All Those Hysterical Right Wing Nuts Concerned With Obama’s Czars Should Really Be Concerned Because The Blogging Cossacks Are Coming!
See Below: “Joe Wilson's Dirty Health-Care Secret”
Witch Hunt Continues: Fox Goes After Sunstein With False Smears
http://mediamatters.org/items/200909100053
Continuing Fox News' witch hunt against Obama administration nominees and officials whom they have labeled "czars," Glenn Beck falsely claimed that Cass Sunstein, President Obama's nominee to head the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, has said "you must be an organ donor" and "you should not be able to remove rats from your home if it causes them any pain," and Fox News reporter James Rosen also distorted Sunstein's writings about organ donation and animal rights. In fact, Sunstein advocated for reforms to the organ donation system, but not for mandatory donation, and he did not advocate against rat removal.
Beck falsely claimed Sunstein "believes that everyone must be an organ donor"
From the September 9 edition of Fox News' Glenn Beck:
BECK: Here's what the regulatory czar does, in case you don't know. This is the most powerful man around. He is the most powerful invisible man you'll ever see. He regulates laws -- past, present, and future.
What does he do? What does that mean? It means he can take a law -- he doesn't have to pass anything, he just takes the law -- imagine all of the laws on a big board and they're just nothing but dials and knobs. He just tweaks them.
Now, what does that mean for you? Well, from a man who doesn't believe we should be eating meat, from a man who believes that animals should be provided attorneys in the courts of law, a man who believes that everyone must be an organ donor, a man that believes that you should not be able to remove rats from your home if it causes them any pain.
In fact, Sunstein recommended organ donor policies that would save lives while "preserving freedom"
Sunstein said states should consider either presumed consent or mandated choices. In Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth and Happiness, Sunstein and Richard Thaler wrote that in order to save more lives through organ donation, "[w]e think that states should give considerable thought to presumed consent or mandated choice, on the grounds that either approach would be likely to save many lives while also preserving freedom" (Page 180).
Under "presumed consent" policy, citizens "would be presumed to be consenting donors," and could "easily" opt-out. From Nudge:
A policy that can pass libertarian muster by our standards is called presumed consent. Presumed consent preserves freedom of choice, but it is different from explicit consent because it shifts the default rule. Under this policy, all citizens would be presumed to be consenting donors, but they would have the opportunity to register their unwillingness to donate, and they could do so easily. We want to underline the word easily, because the harder it is to register your unwillingness to participate, the less libertarian the policy becomes. (Page 177)
Under a "mandated choice" policy, individuals could be required to make their preference known in order to renew driver's license. From Nudge:
Although presumed consent is an extremely effective way to increase the supply of organs available for transplant, it may not be an easy sell politically. Some will object to the idea of "presuming" anything when it comes to such a sensitive matter. We are not sure that these objections are convincing, but this is surely a domain in which forced choosing, or what is referred to in this domain as mandated choice, has considerable appeal.
Mandated choice could be implemented through a simple addition to the driver's license registration scheme used in many states. With mandated choice, renewal of your driver's license would be accompanied by a requirement that you check a box stating your organ donation preferences. Your application would not be accepted unless you had checked one of the boxes. The options might include "yes, willing to donate" and "no, unwilling to donate." (Page 180)
Rosen misrepresents Sunstein's position on "routine removal" of organs
Rosen selectively quoted Sunstein's comments from Nudge on "routine removal." From the September 9 edition of Special Report:
ROSEN: [T]he professor said it was, quote, "not impossible to defend" the routine removal of organs even from living patients with "certain hopeless conditions" on the basis that the state "own the organs. But Sunstein was willing to settle for "presumed consent," which would force citizens to opt out of organ donation.
