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Enter the Neocons (First published in Liberty, Vol. 2, No. 4, March 1989)
What happened was Ronald Wilson Blithering Reagan. Obviously Reagan did not suddenly descend out of the clouds in 1980. He had been the cherished candidate of the conservative movement, its chosen route to power, ever since Goldwater’s defeat. Goldwater was too blunt and candid, too much an unhandleable Real Person. What was needed was a lovable, manipulable icon. Moreover, Goldwater’s principles were too hard-edged: he was way too much a domestic libertarian, and he was too much an eager warmonger. Both his libertarianism and his passion for nuclear confrontation with the Soviet Union scared the bejesus out of the American masses, as well as the more astute leadership of the conservative movement.

A reconstituted conservative movement would have to drop any libertarian ideology or concrete policies, except to provide a woolly and comfortable mood for suitably gaseous anti-government rhetoric and an improved foreign policy that would make sure that many more billions would go into the military-industrial complex, to step up global pressure against Communism, but avoiding an actual nuclear war. This last point was important: As much as they enjoy the role of the bully, neither the Establishment nor the American people want to risk nuclear war, which might, after all, blow them up as well. Once again, Ronnie Reagan looked like the Answer.

Two important new ingredients entered into, and helped reshape, the conservative movement during the mid 1970’s. One was the emergence of a small but vocal and politically powerful group of neo-conservatives (neocons), who were able, in a remarkably short time, to seize control of the think tanks, the opinion-molding institutions, and finally the politics, of the conservative movement. As ex-liberals, the neocons were greeted as important new converts from the enemy. More importantly, as ex-Trotskyites, the neocons were veteran politicos and organizers, schooled in Marxian cadre organizing and in manipulating the levers of power. They were shrewdly eager to place their own people in crucial opinion molding and money-raising positions, and in ousting those not willing to submit to the neocon program. Understanding the importance of financial support, the neocons knew how to sucker Old Right businessmen into giving them the monetary levers at their numerous foundations and think tanks. In contrast to free-market economists, for example, the neocons were eager to manipulate patriotic symbols and ethical doctrines, doing the microequivalent of Reagan and Bush’s wrapping themselves in the American Flag. Wrapping themselves, also, in such patriotic symbols as The Framers and the Constitution, as well as Family Values, the neocons were easily able to outflank free-market types and keep them narrowly confined to technical economic issues. In short the neocons were easily able to seize the moral and patriotic "high ground."

The only group willing and able to challenge the neocons on their own moralizing on philosophic turf was, of course, the tiny handful of libertarians; and outright moral libertarianism, with its opposition to statism, theocracy, and foreign war, could never hope to get to first base with conservative businessmen, who, even at the best of times during the Old Right era, had never been happy about individual personal liberty, (e.g. allowing prostitution, pornography, homosexuality, or drugs) or with the libertarians’ individualism and conspicuous lack of piety toward the Pentagon, or toward the precious symbol of the Nation-State, the US flag.

The neocons were (and remain today) New Dealers, as they frankly describe themselves, remarkably without raising any conservative eyebrows. They are what used to be called, in more precise ideological days, "extreme right-wing Social Democrats." In other words, they are still Roosevelt-Truman-Kennedy-Humphrey Democrats. Their objective, as they moved (partially) into the Republican Party and the conservative movement, was to reshape it to become, with minor changes, a Roosevelt-Truman-etc. movement; that is, a liberal movement shorn of the dread "L" word and of post-McGovern liberalism. To verify this point all we have to do is note how many times Roosevelt, Truman, Kennedy, et al., properly reviled by conservatives while they were alive, are now lauded, even canonized, by the current neocon-run movement, from Ronnie Reagan on down. And no one calls them on this Orwellian revision of conservative movement history.

