Editor’s
note: The New Messiahs by Katherine Yurica is
based on 1,300 pages of actual transcripts of Pat Robertson’s
television show, The 700 Club recorded for several years
in the early 1980’s. Most of the excerpts came from shows
broadcast in 1984-86. In 1987 the author conducted a study in
response to informal inquiries from the staff of the Subcommittee
on Oversight of the House Ways and Means Committee of the U.S.
House of Representives, which was investigating whether television
and radio ministries were violating their tax-exempt status by
conducting grass roots political appeals, endorsing candidates,
and making political expenditures as defined under Section 527
of the IRS code. The Subcommittee on Oversight published the
author’s study in Federal Tax Rules Applicable to Tax-Exempt
Organizations Involving Television Ministries on October
6, 1987, Serial 100-43. (Published in 1988.)
The New Messiahs is almost twenty
years old, but it rings with current authenticity. The transcribed
words are evidence of a plan to take over the government of the
United States. This is not a “conspiracy theory”; it
is the recording of the actual conspiracy—the actual plans
of how a group of ambitious religious leaders became purveyors
of a new and secular fundamentalism whose political beliefs are
now being enacted to the detriment of all Americans. The religious
right’s plan for you includes: the burning of all J.K. Rowling’s
Harry Potter books; the denial of your right to choose an abortion
if it becomes necessary in your life—even to save your
life; the revamping of the U.S. Constitution; and the denial
of your right to choose what you see, hear and read in the media.
At the last revision of The New Messiahs
in 1999-2000, the largest network in the world was neither CBS,
NBC nor ABC nor all three together. It was TBN, the Trinity Broadcasting
Network, owned by Paul Crouch, (a member of John Ashcroft’s
church, the Assembly of God). By 1999, TBN fed 406 TBN and affiliate
TV stations in America, 4,886 cable systems and an estimated
10 million home satellite dishes. In addition they had a total
of 346 foreign stations on the air and Crouch was only one satellite
away from total live global coverage!
Chapter 1 Excerpts
Why Abraham Lincoln
Threatened to Leave America
During the decade before the Civil War a
secret political organization became prominent in America. It
was called the “Know-Nothings” because every time someone
tried to find out information about the group, some of its members
would respond, “I don’t know” to the questions
that were asked. But one thing was known, the Know-Nothings
opposed immigrants and Roman Catholics from obtaining any political
influence or power in the United States. In a letter to Joshua
F. Speed, Abraham Lincoln wrote:
“I am not a Know-Nothing; that is certain.
How could I be? How can anyone who abhors the oppression of Negroes
be in favor of degrading classes of white people? Our progress
in degeneracy appears to me to be pretty rapid. As a nation we
began by declaring that ‘all men are created equal.’
We now practically read it ‘all men are created equal, except
Negroes.’ When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read
‘all men are created equal, except Negroes and foreigners
and Catholics.’ When it comes to this, I shall prefer emigrating
to some country where they make no pretense of loving liberty—to
Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and
without the base alloy of hypocrisy.” (August 24, 1855)
The Know-Nothings faded into obscurity,
but their brand of fascism has erupted in our body politic many
times since the days of Abraham Lincoln. It has taken many forms;
perhaps the one most familiar to Americans of our generation
is the anti-Communism invective of the late Senator Joseph McCarthy
whose hounding unproved accusations against people destroyed
lives and left us with the word, “McCarthyism,” which
is defined in Webster’s Third New International Dictionary
as:
“A political attitude of the mid-twentieth
century closely allied to know-nothingism and characterized chiefly
by opposition to elements held to be subversive and by the use
of tactics involving personal attacks on individuals by means
of widely publicized indiscriminate allegations especially on
the basis of unsubstantiated charges.”
As I write, Americans and the rest of the
world sit on the huge train of time, all of us rushing forward
with unstoppable speed toward the future and all that the twenty-first
century holds. Some of us have been riding this train for awhile,
and some of us have been only mildly interested in the passing
political scenes that rush by like trees and houses from the
vantage point of a train’s windows; there’s a certain
detachment, a certain unconnectedness to the life surrounding
us on the train. However, others of us have indeed become aware
of a new political movement; some gave warnings, others were
simply stunned at the incredulous spectacle as they watched Mr.
Lincoln’s Republican Party succumb to the will and control
of the “New Messiahs”—the energized, fanatical
Religious Right’s leaders. Yet few of us, I think,
have been aware of the subversive nature of what has actually
taken place.
