Ensign's Secret Society, Revealed

[Joanne98]

Sat Jul 11, 2009 at 12:39:11 PM PDT

Now that the John Ensign/Mark Sanford/Tom Coburn scandal has placed the "C Street House" operated by the secretive elite fundamentalist network called "The Family" or "The Fellowship" in the news, it is worth rewinding to last year when a major book was published on this shadowy and profoundly influential group:

The NBC Nightly News really put the book and the Family itself on the '08 political map, and featured an interview with author Jeff Sharlet -- as well as dramatic video of Family leader Doug Coe preaching about the kind of "covenant" that he says made the likes of Adolph Hitler powerful -- commanding loyalty among his followers, and claiming that this is what Jesus requires.

Frederick Clarkson's diary :: :: I published a review of The Family: the Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power in The Public Eye magazine:

Here is an excerpt:


Jeff Sharlet's new book The Family: the Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power, is in the best tradition of American investigative journalism. Sharlet, a scholar of religion based at New York University, writes with insight, verve and, thankfully, none of the bogus punditry and bad sociology that often passes for informed discourse about the contemporary role of religion in public life. His refreshing narrative style is as engaging as his groundbreaking information.


The story begins when Sharlet is invited to join a Christian community in Virginia, (suburban Washington D.C., really), called Ivanwald. It turns out to be an entry level training facility for a network of what Sharlet calls "elite fundamentalists" that operates partly in the open, but mostly behind the scenes of power for much of the American Century --and into the present day.

Read the whole review, here.


To read an interview with Jeff Sharlet, or to order the book, click here.

Here is an excerpt from the interview:

Did you know how powerful the group was when you first started reporting on The Family?

I didn't even know what the group was when I joined. I was invited to join a house of young jocks who wanted to live and study a peculiar, hyper-masculine idea of Jesus together. But very quickly I realized there was much more to it than that. The house I joined, "Ivanwald," was just one among many owned by The Family, including a giant old mansion overlooking the Potomac called The Cedars, in which The Family hosts congressmen, ambassadors, generals, and even foreign heads of state. My first few days at Ivanwald, The Family received visits from Senator Jesse Helms and the then-newly elected conservative prime minister of Norway. That was such an odd combination that I started paying much closer attention.

What significant role has the group played in American history?

The Family doesn't work from the outside, like most Christian fundamentalist groups, but from the inside. Their influence has been staggering--they played key roles in U.S. involvement with the Cold War's worst killers, the rise of what I call the "Popular Front" of Christian fundamentalism, its public presence, and, more recently, the creation of Faith-Based Initiatives, which even one of their own members--and a former Special Assistant to President George W. Bush for the Faith-Based scam--refers to as a vote-getting machine. The Family began in 1935 as an elite anti-New Deal coalition, and by the late 1940s, their members and friends in Congress had succeeded in rolling back some of FDR's greatest achievements. Then they moved on to foreign policy, becoming matchmakers for foreign dictators seeking access to American power. There was General Suharto of Indonesia, who ordered the murder of at least half a million of his own citizens, and General Siad Barre of Somalia, who reduced his nation to rubble, and a couple of lunatics so drunk with power they actually thought they were gods, Emperor Selassie of Ethiopia and Papa Doc Duvalier, the vicious ruler of Haiti. That's just for starters; their archive is a gallery of monsters. They call them "key men," chosen for leadership by God. Simply put, The Family helped steer American foreign policy in the most horrific directions for generations. And it's still doing so.

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/7/11/752444/-Ensigns-Secret-Society,-Revealed

[47of74]

1. This is one family that needs to be all serving time together at ADX Florence...

...and they should all receive 10,000 year prison sentences.

[LiberalFighter]

2. Has Scarborough been part of this group?

[sam sarrha]

3. here is a link to one of my recent Posts..>Link>> ..this is what i LOVE about DU, the flow of info

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=6040727&mesg_id=6041158
"snip..the GOP is a Cult, an Ideological Cult, its members are brainwashed to the degree that their brains are physically altered.. this is a good example. the frightening thing is that they are this organized and functional without a Psychotic Narcissistic Leader. Bu$h43 was a Psychotic Narcissistic, but not a leader. Reagan was a leader but not a Psychotic Narcissistic.. all the Psychotic death and destruction in that admin in South/central America was done by Poppy Bu$h, Rumsfeld, Negroponte, Oli North..etc. God wouldn't be able to help anyone on this earth if they do find a Psychotic Narcissistic leader...snip"

this add's a new variable to the equation.. no wonder Americans cling so tightly to their guns. hell i might join the NRA after reading this..!!

