Billy Graham and the Rise of the Republican South

Billy Graham, political operative
by John G. Turner
www.christiancentury.org
October 06, 2009

Graham and the Rise of the Republican South
Steven P. Miller
University of Pennslyvania Press, 320 pp., $29.95

Miller has written a political biography that shines fresh light on Graham's political machinations, navigation of the civil rights movement and boosting of the Sunbelt South.

"Now Watergate does not bother me," sang Lynyrd Skynyrd's Ronnie Van Zant in the unofficial Alabama state anthem, "Does your conscience bother you?" When the Watergate break-in turned into a presidency-threatening scandal in 1973, it clearly bothered Billy Graham's conscience. Condemned as a "court prophet" and criticized as a Republican stooge, Graham regretted his political alliance with Richard Nixon. Nevertheless, he refused to call for Nixon's resignation and instead blamed the president's sins on the nation's loss of a "moral compass."

"There's a little bit of Watergate in all of us," the evangelist intoned on several occasions.

As "America's Preacher," Billy Graham was the most famous religious figure in the United States during the second half of the 20th century. Steven Miller, who grew up in a "rural Mennonite congregation" with "evangelical instincts," has written a political biography that shines fresh light on Graham's political machinations, navigation of the civil rights movement and boosting of the Sunbelt South.

Graham's moderation on issues of race and civil rights is well known. Graham haltingly but then definitively desegregated his southern crusades in the early-to-mid 1950s, condemned racist violence at Little Rock and invited Martin Luther King Jr. to pray at his 1957 New York City crusade. Within a few years, however, Graham criticized King's strategy of civil disobedience as lawless, condemned "extremists on both sides" of the civil rights struggle and called for a moratorium on protests. At best a mild prophet of racial justice, Graham quickly became a proponent of moderation, civility and gradualism, an evolution that cost him black support and attendance at later crusades.

Miller does not satisfy himself with the easy job of poking holes in the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association's mythic accounts of Graham's civil rights contributions. Instead, he contends that Graham's "politics of decency" provided "an acceptable path upon which white southern moderates could back away from Jim Crow."

Those moderates flowed into Richard Nixon's emerging "silent majority," steered by none other than Graham. Miller does not portray Graham as politically naive; nor does he suggest that he was simply used by Nixon. Instead, Graham emerges as a shrewd political operative in his own right, dedicated to the success of Nixon and the GOP despite his regular professions of nonpartisanship. Graham regularly undertook political assignments for Nixon, maneuvering against Demo cratic senator Albert Gore Sr.'s 1970 reelection bid and discouraging George Wallace from campaigning for the White House in 1972. Graham's politics of decency played a central role in the emergence of the reliably Republican South. Graham's constant calls for law and order in the wake of civil rights protests and urban unrest prefigured Nixon's 1968 campaign, and his willingness to openly help Nixon court the southern evangelical vote tilled the soil for Jerry Falwell and other Christian right activists.

Chagrined by Watergate, Graham distanced himself from Nixon and pledged to stay "a million miles away from politics." He did not abide by that pledge, though he became more circumspect. One of the most original sections of Miller's book is his discussion of Graham's post-Water gate political career. The evangelist maintained a cordial but distant relationship with Jimmy Carter, developed an intimate friendship with the Bush family, and sympathetically responded to Bill Clinton's personal travails (a reaction that in some respects mirrored his response to Watergate).

Miller concludes that most "portraits of Graham have exaggerated the nature of his depoliticization." Though he distanced himself from the Christian right, he remained a quiet Republican activist. For this, evangelicals, other Christians and all Americans should be grateful. As shriller and sometimes hateful voices became identified with political evangelicalism, Graham emerged as a more irenic elder statesman. He never claimed the mantle of a prophet, and he certainly lacked consistency on the central issue of race relations. Yet when louder and angrier voices on the right further polarized American politics and sullied the image of Chris ianity in the minds of young Americans, Graham "modeled an important yet underappreciated strand of American conservatism that learned to speak a compassionate language of post racialism and international humanitarianism."