The multi-organizational—yet essentially
connected—religious political alliance grew up in our midst,
wrapped securely in the robes of a form of Christianity, but
it preached the gospel of hate. Beginning in the 1970’s
it’s leaders labeled huge segments of our American culture
as immoral. Humanists and atheists led the excluders’ list
and were declared to be “unfit to hold public office or
to teach our children.” Not only were whole classes singled
out for expulsion from public life and office, but the excluders’
list was extended to those who disagreed with political issues
supported by the religious right. In short, as we shall
see in this book, the only citizens deemed fit for public office
and influence in America by the new messiahs are members of the
religious right or those who take the religious right’s
positions. The excludables are us—everyone else in America.
As Abraham Lincoln put it, “Our progress in degeneracy appears
to me to be pretty rapid.”
Like Mr. Lincoln, a few Americans started
talking about fleeing our country should the religious right
cement its hold. Some observers fear the end of our pluralistic
union. This book tells the story of how the new messiahs came
about: from what cultural forces they emerged (and learned to
manipulate), what aberrations helped shape them and what milieu
helped create their ground. The scope of what we are about to
examine is breathtaking. This is the story of a plot to take
over America.
It began in the
late 1970’s with the help of vast so-called religious broadcasting
networks. Pat Robertson’s television talk show, The 700 Club, and hundreds of
other radio and television shows began preaching the gospel of
political Christian activism, stirring the faithful to accept
a political agenda, and reaching an estimated audience of over
20 million people in 1980. The audience for the top ten
shows, however, was to increase dramatically to 60 million by
1985, with Robertson’s 700 Club topping the Nielsen
ratings with a projected monthly viewing audience of 28.7 million.
Although the
plan to take over the government of the United States was announced
publicly on Pat Robertson’s 700 Club, it was at a
time when only the faithful viewed the show, and only the faithful
unquestioningly accepted the possibilities: “We have enough
votes to run the country,” Robertson said, “and when
the people say, ‘we’ve had enough,’ we’re
going to take over the country.” But it was Tim LaHaye,
(often called the founder of the religious right), who laid out
a specific plan to Pat Robertson’s audience. He said it
simple and straight and quick. It went like this:
“There are 110,000
Bible believing churches but there are only 97,000 major elective
offices in America. If we launch one candidate per church, we
can take over every elective office in this country within ten
years.”
I was monitoring and recording the show
at the time, and to those I discussed it with, the plan seemed
like a wild pipe dream that couldn’t be executed. The press
ignored it or most likely didn’t know about it. The people
who took it seriously, however, were those it was intended for:
the insiders, the potential foot soldiers in a newly awakened
and reborn church militant. The term “religious right”
entered our political lexicons.
The original plot was augmented by Pat Robertson
and was laid out in chatty bits and pieces over an estimated
eighteen-month period. (I transcribed more than 1,300 pages in
eight volumes of dialogue for this book.) The plan was to begin
with a three pronged thrust: the first goal was to gain control
of the Republican party and then through the GOP, gain control
of Congress. The second goal was to revamp the balance of powers
between the three branches of government, so that the judiciary
would be weakened permanently and the power of Congress would
be strengthened—if it were controlled by the religious right.
Similarly, the third goal involved the power of the presidency,
which was to be variously weakened when an unacceptable person
occupied the White House, but strengthened when a “God-anointed
man” was in office. The fourth goal was to gain the power
to control domestic morality by denouncing the “immoral”
and by “breaking” individuals and organizations such
as the National Education Association [NEA]. There was
never any doubt of the ultimate goal. It was going to be “dominion.”
And “What is dominion?” Pat Robertson asked his television
audience, “Well, dominion is lordship, to reign and rule.”
It was also a chilling catechism fitting another term, the fascism
of a religious cult.
For fourteen years after their goals were
announced, Americans slept. They expressed little interest in
the machinations of the religious right. Then something changed:
a relentless, four year investigation of a popular president
culminated in the House of Representatives’ rushed partisan
vote to impeach William Jefferson Clinton. Americans received
a wake-up call that almost everyone heard. Many became aware
of the fact they were witnessing the spectacle of what some commentators
were describing as an attempt to execute a bloodless, limited
coup d’etat. And what was worse, someone else’s
standard of morality was the plumb line ruling the debate.
Many sleeping moderates suddenly discovered
the Republican party had indeed been taken over by the religious
right and Congress had indeed been taken over by the Republicans.
(In fact a Newsweek poll conducted
during the trial revealed that half the conservatives in the
Republican party were “religious conservatives,” and
the aggregate of all conservatives in the party made up the controlling
fifty percent, but those that identified themselves as “religious”
were the most active voters, the best-organized portion of the
party, and the best fund raisers.)
