The Men Who Pull the Strings

Ever hear of the Council for National Policy? Probably not... because that's the way the members of that organization want it, and the way they hope to keep it. Its members include all of the usual highly-placed right-wing suspects, from Jerry Falwell and Lou Dobson to Trent Lott and Clarence Thomas to Ralph Reed and Tom DeLay and dozens more.

This is a story that goes well beyond tinfoil hat territory and crosses directly over into Let's All Get Scared Shitless Land. Steven D, a diarist at Daily Kos, has outlined -- with good back-up links and references -- an exposé of the ultimate cabal, the players behind the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy, if you will. Reading this post, much of it taken from an even more in-depth article at the Americans United for Separation of Church and State website, with its named names and citations, should send chills up the spine of every liberal and progressive and even moderate out there who thinks that America might still be saved from the theocratic fascists.

If these people have anything to say about it -- and apparently they do -- it's already too late.

"The CNP was founded in 1981 as an umbrella organization of right-wing leaders who would gather regularly to plot strategy, share ideas and fund causes and candidates to advance the far-right agenda. Twenty-three years later, it is still secretly pursuing those goals with amazing success.

"Since its founding, the tax-exempt organization has been meeting three times a year. Members have come and gone, but all share something in common: They are powerful figures, drawn from both the Religious Right and the anti-government, anti-tax wing of the ultra-conservative movement.

...

"In the summer of 1981, Woody Jenkins, a former Louisiana state lawmaker who served as the group's first executive director, told Newsweek bluntly, 'One day before the end of this century, the Council will be so influential that no president, regardless of party or philosophy, will be able to ignore us or our concerns or shut us out of the highest levels of government.'

"From the beginning, the CNP sought to merge two strains of far-right thought: the theocratic Religious Right with the low-tax, anti-government wing of the GOP. The theory was that the Religious Right would provide the grassroots activism and the muscle. The other faction would put up the money.

...

"Bringing together the two strains of the far right gave the CNP enormous leverage. The group, for example, could pick a candidate for public office and ply him or her with individual donations and PAC money from its well-endowed, business wing.

"The goals of the CNP, then, are similarly two-pronged. Activists like Norquist, who once said he wanted to shrink the federal government to a size where it could be drowned in a bathtub, are drawn to the group for its exaltation of unfettered capitalism, hostility toward social-service spending and low (or no) tax ideology.

"Dramatically scaling back the size of the federal government and abolishing the last remnants of the New Deal may be one goal of the CNP, but many of the foot soldiers of the Religious Right sign on for a different crusade: a desire to remake America in a Christian fundamentalist image.

"Since 1981, CNP members have worked assiduously to pack government bodies with ultra-conservative lawmakers who agree that the nation needs a major shift to the right economically and socially. They rail against popular culture and progressive lawmakers, calling them the culprits of the nation's moral decay. Laws must be passed and enforced, the group argues, that will bring organized prayer back to the public schools, outlaw abortion, prevent gays from achieving full civil rights and fund private religious schools with tax funds."

Read it and weep, my friends. Cry the beloved country.