Next Time "Ensign-Gate" Comes Up in Your Dinner Table Conversation...

Please, please bring up this article in today's Sun! Jeff Sharlet has been following John Ensign's bizarre "C Street" Christianist power cult for a number of years, so he has gained some real insight into the real Ensign behind the public facade he lets us "non chosen ones" see.

Take a look at this quote from Sharlet.

When you vote for someone, you want to know that they are their own man, you want to know they make decisions for themselves. More important, we want to see to what end this group applies its beliefs.

Doug Coe, David Coe’s father and leader of The Family fellowship going back to the mid ’60s, likes to call The Family “The Christian Mafia.” I knew Coe when I was part of The Family. He explained what it means to be a chosen politician.

Talking to another man, he said, “Let me explain to you the concept of ‘chosen.’ Suppose I hear you raped three little girls. What would I think of you?”

The man says, “You would think I was awful, a monster.”

And Doug Coe said, “No, I would not, because you’re chosen, and when you’re chosen, the normal rules don’t apply.”

I think that’s important for the voters of Nevada to know.

... And pay really close attention to this snippet from Sharlet.

I’m saying this not just to the voters of Nevada, but to all the Christian conservatives in Nevada who voted for Ensign because he presented himself as a Christian. Perhaps they would like to know what he means by Christian.

Does he read the New Testament and think it is only about power, and then does he apply that in the world?

One of the things that has come out is that when we look at Ensign’s travel records and Coburn’s travel records, we find them traveling around the world, doing official government business on The Family dime.

In other words, they’re representing U.S. interests, but they are going overseas, paid for by The Family and talking about this Family theology with foreign leaders. That becomes almost a national security issue.

Doug Coe in one presentation talked about Nazi Germany and the allegiance many Germans had to the Nazis. He said it was something of a role model for the approach that Family members need to have to their organization.

David Coe, a former assistant to George W. Bush at the Office of Faith-Based Initiatives, told NBC Nightly News last year that Doug Coe’s references to Nazis in his sermons were really a metaphor, a metaphor for commitment.

I don’t think Jesus used a metaphor of genocidal maniacs for commitment. I know David Coe and like him, but I think this is where you really get to the heart of the problem with The Family, this confusion over what their faith is about. Doug Coe will go so far as to say that he is not a Christian, that Christianity has got it all wrong.

The group began during the Great Depression because the founder thought that God came to him and revealed a vision that the New Deal was satanically inspired and that Christianity was getting it wrong for 2000 years by focusing on the poor, the weak, the suffering.

He said God came one night in April 1935 and said, “I want you to be a minister to not the down and out, but the up and out,” he called them, the powerful. And God’s going to choose a few powerful people, he’ll work through those people, and those people will distribute the blessings to the rest of us.

It sort of becomes this trickle-down fundamentalism that’s all about the fetishization of strength.

Hitler is not an appropriate metaphor for the teachings of Jesus; neither is Stalin or Mao.

When I was at the C Street house with Coe in a counseling session with Congressman Todd Tiahrt (Kansas Republican), he offered as examples Osama bin Laden and Pol Pot.

These were men, Coe said, who knew how to wield power, and we should wield power that way, too, except we should do it for Christ.

They say it’s the means, not the ends.

But when I look at Hitler I have trouble with both the means and the ends. I think any sane human being does.

If this doesn't scare you, I don't know what will. Oh hell, I think I actually do!



So please bring this up next time you hear someone talk about Poor Lil' Johnny Casino.

The Root of the Ensign Problem

Nevada Senator John Ensign "admitted" to an affair with his aide Cynthia Hampton after he was caught red handed. Can one admit to something after one is caught in the act? In any case, remember that Ensign was vocal in demanding that President Clinton step down from office for his sexual indiscretions. This moral stance did not prevent Ensign from pursuing some side nookie himself, however. He now feels remorse that he "violated the vows" of marriage in diddling someone other than his wife. Do ya think? Even creepier, if that is possible, his lover's husband was a top aide in Ensign's office in the Senate. Ignoring his own advice to Clinton, Ensign does not plan to resign.

In addressing the real ugliness behind "Ensign-gate" at HuffPo today, Jeff Schweitzer hit the nail on the head.

Only when we remove the false certainly that comes with claiming god is on our side can we truly confront the moral issues and ethical dilemmas that we face in our society. This epidemic of moral failure in the Republican Party is a clear symptom of the disease of intolerance; and such intolerance is an inevitable consequence of an appeal to divine insight. Why compromise when god says you're right?

We cure this disease by adopting a moral code completely divorced from religion. That task is easier than it would first appear. Religious morality has a poor track record; we can do better. The bar has been set fairly low.

Traits that we view as moral are deeply embedded in the human psyche. Honesty, fidelity, trustworthiness, kindness to others, and reciprocity are primeval characteristics that helped our ancestors survive. In a world of dangerous predators, we can speculate that early man could thrive only in cooperative groups. Good behavior likely strengthened the tribal bonds that were essential to survival. What we now call morality is really a suite of behaviors favored by natural selection in an animal weak alone but strong in numbers. We need to re-discover and appeal to this inner good derived from our biology and evolutionary history rather than to the myth of an invisible man in the sky with magical powers as a sound basis for our moral guidance.

This is how I've explained to friends and family how I, and many others who are atheist, address moral issues. It's not necessarily about which god(s) we want to believe in, but about what kind of people we want to be. We don't need Bible-bashing (or any other type of religious fantacism) to make ourselves better people.

Now don't get me wrong, I am not anti-religion. If a religion helps someone in his/her life journey, then how can I deny that to someone? It's just that religious beliefs alone don't automatically make someone a better person.

And obviously in John Ensign's case, it didn't help that the bizarre and secretive "C Street" radical right Christianist gang that he was a part of encouraged him to disregard whatever concerns he might have had over his moral hypocrisy. Instead, they just reassured him that "he was chosen by God to be great". Now talk about delusions of grandeur!

So I guess this is the frightening drama I see behind the pure comedy of Republican/religious right hypocrisy that John Ensign has taken to new levels. Once again we see how the religious right thinks they can have as many moral failings as they want, but just so long as they force us all to accept their version of "Jeezis" as our angry, belligerent "savior". Obviously, their view of "salvation" shouldn't equate to our society standard of morals.