[Peregrine Took]

4. Is the"Brotherhood" related to the "Family?"

I know they (Brohtherhood) have a branch in northwestern Wisconsin, among other places.

[Joanie Baloney]

5. Proud to be the 5th positive Rec

My b/f (also a DUer) was just telling me about this society earlier today. He was doing research on Nikola Tesla and learned of his connection to Prescott Bush, who begat HW, who begat W, et al. If this came out as a movie (with Tom Hanks or Nick Cage, perhaps) nobody would believe the far-fetched plot. But, cliches are cliches for a reason: truth is stranger than fiction.

Thanks to Ensign/Coburn for keeping this in the news.

-JB

[girl gone mad]

6. Joanne, you've really stayed on top of this.

I'm impressed.

[vssmith]

7. I hate the right wing but

this story doesn't ring true with me. Don't make shit up.

[glitch]

8. The book the dkos diary is discussing was meticulously researched and referenced.

You should look into information before you accuse it of being made up shit, for the sake of your own credibility at the very least.

[Tansy_Gold]

10. The reviewer, too, has an extensive background on the subject

of religion and politics.

http://www.frederickclarkson.com/

drop in and give him a read.





Tansy Gold, always trying to leave/give a little info for the lurkers (and, of course, the woefully uninformed)

[kestrel91316]

9. Welcome to DU. Enjoy your stay. You want pepperoni on that pizza?

[vssmith]

18. With my kool aid?

[peacetalksforall]

11. I think we owe Ensign (and the others) a GREAT BIG DU THANK YOU. Clap clap clap.

If it wasn't for them the book and other little scattered pieces would not have been spotlighted like this. Shortening the location of the physical former convent to 'C' Street is brilliant.

I think the Ensign affair is a significant event that allowed us to open our eyes wider than at any time before to the structure of their drive to convert the world. We could see the evidence of their exquisitely orchestrated campaigns, themes, talking points, attacks, coordinated lies and agendas, strategies, tactics. This heirarchy and platform adds coherent legs to our understanding of their vast goals.

These people have been bought by the military-industrial-financial-media-foundation/organization mafia. They were promised certain religious gains in exchange for their votes and aid to the more secular goals of the consortium. In a sense each group holds the other hostage.

Their antics must have driven Rumsfeld and Cheney berserk, but it's been a pretty well oiled machine. Interesting how Hillary Clinton is brought in by references and activities, plus friendships and recommendations from the tightly knit members.

Funny also, that in the last decade we saw the precision of their efforts to ruin the Clintons and Hillary accurately labeling it the vast right wing conspiracy, but in this decade we find that she is a member of Mrs. (Bill) Nelson's group and Clinton became a traveling charity buddy of Poppy Bush? That part is not clear to me yet.

Yes, for now, let's all thank Ensign. The door is cracked open a little on a secret society/cult. Knowing relationships and hearing background information can't be taken away. Yes, so many things are coming together.

We saw the results and now we're being allowed to see flashbacks and blueprints.

We need to see the lines between Moon and these Christians. We have much proof about the brotherhood of the Washington Times and the passionately religious sect in our Congress and DOD, but we need to know a little more about who signed the agreements for all these entities. The same for the pre and post Murdoch WSJ, NYT, WP, LAT and other papers, and the tv five.

[Tansy_Gold]

13. Understand that this is not "news"

I dare to repeat myself: Understand that this is not news.

Many authors have been documenting the rise of the religious right and its influence in politics for a long time. Erling Jorstad's "The Politics of Doomsday" from 1969, "Holy Terror" by Flo Conway from 1982, Fred Clarkson's "Eternal Hostility" from 1997. Rob Boston's "Close Encounters with the Religous Right." And on and on and on.

