static; their ideas are almost always subject to change. What is indeed actually extremely difficult is effecting change within a 2000-year-old institution that tends to move very slowly, even glacially.

Pope Francis, at least officially, toes the Catholic Church’s teachings against marriage equality. Critics often point to his vehement exchanges while serving as a Cardinal with Argentinian president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner over his opposition to gay marriage. But I suspect that he may be evolving, (albeit on a distinctly Catholic trajectory) just as politicians from Barack Obama to Hillary Clinton have evolved.

Consider for example, where Abraham Lincoln stood on African-American citizenship before the Civil War and the very different place he stood at the time of his death. Think about where Lyndon Johnson stood on civil rights when he was a U.S. senator from the state of Texas and what he did as president of the United States. In Lincoln’s case he was on a progressive trajectory from seeing African-Americans as people to be liberated from slavery and then colonized overseas to the point where he understood their right to American citizenship. In Johnson’s case we see a man who went from being a supporter of segregation to being perhaps the single most effective president on civil rights. As a life-long Catholic I sense that something similar is happening with Pope Francis.

Many of us grew who grew up Catholic during the late 1960s and 1970s remember the priest who would not talk harshly about birth control or the divorced Catholics who received communion. The same sort of priest would often give, at best, only lip service to the Church position on choice. And when you would talk privately to such a priest he would advise you to simply “follow your conscience.” I detect the same qualities in Francis.

What separates Francis from his two immediate predecessors is that he is calling for discussion and debate on certain hot-button issues (at least those for Church conservatives) such as streamlining annulments and being more gracious to gay and lesbian Catholics. And to this certain gestures such as Francis’s recently memorialized meeting with a former student of his and his homosexual partner. All this leads me to conclude that Francis is internally wrestling with the issue of greater inclusion much in the same way Lincoln wrestled with the issue of ending slavery in the middle of the Civil War. I sense that even though he won’t (or seemingly cannot at the risk of schism) openly admit to this possibility he is trying to find a way to reconcile Church teaching to what he may believe in his soul is truly just.

The current pope is in charge of the Catholic Church that has been wandering in the wilderness the last 50 years. After the brief but enlightening papacy of Pope John XXIII, which ended in 1963, we experienced the sometimes progressive but often indecisive Pope Paul VI. It was under Paul where reactionaries could claim their first major victory in 10 years with the anti-birth control encyclical, Humanae Vitae — this despite the fact that the overwhelming majority of clergy, theologians, and medical experts brought in by the Vatican to consult on the issue concluded that birth-control was not in conflict with principles of natural law. Then, after the all too brief reign of Pope John Paul I came the rule of more than 35 years of two conservative popes — John Paul II and Benedict XVI.    

As a heterosexual Catholic I understand that I cannot fully appreciate the frustration that my fellow gay and lesbian co-religionists experience at this point. It is far too easy for me to plead patience when I am not rejected as much as they are rejected. But with that said, I do see reason for hope.

If I am indeed correct about Francis’s inner intentions, then he is going to need a lot of help. It will require the kind of external pressure that only groups such as DignityUSA can organize and bring to bear. But to bring about fuller inclusiveness a lot of the rest of us rank and file will have to play our part. We will have to voice our support for LGBT Catholics.  This will help and encourage those in the hierarchy similarly wrestling with this issue will have the strength and support to speak their conscience with less fear of retribution.

In those 35-plus years many regressive things occurred. We saw the rise of Opus Dei within the church. American Catholic neoconservatives wielded too much power and influence in Rome. Hardliners such as Cardinal Raymond Burke, Archbishop Charles Chaput and others were elevated to positions of power. The American hierarchy in particular became saturated with Neo-conservatives and cultural warriors. Not surprisingly, many prominent members of the hierarchy serve as the Catholic auxiliary of the Republican Party. It will take time to refresh the Church with a distinctly Catholic identity again.