In fact, Sunstein said "routine removal" "violates a generally accepted principle" that people "should be able to decide what happens to their bodies
Rosen ignored Sunstein's comment about personal choice in the passage on "routine removal." In Nudge, Sunstein and Thaler did say it is "not impossible to defend the routine removal of organs even from living patients with certain hopeless conditions on the basis that the state owns the organs." However, in the next paragraph, they stated: "Such an approach violates a generally accepted principle, which is that within broad limits, individuals should be able to decide what is to be done with and to their bodies." From Nudge (emphasis added):
The most aggressive approach, which is more than a default rule, is called routine removal. Under this regime, the state owns the rights to body parts of people who are dead or in certain hopeless conditions, and it can remove their organs without asking anyone's permission. Though it may sound grotesque, routine removal is not impossible to defend. In theory, it would save lives, and it would do so without intruding on anyone who has any prospect for life.
Although this approach is not used comprehensively by any state, many states do use the rule for corneas (which can be transplanted to give some blind patients sight). In some states, medical examiners performing autopsies are permitted to remove corneas without asking anyone's permission. Where this rule has been used, the supply of corneal transplants has increased dramatically. In Georgia, routine removal increased the number of corneal transplants from twenty-five in 1978 to more than one thousand in 1984. The widespread practice of routine removal of kidneys would undoubtedly prevent thousands of premature deaths, but many people would object to a law that allows government to take parts of people's bodies when they have not agreed, in advance to the taking. Such an approach violates a generally accepted principle, which is that within broad limits, individuals should be able to decide what is to be done with and to their bodies. (Page 177).
Beck, Rosen distort Sunstein's comments about removing rats
Beck falsely claimed Sunstein said "you should not be able to remove rats from your home if it causes them any pain." From Glenn Beck:
BECK: Now, what does that mean for you? Well, from a man who doesn't believe we should be eating meat, from a man who believes that animals should be provided attorneys in the courts of law, a man who believes that everyone must be an organ donor, a man that believes that you should not be able to remove rats from your home if it causes them any pain.
I mean, I'm fond -- you know, when I was 8 -- of the Michael Jackson song "Ben," I mean, just as much as any 8-year-old kid was. But do you really want a police officer, you know, telling Ben, who's just shown up in your home, "Ben, you have a right to remain silent. If they try to remove you from the home, you have the right to an attorney. And if you can't afford an attorney, Ben, one will be provided for you."
Rosen: "Rats could attack us in the sewers and court systems if all of Cass Sunstein's writings became law." Rosen also referred to Sunstein's writing on rats. From Special Report:
ROSEN: Rats could attack us in the sewer and court systems if all of Cass Sunstein's writings became law. The Harvard Law professor and Obama choice to lead the OMB's Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs argued in 2004 that animals represented by human beings should be able to sue human beings and has even questioned whether humans can legally expel rats from our homes if doing so causes the rat's distress.
In fact, Sunstein weighed animal rights against "strong justification" for "eliminating" rats
Sunstein: "At the very least, people should kill rats in a way that minimizes distress and suffering." In the introduction to a book of essays he co-edited, Sunstein discussed the argument that rats may have a right against being expelled from a house. However, he did not assert that rats do, in fact, have such a right. Indeed, he noted that from a utilitarian perspective, "[i]f human beings are at risk of illness and disease from mosquitoes and rats, they have a strong justification, perhaps even one of self-defense, for eliminating or relocating them." From the introductory chapter to Animal Rights: Current Debates and New Directions, titled "Introduction: What Are Animal Rights?"
WHICH ANIMALS HAVE RIGHTS?
There is an obvious question in the background. We have seen that animals might have rights in a minimal sense or in a much larger sense. But people do not see all animals in the same way. They might agree that human beings should protect the interests of dogs, cats and dolphins; they are unlikely to think the same about ants, mosquitoes, and cockroaches; rats, mice, and squirrels seem to be an intermediate case. It is often objected, to those who believe in animal rights, that their position would lead to truly ludicrous conclusions -- to the (ridiculous?) suggestion that people cannot kill ants or mosquitoes, or rid their houses of rats and cockroaches.
