2014

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accused this “'new class'” of wanting to transfer power from the free market to the ... agenda, the right-believing Christians must vanquish all others as heathens or ..... 31 Charles P. Pierce, “Greetings from Idiot America,” Esquire Magazine, ..... 53 E. Calvin Beisner, online biography at http://www.ecalvinbeisner.com/bio.pdf.
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Chapter 3: The Corporate, GOP, and Christian Right’s War on Science The Confluence of Corporate Ideology and Christian Right Theology The right-wing war on science is not limited to or even mainly fought by the Christian nationalist movement. It is also waged by the Republican Party and its big business financial contributors in efforts to label legitimate, peer-reviewed science as “‘junk science’” and industry-financed studies as “‘sound science,’” gut the congressional Office of Technology Assessment under Newt Gingrich’s watch, and enact the Data Quality Act in an effort to give big business the earliest possible warning to challenge scientific studies supporting regulatory efforts. All of these actions are “laying the groundwork for a broader assault on the regulatory state.” The basic model for undermining science was pioneered by the tobacco industry who helped “popularize the term ‘sound science,’” used its lawyers to fund and direct research in an effort to create public controversy and confusion over second-hand smoke’s health effects, and created a fake grassroots group, The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition, to help implement its strategy. 1 The war on science is also championed by movement conservatives like the late Irving Kristol who in 1975 joined forces with the supposedly secular New Right to identify liberals as the “‘new class’ of enemies: ‘Scientists, teachers and educational administrators, journalists and others in the communication industries...” Kristol accused this “‘new class’” of wanting to transfer power from the free market to the

1 Chris Mooney, The Republican War on Science, revised and updated, New York: Basic Books, 2005: 71-6, 50, 110, 116, and 67.

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federal government. Sam Tanenhaus in The Death of Conservatism pointed out that the “attack on the ‘new class,’ rooted in cultural hostility dominated movement conservatism for the next thirty years.” 2 Not to be overlooked, particularly as science pertains to broad regulation of the environment and the agencies responsible for enforcing environmental laws (the Environmental Protection Agency and the departments of Energy and Interior) is the fact that, in the words of long-time Republican strategist Kevin Phillips, “the Republican Party has slowly become the vehicle of all three interests—a fusion of petroleumdefined national security; a crusading, simplistic Christianity; and a reckless creditfeeding financial complex.” Phillips noted that the “nation’s oil, coal, and natural gas sections, despite their intramural differences…[are the] regional mainstays of the new ‘heartland’-centered GOP national coalition.” 3 In other words, opposition to environmental regulation is ideological, profit-orientated, and theological. In its simplest form, the Christian nationalist movement’s war on science is the triumph of faith over reason in public discourse. Jeff Schweitzer argued that “faith has triumphed over reason and religion has corrupted our political discourse….Once faith becomes dominant in public life, anything goes, because nothing is subject to verification. You simply need to believe.” 4

2

Sam Tanenhaus, The Death of Conservatism: A Movement and Its Consequences, New York: Random House, 2010: 104-5. 3

Kevin Phillips, American Theocracy, New York: Viking Books, 2006: .

4 Jeff Schweitzer, “Private Faith in Public Life,” The Huffington Post, May 5, 2010, at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeff-schweitzer/private-faith-in-public-l_b_564134.html.

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Charles Pierce summarized the three basic premises of Idiot America, his book on how “stupidity became a virtue in the land of the free”: “Any theory is valid if it sells books, soaks up ratings, or otherwise moves units….Anything can be true if someone says it loudly enough….Fact is that which enough people believe. Truth is determined by how fervently they believe it.”5 Frank Schaeffer suggested that biblical literalism was directly related to the belief in creationism or intelligent design and the general construction of an “alternative reality” on a whole host of issues ranging from creationism to the homosexuality as a lifestyle choice to President Obama being born in Kenya. To Schaeffer the problem is not only biblical literalism but the larger society according “religious stupidity” with respect and making ignorance a virtue. 6 However, the Christian Right’s war on science is rooted in Christian Reconstruction’s pre-suppositionalism that Christian believers must choose between elevating the literal, inerrant word of God providing answers for all political, economic, social, moral, and scientific problems, or, elevating human reason. In their simplistic formulation, either the State (Satan) is number one or God is number one. To make God number one, faith must trump reason, and, in keeping with their dominionist agenda, the right-believing Christians must vanquish all others as heathens or pagans or the ungodly.

5 Charles P. Pierce, Idiot America: How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free, New York: Anchor Books, 2009-10: 35-43. See also Charles P. Pierce, “Greetings from Idiot America,” Esquire Magazine, October 31, 2005, at http://www.esquire.com/features/ESQ0207GREETINGS?click=main_sr. 6 Frank Schaeffer, “The ‘Biblical’ Root of American Stupidity,” The Huffington Post, April 25, 2011, at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/frank-schaeffer/the-biblical-root-of-amer_b_852838.html.

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Randall Stephens and Karl Giberson in their book The Anointed: Evangelical Truth in a Secular Age noted that “the intellectual isolation of evangelicals has led to their near universal rejection of evolution.” Ken Ham, the founder of the young-earth Creation Museum in Kentucky runs Answers in Genesis, the leading creationism ministry in the world, and is the leader of a movement started over 50 years ago by Henry Morris. Stephens and Giberson noted the “sheer number of leading scientists who reject creationism [and intelligent design] while affirming Christian beliefs.” Francis Collins, director of the Human Genome Project and current head of the National Institutes of Health, is an evangelical scientist whose scientific explanations are rejected “because he believes in evolution and does not read the first chapters of Genesis literally.” He and other scientists are rejected by biblical literalists because they are compromisers and, most critically, they start from the wrong pre-supposition. Stephens and Giberson explained that the pre-supposition argument is absolutely critical to understanding the evangelical rejection of evolution and other scientific theories that supposedly contradict a literal reading of the Bible. This is the same pre-supposition argument advanced by Rushdoony and the Christian Reconstructionists explained in Chapter 1 on the epistemological break with reality. “The position one holds on origins derives, not from consideration of evidence, but from one’s starting assumptions. If Collins began with different assumptions—specifically acceptance of the literal truth of the Bible instead of an overconfidence in science—he would clearly see the truth of creationism….To suggest that death and suffering preceded the sin of Adam is to blame these defects of the created order on God….In the theological framework of fundamentalism, the acceptance of evolution forces 4

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compromises on the Bible that ultimately undermine the reality of Christ. That is why the stakes are so high.” 7 It may be that Republican lawmakers in the House and the Senate may simply be following the dictates of their paymasters in the oil, gas and coal industries in opposing climate change legislation and laws protecting clean air and water, and the environment. But, more than a few Republicans in the Congress are drawn from or are strongly influenced by the largest and most militant of the Republican base—the Christian Reconstructionist-influenced Christian Right. The Christian Right’s opposition to science, though it may receive funds from the energy industry and other big corporations, is rooted in its theology—God must trump science and reason or else America is brought under God’s wrath for having driven God out of academia and the public square. Kevin Phillips noted the Christian Right generally divides into two camps on regulation of business. The dispensationalists adopt the traditional conservativelibertarian view and do not worry about environmental policies due to their overriding concern with the rapture, tribulation, and the end times. Christian Reconstructionists favor “abandoning most economic regulation in order to prepare the moral framework for God’s return.” However, in the Republican Party “conservatives in the oil and gas, coal, and automobile industries may not believe in end times, but their opposition to

7 Randall J. Stephens and Karl W. Giberson, The Anointed: Evangelical Truth in a Secular Age, Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press (Harvard), 2011: 10, 11, 50, 51, 57-8.

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regulatory environmental prescriptions…makes them ally with the economically undemanding religious right.” 8 James Galbraith underscored the importance of climate change legislation to the “predator class” in the oil, gas and coal industries. Any effective policies “must empower the scientific and the educational estate and the government, that it must involve a mobilization of the community at large, and that it will impose standards of conduct and behavior and performance on large corporate enterprises that the leaders of such enterprises would greatly prefer to avoid.” 9 Naomi Klein has pointed out that climate change denialism pushed by such libertarian think tanks as the Heartland Institute, the Cato Institute and others funded by Koch Industries and other fossil fuel companies are wrong to oppose the science. But, Klein noted that if one takes the implications and consequences of the science on global warming seriously, then the deniers are not necessarily wrong. Adjusting our political, economic and cultural policies to move towards a less threatening posture towards all aspects of the environment—global warming, biodiversity, saving the soil—will require collective public actions that challenge the fossil fuel industry in terms of mass transit, smart electrical grids and renewable energy sources; raise taxes on corporations and the top one percent; foster more public planning; more local democracy; less needless consumption; less global trade and more local businesses; and more income redistribution within and between wealthy and non-wealthy countries. As Klein put it,

8

Kevin Phillips, American Theocracy, New York: Viking Books, 2006: 66-7, 238.

9

James K. Galbraith, The Predator State, New York: Free Press, 2008: 175.

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“Climate change detonates the ideological scaffolding on which contemporary conservatism rests. There is simply no way to square a belief system that vilifies collective action and venerates total market freedom with a problem that demands collective action on an unprecedented scale and a dramatic reining in of the market forces that created and are deepening the crisis.” 10 Creationism and Intelligent Design Schaeffer’s choice of creationism and intelligent design as the starting point of the war on science is well-grounded—it is the first book of the Bible, and from a religious perspective one either accepts it as literally true or as a morality tale. 11 For those who take the Bible as literally and inerrantly true, theological support for creationism and opposition to global climate change are in the first few chapters of the Book of Genesis. God creates humans and the earth in six days. Adam and Eve eat from the tree of knowledge, become like God because they understand good and evil, and are expelled from the Garden of Eden. Eventually, God realizes his mistake in creating humans due to their abundant and apparent evilness and destroys the earth and all living things in a Great Flood. But, finding Noah a righteous man, God tasks Noah to save two of every kind of animal, bird, and creeping things. After the Flood recedes, God promises Noah and his descendants that God will not destroy the earth

10 Naomi Klein, “To Conservatives, Climate Change is Trojan Horse to Abolish Capitalism,” AlterNet, November 27, 2011, at http://www.alternet.org/module/printversion/153230. 11 Rob Boston, “A Flood Of Foolishness: Creationist Critic Tries To Sink Barry Lynn’s ‘Ark Park’ Video,” Talk to Action, June 13, 2011, at http://www.talk2action.org/printpage/2011/6/13/12814/7811.

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again by flood and puts all living things under humans’ dominion. God gives the rainbow as the reminder of His covenant. Accepting the creation story in Genesis as literally true would, from a scientific perspective, “require the science curriculum in public schools to include the notion that a great fish swallowed Jonah, that Joshua made the sun stand still, that Noah put a breeding pair of every animal species on a boat and that the Earth was created in six days, along with a host of other literal interpretations of the Bible.”12 Randal Balmer noted that over time evangelicals have resisted evolutionary theory “first by asserting the literal, historical accuracy of Genesis, then through legislation, next by trying to discredit evolution itself, and, most recently, by trying to advance something called ‘intelligent design.’” 13 Charles Mooney’s seminal study, The Republican War on Science, suggested that creationism and intelligent design were a “fundamental scientific litmus test. Religious conservatives have aligned themselves with ‘creation science,’ a form of religiously inspired science mimicry that commands the allegiance of nearly half the American populace.” Mooney pointed out that in 1967-1975 then Governor Reagan “pushed to weaken the teaching of evolution and endorsed creationism.” President Reagan supported the teaching of evolution in public schools. Mooney pointed out that Reagan’s endorsement of creationism was a turning point for the conservative

12 Jeff Schweitzer, “Heaven Can Wait,” The Huffington Post, April 25, 2011, at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeff-schweitzer/heaven-can-wait_1_b_851963.html. 13

Randall Balmer, Thy Kingdom Come: How the Religious Right Distorts the Faith and Threatens America, New York: Basic Books, 2006: 110.

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movement and the Republican Party. “From this moment forward, many of the party’s leaders willingly distorted or even denied the bedrock scientific theory of evolution, and encouraged pseudoscientific thinking, to satisfy a traditionalist religious constituency.” 14 Mooney reported that President George W. Bush endorsed intelligent design and “ID critic Barbara Forrest has noted that virtually all of the leading organizations on the Christian Right have embraced or at least shown sympathy for ID, including” Focus on the Family, Eagle Forum, Concerned Women for America, Coral Ridge Ministries, the American Family Association, and the Alliance Defense Fund. 15 “Intelligent design” (ID) is the latest iteration of bible-based creationism, though it disguises itself by appropriating scientific language to hide its religious pedigree and intent. Essentially, intelligent design’s “proponents insist that living organisms show detectable signs of having been designed (that is, specially created) by a rational agent (presumably God), while denouncing ‘Darwinism’ for inculcating atheism and destroying cultural and moral values that had previously been ground in piety.”

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Teaching

creationism in public school clearly violated the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause, according to the U.S. Supreme Court Edwards v. Aguillard decision. Intelligent

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Chris Mooney, The Republican War on Science, revised and updated, New York: Basic Books, 2005: 9, 36. 15 Chris Mooney, The Republican War on Science, revised and updated, New York: Basic Books, 2005: 190, 188-9. 16 Chris Mooney, The Republican War on Science, revised and updated, New York: Basic Books, 2005: 173-4. See Mooney’s chapter 11 “‘Creation Science’ 2.0” for unfootnoted details.

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Design is therefore an attempt to circumvent this restriction. The latest iteration in the strategy is to “teach the controversy.” 17 Intelligent design borrowed the model of corporations building alternative think tanks as a counter-weight to universities and has established a number of institutes pushing this new form of creationism. Paul Krugman credits the late Irving Kristol for developing the strategy of corporations investing in think tanks to promote an agenda of supply-side economics that underlies the current effort to promote Intelligent Design. Kristol’s proposal led to business underwriting numerous think tanks promoting an economic theory (supply-side economics and the Laffer Curve) that “has never been backed by evidence.” Corporate funding “created a sort of parallel intellectual universe, a world of ‘scholars’ whose careers are based on toeing an ideological line, rather than on doing research that stands up to scrutiny by their peers” [emphasis added]. This model has been used by ExxonMobil and other energy companies to raise unsubstantiated doubts about global warming research. The same model is applied to Intelligent Design. Krugman argued, the “important thing to remember is that like supply-side economics or global-warming skepticism, intelligent design doesn’t have to attract significant support from actual researchers to be effective. All it has to do is create confusion, to make it seem as if there really is a controversy about the validity of evolutionary theory. That, together with

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Laurie Lebo, “In a Field of Anti-Science Candidates, Santorum Sets Himself Apart,” Religion Dispatches, June 7, 2011, at http://www.religiondispatches.org/dispatches/laurilebo/4719/in_a_field_of_antiscience_candidates%2C_santorum_sets_himself_apart.

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the political muscle of the religious right, may be enough to start a process that ends with banishing Darwin from the classroom.” 18 The leading purveyor of ID is the Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture which recruits conservative Christians with PhDs who claim they are doing scientific work. The leading funders of the Discovery Institute are the Christian Reconstructionist Howard F. Ahmanson, Jr. and the Tennessee-based MacIellan Foundation which is dedicated to “‘the infallibility of Scripture, to Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, and to the fulfillment of the Great Commission.’” 19 Max Blumenthal reported that Ahmanson provided the Discovery Institute in 2003 with $2.8 million dollars and that the Institute had “48 well-heeled research fellows, directors and advisors.” In 1990, Ahmanson gave the Institute $1.5 million dollars to start the then named Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture. 20 Regarding the battle over theory of evolution versus intelligent design, Michelle Goldberg noted that it is a “struggle over the very nature of reality.” Goldberg noted that the leading organization promoting intelligent design, the Discovery Institute, openly tells the faithful about its “true, grandiose goal of undermining the secular legacy of the

Paul Krugman, ‟Design for Confusion,” New York Times, August 5, 2005, at http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/05/opinion/05krugman.html. 18

19 Chris Mooney, The Republican War on Science, revised and updated, New York: Basic Books, 2005: 183-4. Max Blumenthal, Republican Gomorrah: Inside the Movement That Shattered the Party, New York: Nation Books, 2009: 41. 20

Max Blumenthal, “Avenging angel of the religious right,” Salon, January 6, 2004, at http://dir.salon.com/story/news/feature/2004/01/06/ahmanson/print.html. Max Blumenthal, Republican Gomorrah: Inside the Movement That Shattered the Party, New York: Nation Books, 2009: 41.

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Enlightenment and rebuilding society on religious foundations.” The dispute is clearly “a holy war.” 21 According to Goldberg, the Discovery Institute’s memo, “The Wedge Strategy,” “proposed an ambitious five-year plan to lay siege to the scientific and educational establishment….The plan, then, is to undermine the Enlightenment conception of the physical world as a prelude to undermining the Enlightenment’s social legacies.” Proponents of intelligent design “want to discredit…the very idea that truth can be ascertained without reference to the divine.”22 The Discovery Institute’s “Wedge Document” makes clear that intelligent design is a “religious movement.” The Wedge Document outlined a strategy of using intelligent design as a wedge issue to undermine “‘scientific materialism.’” The objective of intelligent design, according to the Wedge Document, is “‘to replace materialistic explanations with the theistic understanding that nature and human beings are created by God.’” As Mooney noted, the “Discovery’s radical agenda of reconstituting a religiously imbued science thus represents an assault on modern science itself.” 23 Randall Balmer warned that the Religious Right is using intelligent design as a “battering ram” to have it taught in public schools and break down the wall of the

21 Michelle Goldberg, Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism, New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2007: 81, 84, 85. 22 Michelle Goldberg, Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism, New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2007: 86. 23

Chris Mooney, The Republican War on Science, revised and updated, New York: Basic Books, 2005: 180. The Wedge document can be found at The Yurica Report, ‟The Wedge Strategy: How to Win the Scientific War Against Evolution,” Discovery Institute memo leaked, at http://www.yuricareport.com/Strategies_Propaganda/TheWedgeStrategy.html.

