The New Messiahs
By Katherine Yurica
The New Messiahs is almost twenty years old, but it rings with current authenticity. The transcribed words are evidence of a plan to take over the government of the United States. This is not a “conspiracy theory”; it is the recording of the actual conspiracy—the actual plans of how a group of ambitious religious leaders became purveyors of a new and secular fundamentalism whose political beliefs are now being enacted to the detriment of all Americans. The religious right’s plan for you includes: the burning of all J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books; the denial of your right to choose an abortion if it becomes necessary in your life—even to save your life; the revamping of the U.S. Constitution; and the denial of your right to choose what you see, hear and read in the media.
At the last revision of The New Messiahs in 1999-2000, the largest network in the world was neither CBS, NBC nor ABC nor all three together. It was TBN, the Trinity Broadcasting Network, owned by Paul Crouch, (a member of John Ashcroft’s church, the Assembly of God). By 1999, TBN fed 406 TBN and affiliate TV stations in America, 4,886 cable systems and an estimated 10 million home satellite dishes. In addition they had a total of 346 foreign stations on the air and Crouch was only one satellite away from total live global coverage!
Chapter 1 Excerpts
Why Abraham Lincoln Threatened to Leave America
During the decade before the Civil War a secret political organization became prominent in America. It was called the “Know-Nothings” because every time someone tried to find out information about the group, some of its members would respond, “I don’t know” to the questions that were asked. But one thing was known, the Know-Nothings opposed immigrants and Roman Catholics from obtaining any political influence or power in the United States. In a letter to Joshua F. Speed, Abraham Lincoln wrote:
“I am not a Know-Nothing; that is certain. How could I be? How can anyone who abhors the oppression of Negroes be in favor of degrading classes of white people? Our progress in degeneracy appears to me to be pretty rapid. As a nation we began by declaring that ‘all men are created equal.’ We now practically read it ‘all men are created equal, except Negroes.’ When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read ‘all men are created equal, except Negroes and foreigners and Catholics.’ When it comes to this, I shall prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretense of loving liberty—to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocrisy.” (August 24, 1855)
The Know-Nothings faded into obscurity, but their brand of fascism has erupted in our body politic many times since the days of Abraham Lincoln. It has taken many forms; perhaps the one most familiar to Americans of our generation is the anti-Communism invective of the late Senator Joseph McCarthy whose hounding unproved accusations against people destroyed lives and left us with the word, “McCarthyism,” which is defined in Webster’s Third New International Dictionary as:
“A political attitude of the mid-twentieth century closely allied to know-nothingism and characterized chiefly by opposition to elements held to be subversive and by the use of tactics involving personal attacks on individuals by means of widely publicized indiscriminate allegations especially on the basis of unsubstantiated charges.”
As I write, Americans and the rest of the world sit on the huge train of time, all of us rushing forward with unstoppable speed toward the future and all that the twenty-first century holds. Some of us have been riding this train for awhile, and some of us have been only mildly interested in the passing political scenes that rush by like trees and houses from the vantage point of a train’s windows; there’s a certain detachment, a certain unconnectedness to the life surrounding us on the train. However, others of us have indeed become aware of a new political movement; some gave warnings, others were simply stunned at the incredulous spectacle as they watched Mr. Lincoln’s Republican Party succumb to the will and control of the “New Messiahs”—the energized, fanatical Religious Right’s leaders. Yet few of us, I think, have been aware of the subversive nature of what has actually taken place.
The multi-organizational—yet essentially connected—religious political alliance grew up in our midst, wrapped securely in the robes of a form of Christianity, but it preached the gospel of hate. Beginning in the 1970’s it’s leaders labeled huge segments of our American culture as immoral. Humanists and atheists led the excluders’ list and were declared to be “unfit to hold public office or to teach our children.” Not only were whole classes singled out for expulsion from public life and office, but the excluders’ list was extended to those who disagreed with political issues supported by the religious right. In short, as we shall see in this book, the only citizens deemed fit for public office and influence in America by the new messiahs are members of the religious right or those who take the religious right’s positions. The excludables are us—everyone else in America. As Abraham Lincoln put it, “Our progress in degeneracy appears to me to be pretty rapid.”
