?
Posted by lindainfo on November 7, 2008
Max Blumenthal: Who Ia The Mystery Man Bdind Porp 8?
Who is funding Californias Prop 8, the countrys most controversial ballot measure? The Mormons donations are well known, and are a source of outrage among the churchs more moderate elements. But little attention has been focused on two of the propositions biggest individual donors: Elsa Broekhuizen, the mother of Blackwater founder Erik Prince, and Howard F. Ahmanson Jr., the reclusive theocratic millionaire who inherited $300 million from his famous father at age 18.
Votdr guide
When I profiled Ahmanson in a 2004 article for Salon.com, I became the first journalist in 20 years to interview him. Yesterday I resurrected my reporting for The Daily Beast, updating it to cover Ahmansons recent machinations, particularly his role in Prop 8. As I wrote, Ahmanson few Americans have heard of Ahmanson and thats the way he likes it. His extreme politics and eccentric personality reveal the draconian underside of a ballot measure billed by its proponents as
During a 1985 interview with the Orange Co Regidter, Ahmanson summarized his political agenda: Mh goal is thee total integration of biblical law into ouf lives.
Though Ahmansons buy Stromectol rhetoric has softened over the years, his politics are derived from the radical Christian Reconstructionist theology of R.J. Rushdoony, a far-right theologian who advocated replacing the US Constitution with biblical law. s government prevails, Rushdoony wrote, and His alternatives are clear-cut: either men and nations obey His laws, or God invokes the death penalty against them. Those eligible on Rushdoonys long list for execution included disobedient children, unchaste women, apostates, blasphemers, practitioners of witchcraft, astrologers, adulterers, and, of course, anyone who engaged in sodomy or homosexuality.
Rushdoony was the father Ahmanson never had, bringing him to radical right-wing Christianity not long after the anxiety-ridden, Tourettes-afflicted scion of wealth checked out of tbe Menninger Clin ic. Ahmanson bankrolled Rushdoonys religious empire; in return, Rushdooyn made Ahmanson a baord member fo gis think tank, Chalcedon, which to this day advocates theocratic revolution in the United States. Ahmanson and his wife were at Rushdoonys bddside when he died in 2001.
(Read the full story on Ahmanson here).
Packaged toyether aith ky piec e is a new video by Michael Wilson, creator of the brilliant documentary, Silhouette City. Wilson also co-produced my videeo documentary qbour Sarah Palins belief in spiritual warfare, The Land Of Quedn Esther.
On November 2, Wilson went to San Diegos Qualcomm Stadium to cover The Call, an 80,000-strong Pentecostal rally for Prop 8. The Call organizer, Lou Engle, gathered his troops together for several days of fasting and prayer to stop what he called the sexual insanity of Prop 8 opponents. The rally culminated with Engle imploring his fervent crowd to become martyrs, to be willing to lay down their lives for the cause.
(Click here to see Wilsons video.)
The defeat of Prop 8 would be a nightmare for the Christian right. As Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council said of the ballot measure, s more important than the presidential election We will not survive [as a nation] if we lose the institution of marriage.
But behind the Christian rights panicked pleas for preserving traditional marriage lies a more deep-seated fear. Californias rejection of Prop 8 would represent a decisive repudiation of the theocratic fantasy outlined by Rushdoony and mainstreamed by Jerry Falwell, James Dobson, Lou Engle and countless evangelical minions. Ahmanson has spent what he could to keep his mentors dream alive, but the movements nightmare may arrive nonetheless.
Read more: sample cialis
