Hi everyone, I just finished reading "The Good News Club" for a research project. I ordered it after I read a review on SOTT. This book was a difficult one to read, especially in light of all the pedophilia findings exposed here on the forum and via SOTT. Essentially what this entire book boils down to is that there is an all out assault on public schooling, with the Christian Nationalists from the top down creating the legal framework to turn the schools into churches. Why? Well because children are easy to scare into the fold!
From the beginning: The separation of church and state has been significantly weakened by Supreme Court decisions which identify religion as "speech." This serves to protect proselytizing on the grounds that we should be "tolerant" of others' viewpoints. As Laura has said this whole theme of "tolerance" for pathologicals is proof that the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
This major change in legal standards occurred after a Supreme Court case called Widmar v. Vincent, in 1981. From the book: "In that case, a state university had excluded a religious group from meeting on campus facilities out of concern that accepting the group would involve the university in a violation of the Establishment Clause..." and the Court decided that, since these individuals were using their speech in a religious way it was actually an issue of free speech ( page 88). Asinine isn't it?
In a 1990 case of Board of Education v. Mergens Sandra Day O'Connor "proposed that there is a 'crucial difference between government speech endorsing religion...and private speech endorsing religion,'" removing another brick in the wall between Church and State which, according to the myth-maker David Barton, never existed. He figures prominently in this book, largely as the wellspring from which most of the Right get their "facts." He's a pretty famous guy on the Far Right circuit, busily creating a new "myth" of the past for a (possible) new matrix to form around. For anyone unfamiliar with him a good analysis of his lies can be found here, at _liarsforjesus.com
From there on out it was all in for the Christian groups (with funding from such family friendly corporations like Blackwater) to start creating pamphlets detailing how to force one's way into the school with legal authority. As Katherine Stewart points out "by 2010...there were 3,439 Good News Clubs, nearly all in public K-6 schools around the country." That's just one such group, among many. And everywhere they go they turn neighbor against neighbor in typical divide and conquer style.
Of course the children are all lured into these after school activities with candy, cookies, pizza and pop. After watching the SOTT report on Scientology and Miviludes I really didn't think I'd be able to finish this book. It's everywhere. There were even undercurrents of pedophilia (gasp) which the author never really delved into.
The chapter on the Textbook Wars really highlights how the character disturbed have risen to prominence on the Texas State Board of Education and decided to completely annihilate any semblance of education in schools. Of course there was hardly any there to begin with, which is where the Christian Nationalists get their strength; they use the truth to advance a lie in typical problem/reaction/solution style. As Katherine Stewart says, "If you can't own it, break it." Shock doctrine.
Here's an exchange that highlights the "feel" of the book:
"'At three and a half, I was saved," she tells me. 'My mom doubted it and asked God to see a change in my behavior. The next day I woke up and told my two-year-old sister that she was going to hell.' Her mother saw this as a sign of Deborah's future. 'My mom said, Huh! I guess evangelism is her gift!'"
So I added this book to my review of literature and decided to post some info on it here, at least the core nuggets that I got out of it. I would recommend it; not highly, but if someone is interested in this topic then this is a good summary of the situation. As for the research I conducted myself I hypothesized that authoritarianism would be highly correlated with moderate Christian Nationalism-type beliefs and discovered that that was true for surveys conducted in 2008. What I didn't expect was that there was a low correlation for extreme Christian Nationalist beliefs such as "the clergy should influence voters/government" etc. From what I've found I would say that the authoritarians are getting flooded with all the shock treatment they can get but weren't quite to the point of accepting such a preposterous solution. That's just me. Time will tell.
From the beginning: The separation of church and state has been significantly weakened by Supreme Court decisions which identify religion as "speech." This serves to protect proselytizing on the grounds that we should be "tolerant" of others' viewpoints. As Laura has said this whole theme of "tolerance" for pathologicals is proof that the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
This major change in legal standards occurred after a Supreme Court case called Widmar v. Vincent, in 1981. From the book: "In that case, a state university had excluded a religious group from meeting on campus facilities out of concern that accepting the group would involve the university in a violation of the Establishment Clause..." and the Court decided that, since these individuals were using their speech in a religious way it was actually an issue of free speech ( page 88). Asinine isn't it?
In a 1990 case of Board of Education v. Mergens Sandra Day O'Connor "proposed that there is a 'crucial difference between government speech endorsing religion...and private speech endorsing religion,'" removing another brick in the wall between Church and State which, according to the myth-maker David Barton, never existed. He figures prominently in this book, largely as the wellspring from which most of the Right get their "facts." He's a pretty famous guy on the Far Right circuit, busily creating a new "myth" of the past for a (possible) new matrix to form around. For anyone unfamiliar with him a good analysis of his lies can be found here, at _liarsforjesus.com
From there on out it was all in for the Christian groups (with funding from such family friendly corporations like Blackwater) to start creating pamphlets detailing how to force one's way into the school with legal authority. As Katherine Stewart points out "by 2010...there were 3,439 Good News Clubs, nearly all in public K-6 schools around the country." That's just one such group, among many. And everywhere they go they turn neighbor against neighbor in typical divide and conquer style.
Of course the children are all lured into these after school activities with candy, cookies, pizza and pop. After watching the SOTT report on Scientology and Miviludes I really didn't think I'd be able to finish this book. It's everywhere. There were even undercurrents of pedophilia (gasp) which the author never really delved into.
The chapter on the Textbook Wars really highlights how the character disturbed have risen to prominence on the Texas State Board of Education and decided to completely annihilate any semblance of education in schools. Of course there was hardly any there to begin with, which is where the Christian Nationalists get their strength; they use the truth to advance a lie in typical problem/reaction/solution style. As Katherine Stewart says, "If you can't own it, break it." Shock doctrine.
Here's an exchange that highlights the "feel" of the book:
"'At three and a half, I was saved," she tells me. 'My mom doubted it and asked God to see a change in my behavior. The next day I woke up and told my two-year-old sister that she was going to hell.' Her mother saw this as a sign of Deborah's future. 'My mom said, Huh! I guess evangelism is her gift!'"
So I added this book to my review of literature and decided to post some info on it here, at least the core nuggets that I got out of it. I would recommend it; not highly, but if someone is interested in this topic then this is a good summary of the situation. As for the research I conducted myself I hypothesized that authoritarianism would be highly correlated with moderate Christian Nationalism-type beliefs and discovered that that was true for surveys conducted in 2008. What I didn't expect was that there was a low correlation for extreme Christian Nationalist beliefs such as "the clergy should influence voters/government" etc. From what I've found I would say that the authoritarians are getting flooded with all the shock treatment they can get but weren't quite to the point of accepting such a preposterous solution. That's just me. Time will tell.