Like Mr. Lincoln, a few Americans started talking about fleeing our country should the religious right cement its hold. Some observers fear the end of our pluralistic union. This book tells the story of how the new messiahs came about: from what cultural forces they emerged (and learned to manipulate), what aberrations helped shape them and what milieu helped create their ground. The scope of what we are about to examine is breathtaking. This is the story of a plot to take over America.
It began in the late 1970’s with the help of vast so-called religious broadcasting networks. Pat Robertson’s television talk show, The 700 Club, and hundreds of other radio and television shows began preaching the gospel of political Christian activism, stirring the faithful to accept a political agenda, and reaching an estimated audience of over 20 million people in 1980. The audience for the top ten shows, however, was to increase dramatically to 60 million by 1985, with Robertson’s 700 Club topping the Nielsen ratings with a projected monthly viewing audience of 28.7 million.
Although the plan to take over the government of the United States was announced publicly on Pat Robertson’s 700 Club, it was at a time when only the faithful viewed the show, and only the faithful unquestioningly accepted the possibilities: “We have enough votes to run the country,” Robertson said, “and when the people say, ‘we’ve had enough,’ we’re going to take over the country.” But it was Tim LaHaye, (often called the founder of the religious right), who laid out a specific plan to Pat Robertson’s audience. He said it simple and straight and quick. It went like this:
“There are 110,000 Bible believing churches but there are only 97,000 major elective offices in America. If we launch one candidate per church, we can take over every elective office in this country within ten years.”
I was monitoring and recording the show at the time, and to those I discussed it with, the plan seemed like a wild pipe dream that couldn’t be executed. The press ignored it or most likely didn’t know about it. The people who took it seriously, however, were those it was intended for: the insiders, the potential foot soldiers in a newly awakened and reborn church militant. The term “religious right” entered our political lexicons.
The original plot was augmented by Pat Robertson and was laid out in chatty bits and pieces over an estimated eighteen-month period. (I transcribed more than 1,300 pages in eight volumes of dialogue for this book.) The plan was to begin with a three pronged thrust: the first goal was to gain control of the Republican party and then through the GOP, gain control of Congress. The second goal was to revamp the balance of powers between the three branches of government, so that the judiciary would be weakened permanently and the power of Congress would be strengthened—if it were controlled by the religious right. Similarly, the third goal involved the power of the presidency, which was to be variously weakened when an unacceptable person occupied the White House, but strengthened when a “God-anointed man” was in office. The fourth goal was to gain the power to control domestic morality by denouncing the “immoral” and by “breaking” individuals and organizations such as the National Education Association [NEA]. There was never any doubt of the ultimate goal. It was going to be “dominion.” And “What is dominion?” Pat Robertson asked his television audience, “Well, dominion is lordship, to reign and rule.” It was also a chilling catechism fitting another term, the fascism of a religious cult.
For fourteen years after their goals were announced, Americans slept. They expressed little interest in the machinations of the religious right. Then something changed: a relentless, four year investigation of a popular president culminated in the House of Representatives’ rushed partisan vote to impeach William Jefferson Clinton. Americans received a wake-up call that almost everyone heard. Many became aware of the fact they were witnessing the spectacle of what some commentators were describing as an attempt to execute a bloodless, limited coup d’etat. And what was worse, someone else’s standard of morality was the plumb line ruling the debate.
Many sleeping moderates suddenly discovered the Republican party had indeed been taken over by the religious right and Congress had indeed been taken over by the Republicans. (In fact a Newsweek poll conducted during the trial revealed that half the conservatives in the Republican party were “religious conservatives,” and the aggregate of all conservatives in the party made up the controlling fifty percent, but those that identified themselves as “religious” were the most active voters, the best-organized portion of the party, and the best fund raisers.)
There were many reasons why the New Messiahs were so absorbed with the presidency, not the least of which was their desire to put their man in the White House. Pat Robertson tried and failed miserably in the 1988 election, but the dream came true in 2000.
Chapter 15 Excerpts
The War to Control America
The Year is 1985: The Author is Watching Pat Robertson's TV Show
Pat Robertson envisions a changed America. He speaks of future political leaders who will listen only to “the counsel of the godly” and will reject advice from “ungodly” men. Curiously, he does not define who the godly are, but his rhetoric closely parallels that of Sun Myung Moon who speaks of a “higher dimension” of Christianity, and said, “We must realize and consider seriously the mission of Christianity to lead a supra-denominational, cultural revolution on a worldwide scale.”
