The Nuptials of Boykin and Wolfowitz ( A great Falwell tag as well)

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

http://www.counterpunch.org/landau11082003.html

For your consideration:

"This is a first," a colleague moaned, claiming that the country has fallen into the hands of a religious cult. "Look," he directed me, "at the crusade-like rhetoric emanating from high circles about the Iraq effort, while we get dosed with supposedly Christian doctrines of enforcement from Attorney General John Ashcroft." He meant the 2001 order from the AG to cover a bare breast on a statue in the Department of Justice as well as his Puritanical diktats that decry abortion and exalt the death penalty.

"Look at history," I reminded my colleague. "Until the late 17th Century, a theocracy ruled Massachusetts Bay Colony. Those Puritans believed in witches and the Devil. They also fostered aggressive conversion of the heathen, so that all might hear the `revealed word.' God had instructed them to build a `Zion in the Wilderness,' so He could issue in the Kingdom of the Apocalypse, or what the current holy rollers call The Rapture. The Puritan mission to create a virtuous society worthy of God's redemption placed an urgent burden on their pious shoulders. Since God had chosen these Puritans to do His mission, the stoic New Englanders could not afford to indulge in sentimentality or other forms of weakness. They tried to eliminate the Devil's presence by killing his witches after fair trials of course.

"Today," I argued, "the religious or ideological descendents of the Puritan elite, the modern crusaders, repeat similar messages from the pulpit and even from the Pentagon." I offered as an illustration Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence General William G. Boykin, who called a dark spot on a photograph in Mogadishu, Somalia `a manifestation of evil.'
<snip>
More here: http://www.counterpunch.org/landau11082003.html

Great monograph that is a definite MUST read!

Landau exploring the connections of the religeous right & the neocons. Scary stuff.