Francis has many enemies, both within and without the Catholic Church.  He elicits edginess, defiance and sometimes rage from Church traditionalists and über-conservatives. But most of all he elicits fear from them. Why is that so? Simply because they understand the concept of trajectory.

As I have written before, Pope Francis is a Jesuit. Unlike many of the more reactionary forces within the Catholic Church the Jesuits thrive on open discussion. This terrifies many on the Catholic Right. From their own experience they know full well that ideas once considered radical can become mainstream. In our own American experience consider the trajectory of support for gay marriage. Only a generation ago many Americans rejected the idea. Now that it has been openly broached and discussed, marriage equality has progressed quickly from widespread acceptance to being held as a right by the highest court in the land.

The Catholic Right and their allies clearly recognize that Francis is not the culture warrior that his two immediate predecessors were. They fear that Francis will bring back the moderates and liberals who left the Church. They can see the more tolerant, more open-minded clergy that he is elevating into the hierarchy; clergy such as Chicago Archbishop Blase Cupich who has called for more out reach to LGBT and divorced Catholics. This is their worst nightmare. As I have written here before it is their goal to make the church smaller and for more reactionary. Movement conservatives such as Opus Dei priest C. John McCloskey openly dream of a Catholic church where moderate and liberals are replaced by conservative evangelical members. The papacy of Pope Francis threatens this dystopian goal.

Bill Donohue Mum While Andrew Napolitano Calls Pope Francis “A False Prophet”

Originally posted at Talk to Action.

Catholic League president Bill Donohue goes after anyone he believes is engaging in anti-Catholic behavior, real or imagined. But as we have come to see, Donohue’s criteria for response depends less on the content of a statement as who makes it. And if the anti-Catholicism emanates from a religious libertarian conservative such as Fox News analyst Andrew Napolitano, mum’s the word. Donohue has frequently demonstrated this double standard since the ascendancy of Pope Francis.

What I did not realize was just how much more brutally ugly these comments would become – while at the same time the self-proclaimed Guardian of all things Catholic looks the other way.

On Thursday, September 24 I learned of this post at Daily Kos. Therein, the author links to this op-ed posted on FOXNews.com in which the network’s judicial analyst Andrew Napolitano accused Pope Francis of being quite possibly – among other things — “a false prophet.” Napolitano’s colorful comments included gems such as:

Now, here comes Pope Francis to use moral relativism to take the Church in two dangerous directions. The first is an assault on the family, and the second is an assault on the free market — two favorite political targets of the left.

And then:

In his papal exhortation on capitalism, Pope Francis spectacularly failed to appreciate the benefits of capitalism to the health, wealth and safety of the poor. Instead, he has reworked the Peronism of his youth to advocate government-mandated redistribution of wealth and to condemn those who work hard, employ others and achieve wealth — even when they give some of that wealth to the Church

For now, let us put aside the fact that the pope has never “reworked the Peronism of his youth” but is instead following basic Catholic doctrine on economics. Donohue’s language is nothing new for the Catholic Right.  But what is new is this:

Pope Francis is popular on the world stage, and the crowds love him. But if he fails in his basic duties as the pope, if his concern is more for secular than sacred, if he aids the political agenda of the atheistic left, he is a false prophet leading his flock to a dangerous place, where there is more central planning and less personal liberty.

As the author in the aforementioned Daily Kos post noted, this is nasty stuff. The use of the description “false prophet” has its roots in the past anti-Catholic rhetoric.

The key point here is that this False Prophet is a leader on the world stage (significantly this is the exact phrase employed by Napolitano). He is a messenger of the Antichrist, appearing at his “right hand.”  Napolitano leaves it to the imagination whom this Antichrist might be, but for a good number of Republicans it is in fact President Barack Obama.

