[tag]Paul Krugman[/tag] devoted today’s column to an issue near and dear to my heart: the religious right movement and its influence on the government. For a change, I’m not entirely sure Krugman has it entirely right.
After working at Americans United for Separation of Church and State for several years, I learned quite a bit about how Robertson, Falwell, Dobson, and others operate, what they want, and how they exercise power once they get it. Krugman argues today that the theocratic wing of the Republican Party set out to permeate the federal government and largely succeeded in its goal.
Today, Regent University, founded by the televangelist Pat Robertson to provide “Christian leadership to change the world,” boasts that it has 150 graduates working in the Bush administration.
Unfortunately for the image of the school, where Mr. Robertson is chancellor and president, the most famous of those graduates is Monica Goodling, a product of the university’s law school. She’s the former top aide to Alberto Gonzales who appears central to the scandal of the fired U.S. attorneys and has declared that she will take the Fifth rather than testify to Congress on the matter.
The infiltration of the federal government by large numbers of people seeking to impose a religious agenda — which is very different from simply being people of faith — is one of the most important stories of the last six years. It’s also a story that tends to go underreported, perhaps because journalists are afraid of sounding like conspiracy theorists.
But this conspiracy is no theory. The official platform of the Texas Republican Party pledges to “dispel the myth of the separation of church and state.” And the Texas Republicans now running the country are doing their best to fulfill that pledge.
I think that’s largely true, but it’s worth noting that for all the religious right’s efforts, and all of the movement’s successes in infiltrating the GOP’s political machine, they’re not exactly thriving when it comes to checking items off their to-do list.
To be sure, Krugman makes a very compelling case that religious extremists have been rewarded with plum jobs, based solely on their religious connections.
For example, The Boston Globe reports on one Regent law school graduate who was interviewed by the Justice Department’s civil rights division. Asked what Supreme Court decision of the past 20 years he most disagreed with, he named the decision to strike down a Texas anti-sodomy law. When he was hired, it was his only job offer.
Or consider George Deutsch, the presidential appointee at NASA who told a Web site designer to add the word “theory” after every mention of the Big Bang, to leave open the possibility of “intelligent design by a creator.” He turned out not to have, as he claimed, a degree from Texas A&M.
One measure of just how many Bushies were appointed to promote a religious agenda is how often a Christian right connection surfaces when we learn about a Bush administration scandal.
There’s Ms. Goodling, of course. But did you know that Rachel Paulose, the U.S. attorney in Minnesota — three of whose deputies recently stepped down, reportedly in protest over her management style — is, according to a local news report, in the habit of quoting Bible verses in the office?
Or there’s the case of Claude Allen, the presidential aide and former deputy secretary of health and human services, who stepped down after being investigated for petty theft. Most press reports, though they mentioned Mr. Allen’s faith, failed to convey the fact that he built his career as a man of the hard-line Christian right.
And there’s another thing most reporting fails to convey: the sheer extremism of these people.
There’s no doubt that the religious right’s extremism is antithetical to American values and traditions, and the fact that Robertson’s activists now pepper the rosters of practically every executive agency is disconcerting.
But I can’t help but notice that the Christian right has also failed to get what the movement wants. Abortion is still legal. Not only is there no anti-gay amendment in the Constitution, but support for legally-recognized gay relationships is on the rise. Public schools still can’t impose prayers on kids. Ten Commandments displays still struggle to receive state sanction. Americans now believe Democrats, not Republicans, are more reliable on questions of morality and values.
This is not to say that the last six years have been pleasant. Because of the religious right’s influence, we have more rigid ideologues on the federal bench, stiffer indecency fines, dangerous restrictions on medical research, spectacularly stupid abstinence-only programs, and a Justice Department that prioritizes porn over civil rights.
But looking back, I think we’ve gotten off easy. Robertson disciples and Dobson acolytes may be everywhere, but they haven’t been that successful. The church-state wall has taken a few hits, but it’s still standing. Dobson looks back at the last six years as a missed opportunity, not a triumph.
Perhaps the real lesson of the last few years is that theocratic Republican officials in the administration tend to screw up and get mired in scandal just like regular ol’ Republican officials in the administration.