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separation of church and state. They are seeking to use the disguise of science to gain entry into academia for the “ultimate goal of this strategy is an attack on science and the scientific method itself.” Balmer continued that if the Religious Right can gain academic legitimacy in academia and breach the wall of separation, “then their conquest of American society will be complete.” 24 Further proof that intelligent design is a religious movement comes from a recent episode in which the president of the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary forced one of its scholars to recant his scientific conclusions in favor of an inerrant Bible-based explanation. William Dembski, a leading proponent of intelligent design and a mathematician at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and a fellow at the Discovery Institute believed the earth was 4.5 billion years old, the universe was 14 billion years old, and that Noah’s flood was regional rather than worldwide. When threatened with his job for doubting the literal truth of the Bible, Dembski recanted and placed the biblical explanation above the scientific data. Dembski apologized to the Seminary’s president saying, “‘As a biblical inerrantist, I believe that what the Bible teaches is true and bow to the text, including its teaching about the Flood and its universality.’” Dembski accepted that the earth was created in six days and that Adam and Eve were real people and “as the initial pair of humans they were the progenitors of the whole human race, that they were specially created by God, and thus that they were not the result of an evolutionary

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Randall Balmer, Thy Kingdom Come: How the Religious Right Distorts the Faith and Threatens America, New York: Basic Books, 2006: 123 and140.

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process from primate or hominid ancestors.” Both Laurie Lebo and Michael Zimmerman who followed this controversy noted that the Discovery Institute which has claimed on numerous occasions and in the film Expelled that Christian scholars are persecuted in academia for their beliefs was completely silent when Dembski was forced to recant his belief in science. 25 The Christian nationalist push for teaching intelligent design or teaching of the self-generated and pseudo-controversy of creationism versus evolution, though losing in the court system has, nevertheless, had public success. Lebo reports that 40 percent of Americans, according to a Gallup survey, believe that God created the earth about 10,000 years ago, down from 47 percent in 1993 and 1999. Fifty-two percent of Republicans as opposed to 34 percent of Democrats and Independents believe in creationism. 26 Robert Putnam and David Campbell in their exhaustive study of religion and behavioral and attitudinal correlates found that religiosity and belief in evolution were strongly related. They compared the top and bottom twenty percent on a six-item religiosity index. They found that “[l]ess than 2 percent of the most religious Americans believe that ‘human beings have developed over millions of years from less advanced

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Laurie Lebo, “Discovery Institute’s Bill Dembski Recants,” Religion Dispatches, October 21, 2010, at http://www.religiondispatches.org/dispatches/laurilebo/3595/discovery_institute%E2%80%99s_bill_dembs ki_recants. Michael Zimmerman, “In the Creationist Universe Religious Dogma Trumps Scientific Inquiry,” The Huffington Post, November 10, 2010, at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michaelzimmerman/religious-dogma-trumps-sc_b_779029.html. 26

Laurie Lebo, “40% of Americans Still Believe in Creationism,” Religion Dispatches, December 21, 2010, at http://www.religiondispatches.org/dispatches/laurilebo/3952/40%25_of_americans_still_believe_in_creati onism.

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forms of life but God had no part in this process,’ compared to 45 percent of the least religious. Over three-quarters of the most religious reject evolution altogether, and believe instead that God created human beings less than ten thousand years ago. Interestingly, this position is also held by 16 percent of the least religious.” 27 Lebo also reported that 13 percent of high school biology teachers openly teach creationism, while 60 percent of biology teachers do not teach much about evolution for fear of upsetting fundamentalist parents and students, according to the National Survey of High School Biology Teachers. 28 The National Center for Science Education which defends the teaching of evolution in public schools reported a record number of nine stealth creationist bills introduced in 2011—right after Republicans significantly took control of state legislatures and governorships. 29 The state of Kentucky approved $43 million dollars in tax credits to construct a Noah’s Ark theme park for Answers in Genesis (AiG). AiG previously built a Creation Museum in Kentucky. 30 Charles Pierce pointed out that “AiG

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Robert D. Putnam and David E. Campbell, American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us, New York: Simon & Schuster, 2010: 21-2. 28

Laurie Lebo, “One in Eight Biology Teachers Creationists,” Religion Dispatches, February 3, 2011, at http://www.religiondispatches.org/dispatches/laurilebo/4171/one_in_eight_biology_teachers_creationists. 29 Laurie Lebo, “Record Number of Stealth Creationism Bills Introduced in 2011,” Religion Dispatches, March 11, 2011, at http://www.religiondispatches.org/dispatches/laurilebo/4364/record_number_of_stealth_creationism_bills_ introduced_in_2011/. 30 Laurie Lebo, “Answers in Genesis Seeks Tax Breaks for New Theme Park,” Religion Dispatches, December 1, 2010, at http://www.religiondispatches.org/dispatches/laurilebo/3825/answers_in_genesis_seeks_tax_breaks_for_ new_theme_park_. Laurie Lebo, “Creationist Theme Park Gets $43 Million in Tax Rebates,” Religion Dispatches, May 20, 2011, at http://www.religiondispatches.org/dispatches/laurilebo/4633/creationist_theme_park_gets_%2443_million _in_tax_rebates_/.

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is dedicated to the proposition that the biblical story of the creation of the world is inerrant in every word.” Thus, visitors to the Creation Museum are confronted by a dinosaur wearing a saddle indicating that dinosaurs co-existed with humans. 31 As Rachel Tabachnick pointed out, the Christian nationalist or fundamentalist worldview is a set of interrelated narratives including Biblical Capitalism, America as a Christian nation, and creationism. 32 This can be seen in the example of David Barton. Barton, a Christian Reconstructionist and pseudo-historian popularizer in the forefront of the America as a Christian nation and the myth of the separation of church and state as embodied in the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause, believes the Founding Fathers debated evolution (seventy years before the theory was published) and chose creationism. 33 Kelly Hayes pointed out that the Christian nationalist push for creationism is really a counter-narrative to evolution and the future of American society: “The battle over human origins and the age of the Earth is about much more than the past—it is, of course, also about the shape of American society in the present.” 34

31 Charles P. Pierce, “Greetings from Idiot America,” Esquire Magazine, October 31, 2005, at http://www.esquire.com/features/ESQ0207GREETINGS?click=main_sr. 32

Rachel Tabachnick, “The War on Unions, Regulatory System, and Social Net—Examples from Fundamentalist Textbooks,” Talk to Action, February 18, 2011, at http://www.talk2action.org/story/2011/2/18/171319/545. 33

Laurie Lebo, “David Barton: Creationist Founding Fathers Settled Debate Over Evolution,” Religion Dispatches, June 9, 2011, at http://www.religiondispatches.org/dispatches/laurilebo/4736/david_barton%3A_creationist_founding_fathe rs_settled_debate_over_evolution/. 34

Kelly E. Hayes, “Creationism and Evolution are Competing ‘Myths.’ Creation Science as Mythic Discourse,” Religion Dispatches, June 3, 2011, at http://www.religiondispatches.org/archive/atheologies/4071/creationism_and_evolution_are_competing_ %E2%80%98myths%E2%80%99/.

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Climate Change Denial, Corporate Sponsors, and the Christian Right The battle against climate change science and regulation is one of the public policy arenas where the naked self-interest of energy corporations meets the Christian nationalist movement’s hostility to science, hostility to liberalism, and support for biblical capitalism. Creationism is linked to climate change denial through the Christian Reconstructionists’ presuppositionalism and dominionism, according to Julie Ingersoll. Dominionism regarding the earth means that humans were given control over all the earth and its creatures. Presuppositionalism, in this case, means that Christians must choose between God-ordained laws for all human behaviors or choosing human reason (or what they pejoratively call human secularism or cultural Marxism); in environmental terms they reject notions of Mother Earth as paganistic—hence their opposition to Earth Day and global climate change science. 35 Sarah Posner, concurs with Ingersoll’s assessment. Posner observed that the “most important, and prevalent views among evangelicals that explain the overall lack of ardor for environmentalism is dominionism, and their [biblically based] views on the ‘limited’ role of government.” 36 Rachel

35 Julie Ingersoll, “Reconstructionists Celebrate ‘Ruling Over the Earth’ Day,” Religion Dispatches, April 22, 2011, at http://www.religiondispatches.org/dispatches/julieingersoll/4530/reconstructionists_celebrate_%E2%80% 9Cruling_over_the_earth%E2%80%9D_day. Bron Taylor, “Debate Over Mother Earth’s ‘Rights’ Stirs Fears of Pagan Socialism,” Religion Dispatches, April 20, 2011, at http://www.religiondispatches.org/archive/atheologies/4522/debate_over_mother_earth%E2%80%99s_% E2%80%98rights%E2%80%99_stirs_fears_of_pagan_socialism. 36

Sarah Posner, “The Real Reasons Why Evangelical Embrace of Environmentalism Lags,” Religion Dispatches, June 24, 2011, at http://www.religiondispatches.org/dispatches/sarahposner/4784/the_real_reasons_why_evangelical_emb race_of_environmentalism_lags.

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Tabachnick’s review of fundamentalist textbooks used by private schools and homeschooling families found that the textbooks “teach that dinosaurs lived on earth with humans; deny global warming;…and teach extreme laissez-faire economics, claimed to be biblically based.” 37 John Hagee, an influential Christian Right preacher who is the lead proponent of Christian Zionism, has fused together the Patriot ideology of the New World Order and dominionism to reject all environmental science as paganism. Bruce Wilson reported on Hagee’s four-part sermons in 1992 (just prior to the exponential growth of the Patriot militia movement that started in 1994) entitled “Environmentalist Agenda/New World Order.” According to Wilson, Hagee emphasized that “‘I have discovered, from a great number of sources, an environmental juggernaut that has come together and married the New World Order crowd and the occultists who have the objective to control the United States economy through environmental concerns, and laws that they have passed, and will pass.’” Part of this agenda, according to Hagee, is to “‘control the birth rate of America’” and “‘to redistribute the wealth of America to Third World nations under the control of the United Nations without any of the controls of the United States of America.’” As an example of his notorious conspiracy thinking which aligns with the Patriot movement, Hagee claimed that a report to the Club of Rome called “‘Reshaping the International Order’” was part of an Illuminati plot “‘goal is to spiritually force everyone on earth to worship Satan, Lucifer, in the New World Order.’” This Illuminati plot included the Rockefellers, liberal foundations, the Council on Foreign Relations,

37 Rachel Tabachnick, “Preview of ‘School Choice: Taxpayer-Funded Creationismk, Bigotry, and Bias,’” Talk to Action, June 27, 2011, at http://www.talk2action.org/story/2011/6/27/151131/081.

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and others, including former President John Kennedy. Hagee also claimed that the location of the worldwide environmental conference, Rio de Janiero, was important because it meant River of January which is the location of an obscure blood cult and where “‘the environmentalist crowd and the New World Order crowd…were married at Rio.’” 38 There are also organizational and strategic overlaps between Christian Reconstructionism, creationism, and climate change denial. The Discovery Institute has recently become involved in pushing climate change denial. Lebo quoted Donald R. Prothero, a professor of geology at the California Institute of Technology, on the link between creationism and climate change denial: “‘It’s all out of the creationists playbook….Denialism goes very deep; evolution or climate change, it’s the same vein. They view science as a threat…Creationists tend to think the world was created for us. They don’t see us as a part of the planet. The climate change denial is part of that worldview.” 39 A subsequent report by Katherine Stewart found that the Discovery Institute had partnered with one of the Christian Right’s premier legal organizations, the Alliance Defending Freedom (formerly the Alliance Defense Fund, the so-called counterpart to the American Civil Liberties Union), and the corporate-funded, Christian Right-founded American Exchange Legislative Council (ALEC) to push ALEC-drafted legislation to promote climate change denial curricula in public high schools in

38 Bruce Wilson, “Transcript of 1992 John Hagee anti-United Nations/Environmentalism Sermon,” Talk to Action, April 28, 2012, at http://www.talk2action.org/story/2012/4/28/11427/2154. 39

Lauri Lebo, “Creationism and Global Warming Denial: Anti-Science’s Kissing Cousins?,” Religion Dispatches, March 17, 2010, at http://www.religiondispatches.org/archive/scienceenvironment/2374/_creationism_and_global_warming_d enial:_anti-science’s_kissing_cousins.

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Louisiana, Tennessee, New Hampshire and other states. Stewart, an expert on the Christian Right’s efforts to infiltrate public schools with their Good News Clubs, noted that “Religious Right activists promote the anti-science bills, in part, because they also seek to undermine the teaching of evolution—another issue that supposedly has ‘two sides’, so schools should ‘teach the controversy.’” 40 The Christian Reconstructionists’ Constitution Party headed by the late Howard Phillips is unalterably opposed to climate change legislation and all environmental regulations, particularly those affiliated with the United Nations. 41 Michael Zimmerman reported that the same Christian Right groups promoting creationism or intelligent design also work through the Cornwall Alliance to challenge the science underpinning climate change by opining “that anthropogenic global warming is an anti-Biblical myth.”42 David Barton, a Christian Reconstructionist and supporter of the dominionist Seven Mountains ideology which is linked to the New Apostolic Reformation, signed the Cornwall Declaration and is now one of the leading proponents of the idea that support for environmental regulation is anti-biblical. 43 People for the American Way quoted from

40

Katherine Stewart, “How the Religious Right Is Fueling Climate Change Denial,” AlterNet, November 5, 2012, at http://www.alternet.org/environment/how-religious-right-fueling-climate-change-denial. 41 Chip Berlet, “Sarah Palin and Christian Dominionist Theocracy,” The Huffington Post, September 2, 2008, at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/chip-berlet/sarah-palin-and-christian_b_123309.html. 42 Michael Zimmerman, “From Creationism to Anti-Environmentalism: The Religious Right’s Attack on Science Expands,” The Huffington Post, December 29, 2010, at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michaelzimmerman/from-creationism-to-antie_b_801783.html?ir=Politics. 43

People for the American Way, “Meet the Religious Right Charlatan Who Teaches Tea Party America The Totally Pretend History They Want to Hear,” AlterNet, April 20, 2011, at http://www.alternet.org/module/printversion/150690.

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the Cornwall Alliance’s Declaration which makes the linkage between intelligent design, opposition to climate change science, and biblical literalism explicit: “‘We believe Earth and its ecosystems—created by God’s intelligent design and infinite power and sustained by His faithful providence—are robust, resilient, self-regulating, and selfcorrecting, admirably suited for human flourishing, and displaying His glory.’” 44 The Christian nationalists’ contesting of the science of climate change shares a number of similarities with its opposition to evolution: both theories are widely accepted by the most knowledgeable and well-qualified scientists; well-funded think tanks are capable of undermining or challenging this scientific consensus; climate change deniers do not propose any alternative theories; and, the think tanks have been able to create confusion and public controversy, where there is no valid scientific controversy. 45 And, Lebo pointed out that the Discovery Institute is now following its playbook on “teaching the controversy” regarding creationism with promoting at the state-level initiatives that would “teach the controversy” regarding the science of climate change. 46 In 1989, representatives from the “electric power, petroleum, and other industries forged the Global Climate Coalition…to emphasize the uncertainties of climate science

44

People for the American Way, “Meet the Religious Right Charlatan Who Teaches Tea Party America The Totally Pretend History They Want to Hear,” AlterNet, April 20, 2011, at http://www.alternet.org/story/150690/meet_the_religious_right_charlatan_who_teaches_tea_party_americ a_the_totally_pretend_history_they_want_to_hear. 45

Lauri Lebo, “Creationism and Global Warming Denial: Anti-Science’s Kissing Cousins?,” Religion Dispatches, March 17, 2010, at http://www.religiondispatches.org/archive/scienceenvironment/2374/_creationism_and_global_warming_d enial:_anti-science’s_kissing_cousins. 46

Laurie Lebo, “Global Warming Denialists the New Creationists?,” Religion Dispatches, March 9, 2010, at http://www.religiondispatches.org/dispatches/laurilebo/2342/global_warming_denialists_the_new_creation ists_.

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and climate modeling.” As the scientific consensus grew stronger over the decade companies such as Shell, Texaco, British Petroleum, Ford, General Motors, and Daimler-Chrysler left the Global Climate Coalition. 47 In 1990, the Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty was formed and is headed by Robert Sirico, who is also on the board of the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT) and on the advisory board of the Interfaith Council for Environmental Stewardship. Think Progress calls this the Interfaith Stewardship Alliance. The Acton Institute is funded by ExxonMobil as well as the right-wing foundations Scaife Family Foundation, the John M. Olin Foundation, and the DeVos family foundation, according to Balmer. The Koch brothers’ foundations also fund the Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty. 48 David Koch, one of the two brothers, also funds parts of the Tea Party movement through his Americans for Prosperity organization. 49 Balmer reported that in 1999, “twenty-five Religious Right leaders met…to devise strategies for countering the environmental movement.” These leaders produced the Cornwall Declaration on Environmental Stewardship and “formed the equally

47 Chris Mooney, The Republican War on Science, revised and updated, New York: Basic Books, 2005: 61, 81. 48 Frank Cocozzelli, “The Story of My Dissent,” Talk to Action, March 7, 2011, at http://www.talk2action.org/story/2011/3/7/83647/32063. 49

Adele M. Stan, “Tea Party Inc.: The Big Money and Powerful Elites Behind the Right Wing’s Latest Uprising,” AlterNet, October 24, 2010, at http://www.alternet.org/story/148598/tea_party_inc.:_the_big_money_and_powerful_elites_behind_the_ri ght-wing's_latest_uprising.

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deceptively named Interfaith Council for Environmental Stewardship.” 50 Among the groups identified with the Cornwall Alliance are Focus on the Family, the American Family Association, Concerned Women for America, Towards Tradition, Priests for Life, Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, WallBuilders, Traditional Values Coalition, World Magazine, and the Southern Baptist Convention. 51 Subsequent reporting by Think Progress and People for the American Way suggest there is considerable deception involved in the Cornwall Alliance. For example, while Balmer noted that E. Calvin Beisner was associated with the Covenant College and the Knox Theological Seminary and identified him as a “dominion theologian,” People for the American Way linked to his online resume which revealed that he received his PhD in Scottish history from the University of St. Andrews in Scotland on “political ideas of the late-seventeenth century Covenanters, an important branch of Calvinist political theory.” 52 According to his online biography he was formerly an associate professor at both institutions. Beisner’s biography identifies him as the

50

Randall Balmer, Thy Kingdom Come: How the Religious Right Distorts the Faith and Threatens America, New York: Basic Books, 2006: 152-4. 51 People for the American Way, “The ‘Green Dragon’ Slayers: How the Religious Right and the Corporate Right are Joining Forces to Fight Environmental Protection,” no date, at http://www.pfaw.org/rww-in-focus/the-green-dragon-slayers-how-the-religious-right-and-the-corporateright-are-joining-fo. 52

People for the American Way, “The ‘Green Dragon’ Slayers: How the Religious Right and the Corporate Right are Joining Forces to Fight Environmental Protection,” no date, at http://www.pfaw.org/rww-in-focus/the-green-dragon-slayers-how-the-religious-right-and-the-corporateright-are-joining-fo.