This is the dog-whistle about Pope Francis now being transmitted by the Republican Party to its evangelical base.  The right-wing Washington Times and Newsmax, neither of which I will link to, have also laid the “F” word [False] at the Pontiff’s feet this week, using the same terminology. The coordination among the right’s media organs reflects the degree of fear occasioned by the Pope’s embrace of what they consider “leftist” positions on climate change , and immigration, two of the GOP’s most sacred cows.  The first, climate change, goes directly to the source of their funding, the fossil fuel industry, the most visible personages being Charles and David Koch. In terms of sheer political clout in the Republican Party nothing approaches fossil fuel conglomerates and their desire for deregulation permitting them to drill, dig and pollute at will. There is a reason that every single GOP’s Presidential hopeful either denies outright or claims insufficient knowledge of climate science. It is a required policy position demanded by their donors.

And as the writer correctly concluded of such intentions, “That is why this Pope must be marginalized at all costs.”

Where is Bill?

And all this raises the question, where is Catholic League president Bill Donohue? After all, this is the same man who sees anti-Catholicism in the way the Empire State Building does its nightly illuminations.

To his credit though, Donohue did properly condemn George Will for using his Washington Post column to conflate Catholic economics with Neo-Luddism. But then again, Will is an atheist; those on the Religious Right, however get preferential treatment. Donohue may well be attacking Will as an indirect way of attacking non-believers.

Interestingly enough, one of Donohue’s criticisms of Will went like this: “More important is his twisting of the pope’s position on materialism to mean that he is anti-electricity.”

That particular criticism carries a great deal of hypocrisy. More than likely it is an allusion to a passing reference in the recent encyclical on the environment Laudato Sii, (“Praised Be”). As I pointed out in an earlier post, it was originally the Catholic League President himself who attempted to make the document be about the condemnation of air conditioning. In reality, air-conditioning is mentioned only once in passing, in the book-length document.

Nor does Donohue complain about the absence of three conservative Catholic US Supreme Court justices — Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito — when Pope Francis spoke before Congress. That is a rather odd reaction from a man who would attack a liberal or moderate Catholic just for sneezing the wrong way.

But then again, there is a likely explanation: Scalia and Thomas are Opus Dei cooperators and Opus Dei has little or no love for the openness of the Jesuits (I have found no links between Alito and Opus Dei). For the record, the Catholic League board is loaded with Opus Dei sympathizers and actual members.

So, where is Bill Donohue on these instances of conservative disrespect and anti-Catholicism?

Where he always is — looking the other way. As I have pointed out again, again and again, this is his modus operandi.

The Papal Visit Brings Forth Ugliness From the Right

Originally posted at Talk to Action.

In a recent press release, Catholic League president Bill Donohue warned, “Pope Visits To U.S. Occasion Ugliness.” Donohue then went on to describe the activities of several Catholic and non-Catholic Progressive leaning organizations during the last two papal visits. As is his wont, Donohue recklessly tarred dissent (by the Women’s Ordination Conference, for example) as anti-Catholic behavior. Donohue demagogically conflates progressive and liberal dissent with hate. There are important differences between hate and dissent, regardless of the source.

But with the ascendancy of the more open-minded Pope Francis, the Catholic League president all-too-conveniently overlooked much of the ugliness aimed at the pontiff from the Right.

On his upcoming visit to the United States Pope Francis will be addressing Congress. A significant portion of his message is expected to focus on the need to take action against Global Warming. This is not sitting well with many conservatives including conservative Catholics who would prefer that Francis talk about culture war memes such as abortion and the supposed war on Christianity.

One of these is Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ) — a Tea Partier and a vocal gun rights activist — who once described Native Americans as “wards of the federal government.” He has also signed a pledge to vote against any Global Warming legislation that would raise taxes. It would be an understatement to say that he is at odds with Francis over economics and the environment.

