The Dreadedness of the Dreaded Religious Right

The blogger Tristero at Hullabaloo has a seven-part (at least) series on, for lack of a better term, the Religious Right. He co-opts the word "Christianists", which I believe Dan alerted me to as an invention of Andrew Sullivan's. Still, everything comes back to the blogs these days, so it's not entirely absurd to think Sullivan stole it from Tristero. Anyway, Tristero's series is long and involved, but it's worth slogging through. Here are the links for the brave:

Part I
Part II
Part III
Part IV
Part V
Part VI
Part VII

Anyway, he mentions some tidbits that give you an idea just how powerful the RR is:

One other point. You may think Rushdoony’s ideas as to be beneath serious notice. Therefore, please note that a major funder of Rushdoony's Christian Reconstrucion, billionaire Howard Ahmanson, funded the “intelligent design” creationism initiative at the Discovery Institute (Ahmanson sits on the board). That's correct: Major funding for "Intelligent design" creationism is linked directly to the ideas you will encounter here.Ahmanson also funds the Claremont Foundation, a rightwing cultural thinktank, and funded the recall initiative of California's governor Gray Davis. These are only a few of the initiatives Ahmanson has taken to advance the rightwing, and often specifically Republican, agenda.

Intelligent Design, as you may or may not have seen, is a warmed over re-write of Creationism designed to give the appearance of scientific validity to theology which recently met with a satisfying court defeat in Dover, PA. It's good that it lost the case, but it's a testament to the power of the various octopus appendages of the RR that such junk even got that far. And this is really the kind of thing that I fret over when it comes to the RR. It's not just that they're assaulting the Constitution or even Enlightenment ideas; it's that they're assaulting the very concepts of reason and rationality, gradually and generationally eroding the capacity of the masses for critical thinking, thereby making the masses ever less able to resist their pernicious influence.

A few further notes on the question of their influence are:
(1) Monica Goodling, former senior counsel to Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales who recently took the Fifth in the Congressional Hearings regarding the not-going-anywhere-and-possibly-the-downfall-of-the-Bush-Administration US Attorney purge scandal, was a graduate of Messiah College and Regent University (http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/3/27/74143/0793). Regent U. is operated by Pat Robertson, and according to their site, 150 graduates currently serve in the Bush Administration
(2) "The Republican War on Science" by Chris Mooney has some examples of RR folks being appointed to key positions in the Executive Branch under Bush who immediately proceeded to politicize their offices and disseminate scientific and medical misinformation in the service of their religious agenda. For example, (http://oversight.house.gov/features/politics_and_science/example_breast_cancer.htm) the National Cancer Institute removed a note from its website which stated the accepted medical community consensus that there is no link between abortions and increased risk of breast cancer and instead added a note suggesting that whether or not abortion causes breast cancer is still an open question.

In short, though the number of regular citizens who could be counted as among the RR may still be pretty small, their influence on the levers of power shouldn't be underestimated. They are, as zealots by definition are, determined, tenacious, well-funded, and well-organized and efforts to counter-act their pernicious influence should be high on the list of things that need to get done in this country over the next 20 years.