Those who emphasize suffering have a simple answer to this objection: Everything depends on whether and to what extent the animal in question is capable of suffering. If rats are able to suffer, then their interests are relevant to the question of how, and perhaps even whether, they can be expelled from houses. At the very least, people should kill rats in a way that minimizes distress and suffering.These claims should not be taken as radical or extreme; many people already take steps in just this direction. On this view, if ants and mosquitoes have no claim to human concern -- if they can be killed at our whim -- it is because they suffer little or not at all. Here we have some empirical questions about the capacities of creatures of various sorts. And utilitarians should certainly be willing to engage in a degree of balancing. If human beings are at risk of illness and disease from mosquitoes and rats, they have a strong justification, perhaps even one of self-defense, for eliminating or relocating them. (Page 12)
Attacks against Sunstein part of Fox witch hunt for "czars"
Fox has led charge against Obama administration officials they have called "czars." AsMedia Matters for America has documented, Fox News personalities have been leading the charge against Sunstein, Van Jones, John Holdren, and other Obama administration officials and nominees they have described as "czars" -- often by unearthing and criticizing statements the officials had made in the past rather than critiquing their job performance or credentials for those positions -- with Sean Hannity, for example, declaring that "my job starting tomorrow night is to get rid of every other ['czar']."
Following Van Jones resignation, Beck and Fox Business' Eric Bolling listed Sunstein, others as targets. On his twitter feed, Beck urged followers to "Find everything you can on Cass Sunstein, Mark Lloyd, and Carol Browner." Similarly, Bolling stated: "Van Jones resigns. ... How about J Holdren Science Czar (mass sterilization) and Cass Susstein [sic]."
Transcripts
From the September 9 edition of Fox News' Glenn Beck:
BECK: Here's what the regulatory czar does, in case you don't know. This is the most powerful man around. He is the most powerful invisible man you'll ever see. He regulates laws -- past, present, and future.
What does he do? What does that mean? It means he can take a law -- he doesn't have to pass anything, he just takes the law -- imagine all of the laws on a big board and they're just nothing but dials and knobs. He just tweaks them.
Now, what does that mean for you? Well, from a man who doesn't believe we should be eating meat, from a man who believes that animals should be provided attorneys in the courts of law, a man who believes that everyone must be an organ donor, a man that believes that you should not be able to remove rats from your home if it causes them any pain.
I mean, I'm fond -- you know, when I was 8 -- of the Michael Jackson song "Ben," I mean, just as much as any 8-year-old kid was. But do you really want a police officer, you know, telling Ben, who's just shown up in your home, "Ben, you have a right to remain silent. If they try to remove you from the home, you have the right to an attorney. And if you can't afford an attorney, Ben, one will be provided for you." The world is upside down.
From the September 9 edition of Fox News' Special Report with Bret Baier:
BRET BAIER (host): Just days after the resignation of the president's green jobs czar, the administration's nominee to head the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs has just cleared a major hurdle to move closer to confirmation by the Senate. But as correspondent James Rosen reports, a lengthy trail of theoretical writings and speeches is providing critics with some serious ammo.
ROSEN: Rats could attack us in the sewer and court systems if all of Cass Sunstein's writings became law. The Harvard Law professor and Obama choice to lead the OMB's Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs argued in 2004 that animals represented by human beings should be able to sue human beings and has even questioned whether humans can legally expel rats from our homes if doing so causes the rat's distress.
Later Sunstein, who has also urged the abolition of hunting, said he wouldn't use his White House post to advance animal rights. In another book, the professor said it was, quote, "not impossible to defend" the routine removal of organs even from living patients with "certain hopeless conditions" on the basis that the state "own the organs. But Sunstein was willing to settle for "presumed consent," which would force citizens to opt out of organ donation.