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founder and national spokesman of the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation. 53 According to an investigative report by Think Progress, the Cornwall Alliance appeared to have been created by the James Partnership which is headed by Chris Rogers and Peter Stein. Rogers also heads CDR Communications which collaborates with David Rothbard, founder and president of the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT). The Interfaith Stewardship Alliance (which Balmer called the Interfaith Council for Environmental Stewardship), was created to oppose the Evangelical Climate Initiative which supports climate change science and legislation. The Interfaith Stewardship Alliance was “guided” by Paul Driessen, a consultant for ExxonMobil, the mining industry, and CFACT.” The James Partnership, CDR Communications, the Cornwall Alliance, and the Alliance’s global warming-denial and anti-environmentalism film Resisting the Green Dragon all share the same physical address in Virginia. 54 Beisner, while an adjunct scholar at the Acton Institute, is also on the “‘board of academic and scientific advisors’ for” CFACT, while Robert Sirico, head of the Acton Institute, is also on the board of CFACT and the advisory board of the Interfaith Council for Economic Stewardship. 55 People for the American Way reported that CFACT is

53

E. Calvin Beisner, online biography at http://www.ecalvinbeisner.com/bio.pdf.

54 Lee Fang, “Exclusive: The Oily Operators Behind The Religious Climate Change Denial Front Group, Cornwall Alliance,” Think Progress, June 15, 2010, at http://wonkroom.thinkprogress.org/2010/06/15/cornwall-alliance-frontgroup/. 55 Randall Balmer, Thy Kingdom Come: How the Religious Right Distorts the Faith and Threatens America, New York: Basic Books, 2006: 153.

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funded by ExxonMobil, the Scaife foundations, and the Koch brothers. Beisner is also an advisor to the Atlas Economic Research Foundation “which is financed by the oilbacked Earthart Foundation, the Koch brothers, and ExxonMobil.” 56 Thus, as Randall Balmer argued, the Acton Institute, the Cornwall Alliance, the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, and the Interfaith Council for Environmental Stewardship, the James Partnership, and CDR Communications are a “web of deceptions and subterfuge…to free corporations from environmental regulations.” 57 The Cornwall Alliance is not run by Beisner and the Alliance itself is part of a much larger network of Christian Reconstructionists involved in TheVanguard.org. TheVanguard.org, though little reported on, appears to be an under-the-radar strategic planning, networking, and coordinating group linked at the highest levels of the Council for National Policy. The Cornwall Alliance is actually run by Shannon Royce. According to TheVanguard.org’s website identifying its own “Board of Advisors,” Royce identified himself as the executive director of the Cornwall Alliance. Royce was also the former executive director of the Arlington Group. As executive director of the Arlington group Royce claimed credit for coordinating the successful confirmation hearings for Supreme Court justices John Roberts and Samuel Alito as well as “spearhead[ing] pro-life and

56 People for the American Way, “The ‘Green Dragon’ Slayers: How the Religious Right and the Corporate Right are Joining Forces to Fight Environmental Protection,” no date, at http://www.pfaw.org/rww-in-focus/the-green-dragon-slayers-how-the-religious-right-and-the-corporateright-are-joining-fo. 57 Randall Balmer, Thy Kingdom Come: How the Religious Right Distorts the Faith and Threatens America, New York: Basic Books, 2006: 153.

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pro-marriage initiatives across the nation.” 58 In 1994 and later in 2005 the AntiDefamation League identified the Arlington Group and the Christian Right as “better financed, more sophisticated, coordinated, unified, energized, and organized coalition of groups in opposition to our policy positions on church-state separation than ever before. Their goal is to implement their Christian worldview. To Christianize America. To save us!” 59 TheVanguard.org itself is an opaque Christian Reconstructionist organization with personnel ties to every important segment of the Christian nationalist and white nationalist movements. It was founded by Rod Martin, a “leading Christian Reconstructionist,” having contributed articles to two Reconstructionist groups, the Chalcedon Institute and the National Reform Association, as well as serving as a fellow at two Christian Reconstructionist institutes, the Center for Cultural Leadership and the Kuyper Institute. Rod Martin is also on the board of governors of the secretive Council for National Policy, a member of the Arlington Group, and is associated with the Alliance Defense Fund and Morton Blackwell’s Leadership Institute. 60 Martin is also a member of the Federalist Society and is a lifetime member of both the National Rifle Association and the Gun Owners of America. TheVanguard.org also draws financial and technical support from Silicon Valley executives Eric Jackson (former PayPal) and Gil Amelio

58

TheVanguard.org, “Board of Advisors,” at http://www.thevanguard.org/thevanguard/about/advisors.shtml. 59 Abraham H. Foxman, “Religion in America’s Public Square: Are We Crossing the Line,” AntiDefamation League, November 3, 2005, at http://www.adl.org/Religious_Freedom/religion_public_square.asp. 60 Bruce Wilson, “Huckabee Endorses His Christian Reconstructionist Arkansas Policy Advisor,” Talk to Action, January 23, 2008, at http://www.talk2action.org/story/2008/1/23/105453/278.

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(former Apple Computer). Among the many heavy hitters on the board of advisors is Jerome Corsi, a Christian Reconstructionist with strong ties to the white nationalist movement through his affiliation with the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps and his virulent anti-immigration books. 61 Also on TheVanguard.org’s board of advisors is Alan E. Sears, president of the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF, now Alliance Defending Freedom). Sears served as the director of Attorney General Edwin Meese’s Commission on Pornography. 62 The Alliance Defense Fund was founded in 1994 by the leadership of the Campus Crusade for Christ, Focus on the Family, the Coral Ridge Ministries, International Christian Media, the American Family Association, and twenty-five other ministries. The Alliance Defense Fund is the Christian nationalist movement’s counter-part to the American Civil Liberties Union. 63 Alan Sears, director of the ADF, is the direct link to Edwin Meese, chairman of the Council for National Policy’s Conservative Action Project. 64 The Conservative

61 Bill Berkowitz, “Spooked by MoveOn.org, conservative movement seeks to emulate liberal powerhouse,” MediaTransparency, February 5, 2007, at http://mediatransparency.org/storyprinterfriendly.php?storyID=177. Southern Poverty Law Center, “The Nativists: Jerome Corsi,” Intelligence Report Spring 2008, at http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/article.jsp?pid=1518. David Christensen, “Constitution Party News and Information,” February 26, 2010, at http://constitutionpartyca.org/node/616. The latter source is a newsletter of the party and it identified Corsi as a party member. 62

TheVanguard.org, “Board of Advisors,” at http://www.thevanguard.org/thevanguard/about/advisors.shtml. 63 RightWingWatch, “Alliance Defense Fund,” August 2006, at http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/alliance-defense-fund. 64 Kyle, “How Many Coalitions Does The Religious Right Need?,” RightWingWatch, October 7, 2009, at http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/how-many-coalitions-does-religious-right-need.

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Action Project, itself a coalition of the top Christian Right organizations, is a member of the Freedom Federation. 65 Rachel Tabachnick, an expert on the New Apostolic Reformation at Talk to Action, identified the Freedom Federation as a hybrid coalition of established Religious Right organizations and such New Apostolic Reformation organizations including “Lou Engle’s TheCall, Rick Joyner’s Morningstar Ministries and Oak Initiative, Strang Communications, Cindy Jacobs’ Generals International, and Che Ahn’s Harvest International,” as well as the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference headed by self-declared apostle Reverend Samuel Rodriguez, and the High Impact Leadership Council headed by NAR apostle Bishop Harry Jackson, an African American. 66 The Freedom Federation includes Christian Right stalwarts such as the American Family Association, Eagle Forum, the Family Research Council, the Traditional Values Coalition, and Liberty University’s law school which was founded by the late Jerry Falwell. The Freedom Federation is opposed to abortion and homosexuality, while supporting the Second Amendment and the Ten Commandments. 67

65

Kyle, “When The Going Gets Tough, The Right Starts A New Group,” RightWingWatch, June 30, 2009, at http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/when-going-gets-tough-right-starts-new-group. 66

Rachel Tabachnick, “Camouflaging a Christian Nationalist Worldview Behind a ‘Pro-Israel’ Façade,” Talk to Action, April 13, 2010, at http://www.talk2action.org/story/2010/4/13/194134/063/Front_Page/_Camouflaging_a_Christian_Nationali st_Worldview_Behind_a_quot_Pro_Israel_quot_Facade. Pam Spaulding, “Professional right-wing, ex-gay extremist groups band together to form the ‘Freedom Federation,’” Pam’s Houseblend, June 30, 2009, at http://www.pamshouseblend.com/diary/11802/professional-rightwing-exgay-extremist-groups-bandtogether-to-form-the-freedom-federation. 67 David Waters, “Christian Right Revival?,” Newsweek/Washington Post, July 2, 2009, at http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/undergod/2009/07/the_new_old_christian_right.html.

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The New Apostolic Reformation’s two persons of color in the leadership position of apostles—Reverend Samuel Rodriguez and Bishop Harry Jackson—are also heavily involved in the Christian Right’s anti-environmental movement while taking money from the energy industry. Bishop Jackson participated in the Cornwall Alliance’s anti-environmental film Resisting the Green Dragon. Jackson formed his Affordable Power Alliance with Niger Innis of the formerly reputable civil rights organization the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and Reverend Rodriguez’s National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference. Jackson portrays environmental regulations as a “‘war on the poor.’” Jackson’s group relies upon funding from “ExxonMobil, Peabody Energy, and other energy corporations.” The Cornwall Alliance’s film features a “who’s who of the Religious Right” including Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council; Tom Minnery of Focus on the Family; Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission; Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association; Wendy Wright of Concerned Women for America; David Barton of WallBuilders; Michael Farris of the Home School Legal Defense Association and Patrick Henry College; radio show host Janet Parshall; and anti-gay activist Bishop Harry Jackson.” The film and accompanying book portray environmentalism as against God’s will, unbiblical, antiChristian, a Satanic deception, and pro-secularism. 68

68

People for the American Way, “The ‘Green Dragon’ Slayers: How the Religious Right and the Corporate Right are Joining Forces to Fight Environmental Protection,” no date, at http://www.pfaw.org/rww-in-focus/the-green-dragon-slayers-how-the-religious-right-and-the-corporateright-are-joining-fo.

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Jackson’s Affordable Power Alliance (APA) and Reverend Rodriguez opposed the regulation of mercury that affects young children. The APA also opposes the taxing and regulation of energy. While receiving funds from Monsanto it promotes genetically modified food. The APA also posts papers from Dr. Willie Soon, a climate skeptic who has “received over million dollars in funding from [energy] industry sources, including the Koch brothers.” Paul Driessen, a senior advisor to CORE and Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow is a climate change denier who believes that “global warming is a ‘fraudulent science.’” Rodriguez has been deceptive and misleading. In his leadership position at the Affordable Power Alliance he has opposed the Environmental Protection Agency’s efforts to regulate mercury and promoted Dr. Sooner’s questionable scientific work which challenged the EPA science, while signing the Evangelical Environmental Network’s letters and efforts to promote the EPA standards regulating mercury. 69 In 2008, Jackson’s High Impact Leadership Coalition joined with CORE and an astroturf group, Americans for American Energy (AEA) to initiate a “Stop the War on the Poor” which targeted environmental regulations and efforts to protect pristine Artic

69

Rachel Tabachnick, “Rodriguez Signed Evangelical Call to Stop Mercury Poisoning While Working to Oppose Regulation,” Talk to Action, September 26, 2011, at http://www.talk2action.org/story/2011/9/26/13031/1119/Front_Page/Rodriguez_Signed_Evangelical_Call_ to_Stop_Mercury_Poisoning_While_Working_to_Oppose_Regulation. Rachel Tabachnick, “Affordable Power Alliance’s Harry Jackson Attacks Evangelical Environmental Network and EPA,” Talk to Action, October 7, 2011, at http://www.talk2action.org/story/2011/10/7/1788/93949/Front_Page/Affordable_Power_Alliance_s_Harry_ Jackson_Attacks_Evangelical_Environmental_Network_and_EPA. Greg Metzger, “Demonstrating Samuel Rodriguez’s Green Hypocrisy,” Talk to Action, November 17, 2011, at http://www.talk2action.org/story/2011/11/17/174448/81/Front_Page/Demonstrating_Samuel_Rodriguez_s _Green_Hypocrisy.

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wildlife areas from drilling. The AEA group had links to Vice President Cheney’s secret energy task force. 70 Jackson has taken his anti-environmental, pro-energy industry talking points, which are indirectly provided by ExxonMobil, Peabody Energy, and many power companies through Management Information Services, Inc. to the Tea Party movement. 71 The Cornwall Alliance and its financial linkages to ExxonMobil and the Koch brothers, as well as other right-wing and corporate sources, are part of a much larger network of corporate funding for the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) which links corporations to their political agenda across all fifty states via the boughtand-paid-for Republican Party. Again, we have a prime example of how conservative corporate ideology, corporate concern for protecting and expanding profits, and Christian Right theology come together to support a mutually-beneficial agenda. ALEC was created by the late Paul Weyrich in 1973, which brought together corporate funding and traditional value conservatives. Weyrich was also responsible for using corporate money, principally but not exclusively from Joseph Coors, to create the bedrock of the Christian Right: the Heritage Foundation in 1973, the Free Congress

70

Right Wing Watch, “Astroturf Groups Claim Environmentalist ‘War on the Poor,’” July 16, 2008, at http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/astroturf-groups-claim-environmentalist-%E2%80%9Cwarpoor%E2%80%9D. Right Wing Watch, “Hatch Joins Phony ‘Stop the War on the Poor’ Effort,” July 30, 2008, at http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/hatch-joins-phony-stop-war-poor-effort. 71

Kyle Mantyla, “Jackson and Innis Are Back With Another Energy Front Group,” Right Wing Watch, April 19, 2010, at http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/jackson-and-innis-are-back-another-energy-frontgroup.

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Foundation in 1977, the now defunct Moral Majority in 1979, and the Council for National Policy in 1980. 72 Kevin Phillips noted that beer magnate Joseph Coors helped fund “four organizations that became linchpins of the GOP’s business-religious axis”: the Heritage Foundation (Weyrich), the Mountain States Legal Foundation (James Watt), the Council for National Policy (Christian Reconstructionist and John Birch Society), and the Coalition on Revival (bridging the gap between premillennial rapturists and postmillennial Christian Reconstructionists). 73 People for the American Way reported that major funding for ALEC comes from ExxonMobil, and right-wing foundations associated with the Koch brothers, the Scaife family, the Coors family, the Bradley family, and the Olin family. ALEC has about three hundred corporate sponsors and receives over 80 percent of its funding from corporations. The super-lobbying law firm, Shook Hardy & Bacon, is responsible for crafting model legislation and lobbying. The law firm is famous for its defense of the tobacco industry and “represents clients from the pharmaceutical, energy, food, banking and tobacco industries.” The law firm helps ALEC’s Republican lawmaker members oppose healthcare reform, corporate accountability and workers’ rights, eliminating capital gains and progressive taxes, promoting voucher initiatives that would gut public schools and teacher unions, voter registration laws that hinder the poor and minorities

72 Joan Bokaer, “ALEC: Traditional values discover corporate funding,” Talk to Action, August 23, 2006, at http://www.talk2action.org/story/2006/8/23/6265/12545. Joan Bokaer, “Paul Weyrich: The Man Who Framed the Republican Party,” Talk to Action, August 9, 2006, at http://www.talk2action.org/story/2006/8/9/55443/17515. 73

Kevin Phillips, American Theocracy, New York: Viking Books, 2006: 65.

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from voting, and obstructing environmental protection legislation, including funding climate change denialism, according to a People for the American Way report. 74 A report on ALEC by the Center for Media and Democracy found that ALEC had created a model law for states to withdraw from regional climate change initiatives— essentially endorsing the Tenth Amendment solution of nullification—while promoting climate change denialism and having House and Senate Republicans “roll back environmental protections agreed upon by both parties over the past 40 years” by gutting environmental regulations and leaving environmental and health protections to the vagaries of the corporate profit motive. 75 Greenpeace identified the Koch brothers and Koch Industries as a “‘financial kingpin’” of underwriting climate change denialism. Since 1997, Koch Industries has provided $48.5 million dollars to fund climate change denialism, with nearly $25 million dollars spent between 2005 and 2008; by contrast ExxonMobil spent nearly $9 million. 76 Think Progress reported that both domestic and foreign oil companies were engaging domestic right-wing groups such as the American Conservative Union headed by David Keene, Americans for Prosperity funded by David Koch and co-creator of the Tea Party movement, and FreedomWorks headed by Tea Party movement organizer Dick Armey

74 People for the American Way, “ALEC: The Voice of Corporate Special Interests In State Legislatures,” May 31, 2011, at http://www.pfaw.org/rww-in-focus/alec-the-voice-of-corporate-special-interests-statelegislatures. 75 Don Monkerud, “A Republican War on the Environment,” Smirking Chimp, August 3, 2011, at http://www.smirkingchimp.com/node/37680. 76

Brendan DeMelle, Greenpeace Unmasks Koch Industries’ Funding of Climate Denial Industry,” The Huffington Post, March 30, 2010, at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/brendan-demelle/greenpeaceunmasks-koch-i_b_518036.html.