Moderate voices always anger those on the political and religious left and right, but there were far worse alternatives to Graham's politics of decency. Similarly, religious and political progressives may not appreciate Rick Warren's opposition to gay marriage, but Warren serves as a far more constructive representative of contemporary evangelicalism than many of his more conservative counterparts.

On the other hand, for all of Graham's political and personal decency (to which there were occasional exceptions, such as when he made anti-Semitic comments that were caught on tape at the Nixon White House), his political theology ultimately proved bankrupt. Graham's political thought revolved around what Miller awkwardly terms "evangelical universalism," which em phasizes social change through individual regeneration and subordination to governmental authority. Graham was an evangelist without parallel in his era, but it would be hard to argue that those myriad conversions produced a more just or moral nation and world—and Graham's emphasis on electing "Christian statesmen" proved problematic for obvious reasons. Moreover, subordination and obedience were hardly a recipe for needed social change on issues like race.

In his "Letter from Birmingham Jail," King termed the southern church "a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles of popular opinion" rather than a "thermostat that transformed the mores of society." Graham could be both and was often somewhere in between; he was thus an ill-fitting actor in morality plays like the civil rights movement and the Watergate scandal. That Miller captures Graham's complexity is one of the chief virtues of this even-handed and probing political profile.

Before we condemn Graham for his moderation and political hypocrisy, we would do well to remember his own—admittedly self-serving—Watergate-era warnings against hubris and self-righteousness. Graham is hardly the only American religious leader to be awestruck by powerful politicians, to make false claims of political neutrality and to say embarrassing things behind closed doors. There's a little bit of Billy Graham in most Christians who involve themselves in the political process.

John G. Turner teaches modern American history at the University of South Alabama. He is the author of Bill Bright and Campus Crusade: The Renewal of Evangelicalism in Postwar America (University of North Carolina Press).

http://www.christiancentury.org/article.lasso?id=7857

Obama's Struggle to Expose Fox News As GOP Propaganda Arm

By Robert Paul Reyes
NewsBlaze
October 25,2009

Fox News is the propaganda arm of the GOP; its primetime lineup is on a mission from God to destroy the Obama administration. Sean Hannity's reason d'être is to vilify, castigate, and criticize Obama. Glenn Beck is slightly more nuanced in his attacks, calling Obama a racist who hates white people.

The president tolerated the relentless attack from the Fox News network with remarkable patience, but he finally decided to fight back against the Fair and Balanced Fox News steamroller.

The White House stated that Murdoch's network is "not a news organization" but rather "the communications arm of the Republican Party. I don't know why Republicans have their panties in a twist over this statement, it's as undeniable and as incontrovertible as declaring that "the sky is blue and the sun is yellow."

President Obama is wise to attack the Fox News leviathan directly, it sends a clear message to the public that the fair and balanced network has as much legitimacy and credibility as talk radio.

The White House isn't confining its assault on the cable news network simply to words; it's refusing to provide key administration officials to appear on Fox News programs.

The Obama and Fox News war is an entertaining spectacle for the public, and it benefits both warring factions. The Obama/Fox News tiff attracts as many viewers as a balloon boy or a missing young white girl. Obama also gains from the epic battle, it appeases the left wing of his party and it serves to deflect charges that he's a softy.

Obama's blitzkrieg won't dampen the love of right-wing nut jobs for the cable news network, but it might convince many normal Americans that Fox News is as reliable as a British tabloid.

Robert Paul Reyes is a NewsBlaze writer on Politics, Pop Culture and Pointless Pontificating. Contact him by writing to NewsBlaze.

http://newsblaze.com/story/20091025120249reye.nb/topstory.html

New Book Exposes Pedophilia, Government Officials and Cover-up

American Chronicle
September 04, 2009

A nationwide pedophile ring, run by a pair of Republican powerbrokers, had access to the highest levels of our government, connections to the CIA, and used venerable Boys Town orphanage as a pedophilic reservoir.

http://alexconstantine.blogspot.com/2009/09/new-book-exposes-pedophilia-government.html

Nick Bryant´s writing has recurrently focused on the plight of disadvantaged children in the United States, and he´s been published in numerous national journals, including the Journal of Professional Ethics, Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, Journal of Social Distress and Homelessness, Journal of Health Care for the Poor and Underserved, and Journal of School Health.