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Joe Wilson's Dirty Health-Care Secret
Newsweek
By Adam Weinstein
Poor Joe Wilson. The conservative Republican representative from South Carolina stepped in it Wednesday night when he broke with centuries of decorum by screaming, "You lie!" at President Obama during his health-care speech to a joint session of Congress.
Cut the man some slack. He's passionate! I know this because he told me, in the sole message that blazes across his campaign Web site:
JOE WILSON IS PASSIONATE ABOUT STOPPING GOVERNMENT RUN HEALTH CARE!
Except that he's not─at least not when it comes to his, and his family's, government-run health care. As a retired Army National Guard colonel, Wilson gets a lot of benefits (one of which, apparently, was not a full appreciation of the customs, traditions, and courtesies that mandate respect for one's commander in chief). And with four sons in the armed services, the entire Wilson brood has enjoyed multiple generations of free military medical coverage, known as TRICARE.
Yes, it's true. As politicos and town-hall criers debate the finer points of the public option, employer mandates, coverage for undocumented immigrants, and who's more Hitler-like, they seem to miss a larger point: the United States has single-payer health care. It covers 9.5 million active-duty servicemen and women, military retirees, and their dependents─including almost a 10th of all Californians and Floridians, and nearly a quarter of a million residents of Wilson's home state.
Military beneficiaries like Wilson─who, as a retiree, is eligible for lifetime coverage─never have to worry about an eye exam, a CT scan, a prolonged labor, or an open-heart surgery. They have access not only to the military's 133,500 uniformed health professionals, but cooperating private doctors as well─whose fees are paid by the Department of Defense. It's high-quality care, too: surveys from 2007 and 2008 list TRICARE among "the best health insurer(s) in the nation" by customer satisfaction. Yet Wilson insists government-run health care is a problem.
To be fair, Wilson has been consistent in his policymaking if not his personal life: according to his last congressional opponent, Wilson voted 11 times against health care for veterans in eight years, even as he voted "aye" for the Iraq War (during the debate on the war vote, he even called one Democrat "viscerally anti-American"─several times). He voted to cut veterans' benefits─not his own─to make room for President George W. Bush's tax cuts. He repeatedly voted for budgets that slashed funding to the Veterans Administration and TRICARE. And perhaps most bizarrely, he refused─repeatedly─to approve Democratic-led initiatives that would have extended TRICARE coverage to all reservists and National Guard members, even though a disproportionate number of them have served multiple tours in Iraq and Afghanistan─and many lost access to their civilian work benefits when they did so.
There's one other notable exception to Wilson's tough-on-government record: In July, when the health-insurance debate just started heating up, he offered an amendment that would exempt TRICARE from any system of employer mandates in a health-care bill. It's not clear whether this is necessary, since most such bills in Congress keep government benefits exempt from the rules as a matter of course. But Wilson took the opportunity to make his stand.
"As a 31-year Army Guard and Reserve veteran, I know the importance of TRICARE," he said in a press release. "The number of individuals who choose to enroll in TRICARE continues to rise because TRICARE is a low cost, comprehensive health plan that is portable and available in some form world-wide." He went on to call TRICARE "world class health care," concluding on a personal note. "I am grateful to have four sons now serving in the military, and I know that their families appreciate the availability of TRICARE," he said.
What does that mean? Nothing─except that Joe Wilson was against government-run health care before he was for it. And now he's against it again. Just not when it comes to his own flesh and blood.
Adam Weinstein, an Iraq veteran, is a freelance journalist. He is uninsured.
TAG(S): Healthcare
US House Speaker: Little Support to Send More Troops to Afghanistan
By VOA News
http://www.reuters.com/article/featuredCrisis/idUSN10409166
The speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, says she sees little support for sending more U.S. troops to Afghanistan.
Pelosi told reporters in Washington Thursday that she does not think there is support in Congress or in the country to deploy more troops to the South Asian nation.
The U.S. is already in the process of ramping up its troop presence there to 68,000 by the end of this year.