As statists-to-the-core the neocons had no problem taking the lead in crusades to restrict individual liberties, whether it be in the name of rooting out "subversives," or of inculcating broadly religious ("Judeo-Christian") or moral values. They were happy to form a cozy alliance with the Moral Majority, the mass of fundamentalists who entered the arena of conservative politics in the mid-1970s. The fundamentalists were goaded out of their quietist millenarian dreams (e.g., the imminent approach of Armageddon) and into conservative political action by the accumulation of moral permissivism in American life. The legalization of abortion in Roe v. Wade was undoubtedly the trigger, but this decision came on top of a cumulative effect of the sexual revolution, the militant homosexual movement "out of the closet" and into the streets, the spread of pornography, and the visible decay of the public school system. The entry of the Moral Majority transformed American politics, not the least by furnishing the elite cadre of neocons with a mass base to guide and manipulate.

In economic matter, the neocons showed no more love of liberty, though this is obscured by the fact that the neocons wish to trim the welfare state of its post-Sixties excrescences, particularly since these were largely designed to aid black people. What the neocons want is a smaller, more "efficient" welfare state, within which bounds they would graciously allow the market to operate. The market is acceptable as a narrow instrumental device; their view of private property and the free market is essentially identical to Gorbachev’s in the Soviet Union.

Why did the Right permit itself to be bamboozled by the neocons? Largely because the conservatives had been inexorably drifting Stateward in the same manner. In response to the crushing defeat of Goldwater, the Right had become ever less libertarian and less principled, and ever more attuned to the "responsibilities" and moderations of Power. It is a far cry from three decades ago when Bill Buckley used to say that he too is an "anarchist" but that we have to put off all thoughts of liberty until the "international Communist conspiracy" is crushed. Those old Chodorovian libertarian days are long gone, and so is National Review as any haven for libertarian ideas. War mongering, militarism, theocracy, and limited "free" markets – this is really what Buckleyism amounted to by the late 1970s.

The burgeoning neocons were able to confuse and addle the Democratic Party by breaking with the Carter Administration, at the same time militantly and successfully pressuring it from within. The neocons formed two noisy front groups, the Coalition for a Democratic Majority and the Committee on the Present Danger. By means of these two interlocking groups and their unusual access to influential media, the neocons were able to pressure the Carter Administration into breaking the détente with Russia over the Afghanistan imbroglio and influencing Carter to get rid of the dove Cyrus Vance as Secretary of State and to put foreign policy power into the hands of the Polish émigré hawk and Rockefeller Trilateralist, Zbigniew Brzezinski. In the meantime, the neocons pushed the hysterically hawish CIA "B" Team report, wailing about alleged Soviet nuclear superiority, which in turn paved the way for the vast gift of spending handed to the military-industrial complex by the incoming Regan Administration. The Afghanistan and "B" Team hysterias, added to the humiliation by the Ayatollah, managed not only to kill off the bedeviled Carter Administration, but also to put the boots to non-intervention and to prepare the nation for a scrapping of the "post-Vietnam syndrome" and a return to the warmongering of the pre-Vietnam Era.

The Reagan candidacy of 1980 was brilliantly designed to weld a coalition providing the public’s instinctive anti-government mood with sweeping, but wholly nonspecific, libertarian rhetoric, as a convenient cover for the diametrically opposite policies designed to satisfy the savvy and politically effective members of that coalition: the neocons, the Buckleyite cons, the Moral Majority, the Rockefellers, the military-industrial complex, and the various Establishment special interests always clustering at the political trough....

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Protesters Play Hardball
...Joan Gaylord, a Herald Square protester who'd already been witness to other arrests, overheard a police order for the public to disperse. She was careful to note that, as in earlier cases when protesters were rounded up and arrested, the order hadn’t come over a public announcement system, nor a bullhorn. As a result, people had been arrested without ever knowing that they were ordered to leave. Al Bond had seen similar tactics take place at Sunday's march with a large group having been split off and arrested for no apparent reason.

Gaylord escorted me out of the specified area and told me she was furious at the Republicans. "The RNC doesn’t have any business being here. It’s a Democratic city, and they only came to exploit 9/11. The Republican administration has been disastrous for NYC. They haven’t given us adequate funding, and the convention is hurting business."

After the sound of sirens and yelling abated, Gaylord told me that she works “in religion” and that she reads the bible daily. “I am enraged that Bush has used the bible for personal gain,” she told me....