The sonorous voice of Stephen McPheeters, one of Robertson’s special reporters on the 700 Club rings across the air waves: “The stage has been set and the conflict of the ages will likely continue into the twenty-first century. Secular and religious leaders agree that the future of western society is hanging in the balance.”
Then Robertson called for a “special revival.”
“Not just good church evangelism,” he said, “that’s not what a revival is. A revival is a sweeping change in society—where people think differently—live differently act on a wide scale basis. And we haven’t seen that yet. It’s coming, but it hasn’t gotten here yet.” In effect, the revival will take aim at the “Centralization of power in Washington,” and Robertson warns, “The only way to change it according to Jefferson, we will have a choice between reformation or revolution!”
Robertson emotionally told his audience, “We are not going to stand for those coercive utopians in the Supreme Court and in Washington ruling over us any more. We’re not gonna stand for it. We are going to say, we want freedom in this country, and we want power, freedom back to the people where it’s supposed to be. And the same thing in the Soviet Union and the same thing in China!”
“What we have to do,” Ben Kinchlow [Robertson’s co-host] told the national convention of the two year college Phi Theta Kappa fraternity, “is very simple. Grab the American dream by the short hairs and snatch it back to where it was originally designed to be. Liberty is what this thing’s all about!”
To keep the message before his audience, Robertson invited Billy Foley, an Escondido, California pastor who founded the Christian Voter’s League to the 700 Club. “It’s always nice to have a guest who says, ‘The organization I’m involved in is going to change the world,” Robertson chuckled…
Foley: “I discovered the Biblical principle in the Bible from one end to the other states that God never intended for the wicked to rule over the righteous. And the purpose of the Gospel was to send Jesus to establish God’s kingdom on earth, to overthrow the rule of the wicked and establish the rule of the righteous. And the bottom line is—it’s either us or them!” [chuckles]
Robertson responded, “Regretfully that’s the way it is. Well, now are you working in so-called party politics?”
Foley replied, “We really are avoiding partisan politics...our goal is not to take over the Republican party or to extend the Democratic party, but our goal is to take over the land and take over both parties. We’re a majority in the land.
Robertson asked, “A lot of people, if they hear Christian Voter’s League, they’ll say, ‘Hey, you’re attempting to dominate me. You’re going to take away my freedom. You’re not gonna let me be—whatever.’ How do you answer those people?”
“It’s very naive,” Foley replied, “to think that the peaceful coexistence—existing today—and the bottom line is it’s either us or them. Right now the ‘them’ are ruling over us because the church gave away its consensus. So we’re merely getting back what we have lost in America in the last forty years.”
The First Step:
Control of Congress
But the thirst for the freedom to exercise power over others is not freedom at all—it is merely a desire for control. Significantly, Pat Robertson and his political associates have stated their agenda openly. It is so open that it is hidden in a sense. It is hidden behind the charming personalities and the deluge of public statements that pour from the TV and radio preachers’ mouths. As a result, the agenda has received little attention from the media, and the American public has yet to perceive the enormity of the political changes that are being proposed and that have been achieved as the 21st century bursts upon us.
The goal of political power was openly expressed on the 700 Club when Tim LaHaye outlined his plan to fill every major elected office in America with a certain kind of evangelical Christian—one who has converted to the tenets of the religious right’s secular fundamentalism.
He told Pat Robertson’s audience in 1985, “Suppose that every Bible believing church—all 110,000—decided to ask God to raise up one person to run for public office and win. From city council to mayor to county supervisor, state legislator and right on up. Okay, if every church in the next ten years did that, within the next decade we would have more Christians in office than there are positions. There are only 97,000 elective offices of a major level.”
“Let’s face it,” Robertson responded, “as Tim LaHaye said, all you need is one man or one woman from each Bible believing church in the United States and we’d have all the elected officials in the country!”
….[I]n some states, among them Iowa, Indiana, Washington and Tennessee, reports showed that the religious right challenged establishment Republicans for control of the local party and were effective in determining which candidate ran for the GOP in congressional races. Because of this superb showing, Robertson was seen by political strategists and consultants as a political master. In 1989, one year after he failed in his bid for the presidency, Pat Robertson founded the Virginia-based Christian Coalition and appointed the 30 year-old, cherub-looking Ralph Reed as executive director. But the born-again Reed was not angelic in any way.