In related news, the White House says U.S. President Barack Obama and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown discussed Afghanistan when they spoke by phone Thursday. A statement says the two leaders discussed their shared commitment to defeat al-Qaida and its extremist allies in Afghanistan, and their resolve to work together to build Afghan institutions.
In violence Thursday, Poland's military says one of its soldiers was killed and four others were wounded in a firefight with militants in Ghazni province.
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Survey USA: 77% Favor Public Option in Health-Insurance Reform »
Over three-quarters of voters in the SurveryUSA poll said they consider a government option to be either extremely or quite important.
Poll: 86% Want Universal Coverage; 79% Want Government Option »
Nearly 8 in 10 Americans support a federal health insurance plan, but only 37 percent define “public option” correctly.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/10/AR2009091002090.html?hpid=topnews
War crimes inquiry into Nato troops and Taliban insurgents
International criminal court prosecutor studying evidence of alleged crimes in Afghanistan
- guardian.co.uk, Thursday 10 September 2009 14.21 BST
- Article history
The prosecutor of the international criminal court is collecting information on alleged war crimes committed by Nato and the Taliban in Afghanistan.
The details emerged at a briefing yesterday on the emerging international criminal justice system, where Luis Moreno Ocampo, prosecutor of the ICC since 2003, confirmed that he was conducting inquiries into possible criminal acts by both Taliban and Nato forces.
US soldiers acting for Nato are being investigated for alleged torture of prisoners and use of excessive force. "What we are trying to assess is ... different types of allegations, including massive attacks, collateral damage exceeding what is considered proper, and torture," he said.
He said he had collected information from a variety of sources in the country, including human rights groups and the Afghan government, but was "very open" to additional information that foreign governments could provide.
Information gathered from non-government organisations, he said, had proved useful in his investigation, as it had been "very difficult" and time-consuming to collect evidence about some of the alleged incidents.
He declined to give specific details about which incidents had been looked into, and said there was a possibility that no charges would be brought from the findings of his inquiries.
"Before we open an investigation, my office has a duty to conduct preliminary examinations to define exactly whether or not I should open an investigation," he said.
A dispute over whether US soldiers can be tried by the ICC is under way at the court's headquarters in the Netherlands; in 2002, the Bush administration rescinded the US signature from the Rome statute, the document that legally binds 109 states to compliance with the ICC.
According to Moreno Ocampo, Nato now explains to colonels during training that if they commit atrocities, they may be brought before the ICC, so that "if those who are planning know they will be prosecuted, they will do something different".
Moreno Ocampo said he was also conducting preliminary investigations on possible war crimes in Georgia, Colombia and Kenya, and by Israeli forces in Gaza, through four investigations to be conducted over the next three years.
ICC Investigates War Crimes In Afghanistan
James Reinl, United Nations Correspondent
Luis Moreno-Ocampo, pictured last year, said any foreign troops could be prosecuted for atrocities in Afghanistan.Fred Ernst / AP Photo
NEW YORK // War crimes investigators are in the early stages of an inquiry into atrocities committed in Afghanistan that could lead to arrest warrants for members of coalition forces and the Taliban.
Luis Moreno-Ocampo, chief prosecutor for the International Criminal Court (ICC), said he is also collecting information about possible crimes committed in Georgia, Colombia, Kenya and by Israeli forces in Gaza.
Mr Moreno-Ocampo is obliged to pursue such complaints occurring within the borders of Afghanistan and the court’s other 109 member nations.
He can investigate and prosecute such allegations even if they are committed by a soldier from a country that is not a member of the court – including the United States, which is not a signatory.
Speaking with journalists yesterday, the Argentine lawyer said he was investigating “massive attacks, collateral damage exceeding what is considered proper and torture” committed in Afghanistan since the US-led invasion in 2001.
