Right Wing Watch is doing a great job of researching the ideas of John Eidsmoe, Michele Bachmann’s former law professor who, by her own admission, was such a huge influence on her. And it turns out the guy is a genuine Christian Reconstructionist who wants America to be a theocracy. He even quotes RJ Rushdoony, the godfather of Reconstructionism, demanding a “full scale offensive” to take over the nation and impose Christianity by force of law. This is from his 1984 book God and Caesar:
God’s Word has a lot to say about government, about crime and punishment, about abortion, about national defense, about war and peace, about the many political issues that face us daily. Paul declared that he had ‘not shunned to declare unto all the counsel of God’ (Acts 20:27). The fundamentalist who refuses to preach or consider what God’s Word has to say about politics is not declaring the whole counsel of God and has a serious gap in his ministry. R. J. Rushdoony put it well when he said,
“Man must exercise dominion in the name of God, and in knowledge, righteousness, and holiness…. The world, moreover, cannot be surrendered to Satan. It is God’s world and must be brought under God’s law politically, economically, and in every other way possible. The Enlightenment, by its savage and long-standing attack on Biblical faith, has brought about a long retreat of Christianity from a full-orbed faith to a king of last-ditch battle centering around the doctrines of salvation and of the infallible Scripture. The time has come for a full-scale offensive, and it has indeed begun, to bring every area of thought into captivity to Christ, to establish the whole counsel of God and every implication of His infallible word.” (p. 56)
Bachmann has repeatedly said that Eidsmoe was a huge influence on her thinking. Ryan Lizza shows just how closely aligned they are:
At Oral Roberts, Bachmann worked for a professor named John Eidsmoe, who got her interested in the burgeoning homeschool movement. She helped him build a database of state homeschooling statutes, assisting his crusade to reverse laws that prevented parents from homeschooling their children. After that, Bachmann worked as Eidsmoe’s research assistant on his book “Christianity and the Constitution,” published in 1987.
Eidsmoe explained to me how the Coburn School of Law, in the years that Bachmann was there, wove Christianity into the legal curriculum. “Say we’re talking in criminal law, and we get to the subject of the insanity defense,” he said. “Well, Biblically speaking, is there such a thing as insanity and is it a defense for a crime? We might look back to King David when he’s captured by the Philistines and he starts frothing at the mouth, playing crazy and so on.” When Biblical law conflicted with American law, Eidsmoe said, O.R.U. students were generally taught that “the first thing you should try to do is work through legal means and political means to get it changed.”
“Christianity and the Constitution” is ostensibly a scholarly work about the religious beliefs of the Founders, but it is really a brief for political activism. Eidsmoe writes that America “was and to a large extent still is a Christian nation,” and that “our culture should be permeated with a distinctively Christian flavoring.” When I asked him if he believed that Bachmann’s views were fully consistent with the prevailing ideology at O.R.U. and the themes of his book, he said, “Yes.” Later, he added, “I do not know of any way in which they are not.”
Forget Bradlee Dean; John Eidsmoe could be Bachmann’s Rev. Wright.
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Rick R
August 12, 2011 at 12:31 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Gee, was this before or after she read that there Vidal Sassoon book?
[/snark]
Freerefill
August 12, 2011 at 12:37 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I think, if you’re going to be sworn into office, or accept any job where you are a public servant of any kind, you should place your hand on a copy of the Bill of Rights, open and pointed toward you, and swear to uphold it. If, at any time, you fail to uphold it in any situation, you are immediately ejected from your position.
That should clean things up a bit.
… although, really, it would be enough to just swear on the First Amendment. Seems an improbably high number of politicians forget that one.
raven
August 12, 2011 at 12:41 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
RJ Rushdooney was one of the few theologians the fundies ever produced. He is the founder of Xian Dominionism.
He was also a psychopathic wannabe mass murderer. Under xian Dominionism it is estimated that 297 million Americans would be killed, 99% of the population. Under biblical law, there are dozens of death penalties for such crimes as being a nonvirgin bride, atheist, disobedient child, adulterer, apostate, sabbath breaker and so on.
Bachmann is a follower of this guy. There is something deeply disturbed inside what passes for her mind.
Shawn Smith
August 12, 2011 at 1:27 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
That really makes me think that the whole claim by Bachmann that she was once a liberal until she found Jesus after college is just another fundie lie that they tell each other. They think it gives them credibility to their fellows.
Rachel Maddow did a piece on Wednesday (8/10/2011) on Perry’s links to other Dominionists, a group called the New Apostolic Reformation movement. These people scare me, because if they get real power I would either have to leave the country (at best) or be executed.
Pierce R. Butler
August 12, 2011 at 2:28 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
bcseweb.org via Raven @ # 4: We have done figures for the UK which suggest that around 99% of the population would end up dead and the remainder would have each, on average, killed 500 fellow citizens.
We may have to ask bcseweb.org to show their work. My calcs have it that if the righteous 1% murders the sinful remainder of the population, and spreads the job around evenly amongst themselves, that each killed, um, 99.
dingojack
August 12, 2011 at 2:41 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Pierce – you’re assuming ‘the righteous’ won’t think any of their fellow ‘righteous’ are not quite as pure as they could be.