So, to that end, on September 17, 2015 Representative Gosar published a piece on the conservative website Townhall.com entitled, “Why I Am Boycotting Pope Francis’ Address to Congress.” The statement is a long list of grievances against the successor to Saint Peter — and it is not short on hyperbole. Gosar complains, for example, that Francis may discuss climate change, but he…

…has adopted all of the socialist talking points, wrapped false science and ideology into “climate justice” and is being presented to guilt people into leftist policies. If the Pope stuck to standard Christian theology, I would be the first in line. If the Pope spoke out with moral authority against violent Islam, I would be there cheering him on. If the Pope urged the Western nations to rescue persecuted Christians in the Middle East, I would back him wholeheartedly. But when the Pope chooses to act and talk like a leftist politician, then he can expect to be treated like one.

It goes on like this.

If the Pope wants to devote his life to fighting climate change then he can do so in his personal time. But to promote questionable science as Catholic dogma is ridiculous.

Gosar claims:

I have both a moral obligation and leadership responsibility to call out leaders, regardless of their titles, who ignore Christian persecution and fail to embrace opportunities to advocate for religious freedom and the sanctity of human life. If the Pope plans to spend the majority of his time advocating for flawed climate change policies, then I will not attend. It is my hope that Pope Francis realizes his time is better spent focusing on matters like religious tolerance and the sanctity of all life. As the leader of the Catholic Church, and as a powerful voice for peace throughout the world, His Holiness has a real opportunity to change the climate of slaughter in the Middle East… not the fool’s errand of climate change.

“Socialist talking points?” “Leftist policies?” Really?

Gosar’s condescending screed is full of stuff like this: “…when the Pope chooses to act and talk like a leftist politician, then he can expect to be treated like one.” Such language is not civic in nature, but instead, full of hatred and hostility.

Unfortunately for Gosar, this partisan sniping reveals a breathtakingly bad understanding of Catholic social teaching (of which, both the “Option for the Poor” and “Stewardship of God’s Creation” are of great importance). He should know this since he boasts of his Jesuit education.

Then there is conservative writer Maureen Mullarkey who recently inked a poison pen piece entitled, “Francis and Political Illusion” in which she describes Francis as “an ideologue and a meddlesome egoist.” Mullarkey subsequently published a piece entitled, “Pope Francis Is A Leftist And Must Be Called Out”. In it, she complains that Francis is not being harsher on Islam “when innocents are slaughtered in Paris by the same forces that are shedding Christian blood in the Middle East… .”

Such ranting should be no surprise coming from Mullarkey who is a contributor to the journal First Things, the well-known outlet for Catholic and Evangelical neoconservatives.

None of this is new.

As I pointed out in 2013 when Rush Limbaugh, Jeb Bush and Bill Donohue himself engaged in some ugliness by mischaracterizing Pope Francis’s criticisms of libertarian economics as a call to Marxist revolution. This is far from the first or only time a Catholic has been called a Marxist or a Socialist for wanting to use the power of government to ensure that capitalism be fairer and less predatory.

While it is true that a lot of ugliness has been directed at Pope Francis: Bill Donohue just isn’t being straight with us about the direction from whence it mostly comes.

Is Koch Brothers Money Fueling Criticism of Pope Francis on Climate Change?

Originally posted at Talk to Action.

In my last post I examined conservative criticism of Laudato Sii, (“Praised Be”), Pope Francis’s encyclical on the environment and poverty. Indeed, some of the loudest howls of disapproval have arisen from Catholic Right pundits and think tanks. But clearly, there are other sources as well.

Is some of this criticism being fossil–fueled by the Koch Brothers? Well, let’s follow the money!

Movement conservatives who have become accustomed to the pronouncements of recent pontiff s as fuel for their culture war diatribes now find themselves in the awkward position of being at odds with Church teachings on the environment. For the first time many movement conservative Catholics are now forced to choose between God and the mammon of their financial backers – and mammon seems to be winning the day. A lot that mammon comes from the Koch Brothers Family foundations as well as Koch allies.