Robertson ordered a tactical change, and so, “We’re flying below radar,” became Reed’s motto. “I want to be invisible. I do guerrilla warfare. I paint my face and travel at night. You don’t know it’s over until you’re in a body bag.” That’s how Ralph Reed described the way conservative Christians would take over American politics in 1991. Reed boasted that the coalition’s targets—such as a dozen hapless Virginia Democrats who lost elections in 1991—didn’t know what his guerrilla warriors were doing until it was too late. Reed and Robertson also boasted on how they saved Jesse Helms from certain defeat in 1990. Robertson described the tactics in his book, The New World Order.
….By election time in 1992, Robertson’s coalition distributed 40 million copies of the “Family Values Voters Guide” in more than 100,000 churches nationwide. Other copies were available at polling places on Election Day. “Stealth tactics” were still the orders from Robertson. Accordingly, Reed told the press, “Mao-Tse-Tung said politics is war without bloodshed.”
Still burning over the Panama Canal Treaty President Jimmy Carter signed, Robertson explained,
“Since treaties are ratified in the U.S. Senate, they also can be stopped in the Senate. The key is to make every candidate for election...declare himself in advance on the issues...”
Issues regarded to be of paramount importance to Robertson in 1991 as stated in his book The New World Order, centered on candidates’ attitudes toward a one-world government, which in turn was tied to Secular Fundamentalist’s fears regarding the coming world dominion of the Antichrist. Robertson wanted candidates to declare themselves in advance on “issues of surrendering the sovereignty of the United States into a world government, and on unilateral disarmament of America.”
Also on his list of prohibitives was whether the candidate favored arming the United Nations, or giving the United Nations power over American citizens, and the candidate’s attitude toward the role of the Federal Reserve Board in global banking.” But that was just the beginning of his list. Robertson hoped to expose those who were for abortion and homosexual rights, for pornography, for condom distribution in schools and for increased taxes among other things. As we shall see, the list has expanded since 1991.
Robertson made no secret about his plans for the religious right to control American politics by the year 2000. Ralph Reed said, by 2000, the coalition would have 10 trained activists in all 175,000 political precincts nationwide. That’s 1.75 million activists. In 1992, President Bush, former Education Secretary William Bennett and former Marine Lt. Col. Oliver North made appearances at Robertson’s political training camp in Virginia Beach, Virginia.
But by 1992, not all Republicans were happy with the religious right’s march toward victory and the taking over of precincts in a dozen states.
“They’re absolutely ruthless—obscene,” said Mary Dent Crisp, head of the Republican National Coalition for Choice, who with chairwoman Ann Stone was denied access to the GOP convention floor in Houston in the summer of 1992, according to Ben Winton of the Phoenix Gazette.
Crisp said the religious right dominated the convention and barred her from speaking because she supported abortion rights.
“They say taking over the Republican Party is not a goal,” Crisp said. “But it is a goal. They have a grand strategy that reminds me of Hitler’s Germany. When the public was unsuspecting and they didn’t read the signals, they (the public) let it happen. I really fear for my country.”
Later, Ralph Reed dismissed the Phoenix Gazette article as “stupid.”
By 1994 the Christian Coalition had taken control of state GOP organizations in Minnesota, Oregon, Virginia, Texas, Iowa, Washington and South Carolina.
But after the 1994 congressional elections, for the first time in 40 years, the GOP took control of Congress, with 44 of the 52 new Republicans in the House owing their victories to the support of the pro-life groups and the Christian Coalition. The religious right also gained control of the Republican Party apparatus in at least 31 states. And the Christian Coalition saw its numbers multiplying: they had sponsored 83 Citizen Action Training Schools across America to teach Christians how to get elected. They established 375 new chapters of the coalition in all 50 states, bringing the total number of Christian Coalition chapters to 872 with more than 900,000 members, distributed 40 million voter guides and 20 million Congressional Scorecards. And by 1996, the coalition reported that it had sponsored 400 Citizen Action Training Schools, and they established 737 new chapters of the coalition, bringing the total chapters to 1,617.
By 1999, following the failed impeachment trial against President William Jefferson Clinton, the Republican religious right geared up for the task of taking back the presidency from the Democrats in the 2000 election…
The Second Step:
Weaken the Judiciary and Revamp the Balance of Powers
What comes after gaining control of Congress? Simply put, it is the revamping of the three branches of the government of the United States. Robertson was developing a program of sweeping political change that represents the most radical departure from the Republic’s system of checks and balances since the founding of our nation.