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to oppose clean energy reform that would lessen America’s dependence on petroleum products from places such as Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. 77 The Center for Public Integrity reported that the Koch brothers and Koch Industries spent $40 million dollars between 2008 and 2010 to “mold, gut or kill more than 100 prospective bills or regulations” dealing with clean energy or the environment. They spent an additional $11 million dollars on political contributions over the past decade. And, that does not include what other industry groups spent on lobbying and campaign contributions. 78 An investigative report by the acclaimed DeSmogBlog website that discovered the entire 2010 membership of the libertarian Mont Pelerin Society (see Chapter 5) found that in addition to Charles Koch, the Society included “senior staff, directors and associates from groups his family foundations have helped to fund. These include the Cato Institute, Heritage Foundation, the Acton Institute, the Reason Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute.”79 Kevin Phillips reported a growing trend for “corporations…hiring more Washington lobbyists with biblical worldviews or Christian right connections. In Texas and Oklahoma, and across the South and some Rocky Mountain states, the

77

Lee Fang, “‘Grassroots’ Opposition To Clean Energy Reform Bankrolled By Foreign Oil, PetroGovernments,” Think Progress, January 13, 2010, at http://thinkprogress.org/2010/01/13/foreign-oil-tea/. Lee Fang, “Lobbyists For Foreign Corporations Begin Fight To Ensure Foreign Money Can Influence American Elections,” Think Progress, January 27, 2010, at http://thinkprogress.org/2010/01/27/foreignlobbying-elections/. 78

John Aloysius Farrell (The Center for Public Integrity), “The Koch Brothers’ Tangled and Far-Reaching Web,” AlterNet, April 7, 2011, at http://www.alternet.org/module/printversion/150547. 79 Graham Readfearn (DeSmogBlog), “Revealed: Leading Climate Deniers Are Members of Secretive ‘Society,’” The Progressive, January 15, 2014, at http://www.progressive.org/revealed-leading-climatedeniers-are-members-of-secretive-society.

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connections among boardrooms, petroleum clubs, and conservative preachers are well established.”80 The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has opposed environmental legislation going back to 1981 and includes attempts to weaken the Clean Air Act, opposing a ban on toxic waste dumping, and opposing both global climate change science and legislation. 81 It should therefore come as no surprise then that the Republican Party at the national and state levels of government believes climate change science is a hoax, opposes clean energy legislation, and opposes environmental regulation. In fact, the Republican Party’s rejection of climate change science is unprecedented and unique among conservative parties in industrialized countries. 82 Assisting the Republican Party in embracing the anti-science views of energy corporations, ALEC, the Chamber of Commerce, the Christian Right, and the Tea Party movement was Fox News and Fox Business Network; 76 percent of its guests between December 2009 and April 2011 were opposed to environmental regulations. 83 A Yale University study found that using conservative media led to a decrease in trust for

80

Kevin Phillips, American Theocracy, New York: Viking Books, 2006: 64.

81 Brad Johnson, “Chamber of Commerce continues decades-long assault against clean energy economy,” Climate Progress, February 3, 2011, at http://climateprogress.org/2011/02/03/chamber-ofcommerce-against-clean-energy/. 82 Joe Romm, “National Journal: ‘The GOP is stampeding toward an absolutist rejection of climate science that appears unmatched among major political parties around the globe, even conservative ones,’” Think Progress, October 10, 2010, at http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2010/10/10/206847/nationaljournal-gop-rejection-of-climate-science-ron-brownstei/. 83 Brad Johnson, “Report: Climate Zombies Dominate Airwaves,” Think Progress, June 7, 2011, at http://thinkprogress.org/green/2011/06/07/238451/report-climate-zombies-dominate-airwaves/.

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scientists which led to a decrease in belief in global warming. Conversely, the study’s abstract noted that the “use of non-conservative media increases trust in scientists, which, in turn, increases certainty that global warming is happening.” The Yale researchers found five tactics that conservative media use to undermine confidence in scientists, according to a summary and an additional data provided by Media Matters: portraying contrarians as ‘objective’ experts such as using “experts” from the Competitive Enterprise Institute; denigrating peer-reviewed science and scientific institutions as non-credible or as “terrorists;” equating scientific conclusions as liberal opinion; claiming that scientists distort their findings simply to gain additional funding; and, characterizing climate science as a “‘religion’” or “‘cult,’” or “‘indoctrination into socialism.’” 84 Republican Party Follows Its Faith and Dollars To Climate Change Denial Senator James Inhofe (R-OK) is “probably the Republican Party’s leading environmental spokesman,” according to Chris Mooney. Inhofe believes that climate change science is “‘the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people.’” Inhofe led the successful 2003 fight against the McCain-Lieberman Climate Stewardship Act and used his chairmanship of the Committee on Environment and Public Works to undermine the federal government’s consensus on climate change science by challenging a 2001 National Academy of Science report on climate science and the Clinton-era study known as “‘National Assessment’” on the effects of climate

84 Denise Robbins, “Study Finds 5 Ways Conservative Media Erode Trust In Scientists,” Media Matters, August 5, 2013, at http://mediamatters.org/blog/2013/08/05/study-finds-5-ways-conservative-mediaerode-tru/195229.

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change on the United States. Inhofe’s strategy was to create as much public confusion and controversy as possible using dubious scientific reports from researchers at think tanks funded by the energy industry. These think tanks include the George C. Marshall Institute, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, Frontiers of Freedom, the Heartland Institute, and the TechCentralStation.com website. 85 In fact, leaked documents from the Heartland Institute confirmed that the think tank received funding from the Koch brothers, as well as other energy, tobacco, and pharmaceutical corporations; was planning to devise and distribute a curriculum to public schools claiming that climate change science was a “‘major scientific controversy’” (rather than a fact); funding a blogger to distort temperature data; and, funneled money from secret and anonymous donors to climate change skeptics in universities. 86 Inhofe’s opposition to climate change science and legislation is rooted in his literal interpretation of the Bible. In his 2012 book The Greatest Hoax: How the Global Warming Conspiracy Threatens Your Future and interviews about the book Inhofe

85

Chris Mooney, The Republican War on Science, revised and updated, New York: Basic Books, 2005: 78, 79, 82, and 95. 86

Brad Johnson, “Internal Documents: The Secret, Corporate-Funded Plan To Teach Children That Climate Change Is A Hoax,” Think Progress, February 14, 2012, at http://thinkprogress.org/green/2012/02/14/425354/internal-documents-climate-denier-heartland-instituteplans-global-warming-curriculum-for-k-12-schools/. Brad Johnson, “Confirmed: Anti-Science Blogger Admits Heartland Institute’s ‘Special Project’ To Distort Temperature Data,” Think Progress, February 15, 2012, at http://thinkprogress.org/green/2012/02/15/426174/anti-science-blogger-anthony-watts-confirms-heartlandweather-stations-project/. Bob Ward, “Leaked files expose Heartland Institute’s secrets,” New Scientist, February 16, 2012, at http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn21486-leaked-files-expose-heartland-institutes-secrets.html. Brendan DeMelle, “Heartland Institute Exposed: Internal Documents Unmask Heart of Climate Denial Machine,” DeSmog Blog, February 14, 2012, at http://www.desmogblog.com/heartland-institute-exposedinternal-documents-unmask-heart-climate-denial-machine.

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claims that the reason climate change science is a hoax is because “‘God’s still up there. The arrogance of people to think that we, human beings, would be able to change what He is doing in the climate is to me outrageous.’” 87 Inhofe’s analysis, if you will, is entirely consistent with the theological assertions of the Cornwall Alliance. Cal Beisner, the national spokesman for the Cornwall Alliance, told the Christian Right’s American Family Asssociation’s radio audience the real reason to oppose climate change science and legislation—it is “insult to God” and the “path to tyranny.” According to Beisner, “The whole belief that the human addition of a tiny, tiny percentage of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere… will cause catastrophic consequences for the climate putting human civilization at risk, putting at risk millions of plant and animal species around the world, that idea really rests on the notion that the earth is an extremely fragile place and that doesn’t fit well with the biblical teaching that the earth is the result of the omniscient design, the omnipotent creation and the faithful sustaining of the God of the Bible…So, it really is an insult to God. Many of these policies would require to become far more invasive in our lives; they would require giving over more and more of our decisions to government bureaucrats on a global scale, not just national, certainly not just local, but globally to bureaucrats who frankly are not accountable and that’s the way, that’s the path to tyranny, to the loss of freedom.”88

87 Brian Tashman, “James Inhofe Says the Bible Refutes Climate Change,” Right Wing Watch, March 8, 2012, at http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/james-inhofe-says-bible-refutes-climate-change. 88

Kyle Mantyla, “Beisner: Belief in Climate Change ‘is an Insult to God,’” Right Wing Watch, November 19, 2012, at http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/beisner-belief-climate-change-insult-god. Full quote comes from author’s transcription of broadcast provided by Right Wing Watch.

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Senator Inhofe also happens to be a member of The Family (also known as the Fellowship or C Street, one of the Family’s entities). The Family has “traditionally fostered strong ties with businessmen in the oil and aerospace industries.” 89 C Street promotes “free market fundamentalism justified and slightly softened by scripture.” This free market fundamentalism (or as Rachel Tabachnick calls it biblical capitalism) includes the catchphrase “Let go and let God” which is a “mandate for the transfer of public wealth into private hands.” 90 James Galbraith links this theology/ideology to the rise of the “Predator State” and the “predator class” of corporate chieftains—many of them from the oil, gas and coal industries—“to make money off the state—so long as they control it.”91 Robert Benson reported that Republicans in the Congress elected in 2010 oppose climate change science. “More than half of the incoming Republican caucus denies the validity of climate change science. Some 74 percent of Republicans in the U.S. Senate now take that stance, as does 53 percent of GOP in the House.”92 What R.L. Miller termed the “climate zombies” among Republicans in Congress “express the classic variants of global warming denial: that it is not warming, that cold weather refutes concerns about global warming, that man’s influence is unclear, that

89

Jeff Sharlet, The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power, New York: Harper Perennial, 2008: 18 and 19. 90

Jeff Sharlet, C Street: The Fundamentalist Threat to American Democracy, New York: Little, Brown, 2010: 58 and 59. 91

James K. Galbraith, The Predator State, New York: Free Press, 2008: 132, 131, 126.

92

Robert Benson, “3/4ths of Senate GOP Doesn’t Believe in Science—When Did Republicans Go Completely Off the Deep End?,” AlterNet, March 22, 2011, at http://www.alternet.org/module/printversion/150340.

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climate scientists are engaged in a hoax, scam, or corrupt conspiracy, and that limiting greenhouse pollution would have no impact on global temperatures.” 93 Brad Johnson at Think Progress reported that all of committee chairs in the House of Representatives oppose climate change legislation and “oppose limits on global warming pollution under the Clean Air Act. Several have accused climate scientists of doctoring data and suppressing dissent; the others merely claim climate policy is actually a conspiracy to destroy the American economy.”94 R.L. Miller, a blogger at the Daily Kos surveyed Republican candidates for the House, Senate, and governorship and reported that “climate zombies are the Republican party norm.”95 In March 2011, all 31 Republican members of the House of Representative’s Committee on Energy and Commerce voted against three amendments that recognized the scientific consensus that human activity is causing global climate change. 96 The Los Angeles Times reported that once environmentally-friendly and political House Republican moderate Fred Upton under pressure in a primary race from the Tea Party

93 Brad Johnson, “The Climate Zombie Caucus Of The 112th Congress,” Think Progress, November 19, 2010,at http://thinkprogress.org/climate-zombie-caucus/. 94

Brad Johnson, “Climate zombies now run House of Represenatives,” Think Progress, January 4, 2011, at http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2011/01/04/207285/climate-zombies-now-run-the-house-ofrepresentatives/. 95

R.L. Miller, “Attack of the climate zombies,” Think Progress, September 10, 2010, at http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2010/09/10/206709/climate-zombies-gop-global-warming-deniers/. 96

Evan McMorris-Santoro, “Every Single GOPer On House Energy Cmte Won’t Say Climate Change Is Real,” Talking Points Memo, March 15, 2011, at http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/03/everysingle-goper-on-house-energy-cmte-wont-say-climate-change-is-real.php?wpisrc=nl_wonk. Andrew Restuccia, “House GOP rejects amendments that say climate change is real,” The Hill, March 15, 2011, at http://thehill.com/blogs/e2-wire/149585-house-gop-rejects-amendment-that-says-climatechange-is-occurring.

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movement and its corporate backers like the Koch brothers, re-invented himself as an ardent opponent of the Environmental Protection Agency and climate science. 97 Laurie Lebo suggested that the incoming Republicans in the House of Representatives would use the grassroots anger of the Tea Party movement to conduct a series of hearings to pressure the Environmental Protection Agency on climate change regulations and environmental protection. 98 Francis Beinecke, president of the Natural Resources Defense Council, reported that Tea Party Republicans in the House “stuffed 19 anti-environmental riders into the [Continuing Resolution spending] bill….[that] would have harmed public health and the environment.” The Republicans wanted to prevent the EPA from protecting the nation’s waterways under the Clean Water Act and regulating carbon dioxide under the Clean Air Act; prevented the restoration of the Chesapeake Bay and the San Francisco Bay-Delta; prevented the Agriculture Department from enforcing guidelines for healthy foods in our nation’s schools; and, stopped the Food and Drug Administration from restricting antibiotics in healthy animals. 99 In January 2014, all 24 Republican members of the House’s Energy and Commerce Committee “voted down an amendment [to the Electricty Security and Affordability Act] that would have stated conclusively that climate change is occurring.”

97 Neela Banerjee, “In ‘tea party’ era, the GOP’s ‘Red Fred’ is no longer green,” Los Angeles Times, June 11, 2011, at http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-upton-profile20110611,0,1395945,print.story. 98

Laurie Lebo, “A Republican House Will Launch ‘Witch Hunt’ on Science,” Religion Dispatches, November 1, 2010, at http://www.religiondispatches.org/dispatches/laurilebo/3652/a_republican_house_will_launch_%22witch_ hunt%22_on_science. 99

Francis Beinecke, “Tea Party Leaders in House Resume Their Assault on Environmental Safeguards,” The Huffington Post, June 13, 2011, at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/frances-beinecke/tea-partyleaders-in-hous_b_875942.html?view=print.

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All of the Republicans who voted against the amendment, including Representative Fred Upton, have “accepted about $9.3 million in career contributions from the oil, gas and coal industries,” according to Center for American Progress calculations. 100 None of these anti-environmental, anti-climate change actions by the Republicans in Congress is surprising given the level of financial resources that the Koch brothers alone have poured into congressional races and the Tea Party movement. Adele Stan summarized a Center for American Progress report on the Koch brothers that found: the Kochs directly donated to 62 of the 87 new House members and 12 Senate members in the 2010 elections; since 1990, the Koch brothers have donated $11 million dollars to federal candidates, of which 89 percent or $9.8 million went to Republican candidates; the Koch brothers are the single largest donor to the House Energy and Commerce Committee; in 2010, they spent $1.2 million to elect conservative Republican governors; between 2003 and 2010, they and their companies or foundations spent $5.2 on state-level candidates and ballot initiatives, the majority of which went to Republicans; and, over the past 15 years 85 libertarian think tanks received $85 million—all to influence public opinion and to which many Tea Party groups plugged into to receive information. 101

100

Katie Valentine, “24 House Republicans Just Voted To Deny The Reality Of Climate Change,” Think Progress, January 28, 2014, at http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/01/28/3215971/house-membersdeny-climate-change/.

101

Adele M. Stan, “You Thought the Koch Brothers Were Bad? Turns Out They’re Even Worse Than You Thought,” AlterNet, April 5, 2011, at http://www.alternet.org/story/150520/you_thought_the_koch_brothers_were_bad_turns_out_they%27re_ even_worse_than_you_thought. Jerry Markon, “New media help conservatives get their anti-Obama message out,” Washington Post, February 1, 2010, at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-

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A recent peer-review study published by the American Sociological Association found that between 1974 and 2010 (using the General Social Survey for public opinion data), while self-described liberals and moderates held rather stable views in their trust in science, among self-identified conservatives and those who frequently attend church there was a 25 percentage point drop in trust in science. Those were the only two socio-demographic variables that were statistically significant. Similar to the findings reported by Mooney in Chapter 1, it was educated conservatives who were most distrustful of science. Regarding belief that climate change was caused by man-made sources, between 2010 and 2012, the Gallup poll reported that conservatives went from 50 percent support for that position to 30 percent support; liberals, on the other hand, were consistent in both years with just over 70 percent support for this position. 102 James Broder reported in the New York Times that “climate change doubt is Tea Party article of faith.” Broder cited a New York Times poll that showed more than 50 percent of Tea Party supporters did not believe that global warming would have any serious effect. Eight percent of Tea Party supporters volunteered that global warming does not exist. Only 14 percent of Tea Party supporters believe global warming is an

dyn/content/article/2010/01/31/AR2010013102860.html. State Policy Network, no date, at http://www.spn.org/members/pageid.9/default.asp. 102

Gordon Gauchat, “Study: Conservatives’ Trust in Science Has Fallen Dramatically Since Mid-1970s,” American Sociological Association, March 29, 2012, at http://www.asanet.org/press/conservatives_trust_has_fallen.cfm. John Hoeffel, “Conservatives’ trust in science has declined sharply,” Los Angeles Times, March 29, 2012, at http://articles.latimes.com/2012/mar/29/nation/la-na-conservatives-science-20120329.

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environment problem. Forty-nine percent of the American public believes it is an environmental problem. 103 Laurie Lebo commented on the New York Times article and noted that when local Tea Party leaders were pressed on why they rejected the science of humanproduced climate change they “drop the pseudo-science fed to them from the corporate astroturf web sites and turn to religion.” Lisa Deaton, founder of the We The People group in Indiana stated, “‘Being a strong Christian I cannot help but believe the Lord placed a lot of minerals in our country and it’s not there to destroy us.’” Norman Dennison, founder of the Corydon Tea Party group stated, “‘I read my Bible. He made this earth for us to utilize.’” Dennison told the New York Times that he “based his views on the preaching of Rush Limbaugh and the teaching of Scripture.” 104 And, Limbaugh himself let the cat out of the bag when he claimed in August 2013, “‘if you believe in God, then intellectually you cannot believe in manmade global warming … You must be either agnostic or atheistic to believe that man controls something that he can’t create.’” 105 Lebo’s observations are supported by Skocpol’s and Williamson’s nationwide field research on the Tea Party movement. They reported that “the many rankand-file members who hold heartfelt Christian conservative views set the tone for the

103

John M. Broder, “Climate Change Doubt Is Tea Party Article of Faith,” New York Times, October 21, 2010, at http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/21/us/politics/21climate.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss. 104

Laurie Lebo, “Tea Partiers Fall Back on Religion to Deny Reality of Climate Change,” Religion Dispatches, October 25, 2010, at http://www.religiondispatches.org/dispatches/laurilebo/3615/tea_partiers_fall_back_on_religion_to_deny_ reality_of_climate_change_.