One of the Catholic Right climate change skeptics challenging Francis on the new encyclical is Catholic League president Bill Donohue. Whether it be a coincidence or not, it is worth noting that Donohue is an adjunct scholar for the Heritage Foundation. The conservative think tank is heavily funded by Koch Brothers money.

Another Catholic Right climate change skeptic organization working overtime to blunt the effects of Laudato Sii is ultra-libertarian think tank the Acton Institute . As the website Source Watch noted :

The Acton Institute’s strong support for both Catholicism and free market economics has come under strain as Pope Francis has actively criticized global inequality and unfettered capitalism. In May 2014, the Pope’s Twitter account posted a tweet saying “Inequality is the root of all evil.” Joe Carter, a senior editor at Acton, tweeted in reply, “Seriously, though, what was up with that tweet by @Pontifex? Has he traded the writings of Peter and Paul for Piketty?”, referring to economist Thomas Piketty, author of the 2014 book Capital in the 21st Century, a critique of growing economic inequality.

Action features a page on its web site filled with blog posts critical to varying degrees of the pope’s stand on climate change.

Acton also receives significant funding from Koch Brothers foundations. According to Greenpeace, between1997 to 2011 the Kochs kicked-in about $423,750 to Father Sirico’s organization.

Then there is self-described Koch Brothers ally billionaire Foster Friess. ABC News has dubbed him as “ The Man Behind Rick Santorum’s Money ” :

Friess is a born-again Christian who, along with his wife, Lynn, has given millions to conservative and Christian causes, including $1 million to Koch-brothers-related causes, as well as non-political charities, including raising money for children orphaned in the Haitian earthquake.

As I pointed out in my last piece, Santorum criticized Francis’s encyclical by complaining that the Pope is not competent enough to discuss matters of science.

But the t w o infamous libertarian siblings are funding those attacking the Pope ’s environmental ism from outside of Catholicism as well as from within. For example, there is the Chicago-based Heartland Institute. S ourcewatch describes Heartland as “ a nonprofit “think tank” that questions the reality and import of climate change, second-hand smoke health hazards, and a host of other issues that might seem to require government regulation. ” More importantly, the organization is strongly linked to and heavily funded by Charles and David Koch.

The Heartland Institute seems to be particularly threatened by the Pope’s stance on climate change. The organization has not only dedicated a page on its website to disputing Francis on global warming but even sent a contingent to protest the issuance of the encyclical .

Fred Koch, Charles and David’s father and founder of the Koch Family empire once did contract work in Stalin’s Soviet Union during the 1920s. Indeed, it was Stalin who sarcastically remarked in 1935, ” The pope! How many divisions has he got? ” A little more than a half a century later it would be another pope that would play a significant role in bringing down Soviet hegemony in Eastern Europe.

Perhaps Charles and David Koch understand that when it comes to climate change they are now up against a force truly to be reckoned with. Here is a pope who can not only rally liberal and moderate Catholics but a significant number of religious conservatives too. Perhaps unlike Stalin they know not to underestimate his nontraditional source of power. And, they appear to be spending an awful lot of money to make sure that they do not repeat the Soviet mistake.

The Pope, Climate Change and the Catholic Right

Originally posted at Talk to Action.

The conservative criticism of Laudato Sii, (“Praised Be”), Pope Francis’s encyclical on the environment and poverty that began even before its release, has now reached a fever pitch.

It is of more than passing interest that many of the cadre of naysayers are members of the Catholic Right. And not coincidentally, many of them have strong ties to conservative Evangelicals. What is it that they truly fear about Laudato Sii? Is it the encyclical’s inconvenient discussion of the disastrous implications climate change has upon the world’s poor – or is it something else? To wit, does the Jesuit Pope Francis threaten to undermine the power of the Catholic Right-Evangelical political alliance?

Among the rankled conservatives feeling the political heat are several hopefuls for the 2016 GOP presidential nomination, including: Jeb Bush, Bobby Jindal and Rick Santorum.