Mr Moreno-Ocampo said the court had received “allegations from many different sources” in Afghanistan, which, if substantiated, could lead to full-scale investigations and prosecutions.
The Taliban has been accused of many gross violations in the turbulent Asian nation, including kidnapping and murdering aid workers, setting off bombs in girls' schools and killing civilians during raids.
Nato forces have likewise been accused of atrocities, such as the air strike on two hijacked fuel lorries on September 4 that is blamed for the deaths of 60 to 70 civilians and described by President Hamid Karzai as a major “error of judgment”.
Afghan officials have complained about heavy civilian death tolls after previous Nato air raids, while rights groups have accused members of the Bush administration of authorising torture in Afghan jails.
Mr Moreno-Ocampo would not reveal whether he was investigating allegations against low-level commanders or their superiors in Washington, saying he would prosecute those “most responsible” for atrocities.
Although the US signed the court’s founding Rome Statute during Bill Clinton’s presidency, Washington rescinded the deal under the Bush administration to prevent politically motivated trials of American soldiers.
But Mr Moreno-Ocampo said any foreign troops could be prosecuted for atrocities in Afghanistan if investigators in their home countries were unwilling or unable to launch their own probes.
“People cannot commit atrocities. This is a line: no one can do it. Nato, or whoever,” the prosecutor told journalists yesterday after an ICC briefing at UN headquarters in Manhattan.
A spokeswoman for the US State Department declined to comment on the provisional investigation, but military commanders have asserted that US forces strive to minimise civilian deaths. Officials from the Bush administration have likewise denied authorising torture in Afghanistan.
Richard Dicker, a global law expert from Human Rights Watch, said there was enough evidence of war crimes to warrant prosecutions.
“Crimes committed in Afghanistan are potentially within the reach of the ICC prosecutor whether they are committed by any of the actors of the on the field, Afghans or international, including US actors,” Mr Dicker said. “But there are a number of legal thresholds that have to be surmounted before any legal action would be taken by the ICC.”
The New York-based advocacy group’s analyst said allegations would have to relate to widespread crimes resulting from systematic policies before they would fall under the mandate of the court, which is based in The Hague.
He called for the US and other countries contributing to Nato forces in Afghanistan to fully investigate and prosecute cases against their own troops so the ICC would not have to intervene.
The ICC has been operating as the world’s first permanent war crimes tribunal since 2002 and has directed most of its attention towards Africa, indicting 14 people, including the Sudanese president Omar al Bashir, for atrocities in Darfur.
Critics of the ICC say it operates a neocolonial system of justice and will only launch investigations that suit the interests of the permanent five members of the UN Security Council: the US, Britain, France, Russia and China.
jreinl@thenational.ae
Mysterious Electrocutions in Iraq
JEREMY SCAHILL | The death of a Triple Canopy contractor in Iraq bears a striking resemblance to an earlier electrocution ruled to be a "negligent homicide."
September 9, 2009
The following is an excerpt from Max Blumenthal's new book Republican Gommorah: Inside the Movement That Shattered the Party published by Nation Books.
A few miles down the road from Colorado Springs [a home to James Dobson's Focus on the Family], in the quiet bedroom community of Eldredge, a deeply disturbed young man named Matthew Murray followed the unfolding debacle at New Life Church [once under the stewardship of Pastor Ted Haggard] with an interest that bordered on obsession. Murray, a sallow-faced, bespectacled 24-year-old, had been indelibly scarred by a lifetime of psychological abuse at the hands of his charismatic Pentecostal parents. Murray's mind became crowded with thoughts of death, destruction, and the killings he would soon carry out in the name of avenging what he called his "nightmare of Christianity."
On an online chat room for former Pentecostals, Murray heaped contempt on his mother, Loretta, a physical therapist who homeschooled him to ensure that his contact with the outside world was severely limited. "My 'mother,'" Murray wrote, "is just a brainswashed [sic] church agent cun,t [sic]. The only reason she had me was because she wanted a body/soul she could train into being the next Billy Graham..."
