http://www.nyobserver.com/pages/conason.asp
Put Ye No Faith in Bush’s Ministers
by Joe Conason
As a sales team seeking to promote their political goals, the present
occupants of the White House truly excel. By now, everyone must know that the
Bush administration is a cheerfully efficient team of “compassionate
conservatives” presenting the nation with “charitable choice” so that we can
achieve “faith-based solutions” to our national woes. Yet behind all this
happy-sounding rhetoric lies a reality that is less uplifting and wholesome.
The President’s determination to channel billions of tax dollars to religious
organizations may support some worthy inner-city programs, and his lawyers
may find a way to finesse the Constitutional questions raised by such
funding. But eventually, choices will have to be made about which groups get
money and which do not—and those choices, being made in the White House, will
inevitably carry a political tinge.
Bearing in mind that the original promoter of “compassionate conservatism”
in the Bush camp was campaign strategist Karl Rove, it seems likely that the
Office of Faith-Based Initiatives will soon become a highly effective
patronage scheme. That assumption is confirmed by the new administration’s
reduced emphasis on such traditional executive-branch operations as the
Domestic Policy Council, the Office for Intergovernmental Affairs and the
Office of Public Liaison. Despite all the feel-good assurances offered to
justify the new partnership between church and government, it would be a
mistake to forget that Mr. Rove more closely resembles Boss Tweed than St.
Francis of Assisi.
There were a few ominous hints of what Messrs. Bush and Rove may intend
during one of the Washington gatherings that celebrated the Bush
inauguration. At an enormous “prayer luncheon” held in the Hyatt hotel
ballroom on Capitol Hill on Jan. 19, the featured speaker was none other than
John Ashcroft, then in the midst of those difficult hearings concerning his
nomination as Attorney General. The former Missouri Senator—who wrote the
first federal “charitable choice” legislation a few years ago—told the
assembled multicultural divines that he had just been endorsed by a street
musician who played “Amazing Grace.”
The luncheon was also addressed by Stephen Goldsmith, the former mayor of
Indianapolis appointed to oversee the Office of Faith-Based Initiatives.
“This is an administration that will clear out the regulation problems, clear
out the legal problems,” he vowed. What made Mr. Goldsmith’s pledge slightly
eerie was the luncheon’s sponsorship by the Washington Times Foundation. The
foundation is yet another tentacle of Sun Myung Moon, the would-be messiah
who went to prison for federal tax evasion and illegal commingling of his
business and spiritual interests. At the luncheon, the Unification Church
leader received an award for his “work in support of traditional family
values” (which presumably did not include spiriting young people away from
their homes to serve his cult). Before returning to whatever palatial
compound he currently inhabits, Mr. Moon reminded his fellow ministers that
“religions tell us to fast, to serve others, to be sacrificial.”
In keeping with that injunction, Mr. Moon runs charitable organizations along
with his huge media and industrial holdings. So does Jerry Falwell, the
partisan Baptist preacher who in recent years has become a virtual adjunct of
the Moon empire. And like his Korean benefactor, Mr. Falwell has long been a
loyal promoter of the Bush family’s political causes.
Another dependable Bush ally is Pat Robertson. The wealthy televangelist and
Christian Coalition leader also controls Operation Blessing, a far-flung
charitable outfit that he expects to benefit from the President’s faith-based
federal boodle. He, too, has had his troubles with government authorities,
due to violations of the Christian Coalition’s tax-exempt status and also
because of Operation Blessing’s misuse of certain assets to serve his
commercial enterprises. Specifically, the charity’s airplanes were found to
have secretly transported personnel and equipment for a diamond-mining
enterprise in Zaire, undertaken by Mr. Robertson in 1994 with the blessing of
the late and unlamented dictator Mobutu Sese Seko.
An expose of that affair by the <I style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">
Virginian-Pilot newspaper led to a state investigation of Operation
Blessing two years ago. That probe’s findings were embarrassing, but
Virginia’s Republican governor and attorney general—both recipients of large
contributions from Mr. Robertson—saw no reason to seek indictments or fines.
And now, quite predictably, Mr. Robertson anticipates a nice big check for
Operation Blessing from his White House friends. With one hand he feeds the
hungry, while with the other he endorses and finances candidates like George
W. Bush.
Still, Mr. Robertson says he is concerned about governmental interference in
his charity’s promotion of fundamentalist dogma. With officials like Mr. Rove
and Mr. Goldsmith handing out the money, under the sympathetic eye of
Attorney General Ashcroft, he and his fellow evangelical entrepreneurs can
probably rest easy. The same cannot be said for the rest of us taxpayers.
