Hillary's achilleshiel: The family

[Hein van Meeteren]

REPLY TO: D66 at nic.surfnet.nl

Say Hillary, What About The Religious "Family" You Have Chosen To Be
Part Of?  "You don't choose your family, but you choose what church you
want to attend." said Hillary Clinton, to reporters and editors of the
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review on Tuesday the 25th. This is an interesting
choice of words, since - while we mostly hear about her Methodist
upbringing - Hillary Clinton has chosen to associate herself with The
Family (also known as the Fellowship), a very conservative,
fundamentalist organization started by Abraham Vereide... "...an
immigrant preacher who in 1935 organized a small group of businessmen
sympathetic to European fascism, fusing the Far Right with his own
polite but authoritarian faith. From that core, Vereide built an
international network of fundamentalists who spoke the language of
establishment power, a "family" that thrives to this day. In public,
they host prayer breakfasts; in private they preach a gospel of
"biblical capitalism," military might, and Am
 erican empire. Citing Hitler, Lenin, and Mao, Doug Coe, the Family's
current leader, declares, "We work with power where we can, build new
power where we can't." This quote is taken from the book on The Family
by the same name which will be published in May... a book which claims
to  "...dramatically challenge conventional wisdom about American
fundamentalism, revealing its crucial role in the unraveling of the New
Deal, the waging of the Cold War, and the no-holds-barred economics of
globalization. The question Sharlet believes we must ask is not "What do
fundamentalists want?" but "What have they already done?"A long article
was written about Hillary Clinton's participation in this organization
last September in Mother Jones, and The Family, itself, was the subject
of an extensive article in Harper's in March of 2003. And on March 21st,
The Nation published an article on Hillary and The Family by Barbara
Ehrenreich that was published on The Huffington Post and CBS News' we
 b site. The Family avoids the word Christian but worships Jesus, though
not the Jesus who promised the earth to the "meek." They believe that,
in mass societies, it's only the elites who matter, the political
leaders who can build God's "dominion" on earth. Insofar as The Family
has a consistent philosophy, it's all about power - cultivating it,
building it and networking it together into ever-stronger units, or
"cells."...wrote Ms.Ehrenreich.  Is it possible that Hillary's
participation in this fundamentalist group - which apparently preaches
the "gospel of military might" - would help explain her vote in favor of
authorizing President Bush to attack Iraq? Is it possible her pro-NAFTA
stance during her husband's administration comes from its embrace of
"the no-holds-barred economics of globalization"? Is it possible that
the sense some get that Hillary feels entitled to be president comes in
part from this group's belief that "it's only the elites who matter"?  I
encourage
 any reporter covering Hillary's campaign to ask her about all this.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steven-g-brant/say-hillary-what-about-t_b_93435.html



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