Significantly, Robertson wanted to reduce or eliminate the power of the judiciary. He denied that the Constitution provides a system of checks and balances between the three branches of government. Instead, he saw the legislative branch as the dominant center of power in our nation, and accordingly wanted to make some changes, which we will look at shortly. Paramount in his thinking was his denial that the judiciary is an equal branch of the government. The Supreme Court, according to him, usurped its own power. “There was nothing in there [the Constitution] giving them the power to review the acts of Congress. Just nothing in there at all. John Marshall took it, but it wasn’t given to him.” Instead Robertson believed the Supreme Court and the entire federal judiciary system was intended by the framers of the Constitution to be subordinate to Congress.
Many people were alarmed when Robertson’s interview with the editorial board of the Washington Post (June 27, 1986) was published. He said, “A Supreme Court ruling is not the law of the United States. The law of the United States is the Constitution, treaties made in accordance with the Constitution and laws duly enacted by the Congress and signed by the president. And any of those things I would uphold totally with all my strength, whether I agreed with them or not.”
Citing Roe v. Wade, which legalized abortions, Robertson claimed the court’s decision was not the law of the land because it was based on “very faulty law.” As a private citizen, he said, “I am bound by the laws of the United States and all 50 states...(but) I am not bound by any case or any court to which I myself am not a party....I don’t think the Congress of the United States is subservient to the courts...They can ignore a Supreme Court ruling if they so choose...”
To understand Robertson’s underlying criticism of the court system, one needs to go back to the 700 Club, where Robertson had expressed himself freely to his own followers and where he accused three Supreme Court Justices of murder because of their decision in Roe v. Wade. On June 5, 1985 he alleged, “Three of them have on their hands the blood of 17 million aborted babies....They have allowed hardened criminals to roam the streets because of so many of their so-called civil libertarian views...I mean there’s some very serious things that these people have done. And one of them is Thurgood Marshall, another is Justice William Brennan...another is Blackmun.” Then adding Justice Lewis Powell to the list, he accused the justices of preventing the majority of Americans “from affirming their religious beliefs in the public life.” With a menacing tone, he called on the public to pray for what amounted to the justices’ deaths: “I think we ought to pray...that God will show them...justice—the real kind....that they might be brought themselves to the bar of [God’s] judgment—[God’s] justice.”
Unfortunately, Robertson’s rhetoric inspired a broad resonance among America’s fundamentalists. Robert L. Hymers Jr., pastor of the Fundamentalist Baptist Tabernacle in Los Angeles, which had one of the largest fundamentalist congregations in Southern California, began to “pray that God kills all five of the Supreme Court justices who upheld the right to abortion in the June 11, 1986 decision of the court.” He hung an abortion-clinic operator in effigy. Greg Dixon, the former president of the Coalition for Religious Freedom, and pastor of an Indianapolis fundamentalist church, started his own “Court of Divine Justice” to try government officials who infringe on the freedom of fundamentalist churches. He said, “The judges of America are operating under the Communist Manifesto.”
….Robertson’s call for a dramatic change in the judiciary seems strangely incongruent and incoherent: “We can no longer live under a rule by judges,” he told his audience.
“We have to live by rule by people through legislatures and through the amendment process. That’s what we desire to do to the Constitution. But the Constitution, although it is a living breathing document, cannot be breathed on by every district court judge in the United States every time he feels like making a decision. And something has got to be done!”
On another show, still sticking to the urgency of his appeal, Robertson complained of the “crazy unconstitutional world” created by the Supreme Court Justices “who don’t abide by the original intention of the framers. We’ve got to change it very quickly,” he warned.
Robertson’s solution came as a revelation. He told Danuta Soderman on March 24, 1986, “Danuta, I learned something this weekend. I’m supposed to have studied constitutional law when I was in law school, but I read—I’ve gotta go speak at Yale Law School on Tuesday night—and so I read the Constitution Saturday. The whole thing! [laughs] ....I mean it literally blew my mind....The Congress has the power to set the number of the justices—how many of them, how long they are supposed to stay in office—not for life but on good behavior....The Congress by a simple majority, could put in fifteen Supreme Court Justices tomorrow...or cut it down to seven or five or whatever they wanted...Furthermore, the Congress has absolute authority to establish the lower federal courts and to establish the appellate jurisdiction of the Supreme Court coming up from those. So they [Congress] can say, ‘there’s a whole class of cases you can’t hear’ and there’s nobody can do anything about it!”