105

Jack Jenkins, “Limbaugh: ‘If You Believe In God, Then Intellectually You Cannot Believe In Manmade Global Warming,’” Think Progress, August 14, 2013, at http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/08/14/2469341/limbaugh-christians-global-warming/.

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Tea Party as a whole” and the “less religious or more libertarian members tended to remain on the periphery of the activist base.” With regards specifically to anti-science and anti-climate change views, the scholars reported that local leaders “traded war stories of their own efforts to combat the dangers of science education in schools” and that “[a]ll of these anti-science views were presented in religious terms.” 106 At the first Republican presidential debate in June 2011, Michele Bachmann, Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul, Herman Cain, and Tim Pawlenty supported abolishing the Environmental Protection Agency or gutting it to the point of ineffectiveness. Only former governor Mitt Romney believed the climate science of human-induced rising of global temperatures. 107 Former Utah governor and presidential candidate Jon Huntsman labeled himself “crazy” for believing in evolution and climate change science. 108 Former U.S. Senator Rick Santorum may be the most anti-science presidential candidate—he openly does not believe in climate science and advocated the teaching of intelligent design; he was also an advisor to the Thomas Moore Law Center which provided counsel to the Dover School Board who attempted to impose the teaching of intelligent design in violation of the U.S. Constitution. When advocating

106

Theda Skocpol and Vanessa Williamson, The Tea Party and the Remaking of Republican Conservatism, New York: Oxford University Press, 2012: 37-38.

107

Benjy Sarlin, “Meet The New Pollution-Friendly GOP,” Talking Points Memo, June 21, 2011, at http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/06/meet-the-new-pollution-friendly-gop.php.

108

Jill Lawrence, “Jon Hunstman Goes ‘Crazy,’” The Daily Beast, August 19, 2011, at http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/08/19/jon-huntsman-goes-crazy-says-climate-changeexists.print.html.

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intelligent design looked like a losing political issue in an election race, Santorum changed his mind. 109 Christian Reconstructionist and Tea Party Opposition to Agenda21 Opposition to the United Nations and fear that an American president was or would be in cahoots with international elites to sell-out America’s sovereignty and Americans’ freedom pre-dates the John Birch Society. In 1953-1954, conservatives proposed passage of the Bricker Amendment drafted by Ohio Senator John Bricker that they believed would “guard against America’s adoption of UN conventions on human rights and genocide that they felt made backdoor policy by subjecting Americans to foreign tribunals, limiting the international arms trade, and pushing social medicine, desegregation, and compulsory unionization on the United States.” Bricker feared that these UN treaties would lead to a “‘world government in fact if not in name.’” Needless to say, President Eisenhower was not impressed and fired Pat Manion, a conservative Democrat who headed the Commission on Intergovernmental Relations for backing the amendment. 110 The John Birch Society in the late 1950s and early 1960s made opposition to the United Nations part and parcel of its vehement anti-communist ideology. For Robert Welch, founder of the JBS and his followers, “socialism, Communism, and ‘collectivism,’ are the same evil, masked by a confusion of names.” Moreover, the United Nations was part of the Soviet Union’s plan to conquer America

109 Laurie Lebo, “In a Field of Anti-Science Candidates, Santorum Sets Himself Apart,” Religion Dispatches, June 7, 2011, at http://www.religiondispatches.org/dispatches/laurilebo/4719/in_a_field_of_antiscience_candidates%2C_santorum_sets_himself_apart. 110 Allan J. Lichtman, White Protestant Nation: The Rise of the American Conservative Movement, New York: Grove Press, 2008: 187-8.

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“‘to induce the gradual surrender of American sovereignty, piece by piece, and step by step, to various international organizations—of which the United Nations is the outstanding but far from the only example…’” 111 Opposition to the United Nations and conspiracy theories about the organization’s world government designs is now widespread across the entire right-wing and includes both religious and secular narratives that feature a number of other organizations, such as the Federal Reserve System, as part of a New World Order. 112 Nearly all of the linkages noted below between Tea Party umbrella and local organizations opposed to Agenda21 and the organizations affiliated with the Christian patriot militia movement were preceded by the “wise use” movement that linked together the Christian Right and the Christian patriot militia movement in the 1990s. Interestingly, the model for the “Wise Use” movement came from the Koch brothers in the mid-1980s with their Citizens for a Sound Economy (CSE). CSE, though funded by the billionaire brothers, received corporate funding from the “oil, gas, and coal industries” as well as the tobacco companies to gin up fake grassroots opposition to federal regulations. Allan Lichtman noted that “scores of kindred groups followed the CSE model nationally, regionally, and locally….Extractive industries…helped fund grassroots ‘wise use’ groups during the late 1980s to challenge the environmental movement and promote private access to public lands for development, mining, drilling,

111

Gene Grove, Inside the John Birch Society, Greenwich, CT: Gold Medal Books, 1961: 42 and 48.

112

Chip Berlet and Matthew N. Lyons, Right-Wing Populism in America: Too Close for Comfort, New York: The Guilford Press, 2000: 13.

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grazing, and logging.” Lichtman also noted that “wise use” groups were also funded by the Unification Church (the Moonies) and “forged alliances with Christian conservatives who believed that the Bible ordained productive human use of the earth’s resources.” 113 While the model may have come from the Koch brothers, Alan Gottlieb (Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise) is credited as one of three individuals as “founders and leaders of the Wise Use/property rights movement,” according to sociologist Luther Gerlach who has written extensively on the movement. 114 A more revealing examination of Gottlieb’s affiliations reported that he was a member of the Council for National Policy (1984-5, 1988, 1996, and 1998) as well as the chairman of the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms (CCRKBA) and the founder of the Second Amendment Foundation (SAF). Among the funding sources for the Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise is the Coors Foundation, which helped fund the Christian Right’s infrastructure in the 1970s and 1980s, as well as Exxon. 115 Both the CCRKBA and the SAF are Second Amendment absolutists which help drum up support for the Patriot militia movement with their conspiracy theories of the federal government seizing Americans’ guns. Consider Gottlieb’s 2010 partial analysis of the Obama administration, or, what he called “a Chicago mafia running the bureaucracy like it was the Socialist States of America” in which he suggested the President might rule like

113 Allan J. Lichtman, White Protestant Nation: The Rise of the American Conservative Movement, New York: Grove Press, 2008: 423-4. 114

Luther P. Gerlach, “The Structure of Social Movements: Environmental Activism and Its Opponents,” pp. 289-310 in John Arquilla and David Ronfeldt, editors, Networks and Netwars: The Future of Terror, Crime, and Militancy, Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2001: 294.

115

Seek God, “The Council for National Policy: Selected Member Biographies, CNP ~ G,” no date, at http://www.seekgod.ca/cnp.g.htm. Source Watch, “Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise,” no date, at http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Center_for_the_Defense_of_Free_Enterprise#Funding_.26_f inances.

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Hugo Chavez while obeying demands from “green extremists” and “the most radical environmental leaders.” Gottlieb made clear in the book that Obama and the Democrats ruled through czars not confirmed by the U.S. Senate and unconstitutional executive orders, while appointing Cass Sunstein, whom Gottlieb suggested he could become the “‘gun czar.’” 116 Randall Balmer noted the coincidence in 1980s of the Reagan administration’s first Secretary of the Interior James Watt pre-millennialist dispensationalism to exploit the environment ruthlessly, the rise of dominionism related to natural resource exploitation, and the “wise use” movement. Watt believed that Americans should exploit the environment to the full because Jesus could return at any time—thus making environmental protection a moot point. E. Calvin Beisner at the Knox Theological Seminary wrote that dominionism meant “that God has placed all of nature at the disposal of humanity. The created order has no intrinsic value aside from how it benefits human beings.” The wise use movement coincided with both developments and basically reasoned that “the wise use of land and natural resources overrides environmental considerations. Like other anti-environmental groups, the wise use movement places humanity above the rest of the created order, which authorizes, for instance, the unfettered extraction of minerals by mining corporations, the clear-cutting

116

Alan Gottlieb, Black & Blue: How Obama and the Democrats are Beating Up the Constitution, Bellevue, WA: Merrill Press, 2010: 7, 147-150, and 119-121.

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of forests by logging interests, and unlimited access to the public lands by hunters and off-road vehicle owners.” 117 James Watt was only the tip of the iceberg in terms of the theological/ideological affinity between “wise use” and the Christian Patriot militia. Joseph Coors, who helped fund the Council for National Policy (CNP) and the Coalition on Revival, also funded the Mountain States Legal Foundation (MSLF). Kevin Phillips pointed out that three Interior secretaries—James Watt, Donald Hodel, and Gale Norton— and one EPA administrator, Anne Gorsuch, had served with the MSLF or the CNP. 118 Under James Watt the MSLF opposed affirmative action, health and safety inspections, and the Equal Rights Amendment. Russ Bellant pointed out that the MSLF had the “reputation of being anti-consumer, anti-feminist, anti-government, anti-Black, and above all, antienvironmentalist.” In its early years, Bellant reported that it was funded by such oil companies as Phillips, Amoco, Marathon, Chevron, Shell, and western utilities. 119 Among the 1990 action plan of the Christian Reconstructionist-influenced Coalition on Revival were calls to support the formation of “‘county militias’” and “‘Christian’ courts”— essentially adopting and promoting the program of Posse Comitatus which would

117

Randall Balmer, Thy Kingdom Come: How the Religious Right Distorts the Faith and Threatens America, New York: Basic Books, 2006: 149-50.

118

Kevin Phillips, American Theocracy, New York: Viking Books, 2006: 65.

119

Russ Bellant, The Coors Connection: How Coors Family Philanthropy Undermines Democratic Pluralism, Cambridge, MA: Political Research Associates, 1988: 84-7.

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emerge one year later as the Christian Patriot militia, though the Christian Reconstructionists had been supporting such an ideology since the early 1980s. 120 David Bennett pointed out that “‘Wise Use’ groups in the West are lavishly funded by resource extraction industries. It is obviously in the financial interest of large mining, timber and ranching corporations to rid themselves of environmental regulations.” Bennett also noted that these so-called populist Wise Use groups such as Grassroots Endangered Species Act Coalition, the National Federal Lands Conference, the Snohomish County Property Rights Alliance, and the Coalition for Land Use Education “have noted links with militias and other movements on the far Right.” 121 Robert Snow reported that militia and wise use groups worked together to oppose environmentalists and incorporated the Posse Comitatus threat of hanging environmentalists by a rope. 122 David Neiwert similarly reported that militia groups in the Northwest Pacific worked with wise use groups to oppose environmental regulations but, to gain membership added two conspiracy theories—the United Nations was going to take over a large national park that would cost local businesses jobs and profits, and, that the United Nations was going to create a network of concentration camps manned by foreign troops to round-up “gun owners and other dissidents.” 123

120

Chip Berlet and Matthew N. Lyons, Right-Wing Populism in America: Too Close for Comfort, New York: The Guilford Press, 2000: 253, 271-3. Gary North, editor, The Theology of Christian Resistance, Tyler, Texas: Geneva Divinity School Press, 1983. 121

David H. Bennett, The Party of Fear: The American Far Right from Nativism to the Militia Movement, revised and updated, New York: Vintage Books, 1995: 453.

122

Robert L. Snow, The Militia Threat: Terrorists Among Us, New York: Plenum Trade, 1999: 120-1.

123

David Neiwert, In God’s Country: The Patriot Movement and the Pacific Northwest, Pullman, WA: Washington State University Press, 1999: 265-7.

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This is not the only time where the Christian Reconstructionist Constitution Party and the Christian Patriot militia will interact with other right-wing social movements such as the white nationalist anti-immigration movement and the Tea Party movement. Each variant of the right-wing movement is drawn into the ideology and program, if not the theology, of the Christian Reconstructionists. Opposition to the so-called United Nations “Agenda21” is another indicator that the Tea Party movement follows the Christian Reconstructionists in their rejection of science in the name of upholding small government and opposition to nefarious secret liberal and/or secular humanist elites. The genius of the Christian Reconstructionist strategy to fight the federal government at the local level is that it can incorporate opposition to all kinds of federal spending for infrastructure projects by motivating Tea Party and Patriot militia activists to oppose the New World Order and enslavement of Americans. In fact, that strategy was pioneered in the 1960s by the John Birch Society which organized small groups at the local level in order to engage in ideological combat with the Republican and Democratic parties. In their 1963 book, Danger on the Right, Arnold Forster and Benjamin Epstein explained that a small group of “‘10 to 20 dedicated patriots’” were expected to “exert an impact at the local community level—on the school boards, libraries, church groups, PTAs, and thus on the whole nation—and to shock the people into enlightenment by exposing the supposed extent of the Communist conspiracy.” 124 Except now instead of outright blaming communists, the

124

Arnold Forster and Benjamin R. Epstein, Danger on the Right, New York: Random House, 1964: 19.

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Christian Right blames secular humanists or cultural Marxists or a shadow elites or a secret government. Carolyn Gallaher’s research on the Patriot movement in Kentucky, specifically its opposition to the United Nations’ Man and the Biosphere Program, essentially the Agenda21 program, revealed how an above ground umbrella group to oppose a previously established biosphere reserve in Kentucky, the Citizens for a Constitutional Kentucky, could link to other patriot groups. Under that umbrella worked the Kentucky State Militia, the Kentucky Coalition to Carry Concealed, Kentuckians for the Right to Bear Arms, Take Back Kentucky, and the Constitutional Party of Kentucky, the latter a state branch of the Christian Reconstructionist’s Constitutional Party headed by the late Howard Phillips, who also headed the Conservative Caucus. Gallaher noted that between 1997, when her research began, and 2002, when it ended, that the Constitutional Party of Kentucky was forging formal connections with key elements of the Patriot movement in Kentucky. She noted that the Kentucky patriots opposed the small, previously established Kentucky biosphere on the grounds that it was “‘antihuman;’” was owned by the United Nations, a conspiracy that came in two variants—it was owned by the UN for public consumption, but privately believed was owned by the U.S. government, but would be transferred to the UN; and, that the biosphere was “an infringement of U.S. sovereignty.”125 Opposition to the United Nations and its environmental program was widespread in the Patriot movement and its subset of the Patriot militia movement. John

125 Carolyn Gallaher, On the Fault Line: Race, Class, and the American Patriot Movement, Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003: 123, 1-16, 168-71.

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Trochmann, co-founder of the very influential Militia of Montana which was instrumental in spreading the movement’s ideology through instruction manuals, videos, and participating in Patriot movement recruitment meetings, testified before the U.S. Senate’s Committee on the Judiciary’s Subcommittee on Terrorism and asserted that the Patriot militia movement was opposed to UN’s environmental program. Trochmann stated that one of a multitude of reasons that people were “becoming more and more involved in militia/patriot organizations” was because they perceived that “Government defines human beings as a biological resource under the United Nations ecosystem management program…” 126 By 2000, the Christian Right and the Patriot movement were collaborating and participating in a broad-based coalition called Freedom21. Freedom21 began in 1988 as the Environmental Conservation Organization, Inc., a coalition of 17 national groups to “devise a strategy to protect private property rights.” It is not known which national groups actually established the Environmental Conservation Organization, Inc. In 2008, the board of directors changed the name to Freedom21. The board of directors of Freedom21 includes Norman Davis, the executive director of the aforementioned Take Back Kentucky; Henry Lamb of Sovereignty International and a World Net Daily columnist; Howard Hutchinson, chairman of the board and executive director of the Arizona/New Mexico Coalition of Counties; according to the latter’s Facebook page, it is a proponent of nullification by the states of federal environmental regulations and linked

126

Committee on the Judiciary, Subcommittee on Terrorism, Technology, and Government Information, The Militia Movement in the United States, United States Senate hearing, June 15, 1995, Diane Publishing Company, page 84.

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to the Tenth Amendment Center; it was part of the anti-environmental county movement; and, Ronnie Merritt, a member of the Public Lands Advisory Council. Among its board of advisors are Larry Pratt, the Christian Reconstructionist gun rights absolutist who is the executive director of Gun Owners of America; Floy Lilley, a lawyer and advisor to the Ludwig von Mises Institute, a neo-Confederate, laissez-faire economic think tank co-founded by Ron Paul and Lew Rockwell; and S. Fred Singer, an advisor for the Science and Environment Policy Project. 127 Singer is also affiliated with the Heartland Institute, a prominent think tank funded by the Koch brothers and other energy companies that denies global warming and claims that global warming is a hoax. 128 The first annual Freedom21 conference in 2000 featured speakers from the Christian Right’s Eagle Forum (Phyllis Schlafly and Cathie Adams) and Alan Keyes, as well as Patriot organizations such as Liberty Matters; Sovereignty International; Tom

127

Freedom21, “Who We Are,” no date, accessed October 11, 2012, at http://www.freedom21.org/who.html. Lew Rockwell, “Mises Institute Founded 27 Years Ago Today,” LewRockwell.com, August 24, 2009, at http://www.lewrockwell.com/blog/lewrw/archives/33933.html. Southern Poverty Law Center, “The Neo-Confederates,” Intelligence Report Summer 2000, at http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-report/browse-all-issues/2000/summer/the-neoconfederates?page=0,0. 128

State Policy Network, no date, at http://www.spn.org/members/pageid.9/default.asp. Mark Ames, “Radicals for Corporate Pollution: The Koch Cartel & The Heartland Institute,” Exiled OnLine, February 15, 2012, at http://exiledonline.com/radicals-for-corporate-pollution-the-koch-cartel-the-heartlandinstitute/. Brad Johnson, “Internal Documents: The Secret, Corporate-Funded Plan To Teach Children That Climate Change Is A Hoax,” Think Progress, February 14, 2012, at http://thinkprogress.org/green/2012/02/14/425354/internal-documents-climate-denier-heartland-instituteplans-global-warming-curriculum-for-k-12-schools/. Bob Ward, “Leaked files expose Heartland Institute’s secrets,” New Scientist, February 16, 2012, at http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn21486-leaked-files-expose-heartland-institutes-secrets.html. Brendan DeMelle, “Heartland Institute Exposed: Internal Documents Unmask Heart of Climate Denial Machine,” DeSmog Blog, February 14, 2012, at http://www.desmogblog.com/heartland-institute-exposedinternal-documents-unmask-heart-climate-denial-machine.

