Salon: Sex and power inside "the C Street House"

[Douglas Carpenter]

Sex and power inside "the C Street House

Sanford, Ensign, and other regulars receive guidance from the invisible fundamentalist group known as the Family

By Jeff Sharlet

link to full article:

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2009/07/21/c_street/index.html

snip: "The Family likes to call itself a "Christian Mafia," but it began 74 years ago as an anti-New Deal coalition of businessmen convinced that organized labor was under the sway of Satan. The Great Depression, they believed, was a punishment from God for what they viewed as FDR's socialism. The Family's goal was the "consecration" of America to God, first through the repeal of New Deal reforms, then through the aggressive expansion of American power during the Cold War. They called this a "Worldwide Spiritual Offensive," but in Washington, it amounted to the nation's first fundamentalist lobby. Early participants included Southern Sens. Strom Thurmond, Herman Talmadge and Absalom Willis Robertson -- Pat Robertson's father. Membership lists stored in the Family's archive at the Billy Graham Center at evangelical Wheaton College in Illinois show active participation at any given time over the years by dozens of congressmen.

Today's roll call is just as impressive: Men under the Family's religio-political counsel include, in addition to Ensign, Coburn and Pickering, Sens. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and Jim DeMint and Lindsey Graham, both R-S.C.; James Inhofe, R-Okla., John Thune, R-S.D., and recent senators and high officials such as John Ashcroft, Ed Meese, Pete Domenici and Don Nickles. Over in the House there's Joe Pitts, R-Penn., Frank Wolf, R-Va., Zach Wamp, R-Tenn., Robert Aderholt, R-Ala., Ander Crenshaw, R-Fla., Todd Tiahrt, R-Kan., Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., Jo Ann Emerson, R-Mo., and John R. Carter, R-Texas. Historically, the Family has been strongly Republican, but it includes Democrats, too. There's Mike McIntyre of North Carolina, for instance, a vocal defender of putting the Ten Commandments in public places, and Sen. Mark Pryor, the pro-war Arkansas Democrat responsible for scuttling Obama's labor agenda. Sen. Pryor explained to me the meaning of bipartisanship he'd learned through the Family: "Jesus didn't come to take sides. He came to take over." And by Jesus, the Family means the Family."


snip: "What do they do? Rep. Zach Wamp, one of Ensign's fellow C Streeters who's been in the news for defending the Family's secrecy, has teamed up with Family-linked Reps. Ander Crenshaw, R-Fla., and John R. Carter, R-Texas, on an obscure appropriations committee to help greenlight tens of millions in federal funds for new megachurch-style chapels on military bases around the country. Former Rep. Chip Pickering was not only sleeping on the sly with a representative of the telecom industry, he was living with one -- former Oklahoma Republican Rep. Steve Largent, a C Streeter who in his post-Congress capacity as the head of a telecom association paid for travel by Pickering and John Ensign. Some might call that "crony capitalism"; Family members call it "biblical capitalism." "

snip: "One needn't be a Marxist to find fault with the Family's mash-up of New Testament and unfettered capitalism -- Adam Smith himself would have recognized that theology as a disingenuous form of self-interest by proxy. Such interests have led the Family into some strange alliances over the years. Seduced by the Indonesian dictator Suharto's militant anti-communism, they described the murder of hundreds of thousands that brought him to power as a "spiritual revolution," and sent delegations of congressmen and oil executives to pray to Jesus with the Muslim leader. In Africa, they anointed the Somali killer Siad Barre as God's man and sent Sen. Grassley and a defense contractor as emissaries. Barre described himself as a "Koranic Marxist," but he agreed to pray to Grassley's American Christ in return for American military aid, which he then used to wreak a biblical terror on his nation. It has not yet recovered. More recently, the Family has paid for congressional Christian junkets to bastions of democracy such as Serbia, Sudan, Belarus, Albania, Macedonia and Musharraf's Pakistan"

snip: "Sen. Ensign, facing calls for an investigation of what may have been felony abuses of campaign funds in his attempt to cover up his affair, might not get there. Then again, the Family's preview of a "new kingdom" -- a private club of men protecting one another's secrets -- doesn't sound so different from the old kingdom. That's the awful secret behind the closed doors of the C Street House, the Family's authoritarian rhetoric, and even the Family's real mission: business as usual, fortified by faith in more power for the powerful and privilege itself a form of piety."

link to full article:

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2009/07/21/c_street/index.html

The author of this article lived undercover for a year with "The Family" and wrote a detailed book about his experience and what he learned about the secret world of this hidden network of fundamentalist members of Congress.

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51f20PR6UKL._BO2,204,203,200_PIsitb-sticker-arrow-click,TopRight,35,-76_AA240_SH20_OU01_.jpg

The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power

Amazon link:

http://www.amazon.com/dp/0060560053?tag=saloncom08-20&camp=14573&creative=327641&linkCode=as1&creativeASIN=0060560053&adid=1FY7GN0VDJCCM87AZ6DY&

.

