Tonight Chris Matthews did a segment about a townhouse on Capitol Hill where many Christian congressmen live, conduct Bible studies, and then go out and make righteous laws. Journalist Jeff Sharlet was on to talk about his book on the group, The Family: the Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power, and he posited that the members of the house feel themselves to be "selected" as superior beings in an ideology of Christian capitalism.
There was a lot of religious hugger-mugger in the segment.
The segment wasn’t all that convincing. Sharlet could point to little actual legislation that is swayed by this group, apart from laws favoring capitalism.
Contrast this group with the neoconservatives, who Matthews said earlier in the broadcast had dragged us blindfolded (I believe that was his word) into "hell" in Iraq. Agreed. Well, they had a religious orientation. Neoconservatism came out of Jewish life, and most of the neocons were Jewish One-Jerusalem ideologues, such as Elliott Abrams, who believes that Jews have a covenant with God, and Doug Feith, who uses religious words like "Judea and Samaria" for the West Bank. These guys were in the White House, making war. Joe Klein says they had "divided loyalties" to Israel, the Jewish state, in pushing the war. Matthews knows all this — with his intense interest in American tribes and religion– he just won’t ever say it. But I’m repeating myself. I used to write about this all the time. Evidently I haven’t improved him. Go bash the Christians some more.