All Robertson and the religious right secular fundamentalists needed, was a like-minded Congress. Congress was the key to the whole plan. Robertson said, “I mean it is unbelievable how much power Congress was given by the framers of the Constitution. Unbelievable! The president of the United States can’t appoint a janitor without Congress’ approval.”
In the meantime, concerned about the fate of the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings Bill, which was being reviewed by the Supreme Court, Robertson proposed a simple little plan with horrific ramifications to his audience: any law found to be unconstitutional, Robertson said, “Congress could just [say], ‘Well we just disregard your opinion.’ And the president could say, ‘We disregard it and that’s just tough luck.’”
“Absolutely ignore the court,” he said, “It’s time they do it.”
Robertson’s proposal had legal scholars of both the right and left confounded. Harvard’s Laurence Tribe said, “It is surprising to find a conservative taking so radical and ultimately lawless a position.”
Robertson had another plan—what one man could dream, another could actually do: pack the courts with ideologically correct judges. A Republican president with a Republican Senate, had unqualified appointment power. For those presidents who would listen, on separate occasions he told his audience that he favored right wing activist, Phyllis Schlafly and Senator Orrin Hatch for appointments to the Supreme Court. However, at the National Press Club (on December 4, 1985) his choice for nominees to the Supreme Court were, “William Bork or Judge Scalia or whoever has been suggested who takes a different view of the Constitution.”
For twelve years, however, Ronald Reagan and George Bush did pack the judiciary with conservative judges. By 1997 there were 462 federal judges appointed by Republicans and only 285 by Democrats. The Republican appointees’ decisions, according to a U.S. News & World Report article, “were shifting power toward police and corporations and away from criminal suspects, environmentalists, and trade unions.” When Bill Clinton was elected to the presidency in 1992, however, many democrats hoped he would be able to shift the balance of power back. Not so. For if, as Pat Robertson pointed out, “treaties can be stopped in the Senate”—so could the nominations of Supreme Court justices and federal judges. In what has been called “a scandalous and stunningly irresponsible misuse of the Senate’s authority” by law professor, Geoffrey Stone, the provost at the University of Chicago, Senate leaders came to believe they had the power in their Constitutional “advise and consent” role to actually select federal judges.
….Within twelve years of Pat Robertson’s stated plans to his television audience on how to control and change the judiciary—that is, by 1997— two more Republican blueprints emerged from Congress reminiscent of Robertson’s proposals concerning federal judges who were sitting on the bench and making decisions not liked by the religious right. The first was to pass legislation making it a requirement that on a list of issues near and dear to conservative hearts, a three-panel tribunal would be required—a solitary judge would not be allowed to hear them. House Majority Whip, Tom DeLay, said Congress should no longer stand by while Federal “liberal activist” judges made improper law. He then suggested a second strategy: the impeachment process should be used against judges for bad decisions. He called for making “an example” of a judge. He told reporters from Time magazine that Judge Thelton Henderson in California was high on his list of targets, for striking down a voter-approved referendum ending state affirmative-action programs (the judge has since been reversed); also, Judge John Nixon of Tennessee, who reversed several death-penalty convictions; and Judge Fred Biery in Texas, who refused to seat a Republican sheriff and county commissioner because of a pending lawsuit challenging some absentee ballots.
The Third Step:
Increase the Power of the President
Although this was 1997, the spread of Robertson’s agenda to the floor of Congress was not yet fully comprehended by mainstream Americans, nor was the extent of his influence realized. But Robertson’s goals were always clearly laid out in his mind and he took them one step at a time….
Robertson wanted to consolidate the power of the presidency … He wanted the economic policies of the president executed without opposition from the Federal Reserve. He believed the president, as an elected official, should control the money system of the country. The religious right secular fundamentalists, almost to a man, oppose the Federal Reserve System. Robertson called it “unconstitutional,” and blamed the Federal Reserve Board for the “growth of debt in our country.” Claiming that the chairman of the Federal Reserve has too much power, Robertson said, “Here’s and unelected man in charge of a quasi-private organization who is just as powerful [as the president]. A president can put us on the road to prosperity, and this unelected man can put us into a depression, merely by regulating the currency supply. It’s a very dangerous thing for people who love democracy, and I think more and more there’s a ground swell beginning to build in this country, that says in matters dealing with the vital interests of all of us, the people have to have control of what is being done.”