It should be news, but it isn't, in the sense that none of this is being publicized. Yes, NBC interviews Sharlet and he's on Rachel Maddow's show, but by and large, the mainstream media do not make a habit of bashing religion, even in its most extreme forms. There is very little in the media about the intertwining of Islam and government, whether in Egypt or Iraq or Iran or Indonesia. There's almost no examination of the role of Orthodox Judaism in the government of Israel. There's little discussion of the excesses of christian sects in this country. There is, however, a strong movement, even on the left, to grant immunity via cultural relativism to those excesses, all of them. We saw this right on DU with the episode at the FLDS compound in Texas, where the children were rounded up on some suspicion of abuse and under age sex and polygamous families. All of that sort of stuff just slaps the face of Enlightenment philosophy, and we sit back and allow it. "They are entitled to their beliefs," we simper, and we enable the abusers.

This was done for years and years and years with the Catholic Church, covering up the abuse, silencing the victims, protecting the abusers. Even now, the U.S.government dare not confront the Vatican on certain issues such as birth control, AIDS/HIV, abortion, etc. Obama has to issue words that placate the Holy See on these "sensitive" issues. NEVER, NEVER, NEVER does a secular U.S. government tell the Holy See to shove its religion up its lily white ass. It simply isn't done. (And no, I will not apologize.)

No one will go after gay-bashing nut case Fred Phelps. No one will stand up and say to the likes of John Ensign and Mark Sanford and Newt Gingrich and John McCain, "You men are simply lying moral hypocrites. You need to shut the fuck up and get out of public life. Take your so-called morals, your sexual double standards, and disappear."

We have too few voices shouting down the screams of the fundamentalist minority. It is loud and it shrieks, and we are too tolerant of its meanness, its vindictiveness, its hatred, its lust for power and money and war. The History Channel reruns the Secrets of the Freemasons over and over and over, but where are the exposés of the preachers? Who dares tell the world about Pat Robertson's race horses and diamond mines? Who dares put the billionaire Reverend Moon in the cable-tv documentary's cross-hairs?

Religion, if you'll pardon the irony, is a sacred cow in American media. Oh, not in American journalism. As noted at the beginning of this post, reporters have long dug out the information on the sects and cults, the philosophies and the dogmas, the preachers and the pimps for Jesus. But they do not take it to the mass media. It's carefully published in thick expensive books whose authors do not get big promotional budgets.

And if the arts take on religion, they take risks. "Elmer Gantry" was banned. "The Last Temptation of Christ" was vilified. Serrano's "Piss Christ" still evokes outrage. (And yes, I understand that the U.S. is not alone in its assault on anti-religious art. But it is rare that any art that is perceived to be anti-religious -- by which one should understand religion = christianity -- in the U.S. is NOT greeted with well-publicized criticism.)

We should not be surprised that The Family exists. We should be surprised that we have allowed it to exist so long.




Tansy Gold

When I read "Holy Blood, Holy Grail" for the first time in 1983 or so, shortly after it was published in paperback, my first thought was gee, here's a great book (assuming the info in it is true) that attempts to take the divine out of Jesus and turn him instead into a mortal. Following that, I read Hugh Schonfield's "The Passover Plot." More examination of the possiblity that maybe there wasn't so much magic and miracle in the myth. But "Holy Blood, Holy Grail" turned out to be mostly holy fiction, and "The DaVinci Code" turned it all back into myth and magic. Tom Hanks never kissed the girl because too many christians would be horrified and insulted if the infinitely great-granddaughter of Jesus -- who had to be the product of generations of sexually active descendants from that original sexually active guy -- they'd be horrified if that fictitious daughter was seen kissing a mere "mortal."

THIS IS BULLSHIT. It's also bullshit that "In God We Trust" is on our money. It's bullshit that "under God" is in the Pledge of Allegiance. (Who needs to repledge their allegiance daily, or at the beginning of every public meeting anyway?) It's bullshit that someone has to sue the city of New York because he's arrested for going to the bathroom during "God Bless America" at a baseball game! This is nuts!

But our media is far too hesitant to confront any issue that runs up against traditional, conservative, fundamentalist christian ideology.