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Praying on the sideline
Social conservatives frustrated over their diminished role

NEW YORK -- A dozen Republicans gathered in a hotel meeting room a block from Madison Square Garden yesterday and prayed that God would intercede to give George W. Bush another term.


''We pray for George Bush, God," intoned the Rev. Wayne Perryman, sparking murmurs of assent from others. ''Give him the confidence that you're on his side."

Other speakers asked God to ensure that Republicans pick up a few more Senate seats to help stop Democratic filibusters against Bush's judicial nominees, singling out Alan Keyes's bid to defeat Barack Obama in Illinois. They asked God to ''touch America" this election to reinvigorate traditional values....

...''The very foundation of this great nation is Christianity and the firm belief in Jesus Christ," LaSueur said instead, provoking wild applause and cheers on Monday evening. ''And I believe that before we can begin to address the many problems our nation faces today, that we must restore and maintain morality and spirituality in government. And George W. Bush is fully committed to that end."...

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Burning Slaves at the Stake
On "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God"
By THOMAS ST. JOHN

Rev. Jonathan Edwards delivered the hellfire and brimstone "spider" sermon, "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" in Enfield, Connecticut on July 8, 1741. This topical sermon is a bitter jeremiad against the "New York Negro rebels" who were then being executed for plotting to burn the village of New York to the ground.

From late May to August 1741, in the public market place that later became known as "the Five Points", thirteen slaves were burned at the stake, sixteen were hanged, hundreds were jailed, and seventy-two were transported to certain death in the West Indies. Contemporaries compared these events to the Salem witch hysteria of 1692. When Edwards preached in early July, twelve slaves had already been burned, and nine were hanged; the minister had no way of knowing how many more would be tortured.

The courtroom tirades of Edwards' personal friend, the prosecuting attorney William Smith sent many innocent slaves to their fiery deaths amid the screaming populace. Smith's tirades echo in the nightmarish images that build to terrifying effect in "Sinners in the Hands of An Angry God". Jonathan Edwards met William Smith at Yale University, and from August 1722 to May 1723 lodged with Susanna Odell, Madam Thomas Smith, in New York City--the prosecuting lawyer's mother. Edwards supplied the pulpit of a small Presbyterian church on Williams Street, near the docks. Thomas Smith was a church trustee. William's younger brother, John Smith, became Jonathan's closest, and abiding friend both at Yale, and during the New York days, their correspondence continuing twenty years later.

There is a tradition that Edwards delivered his discourse while staring fixedly at the bell-rope that hanged directly opposite the pulpit. This uncharacteristic preaching manner drew attention. Edwards likely stared not to the rope, but directly beyond it to the Negroes segregated in the gallery....

...Jonathan Edwards did not create terrifying visions of torture in order to hurl his people into despair. The congregation, unwilling to accept any responsibility for slavery and its trade, needed "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" to ease the intolerable pangs of conscience that were provoked by the events in New York....

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THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY
by ADAM GOPNIK
What do we talk about when we talk about wine?

...What they rarely seem to be about is drinking wine. Remarkably, nowhere in wine writing, including Parker’s and Echikson’s, would a Martian learn that the first reason people drink wine is to get drunk. To read wine writing, one would think that wine is simply another luxury food, like smoked salmon or caviar or chocolate; the one idea that is banished is that it is a powerful drug, which can wash away, in a few minutes, the ability to discriminate at all. The end of food writing is to turn eating into a metaphor for wanting, of all kinds. The end of wine writing is to turn drinking into a metaphor for judging. Since we know that this is false, we feel the falsity, and the pathos of the falsity.