If 0.19960075% survives (ca. 124,335) , then each will have killed – um – 500.00133.
:) Dingo
D. C. Sessions
August 12, 2011 at 2:44 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
So it’s Bachmann and Perry, in competition for the Nehemiah Scudder role in the 2012 Presidential election.
Nostradamus, eat your (rotted) hear out.
Steve LaBonne
August 12, 2011 at 2:49 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I guess I won’t have to worry about retirement. I can go out in a blaze of glory fighting in the Resistance.
naturalcynic
August 12, 2011 at 2:59 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Pierce Butler: You assume that each member of that 1% of the population is capable of killing 99 guilty sinners. Almost all of the innocent population population would be under the age of 5, especially including those innocent babeez in utero. Not a group very capable killing anyone. Especially those babeez in the womb that would be tasked with killing their mothers. Maybe Rushdoony expects every sinner to stone him/herself.
I think Bob Dylan wrote a song about that.
raven
August 12, 2011 at 3:37 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
In Rushdooney’s wacko world, women and children are property and don’t count for anything.
Only adult men get the joyful job of doing the lord’s work and murdering on average 500 people each.
D. C. Sessions
August 12, 2011 at 4:52 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
naturalcynic, I believe that the idea is to start by having approximately half of the population take out the other half. Then you raise the purity bar a notch, and repeat as needed.
cyberCMDR
August 13, 2011 at 12:29 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
And these people froth at the mouth at every rumor that somewhere in America they allow Sharia law. These people make the Taliban look like moderates.
Hercules Grytpype-Thynne
August 13, 2011 at 12:49 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
How? By some Christian version of “Room 101″ from 1984? Because I’ll tell you right now that they won’t bring every area of my thought “into captivity to Christ” by any lesser means.
Pinky
August 13, 2011 at 1:23 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
The Public Eye Magazine has a well researched three part article on Dominionism:
Christian Reconstructionism March/June 1994 Theocratic Dominionism Gains Influence
Sounds like these sadistic bastards have it all planned out and ready to be implemented.
democommie
August 13, 2011 at 2:58 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Oh, I see, now instead of signing in every day or so I’m back to having to type in my name and webdress every time I comment. I do not view this as a good trade.
Missy Bachman is teh batshit KKKrazzee, but never fear, St. Sarah the Impalinator is at the Fair in Iowa, trying out her presidunce mojo.
Felix
August 13, 2011 at 8:22 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
@Democommie
Felix
August 13, 2011 at 8:25 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
@Democommie
I was going to say that I much prefer just leaving name and email address and not having to bother about passwords (and syncing them across multiple PCs).
However, if by logging in I was able to delete that comment above then maybe I would change my mind!
jack
August 14, 2011 at 2:13 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
This reminds me of an old story, a shipwrecked sailor washes up on the beach and sees a gallows and says “Thank god I landed in a Christian nation.” Its too damned bad it is political disaster in the US to call out the Christian Dominionists on the wacko facist beliefs they hold, the average luke warm Christian and single issue social conservative fails to discern how different and sinister many fundementalist/evangelical beliefs actually are. Anyone who points out the facts is labled anti-Christian and ignored, if they are brave enough to speak up at all. Most of the time the liberal blogosphere is talking only to itself and is therefore marginalised.
democommie
August 14, 2011 at 8:58 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
This:
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/tobyharnden/100100848/fried-food-and-retail-politics-at-the-iowa-state-fair/
leads me to thinking that Missy has about the same poorly developed gag reflex as the rest of the POG’s Female Auxiliary. And I thought that there was NOTHING I could ever like her for. I’ll go out on a limb here, a stout, fully engorged and willin’ limb and guess that this is one form of “respect” that Marcus insists on.
Spunmunkey
August 15, 2011 at 6:13 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Like a B grade horror film – you know who gets killed & in what order – but still watch…
Time alot of people put down the Kool-aid & back away – the US is becoming scary.
Aquaria
August 15, 2011 at 7:53 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
According to Gary North, women who have abortions should be publicly executed, “along with those who advised them to abort their children.
Because women could never, you know, come up with the idea to abort all by their lonesome.
Reconstructed Biblical theocracies would be “happy” places, to which people would flock because “capital punishment is one of the best evangelistic tools of a society.”
I take it he hasn’t read The Handmaid’s Tale, and how there’s mention of tourists who visit Gilead to gawk at and laugh at the backwardness and ignorance of the natives. Funny, apparently Gilead is a rogue nation, one spurned and ridiculed and treated like North Korea is now.
Strange how Atwood’s fiction is more grounded in reality than this fuckfaced terrorist.
Christian Fundamentalism and Government | PEI Curmudgeon's Blog
August 12, 2011 at 12:44 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
[...] my last post on the rise of Islamic Fundamentalism in Pakistan’s universities, I found this article at Ed Brayton’s blog on the influence of John Eidsmore on Michele Bachmann’s thinking [...]
Model Agency Sheffield
January 28, 2012 at 8:41 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Model Agency Sheffield…
[...]Bachmann Mentor a Christian Reconstructionist | Dispatches from the Culture Wars[...]…