If you want to know how your world is being shaped by forces beyond your control consider the following.
1. These are men with a common fundamentalist or orthodox philosophy of life. 2. These are men who live together and communicate 24/7 about that philosophy of life. 3. These are men who share a common loyalty to one another that, in their words, even transcends morality in favor of the success in their venture. 4. These are the same men's groups that shaped the culture of the early British Empire. The Florentine Cameratas were born out of that same men's club environment that shaped Western science and culture from the 16th through the 20th centuries. The sole difference in today's group's compared the past is the sophistication. Either those groups in the past were tremendously prejudiced and internationally unsophisticated or the current aristocracy has come upon intellectual hard times. NOTE: Since this appeared in the Wall Street Journal I would assume that they have caught Rupert Murdoch's eye and that he is not too happy about it since the reviewer is negative about the group. REH How Fundamentalist C-Street Center is Shaping the Mid-Term Elections * Jeff Sharlet Wall Street Journal, October 24, 2010, 9:00 AM ET Last year, when I signed up to write a book about the C Street Center Inc., the Capitol Hill townhouse church-cum-condo - dubbed the "Prayboy Mansion" by some bloggers last year for its centrality to the G.O.P. sex scandals of Sen. John Ensign (R-NV) and former congressmen Chip Pickering (R-MS), both residents of the church during their affairs, and Gov. Mark Sanford (R-SC) - I didn't think it would still be in business by the time my book came out. After all, I reasoned, what kind of congressman -- and it's all men in C Street's bedrooms -- was going to tell his wife that he'd decided to keep lodging in a place that provided cover for not one but three philandering politicians, or "brothers," as the residents sometimes call one another? But as we head into the 2010 elections, the man of the hour is a loyal C Streeter, Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC). It's DeMint who has emerged as the G.O.P.'s new kingmaker, tapping Tea Party candidates for support by the establishment. And he's not the only fringe politician who now finds himself at the center of the coming storm. There's also C Streeter Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK), previously best known for musing on the prospect of the death penalty for abortion providers; now, Coburn is an elder statesman of the new conservatism. Sen. Sam Brownback (R-KS), a former C Streeter, is about to become governor of Kansas despite the opposition of an outfit comprised of both Democrats and Republicans, called the Mainstream Coalition. Almost certainly replacing him in the Senate will be current C Street resident Rep. Jerry Moran, who beat out the presumed favorite, Rep. Todd Tiahrt, a C Street visitor, in the Republican primary in part thanks to big establishment endorsements from C Street brothers DeMint, Coburn, Ensign, Pickering, Rep. Tom Osborne (R-NE), and Sen. John Thune, the South Dakota Republican who moved out, most believe, in preparation for a presidential run. "The fact that everyone that lived in the same house," Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK) said of the endorsements, "can't just be a coincidence." Sen. Inhofe is my favorite C Streeter, because he's so candid. Inhofe doesn't live there, but in the thick of the scandals last summers, when C Streeters were busy insisting C Street was just a place for personal spiritual solace, Inhofe piped up to declare that he held regular foreign policy meetings there. And when the Tulsa Oklahoman revealed that he'd spent at least $187,000 of taxpayer money -- not counting the cost of military transportation -- to meet with foreign heads of state on behalf of the Fellowship Foundation, the organization behind C Street, he didn't equivocate. His mission, he declared, was to use his status as a U.S. senator -- and a Fellowship brother -- to spread "the political philosophy of Jesus, something put together by Doug." That would be Doug Coe, the octogenarian leader of the Fellowship, which he likes to call simply the Family. Coe is a warm, charismatic figure with defenders even within the liberal establishment. They tend to be the sort of people who confuse personality for politics, individual character for the integrity of ideas. Coe is a nice man. But his theology, the "political philosophy of Jesus" that C Street, according to another Family leader, exists to help legislators infuse into their work? Coe calls it "Jesus plus nothing" -- not the church, not history, not even morality. "Moral orders," advises his son, the spiritual leader who helped cover up Sen. Ensign's affair, "that's for kids." Jeff Sharlet, New York Times bestselling author of The Family, is a contributing editor for Harper's Magazine, Rolling Stone, the coauthor of "Killing the Buddha," and an assistant professor of English at Dartmouth College, He has written for Mother Jones, The Nation, The New Republic, and many other magazines and newspapers. He lives in New Hampshire. Visit his website at www.jeffsharlet.com <http://www.jeffsharlet.com/> .
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