He went on:
...my mother was into all the charismatic "fanatical evangelical" insanity. Her and her church believed that Satan and demons were everywhere in everything. The rules were VERY strict all the time. We couldn't have ANY christian or non-christian music at all except for a few charismatic worship CDs. There was physical abuse in my home. My mother although used psychotropic drugs because she somehow thought it would make it easier to control me (I've never been diagnosed with any mental illness either). Pastors would always come and interrogate me over video games or TV watching or other things. There were NO FRIENDS outside the church and family and even then only family members who were in the church. You could not trust anyone at all because anyone might be a spy.
An authoritarian Christian-right self-help guru named Bill Gothard created the home-schooling regimen implemented by Murray's parents. Like his ally James Dobson, Gothard first grew popular during the 1960s by marketing his program to worried evangelical parents as anti-hippie insurance for adolescent children. Based on the theocratic teachings of R. J. Rushdoony, who devised Christian schools and home-schooling as the foundation of his Dominionist empire, Gothard's Basic Life Principles outlined an all-consuming environment that followers could embrace for the whole of their lives. According to Ron Henzel, a one-time Gothard follower who co-authored a devastating exposé about his former guru called A Matter of Basic Principles, under the rules, "large homeschooling families abstain from television, midwives are more important than doctors, traditional dating is forbidden, unmarried adults are 'under the authority of their parents' and live with them, divorced people can't remarry under any circumstance, and music has hardly changed at all since the late nineteenth century."
At the Charter School for Excellence, a school in South Florida inspired by Gothard's draconian principles that receives $800,000 in state funds each year, children are indoctrinated into a culture of absolute submission to authority almost as soon as they learn to speak. A song that the school's first-graders are required to recite goes as follows:
Obedience is listening attentively,
Obedience will take instructions joyfully,
Obedience heeds wishes of authorities,
Obedience will follow orders instantly.
For when I am busy at my work or play,
And someone calls my name, I'll answer right away!
I'll be ready with a smile to go the extra mile
As soon as I can say "Yes, sir!" "Yes ma am!"
Hup, two, three!
Former Arkansas governor and Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee is among the 2.5 million Americans who have attended Gothard's Basic Seminar. According to Huckabee, who once earmarked state funds to distribute Gothard's literature in Arkansas prisons, Gothard was responsible for "some of the best programs for instilling character into people." But to the deeply alienated Murray, Gothard was the original source of his pathology. "I believe that the truth needs to be exposed," Murray wrote in a September 2006 discussion forum of recovering Gothard followers. "People need to see through errornious [sic] and destructive doctrines and teachings including Bill Gothard's."
After graduating from Gothard's home-schooling seminars, which constituted the bulk of his education (Colorado has no educational records for Murray after third grade), he was presented by his parents with two options for higher education. The first choice was Haggard's alma mater, Oral Roberts University. ORU at the time was beginning to unravel under the weight of scandalous revelations that its new president, Richard Roberts--the scion of its beloved founder--had allegedly looted university coffers to pay for his daughter's junkets to the Bahamas and bankroll his wife's shopping sprees. (Oral Roberts's other son, Ronnie, was a cocaine-addicted closet homosexual who committed suicide in 1982). Murray's second option was the "Discipleship Training School" of Youth with a Mission (YWAM), a Christian Reconstructionist-inspired missionary group that trained bright-eyed youngsters to spread the gospel of Colorado Springs to under-evangelized Third World nations. Desperate to escape his parents' rigid order, Murray joined YWAM.