Also see: "Robert Wadman's Perjury Party"

The Franklin Scandal : a new documentary and book on the Franklin Cover-up by Nick Bryant:

Documentary Trailer, Part 1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6aqA4Shsjhk

Part 2

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2uLvY3oHCiA

http://www.franklinscandal.com

DUPING LIBERALS THE WAY FOX DUPES MODERATES, PACIFICA'S AMY GOODMAN PROMOTES CIA MIND CONTROL TORTURER

Amy Goodman, unabashed admirer of CIA mind control pioneer Robert Jay Lifton
By Alex Constantine (Repost)

In case you were still wondering, Amy Goodman is not credible.

CIA Mockingbird-journalist followers are used to taking spoon-fed information and this has turned them into credulous dupes.

The funny thing is, they don't know it.

An animal that runs in herds doesn't think about where it is being led. It follows without question. So do the listeners of Democracy Now!

I'll introduce a sub-title at this point because this is too significant for the body of this complaint - this brick wall of words that should have graffiti painted over it in bold, red letters: Robert Jay Lifton is Responsible for Much of the Illicit MKULTRA Experimentation Conducted by the CIA - a Scaife-Funded Torturer Highly Praised by Amy Goodman

This is a particularly offensive act by Amy.

She is an unabashed fan of Dr. Robert Jay Lifton, who is passed off on Democracy Now! as a concerned establishment liberal of some kind, his paper-thin CIA cover story. Dr. Lifton is in fact a guiding light of the far-right, Mockingbird Scaife-funded American Family Foundation, a CIA front. Confused? This far-right-left-wing-CIA-anti-CIA doctor isn't confused politically. He's a manager of perceptions. Suspend disbelief for a moment and the contradictions aren't so glaring. Amy Goodman takes him at his word. Research his past, dig a little (a few minutes on the Internet), and you will find that Lifton is responsible for thousands of atrocities committed against hapless American citizens, tortured in unconscionable CIA mind control experiments initiated by Lifton himself as a founder of the Human Ecology Fund.

The Fund disbursed grants for classified experimentation code-named MKULTRA, an ambitious program that explored the uses of electric shock, LSD, bio-electronics, torture, depatterning (the desctruction of the mind in order to rebuild it), "coercive persuasion" and other forms of mind control atrocity in the 1950s and early '60s.

And that takes some doing.

His famous study, The Nazi Doctors, was written for the CIA. It is, viewed one way, a prescription for CREATING Nazi doctors. It fails to name names.

From the Democracy Now! people, however, we learn none of this. And that is especially galling - Goodman is intentionally keeping the truth from her listeners.

Lifton is PRAISED: "Robert Jay Lifton, distinguished Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry at John Jay College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York as well as a visiting psychiatry professor at Harvard Medical School. He is also the author of several books. His latest book is Superpower Syndrome: America's Apocalyptic Confrontation with the World."

You can almost hear the depths of her awe in the clipped speech and the intensity of her delivery. It's a voice that grows more grating every day to my ear. She can ACT, but not so well. This is Amy Goodman's take on one of the most notorious CIA officers in American history.

Information on Lifton can be found The Search for the Manchurian Candidate, (J. Marks, p. 128), Psychic Dictatorship in the U.S.A. 1995 (Alex Constantine, p. 58), Journey Into Madness (G. Thomas, pp. 344-5, 376).

If you have ever read about the fascist excesses of MKULTRA, consider that the Human Ecology Fund's co-founder, Dr. Lifton, made them all possible.

He is widely considered a "cult expert." In fact, his writing on cults for Scaife's AFF is easily refutable CIA disinformation, CRAP, his stock-in-trade.

Lifton's writing on mind control is also crap and a cover story that conceals widespread and ongoing illicit experimentation by the CIA, the subject of numerous books on the topic ignored by the media-at-large ... and by Pacifica and The Nation, which have foisted this pariah upon the Left without so much as a mention of his past.