There were many reasons why the New Messiahs
were so absorbed with the presidency, not the least of which
was their desire to put their man in the White House. Pat Robertson
tried and failed miserably in the 1988 election, but the dream
came true in 2000.
Chapter 15 Excerpts
The War to Control America
The Year is 1985: The
Author is Watching Pat Robertson's TV Show
Pat Robertson envisions a changed America.
He speaks of future political leaders who will listen only
to “the counsel of the godly” and will reject advice
from “ungodly” men. Curiously, he does not define who
the godly are, but his rhetoric closely parallels that of Sun
Myung Moon who speaks of a “higher dimension” of Christianity,
and said, “We must realize and consider seriously the mission
of Christianity to lead a supra-denominational, cultural revolution
on a worldwide scale.”
The sonorous voice of Stephen McPheeters,
one of Robertson’s special reporters on the 700 Club
rings across the air waves: “The stage has been set
and the conflict of the ages will likely continue into the twenty-first
century. Secular and religious leaders agree that the future
of western society is hanging in the balance.”
Then Robertson called for a “special
revival.”
“Not just good church evangelism,”
he said, “that’s not what a revival is. A revival is
a sweeping change in society—where people think differently—live
differently act on a wide scale basis. And we haven’t seen
that yet. It’s coming, but it hasn’t gotten here yet.”
In effect, the revival will take aim at the “Centralization
of power in Washington,” and Robertson warns, “The
only way to change it according to Jefferson, we will have a
choice between reformation or revolution!”
Robertson emotionally told his audience,
“We are not going to stand for those coercive utopians in
the Supreme Court and in Washington ruling over us any more.
We’re not gonna stand for it. We are going to say, we want
freedom in this country, and we want power, freedom back to the
people where it’s supposed to be. And the same thing in
the Soviet Union and the same thing in China!”
“What we have to do,” Ben Kinchlow
[Robertson’s co-host] told the national convention of the
two year college Phi Theta Kappa fraternity, “is very simple.
Grab the American dream by the short hairs and snatch it back
to where it was originally designed to be. Liberty is what this
thing’s all about!”
To keep the message before his audience,
Robertson invited Billy Foley, an Escondido, California pastor
who founded the Christian Voter’s League to the 700 Club.
“It’s always nice to have a guest who says, ‘The
organization I’m involved in is going to change the world,”
Robertson chuckled…
Foley: “I
discovered the Biblical principle in the Bible from one end to
the other states that God never intended for the wicked to rule
over the righteous. And the purpose of the Gospel was to send
Jesus to establish God’s kingdom on earth, to overthrow
the rule of the wicked and establish the rule of the righteous.
And the bottom line is—it’s either us or them!”
[chuckles]
Robertson responded, “Regretfully that’s
the way it is. Well, now are you working in so-called party politics?”
Foley replied, “We really are avoiding
partisan politics...our goal is not to take over the Republican
party or to extend the Democratic party, but our goal is to take
over the land and take over both parties. We’re a majority
in the land.
Robertson asked, “A lot of people,
if they hear Christian Voter’s League, they’ll say,
‘Hey, you’re attempting to dominate me. You’re
going to take away my freedom. You’re not gonna let me be—whatever.’
How do you answer those people?”
“It’s very naive,” Foley
replied, “to think that the peaceful coexistence—existing
today—and the bottom line is it’s either us or them.
Right now the ‘them’ are ruling over us because
the church gave away its consensus. So we’re merely getting
back what we have lost in America in the last forty years.”
The First Step:
Control of Congress
But the thirst for the freedom to
exercise power over others is not freedom at all—it is merely
a desire for control. Significantly, Pat Robertson and his political
associates have stated their agenda openly. It is so open that
it is hidden in a sense. It is hidden behind the charming personalities
and the deluge of public statements that pour from the TV and
radio preachers’ mouths. As a result, the agenda has received
little attention from the media, and the American public has
yet to perceive the enormity of the political changes that are
being proposed and that have been achieved as the 21st
century bursts upon us.
The goal of political power was openly expressed
on the 700 Club when Tim LaHaye outlined his plan to fill
every major elected office in America with a certain kind of
evangelical Christian—one who has converted to the tenets
of the religious right’s secular fundamentalism.
He told Pat Robertson’s
audience in 1985, “Suppose that every Bible believing
church—all 110,000—decided to ask God to raise
up one person to run for public office and win. From city council
to mayor to county supervisor, state legislator and right on
up. Okay, if every church in the next ten years did that,
within the next decade we would have more Christians in office
than there are positions. There are only 97,000 elective offices
of a major level.”
“Let’s face it,” Robertson
responded, “as Tim LaHaye said, all you need is one man
or one woman from each Bible believing church in the United States
and we’d have all the elected officials in the country!”