But as soon as Murray enrolled at YWAM's training center in nearby Arvada in 2002, he found himself trapped in an authoritarian culture even more restrictive than home. He realized that, as another student of YWAM bluntly put it, the school's training methods resembled "cult mind-controlling techniques." Murray became paranoid, speaking aloud to voices only he could hear, according to a former roommate. He complained that six of his male peers had made a gay sex video and that others routinely abused drugs. Hypocrisy seemed to be all around him, or at least dark mirages of it. A week before Murray was scheduled to embark on his first mission, YWAM dismissed him from the program for unspecified "health reasons." "They admitted that I hadn't done anything wrong, just that they had prayed and felt I wasn't popular/'connected' and talkative enough," he recalled.
Two years later, Murray raged at two YWAM administrators during a Pentecostal conference his mother had dragged him to attend. The shocked staffers promptly warned Loretta Murray that her son "wasn't walking with the Lord and could be planning violence." Within days, an ornery local pastor was allowed to burst into the young Murray's room, rifle through his belongings, and leave with a satchel full of secular DVDs and CDs--apparent evidence of his depravity. Murray's mother searched his room for satanic material every day afterward for three months, stripping him of his privacy and whatever was left of his love for her. After the trauma-inducing raids, in which Murray estimated his mother and her friends destroyed $900 worth of his property, he concluded, "Christianity is one big lie."
Murray lurched to the polar opposite edge of his parents' fanatical faith, replacing their Bible as his inspiration with the writings of Aleister Crowley, a flamboyant, self-proclaimed Satanist. The fin de siècle British sensationalist declared himself the "Great Beast of Revelation" and claimed his birth was foretold in the Apocalypse of St. John. For two years Murray attended ceremonies of Crowley's mock-religious order, Ordo Templi Orientis, following in the footsteps of famous Crowley followers such as Scientology cult founder L. Ron Hubbard and Jack Parsons, the eccentric rocket fuel inventor who prayed to the Greek god Pan after each successful launch. "This man is like the antidote to what I was raised in," Murray wrote of his new hero Crowley. Murray was especially compelled by the fact that Crowley, like him, was raised by fundamentalist Christian parents he loathed.
Murray had been indoctrinated so thoroughly into charismatic Pentecostal culture, however, that even while he railed against his religious upbringing, he could not abandon his ingrained attraction to religiosity. So instead of fleeing hardcore Christian culture for secular humanism, a natural position for jaded skeptics like him, he traded his former faith for Crowley's occultism. Crowley's philosophy of sex "magick," narcotic hallucination and self-degradation (he allegedly ordered his followers to have oral sex with goats and drink the blood of cats) was forged in reaction to his parents' Puritanism and, in fact, was first practiced in English boarding schools, where homosexual experimentation was practically de rigueur. Crowley became Murray's new lodestar. Like Jesus, who was so impressed by the ardor of a pagan Roman centurion whom he met that he remarked, "I have not found such great faith, even in Israel," Murray yearned for spiritual practice in its purest form.
Now he practiced Crowley's faux faith as fervently as his parents wished he had worshipped their neo-evangelical macho Christ. But the occult only led Murray into a confusing new world of cheap thrills. By his own account, he engaged in "every sort of sexual pervrsion [sic]...that's legal," from anonymous gay sex to bestiality. He boasted of his proclivity for binge drinking, his love for death metal bands, and his penchant for spewing "blasphemy." He envisioned his new experiences as positively transcendent. "In a way it's like I'm just about completely rebelling against christianity [sic] in any way that I can," theenragé mused, "but this is a little different of a rebellion."
But as Murray's detachment from his family and community intensified, so did his yearning for the interpersonal solidarity increasingly denied to him. In May 2007, Dr. Marlene Winell, a leading expert on treating ex-fundamentalists traumatized by the experience of leaving their faith, was notified about Murray's tortured online postings. Winell immediately posted a response to Murray. "I can see that you are in a great deal of pain and I'd like to invite you to contact me," she wrote on a website where he frequently posted. "I'd like to be helpful if I can. People do care about you and there is hope."
Murray recoiled. "It's so funny how many people want to help you and love you and counsel you when there is money involved," he replied. PAGE 1 2 3 NEXT »
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