[Lorax7844]

1. k and r

[SpiralHawk]

2. Freaking perverted Republicon Family Values all over

Verily I say unto thee, Republicons are the Latter Day Pharisees.

Fer sure.

[democracy1st]

3. K & R I'll read later

[azurnoir]

4. So they proudly claim to have a fifth colimn in the government

Christian right leader -- and Watergate felon -- Chuck Colson, converted through the efforts of the Family, has boasted of it as a "veritable underground of Christ's men all through government."

that's truly scary, why aren't this bunch under investigation again?

K&R:kick:

[Douglas Carpenter]

5. Rachel Maddow interviews Jeff Sharlet - the author of this article -- link to youtube video

.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=385&topic_id=338358

My thanks to Hissyspit for posting this interview on the video forum:

MSNBC The Rachel Maddow - July 16, 2009: 'Hypocri-C Street'

MORE interview with Jeff Sharlet about "The Family." The scandal revelations "just won't stop, they won't let us take a break, will they?" says Sharlet.

Sharlet speaks with Rachel about the new accusations that marital infidelity took place within the C Street house. Soon-to-be-ex-wife of Congressman Chip Pickering is suing "the other woman" and has alleged that "some of the wrongful conduct on the part of" Pickering's mistress "occurred and accrued in the 1st Judicial District of Hinds County, Mississippi, as well as Washington D.C. at the C Street complex,"... as in the building, "the church."

Sen. John Ensign and South Carolina Gov. Sanford are linked to the residence. RACHEL: "Another member of The Family who lived at C Street, Nevada Sen. John Ensign, as you know, had an affair with a campaign staffer whose husband he also employed. Beyond the affair, what is now emerging is a big fat complicated money trail of payments to the mistress and to her family from Ensign and Ensign's family, and that's the part where creepy starts to make googly eyes at criminal.

"... There's a level when you are at the C Street house, It's almost like a fundamentalist frat house," says Sharlet. The members of "The Family sees their oath to one another as more important than their accountability to the public."

"In the core of The Family, they actually reject the idea of morality for their members. They believe that morality is a secular construct, that morality is something made by man for little people like us, and that if you are part of God's chosen, as we've been talking about - what The Family believes that they are the sort of New Chosen by God - morality, ethics, these things don't apply to you. That doesn't mean that they endorse adultery, it just means that they're not paying attention as much to it. And then you combine that to a, frankly, fairly misogynist viewpoint. They subscribe to an idea of male headship. In some of their documents, Doug Coe, the leader of the group, was actually advising another member on what to do with his wife, who the member felt was demonically possessed, and Doug Coe said that's quite possible. The symptoms, were, and there's just no way to make this sound respectable, the symptoms were that the woman was complaining that she wasn't sexually satisfied by her husband. That was, to them, a symptom of demonic possession. I mean, it sounds crazy and it would be silly, if it weren't happening right in the middle of Washington with these men who are so powerful - who are congressmen and then lobbyists in this revolving door that seems to be facilitated by The Family."


link to full interview on youtube:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=385&topic_id=338358


.

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[Douglas Carpenter]

6. here is another Rachel Maddow interview with Jeff Sharlet regarding "the family" AKA "C-Street"

posted by Shallah Kali

C-Street: Jesus Plus Nothing -or- The Totalitarianism of Christ! & Tiahrt's plan to outbreed Muslims

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=385x340387

"Kansas Rep. Todd Tiahrt (R) wants lots and lots of Christian babies so as to beat the numbers of Muslims babies in some kind of obscene race these wackos are engaging."
- (comment by Shallah Kali who posted this video.) This was just one of the many bizarre comments made by political figures who are members of C-Street.


.

[asphalt.jungle]

7. "Great Depression, they believed, was a punishment from God for what they viewed as FDR's socialism"

Wasn't FDR's "socialism" a response to the Great Depression? Are they planning on rewriting history again and saying the 2008 financial collapse was a punishment from God for what they view as future president Obama's "socialism"?

[invictus]

8. K&R

[Douglas Carpenter]

9. one little kick for the next shift

[Avalux]

10. I keep thinking "antichrist".

And if I believed in such things, The Family certainly fits the bill. Frightening.

[Shallah Kali]

11. Link to Sharlet's book on books.google.com where you can read several chapters

The Family: Power, Politics and Fundamentalism's Shadow Elite by Jeff Sharlet

Worse Than Fascists: Christian Political Group 'The Family' Openly Reveres Hitler

Google search of Talk2Action keywords "doug coe"

[Cha]

12. Worshippers of greedy, oligarchy, and

perversion..the evil just oozes out of their pores.

[Justice]

13. All justification

in their minds for just about any activity or any amount of money.

I did not appreciate until this article how far back their efforts go.

[Douglas Carpenter]

14. same with me, I never realized the group, "the family" had been around 74 years

originally to fight FDR and the New Deal