….[I]n some states, among them Iowa,
Indiana, Washington and Tennessee, reports showed that the religious
right challenged establishment Republicans for control of the
local party and were effective in determining which candidate
ran for the GOP in congressional races. Because of this superb
showing, Robertson was seen by political strategists and consultants
as a political master. In 1989, one year after he failed in his
bid for the presidency, Pat Robertson founded the Virginia-based
Christian Coalition and appointed the 30 year-old, cherub-looking
Ralph Reed as executive director. But the born-again Reed was
not angelic in any way.
Robertson ordered a tactical change, and
so, “We’re flying below
radar,” became Reed’s motto. “I want to be invisible.
I do guerrilla warfare. I paint my face and travel at night.
You don’t know it’s over until you’re in a body
bag.” That’s how Ralph Reed described the way conservative
Christians would take over American politics in 1991. Reed boasted
that the coalition’s targets—such as a dozen hapless
Virginia Democrats who lost elections in 1991—didn’t
know what his guerrilla warriors were doing until it was too
late. Reed and Robertson also boasted on how they saved Jesse
Helms from certain defeat in 1990. Robertson described the tactics
in his book, The New World Order.
….By election time in 1992, Robertson’s
coalition distributed 40 million copies of the “Family Values
Voters Guide” in more than 100,000 churches nationwide.
Other copies were available at polling places on Election Day.
“Stealth tactics” were still the orders from Robertson.
Accordingly, Reed told the press, “Mao-Tse-Tung said politics
is war without bloodshed.”
Still burning over the Panama Canal Treaty
President Jimmy Carter signed, Robertson explained,
“Since treaties are ratified in the U.S.
Senate, they also can be stopped in the Senate. The key is to
make every candidate for election...declare himself in advance
on the issues...”
Issues regarded to be of paramount importance
to Robertson in 1991 as stated in his book The New World Order,
centered on candidates’ attitudes toward a one-world government,
which in turn was tied to Secular Fundamentalist’s fears
regarding the coming world dominion of the Antichrist. Robertson
wanted candidates to declare themselves in advance on “issues
of surrendering the sovereignty of the United States into a world
government, and on unilateral disarmament of America.”
Also on his list of prohibitives was whether
the candidate favored arming the United Nations, or giving the
United Nations power over American citizens, and the candidate’s
attitude toward the role of the Federal Reserve Board in global
banking.” But that was just the beginning of his list. Robertson
hoped to expose those who were for abortion and homosexual rights,
for pornography, for condom distribution in schools and for increased
taxes among other things. As we shall see, the list has expanded
since 1991.
Robertson made no secret about his plans
for the religious right to control American politics by the year
2000. Ralph Reed said, by 2000, the coalition would have 10 trained
activists in all 175,000 political precincts nationwide. That’s
1.75 million activists. In 1992, President Bush, former Education
Secretary William Bennett and former Marine Lt. Col. Oliver North
made appearances at Robertson’s political training camp
in Virginia Beach, Virginia.
But by 1992, not all Republicans were happy
with the religious right’s march toward victory and the
taking over of precincts in a dozen states.
“They’re absolutely ruthless—obscene,”
said Mary Dent Crisp, head of the Republican National Coalition
for Choice, who with chairwoman Ann Stone was denied access to
the GOP convention floor in Houston in the summer of 1992, according
to Ben Winton of the Phoenix Gazette.
Crisp said the religious right dominated
the convention and barred her from speaking because she supported
abortion rights.
“They say taking over the Republican
Party is not a goal,” Crisp said. “But it is a goal.
They have a grand strategy that reminds me of Hitler’s Germany.
When the public was unsuspecting and they didn’t read the
signals, they (the public) let it happen. I really fear for my
country.”
Later, Ralph Reed dismissed the Phoenix
Gazette article as “stupid.”
By 1994 the Christian Coalition had taken
control of state GOP organizations in Minnesota, Oregon, Virginia,
Texas, Iowa, Washington and South Carolina.
But after the 1994 congressional elections,
for the first time in 40 years, the GOP took control of Congress,
with 44 of the 52 new Republicans in the House owing their victories
to the support of the pro-life groups and the Christian Coalition.
The religious right also gained control of the Republican Party
apparatus in at least 31 states. And the Christian Coalition
saw its numbers multiplying: they had sponsored 83 Citizen Action
Training Schools across America to teach Christians how to get
elected. They established 375 new chapters of the coalition in
all 50 states, bringing the total number of Christian Coalition
chapters to 872 with more than 900,000 members, distributed 40
million voter guides and 20 million Congressional Scorecards.