Another way Robertson would like to see the power of the presidency increase is through greater control over the civil service system. In a throwback to cronyism and Tim LaHaye’s percentage scheme, Robertson would like to see a civil service that reflects the political ideology and views of the president. Pointing out that a new president can only replace about 3,000 out of 3 million federal employees, which his guest said is only one tenth of one percent and that the system is insulated from popular opinion and from the elected officials themselves, he called for a revamping of the civil service merit system. Although his language seemed innocuous enough, one can only guess at his intentions: We need to “give the government officials an opportunity to retire, or dismiss those who are doing substandard work,” he said. We need to “demand more merit.” Both features, however, exist in the present system.
No one doubted that Pat Robertson was running for the presidency. He told reporters at the National Press Club on December 4, 1985 that he would not even consider running as a vice presidential candidate. And what is more, he gave every indication that should he make it, he planned to be a strong president; he did not wish to share executive power with anyone and certainly not with another branch of government.
The Fourth Step:
Domestic Morality and Control, Control, Control
The fourth step in Robertson’s plan was the imposition of the glorious “biblical” morality of secular fundamentalism upon our land. Since we have already discussed his Social Darwinism which largely ignores the plight of the weakest and poorest members of our society, I wish only to focus here on three domestic issues: education, the arts, and Social Security. Robertson wanted to change them.
To help implement the changes, the revolution in American life will be ushered in under the banner of a new morality. However, Robertson needed consensus, and one way of achieving consensus was to limit deliberation, a logical next step in the sequence. As much as he might protest otherwise, he was irked by political debate in any arena. For basically, he believed that the truth or “God’s Will” could be known, and once it was known, further debate was useless. The issue was settled. From an historical point of view, he argued that divergent political views brought about the collapse of ancient Greece and he often lamented the lack of “unity” of thought in Congress—as we have seen above—implying that political diversity is a symptom of weakness….
[Editor’s Note: Robertson then threw blanket protection over churches and church run schools, denying the state licensing powers. He said “The educational establishment has got to be broken.” (NEA, The National Education Association). Another target was art and literature: On September 19, 1985 he said, “You see the mental confusion, the anarchy, the nihilism of today’s art and today’s literature and today’s films.” Robertson’s solution was to remove any congressman who voted for grants to the National Endowment for the Arts.]
Robertson said of Social Security in 1986: “The second thing has to do with Social Security...For people who are 25 and 30 and 35, it’s going to be a tragic problem in about the year 2030 because there’s not gonna be enough workers, there...will not be enough money to take care of the retirement of today’s young adults...And what we need to do is...right now—is to phase in some kind of a compulsory private system where they can begin to set aside money on their own so that 30, 40 years from now they will have enough.”
Social Security is in fact one of Pat Robertson’s favorite targets, and typically his rhetoric ran hot and vivid. What he did not tell his audience was that his proposals for privatization could destroy the system. To gain consensus, he resorts to a tactic we have seen him use in the last four chapters. It apparently comes easy for him. On May 21, 1985 he told his worried audience:
“The government is running—they’re not telling anybody—they’re running very scared....There is going to be an awful crash. There’s going to be a repudiation of debt. There’s going to be a wipe-out of Social Security. Many people who are figuring on getting Social Security are not going to get any Social Security. People who are anticipating Medicare—there’s not going to be enough money to pay the bill. And you either have runaway inflation where you absolutely wipe out the middle class of the country or you’re going to have a revolution because that’s what this means.”
And on August 14, 1985, he returned to the topic to worry his viewers some more:
“By the end of this century the tax on Social Security per taxpayer is going to be—guess how much? $10,000 per taxpayer. Social Security alone, now that’s one of the estimates. And the truth is, and it’s a sad truth, that the younger Americans, 25, 22, 30, 35 who are paying into Social Security according to what’s going on right now are not going to get a dime!”
Step Five:
Moral Leadership
Pat Robertson told reporters on national television and journalists from the print media that people wanted him to run for president because of his “moral leadership.”
“I would be better able to address [problems] from a moral and spiritual standpoint,” he said, and “also build a national consensus to support that point of view than maybe the other candidates.” On another occasion he remarked, “The question is one of leadership...who would best be able to minister to the needs of the people of America, to serve them, to help the poor and needy, to have compassion, to lead this nation into new heights.”
