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Fundamentalist flim-flam
... But what makes this strain of Cultivated Ignorance so pernicious and virulent is the ersatz fundamentalist religious coating which Joe Conason describes in his book "Big Lies" (2003):

"No matter how many of the Right's virtucrats are caught committing the sins they claim to condemn, they pretend that they are lecturing us from the moral high ground. Are these bogus moralizers trying to deceive themselves as well as the rest of us? Or are they simply relying on the willingness of the millions of Americans to be duped? It is remarkable indeed that those trusting herds remain convinced of the moral superiority of conservatism, giving their money to ranting televangelists and their votes to ostentatiously pious politicians. Such credulous folk must be unaware of the evidence that traditional morals are declining more rapidly and more precipitously on the right-and in the so called red states-than anywhere else."...