And by 1996, the coalition reported that it had sponsored 400
Citizen Action Training Schools, and they established 737 new
chapters of the coalition, bringing the total chapters to 1,617.
By 1999, following the failed impeachment
trial against President William Jefferson Clinton, the Republican
religious right geared up for the task of taking back the presidency
from the Democrats in the 2000 election…
The Second Step:
Weaken the Judiciary
and Revamp the Balance of Powers
What comes after
gaining control of Congress? Simply put, it is the revamping
of the three branches of the government of the United States.
Robertson was developing a program of sweeping political change
that represents the most radical departure from the Republic’s
system of checks and balances since the founding of our nation.
Significantly,
Robertson wanted to reduce or eliminate the power of the judiciary.
He denied that the Constitution provides a system of checks and
balances between the three branches of government. Instead, he
saw the legislative branch as the dominant center of power in
our nation, and accordingly wanted to make some changes, which
we will look at shortly. Paramount in his thinking was his denial
that the judiciary is an equal branch of the government. The
Supreme Court, according to him, usurped its own power. “There
was nothing in there [the Constitution] giving them the power
to review the acts of Congress. Just nothing in there at all.
John Marshall took it, but it wasn’t given to him.”
Instead Robertson believed the Supreme Court and the entire federal
judiciary system was intended by the framers of the Constitution
to be subordinate to Congress.
Many people were alarmed when Robertson’s
interview with the editorial board of the Washington Post
(June 27, 1986) was published. He said, “A Supreme Court
ruling is not the law of the United States. The law of the United
States is the Constitution, treaties made in accordance with
the Constitution and laws duly enacted by the Congress and signed
by the president. And any of those things I would uphold totally
with all my strength, whether I agreed with them or not.”
Citing Roe v. Wade, which
legalized abortions, Robertson claimed the court’s decision
was not the law of the land because it was based on “very
faulty law.” As a private citizen, he said, “I am bound
by the laws of the United States and all 50 states...(but) I
am not bound by any case or any court to which I myself am not
a party....I don’t think the Congress of the United States
is subservient to the courts...They can ignore a Supreme Court
ruling if they so choose...”
To understand Robertson’s underlying
criticism of the court system, one needs to go back to the 700
Club, where Robertson had expressed himself freely to his
own followers and where he accused three Supreme Court Justices
of murder because of their decision in Roe v. Wade.
On June 5, 1985 he alleged, “Three of them have on their
hands the blood of 17 million aborted babies....They have allowed
hardened criminals to roam the streets because of so many of
their so-called civil libertarian views...I mean there’s
some very serious things that these people have done. And one
of them is Thurgood Marshall, another is Justice William Brennan...another
is Blackmun.” Then adding Justice Lewis Powell to the list,
he accused the justices of preventing the majority of Americans
“from affirming their religious beliefs in the public life.”
With a menacing tone, he called on the public to pray for what
amounted to the justices’ deaths: “I think we ought
to pray...that God will show them...justice—the real
kind....that they might be brought themselves to the bar of [God’s]
judgment—[God’s] justice.”
Unfortunately, Robertson’s rhetoric
inspired a broad resonance among America’s fundamentalists.
Robert L. Hymers Jr., pastor of the Fundamentalist Baptist Tabernacle
in Los Angeles, which had one of the largest fundamentalist congregations
in Southern California, began to “pray that God kills all
five of the Supreme Court justices who upheld the right to abortion
in the June 11, 1986 decision of the court.” He hung an
abortion-clinic operator in effigy. Greg Dixon, the former president
of the Coalition for Religious Freedom, and pastor of an Indianapolis
fundamentalist church, started his own “Court of Divine
Justice” to try government officials who infringe on the
freedom of fundamentalist churches. He said, “The judges
of America are operating under the Communist Manifesto.”
….Robertson’s call for a dramatic
change in the judiciary seems strangely incongruent and incoherent:
“We can no longer live under
a rule by judges,” he told his audience.
“We have to live by rule by people
through legislatures and through the amendment process. That’s
what we desire to do to the Constitution. But the Constitution,
although it is a living breathing document, cannot be breathed
on by every district court judge in the United States every time
he feels like making a decision. And something has got to be
done!”
On another show, still sticking to the urgency
of his appeal, Robertson complained of the “crazy unconstitutional
world” created by the Supreme Court Justices “who
don’t abide by the original intention of the framers. We’ve
got to change it very quickly,” he warned.
Robertson’s solution came as a revelation.