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DeWeese of the American Policy Center; Alan Gottlieb of the Second Amendment Foundation, another gun rights absolutist organization; and Ron Arnold of the Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise. Both Gottlieb and Arnold were co-founders of the antienvironmental Wise Use movement (see above and also Chapter 15). Eagle Forum and the American Policy Center were among the six sponsoring organizations, which included the anti-environmental Environment Conservation Organization. Ron Paul was going to be represented either by the congressman making a speech or his representative Kent Snyder, executive director of Paul’s Liberty Study Committee. 129 The second Freedom21 conference held in 2001 again brought together leading elements of the Christian Right—Eagle Forum’s Phyllis Schlafly and Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow’s David Rothbard, described in the conference’s announcement as “instrumental in the development of the Cornwall Declaration.” Ron Paul was a confirmed speaker. He was lauded for his “efforts to prevent the United Nations’ relentless march toward global governance.” Henry Lamb of the Environmental Conservation Organization made a presentation on the net assessment of actions of the pro- and anti-Agenda21 forces. The conference also featured Dr. Michael Coffman from Environmental Perspectives, Inc. who was credited with having “created the ‘Biodiversity’ maps that helped defeat the Convention on Biodiversity.” It is not clear how important Coffman’s maps were but the Convention was signed by President Clinton in June 1993, passed the Senate Foreign Relations Committee by a vote of 16-3

129

Freedom21, “Freedom21 National Conference,” July 9-12, 2000, at http://www.freedom21.org/conf/00prog.html.

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in 1994, but never came to a floor vote and has not been considered by the Senate since then (up to late 2008). 130 The Freedom21 conference in 2002 featured the same lineup of speakers (minus Eagle Forum), plus presentations on local actions to oppose Agenda21, including a presentation by Norm Davis of Take Back Kentucky which was offered as a template for local actions and who led one of the conference’s workshops. The conference also presented a “national action plan” based on “five priority objectives to guide a coordinated campaign.” These objectives and the campaign were the work of several working groups. Tom DeWeese of the American Policy Center led an “examination of Agenda21.”131 The 2003 Freedom21 conference again brought together the Christian Right and the anti-environmental segment of the Patriot movement. Phyllis Schlafly was a featured luncheon speaker and had written the foreword to a book written by an author, Allen Quist, who was also a speaker at the conference. David Rothbard, previously identified with the Cornwall Alliance, returned this time as simply president of the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow. Ron Paul’s executive director, Kent Snyder,

130

Defenders of Wildlife and Center for Biological Diversity, “The United States and the Convention on Biodiversity,” fact sheet, late 2008, accessed August 7, 2013, at http://www.defenders.org/sites/default/files/publications/the_u.s._and_the_convention_on_biological_dive rsity.pdf. Freedom21, “Freedom21 National Conference,” July 12-14, 2001, at http://www.freedom21.org/conf/01prog.html.

131

Freedom21, “Freedom21 Regional Workshop on Smart Growth: Global Governance and Local Policy,” July 19-20, 2002, at http://www.freedom21.org/conf/02prog.html.

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updated conference participants on Ron Paul’s “efforts to diminish the U.N.'s influence on domestic policy.” 132 The 2004 Freedom21 conference featured Eagle Forum as a sponsor in addition to the laissez-faire Heartland Institute, the Christian Right’s Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, the Environmental Conservation Organization, the American Policy Center, and Sovereignty International. The first session featured former Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court Roy Moore, who lost his elected office because he displayed a five-ton model of the Ten Commandments on government property. To put a black face to an all-white audience, Niger Innis, spokesman for the Congress of Racial Equality, spoke at the conference. Niger’s father, Roy Innis, was a “longtime NRA board member.” Larry Pratt, another Second Amendment fundamentalist, gave a talk on how “Disarming Americans has been a major goal of the ‘sustainable development’ movement for years.” Also appearing was former Representative Helen Chenoweth-Hage, a strong supporter of the Patriot militia movement, and Representative Ron Paul who had a session devoted completely to himself and his accomplishments. Additionally, Ron Paul’s executive director Kent Snyder made another presentation. The Eagle Forum’s executive director of its Washington D.C. office also made a presentation. Two fringe presidential candidates attended the 2004 Freedom21 conference that would prove central to Ron Paul’s efforts in 2009 (see Part III) to pull together the Patriot movement and merge into the Tea Party, Michael

132

Freedom21, “Freedom21 National Conference on Advancing Freedom in Domestic Policy,” July 17-19, 2003, at http://www.freedom21.org/conf/03prog.html.

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Peroutka, the candidate of the Christian Reconstructionist Constitution Party, and Michael Badnarik, candidate of the Libertarian Party. 133 Freedom21 conferences in 2005 through 2009, when the last conference was held, have included the same mix of sponsors of such Christian Right groups as Eagle Forum (national plus Texas and Kentucky affiliates), the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, and sometimes the Gun Owners of America as open sponsor; the laissezfaire Heartland Institute; as well as three core groups: American Policy Center (Tom DeWeese), Sovereignty International (Henry Lamb), and the Environmental Conservation Organization which includes among its board and advisors Larry Pratt (Gun Owners of America), S. Fred Singer (Heartland Institute), Norm Davis (Take Back Kentucky), and Floy Lilley (Ron Paul’s Ludwig von Mises Institute). Essentially, all of the conferences have been about how global elites, including those in the United States, have conspired through the United Nations and its programs for combating global warming, promoting biological diversity, and promoting sustainable

133

Freedom21, “5th Annual Freedom21 National Conference,” July 21-24, 2004, at http://www.freedom21.org/conf/04prog.html. Heidi Beirich reported that the Jekyll Island meeting in May 2009 was a seminal moment in bringing together many leaders of the Patriot movement and “appears to have played a key role in launching the current resurgence of militias and the larger anti-government ‘Patriot’ movement.” According to Beirich, the Jekyll Island meeting brought together “radical tax protesters, militiamen, nativist extremists, anti-Obama ‘birthers,’ hard-line libertarians, conspiracy-minded Patriots.” Heidi Beirich, “Midwifing the Militias,” Intelligence Report Spring 2010, at http://www.splcenter.org/getinformed/intelligence-report/browse-all-issues/2010/spring/midwifing-the-militias. In fact, the complete listing of Jekyll Island participants at the defunct ‘continental congress’ website, which was the follow-on meeting that brought together the Constitution Party and the Libertarian Party, as well as Ron Paul’s own infrastructure included the following persons/organizations, some of whom had direct ties to Ron Paul: G. Edward Griffin, Bob Schultz, Edwin Vieira, Michael Badnarik, Catherine Bleish, Gary Franchi, Raymond D. Powell, John Stadtmiller, and, Tom DeWeese. Continental Congress, “History Leading to the Continental Congress 2009,” at http://cc2009.us/aboutcc2009/history-leading-to-cc2009. Badnarik of the Libertarian Party was president of the self-described ‘continental congress,’ according to a diary of the meeting. Continental Congress, “History Leading to the Continental Congress 2009,” at http://cc2009.us/about-cc2009/history-leading-to-cc2009.

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development to deprive Americans of their property and freedom. If not the United Nations, then activists were encouraged to stop the North American Union, the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America, and the North American Free Trade Agreement Superhighway. More importantly, the conferences have also emphasized how local training and organizing can combat this “secret government” and nefarious agenda. Ron Paul has either directly participated as a speaker or workshop leader, while in six of ten years Kent Snyder, his executive director of the Liberty Committee, has made a presentation. In 2009, Catherine Bleish, Ron Paul’s executive director for the Liberty Restoration Project and a Jekyll Island and ‘continental congress’ participant also made a presentation at the Freedom21 conference. Also in 2009, Restore the Republic, another Ron Paul-linked organization headed by Gary Franchi, was a sponsor of the conference. In 2006, DeWeese’s American Policy Center sponsored a showing of Aaron Russo’s movie America: Freedom to Fascism. Franchi would take over Restore the Republic from the late Aaron Russo. G. Edward Griffin, a John Birch Society author, conspiracy theorist about the Federal Reserve, and another Ron Paullinked Jekyll Island participant also gave a presentation at the 2009 Freedom21 conference. Bob Schultz, head of the We The People Foundation and a key organizer of the self-described “‘continental congress’” which grew out of the May 2009 Jekyll Island meeting also gave a presentation at the 2009 Freedom21 conference where he advertised for the upcoming “‘continental congress.’” And, the Christian Reconstructionists have had a growing visibility within the Freedom21 conferences, especially through presentations by Chuck Baldwin, its one60

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time presidential candidate who was endorsed by Ron Paul, and Christian Reconstructionist author and conspiracy monger Jerome Corsi. The 2008 conference report noted that Baldwin had “wowed the crowd with what might be called a ‘back to the Constitution’ sermon. He won many friends and voters as he explained the principles of freedom are a gift of the Creator, and declared it is the purpose of government to protect and defend these principles for every citizen.” Baldwin came back for the 2009 conference to give a talk on “Attacks on the Freedom Movement.” Another dominionist influence within Freedom21 has been presentations by Steve Pratt who works with the National Center for Constitutional Studies, an organization founded by far-right Mormon W. Cleon Skousen considered to be too extreme for the far-right American Security Council. However, Skousen was not too extreme for the Council for National Policy or Jerry Falwell who was sending his employees to Skousen’s seminars. 134 In August 2010, the Freedom21 conference apparently morphed into the Freedom Action Conference whereby the “Forces of Freedom Return to Valley Forge!” This conference included the core of the Freedom21 conference, plus with the earlier promotion of the Ron Paul-promoted and -linked self-styled ‘continental congress’

134

Freedom21, “6th Annual Freedom21 National Conference,” July 14-16, 2005, at http://www.freedom21.org/conf/2005/14.html. Freedom21, “7th Annual Freedom21 National Conference,” July 20-22, 2006, at http://www.freedom21.org/conf/2006/20.html. Freedom21, “8th Annual Freedom21 National Conference,” July 19-21, 2007, at http://www.freedom21.org/conf/2007/19.html. Freedom21, “9th Annual Freedom21 National Conference,” July 24-26, 2008, at http://www.freedom21.org/conf/2008/24.html. Freedom21, “9th Annual National Conference Report,” July 24-26, 2008, at http://www.freedom21.org/conf/2008/report-08.html. Freedom21, “National Conference: ‘The Growing American Tyranny and How to Stop It,’” August 13-15, 2009, at http://www.freedom21.org/conf/2009/con-09.html. On Skousen see Alexander Zaitchik, Common Nonsense: Glenn Beck and the Triumph of Ignorance, Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2010: 215-234.

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included Patriot sphere luminaries as former Arizona sheriff Richard Mack; Tom DeWeese of the American Policy Center; Thomas E. Woods of the Ron Paul-founded Ludwig von Mises Institute; Larry Pratt, Gun Owners of America; Dr. Jane Orient, a physician who participated in the 2009 Freedom21 conference; Dr. Jeff Marrongelle who participated in the 2009 Freedom21 conference; Michael Shaw of Freedom Advocates who participated in all but the first two Freedom21 conferences; Michael Lerner of the Constitutional Alliance who participated in the 2009 Freedom21 conference; Dan Byfield of the American Land Foundation participated in the Freedom21 conferences in 2000, 2007, 2008, and 2009; Michael Coffman who participated in every Freedom21 conference between 2000 and 2009; Steve Hempfling, director of the Free Enterprise Society who participated in the 2009 Freedom21 conference; Beverly Eakman who participated in the 2008 Freedom21 conference and was billed as an expert on “microchip implants that provide not only physical location through global positioning satellite (GPS) technology, but facilitate links to other personal data-files,” as well as “threats to individual privacy rights from predictive computer technology;” Marc Morano, the communications director for Senator Inhofe (R-OK) who gave three presentations (2005, 2008, 2009) at the Freedom21 conference on global warming being a hoax, while from 1992 through 1996 he was a producer for Rush Limbaugh; Michael Badnarik, the Libertarian Party presidential candidate also campaigned for support and votes at the 2004 Freedom21 conference; Gary Franchi, the national director of Restore the Republic and the managing editor of Republic Magazine participated in the 2009 Freedom21 conference; the John Birch Society was well represented by Larry Greenley, the director of marketing, and William F. Jasper,

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senior editor for its flagship New American Magazine; and, Amanda Teegarden, cofounder of OK-SAFE, a coalition that joined Howard Phillips’ Conservative Caucus, according to the 2007 Freedom21 report; she was also a participant in Freedom21 conferences in 2008 and 2009 where she spoke about how “NASCO is tied to the ever increasing threat of global surveillance.” NASCO, according to Freedom21’s 2008 conference report stands for the North American Super Corridor Coalition. At the 2009 Freedom21 conference she joined Catherine Bleish in opposing the federal-state-local law enforcement Fusion Centers. According to a Southern Poverty Law Center biography of Teegarden, OK-SAFE stands for Oklahomans for Sovereignty and Free Enterprise, while her Oklahomans for School Accountability “promotes teaching a ‘biblical world view.’” 135 According to NASCO’s official website explaining what they are all about, NASCO is “a coalition—a network—of North American governments, businesses and educational institutions, driven by a common interest in collaboration along commercial corridors and trade networks. NASCO fosters a desire for

135

Freedom Action Conference, “The Forces of Freedom Return to Valley Forge!,” undated, at http://freedomactionconference.com/. Southern Poverty Law Center, “Meet the Patriots,” April 20, 2010, at http://www.splcenter.org/getinformed/publications/the-patriots?page=0,3. Freedom21, “Freedom21 National Conference,” July 9-12, 2000, at http://www.freedom21.org/conf/00prog.html. Freedom21, “Freedom21 National Conference,” July 12-14, 2001, at http://www.freedom21.org/conf/01prog.html. Freedom21, “Freedom21 Regional Workshop on Smart Growth: Global Governance and Local Policy,” July 19-20, 2002, at http://www.freedom21.org/conf/02prog.html. Freedom21, “Freedom21 National Conference on Advancing Freedom in Domestic Policy,” July 17-19, 2003, at http://www.freedom21.org/conf/03prog.html. Freedom21, “5th Annual Freedom21 National Conference,” July 21-24, 2004, at http://www.freedom21.org/conf/04prog.html. Freedom21, “6th Annual Freedom21 National Conference,” July 14-16, 2005, at http://www.freedom21.org/conf/2005/14.html. Freedom21, “7th Annual Freedom21 National Conference,” July 20-22, 2006, at http://www.freedom21.org/conf/2006/20.html. Freedom21, “8th Annual Freedom21 National Conference,” July 19-21, 2007, at http://www.freedom21.org/conf/2007/19.html. Freedom21, “9th Annual Freedom21 National Conference,” July 24-26, 2008, at http://www.freedom21.org/conf/2008/24.html. Freedom21, “9th Annual National Conference Report,” July 24-26, 2008, at http://www.freedom21.org/conf/2008/report08.html. Freedom21, “National Conference: ‘The Growing American Tyranny and How to Stop It,’” August 13-15, 2009, at http://www.freedom21.org/conf/2009/con-09.html.

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collaboration between the public and private sectors across cities, states / provinces, regions and international borders which enables NASCO to engage our members and partners in tangible projects and research that deliver meaningful, useful, actionable results….. Our ultimate objective is to have a globally competitive transportation network.” As early as the 2004 party platform (based on Gallaher’s research on the Patriot movement in Kentucky probably much earlier than 2004) the Christian Reconstructionist’s Constitution Party headed by Howard Phillips included in its antiscience and anti-globalist political platform opposition to “United Nations World Heritage sites or Biosphere reserves. We call for an end to this United States participation in UN programs such as UNESCO, Man and the Biosphere, and the UN Council on Sustainable Development. We oppose environmental treaties and conventions such as the Biodiversity Treaty, the Convention on Climate Control, and Agenda21, which destroy our sovereignty and right to private property.” The same language was included in the 2008 platform. 136 In 2008, the Constitution Party’s presidential candidate Chuck Baldwin spoke at a rally against Agenda21 in Dallas, Texas, with such luminaries of the Christian Right as Phyllis Schlafly, head of Eagle Forum; Jerome Corsi, a Constitution Party member and white nationalist; Larry Pratt, executive director of Gun Owners of America; and William Jasper, senior editor of the John Birch Society’s New American Magazine. A key

136

U.S. Constitution Party, “Platform 2004,” Select Smart, no date, at http://selectsmart.com/president/Constitution.html. Chip Berlet, “Sarah Palin and Christian Dominionist Theocracy,” The Huffington Post, September 2, 2008, at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/chip-berlet/sarah-palin-and-christian_b_123309.html.

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opponent of Agenda21, Tom DeWeese, founder and president of American Policy Center was also a speaker. Baldwin told the Lou Dobbs radio program all of the essentials of the New World Order paranoia and how the right-wing packages their antiscience and anti-globalist views: “‘The United Nations’ stealth policies, through so-called Sustainable Development will serve only to create a tyrannical New World Order. Americans must begin to connect the dots on global schemes to advance gun control, promote a globalist education agenda in our classrooms and take away our freedoms under the guise of ‘environmentalism’. The U.N. is behind the push for national ID cards, higher taxes, denigration of the Judeo- Christian world view and the coming North American Union’” [emphasis in original]. 137 In fact, Dobbs was helping to promote the Freedom21 conference held in Dallas. The Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks developments in the Christian Patriot militia movement—which includes the Constitution Party and the John Birch Society—reported that DeWeese’s American Policy Center, the John Birch Society, Phyllis Schlafly’s Eagle Forum, the Tenth Amendment Center, Oath Keepers, the white nationalist and secessionist League of the South, and the Christian Patriot movement have all been pushing the Agenda21 conspiracy theory into the Tea Party movement and the Republican Party. The SPLC noted that for a “growing cast of far-right hardliners, Agenda21 is a sort of Trojan horse, a totalitarian scheme with a green environmental mask, lying in wait to destroy America as we know it.” The John Birch Society, according to a 2012 SPLC report, “has done as much or more than any other

137

The Lou Dobbs Show, “Presidential Candidate to Speak Out at Dallas Conference,” July 24, 2008, at http://old.loudobbsradio.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=762&PID=6589.

