Customer Reviews

With God On Their Side: How Christian Fundamentalists Trampled Science, Policy, And Democracy In George W. Bush's White House

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

In this journalistic masterpiece, Esther Kaplan makes it clear that Bush & Co. has just about succeeded in transforming the US government into a Christo-fascist juggernaut, endangering our freedoms and the welfare of the world. A lucid analyst and highly scrupulous reporter (and a most gifted writer), Kaplan describes, in harrowing detail, the Bush regime's ongoing subversion of American democracy. Here is the whole shocking story that should by now be known to every rational American, and yet the US press has steadfastly refused to deal with it: Bush/Cheney's religious war against Iraq, the "Christian Zionist" foundation of the regime's catastrophic Mid-East policy, Bush/Cheney's vast faith-based assault on science, the regime's fervent efforts to impose its puritanical morality on everybody else, the use of our tax dollars to support the proselytizing work of pro-Bush Christian groups, and on and on.

Concerning the grave threat posed by Bush/Cheney, there are a lot of excellent books and documentaries available today (including mine, if I may say so). If you decide to buy just one (or just one more), get Esther Kaplan's book--and do it now.

This book documents the religious right's attack on America through George W. Bush's reign of terror. Even Ronald Reagan (who was the first modern president to court the religious right in order to win the Republican presidential nomination) never had attempted to divide America through religion to this extent.

From John Ashcroft's tenure as Attorney General to the establishment of a White House office for religious outreach, this administration has reached new lows in religious zealotry. Good government policy has thus become defined as only what conveniently matches the Bush administration's own religious convictions.

The unprecedented errors in government publications are allowed because the religious right honestly is not interested in having a realistic public policy discussion. They want to condemn and punish ANYBODY who does not share their totalitarian world view. This includes people of faith who WANT everybody to enjoy religious freedom.

Bush may be sincere in his own religious convictions, but I cannot see this same belief system being of actual moral use if he is trampling the First Amendment rights of myself and other citizens--who are also a part of the America he is supposed to work for.

For all Bush's fancy education, he has selectively forgotten that the First Amendment also protects the religious rights of other people, and also people who do not want to engage in any religious practices (organized or otherwise).

The First Amendment was enacted because the framers had personal experience with theocracies in England and the colonies; a person who was outside of the state-sponsored religion automatically became less of a person, and (virtually) ceased to exist as a being.

If the president of America is not interested in learning from American history, we are in deeper trouble than initially imagined.

Still looking for evidence to give your family and friends that George W. Bush has got to go? This book doesn't take cheap political shots, it just lays out all the connections between the Religious Right and everyday activities at the White House -- from John Ashcroft leading morning prayer sessions for the people who report to him at the Department of Justice to a battle over creationist psuedo-science books being promoted in a Grand Canyon park service store.

It may seem like George W. Bush's major effects on American life has been in the area of foreign policy, but Kaplan's well-reported, well-written book shows how political appointees from the country's most conservative groups are filling advisory councils and approval committees -- and, often unseen, making shocking changes to our national policies about condoms, access to contraception, and healthcare research and funding. As even the Reagans know, this administration is hazardous to your health!

I'd recommend this book to anyone who cares about the future of science policy, education, and health research in the United States -- which is probably everyone reading this review.

I am only writing this review because it seems to me that most of the preceding reviews of this book were quite negative,or seemed less reviews than somewhat obscure editorials.
(By the way Ms Kaplan's sentence p.219 reads "On January 22, 2001, THE TWENTIETH ANNIVERSARY OF Roe v,Wade, it is you who has made the error, if you can't read a sentence perhaps you shouldn't try a whole book!)
I thought this book was great. It honestly recounts exactly how right wing religious thought has made its way into American politics.
This book scared me Imagine Sex Education being taught by conservative christian ministries where abortion and condoms are unmentionable not to mention ignoring gays. Imagine Aids policy decided by christian ideologues who stress "abstinence."
Speaking of Aids; counsel appointments and the Aids policy in general under George Bush, Kaplan writes'
" Rather than seek advice from the aids researchers, doctors, social workers, advocates and people living with HIV who had set the AIDS agenda in the past, he(Bush) would listen to pharmaceutical executives intent on preserving drug profits and social conservatives whose abhorrence of gay and extramarital sex was matched only by their lack of AIDS expertise."
I found this chilling especially in the wake of Fema and Brown.Imagine a global Aids policy teaching Africans that abstinence is the key to safe sex. That these things are actually happening is appalling, and there is much more, and it's all disturbing to say the least.Estar Kaplan should be applauded for this terse yet well documented expose . Read it you won't believe it but it's true.