He told Danuta Soderman on March 24, 1986, “Danuta, I learned
something this weekend. I’m supposed to have studied constitutional
law when I was in law school, but I read—I’ve gotta
go speak at Yale Law School on Tuesday night—and so I read
the Constitution Saturday. The whole thing! [laughs] ....I mean
it literally blew my mind....The Congress has the power to set
the number of the justices—how many of them, how long they
are supposed to stay in office—not for life but on good
behavior....The Congress by a simple
majority, could put in fifteen Supreme Court Justices tomorrow...or
cut it down to seven or five or whatever they wanted...Furthermore,
the Congress has absolute authority to establish the lower federal
courts and to establish the appellate jurisdiction of the Supreme
Court coming up from those. So they [Congress] can say, ‘there’s
a whole class of cases you can’t hear’ and there’s
nobody can do anything about it!”
All Robertson and the religious right secular
fundamentalists needed, was a like-minded Congress. Congress
was the key to the whole plan. Robertson said, “I mean it
is unbelievable how much power Congress was given by the framers
of the Constitution. Unbelievable! The president of the United
States can’t appoint a janitor without Congress’ approval.”
In the meantime, concerned about the fate
of the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings Bill, which was being reviewed by
the Supreme Court, Robertson proposed a simple little plan with
horrific ramifications to his audience: any law found to
be unconstitutional, Robertson said, “Congress could just
[say], ‘Well we just disregard your opinion.’ And
the president could say, ‘We disregard it and that’s
just tough luck.’”
“Absolutely
ignore the court,” he said, “It’s time they do
it.”
Robertson’s proposal had legal scholars
of both the right and left confounded. Harvard’s Laurence
Tribe said, “It is surprising to find a conservative taking
so radical and ultimately lawless a position.”
Robertson had another plan—what one
man could dream, another could actually do: pack the courts with
ideologically correct judges. A Republican president with a Republican
Senate, had unqualified appointment power. For those presidents
who would listen, on separate occasions he told his audience
that he favored right wing activist, Phyllis Schlafly and Senator
Orrin Hatch for appointments to the Supreme Court. However, at
the National Press Club (on December 4, 1985) his choice for
nominees to the Supreme Court were, “William Bork or Judge
Scalia or whoever has been suggested who takes a different view
of the Constitution.”
For twelve years, however, Ronald Reagan
and George Bush did pack the judiciary with conservative judges.
By 1997 there were 462 federal judges appointed by Republicans
and only 285 by Democrats. The Republican appointees’ decisions,
according to a U.S. News & World Report article, “were
shifting power toward police and corporations and away from criminal
suspects, environmentalists, and trade unions.” When Bill
Clinton was elected to the presidency in 1992, however, many
democrats hoped he would be able to shift the balance of power
back. Not so. For if, as Pat Robertson pointed out, “treaties
can be stopped in the Senate”—so could the nominations
of Supreme Court justices and federal judges. In what has been
called “a scandalous and stunningly irresponsible misuse
of the Senate’s authority” by law professor, Geoffrey
Stone, the provost at the University of Chicago, Senate leaders
came to believe they had the power in their Constitutional “advise
and consent” role to actually select federal judges.
….Within twelve years of Pat Robertson’s
stated plans to his television audience on how to control and
change the judiciary—that is, by 1997— two more Republican
blueprints emerged from Congress reminiscent of Robertson’s
proposals concerning federal judges who were sitting on the bench
and making decisions not liked by the religious right. The first
was to pass legislation making it a requirement that on a list
of issues near and dear to conservative hearts, a three-panel
tribunal would be required—a solitary judge would not be
allowed to hear them. House Majority Whip, Tom DeLay, said Congress
should no longer stand by while Federal “liberal activist”
judges made improper law. He then suggested a second strategy:
the impeachment process should be used against judges for bad
decisions. He called for making “an example” of a judge.
He told reporters from Time
magazine that Judge Thelton Henderson in California was high
on his list of targets, for striking down a voter-approved referendum
ending state affirmative-action programs (the judge has since
been reversed); also, Judge John Nixon of Tennessee, who reversed
several death-penalty convictions; and Judge Fred Biery in Texas,
who refused to seat a Republican sheriff and county commissioner
because of a pending lawsuit challenging some absentee ballots.
The Third Step:
Increase the Power of
the President
Although this was 1997, the spread of Robertson’s
agenda to the floor of Congress was not yet fully comprehended
by mainstream Americans, nor was the extent of his influence
realized. But Robertson’s goals were always clearly laid
out in his mind and he took them one step at a time….
Robertson wanted to consolidate the power
of the presidency … He wanted the economic policies of the
president executed without opposition from the Federal Reserve.