For it is not wine that makes us happy for no reason; it is alcohol that makes us happy for no reason. Wine is what gives us a reason to let alcohol make us happy without one. Without wine lore, and wine tasting, and wine talk, and wine labels, and, yes, wine writing and rating—the whole elaborate idea of wine—we would still get drunk, but we would be merely drunk. The language of wine appreciation is there not because wine is such a special subtle challenge to our discernment but because without the elaborate language—without the idea of wine, held up and regularly polished—it would all be about the same, or taste that way. Wine talk and wine ceremony are not simply snobbish distractions that lead us away from the real experience; they are part of what lets the experience happen. To turn wine away from happiness is the drinker’s sin. A good fruity bottle of a Santa Barbara Pinot Noir, with a pretty label and a decent story, makes us happy, and happier than that we don’t really deserve to be. In that James story, of course, the innocent empirical American’s reward and punishment would come when he marries that comtesse and retires to her château, where they spend the rest of their lives drinking nothing but water, for their health.

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Is America in Bible Prophecy?
Beliefnet talks to the evangelist whose new book has zoomed up the best-seller lists in its first two weeks.

...So extrapolating from the scenarios of the Bible, what do you believe is our nation’s future, based on prophecy?

The story of prophecy that has to do with the Jews goes all the way through to the end of the Book of Revelation. Jesus prophesied in Matthew 24. The disciples said, “What shall be the signs of the coming of the ends of the age?” And he said, “The first sign would be deception.” Now, there’s never been greater deception then what happened on September 11, 2001. In the 1990s, New Age relativism redefined a terrorist as just an “extremist.” Bill Clinton and his moral relativism wanted [a Middle East peace agreement] because he was trying to get a postage stamp of himself over Monica’s face. By doing that, he sent a signal to the Islamic fundamentalist world that was already in a rage, that America would embrace terrorism.

In the 1990s, Jews were being blown up almost weekly, and we would not acknowledge it as terror. We called it a “cycle of violence.” We would not define morality, and we allowed the disintegration of our moral values to affect not only the private life of a president, but also the domestic policy in America and also our foreign policy.

What does your theory mean for the coming presidential election?

Number one, we’re in a horrendous battle between darkness and light. We began with a distraction of our moral principles We saw it through the 1960s and the 1970s. We saw it through abortion and prayer in school and all these other issues. We saw it in the White House through Clinton. Then we saw that it translated into our foreign policy--not just our domestic policy. It spread like the Ebola virus.

And now we realize that the holy grail of understanding is that 9/11 was the most apocalyptic day in American history. And we woke up from our innocence to realize that we cannot put our heads in the sand any longer. We’ve got to stand up to the New Agers who believe that a terrorist is not a terrorist. ...

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Once Born (Kerry) vs. Born Again (Bush)
Influential conservative writer Marvin Olasky, who coined the term "compassionate conservatism" and helped craft Bush’s original faith based agenda, has raised an interesting distinction between the spiritual lives of George W. Bush and John Kerry. In the course of a column about the paths they chose related to Vietnam, Olasky writes:

"The other thing both of us [Olasky and Bush] can and do say is that we did not save ourselves: God alone saves sinners (and I can surely add, of whom I was the worst). Being born again, we don't have to justify ourselves. Being saved, we don't have to be saviors.

"John Kerry, once-born, has no such spiritual support, nor do most of his top admirers in the heavily secularized Democratic Party. It would be great if he could say: 'I was young and vainglorious and often self-absorbed. I exaggerated and lied at times, and since then have thought it necessary not to disavow the fantasies I wove. But I do deserve credit for being there and serving my country in a mixed-up era in which I at times was also mixed-up.'"

This prompted liberal blogger Josh Marshall to ask whether Olasky was saying “John Kerry fibs about his war record because he's a Catholic.” I wondered about that and a few other points so I wrote to Olasky, who emailed back quickly. Our exchange...

...Olasky: As I wrote, "he evidently does not believe that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God." Based on the evidence I've seen, he seems to want to justify himself. If there's evidence to the contrary, I'd be glad to see it.

Me: If you don’t have to justify your actions, does that mean you don't have to lead a good life....as you long as you accept Jesus Christ?

Olasky: [After noting that he didn’t have time then to answer fully—I’d written him at 10 pm on a Friday night, after all—he wrote] I'll direct you (or your readers) to chapter six of Romans. Paul writes, "Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound. By no means." He then explains why we should not let sin reign. His thinking is far better than mine.

