Terrifying.

Once DefCon (The Campaign to Defend the Constitution) announced that they'd kick off their new book club in March 2006 with Esther Kaplan's WITH GOD ON THEIR SIDE: HOW CHRISTIAN FUNDAMENTALISTS TRAMPLED SCIENCE, POLICY AND DEMOCRACY IN GEORGE W. BUSH'S WHITE HOUSE, I checked out a copy from my local library, post-haste. Unfortunately, I never did finish it in time for the online chat with author Kaplan, but not because it was a boring, tedious read; in fact, just the opposite. I was so shocked, outraged, and just plain pissed off about what I learned in WITH GOD ON THEIR SIDE that I found myself throwing the book down every third page so I could rant to anyone within earshot about GW and his Bible-beating cronies. I mean, I knew that the current administration let their evangelical faith guide their policies; I guess I just didn't realize how far their zealousness had taken them.

Kaplan focuses on several areas in which GW shapes government policy and programs to fit his conservative Christian worldview to an egregious extent: foreign policy (specifically, the "War on Terror" and the conflict in Iraq), science (including stem cell research and any science surrounding sexual matters, such as AIDS and condom effectiveness), faith-based initiatives, gay marriage, and reproductive rights (with an emphasis on contraception, abstinence-only programs, and abortion). Kaplan discusses the impact of Bush's policies both in the United States and abroad (for example, the Global Gag Rule has had a deleterious effect on women in developing nations). The issues are complex, the violations many, yet Kaplan does an excellent job of nailing down the significance of each and showing how they are all interrelated.

Perhaps more interesting than George W. Bush's faith-based politics is his stubbornness, his dogged determination to "stay the course," his unrelenting single-mindedness and his intolerance for inconvenient "facts" (like Stephen Colbert, I believe GW prefers "truthiness" to "book learning"). He is "the decider," and as such, his words are gospel. Should any of his staff or government employees (or any recipients of government largesse) disagree with him, they had better shape up or be prepared to ship out. Kaplan serves up example after example of GW's disdain for dissent. Scientists who pursue controversial research or publish data at odds with the Bush admin's ideology are selectively audited, driven out of office, or have their grant money yanked out from under them. Staffers and cabinet members who dare disagree with Bush in public must renounce their blasphemous ways or risk being thrown overboard to satisfy the conservative sharks that make up GW's base. More so than any president before him, George W. has consistently stifled science, censored his critics, and generally abused his position of power.

WITH GOD ON THEIR SIDE was first published in early 2004, prior to the 2004 Presidential Elections. Although Kaplan is clearly disgusted with the "trampling" of "science, policy, and democracy" that she so eloquently describes, she still manages to maintain a somewhat optimistic tone - perhaps because she hopes that the good citizens of the US will vote this schmoe out of office when given the chance. Unfortunately, we all know what happened in 2004. I can't help but wonder if GW would have been defeated if more voters (and potential voters) had read WITH GOD ON THEIR SIDE before making their dates with the Diebold machines. Like his evangelical base, Bush is a master at concealing his true goals, as well as the unconstitutional activities he uses to pursue them.

I should also note that Kaplan documents her sources exhaustively. Nothing annoys me more than an investigative piece of nonfiction with a sloppy reference list tacked on as an afterthought (or, heavens forbid, such a book that's completely devoid of any references at all!). Kaplan's "Notes" section weighs in at a healthy 35 pages, making it easy for skeptics to track down her resources and verify her claims. (Yes, it's all true, and it's every bit as scary as it seems!) And, while Kaplan may take issue with Bush's flouting of the wall of separation between church and state, she is herself religious - Jewish, to be exact. She's not anti-religion or an atheist (like moi), but rather opposes Bush's evangelical antics because they're an affront to the First Amendment and are more often than not counter-productive in terms of science, foreign policy, human rights, and democracy.

In the words of one reviewer, WITH GOD ON THEIR SIDE is "a truly shocking dossier of recent religious fundamentalist incursions into the soul of American democracy." Every American must read this book - and keep Kaplan's lessons in mind as they head to the polls this fall.

http://www.easyvegan.info/2006/05/17/book-review-esther-kaplans-with-god-on-thei... ( )

Esther Kaplan has written an excellent journalistic account of the crossover between the movement for right-wing Christian politics and the Bush administration in the United States. Many of the issues addressed here have been explored in greater depth elsewhere, but this is the best overview. The book is divided into 10 short chapters on different aspects of the influence of conservative religion on American politics.
“Yes, Virginia, it is a holy war” focuses on the support for Bush’s war agenda by right-wing Christians since 9-11. These political evangelicals have been some of the strongest voices for conflating Bush’s so called “war on terror” with a cultural and religious war between Christianity and Islam. Also interesting here is the unlikely confederation of evangelical Christians and the state of Israel in mid-east policy.
The next two chapters provide general background on faith-based initiatives and the history of George Bush’s ties to conservative Christian politics. “Weird Science” focuses on the efforts to constrain scientific research and education with religious doctrine. The lead story is of the administration attempt to have the National Parks Service sell a book arguing that the Grand Canyon was created by Noah’s flood. But more troubling is strong pressure being put on the scientific review panels which oversee funding of basic research (particularly at the NIH) to conform to standards of conservative Christian morality, and the placing of misleading or false information on issues like birth control in government publications and web-sites.
“Good-bye Roe” and “Whose gay agenda?” outline the campaigns against legal abortion and gay rights, particularly gay marriage. Less well known is the story in the next chapter, “AIDS, born again.” Kaplan details a concerted campaign to strip programs for contraception (condoms) and clean needles from federally funded AIDS prevention programs. The religious conservatives driving social policy prefer to focus exclusively on abstinence and to frame the problem of AIDS as one of personal responsibility, i.e. gays and drug-uses get what’s coming to them.
“The Purity Brigades” is perhaps the most interesting chapter, giving a close account of the rise of abstinence only programs. These highly limited sex-ed programs have received a massive boost of funding through the faith-based initiative. Although nominally independent these programs are often tied closely to evangelical churches and to so call “crisis pregnancy centers” whose sole purpose is to turn young women against the option of abortion. Particularly disturbing is that people who run these programs seem totally unconcerned that they are manifestly useless in preventing teen pregnancy. The goal is not to lessen unwanted pregnancy, but to project the correct moral message (at least by their conservative standards) about the evils of sex outside marriage.
“The global crusade” shows how the administration has used control of foreign aid money to press Christian morality not only in the US but around the world. And the final chapter deals with the campaign to use court appointments to shift change the law. ( )

religion and politics, Christian fundamentalism