[quote]
It was an e-mail we weren’t meant to see. Not for our eyes were the notes that showed White House staffers taking two-hour meetings with Christian fundamentalists, where they passed off bogus social science on gay marriage as if it were holy writ and issued fiery warnings that “the Presidents [sic] Administration and current Government is engaged in cultural, economical, and social struggle on every level”—this to a group whose representative in Israel believed herself to have been attacked by witchcraft unleashed by proximity to a volume of Harry Potter. Most of all, apparently, we’re not supposed to know the National Security Council’s top Middle East aide consults with apocalyptic Christians eager to ensure American policy on Israel conforms with their sectarian doomsday scenarios.[\quote]
I also find this scary, if it’s true, but beyond waiting until the election and voting the bozos out, what can be done? They can talk to whatever nutjobs and halfwits they want, just like us.
Is this really how they think? More to the point, is this how the born-again GWB thinks? Is it?
(If what they’re describing really is a precondition for the End Times, then the appropriate response would be to forcibly evacuate Jerusalem and nuke it with dirty bombs, so thoroughly that nobody could go near the site for another thousand years.)
(Besides, Solomon built the Temple, not David. But that might be the Voice’s mistake.)
I don’t see a problem with them meeting with the White House, anymore than with any special interest group meeting with the White House. I think they’re wackos, but wackos have the right to lobby too, I guess.
When I worked for a Senator (not exactly analogous, sure, but close enough), we took meetings with a lot of people from our state who were either a little nutty or whom we didn’t agree with. Taking a meeting doesn’t imply accepting what those in the meeting are saying. It just means you listen to them, say “we’ll keep your thoughts in mind,” and let them go after a half-hour or an hour. No big deal.
Whether or not I like the Bush Administration’s decision making process (or decisions), I do not see any reason why they shouldn’t meet with various interest groups. I wish they would see more interest groups, not fewer.
Well, despite the hysterical tone of the Village Voice article, at least Perlstein had the integrity to point out that
In other words, after all the confabulating and conveying of prophetic messages from the kooks, the White House went ahead and acted against their wishes.
This might be a reason for people who oppose the “Christian Zionists” to also oppose the re-election of President Bush, but there is hardly anything unethical or morally objectionable to White House staff members meeting with some group.
This is a non-story.
I think what’s got Reeder concerned is the belief that only some nuts will get free access to senior White House officials, while other nuts (those with nutty views the Administration doesn’t subscribe to) will get ignored, obfusicated, and generally barred from those selfsame officials. Kinda like Dick Cheney’s secret energy task force meetings, y’know?
In a country where the separation of church and state is law, I’d be disturbed if religious belief were used as the reason to make something illegal that was otherwise legal!
You have a unique interpretation of the First Amendment. Fortunately, that interpreation is not shared by the courts. You might want to read the whole amendment sometime, especially the part after “establishment of religion”:
Yeah, but that’s just standard operating proceedure. Lets say you’ve got 4 different groups trying to get meetings.
Nuts who generally support your views
Sane people who generally support your views
Sane people who generally oppose your views
Nuts who generally oppose your views.
You’re going to definately meet with 2, and probably even with 3, before you talk to 1 and 4, but you’re going to meet with 1 before 4, just because you and 4 don’t have anything to talk about. (You and 3 probably don’t have anything to talk about either, but 3 probably has enough clout that you at least worry about what they’re doing.)