Pacifica managers and board members are old enough to recall the release of LSD upon an unsuspecting world by the CIA in the mid-'60s to DISTRACT, DISORIENT, DISCREDIT AND DEFUSE THE ANTI-WAR MOVEMENT, a case I make supported by Army biowarfare documents.

That was the work of Ms Goodman's beloved Robert Jay Lifton.

Once again, paying Pacifica listeners have been fed deliberately misleading information that serves the CIA - on the basis of such frauds, the network has thrived.

I am publicly condemning Pacifica and Amy Goodman.

Let them respond.

(Copies of a version of this complaint were sent privately to every member of the board at KPFK, the Pacifica outlet in Los Angeles. Not one denial came back.)

White House Should Engage Fox, not Ignore it

By Doug Stone
Minn. Star Tribune
October 20, 2009

... President Obama did interviews with all the networks’ Sunday shows last month except Fox. His communications director told The New York Times that “as they (Fox officials) are undertaking a war against Barack Obama and the White House, we don’t need to pretend that this is the way that legitimate news organizations behave.” She also called the network an “arm of the Republican Party.”

Administration officials continued to blast the network in talk shows last weekend although they indicated, according to the Washington Post, that members of the administration would be allowed to appear on Fox in the future.

The administration’s stance struck me as rather childish, like the youngster who didn’t get his way so he took his ball and went home. In Washington politics is a blood sport. The way to deal with the conservative commentators and the factual distortions and accusations that the White House so dislikes is to confront them, not run from them.

Have administration spokespeople all over the Fox airwaves, challenging the commentators with reasonable arguments, facts and persuasion. Show the Fox audience, which by the way contains at least some moderates who might be sympathetic to the President, that Obama is not the monster he is sometimes made out to be by the right. He is, in fact, a bright, thoughtful, restrained man.

And when you have the best presidential communicator in years, put him on Fox up against the Hannitys and Becks and O’Reillys.

As David Carr of The Times points out, “When he (Obama) eventually sat for an interview with Fox News personality Bill O’Reilly two months before the election, it made for great television.”

It is far more difficult for the Fox commentators to throw mud at the President when he is sitting with them in the White House or on the set of their show or live via satellite than when he refuses to engage them.

In my work, I have always advised leaders and officials not to say “no comment,” but to engage in a discussion or rebuttal if attacked or criticized. In the modern era of 24-hour television and the Internet, failure to respond is seen as an admission that the critic is right. Officials often are resistant to such responses because they don’t want to get “in the gutter” with their critics. But responses can be thoughtful, factual and persuasive. They don’t have to have the same tone as the critic.

Fox, which relishes its role as the not-so-loyal opposition, has seen its ratings climb this year. The President and his aides do themselves no good by boycotting Fox and its commentators. Obama is better than that and bigger than that. And he can show the country that he is by using his own great debating and oratorical skills to engage the network which conservatives love, rather than ignoring it.

http://www.startribune.com/yourvoices/65099897.html?elr=KArks7PYDiaK7DUoaK7D_V_eDc87DUiD3aPc:_Yyc:aUU

Meet author Jerry Brown: The "philosopher prince" as CA governor again?

"As you observe modernizing projects in the world today that are operated by multinational corporations without much interference from national governments, do you see fascistic elements there? There are certainly enormous changes imposed without the consent of the governed." - Jerry Brown

Posted By: Carla Marinucci
SF Chronicle Politics Blog
Oct 22, 2009

State Attorney General Jerry Brown's past life as the liberal host of the 90s' We the People radio show came in for a good look this week -- so now's a good time to re-introduce you to author Jerry Brown, whose '90s book "Dialogues" also contains a few memorable quotes that may end up in some 2010 gubernatorial campaign ads.

The "philosopher prince" expounds?

With 40 years in state politics, there's a lot of colorful history, quotes and possibly controversial material out there in the public domaine regarding Brown, the politico whom author Robert Pack called "the philospher prince."

Brown's 1998 book, Dialogues (Berkeley Hills Books, $14.95), is an example: it's his hand-picked collection of deep conversations with some leading academics, activists and intellectuals of the day.

