The wierdest part is that many of those on the right-wing fringe believe this stuff: Oliver North, Jack Kemp, Tommy Thompson, John Ashcroft immediately come to mind as fellow travellers.
The most popular novel in America right now is one in which the world is tyrannized by the former secretary general of the U.N., who operates from Iraq, and his global force of storm troopers, called "peacekeepers." Revered rabbis evangelize for Christ, repenting Israel's "specific national sin" of "[r]ejecting the messiahship of Jesus." Much of the world is deceived by a false prophet, part of the inner circle of the Antichrist, who seems a lot like the pope -- he's a Catholic cardinal, "all robed and hatted and vested in velvet and piping."
"The Remnant," which debuted at No. 1 on the New York Times bestseller list, is the 10th entry in Jerry B. Jenkins and Tim LaHaye's phenomenally popular "Left Behind" series, a Tom Clancy-meets-Revelation saga of the Rapture, the Tribulation and, presumably, the eventual return of Jesus....
After all, Tim LaHaye isn't merely a fringe figure like Hal Lindsey, the former king of the genre, whose 1970 Christian end-times book "The Late Great Planet Earth" was the bestseller of that decade. The former co-chairman of Jack Kemp's presidential campaign, LaHaye was a member of the original board of directors of the Moral Majority and an organizer of the Council for National Policy, which ABCNews.com has called "the most powerful conservative organization in America you've never heard of" and whose membership has included John Ashcroft, Tommy Thompson and Oliver North. George W. Bush is still refusing to release a tape of a speech he gave to the group in 1999.
The point isn't that all these leaders are part of some kind of right-wing Illuminati. It's simply that the seemingly wacky ideology promulgated in the Left Behind books is one that important people in America are quite comfortable with. The Left Behind series provides a narrative and a theological rationale for a whole host of perplexing conservative policies, from the White House's craven decision to cut off aid to the United Nations Family Planning Fund to America's surreally casual mobilization for an invasion of Baghdad -- a city that is, in the Left Behind books, Satan's headquarters.
I have not read any of the Left Behind books, nor do I have any plan or reason to do so. In my estimation, it's pure right-wing propaganda packaged as popular literature. Frankly, there's not enough lipstick to make this pig pretty. The literary merits of the series aside, what scares me is that their far-right orienation is shared by a number of fairly influential Conservative types. I don't begrudge anyone their religious views, though I have no problems identifying Right-wing nutcases for what they are- dangerous ideologues..
I am disturbed that public policy could be crafted and executed by politicians who are convinced that THIS IS THE WAY THE WORLD REALLY IS. This is the kind of thinking that starts wars. When you divide the world into "us" and "them", "good" and "evil", "believer" and "unbeliever", how could you NOT want to vanquish those on the other side of the spectrum?
Be afraid. Be very afraid....