Me: On a more pedestrian level. Isn't it hard to be a politician without "justifying" yourself? Doesn't President Bush (and any other politician) do that every time he explains why he behaved a certain way?

Olasky: "Justifying" vs. justification; big difference between explaining actions and claiming a life of perfection....

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In the name of God
George Bush really is doing God's work - according to the Rev Evans' best-selling book, that is

One of the surest ways of testing a country's political temperature is to look at the national bestseller list. The current No 1 on Amazon's chart, Unfit for Command, in which "Swift Boat veterans speak out against John Kerry", will draw attention in this country. Formerly No 1, currently holding on at No 3 among the mega-sellers, The American Prophecies, will probably not. It should.

The author, Michael D Evans, is part preacher, would-be sooth-sayer, big-time blowhard. He's also rich, given his book's runaway sales. Not that money is a main motive, any more than it was for Moses. The book purports to reveal how "ancient prophecies reveal our nation's future". More precisely these prophecies, correctly decoded, confirm that George Bush's tearing up of the Middle East road map, last April, has found great favour with God.

The current conflict accords exactly, for those that have eyes to see, or teachers like the Rev Evans to instruct them, with the divinely ordained script for America and Israel. We are now, as Evans puts it, "in the eye of the prophetic storm". Bracing, perilous, but for the American faithful, deeply reassuring.

Much of The American Prophecies is devoted to close exegesis of the page of the Bible on which incoming presidents have laid their hand while taking the oath of office during the swearing-in ceremony. It is a presidential privilege to choose the passage. What did the 42nd president (known to the irreverent as Slick Willy) select for that fateful day? Galatians 6:8, "For he that soweth unto his own flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption."

Prophetic or what? More damning, however, than his fleshly reapings with Monica, was Clinton's betraying the sacred mission entrusted him by God. He cannot plead ignorance, when his time comes to stand before the divine bench. As governor of Arkansas, he was specifically instructed by his pastor, the Rev WO Vaught, "You might be president one day. You will make mistakes and God will forgive you. But God will never forgive you if you turn your back on Israel." Which, to the great peril of his country, Clinton did, at Camp David in July 2000. What followed, 14 months later in Manhattan, was a mark of God's stern displeasure at the errant president. ...

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...Soon after Hagel spoke, the acting state Republican chair--an African-American man in a white cowboy hat named Leon Mosley--urged his delegates, "Let's remember what's paramount in our life: God ... This is the GOP: God's Official Party." At that, the room burst into sustained applause. Behold, the Republican base.

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Evangelical Anxiety I
George Ratliff's documentary Hell House is an extraordinary film. Here's the IMDB summary:

A look at the "Hell House" performed annually in October by the youth members of Trinity Church (Assemblies of God) in Cedar Hill, Texas (a Dallas suburb) -- seen by over 10,000 visitors each year. We see the organization and planning of the event -- including auditions, construction, scripting and rehearsals -- largely through the involvement of one family: a single father with 4 children (one of whom suffers from cerebral palsy) including his daughter, a cast member.

The remarkable thing is Ratliff's detachment and lack of spin. He presents Trinity Church and its "Hell House" as they are and allows the members of the church to speak for themselves. The result is a film that I think the members of Trinity would find represents them accurately, but that most viewers will find appalling....

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RNC singer: war on gays who "kill and rape our children"
..."I'm not in the mood to play with those who are trying to kill our children." - Donnie McClurkin, GOP Convention entertainer speaking about gays.

Donnie McClurkin, one of the just-announced (http://www.gopconvention.com/contents/newsroom/releases/082304.shtml) entertainers to be performing at the GOP Convention in NYC, thinks homosexuality is a "curse," (http://www.charismamag.com/a.php?ArticleID=5999) that it's caused by men raping small children, that being gay is a choice, that it can be cured, and most explosively, that gays are trying to "kill our children." Big tent? Try big tent of hate.

One more thing before we get to the good stuff. The GOP Convention Web site notes that (http://www.gopconvention.com/contents/newsroom/releases/082304.shtml) McClurkin "is spearheading a grassroots effort to bring about unity among churches throughout New York and New Jersey." What the GOP doesn't tell you is that, according to the 700 Club, he's spearheading the grassroots effort so that "Christians can have a major voice against the homosexual agenda." ...

