Sinister.
Imagine that a little-known but increasingly powerful group of ideologues had hatched a plan to transform the United States into a Christian theocracy harkening back to the Dark Ages of Europe, a time when society was governed by the laws and officials of the Catholic Church.
Suppose further that this plan had a scary simple strategy: Recruit bright, young law students; put them through an intensive indoctrination program; place them in plum internships across the country; and watch as they swim upstream until they reach the top of the legal system, where they can create, enforce, and interpret laws according to a legal philosophy infused with fundamentalist Christian theology.
Got it?
Now learn that it’s already here. Sofia Resnick and Sharona Coutts at RH Reality Check report:
Welcome to the world of the Blackstone Legal Fellowship, an annual program established in 2000 by the Alliance Defending Freedom, an Arizona-based nonprofit that is swiftly emerging as a major behind-the-scenes player in many of the nation’s most controversial legal cases involving reproductive rights, sexual justice, and a vast range of other moral and social disputes.
“[T]he Blackstone Fellowship inspires a distinctly Christian worldview in every area of law, and particularly in the areas of public policy and religious liberty,” states the Alliance’s public tax filing. “With this ongoing program, it’s [the Alliance’s] goal to train a new generation of lawyers who will rise to positions of influence and leadership as legal scholars, litigators, judges—perhaps even Supreme Court Justices—who will work to ensure that justice is carried out in America’s courtrooms.”
Um…help.
In Missouri, a former Blackstone Fellow, Kevin Corlew, is running for the state’s 14th congressional district in this year’s elections. Another, Bradley Cowan, is the chief of the administrative law division at the 101st Airborne Division at Fort Campbell, Kentucky,according to his profile on LinkedIn. And based on our review of public records, the offices of attorneys and solicitors general in at least eight states—Alabama, Arizona, Georgia, Indiana, Michigan, Oklahoma, Texas, and Virginia—have hosted Blackstones as interns, jobs in which fellows help draft memos and pleadings for the most powerful lawmakers in their states and, more importantly, forge the contacts that will propel them to their own positions of power.
Mind you, it’s a small number of people, however creepy. But it’s insinuated itself into some key places.
Through legal actions and its various legal training programs, the nonprofit focuses on fighting for the criminalization of abortion; against the rights of LGBT people; for so-called religious liberty (which often comes in the form of defending clients who wish to discriminate against gay people based on their religious beliefs); and for organized Christian prayer in government or public-school settings, such as its most recent victory—last week’s Supreme Court ruling upholding legislative prayer in Town of Greece v. Galloway, in which the Alliance represented the plaintiffs.
Theocrats on the march. I don’t like it.
The Mormons have a similar plan with their “Thomas Jefferson Education” (or TJEd – “Leadership Education”) program targeting homeschoolers, who are already overwhelmingly crazy-ass Christians of some sort or other. They claim that those who follow their plan (and buy all their materials and pay to attend all their conferences – see where this is going?) will raise children who will quite naturally move into leadership positions as adults, in every sphere including politics.
Well, guess what? It’s not happening. This “program” is out of George Wythe University (formerly college) and is the brainchild of a Mormon faker with bought credentials and no relevant education in childhood education or pedagogy.
Get this, from Oliver DeMille, whose brainchild both TJEd and George Wythe (non)College were:
“No classic is more important than the Book of Mormon, yet is [sic] has never been used as a central curriculum like the Old Testament, New Testament and the Koran. Not only does the Book of Mormon contain all the necessary fields of study, at levels from Kindergarten to Doctoral studies, it also provides its own specific guidelines for how and what to study – both for religious and secular education. In short, it is the classic of classics, and it’ about time to start utilizing it as such.”
Oh, right! My ass!!
It’s fun to see these Christian dickheads hoist on their own petard:
http://whyidontdotjed.blogspot.com/
http://themakingofauniversity.blogspot.com/2009/01/review-of-thomas-jefferson-education.html
http://themakingofauniversity.blogspot.com/2009/01/diploma-demille.html
“Diploma DeMille:
Or How to Use Phony Degrees, Shoddy Scholarship, Worldwide Conspiracy Theories, and Obfuscation to Become a Popular LDS Educational Speaker and Break into the Christian Homeschool Market”
And here, the icing on the cowpat, I mean “cake”, is a picture of Coral Ridge Baptist University, the source of all DeMille’s supposed credentials:
http://themakingofauniversity.blogspot.com/2009/06/behold-coral-ridge-baptist-university.html
Christians have always been after theocracy – the Catholic Church came the closest, bringing darkness, fear, and superstition upon the world. Since we aren’t going *back* to that ignorant time, all those grand “dominion” plans are doomed to fail, no matter how cherished they are to their zealot faithful.
This plot is simply diabolical.
@ 1 Claire Ramsey
Actually, it’s the exact opposite. Evangelical? 😉
I have a diabolical plot for these guys punk asses.
…well, not really, but I had to say something BA, because my ‘nym demanded it.
For a moment I was confused, then I remembered the Bourne books have Treadstone, not Blackstone. Still creepy.
From their Satanic point of view, what Christian (?) denomination gets to lead the rest of the pack in this holy project?
Catholics? No, they had their go at it; went OK for about 1,000 years then they provoked the Reformation.
Presbyterians? Catholics would never serve under their command.
Jews? Forget it.
Islamics?
Now we’re onto something. Perhaps an alliance of southern Baptists with a collection of outfits like Jemaah Islamiyah (however they spell it.) Could be on the money
Grrr… That’s not what the “Dark Ages” were. The Dark Ages* were the period between the collapse of the Roman and the “time when society was governed by the laws and officials of the Catholic Church”. They are characterised by complex interactions between many different forms of religion and social organisation, of which the Catholic Church was merely one (and by no means the dominant one).
Sorry, I realise this is not particularly important in the grand scheme of things, but it’s a period I have a particular interest in, and it pisses me off no end to see the term endlessly abused.
* In any context where the term actually makes sense in post-Roman Europe…
Which fills in the picture a bit more of our Michgan AG Bill Shuette’s tooth-and-nail fight against marriage equality here.
@7
Dunc,
Yes, indeed, the Influence of the Church was actually at its peak during the high Middle Ages and early modern times.
The ‘Dark Ages’ were only dark to later historians.
Grrr2, ‘Medieval’ is another term that’s often used to indicate ‘backward or primitive’, the later Middle Ages were a time of considerable technical and economic progress and the source of most modern Western institutions.
This is all true and should be watched and documented.
In the meantime, much closer to the centres of power in Washington, individuals like Dahlia Mogahed, a Muslim Brotherhood sympathise, and numerous others like her, have free and easy access to Obama. The influence these islamists have had on both Obama’s domestic and foreign policies and initiatives is far from negligable, deserves some VERY close examination, but isn’t getting any.