From Krugman(This is behind a New York Times subscription, here is the meat of it):
In 1981, Gary North, a leader of the Christian Reconstructionist movement — the openly theocratic wing of the Christian right — suggested that the movement could achieve power by stealth. “Christians must begin to organize politically within the present party structure,” he wrote, “and they must begin to infiltrate the existing institutional order.”
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.
[...]
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.
[...]
The Bush administration’s implosion clearly represents a setback for the Christian right’s strategy of infiltration. But it would be wildly premature to declare the danger over. This is a movement that has shown great resilience over the years. It will surely find new champions.
Next week Rudy Giuliani will be speaking at Regent’s Executive Leadership Series.
Paul is right. These people are not going away. It is clear to me that for the past six years a cancer has been growing in the bowels of our government, and it goes beyond just the Loyal Bushies. It appears as if the Bush Administration has been staffing key positions in it's agencies and bureaucracies with rabid right-wing christianists who are all busily working to subvert our Constitution. And as I said in my post about the Loyal Bushies, now that they have gotten into said bowels, it will most likely be very difficult for us to rid ourselves of them.
Now don't get me wrong, I have nothing against Christians, not the real ones, the ones who let the teachings of Jesus Christ guide their lives. The ones who turn the other cheek and strive to love their neighbors as they love themselves. The ones who share their good fortune with those less fortunate and work to help their fellow man. Now those Christians are my kind of people. But here we are looking at a different breed. These people call themselves Christians, but they are not. They are christianists. They want to do away with our Constitution and install a theocracy here in the Good 'Ole USA and they are well on their way.
The American people have been sleeping. They've been mesmerized by "reality TV" and self-absorbed celebrities and false news channels that blare right-wing christianist propoganda 24 hours a day, making it sound like dangerous news. We've been all wrapped up in murder trials and overdosing heiresses and talent contests. We've allowed ourselves to be distracted by a very focused, ideological group of religious extremists who will ride their train to hell trying to take over our country and impose their sick authoritarian style of "religion" on the rest of us. We better wake up.
(originally posted at amahchewahwah)