Esther Kaplan is prescient. If this book had come out before the recent presidential election, and her thoughts had been widely diseminated, the American public would have a very different view of what was, in fact, happening in our country. On November 3, every democrat was running around screaming, "how did this happen?". Esther Kaplan already knew.

The extent of intermingling between this administration and the hardcore right wing is novel, and bizarre, when one considers the dearth of media coverage on this very issue. Esther Kaplan gives the reader a map to who really controls this government and their plan. A must read.

Faith-based foreign policy from Israel to Iraq." So opens, Chapter 1, of this detailed, well-documented investigation and expose on how the Bush White House has partnered with the Christian right to put their fundamentalist worldview and political agenda at the heart of foreign policy and public health policy. The following chapters include "Christian Nation: From Bush's faith-based initiative to creationism in our public parks, the administration edges toward theocracy; Most Favored Constituency: How the Christian right came to dominate the Republican Party and the administration of George W. Bush; Weird Science: Faith healers, fake data, censorship, and other hallmarks of Christian science in the Bush administration; Good-Bye Roe: How to gut abortion rights in four easy steps; Whose Gay Agenda?: A president who was soft on gays finds religion and joins the antimarriage crusade; Aids, Born Again: AIDS was never a Republican issue, but Bush gave it a Christian makeover; The Purity Brigades: The Bush administration's one-size-fits-all abstinence agenda saves soles, not lives; The Global Crusade: Taking cues from the Vatican, Bush exports 'family values' abroad; Staking The Courts: Building permanent conservative rule on the federal bunch." This constantly amazing and frightening must-read ends with the well-supported conclusion that "Our governing Republican Party is unmistakably in the grips of its own Christian theocratic base...but there has so far been too little public debate about its corrosive effects on our democracy."

This book will help you understand the Christian right's coded language of "moral values," their goals and motivations, their political strategies and tactics, their political organization and methods, their political influence and power. You will better understand the resulting insidious effects on our society, the diminution of our personal freedoms, the undervaluing of empirical rationality and its benefits, and the loss of commitment to religious tolerance, cultural diversity, and democratic plurality. After reading this book, you will be better informed and motivated to actively join the growing debate.

Although its content scared me silly, I enjoyed this book. Kaplan is a skilled reporter who exhaustively probes the pervasive influence of the religious right on the Bush Administration. (And I have to take exception to an earlier, negative review posted here. You would think that someone who supposedly earned a Ph.D. from Harvard would know how to spell "dichotomy" and "mantra.")

The White House is fully under American evangelicalism's fundamental Christian "Religious Right" - meanwhile more than many an Arabian government group under Islamic right. A morning prayer hour is always held at the Department of Justice, thanks to John Ashcroft (influential besides him as main-zealots: "Godfather" Richard Vigurie and TV religion dealer Pat Robertson or Bush favorites Grover Norquist and Karl Rove). Twice-weekly bible classes in the White House proceed intensely against condoms and abortion as well as for a necessary crusade (thanks to Cheney) against an unbelieving Iraq (an exhausted budget can never send a reminder to return to reason). Abstinence of alcohol is palavered or all strengths are mobilized enthusiastically for the anti Darwinism topic, mentioned: "Creationism": God, the creator has managed everything (also the Bush family) with "Intelligent Design" - the evolution teaching is rubbish because that cannot be found in the Bible. If one has made arguing religiously for the populace palatable (supported by obedient school lessons, intimidated press and a judiciary, sharply intervening at discovered anti-religiousness) then one has a free journey bill for further crusades, obtained by devious means. The reviewer wants ardently that European journalists and politicians will take a clear distance to this hustle and bustle instead of orientating oneself at such reactionary developments. Unfortunately, the danger is not unreal, that with such a Bible amorous affair a fiery Apocalypse is prepared via the intermediate stage of hypocritical financial obtaining and rigid personnel policy - in government groups remained regrettably infantile. Not only keeping the military-energy complex alive for well-earning directors, but maybe initiating a global Christian-Arabian Apocalypse could overwhelm all of us. In view of the surname of the author "Esther Kaplan" I have to remember, that a "Metin Kaplan" from Germany, Cologne, who intended to found a theocracy (also with a God on his side), was taken into custody first, then was expelled from the Federal Republic (now sentenced to a life-long prison-stay in Turkey). A sensible verdict ...