Brown's prologue promises that "you will find that each dialogue illuminates the paradoxes of progress, and opens up cracks in the certitudes of our modern world view."

That's a tall order, but with a used copy going for $8 on Amazon, we went for it. The jacket blurb gushes that Brown "has reevaluated and attacked entrenched ideas, forging a political philosophy that transcends conventional boundaries."

But Dialogues -- along with the recent story on We the People by the Sacramento Bee's reporter Jack Chang -- both dramatize how the 2010 campaign may be a blast from the past. It will work both ways -- for Brown fans, the material illustrates the intellectual curiousity and independence that they say set him apart in the current pack of pols. For conservatives, it's more proof he's still that ultra-liberal, wacky "Moonbeam'' character.

So here's some snippets of vintage Brown's "Dialogue" comments and questions to the big thinkers -- long before he had to worry about mundane stuff like crime and punishment as the state AG, or talking to Average Joe Voter in his next campaign for governor:

*To author and philosopher Noam Chomsky:

*"How would you compare the propaganda system in the so-called free world to an authoritarian system? What are the differences?''

*To Alice Walker, prize-winning author of "Color Purple":

*"Many people are proposing education is the answer. They say it's the answer to poverty; it's the answer to other problems. And yet, in many respects, education is a deeper embedding of alienation."

*"Is whatever left of civil rights, liberalism, activism, whatever, is it now so domesticated that violence and repression aren't needed?"

*To Judi Bari, late "Earth First!" enviromental activist:

*"None of us is an isolated monad with this bundle of private property rights outside the fabric of these larger obligations. So I very much believe that it's time to take another step in the evolution of capitalism. Right now, I don't think the federal government can make that happen...it can't even operate what it owns, so that's not the answer. But we're on a track of real destruction socially and ecologically and we have to understand that as clearly as we can in order to come up with a better set of rules."

*To Wolfgang Sachs, author and enviromental researcher:

*"As you observe modernizing projects in the world today that are operated by multinational corporations without much interference from national governments, do you see fascistic elements there? There are certainly enormous changes imposed without the consent of the governed."

*To Suzanne Arms, natural childbirth crusader, photojournalist and author:

*"There is a massive propaganda system that is invading our unconscience, and its message is what you're talking about ... romanticism."

*To Lt. Col Dave Grossman, author:

*"During the Gulf War, we saw green missile flashes broadcast on CNN. We didn't see Iraqi people, human beings, young boys, many of them Christians, buried alive by vehicles driven by America GIs. If we'd gotten that picture, we might have had a very different reaction to this very popular war."

*"We are exposed to death and violence in so many forms, movies, television, video games. Even our president takes out television commercials to show how committed he is to killing criminals. You might say we have a stronger fascination with death than ever before."

*To Sister Helen Prejean, anti-death penalty activist and author of Dead Man Walking:

*"Over the centuries, there has persisted the sense of an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth, a belief in rightous vengeance, a primordial feeling that the killings of criminals will balance the scales of justice...we are faced with the question of the death penalty nearly every time we vote, either in specific crime-related measures, or by candidates promoting their stand for or against capital punishment. This question is nothing less than a test of our humanity, of how we see ourselves and others and how we define the role of the state.''

*To Paolo Soleri, author and architect:

*Paolo, I want to talk a little bit about your idea of the omega seed."

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/nov05election/detail?entry_id=50095

Betsy McCaughey and the Media

" ... [The New Republic] owner Martin Peretz still stands by her ... "

by Jamison Foser
Media Matters
October 05, 2009

The New Republic's Michelle Cottle examines "the never-ending lunacy of Betsy McCaughey," including a lengthy examination of the largely-forgotten hilarity and insanity that marked McCaughey's time as Lieutenant Governor of New York.

Cottle's article seems to be part of TNR's continuing efforts to make up for inflicting McCaughey's lies on the rest of us in the first place. Just this morning, for example, Politico's Michael Calderone quotes TNR editor Franklin Foer saying of the magazine's publication of McCaughey's falsehood-riddled attack on the Clinton health care bill "an original sin that I hope we can expunge."