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group on the radical right to drum up panic and outrage. It has held more than a dozen conferences across the nation in the last six months.” In fact, the Republican National Committee and Republican-controlled state legislatures in New Jersey, North Carolina, and Tennessee have all passed resolutions opposing Agenda21 in early 2012. More tellingly, the Tennessee House bill is almost an exact word-for-word version published by the John Birch Society on its website, differing only in structure of the JBS “model legislation.” Both the JBS and the Tennessee House equate “social justice” with the “socialist/communist redistribution of wealth” and claim that Agenda21 is a “comprehensive plan of extreme environmentalism, social engineering, and global political control.” 138 The constellation of Patriot groups identified by the Southern Poverty Law Center was, in fact, largely the decade-long Freedom21 coalition. Both Henry Lamb and Tom DeWeese have links to Ron Paul, the latter more so. Henry Lamb founded Sovereignty International (SI) in 1996. Lamb is a very trusted source for Ron Paul on environmental and World Trade Organization issues. Paul called him a “leading observer” of the issues. He is a columnist for WorldNetDaily, but has no formal training in environmental or international trade issues. ExxonSecrets.org identified Lamb as “a central figure in the spread of United Nations conspiracy theories

138

Ryan Lenz, “UN’s Agenda21 is Seen as Trojan Horse for ‘New World Order,’” Hate Watch, Southern Poverty Law Center, February 6, 2012, at http://www.splcenter.org/blog/2012/02/06/uns-agenda-21-isseen-as-trojan-horse-for-new-world-order/print/. Marilyn Elias, “Tennessee House Falls Victim to ‘Agenda21’ Conspiracy Theory,” Hate Watch, Southern Poverty Law Center, March 14, 2012, at http://www.splcenter.org/blog/2012/03/14/tennessee-house-fallsvictim-to-agenda-21-conspiracy-theory/print/. Ryan Lenz, “Antigovernment Conspiracy Theorists Rail Against UN’s Agenda21 Program,” Intelligence Report Spring 2012, Southern Poverty Law Center, at http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligencereport/browse-all-issues/2012/spring/behind-the-green-mask. Brian Tashman, “Tennessee Republicans Copy John Birch Society Model Legislation on Agenda21,” Right Wing Watch, March 16, 2012, at http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/tennessee-republicanscopy-john-birch-society-model-legislation-agenda-21.

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throughout the anti-environmental movement. Lamb co-founded SI with John Birch Society member Michael Coffman. 139 Coffman made presentations at every single Freedom21 conference. Tom DeWeese, head of the American Policy Center, is generally the Constitution Party’s and Tea Party movement’s expert on Agenda21. DeWeese is a prime example of how the Christian Reconstructionist’s Constitution Party political party, the Christian Patriot militia, the Tea Party movement, and the white nationalist anti-immigration movement are all interconnected in opposition to the federal government, to science, and in favor of energy corporations. DeWeese is a climate change denier funded by ExxonMobil. 140 He signed the Christian Right’s Secure Borders anti-immigration coalition’s demand supporting the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps and John Tanton’s white nationalist war of attrition against Latino immigrants. 141

139

Ron Paul, “Does the WTO Serve Our Interests?,” Texas Straight Talk, May 16, 2005, at http://www.house.gov/paul/tst/tst2005/tst051605.htm. Henry Lamb, “Henry Lamb,” World View Times, at http://www.worldviewweekend.com/worldviewtimes/bio.php?authorid=58. Exxon Secrets.org, “Founder and Executive Vice President, Environmental Conservation Organization,” at http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/personfactsheet.php?id=1144.

140

Stephanie Mencimer, “The Tea Party Targets…Sustainable Development?,” Mother Jones, November 18, 2010, at http://motherjones.com/politics/2010/11/tea-party-agenda-21-un-sustainable-development. 141

Secure Borders Coalition, “Declaration opposing amnesty and ‘guest worker’ proposals,” June 19, 2006, at http://secureborderscoalition.com/. Leah Nelson, “New Leaders at Tanton’s Nativist Network, But Not New Tolerance,” HateWatch, Southern Poverty Law Center, February 10, 2011, at http://www.splcenter.org/blog/2011/02/10/new-leaders-attantons-anti-immigrant-network-but-not-new-tolerance/print/.

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DeWeese was one of about 30 men and women who met at Jekyll Island, Georgia, in May 2009 who represented “radical tax protesters, militiamen, nativist extremists, anti-Obama ‘birthers,’ hard-line libertarians, [and] conspiracy-minded Patriots.” The Jekyll Island meeting spawned the November 2009 self-styled “continental congress” (see Part III) that essentially gave renewed vigor and emphasis to the resurgence of the Christian Patriot militia. 142 DeWeese was a delegate to the socalled “continental congress” and signed its manifesto that hinted at violent rebellion against the federal government. 143 In August 2010, DeWeese’s American Policy Center hosted a Freedom Action Conference at Valley Forge, an outgrowth of the Freedom21 conferences discussed above, which featured a wide array of Christian Right and Christian patriot militia types including former Arizona sheriff Richard Mack (affiliated with Oath Keepers); Larry Pratt of Gun Owners of America, who helps grow the militia movement with gun control hysteria; a neo-Confederate movement leader ensconced at Ron Paul’s Ludwig von Mises Institute, Thomas E. Woods; William Jaspers and Larry Greenley of the John Birch Society, and, Michael Badnarik, a Libertarian Party presidential candidate who presided over the “continental congress” which essentially declared the federal government illegitimate and bound to provoke a violent reaction from the right-wing if it persisted to pursue its current policies. 144 The Southern Poverty Law Center reported

142 Heidi Beirich, “Midwifing the Militias,” Intelligence Report Spring 2010, at http://www.splcenter.org/getinformed/intelligence-report/browse-all-issues/2010/spring/midwifing-the-militias. 143

Articles of Freedom.us, “Pledge by the Delegates,” November 11, 2010, at http://articlesoffreedom.us/TOC/DelegatesPledge.aspx.

144

Freedom Action Conference, “The Forces of Freedom Return to Valley Forge!,” undated, at http://freedomactionconference.com/.

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that DeWeese’s Valley Forge conference repeatedly emphasized a Second Amendment solution to the Tenth Amendment crisis in the country. 145 The Tenth Amendment Center listed the Oklahoma Tea Party’s mission statement which included opposition to Agenda21, the mythical North American Union and the NAFTA transit corridor, and “illegal immigration.” The Oklahoma Tea Party maintained internet links to the John Birch Society, DeWeese’s American Policy Center, Howard Phillips’ The Conservative Caucus, and the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps. 146 DeWeese wrote on the Tea Party Patriots News website a lengthy article on Agenda21. DeWeese claimed that “[h]alf of the land area of the entire United States will be designated ‘wilderness areas,’ where only wildlife managers and researchers will be allowed…. Strict regulations and special permit requirements for every activity related to farming, logging, livestock, mining etc. make it difficult for land owners to realize a profit…. Since freedom-loving people would never willingly submit to such totalitarian control, education became the ‘key’ to sustainable development.” DeWeese painted a picture suggesting that Americans would be herded and confined into cities. DeWeese claimed that special permits would be needed to remove a tree or to disturb the land in

World Net Daily, “‘Continental Congress’ abolishes income tax. Citizens mobilize in spirit ’76 to help return U.S. to its roots,” November 23, 2009, at http://www.wnd.com/index.php?pageId=116996. 145

Leah Nelson and Larry Keller, “‘Patriot’ Rhetoric Becomes Increasingly Violent,” Intelligence Report Winter 2010, Southern Poverty Law Center, at http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligencereport/browse-all-issues/2010/winter/-willing-to-kill-in-gatherings-over-t. Tenth Amendment Center, ‟Secession Movements by States,” no date, at http://www.tenthamendmentcenter.com/state-groups/.

146

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any way. And, he claimed that local democratic government would be usurped by unelected bureaucrats and planners. 147 All of these themes would be echoed in Tea Party publications and website calls to action. In 2010 and 2011, the Tea Party movement’s opposition to Agenda21 using much the same language as the Christian Reconstructionists and DeWeese’s American Policy Center became noticeable to the blogosphere on the left and the right. Stephanie Mencimer at Mother Jones observed “Agenda21 paranoia has swept the Tea Party scene” which they believe aims to “curtail private property rights and deprive Americans of precious constitutional freedoms.” She noted that Virginia Tea Party activist Donna Holt, Ron Paul’s Virginia coordinator for the Campaign for Liberty, relied upon WorldNetDaily.com columnist Henry Lamb, who she linked to Sovereignty International and Freedom21 without further explanation, and Tom DeWeese’s American Policy Center for information. According to Holt, implementation of Agenda21 “‘basically will turn us into a Soviet state.’” Mencimer reported that Tea Party activists saw Agenda21 items in local planning for a septic tank inspection law in Florida and a traffic reduction plan in Maine for Route 1. 148 Unfortunately, Mencimer’s otherwise excellent report failed to trace the Tea Party’s involvement in the anti-Agenda21 campaign to the Christian Reconstructionists and the ten-year Freedom21 efforts to

147

Tom DeWeese, “Just What Is Agenda21?,” Tea Party Patriot News, October 31, 2011, at https://sites.google.com/site/teapartypatriotnews/home/just-what-is-agenda-21.

148 Stephanie Mencimer, “The Tea Party Targets…Sustainable Development?,” Mother Jones, November 18, 2010, at http://motherjones.com/politics/2010/11/tea-party-agenda-21-un-sustainable-development.

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develop a nearly nation-wide infrastructure to challenge the federal government and lower level governments on environmental regulations. Caroline May at the conservative Daily Caller website noted that the Tea Party Tribune, an online magazine, had issued a call to arms to fellow patriots to resist the “‘socialism creeping in at the local level through Agenda21.’” May quoted North Carolina Tea Party activist Cheryl Pass describing a UN-fostered totalitarian future: “‘Agenda21 usurps sovereignty, property rights, economic liberty, and basically hands over power, resources and land to unelected elitists …to control the populations of every country in the world.’” May also quoted Donna Holt, who expanded upon her Soviet future thesis and claimed that “‘the UN’s vision for a completely managed society, dictating the process to be used for industry, agriculture, housing development, and especially education. It’s an all-encompassing plan to rule from an all-powerful central government.’” 149 According to the Tea Party Tribune article by Rachel Alexander, Agenda21 “ostensibly seeks to promote ‘sustainability’…. Agenda21 promotes European socialist goals that will erode our freedoms and liberties….The environmentalist goals include atmospheric protection, combating pollution, protecting fragile environments, and conserving biological diversity. Agenda21 goes well beyond environmentalism. Other broad goals include combating poverty, changing consumption patterns, promoting health, and reducing private property ownership, single-family homes, private car ownership, and privately owned farms. It seeks to cram people into small livable areas

149

Caroline May, “UN environmental initiative is the Tea Party’s new nightmare,” The Daily Caller, July 6, 2011, at http://dailycaller.com/2011/07/06/un-environmental-initiative-is-the-tea-partys-new-nightmare/.

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and institute population control. There is a plan for ‘social justice’ that will redistribute wealth.” Alexander quoted one right-wing opponent who claimed that Agenda21 would restrict Americans’ access to “‘water, electricity and transportation [and] even deny human access to our most treasured wilderness areas.’” 150 Tea Party West called Agenda21 “national suicide.” It linked to a lengthy article by DeWeese. Tea Party West opposed high-speed rail projects because it would encourage people to live in cities without access to cars. Tea Party West compared the Obama administration’s rail projects to collectivization under communist Russia. 151 Tea Party Nation quoted the same right-wing expert on Americans having limited access to water, electricity, transportation, and wilderness areas. Agenda21 was called the number one threat to America because it was “the Global plan…for us to live on the level of third world nations.” 152 Tea Party Patriots posted a warning about Agenda21 by someone called im2byteme. According to this post, Agenda21 being pushed by the United Nations was part of the Obama administration’s plan to push a New World Order agenda down to the local level in Palmdale, Lancaster and other parts of the Antelope Valley in California. Allegedly, Agenda21’s “mother is Global Warming and the father is the bastardization of

150

Rachel Alexander, “Agenda21: Conspiracy Theory or Real Threat?,” Tea Party Tribune, July 2, 2011, at http://www.teapartytribune.com/2011/07/02/agenda-21-conspiracy-theory-or-real-threat/. 151 Marilyn M. Barnewall, “Agenda21 Equals National Suicide,” Tea Party West, October 4, 2011, at http://teapartywest.com/?p=2550. 152 Ronald Brahin, “Agenda21 #1 Threat to America,” Tea Party Nation, October 27, 2011, at http://www.teapartynation.com/profiles/blogs/agenda-21-1-threat-to-america.

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global wealth and intelligentsia carefully placed in the womb.” 153 A Tea Party meeting in California’s Central Valley in October 2011 was expected to attract about 200 members to discuss how to oppose Agenda21 in their area. 154 Cheryl Pass gave a speech to her Gaston Tea Party in North Carolina. Pass made explicit the link between her opposition to Agenda21 and her disbelief in climate change. Pass told her Tea Party group, “When you started hearing about man-made Global Warming it was because of the United Nations pushing for Agenda21 / Sustainable Development in America. In my research I found substantial evidence that there is no such thing as man-made Global Warming and …by the way, CO2 is not a pollutant.” Pass claimed that the great danger behind environmental concern was that it was “about controlling wealth and resources.” 155 In February 2012, as the Republican primary season was heating up, the New York Times reported that Tea Party activists “are railing against all sorts of local and state efforts to control sprawl and conserve energy. They brand government action for things like expanding public transportation routes and preserving open space as part of a United Nations-led conspiracy to deny property rights and herd citizens toward cities.” The Times credited Tom DeWeese, a fringe player for two decades and now a “regular speaker at Tea Party events” and Fox News for directing Tea Party activists into

153

Tea Party Patriots, “Agenda21,” http://www.teapartypatriots.org/BlogPostView.aspx?id=fc85caf0-09384d5e-a6f5-2aeeffb16970.

154 The Fresno Bee, “Tea Party hosts lecture on Agenda21 today in NE Fresno,” October 29, 2011, at http://www.fresnobee.com/2011/10/29/2595553/tea-party-hosts-lecture-on-agenda.html. 155

Cheryl Pass, “Tea Party Is Onto Agenda21,” My Tea Party Chronicle, June 15, 2011, at http://myteapartychronicle.blogspot.com/2011/06/tea-party-onto-agenda-21.html.

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opposing Agenda21. Newt Gingrich picked up the issue for his presidential campaign and the Republican National Committee passed a resolution in January 2012 calling sustainable development a “‘radical’” threat to the American way of life. 156 Not only has the Tea Party movement been drawn into opposing what the Christian Reconstructionists identified as early as 2004 as the United Nations’ Agenda21, but the Tea Party movement at a critical juncture—the 2009 Washington D.C. rally—was supported by the National Association of Rural Landowners. The NARL claimed that America was facing an unprecedented risk of violent revolution by the rightwing because the federal government was ungodly, trying to enslave Americans, and pursuing socialism through the hoax of global warming and national health reform. 157 Numerous reports have linked Tea Party groups’ opposition to Agenda21 (or opposition to climate change legislation with the concomitant belief of the myth of global warming) with the John Birch Society, Oath Keepers, Christian patriot militia groups, and Christian nationalism. 158

156

Leslie Kaufman and Kate Zernike, “Activists Fight Green Projects, Seeing U.N. Plot,” New York Times, February 4, 2012, at http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/04/us/activists-fight-green-projects-seeing-unplot.html?_r=1&sq=agenda21&st=cse&scp=1&pagewanted=print. 157

Ron Ewart, “Irreconcilable Differences—America in the Throes of Divorce,” The National Association of Rural Landowners, October 2009, at http://www.narlo.org/.

Ed Kemmick, ‟Are They Defenders of the Constitution or Anti-Government Extremists?,” The Billings Gazette (Montana), May 16, 2010, at http://billingsgazette.com/news/state-andregional/montana/article_d3802772-608a-11df-b185-001cc4c002e0.html. Devin Burghart, “Tea Time with the Posse: Inside an Idaho Tea Party Patriots Conference,” Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights, April 18, 2011, at http://www.irehr.org/issue-areas/tea-partynationalism/tea-party-news-and-analysis/item/297-tea-time-with-the-posse-inside-an-idaho-tea-partypatriots-conference. Ben McGrath, ‟The Movement: The Rise of Tea Party activism,” New Yorker Magazine, February 1, 2010, at http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/02/01/100201fa_fact_mcgrath?currentPage=1. David Neiwert, “‘We Are at War’: How Militias, Racists and Anti-Semites Found a Home in the Tea Party,” AlterNet, November 21, 2010, at http://www.alternet.org/module/printversion/148946. 158

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Tea Party groups in Idaho, Washington State, Oregon, and Ohio link the John Birch Society, the Christian Patriot militia, and opposition to climate change science and legislation. A December 2009 “Freedom Festival” in Post Falls, Washington State, featured an atmospheric physicist, Edwin X. Berry, who is linked to Stand Up America (partners with Tea Party Nation and Tea Party Patriots) to oppose climate change science and legislation. The festival featured a mixture of Tea Party groups, militia groups, and county sheriffs and was a clear indicator that the Tea Party movement was converging with the Christian Patriot militia movement. 159 David Barstow’s February 2010 report on the Sandpoint (Idaho) Tea Party Patriots demonstrated that the Patriots were linking up with the John Birch Society, Glenn Beck’s 912 Project, and Oath Keepers, “a new player in a resurgent militia movement.” Barstow noted that “Tea Party events have become a magnet for other

Adele M. Stan, “Ginni Thomas’ Think Tank Allied With Group That Celebrates Spanish Inquisition,” AlterNet, October 28, 2010, at http://www.alternet.org/module/printversion/148602. Max Blumenthal, “Days of Rage-The Noxious Transformation of the Conservative Movement into a Rabid Fringe,” AlterNet, August 10, 2010, at http://www.alternet.org/story/147784/days_of_rage_-_the_noxious_transformation_of_the_conservative_movement_into_a_rabid_fringe_. Faiz Shakir, Amanda Terkel, Matt Corley, Benjamin Armbruster, Brad Johnson, and Zaid Jilani, “Radical Right: Glenn Beck’s 9/12 Project,” Think Progress, Progress Report, September 11, 2009, at http://pr.thinkprogress.org/2009/09/pr20090911. David Barstow, “Tea Party Movement Lights Fuse for Rebellion on Right,” New York Times, February 16, 2010, at http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/16/us/politics/16teaparty.html?hp. David Neiwert, “Getting Inside the Tea Party: At its core, a revival of the Patriot movement of the 1990s,” Crooks and Liars, February 16, 2010, at http://crooksandliars.com/david-neiwert/getting-inside-tea-partyits-core-re. 159

Flathead Valley Community College, “Edwin X. Berry, PhD,” no date, at http://fvcctrustees.com/edwinx-berry-phd/. Stand Up America US, “Partners,” no date, at http://www.standupamericaus.org/partners/. Meghann M. Cuniff, “A passion rising,” The Spokesman-Review, December 6, 2009, at http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2009/dec/06/a-passion-rising/. David Neiwert, “If ‘Tea Party’ candidates really are the preferred choice on the Right, then we’re in serious trouble,” Crooks and Liars, December 8, 2009, at http://crooksandliars.com/node/33323.