In the past, Catholic Democratic Party candidates who disagreed with the Vatican on biological issues bore the onus of being out of step with Church teaching. Now that dynamic has changed. The emphasis of the current Pope is not abortion and birth control but economics and now environmental justice. This places GOP Catholic pols in the unfamiliar (and often uncomfortable) position of being out of step with the Church on significant issues.

The worrying has led to well-orchestrated pushback. Coal industry lobbyists, for example, have been distributing “talking points” to members of Congress in order to lessen its impact. Rush Limbaugh is again dissembling about Pope Francis being influenced by Marxist economics.

As the New York Times recently noted:

This stance has rankled some conservative Catholics, as well as climate change skeptics, who have suggested that Francis is being misled by scientists and that he could veer into contentious subjects like population control. Others have argued that papal infallibility does not apply to matters of science. In April, a group of self-described climate skeptics, led by the Heartland Institute, a libertarian group, came to Rome to protest.

As well as:

Bishop Marcelo Sánchez Sorondo of Argentina, who is also chancellor of the Vatican’s Pontifical Academy of Sciences, has sharply rebutted the criticism and postulated that many of the attacks have been underwritten by oil companies or influenced by conservative American interests, including the Tea Party. “This is a ridiculous thing, completely,” Bishop Sorondo said in an interview at the Vatican.

Among those on the Catholic Right who chided the pope on the encyclical were Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum and Catholic League President Bill Donohue. Both came off as best, ineffectual.

Santorum started the ball rolling by complaining that Pope Francis is not competent enough to discuss matters of science. While the pontiff does not hold a Master’s degree in chemistry as has sometimes been reported He did, however, earn a 2 year degree in the subject along with working several years as an actual chemist.

And of course Bill Donohue went into overdrive to obfuscate matters. And in one attempt at discrediting the pope the Catholic League President attempted to make the document be about the condemnation of air conditioning. In reality, air-conditioning is mentioned only once in passing, in the book-length document.

Pope Francis’s Jesuit credentials are of no small consequence in this matter. For the last century the Jesuit order has been one of the most progressive within Catholicism both in economic and scientific matters. Among other things, they run the Vatican Observatory. (Georges Lemaître, the astronomer who developed the big bang theory of the universe was a Jesuit-educated priest and a professor of physics.) And it has been the Jesuits – current pontiff included – who dismiss a fundamentalist rejection of evolution. And of course they have been active in pursuing distributive justice economics.

It is no wonder that the Catholic Right looks upon the Jesuits with distrust and alarm. Culture warriors such as Opus Dei’s Rev. C. John McCloskey and recently resigned Bishop Robert Finn have epitomized their preferred visions of Catholic clergy. As I have previously written, this cabal has long desired replacing moderate and liberal Catholics with converts from the fundamentalist Evangelical Protestantism. Obviously, the more progressively minded Francis frustrates this plan of action.

Then there is a political alliance that now exists between the Catholic Right and elements of fundamentalist Evangelicals. Frederick Clarkson has written extensively on this development, explaining how the two camps – often distrustful of the other – are now collaborating in ways that were, until relatively recently, unthinkable. But now, it is the new reality.

Laudato Sii is clearly not the signal the Catholic Right wants to send to potential fundamentalist Evangelical converts to Catholicism. Nor is it a subject that climate change skeptical Catholic GOP presidential hopefuls want to discuss with the evangelical voters they need to win the nomination. Just as John F. Kennedy was asked in 1960 by some of their number, there may also be some concern about whether the where their loyalty may lie: To his evangelical supporters or to Catholic teaching? Indeed, recent polling has revealed that the majority of American Evangelical Protestants attributed the cause of Extreme weather as a sign of end times as opposed to a manmade climate change.

At least for now, gone are the days when most of the significant pontifical pronouncements provide comfort to the GOP and movement conservatism. We do indeed live in interesting times.