Cottle pulls few punches in her profile of McCaughey, beginning with a description of Brookings Institution scholar Henry Aaron's opening statement during a recent debate with McCaughey, which Aaron used to make clear his opponent's dishonesty:

So it is that Aaron finds himself standing in the Crystal Ballroom of the Doubletree Hotel in Arlington, Virginia, running through PowerPoint slides that detail--quote by excruciating quote--McCaughey's reputation as among the most irresponsible, dishonest, and destructive players on the public stage. He starts with Politifact.com's categorization of her commentary as "Pants on Fire," followed by New York Times articles debunking her assertions, followed by complaints from economist Gail Wilensky (adviser to John McCain's presidential campaign and head of Medicare financing under the first President Bush) that "these charges of death panels, euthanasia and withholding care from the disabled give rational, knowledgeable, thoughtful conservatives a bad name." Next comes a denunciation of McCaughey's "fraudulent scare tactics" by John Paris, professor of bioethics at Boston College; AARP executive vice president John Rother's protest that her statements are "rife with gross--even cruel--distortions"; a scolding editorial by The Washington Post about McCaughey's characterization of White House health policy adviser Ezekiel "Zeke" Emanuel as "Dr. Death"; and, to wrap it all up, Stuart Butler, vice president of domestic policy at the conservative Heritage Foundation, expressing dismay that the "personal attacks on good people like Zeke are outrageous. There are real policy issues that should be debated vigorously, but slandering a good person's name is beyond the pale." At one point, the debate moderator felt moved to reach over and give McCaughey's hand a comforting pat.

Cottle concludes that McCaughey's refusal to acknowledge her own dishonesty is what makes her infuriating:

Since her earliest days in the spotlight, McCaughey has presented herself as a just-the-facts-please, above-the-fray political outsider. In reality, she has proved devastatingly adept at manipulating charts and stats to suit her ideological (and personal) ambitions. It is this proud piety concerning her own straight-shooting integrity combined with her willingness to peddle outrageous fictions--and her complete inability to recognize, much less be shamed by, this behavior--that makes McCaughey so infuriating.

I don't think that is actually what makes McCaughey infuriating. There are plenty of liars in the world who nobody gets worked up about -- because their lies don't drive major media coverage about an important issue. That's what's infuriating about Betsy McCaughey: major news organizations give her a platform. They run her op-eds, they host her on television, they quote her, they allow her falsehoods to shape the public debate about health care. They do this despite knowing that she's a liar.

That's what's infuriating: that someone whose defining quality for the past 15 years has been her dishonesty about health care reform should be granted a role shaping the debate over health care reform by major media outlets. And, unfortunately, Cottle doesn't address that issue at all. How did TNR come to publish McCaughey in the first place? Don't they employ fact-checkers? Shouldn't they? How do her false claims continue to make it into print? Why do television news shows book her? What does it say about the news media that they grant McCaughey a platform? That's the important part. If McCaughey was just another crackpot spouting off lies and conspiracy theories while nursing a cup of coffee at the local diner, nobody would care.

But she isn't. And as Calderone notes, TNR owner Martin Peretz still stands by her:

"I do not think Betsy is an intellectual fraud. Not at all," Peretz wrote in an email.

"I have not read the Cottle piece and I do look forward to doing that," he continued. "But the issue that McCaughey went after was one of the most intricate and economically challenging ones that America has faced, as we can see from the present debate."

...

Also, Peretz wrote, "their [the Clinton administration's] worst tactical error was to do up what was I think [was] an eleven-page memo 'rebutting' the New Republic article, a sign of its importance and weight."

The owner of a magazine that published a deeply dishonest attack on the Clinton health care reform efforts thinks it's appropriate for him to lecture the Clinton administration on why they were unsuccessful in combatting the lies he published?

That's the story here. Not Betsy McCaughey's shamelessness -- the irresponsibility of the news organizations that promote her, and the arrogance of someone who lectures others for failing to properly clean up his own mess.

http://mediamatters.org/blog/200910050009