A useful reference for tracking the fundamentalist assault on American government. Chapters survey specific areas of public policy, and show how personnel changes by Bush administration are resulting in strong rightward shift led by fundamentalist zealots. Details are presented cleanly and without embellishment. All the usual suspects are present, from godfather Richard Vigurie, to tv huckster Pat Robertson, to cop-on-the-beat John Ashcroft, along with names you may never have heard. However, the book's main virtue, its unembellished factual account, also militates against the impact and staying power. Put simply, With God on Their Side lacks both analytic depth and perspective, the sort of context that would properly frame the threat this neo-theocratic movement presents to liberal democracy and individual rights. After all, Grover Norquist, the darling of the Business Roundtable, may want to repeal 100 years of progressive legislation, but many of these folks would like to dump the last 500, and replace natural history with the Book of Genesis, the Constitution with the Ten Commandments, and humanity's future with the fiery Apocalypse -- now let's see how this agenda sells among their Wall Street facilitators. The movement is so rife with money-grubbing hypocrisy and anti-science cant, I wish Kaplan had become more personally engaged. Nonetheless, With God on Their Side remains a useful source for presenting the facts and nothing but.

Perhaps the best quote ever to describe the Bush administration came from George W. Bush's original pick for Faith Czar, John DiIulio, who said, "What you've got is everything - and I mean everything - being run by the political arm" The Bush administration has wrote the book on abusing Democracy and circumventing checks and balances. Rather than worry about governance the Bush Admin runs a 24/7, year in year out campaign to appease its base, satisfy the lobbyists and find wedge issues to lure new constituencies. One of the most disgusting incidents of pandering was the reinstatment of the "Mexico City Policy" which forbid any foreign organization from receiving U.S. dollars if they so much as mention anything concerning abortion even if it's done with their own money. It wasn't so much the reinstatement that was foul it was Bush's ignorance of the policy itself as Esther Kaplan wrote, "It seemed that President Bush, in an effort to offer a `symbolic gesture' to his domestic political supporters, had casually imposed an international policy he hadn't bothered to read - one that would have profound effects on women around the globe"

This is essentially everything that's wrong with the Bush presidency. He just doesn't appear to care. It doesn't matter that "six years after Texas mandated abstinence, teen pregnancy rates were one and a half times the nation average" It doesn't matter that discouraging the use of condoms has led to a rise in STD's and in countries like Romania an increase in unwanted pregnancies and YES an increase in abortions. John DiIulio made the mistake of believing that the efficacy of Bush's faith based programs was important. It isn't. Results are irrelevant. Satisfying the base and maintaining ideological purity is the ONLY important thing. Every day government health and science experts are replaced by political hacks. What happened with Michael Brown and hurricane Katrina was only one high profile example of Bush placing totally unqualified supporters into important government positions. Rather than show contrition over the debacle he almost immediately nominated the embarrassing Harriett Miers to the Supreme Court.

The author points out that George W. Bush saw himself as a man of destiny even before he was elected as he was quoted telling televangelist James Robison, "I feel like God wants me to run for president. I can't explain it, but I sense my country is going to need me" The fact that he won despite losing the popular vote only increased his belief that his position as president was a divine appointment. It's no wonder that Bush has so little patience for dissenting opinion when his efforts are guided by God. On the Iraq war the author writes, "Each scrap of intelligence that supported invasion would have leaped from the page, an affirmation of God's will, while any intelligence that refuted such a necessity would have been received with suspicion" This pattern of infallibility is likely behind Bush's constant appointment of unqualified candidates often done by making an end run around Congress. Candidates are appointed to reflect Bush's godly worldview.

"With God on Their Side" focuses on the appointments of conservative evangelicals to policy making decisions particularly in the areas of health care, science and foreign policy making. (For a more detailed view on the science portion read `The Republican War on Science' by Chris Mooney) Political ideologues have been inserted while experienced professionals are pushed out the door to the detriment of everyone. The `Left Behind' book series by Tim LeHaye casts the United Nations as the villain in Satan's plan. Unfortunately many Evangelicals take the fictional series seriously and thanks to their influence in government the United States has been sending more than a few anti-UN representatives to the UN. The U.S. has been pushing for abortion and contraceptive rules overseas that are far more restrictive than anything in the United States, so restrictive in fact that the United States was forced to create alliances that "included nations suspected of supporting or harboring terrorist operations, such as Sudan, Syria, and Libya, along with `axis of evil' member Iran" In trying to strong arm Asian countries "not a single Asian country backed the extreme U.S. stance, even nations with conservative abortion laws such as the Philippines and Iran" Yes, the United States is sometimes too restrictive even for Iran.

This book is a must read for those who have any concern over the direction the United States is headed in. The author writes, "The Christian right movement, as a whole, is not enamored of democracy" and this would apply to tradition conservativism as a whole (just read The Conservative Mind by Russell Kirk to see a 600 page attack on Democracy). On the Republican tactics Kaplan writes, "The goal is not to engage your opponents in the public square, but to kneecap them or send them into exile" The goal is to entrench Conservativism through the courts and in public funding to the point where Republican's will own policy long after Bush's term is over. "With God on their Side" isn't a short book but it's packed with plenty of info to send a shiver down the spine of anyone who believes that an American theocracy is a path we seriously need to avoid.