….On September 10, 1985, in the same statement in which he said he was against apartheid, he announced, “Now one solution that has been offered by a very wise man—I know this is hard—is a type of partition of South Africa in a true homeland region for the various tribes. The black tribes and the white tribes. That might be the solution.”
Robertson often conveyed a bristling and offensive superiority over others. On June 13, 1985, he referred to the nations of Central America as “banana republics.” “I mean they essentially are like an American colony. You know you go down and you see McDonalds and you see Cocoa Cola signs.”
But without a doubt, his attitude toward assassination was one of the most revealing facets of his value system. For the fact of the matter is that he has urged outright assassinations and the covert overthrow of foreign governments. But two former Republican National Security Advisors, Henry Kissinger and Robert MacFarlane have pointed out that not only do United States laws prohibit such activities, but assassinations and murder fly in the teeth of the generally held moral values of this nation.
But one needs to listen to Robertson to get the true flavor and intensity of his feelings as well as an understanding of just how far he would consider carrying violence. In a quote that was picked up by the Associated Press and CNN News, Robertson told his audience on April 11, 1986, just how he would deal with Libya’s Colonel Kaddafi:
“The problem with kicking a mad dog is that the mad dog will bite you. Specially if he’s got rabies. He might hurt you and he might infect you badly. So you don’t go out and kick a mad dog. If you have a mad dog with rabies you take a gun and shoot him. I mean that’s the only thing you can do, mercifully to keep yourself—[laughs and audience gives big applause].”
Danuta: “Wait, now let’s wait now. Back up just a step or two [audience laughs]. Are you saying that we should go in there and—”
Robertson: “Danuta, there’s an old old saying, that you don’t strike the king unless you kill him. You don’t strike a king’’ just hit him in the face and walk away from him, because he’ll turn around and do something terrible to you.... And the only way to get rid of him is to do the thing that the old maxim says, if you’re gonna strike him, you need to kill him.”
But this statement of Robertson’s was consistent with the attitude he had expressed all along. Power is something that ought to be used. He said on June 19, 1985:
“Kaddafi’s a crazy man...We’ve already caught him in certain murder plots....I’m hesitant to think of international assassination or anything, but something has to be done, and uh, and right now the one that is enemy number one of the whole world is Ayatollah Khomeini. He is a crazy man...We could probably foment some kind of an overthrow of Khomeini and get that country back to normal again....We can’t just sit back and be held hostage again by those crazy people. We’re too big and powerful a nation. It can’t happen.”
The ease with which Robertson described aggressive acts that could embroil the nation in war was amazing. He told his audience on June 26, 1985:
“We could make a selective strike right at the Ayatollah’s headquarters or something. We could also consider freeing Lebanon from the Syrians...We could join with the Israelis in some kind of activity. We could cut off Syria, which doesn’t have a very strong country, and bring economic sanctions against Syria. We could conceivably bring it down.”
Robertson believes that an important part of American foreign policy should be the overthrow of repressive governments around the world and that young Christians should be willing to fight and die in military actions. In fact, he believes that young men have been called by God to do so. Herb Titus, Dean of the School of Public Policy at CBN University told Robertson on the show on May 27, 1985: “I believe that those who believe in God will ultimately bring justice in all circumstances.” Should they die in the process, Titus said, they need only remember, “They still have eternal life in Jesus Christ.”
It appears as if Pat Robertson is right after all: Moral leadership is indeed the issue. And it seems fitting to give him the last word, for as he told U.S. News & World Report for the July 14, 1986 issue, “If you do not think I would be a wise leader who is strong and capable, a person of integrity and moral uprightness, then go vote for somebody else.”
While Americans did “go vote for somebody else” for President, Americans did not catch on to the continuing, secret, intensely bitter war for control of this country at every governmental and judicial level; nor did they discover who was calling the shots from behind the scenes—until the take-no-prisoners-war created a constitutional crisis, and a president’s sexual lapses spilled into every living room in America.
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Katherine Yurica was educated at East Los Angeles College, U.S.C. and the USC school of law. She worked as a consultant for Los Angeles County and as a news correspondent for Christianity Today plus as a freelance investigative reporter. She is the author of three books. She is also the publisher of the Yurica Report.
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