He believed the president, as an elected official, should control
the money system of the country. The religious right secular
fundamentalists, almost to a man, oppose the Federal Reserve
System. Robertson called it “unconstitutional,” and
blamed the Federal Reserve Board for the “growth of debt
in our country.” Claiming that the chairman of the Federal
Reserve has too much power, Robertson said, “Here’s
and unelected man in charge of a quasi-private organization who
is just as powerful [as the president]. A president can put us
on the road to prosperity, and this unelected man can put us
into a depression, merely by regulating the currency supply.
It’s a very dangerous thing for people who love democracy,
and I think more and more there’s a ground swell beginning
to build in this country, that says in matters dealing with the
vital interests of all of us, the people have to have control
of what is being done.”
Another way Robertson would like to see
the power of the presidency increase is through greater control
over the civil service system. In a throwback to cronyism
and Tim LaHaye’s percentage scheme, Robertson would like
to see a civil service that reflects the political ideology and
views of the president. Pointing out that a new president can
only replace about 3,000 out of 3 million federal employees,
which his guest said is only one tenth of one percent and that
the system is insulated from popular opinion and from the elected
officials themselves, he called for a revamping of the civil
service merit system. Although his language seemed innocuous
enough, one can only guess at his intentions: We need to
“give the government officials an opportunity to retire,
or dismiss those who are doing substandard work,” he said.
We need to “demand more merit.” Both features,
however, exist in the present system.
No one doubted that Pat Robertson was running
for the presidency. He told reporters at the National Press Club
on December 4, 1985 that he would not even consider running as
a vice presidential candidate. And what is more, he gave every
indication that should he make it, he planned to be a strong
president; he did not wish to share executive power with anyone
and certainly not with another branch of government.
The Fourth Step:
Domestic Morality and
Control, Control, Control
The fourth step in Robertson’s plan
was the imposition of the glorious “biblical” morality
of secular fundamentalism upon our land. Since we have already
discussed his Social Darwinism which largely ignores the plight
of the weakest and poorest members of our society, I wish only
to focus here on three domestic issues: education, the
arts, and Social Security. Robertson wanted to change them.
To help implement the changes, the revolution
in American life will be ushered in under the banner of a new
morality. However, Robertson needed consensus, and one way of
achieving consensus was to limit deliberation, a logical next
step in the sequence. As much as he might protest otherwise,
he was irked by political debate in any arena. For basically,
he believed that the truth or “God’s Will” could
be known, and once it was known, further debate was useless.
The issue was settled. From an historical point of view, he argued
that divergent political views brought about the collapse of
ancient Greece and he often lamented the lack of “unity”
of thought in Congress—as we have seen above—implying
that political diversity is a symptom of weakness….
[Editor’s Note: Robertson then threw
blanket protection over churches and church run schools, denying
the state licensing powers. He said “The educational establishment
has got to be broken.” (NEA, The National Education Association).
Another target was art and literature: On September 19, 1985
he said, “You see the mental confusion, the anarchy, the
nihilism of today’s art and today’s literature and
today’s films.” Robertson’s solution was to remove
any congressman who voted for grants to the National Endowment
for the Arts.]
Robertson said of Social Security in 1986:
“The second thing has to do with Social Security...For people
who are 25 and 30 and 35, it’s going to be a tragic problem
in about the year 2030 because there’s not gonna be enough
workers, there...will not be enough money to take care of the
retirement of today’s young adults...And what we need to
do is...right now—is to phase in some kind of a compulsory
private system where they can begin to set aside money on their
own so that 30, 40 years from now they will have enough.”
Social Security is in fact one of Pat Robertson’s
favorite targets, and typically his rhetoric ran hot and vivid.
What he did not tell his audience was that his proposals for
privatization could destroy the system. To gain consensus, he
resorts to a tactic we have seen him use in the last four chapters.
It apparently comes easy for him. On May 21, 1985 he told his
worried audience:
“The government is running—they’re
not telling anybody—they’re running very scared....There
is going to be an awful crash. There’s going to be a repudiation
of debt. There’s going to be a wipe-out of Social Security.
Many people who are figuring on getting Social Security are not
going to get any Social Security. People who are anticipating
Medicare—there’s not going to be enough money to pay
the bill. And you either have runaway inflation where you absolutely
wipe out the middle class of the country or you’re going
to have a revolution because that’s what this means.”
And on August 14, 1985, he returned to the
topic to worry his viewers some more:
“By the end of this century the tax on
Social Security per taxpayer is going to be—guess how much?
$10,000 per taxpayer. Social Security alone, now that’s
one of the estimates. And the truth is, and it’s a sad truth,
that the younger Americans, 25, 22, 30, 35 who are paying into
Social Security according to what’s going on right now are
not going to get a dime!”