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Holding the Pentagon Accountable: For Religious Bigotry
The first reports sounded like an over-the-top satire of the Bush Pentagon: the deputy secretary of defense for intelligence - the ranking general charged with the hunt for Osama bin Laden - was parading in uniform to Christian pulpits, preaching that God had put George Bush in the White House and that Islamic terrorists will only be defeated "if we come at them in the name of Jesus." But now a Pentagon inquiry has concluded that Lt. Gen. William Boykin did indeed preach his grossly offensive gospel at 23 churches, pronouncing Satan the mastermind of the terrorists because "he wants to destroy us as a Christian army."

It was stunning last fall, after the general's lapse into brimstone bigotry became public, when Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, far from disturbed, praised General Boykin for an "outstanding record" and kept him at the highly sensitive intelligence post during the inquiry. Now it is simply mind-boggling that Pentagon reports suggest the general may survive with only a reprimand for having failed to clear his remarks in advance.

General Boykin has to be removed from his current job. He has become a national embarrassment, not to mention a walking contradiction of President Bush's own policy statement that the fight against terror is bias-free and not a crusade against Islam. (General Boykin preached of a 1993 fight against a Muslim warlord in Somalia: "I knew that my God was bigger than his. I knew that my God was a real God, and his was an idol.")

The sense of offense among Islamic Americans is already deep. Removal of the preacher-general should be a no-brainer, however much the president's campaign generals might fear offending the Christian right voting bloc.

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You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll hurl
In many ways, George W. Bush: Faith in the White House lives up to its title. The 70-minute documentary, released to Christian bookstores this week and eyeing a possible network TV primetime slot in September, is indeed an informative and inspiring look at the faith that drives our President.

The film, from Grizzly Adams Productions, is based primarily on two recent best-sellers—Tom Freiling's George W. Bush: On God and Country (Allegiance Press/FaithWorks) and David Aikman's A Man of Faith: The Spiritual Journey of George W. Bush (W Publishing Group). Numerous interviews with Bush experts, advisers and observers—many of them evangelicals—are spread throughout the piece, giving it credibility.

We see not only Bush's faith in its current form—a man driven by prayer and the principles of Scripture...

...Right after that, NAE president Haggard announces that Bush "will be known as the man who stood up to Islamic fundamentalism being used to tyrannize their own people, so that in another hundred years, in the Islamic world, he'll be viewed as a great liberator."

I winced at that quote: A hundred years? And how will the Islamic world regard Bush in the meantime? It was an odd—and hardly ringing—endorsement.

The film finally addresses Michael Moore, less than five minutes before its conclusion. Well, he's sort of addressed. Parshall narrates: "But will George W. Bush be allowed to finish the battle against the forces of evil that threaten our very existence? One thing appears to be certain: He has already paid a very high price politically for this dedication. One Hollywood filmmaker who claims to be non-political has written and produced what he calls a documentary, that many critics quickly disclaimed as pure propaganda dedicated to the sole purpose of damaging the president's image …"...

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Poll: Americans Wary of Politics in Church
WASHINGTON - Most Americans oppose political parties obtaining church rosters, says a new poll that found bipartisan opposition to a step the Republicans have taken to identify voters...

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So the biblical model of marriage is one man, one woman, one lifetime?
Campolo: A "biblical model" is harder to establish than you think. A colleague of mine has identified, I think, 16 models of marriage in the Hebrew Bible, including polygamy, concubinage, handmaidens, levirate arrangements, purchasing of wives, and spouses that accompany political alliances. It's so pious to say "the biblical model of marriage." Which of those forms of marriage do you mean?...

...Campolo: Speaking of Mark 10, what do you do with divorced people who remarry? Do you accept them in your church? I mean, while Jesus never speaks about gay marriage, he speaks very clearly about those who remarry after a divorce. I don't know many churches that enforce a no-remarriage rule.

