Jeff Sharlet's Book "The Family" Makes NYT Best Seller List
(Don't know what NEW DU'ers would think of this...but this was BIG NEWS on DU ...WAY BACK...
Does Anyone Remember who was here on DU back in the Old Days? ...When INFORMATION WAS KING...and that THIS was BIG NEWS???
==================================
Jeff Sharlet's Book "The Family" Makes NYT Best Seller List
Frederick Clarkson printable version print page Bookmark and Share
Sun Jul 06, 2008 at 09:55:06 PM EST
Jeff Sharlet's book The Family has made the "extended" New York Times Bestseller List, coming in at #31. out of 35. Congratulations, Jeff! This is also a considerable victory for the Greater Blogopshere which has helped to drive sales, even as the establishment press has mostly ignored it so far.
My review of Jeff Sharlet's new book, The Family: the Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power appears in the current issue of The Public Eye. Here is an exerpt, on the flip:
----------------------------------
Jeff Sharlet's new book The Family: the Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power, is in the best tradition of American investigative journalism. Sharlet, a scholar of religion based at New York University, writes with insight, verve and, thankfully, none of the bogus punditry and bad sociology that often passes for informed discourse about the contemporary role of religion in public life. His refreshing narrative style is as engaging as his groundbreaking information.
The story begins when Sharlet is invited to join a Christian community in Virginia, (suburban Washington D.C., really), called Ivanwald. It turns out to be an entry level training facility for a network of what Sharlet calls "elite fundamentalists" that operates partly in the open, but mostly behind the scenes of power for much of the American Century --and into the present day.
The Family takes us down some familiar roads of American history, bringing fresh perspectives on such influential evangelists as Jonathan Edwards, Charles Finney, and Billy Graham. We also gain significant new understandings of contemporary political leaders including Senators Sam Brownback and Hillary Clinton as well as former Senator Dan Coats, (Republican of Indiana), John Ashcroft, and Jack Kemp; and religious right leaders Bill Bright, Ted Haggard, and Chuck Colson.
Sharlet explores the role of a distinct “elite fundamentalism” through our history and culture, and illustrates how it currently operates at top levels of American business, government, and the military. This may come as a shock to those for whom overt fundamentalism in the federal government was not apparent before the administration of George W. Bush. But Sharlet demonstrates its role during the Cold War and since. We learn for example, of how “charitable choice,” the legislative precedent for George W. Bush’s “faith-based initiative,” stemmed from ideas incubated by The Family, and was sponsored by Family members, Republican Senators John Ashcroft and Dan Coats—with an assist from Family associate Senator Hillary Clinton.
Originally called The Fellowship, now The Family, the organizational roots of this elite fundamentalism was a powerful corporate clique, founded in Seattle in the 1930s as a virulently anti-labor group backed by local big business leaders. Now The Family is headquartered on Washington, D.C.’s Embassy Row.
Read the whole review, here.
http://www.talk2action.org/story/2008/5/27/13480/6509
= new reply since forum marked as read
"Mind blower"?
Funny typo. 
I think I posted a couple of OP.s on the book.
Instead we were spending Dems Money paying that guy/Guru about "How We should FRAME Dem ISSUES!
was that about.
If we Dems had focused on WHAT WE KNEW...INFO instead of going with "THINK TANK CRAP" ...couldn't we HAVE CHANGED THE WORLD?
(anyway..that's what I have nightmares about ...these days)It gets so horrific...one needs to take a break from it. BUT...if we don't force ourselves to read "opposing views" then aren't we just "clones fed by Wolf Blitzer?" 
posted here late last year, but has since been removed from Youtube, which claimed that these (Ralph Reed) networks around the Bush administration produced almost 100,000 phone calls whenever Bush said something that wasn't properly respectful of Israel's security needs in the MidEast vis a vis Iraq and, we would assume, the "WMD" situaiton.
Those 100K phone calls were thought to be the voice of the End Timer community which rose up out of the books written by Timothy LeHaye, a phone bank that might have been at Reed's command. LeHaye also donated tens of millions from the sale of that series of books he wrote, The Left Behind series, to the Christian universities which later became practically the sole contracted staffing sources for the War Profiteers who took root in the Green Zone and failed the Iraqis and U.S. troops so horribly while robbing old Uncle Sugar of billions. I actually met one of those contracted "security trainers" somewhere in the long-term care milieu once - you. would. not. believe. THE. attitude!!! Wow. 
It would be awesome to listen to Brownback's radio propaganda shows from that period. I keep wondering if, since they were made on government property, they'd be subject to FOIA.
I was against the war on Iraq from the first, but I completely understand how the comprehension and perceptions of the people of America were so completely and thoroughly under-mined, not only by the mainstream media propaganda machine, but also by how many hundreds of thousands of people right in their own midst, lead by the likes of SUBSIDY-Sam Brownback, who were, over the year+ since 9/11, reinforcing war talk with rewards of all kinds and punishing anyone who even asked questions or suggested making a commitment to peace. It would take only a very few people to set something like that off, in a conscious way, after that it would perpetuate and reinforce itself out of de facto elements in community situations.
Remember that Daddy Bush set Junior to be the political shephard of the Christian Right Wing, right after Junior stopped showing up for duty in the TX ANG. The pay-off for Junior and the "Christians", amongst other things like the political capital/opportunity to privatize Social Security, was also supposed to be at least one SCOTUS position that would kill Roe v. Wade AND make a permanent under-class out of our LGBTQ brothers and sisters. Anyone who thinks that's a stretch should acquaint themselves with the likes of Kansas City's own Lou Engle, courted by Newt Gingrich during the primaries, who is said to have spoken on the possibility of Civil War II against Pro-Choice and against Gay Marriage. I personally think that was the source of some of the FIRE imagery we were seeing in religious campaign ads against BO during the last campaign season.
It's that "Christian" cohort out there who helped Junior make the Iraq War happen from whom we're hearing positive stuff about war on Iran now.
And...we see it play out day after day with the REPUGS in their Voting in Congress...but we also see NOW that frightened Democrats go ALONG WITH IT!
That's what's really disturbing. Why shouldn't DEMOCRATIC IDEOLOGY at this point in time...be a TRUMP CARD over that old Reagan/Bush Ideology which has sent us into BANK FAILURES and down the Path to UNDO all DEM GAINS from FDR Forward?
It's like we Dems IGNORED what the RW FASCIST LEANINGS were DOING ....and NOW we are told that Democrats are AFRAID!
How CAN IT BE...that Demorats are Afraid when we managed to Elect Bill Clinton for Two Terms and Barack Obama for Two Terms and we are STILL FIGHTING against FILTH FROM THE RIGHT WING?