Step Five:
Moral Leadership
Pat Robertson
told reporters on national television and journalists from the
print media that people wanted him to run for president because
of his “moral leadership.”
“I would be better able to address
[problems] from a moral and spiritual standpoint,” he said,
and “also build a national consensus to support that point
of view than maybe the other candidates.” On another occasion
he remarked, “The question is one of leadership...who would
best be able to minister to the needs of the people of America,
to serve them, to help the poor and needy, to have compassion,
to lead this nation into new heights.”
….On September 10, 1985, in the same
statement in which he said he was against apartheid, he announced,
“Now one solution that has been offered by a very wise man—I
know this is hard—is a type of partition of South Africa
in a true homeland region for the various tribes. The black tribes
and the white tribes. That might be the solution.”
Robertson often conveyed a bristling and
offensive superiority over others. On June 13, 1985, he referred
to the nations of Central America as “banana republics.”
“I mean they essentially are like an American colony.
You know you go down and you see McDonalds and you see Cocoa
Cola signs.”
But without a doubt, his attitude toward
assassination was one of the most revealing facets of
his value system. For the fact of the matter is that he has urged
outright assassinations and the covert overthrow of foreign governments.
But two former Republican National Security Advisors, Henry Kissinger
and Robert MacFarlane have pointed out that not only do United
States laws prohibit such activities, but assassinations and
murder fly in the teeth of the generally held moral values of
this nation.
But one needs
to listen to Robertson to get the true flavor and intensity of
his feelings as well as an understanding of just how far he would
consider carrying violence. In a quote that was picked up by
the Associated Press and CNN News, Robertson told his audience
on April 11, 1986, just how he would deal with Libya’s Colonel
Kaddafi:
“The problem with kicking a mad dog
is that the mad dog will bite you. Specially if he’s got
rabies. He might hurt you and he might infect you badly. So you
don’t go out and kick a mad dog. If you have a mad dog with
rabies you take a gun and shoot him. I mean that’s the only
thing you can do, mercifully to keep yourself—[laughs and
audience gives big applause].”
Danuta: “Wait, now let’s wait
now. Back up just a step or two [audience laughs]. Are you saying
that we should go in there and—”
Robertson: “Danuta, there’s
an old old saying, that you don’t strike the king unless
you kill him. You don’t strike a king’’ just hit
him in the face and walk away from him, because he’ll turn
around and do something terrible to you.... And the only way
to get rid of him is to do the thing that the old maxim says,
if you’re gonna strike him, you need to kill him.”
But this statement of Robertson’s was
consistent with the attitude he had expressed all along. Power
is something that ought to be used. He said on June 19, 1985:
“Kaddafi’s
a crazy man...We’ve already caught him in certain murder
plots....I’m hesitant to think of international assassination
or anything, but something has to be done, and uh, and right
now the one that is enemy number one of the whole world is Ayatollah
Khomeini. He is a crazy man...We could probably foment some kind
of an overthrow of Khomeini and get that country back to normal
again....We can’t just sit back and be held hostage again
by those crazy people. We’re too big and powerful a nation.
It can’t happen.”
The ease with which Robertson described
aggressive acts that could embroil the nation in war was amazing.
He told his audience on June 26, 1985:
“We could make
a selective strike right at the Ayatollah’s headquarters
or something. We could also consider freeing Lebanon from the
Syrians...We could join with the Israelis in some kind of activity.
We could cut off Syria, which doesn’t have a very strong
country, and bring economic sanctions against Syria. We could
conceivably bring it down.”
Robertson believes that an important part
of American foreign policy should be the overthrow of repressive
governments around the world and that young Christians should
be willing to fight and die in military actions. In fact, he
believes that young men have been called by God to do so. Herb
Titus, Dean of the School of Public Policy at CBN University
told Robertson on the show on May 27, 1985: “I believe
that those who believe in God will ultimately bring justice in
all circumstances.” Should they die in the process, Titus
said, they need only remember, “They still have eternal
life in Jesus Christ.”
It appears as if Pat Robertson is right
after all: Moral leadership is indeed the issue. And it
seems fitting to give him the last word, for as he told U.S.
News & World Report for the July 14, 1986 issue, “If
you do not think I would be a wise leader who is strong and capable,
a person of integrity and moral uprightness, then go vote for
somebody else.”
While Americans did “go vote for somebody
else” for President, Americans did not catch on to the continuing,
secret, intensely bitter war for control of this country at every
governmental and judicial level; nor did they discover who was
calling the shots from behind the scenes—until the take-no-prisoners-war
created a constitutional crisis, and a president’s sexual
lapses spilled into every living room in America.