Has the church said, "We have to be faithful to Scripture about marriage, except on the issue of divorce and remarriage"? Or do we extend grace? Because if we're going to show grace toward people who are divorced and remarried, an area Jesus specifically called sin, then how do you not show grace to people in a sexual relationship that Jesus never mentions?

Yes, Paul addresses it. But the fact that Jesus doesn't is important, because it's apparently not on his top ten list of sins....

...Sanders: The Bible warns us against those who are proud of being right, even when they claim Scripture as their authority. Jesus rejects that self-justifying, judgmental attitude.

Based on history, the African-American perspective would suggest that white evangelicals are not to be readily trusted on biblical interpretation. It goes back to what they said about slavery. That's why black people didn't get too excited about debates over inerrancy and the authority of Scripture, because you look at the behavior of the people carrying on the conversation. Are they using the Bible to justify themselves?

I'm learning from Jesus that it's more important to be righteous than to be right. Our attitudes and actions speak louder than any position we articulate....

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Angry notes take a shot at drinkers
People in the Wilkes-Barre's Heights section are told of a mysterious program that says it will respond to results of heavy drinking.

WILKES-BARRE - Up Sherman, and down Meade streets. Along a stretch of Northampton Street. The bizarre white fliers appeared tucked beneath windshield wipers and taped to some doors in the Heights neighborhood.

Bouncing between anger and sarcasm in tone, the unsigned flier that appeared Wednesday describes an "alarming rise in the number of worthless, alcoholic pieces of crap in the area," the word "worthless" underlined for emphasis.

The flier promises an unknown group called "ADVANCED AA" is on the way, "Helping you when you can't help yourself."

Described in the flier are these scenarios:

# "Where there is a man who has nothing better to do than wake-up, crack open a beer and proceed to beat his wife."

# "Where there are children that are scared of their own father due to the fact that all he does is drink and beat them."

# "Where there is a woman who chooses to buy a case of beer instead of food for her children."

# "Where there is a family that is falling apart because alcohol is more important than love."

Each scenario ends with the ominous phrase, "there we'll be..." - leaving the reader uncertain of just what "Advanced AA" intends to do....

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Boykin violated military rules with speeches, report says
WASHINGTON (ABP) -- The Pentagon's chief intelligence official violated military procedures while giving controversial religious speeches, an internal investigation has reportedly found.

News organizations reported Aug. 19 that the Pentagon inspector general's office had given lawmakers a long-anticipated report on Army Lt. Gen. William Boykin. Boykin angered Muslim-Americans and many supporters of church-state separation in October, after news reports revealed comments he had made in a series of speeches to Christian groups.

Among the most controversial of Boykin's statements were comments casting the war on terrorism in spiritual terms, referring to the United States as "a Christian nation," saying Muslims worshiped an "idol" and asserting that God had put President Bush in the White House.

But Boykin's most publicized remarks came during a January 2003 speech to a pastors' meeting at First Baptist Church of Daytona Beach, Fla. There, he spoke about his involvement fighting warlords during the United States' ill-fated intervention in the Muslim nation of Somalia. One top lieutenant to a Somali warlord had been quoted on CNN as saying he would not be captured because Allah would spare him.

"Well, you know what I knew, that my God was bigger than his," Boykin said, according to a tape of the speech. "I knew that my God was a real God, and his was an idol. But I prayed, 'Lord, let us get that man.'"

He also reportedly showed his audience photographs of Mogadishu taken at the time, and pointed to a black streak above the city that he described as the presence of evil. ...

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The Real Deal:
How a Philosophy Professor With a Checkered Past
Became the Most Influential Catholic Layman in George W. Bush's Washington

Editor's note: Deal Hudson announced Aug. 18 that he would be giving up his position with the Republican National Committee in reaction to questions posed by "a liberal Catholic publication." In recent days, NCR has tried repeatedly to meet with Hudson to get his response to questions about his departure from Fordham University in 1994 following allegations of an inappropriate sexual relationship with a freshman female student. The university said Hudson "surrendered" his tenure. He also paid a settlement of $30,000 to terminate a lawsuit that the student brought against him on the basis of these allegations. ...