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groups and causes—including gun rights activists, anti-tax crusaders, libertarians, militia organizers, the ‘birthers’ who doubt President Obama’s citizenship, Lyndon LaRouche supporters and proponents of the sovereign states movement.” 160 A February 2011 Tea Party conference in Oregon featured the John Birch Society and a separate speaker who claimed that progressives were “elitist socialists” intent on “centralizing the state.”161 Devin Burghart reported on a March 2011 Idaho Tea Party conference that featured “a heavy dose of racist ‘birther’ attacks on President Obama, discussions of the conspiracy behind the problem facing America (complete with anti-Semitic illustration), Christian nationalism, anti-environmentalism, and serious calls for legislation promoting states’ rights and ‘nullification.’” The Tea Party Patriots group brought together the Tenth Amendment Center, the John Birch Society, and Oath Keepers. The meeting again featured Dr. Edwin X. Berry. Burghart reported that Dr. Berry has affiliated with the Christian Reconstructionist Constitution Party. Berry’s speech not only opposed climate change legislation, but also Agenda21. 162 An Ohio state convention by the Ohio Liberty Council, a coalition of 88 Tea Party groups, was sponsored by the Tea Party Patriots, the Koch-financed Americans for Prosperity, the Christian Right’s Heritage Foundation, and American Majority. The 160 David Barstow, “Tea Party Movement Lights Fuse for Rebellion on Right,” New York Times, February 16, 2010, at http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/16/us/politics/16teaparty.html?hp. 161

Mike Edera, “The 2nd Annual Oregon Tea Party Convention: A Movement in Which Ideas Seem to Have Growing Importance,” Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights, May 31, 2011, at https://www.irehr.org/issue-areas/tea-parties/19-news/83-the-2nd-annual-oregon-tea-party-celebration-amovement-in-which-ideas-seem-to-have-growing-importance. 162

Devin Burghart, “Tea Time with the Posse: Inside an Idaho Tea Party Patriots Conference,” Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights, April 18, 2011, at http://www.irehr.org/issue-areas/teaparty-nationalism/tea-party-news-and-analysis/item/297-tea-time-with-the-posse-inside-an-idaho-teaparty-patriots-conference.

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convention featured the president of the John Birch Society. Attendees were also told that global climate change science was a fraud by an optometrist, Robert Wagner, and a geochemist, John Sanz. 163 American Majority was created and funded by the climatechange denying Koch foundations’ Sam Adams Alliance and trains local Tea Party political operatives. 164 The successful Republican and Tea Party Texas senatorial candidate, Ted Cruz, made opposition to Agenda21 a centerpiece of his 2012 campaign in language similar to the Patriot’s reasoning in Kentucky a decade earlier and multiple subsequent Freedom21 conferences. That is not surprising considering that the Texas Republican Party included in its party platform staunch opposition to Agenda21. Among other rightwing policy proposals such as believing that human-created laws should be subordinate to the Bible, destroying the Federal Reserve System, bringing back the gold standard, and creating a state militia under the auspices of the county sheriff, the Texas GOP “should expose all United Nations Agenda21 treaty policies and its supporting organizations, agreements and contracts. We oppose implementation of the UN Agenda21 Program…” According to Cruz’s website, he attributed Agenda21 to the financier George Soros and claimed that “Agenda21 attempts to abolish ‘unsustainable’ environments, including golf courses, grazing pastures, and paved roads. It hopes to

163

Devin Burghart, “The John Birch Society and Tea Party Patriots: Inside the Ohio ‘We the People Convention,’” Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights, September 16, 2011, at http://www.irehr.org/issue-areas/tea-party-nationalism/tea-party-news-and-analysis/item/368-inside-theohio-we-the-people-convention. 164

Alex Brant-Zawadzki and Dawn Teo, “Anatomy of the Tea Party Movement: Sam Adams Alliance,” The Huffington Post, December 11, 2009, at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alexbrantzawadzki/anatomy-of-the-tea-party_b_380662.html. Allison Kilkenny, “The Koch Spider Web,” Truth Out, August 4, 2011, at http://www.truth-out.org/kochspider-web/1312231636.

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leave mother earth’s surface unscratched by mankind. Everyone wants clean water and clean air, but Agenda21 dehumanizes individuals by removing the very thing that has defined Americans since the beginning—our freedom.” 165 People for the American Way’s Peter Montgomery reported that Ted Cruz was a product of massive financial and endorsement support from both the Koch-funded projects, FreedomWorks, the Club for Growth, and the Christian Right, which included then Senator Jim DeMint’s fund raising which tapped into Christian Reconstructionist funders. Cruz sought votes and endorsements from the Family Research Council’s Voter Values Summit participants as well as from Ralph Reed’s Freedom Federation Awakening conference, a vehicle to merge the Christian Right and the Tea Party movement. Cruz is also a strong Tenth Amendment supporter having been a fellow at the Koch- and energy-funded Center for Tenth Amendment Studies of the Texas Public Policy Foundation. Cruz is also on the “National Board of Reference” for a Louisiana Christian Right law school dedicated to turning out Christian Right lawyers who challenge the separation of church and state and believe that God’s law, whatever that may be, trumps the U.S. Constitution and other human-created laws. 166 In November 2012, the then Georgia Senate majority leader Chip Rogers, invited a conspiracy theorist formerly with the Georgia Tea Party to present a four-hour Power

165

2012 Republican Party of Texas, “2012 State Republican Party Platform,” at http://s3.amazonaws.com/texasgop_pre/assets/original/2012-Platform-Final.pdf. Tim Murphy, “The Texas GOP Just Nominated a Gay-Hating Conspiracy Theorist for US Senate, Mother Jones, August 1, 2012, at http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2012/08/ted-cruz-texas-senate-conspiracytheories. 166

Peter Montgomery, “Who’s Ted Cruz? Getting to Know the Next Senator from the Tea Party,” Right Wing Watch, August 31, 2012, at http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/whos-ted-cruz-next-senator-teaparty.

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Point presentation on Agenda21 to the Georgia Senate. The presentation compared President Obama’s tepid support for sustainable development to Stalin and Mao’s policies. The Mother Jones report noted that the Georgia Senate had considered legislation to block Agenda21, while Kansas had done so in May 2012. The magazine also noted that the John Birch Society had prepared model legislation for the states to consider passing. 167 In Oklahoma in December 2012, Republican state senator Patrick Anderson introduced a bill based on a bill that had been passed in the Alabama legislature to prevent the federal government from violating local private rights in line with Agenda21. 168 Four months later, in April 2013, Republican state senator Carl Branan, who chaired the committee with responsibility for considering the anti-Agenda21 bill, was threatened by Al Gerhart, co-founder of the Oklahoma Sooner Tea Party. Branan thought the bill which had passed the Oklahoma House was unacceptable because it was based on a “‘fringe conspiracy.’” About a week after sending at least two threatening emails, Gerhart was arrested on two felony charges. 169

167

Tim Murphy, “Top Georgia GOP Lawmakers Host Briefing on Secret Obama Mind-Control Plot,” Mother Jones, November 14, 2012, at http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2012/11/georgia-senate-gets52-minute-briefing-united-nations-takeover. 168

Jillian Rayfield, “Oklahoma GOPer introduces bill targeting ‘Agenda 21,’” Salon, December 26, 2012, at http://www.salon.com/2012/12/26/oklahoma_goper_introduces_bill_targeting_agenda_21/.

169

Jillian Rayfield, “Oklahoma Tea Partyer threatens legislator over Agenda 21,” Salon, April 2, 2013, at http://www.salon.com/2013/04/02/tea_party_leader_threatens_oklahoma_goper_over_agenda_21/. David [Neiwert], “Oklahoma Tea Party Founder Busted for Threats to Lawmaker Over 'Fringe' Agenda 21 Conspiracy,” Crooks and Liars, April 10, 2013, at http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/david/oklahomatea-party-founder-busted-threats-la.

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Rural Minnesota blogger Sally Jo Sorenson reported that the “Delphi Technique” warned about in the Georgia briefing on Agenda21 had first been used by Representative Michele Bachmann’s allies, the Maple River Education Coalition founded by Julie Quist and Renee Doyle, who had apparently derived it from a John Birch Society book, None Dare Call It Education written by John A. Stormer. 170 Allen Quist representing the Maple River Education Coalition, presumably Julie’s husband, had made presentations at the Freedom21 conferences in 2002 and 2003 as examples of how successfully to resist Agenda21 at the local level. 171 According to Amazon.com, Stormer’s book was first published in 1998. Stormer is famous or infamous for first publishing in 1964 the John Birch Society classic, None Dare Call It Treason. Finally, opposing Agenda21 is easily grafted onto pre-existing anti-Semitic beliefs in order to appeal to a completely different segment of the right-wing: the neo-Nazis and those opposed to Muslims. The Southern Poverty Law Center reported that antiSemites have attached the anti-Agenda21 platform to their anti-Semitic version of the New World Order—the one where it is the Jews who control all of the world’s money and institutions rather than the shadowy “secret government” or the vague “international banksters.” 172 And Avi Lipkin, an American-born Israeli who claims his wife has

170

Sally Jo Sorenson, “Long before Georgia legislature became laughing stock, Michele Bachmann's Maple River Education Coalition warned of Delphi Technique,” Bluestem Prairie, November 16, 2012, at http://www.bluestemprairie.com/bluestemprairie/2012/11/long-before-ga-became-laughing-stockbachmanns-ed-group-issued-delphi-technique-warning.html.

171

Freedom21, “Freedom21 Regional Workshop on Smart Growth: Global Governance and Local Policy,” July 19-20, 2002, at http://www.freedom21.org/conf/02prog.html. Freedom21, “Freedom21 National Conference on Advancing Freedom in Domestic Policy,” July 17-19, 2003, at http://www.freedom21.org/conf/03prog.html. 172

Ryan Lenz, “Agenda 21 and the Jews,” Intelligence Report Summer 2013, Southern Poverty Law Center, at http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-report/browse-allissues/2013/summer/agenda-21-and-the-jews#.Uak340CDySo.

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connections to Israeli intelligence, has spun a conspiracy so convoluted and complex that it essentially boils down to Obama has a Saudi Arabia-drafted three-part secret plan to help the Muslim Brotherhood create enormous conflict and upheavals in the Middle East that will result in 50 to 100 million Muslims emigrating to America where they will live on lands confiscated under the United Nations’ Agenda21 program and institute sharia law. Apparently, this is a Saudi plot to make America Muslim by 2016, according to information obtained at least partially from Lipkin’s wife. Lipkin is linked to a company that specializes in booking guests on conservative talk radio shows like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, and Michael Savage, as well as his own touring of churches and synagogues with his conspiracy theory. Lipkin later claimed that the Muslim population of America is actually ten percent of the population and that these unnoticed Muslim men had been secretly flown into the country on governmentcontrolled aircraft with the mission of impregnating as many unsuspecting or easily duped Christian and Jewish women as possible in order to create new MuslimAmerican citizens. Once married to these duped American women, they could then import their families from the Middle East. According to the even crazier version reported by Right Wing Watch, Lipkin essentially endorsed the John Birch Society and right-wing conspiracy theory that “‘America has been having its leaders chosen, Democrat or Republican, chosen by the one world government, the Masons, the Illuminati, the Trilateral Commission, whatever you want to call these people, these are people who control the world.’” 173 Oy vey, who knew?

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David Corn, “Obama’s Secret Plot To Bring 100 Million Muslims to the US,” Mother Jones, February 25, 2011, at http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2011/02/obamas-secret-muslim-plot.

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Conclusion The war on science is fought on many fronts and by many different groups. It is understandable that corporations in general and energy corporations in particular would want to challenge the science that undergirds federal laws and regulations that allegedly affect their profitability and stock prices. It is also understandable that they would fund all manner of groups, including libertarian and Christian Right groups that would promote the idea that legitimate science is a “hoax” or “myth” or “fraud” in order to sow public confusion and thus undermine public support for laws protecting the environment, and endangered species, as well as protecting the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the food we eat. But, the war on science is much deeper and the stakes are much greater than the profitability of energy corporations. This chapter has shown the linkage between the corporate war on science and the Christian Right’s war against evolution, climate change science, environmental protection, and sustainable development. The Tea Party movement, funded by the same energy corporations and influenced by the Christian Right, is just the latest expression of this war on science. Moreover, the Tea Party movement’s opposition to science appears to be more strongly based on religion than it does on libertarian ideology about corporate profits. This chapter also demonstrated that the Tea Party movement can be drawn into campaigns like opposing

Brian Tashman, “The Ultimate Obama-Islam-Sharia-Agenda 21-Immigration-Debt Conspiracy,” Right Wing Watch, May 23, 2012, at http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/ultimate-obama-muslim-shariaagenda21-immigration-debt-conspiracy. Brian Tashman, “The Craziest Obama Conspiracy Theory Gets Even Crazier,” Right Wing Watch, August 21, 2012, at http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/craziestobama-conspiracy-theory-gets-even-crazier.

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Agenda21 that have a long pedigree in the Patriot movement and is the product of longterm planning and network infrastructure creation. The Tea Party movement plugs into pre-existing propaganda campaigns and networks—it does not create them. This chapter also shows how a patient strategy of building alliances under the radar works. The Environmental Conservation Organization, Inc.—a name surely chosen to make people believe it was for environmental protection and conservation— was founded in 1988. The seventeen organizations that created the organization are unknown, but from the later organizations that are known—Gun Owners of America, Sovereignty International, and Take Back Kentucky, plus southwestern cattle and land use organizations—it is pretty clear that it started on the fringe of the Christian Right and the Patriot movement. The involvement of Larry Pratt and Alan Gottlieb, leaders of two guns rights absolutist organizations, brought to the coalition links to the Patriot movement and the Wise Use movement, both of which had ties to the Patriot militia. By 1999, the Cornwall Alliance had gathered significant financial support from energy corporations, Christian Right/conservative foundations, and elite Christian Right parachurch organizations. Linking the ECO/Freedom21 coalition and the Cornwall Alliance was the driving force of the Cornwall Alliance, the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow. Both coalitions moved forward with their separate but interactive campaigns. By 2010, the Freedom21 coalition that had emerged from the Patriot sphere attracting the support of the Tea Party movement and pursuing an antiAgenda21 campaign that was rooted in the 1990s Patriot militia movement. The Constitution Party’s head, the late Howard Phillips, had connections to several segments of the right-wing. His Conservative Caucus was the public conservative face 83

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that was a long-time power in the Council for National Policy. His Constitution Party was the Christian Right’s link to the Patriot movement and its militias. Subsequent chapters in Part II will show that the Constitution Party was linked to white supremacist organizations. On the other hand, the powerful parachurch organizations in the Council for National Policy could continue building elite and grassroots opposition to environmental protection and the need to move toward a more sustainable energy future. Part of this strategy was to attack evolution and climate change science as antibiblical, anti-God, paganism, or satanic. To presage the findings of subsequent chapters, the Freedom21 conference shows the correlations in public opinion that will show up among conservative Republicans and Tea Party members. Opposition to all manner and type of environmental and land-use regulations will correlate with staunch opposition to all abortion, staunch opposition to all same-sex rights, support for guns rights absolutism, and support for free market absolutism. These correlations cannot only be seen in the Freedom21 conference, but in the Cornwall Alliance. These correlations at the elite and organizational levels of analysis will repeat again and again. For the Christian Right, however, the war against science is more a holy war against the Enlightenment than it is a war for corporate profits. This holy war is as important, if not more important, than the “culture wars” against reproductive rights and same-sex rights. As Chapter 4 shows, the culture war against same-sex rights is really part of a much larger and much longer struggle by fundamentalist Christians to define America as a white, Protestant nation with Catholics, Jews, Muslims, other religions,

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and other believers classified as secondary citizens that are, at best, tolerated and at worse, enemies to be subjected to cultural and physical genocide. Chapter 5 will show that the linkage between big business and the Christian Right in support of what Rachel Tabachnick calls ‘biblical capitalism’ has been building for decades—since the 1920s and 1930s. For fundamentalist Christians believing in an inerrant Bible, laissez faire capitalism is biblically mandated. It is therefore not an accident that the Christian Right would take up the war on science on behalf of the largest corporations in the world. Chapter 6 examines the specific theological/ideological aspects of biblical capitalism. The same enemies identified in Chapter 4 are to be subjected to financial genocide as the wealth of the ungodly is confiscated for Jesus, while the Christian Right simultaneously promotes Supply Side Jesus for the benefit of the Koch brothers and others in the top one-tenth of one percent.

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