This nation was not designated a "christian" nation, but many of its institutions are based on the ideals held by men who knew they were going to have to govern a country of mostly believers. They drew on the familiar traditions of those believers, so that if the institutions of the new nation were not christian in tone, they were christian in foundation. What happened over the centuries was that those who believed in a christian nation were never completely disabused of that belief -- and they proceeded to abuse it.

I said from the beginning that one of the things that bothered me about candidate Barack Obama was his overt christianity. He couldn't get away from it. As president, he still can't. There's still that traditional repulsion to the notion of same-sex marriage. He just can't bring himself to say, "Look, this is a religious thing, not a legal one. There's no reason why two people of any genders and/or combinations thereof shouldn't be able to join in a legal partnership. We need to take 'marriage' out of the government and replace it with 'civil unions' for everyone, and let the churches and temples and mosques and whatever else make their own religious ceremonies for the union of two into one." But he can't do that. It's too inflammatory, and he's not strong enough to lead the way through the flames.

WE haven't had that leader step forward yet.

[peacetalksforall]

15. You're right. I have the feeling however, that there is a growing resentment

in the U.S. Most of us were raised to believe in the separation of church and state. Though they may not all be vocalizing it yet, it's building. I think more people are capable of seeing the hypocrisy. There is worry when they read about the growing terror of the Phelps followers.

We need to keep broadcasting the Rev moon history and news.

As the modest and tolerant religious become poorer they might start questioning the horse and diamond businesses of Robertson.

What is probably going to come out again is how the reverends were paid off by the RNC for their votes and donations and one of the pay-offs was a flood of jobs that opened up for the Robertson law school grads who got key positions in the Cheney=Bush administration in spite of their greenness - especially at the Justice Dept where they were given the job of firing non-complicit U.S. Atty's for poltical reasons. Just completed last week - eight hours of interrogation for Rove regarding these Attorneys - perhaps something will result.

The dikes are breaking.

[Tansy_Gold]

16. The dikes may have tiny leaks, but they aren't breaking

Neither Ensign nor Sanford has resigned. Palin is still in power even if not in office. Understand that this was a woman who was videotaped in her church getting herself protected from "witches." She was not laughed off the national stage. Her beliefs were not laughed off the national stage. Barack Obama did not come out and say "SHE'S FREAKIN' NUTS." Joe Biden didn't look at her at the VP debate and tell her, "You're a wacko, lady, a certifiable wacko."

She was not called to account for her constant invocation of her god into the performance of her duties as governor. Her children were far more "fair game" than her religion.

And remember too that Obama's relationship with Jeremiah Wright was called into question, but NOT his religion.

What has to be examined is the prioritization of religion in the performance of official duties. Joe Lieberman put his faith before his campaign; he would not campaign on his sabbath. Obama continues to lean on traditional christian sanctions against gays. The rhetoric is still "we need to have fewer abortions" instead of "we need to have fewer unwanted pregnancies."

We have people here on DU insisting that Obama offer a "conscience clause" so pharmacists who don't believe in birth control can get out of dispensing contraceptives. Understand that these contraceptives, including Plan B "morning after" pills, are ONLY prescribed to WOMEN. There is no male birth control pill, and condoms are available without prescription. "Don't believe in abortion? Then don't have one. Don't believe in contraception? Then don't become a pharmacist!"

There is very little public debate about this, but we have 24/7 of a dead Michael Jackson for a week or more.

The liberal/progressive/secular left is, for some reason or other, afraid to speak up about the insinuation of fundamentalist christianity into our government. We are indeed headed for Gilead, the land of the handmaid's tale.


Tansy Gold

[MzNov]

19. this did come somewhat to light regarding Hillary Clinton

and her involvement in "The Fellowship" aka The Family, during the campaign

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080331/ehrenreich

Didn't she walk back her involvement in the group?

[lib_wit_it]

20. So very well put! Time to slaughter that fucking sacred cow!

[HowHasItComeToThis]

14. OUR NATIONS DESTINY DEPENDS ON BLOCKING THESE PEOPLE

[snake in the grass]

12. marked for later n/t

[MzNov]

17. another offering from BuzzFlash

http://blog.buzzflash.com/node/8957

Are we scared yet?